Illusions.1

I must have been due for a fall. For weeks, it seems, I have been floating on the good feelings given me by my children, my exciting travel to Japan, the birth of my first grandson. But today that unwanted shadow, depression, returned to my side. At certain times it does not take much, and part of what triggered today's slump was the realization that I really have a pretty hard challenge, raising three young children half-time, generating enough resources for everyone, working in a technology environment when I'm about as technical as a log.

I try never to cut corners, but sometimes I have to make choices between career and family, like leaving work a bit early to see my son play in a JV basketball game. He swished a jumper from the 3-point line, fed a pass to a teammate under the basket for an assist, stole one pass, blocked another, drew a shooting foul. He committed no turnovers or fouls himself. Overall, then, he played a very good game.

Under normal circumstances, getting to watch his game would have been enough to cheer me. But as I dropped him off at his mother's afterwards, I was suddenly struck by that old feeling of sadness about my broken marriages. It is harder to drop your kids off sometimes than others. Tonight, I must have needed something other than to be reminded that on Monday nights, no one ever comes home with me.

I guess I started feeling lonely.

After a while, I walked to Luna Park, where I had a lovely dinner with my buddies who are publishing TODO Monthly, that sexy city guide startup that I've long felt would be a success. The two of them are both such charming people, witty, intelligent, creative women, I couldn't ask for better company. It is the kind of dinner in the kind of restaurant with the kind of people I enjoy most, and it did indeed boost my spirits a bit.

But on the long walk home, my thoughts were consumed by other visions. I thought of one good friend, an executive secretary, a calligrapher, an incredibly well informed amateur historian, a gay man, and a speed addict. I'd tried to help him with his addiction several times, and for a while it looked like he had gotten himself clean.

I remember one night as I was driving through the Haight, far from his home in the Tenderloin, I saw him walk rapidly across the street, carrying his shoulder bag, and I just knew he was high. This must have been what he did -- walk the streets quickly, here and there, all over town, probably feeling invisible.

Then I remembered another friend, a Vietnam vet who had a drinking problem. He had started going downhill, I heard, and my impression from someone was that he had become homeless. One day, a homeless man died on the sidewalk outside our office on Mint Street in downtown San Francisco, and one of our young interns so freaked out when she bent to help him and discovered he was dead that she quit, left San Francisco, and headed back for her parents' home somewhere in the Midwest.

A few days later, standing at the window of my office, I looked down and was sure I saw a roughened version of my friend, the drunken vet, staring up at me. I really had no idea what I would do if he showed up, wanting something. But he never did.

Years later, I found out he had cleaned up, gotten married, moved to Oregon and was steadily employed. He found his escape from the streets, which otherwise turn deadly in the end. Average life expectancy of a homeless person? Five years.

Then, I thought of another friend, a woman colleague who was so devastated by her divorce that she suffered an emotional breakdown. I helped her for years, getting her a job and supporting her find a new career. Her ex-husband, a good man, was generous to a fault. But she, too, developed an alcohol addiction, and her calls became more and more strange and tearful over the subsequent years.

She died at age 57, alone in her bed, letters from her sons at her bed table.

***

Who knows why sad memories suddenly flood our brains on otherwise perfectly innocent nights. Maybe today's problem for me is I am acutely aware of how far out on the edge I have to live my life.

I was puzzled about how a series of laptop computers got "broken" at my house or in my car recently, mainly three broken latches or hinges. Did my kids or their friends possibly break them, while I was distracted, as I often am, making dinner or packing school lunches or cooking breakfast, or cleaning or dishwashing, or doing laundry, or helping with homework, giving baths and shampoos, checking for ticks after hikes, putting band aids on scrapes, administering medicines for coughs, stomach aches, etc., locating "lost" clothes, comforting a kid who thinks he is no good at math or who thinks she is no good at reading, and on and on and on?

So, I may be making excuses, but given the pressures I am constantly under, with no help whatsoever from any quarter, how in the hell could I possibly know if one of them accidentally broke a latch or a hinge on some stupid laptop computer? Why don't they make stronger latches and hinges, anyway?

While I am on the subject, why is this society so relentlessly hostile to families and children? Why do I have to pay full fare for two-year-olds on airplane flights? How can one salary ever stretch far enough to cover this kind of expense, even though air travel is mandatory in our modern way of life, with dispersed families, and the desire to remain connected with relatives, no matter how far apart we may live?

I just feel sorry for myself tonight, disrespected. There's nothing much to be done about it, save for acting like a gentleman, which is what I always try to do. But it is at times like this that my unwanted shadow returns.

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