Getting thoughts down about control. A thing I’ve strived for all my life and naturally something that’s slipped away on the regular throughout that self-same life. Even in my music dayz, Hunter S Thompson may have been raging chaos one floor above during my first real career job at Rolling Stone but I’d be tucked in a warren of rooms with the copyediting crew hunting out comma splices and dangling participles, setting things straight in the word&meaning department. I could (and did) go upstairs and dip my toe into the mayhem, yet I always knew I would return below stairs to four walls of order. Of course, there are a lot of metaphorical trails I could follow with the above/below analogy. Launching out into the wilderness at Spin where there wasn’t as defined a parameter around me to retreat from the crazy I wanted to be a part of but also felt flushed with panic by not being able to control the things and people around me. I did have an office. It had a door. The door didn’t actually close though because the office had been a supply closet before I’d been hired, then a too-big desk had been shoved in that blocked the door. Basically, if I felt overwhelmed I would need to squeeze behind my desk, then turn my chair to face the wall. Which was a weird look. For a minute I’d thought about hanging a curtain. Also weird and on a staff of alpha males would only have invited more comments and sneers. So I guess I gave up the need for anything other than being in the mix. I say “I guess” because, no lie, those times are a bit fuzzy in my mind. Probably an indication of dancing as fast as I could while having legitimately excellent adventures and quantifiably strange moments, all mashed together with alcohol. sleep deprivation, and stress to create a swirly swim of life experiences.

This many years later and maybe I thought there’d be more to this thing called life planning, control of the days, the future, and such. Honestly, I don’t know who I’m trying to fool with that given on a purely intellectual level I’ve known that control of events isn’t actually a thing. I have a tattoo that says change if only to remind me that yes, change. Happens. Always. But yet. Still and all. The emotional living of that is confounding. I’ve said it recently, I’ll say it again (mainly because I’m just starting to believe it), being with my dad as his cognition of the world around him shifts, ebbs, flows, flattens, and all other things with no name, I realize how fluid events are. What I see, he doesn’t. What I say, he understands but then lets go of seconds later. But he keeps moving forward independently. Knows things, does things, makes his wants and desires clear and acts on stuff. There are some times (this morning) where he says something that to me is so mysterious I wonder if unicorns are currently living under triple rainbows in his space, yet to him the thing is perfectly clear. As I make my way over to his house, I half expect to find a scary scenario and given I haven’t gotten there yet, maybe I will. The thing that strikes me is that there is no black and white. There is no obvious moment when Now a Change Must Be Made. And that crashes right into my sense of control. That there is none. That as they (all-knowing they?!?) “(Hu)man plans, (fill in fave deity) laughs.” It’s not as if I’m thwarted, it’s just a matter of shifting with the moment. Calling it in the second of what might be the next thing. And not being overly reactive in that.

I’m reading this great book Being Mortal by Atul Gawande that a friend suggested and I bought years ago but am now just getting around to reading. I guess we come to things when we need them. The words resonate in regards to how we respect aging, allow autonomy in the face of what might be felt to be dangerous. In other words, places like assisted living and nursing homes are often designed around the needs of the children of those residents in order that they’ll feel their loved ones are safe. Safety is a high priority that often takes precedence over desires and individual choices. And that’s not nothing. It’s just there’s a balance. So as I understand my dad is a ramblin’ dude in his own space and I imagine catastrophes tripping him (literally), I also know he’s mostly happy doing all that and I become someone who’s there to catch him if he falls (hopefully literally, but that’s mostly figurative). There will come a time another decision needs to be made. I kind of know what that is but again, plans, control, none of it is knowable until … who even knows …

I throw up my proverbial hands. Not in frustration. Not even necessarily in supplication. Mostly because it feels good to fling them somewhere.