Adorable

There are two critical pieces of information to set the stage for this essay.

The average height for a three-year-old human is roughly thirty-seven inches.

The proscribed height for a sink counter is thirty-six inches.

I am six feet tall, although as I age, that measurement is decreasing. This affects my self-esteem. Because my vanity demands that I should be six feet tall forever, I will be buried vertically. But I digress (expect more of that).

So… I’m six feet tall. To put me on an equal footing with a three-year-old, the sink counter in my house would have to be 5’11”.

This means I can’t see the top of the counter, even if I step on my tiptoes. I have no idea what is up there, but I can make some guesses based on my careful observations of how the giants interact with the countertop.

For at least fifty years, I’ve towered over the sink, so any trauma I might have related to kitchen elevations is a distant memory. Or so one would think.

Imagine, at three years old, I am moved to prove that I am as good a helper as my sister, who is four years older than me (forty-eight inches tall). I take my plate and silverware, along with the small pile of spaghetti noodles that I didn’t eat, over to the sink. I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to put the plate on the counter with silverware and spaghetti intact. I’m coordinated, evidenced by my ability to ride a tricycle, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

But it is. Lifting the plate over my head, I tilt it. The silverware falls on my tiny little feet, and the spaghetti, with the accompanying sauce, slides down my favorite shirt. Why is this my favorite? Because it has a pocket! I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain that.

The shock of the silverware’s assault and the ruination of my shirt bring me to such a state of bumfuzzlement that I let go of the plate–which is more off the counter than on. The plate falls to the floor and shatters. Now, everyone is going to get involved.

In the family I grew up in, there is now a hubbub. It is clear that I have done something wrong. I’m picked up and set out of the way, my sister says I’m an idiot, my mother yells at my sister, my father says we don’t yell, and my mother tells everyone to get out of the kitchen. A somewhat peaceful evening has descended into angry chaos, and it's clear that I'm the cause of it. All of this will go into my very own carefully curated file of evidence that can and will be held against me as life progresses.

Well, that sucks. Fortunately, there is another way of looking at this. I mean, for gosh sake, a three-year-old wanting to be part of contributing to the family? This is admirable. This is something every parent hopes for. And… on top of this, it is adorable. Adorable. This three-year-old isn’t flawed. This three-year-old is adorable. After all, a plate is only a plate, and a shirt is only a shirt—even with a pocket. The idea that, even with a plate in pieces and a distressed child, everything is right with the world. This will come in handy later.

Fast forward fifty-eight years, and it’s 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. I woke up at 7:30, but because I’m in the worst depressive episode I can remember, it will be 10:00 before I get out of bed. After putting some granola and milk in a bowl, I will sit at my desk until 12:30. Then I will gather what will I have left and make the long, long, long two-minute walk to my truck. Once I’m safely in the truck, the day unfolds with a facade of normalcy. I’m going to work, and I’ll do some good work, but on an average day, I'm only putting in two hours, three at the most. To pile on, my divorce is still in the future, but not by much.

I suppose there are reasons for all behavior, and an outside observer might be able to connect some dots, but during this time, that kind of self-reflection is beyond me.

This goes on for quite a while, maybe a year. During this time I’m meeting with someone once a week with the bare minimum of hope. The kind of hope that has no portents of better days, only the simple strength that allowed me to ask for help. Which, in reflection, was a big cussword deal.

As time progressed, I became aware of my depressive behavior. I didn’t do anything about it, and maybe I couldn’t, but I could report about it in my weekly meeting. Week after week. I began to experience a few things. Shame, muted anger, and a sense of hopelessness.

Exactly what I think would be the gifts of five minutes in the kitchen of a dysfunctional family (God bless their pointed little heads)

The bushel of epiphanies that came from years of therapy and my never-ending search for reasons don’t seem to be having any effect, and frankly, I’m not sure I was in a state to recall anything useful.

Here’s what did happen. Somewhere, probably early in life, I came up with a strategy of self-deprecation and self-loathing to make sense of the world. Oh boy…

In spite of the accomplishments I made over the years and the love that was offered, I was relentless in my quest for the ‘one more thing’ that would make everything right. Because I knew in my heart that there was something wrong, and had been since I was a little guy. So… One more thing. Less weight—more money—more skill—more love—another guitar, or, for the love of Christ, a fancy pencil sharpener I would get at the Exchange for seventy-five cents. Just one more thing that would let me escape decades of what I would come to recognize as self-torture.

Gently and persistently, the man I was working with would listen patiently to my self-deprecation and then carefully suggest that the behaviors I was describing, that kept an ugly pit in my stomach, were completely normal. That I was completely normal. That, indeed, there wasn’t one more thing that I needed in order to be enough. To be of value. To be all right.

The depth to which an old idea can root is like bamboo. Bamboo is tough. It seems like it isn’t that hard to attack it–dig down three feet and get rid of it forever. Except bamboo roots like to spread out. Way out. A year later, a new shoot of bamboo will appear five feet away from the original plant. Oh boy…

Here are the two minutes that began to change my perception of the world. I’m in the middle of one of these meetings, and this man suggests that I might be a slacker.

What the hell? How dare he? I’ve worked all my life. I used to get up at 5:00 in the morning and work until 7:00 at night. What does he know? The audacity. This reaction was probably written in a forty font across my face, but that did not deter him.

“Look at your life. You don’t get out of bed until 10:00, you don’t go to work until 1:00, and you only work two to three hours a day.” And then he went on to say the two sentences that loosened the grip of my oldest idea, the one that I was most fond of and would defend to the death– “Well, I’m just telling you what I see. I mean, if you were trying to be a slacker, you would be killin’ it!”

It’s a grain of sand thing. After a year of working with him, years and years working at self-discovery, this simple proposition tipped the scale. “I mean, if you were trying to be a slacker, you would be killin' it.”

The idea that, with a different set of qualities applied to the bell curve, I might be in the middle. The idea that, without changing a thing, I would be okay. That there wasn’t ‘one more thing.’ The idea of me standing at the kitchen sink with a shattered plate surrounding me—that this might be adorable. That was a very kind thing for him to suggest.

Adorable.