Responsibility

What has in retrospect been the most difficult summer of my life is finally coming to a close. Today, a wheelchair finally arrives, and on Monday it will be taken out to the school for its inaugural journey.

Life as a caretaker is hard, much more so when the person you are caring for lacks the equipment they need to properly live. I am gladdened to know that this period is finally coming to a close, but it brings to mind all the other times I was responsible for another, and how I handled these events throughout my life.

My first true period of responsibility came as a preteen. I had been expelled from a boarding school and the money my parents had paid for it was forfeited. I was told I would have to pay them back as part of my punishment, so I began working at the family car lot. I turned what should have been responsibility into opportunity, focusing my efforts only on what I found enjoyable to do and overworking sufficiently such that at the end of my "punishment" I was owed what was to me back then a not so insignificant amount. Looking back, I am sure that my father organized this deception to try and instill a work ethic into me, but at the time I genuinely thought I was "getting one up" on him.

Later, I learned a worse lesson. When my father learned that I had caused a teen pregnancy before I could even drive, I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to get married, be a father, and take care of my new family. I did not know it at the time, but my father's childhood experience of becoming the de facto parent of his several siblings at thirteen years old merely because he was the eldest son was marred because none of his extended family were willing to take in the siblings as a unit. This recusal of responsibility by his supposed close family members scarred him; becoming a parent of his siblings at thirteen himself was his experience of growing up: living in a house without an adult, ensuring food was available, making sure the kids went to school, helping raise their infant brother.... For him, the event was his mother dying suddenly and his father being unavailable. For me, it was teen pregnancy. But to my father, the implication was the same: I must not be like his extended family members who refused to take in his brothers and sisters. I must stand up to my responsibility and raise this child. And so I was forced into marrying far too young. 

I thought I could handle it. I put on a good face, not letting the girl know that I felt pressured into this, but, behind the scenes, I felt I had no choice. It took months before it became clear that I just could not handle the responsibility, but even then I tried to force it. I did not bond with my biological daughter, but I never entertained the idea of abandoning my responsibilities, mostly because my father instilled in me the idea that I had no choice — that, even if I were failing at every side, the important part was to stay and continue and never abandon. Thankfully, my then child wife had no such compunction, and she correctly came to the conclusion that life would be better for us all if she left.

I was distraught at their leaving, even though it was honestly the best decision that could have been made. I was never going to leave on my own, even though I failed at every moment in that domestic life. I stubbornly thought that, even though I hated life, even though I did nothing to make life better, it was still my responsibility to stay and endure. So I did — until she made the decision for me and left abruptly.

I see this problem with responsibility show up again and again in my life. Whenever I feel as though I need to take care of something, whatever it is, I would focus not on taking care of it well, but instead on ensuring I never abandoned the task. It was as though the primary goal was not to do anything well, but to instead just remain focused on constant effort. In some ways, this was a blessing: unlike many of my peers, I have a tendency to always slowly improve in whatever I do. I never get stuck in a rut; I identify things that can be done better, and I change them, one at a time, such that after years and years pass I am a demonstrably different and undeniably better person than when I began. But this process is slow, and it eschews an important practice that I never truly took to heart: failing early and often is more likely to get you to something truly successful. Instead, I would doggedly pursue whatever task I had set before me, slowly getting better and better at it over time.

Don't get me wrong: this is one of my better qualities. Katherine loves to recount how amazing she found that I would change my routine in small ways to get better and more efficient year after year. But it is also one of my worse qualities: instead of voluntarily stepping away from a difficult task, I will try to improve continuously even when it is clear that anothers' skillset would be better suited to the task. This is a fail state that I have to consciously avoid, even to this day. It just is not automatic for me to abandon a task, no matter how ill-suited I may be for it.

It meant I was a terrible middle manager. I just could not delegate well. I would focus on tasks that I was bad at, improving all the while, but really some of these tasks should have been contracted out. I was better in oversight positions; acting as a board member, I could almost instinctively identify failure points and ways to improve — but when I was an actual employee, I would focus on fixing these problems myself instead of properly sending someone better suited to the task. It took many years for me to realize that my true skillsets are in the identification of opportunities and possible fail states, and not in the day to day operation of regular tasks where no improvements can be found.

All this is to say: this summer has been amazingly difficult for me. Tasks this summer have all been rote, with little room for improvement. I have been navigating finding a new home, identifying sources of funding to afford something nice, caretaking for Katherine, and running the usual chores that help a household go. It doesn't sound like much, but almost everything I've done this summer has been the kind of thing that I am particularly poor at doing. It has been a grueling experience.

So I am gratified to know that it is now, at last, coming to an end. I still will have much to do: finding a new home to purchase is certainly at the top of my upcoming list; but at least I will finally not be spinning my wheels with tasks that I am not well suited for.

I look forward to whatever will come next.

Death of a Friend

Crayon art by Jon Gronberg.

I didn't know Jon Gronberg as well as I could have. We met online in 2021 when a mutual friend introduced us, and we started playing games, sometimes weekly, over the next three years. I never saw Jon in person. I always interacted with his multitude of screen names: metatroid, antocitizen, arkanoid, etc.. I never saw his face; we only spoke via voice chat on Discord. But he was a friend, nevertheless, and life is now less with him gone from it.

Jon was a consummate gamer. In a condolence letter that Katherine and I wrote to his mother after his death, we talked about the games we would play, and how skilled he was in various genres. This was the Jon I knew: a fun person to play with.

We also wrote about the conversations we would have over Discord. As Katherine put it: "He strongly advocated for what he believed in during our many and varied talks, and he liked to have extensive and deep discussions on philosophy, politics, ethics, and even just jokes while we played." This was also the Jon I knew: a debater with strong communist beliefs.

And, of course, I cannot fail to mention how helpful he was with charitable work. He volunteered his time to problem-solve technical web stuff for me on a regular basis. He was always ready to lend a hand. Looking at his professional website, I see that he worked with lots of various charities over the years, not just mine. This was also the Jon I knew: a kind, giving person who loved to do good.

We didn't always see eye-to-eye. Our politics differed; our choice of how to relax differed; sometimes even the genres of games we preferred differed. But he was always, first and foremost, a friend whom I enjoyed playing regularly with.

The mutual friend who introduced us knew Jon as a close friend for twenty-five years. This loss has truly hurt him. He mentions it briefly in his latest blog entry. I don't know how to best be there for my grieving friend. They were close in the ways that only decades-old friends can be. The loss of such a close friend is hard for me to fully wrap my head around. Our mutual friend (whom I've known for 11 years) is now at a silent retreat for a few weeks. Hopefully it will help him to clear his mind and process the grief well, but it does mean that I have no way to contact him nor help him through this grieving period. I feel inadequate to the task.

I will miss you, Jon. Thank you for all the good times.

Ashley, Sammy, & Shelby

Sammy & Shelby as kittens in 2011.

I'm devastated, but also relieved. I'm heartbroken, but also feel that this is the best outcome.

Last month, Katherine informed me that the inlaws of one of her coworkers had died suddenly, and they were having trouble finding a home for their three cats. Sammy and Shelby were over a dozen years old and Ashley was rather feeling his age at sixteen, and likely wouldn't make it to his seventeenth birthday. Our home has felt rather empty for the past three years, ever since Jasper passed on. We'd been talking about taking in a cat that needs a home — maybe an older cat who would otherwise have trouble finding a forever home. But we hadn't yet gotten to the point where we were actively looking. Among other things, we need to purchase a new front door to our home, and it made sense to wait until after that before we began to look. But fate, it seemed, had brought us this opportunity, and we felt like we should take the plunge. After all, they need a home; we have a home. What else could we do?

Ashley (aka Pirate).

It was a big change from what I was expecting before. Taking in three cats instead of one is a BIG difference, as any owner of multiple pets can tell you. And adopting cats sight unseen was scary; what if they didn't like us? What if we didn't mesh well? But I was ready to take on the responsibility, come what may.

Katherine reminded me that this was not a sure thing. They wanted to ask the greater family first to see if they could take in the cats. These cats were family after all; they wanted the chance to keep them together and visitable by everyone. But so far they had had no takers, so we were to be the backup, just in case no one had the capacity to take them all in.

I understood, but at the same time, I wanted to learn more. I looked up their two humans, Richard and Karen Matta, who had both passed away in the course of only a few weeks. I learned about Richard's avid stamp collecting, seeing several of his posts on a philatelist forum. I learned about Karen's quilting, seeing her help several new quilters by answering questions on Quora. These were very nice humans, and I felt so bad about Ashley, Sammy, & Shelby losing both of them so suddenly and unexpectedly.

Richard was also amazing at photography. His flickr account has hundreds of photos, and some of them are of the three cats he lived with. (These are the pictures you see here on this blog post.) Sammy and Shelby are absolutely beautiful sibling rag dolls, and Ashley (who also goes by Pirate) is a gorgeous black cat who looks so gentle and lithe fitting on shelves without the risk of knocking over various highly breakable-looking items. As I looked through these pictures, I found myself falling in love with these three cats. Even though taking in three cats is a massive ask when we were only looking to take in one, I had already convinced myself that we could make it work. I proudly shared Richard's photos with Katherine and we collectively prepared ourselves to adopt these new members of the family. We might not be able to replace their previous humans, but we could at least give them a loving home for them to live out the remainder of their lives.

And then, as Richard's funeral was held, and their family flew in from out of town, we received news: we would not be taking in these cats after all. I was devastated — but also relieved. I was heartbroken — but I also knew that this was the best outcome for these cats. They would be able to stay in the Matta family, albeit in a new home with different humans. They would still be able to be visited by the sons and daughters who they had grown up with. They would still be able to visit their former canine housemates. They will have better lives staying in the family than they would have had they had become orphans to be adopted by strangers, no matter how loving we might be as strangers to them.

It's sad to think that we were so close to taking in these three cats, to changing our lives to help them, house them, and love them, only to realize after we had warmed up to the idea that we wouldn't be able to adopt them after all. But it is also happy, because I know they will be well taken care of in the Matta family, and it means that we can go back to our original plan of only taking a single cat that needs us.

To Ashley, Sammy, and Shelby: I wish you a good life. I'm sorry that your beloved humans passed on; Richard and Karen seem like wonderful housemates who took very good care of you for almost the entirety of your lives. I hope you will do well in your new home. <3

A Morning Routine

By the time the alarm rings, I'm already up. Carefully, I pack a lunch for my partner. I always try to include something special that will help to slightly brighten her day when she opens it later in the afternoon. I reverse our mini-car; I pull together all my supplies for the morning; I get shoes and socks together for Katherine. Shortly after six a.m., I am on the road, driving Katherine to the local high school, where she works as an art teacher. I tend to have a few tasks there — mostly helping to move things from one place to another — and then I'm off. It's consistently so interesting to walk past so many high school students each weekday morning. It's been a very long time since I've been in their shoes, but seeing them bustle reminds me of how life goes on, no matter what.

I walk five miles each week, one each weekday. It's not as much exercise as I probably should have on a regular basis, but it's certainly better than being sedentary, which is basically how I was for a year or so after covid. Some of my favorite sights along the way are the ravens who flock in the area. Occasionally, one or two will separate from the flock to watch me walk past. I wonder if they are curious about my bright orange jacket, because one will sometimes follow me from tree to tree over the course of a block. They never get close enough to interact with — they stay out of reach on the treetops — but they certainly do watch as I walk by. I wonder if I look similar (to their eyes) to someone who used to walk this route. If so, I hope my doppelgänger was nice to them.

Sometimes I stop for breakfast; other times I drop by the asian market. But mostly I just enjoy the walk and arrive home to rest and start on my daily chores.

(I've written about my morning routine several times on this blog. Here's one back in 2008; again in 2010; another in 2016; and a short one in 2020.)

I have a daughter.

I have a daughter.

It's such a benign statement, especially coming from someone my age. Typical of my peers in myriad categories. Yet, for me, on a personal level, this just feels different. I've spent most of my life thinking of myself as a childfree individual. Sure, I've always been cognizant of the teenage pregnancy that caused me to drop out of school and derail most of my plans for early adulthood, but she was gone — taken away by her mother to someplace far away, and I was instructed to never contact them again. My daughter existed, but for most of my life she has been a phantom, a being existing in the abstract, but never in a palpable way.

I don't know why I took what I was told at face value. Part of me now suspects that this was a cached decision that I made early on in life that I just never really reconsidered. In my mind, she was living well elsewhere without me, and it would be wholly inappropriate for me to butt in, regardless of how many years had passed. This way of thinking stayed true even when what otherwise would have been an appropriate time would pass: I stayed away when she finished primary school; I stayed away when she became an adult. After all, I was not a true father, just merely a sperm donor who had stayed out of things for decades.

Then, a couple of months ago on November 9, I saw a message she had sent me. It was the first time I had been asked to reconsider that cached decision to give her space to become her own person. She wrote to see who I was; to learn about her birth father that had been absent for the majority of her life. This unexpected request turned into an extended conversation where I did my best to represent myself honestly and to give her the knowledge she desired.

I have a daughter.

It's more than just an idle fact now. This is a person who is now, after all these years, a part of my life. While it would be inappropriate to consider myself a father in the sense of being a parent, being the biological father of a person who actually wants me in their life is a title I should be proud of. I suppose I just always imagined that she would desire nothing to do with me, and I allowed the status quo to persist. Yet now I have direct evidence that I am wanted as a "bio-dad", whatever that relationship may mean. And so I am trying to do the best that I can.

I have a daughter, and her name is Adrianah Celes Herboso. I'm only just now getting to know her, yet it's clearly one of the biggest changes to my life in decades. I'm not sure how things will proceed from here, but, whatever happens, I am glad to have her in my life.