Acts of Bravery

I’m grateful for a chance to visit my son. I’m grateful for a ride on his ship. I’m grateful for finding the path back and grateful for always moving forward. I’m grateful for the light that fills my life. I’m grateful for mini-Oreos. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

I’m visiting my son, he’s an officer on the USS Gettysburg, a guided missile cruiser, that will be deploying in a few weeks as part of a carrier strike force, bound for the troubled waters of the Middle East. IRL, I’m a big news junkie, and it does give seemingly remote events a very personal bite when your child is among those going to do a very difficult and dangerous job in a very faraway place.

I have received an invitation for a “Tiger Cruise,” wherein family are invited for a ride on the ship prior to deployment. Of course I responded instantly (also I love my son very much and always jump at chances to see him) and here I am in Norfolk, excited to spend the day tomorrow on my son’s ship. The song? I have always liked this song and it’s set aboard a navy vessel (a battleship not a cruiser). Enough said.

Of course, I’m proud of my Lieutenant son, unbelievably, overwhelmingly proud of him. He left college with a classics degree and was unsure where his extensive knowledge of Latin and ancient Greek would take him. He landed a job with a data analytics company and within a year he was working on special projects with the CEO.

It was December of 2019 when he decided he wanted to take the exam and try to get into Officer Candidate School (“OCS”). I found this out from his sister, because he wasn’t really speaking to me much back then. I was again at a few months of sobriety—but I wasn’t even telling my children that anymore, there had been so many fraudulent day counts, so many lies and misrepresentations about my sobriety—well, it was hard to blame them for not believing much that I said.

Having to find out about him joining the navy from his sister was hard. I was crushed, as hurt as I’ve ever been. I wasn’t mad at my son, I was just so disappointed in myself, so angry at myself. So frustrated at how I had managed to push such wonderful, amazing children so far away. There’s not much that’s more painful than estrangement from your kids. It’s a bleak kind of emptiness, when even the people who loved you reflexively and so sweetly from the very beginning, finally turn away.

There was nothing I could do but keep getting sober, bide my time and hope that time really does heal all wounds. When he called, I answered. When there was any chance to see him, I changed plans and showed up. I never complained, I never asked for more. I just kept showing up sober. I knew there was nothing I could do or say that would influence his opinion of me, he had to come by those feelings on his own. He had to decide for himself about my sobriety, all I could do was provide supporting evidence.

We alcoholics run on different timelines. Days, even months can be lost to a barstool and a flinty sauvignon blanc, but we expect other people to come around lickety-split. It was hard to wait, it was hard to know that it was completely out of my control—except for the part about being honest and showing up whenever I had the opportunity.

He was commissioned as an officer in January of 2022, and since he had graduated near the top of his class, he had choices in the ship assignment process. He was excited to get serve aboard the USS Gettysburg—an incredibly powerful combat ship that is tasked with providing air and missile defense for a carrier strike force. His strike force deploys later in September.

As we get closer to the time, I get a little more scared, although I would never say that to him. Even if one discounts the danger posed by Houthi rebels firing missiles and launching drones at ships in the Red Sea, it’s not easy serving aboard a combat ship. There are long, long days capped with longer nights on watch—scanning the horizon from the bridge, even in the deepest parts of the night. There are months away from family and loved ones; He’ll spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and maybe his birthday aboard the ship.

I’ve written before about the miracle of the restoration of my relationship with him. And as I was re-reading previous efforts, I realized I couldn’t tell the story any better than I did a few Christmases ago. While I would normally just put the link here, I thought I would just put the whole thing here in front of you:

I hope that if Christmas is your thing, it was lovely. It was very, very lovely here. My son is on leave from the Navy and arrived yesterday. We had made the determination that, even though it was Christmas, since we won’t see each other on New Year’s Day, we would have pork and sauerkraut for dinner. In case you didn’t know this, pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day, is essential to securing the lucky bounces for 2023. He regaled me with stories of his time at sea (so far, a ten-day live fire and helicopter operations training cruise). It was hard to hear many of the details he was so vividly discussing, because I was trying to wrap my head around the idea that other adults on a combat ship call him “Sir.”

You see, in my mind’s eye, he’s still wearing pajamas with feet in them and getting all excited after watching “Space Jam” for the 132nd time. We repair to the Fisher-Price basketball set-up in the basement and I get posterized again and again. There is ferocious dunking going on, amid garbled three-year old trash talk, “Take it to the Hooch,” he shout-giggles as he crashes towards the rim, oblivious to the fact that I’ve established position and he was clearly going to take a charging call here and have the “hooch” waved off. He didn’t care. It’s a vicious, two-handed Daryl Dawkins “glass is flying, Robinzine crying, ain’t no playing, get out of the waying” dunk. The impact knocks me off my knees and he falls on top of me with his rumbly, Winnie-the-Pooh belly laugh. He scrambles up, so that he can stand over me, laugh derisively and proclaim:

I don’t know where he learned all of that. My official position is also that I’m unaware of how exactly he learned all of the words to “Dude Looks Like a Lady” when he was five.

My drinking and the ensuing divorce, was pretty hard on a certain 15 year-old. It definitely left marks and it breaks my heart to see them. The cute, cuddly, always-laughing boy had to go through a lot. There are lots of moments I wish I didn’t have to remember, but he does, so I do, too. I think healing isn’t about forgetting; I think it happens when two people hold on to some common pain, and each other, until things get better. And things get better, they really do.

One of the worst memories I have is a dinner with M. in 2019. I was proudly proclaiming how sober I was, how great things were, how my newest relationship was the thing that was going to save me. Look, it’s already working! We were at our favorite Chinese restaurant in DC and I was drunk. He knew it the whole time. Things got pretty frosty after that, and there was more bad stuff to come. When he decided to join the Navy later that year, he made a point of not telling me. At some point, he had the “talk” with me: He would always love me and be grateful for everything I had done for him, but he was a grown-up now and got to choose who was in his life and I was not really going to make the cut.

That was crushing. And it was worse when I let myself think how bad it must have felt to him, to have had enough happen to say that so cooly and calmly. Yeah, it all left a terrible mark and it’s still hard for me to look at him and know what I put him and his sister through.

But last night, we sat in front of my pretty tree with the colored lights and opened presents (well, he did, he forgot mine at his Mom’s house). He put on the high performance stocking cap I got him, for those late nights and super early mornings on the Bridge, while he’s there scanning the horizon. We ate pork and sauerkraut, took a late night, very chilly walk around the upper east side and then he played Skyrim while I dozed on the sofa. I woke up to a soft tap on the shoulder, “Good night, Dad, love you, Merry Christmas.”

I get pretty riled up when I hear people talk about “the Promises of AA” and mention “cash and prizes” in the same breath. I just want to shake my head, “Can’t you see the real miracle that’s out there,” I want to ask?

It’s a miracle that I got sober for sure. The much greater miracle is the way my heart and the hearts of the people who loved me, have grown together again. It took a lot of courage for us to do that, not the bravery in battle kind of courage, but the kind of courage that comes from letting your heart do the work, the courage that comes from putting your heart at the center of your life. That’s what sobriety has done for me and the people who love me. M was pretty upset that he forgot my gift. He’ll see, soon enough, just how great a gift he did deliver this Christmas.1

When you’re (hopefully) reading this tomorrow, I’ll be aboard the Gettysburg and undoubtedly in awe of the 500 young women and men who crew the ship and will be doing what generations of sailors before them have done: Go in harm’s way, so the rest of us don’t have to. The pay is terrible, the job is hard and the hours are long and I’m not sure I could have any more respect or admiration for the dashing young officer on that ship who happens to be my son.

The real power of the Big Book and of AA, is the power of example. Bill got sober when he saw his friend and potentially even bigger alcoholic, Eby Thacher, had gotten sober. If it works for him, it might work for me. When we see the miracles that take place in other’s lives as they gain sobriety, we start to get the idea that maybe we’re not beyond help ourselves.

My son is excited to see me tomorrow, too. We talk a lot these days and unfortunately for his very lovely girlfriend, we have the same sense of humor. We have something back that maybe we both thought was lost for good. He has a father he can trust; a father he can rely on again. And I have a son. A very brave, very kind, very strong, very sensitive, very handsome, very loyal, very funny, very excellent son.2

Seriously, how could I ask for anything more?

Happy Friday.