Here I Am, Baby

I’m grateful for the joy in my heart. I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful the excitement I feel when I get up. I’m grateful for chances to live a new way. I’m grateful for seeing it was up to me to write the story. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

I am so ahead of the curve this week. I’ve known the sotw for many hours, maybe even since yesterday. I had handy little notes on my phone (these are typically aha! type revelations that are completely unintelligible when read later). I was perilously close to having an outline. That’s how far gone things are.

My love for Stevie Wonder has been very much over-chronicled here. But apparently, not enough to stop me today. Today, being Friday the 13th, and me being very, very superstitious and loving the number “13,” it’s adorned jerseys, return addresses and it’s always my go-to if someone asks me to pick a number. You may think Friday the 13th is spooky and scary; it’s the opposite over here. There is a literal boatload of bad-ass, pirate, Friday the 13th energy over here.

Speaking of boatloads of bad-ass pirate energy, I’m getting to spend time with my son during this run-up to his deployment. Of course, it’s bittersweet and of course, I’m emotional and more than a little scared. But it’s building a bond between us that hasn’t been there for a long time. This is what I mean by how tricky the Universe is, using something that seems kind of bad and sad to build something beautiful.

I was lucky enough to have dinner with the Lieutenant and his lovely girlfriend earlier this week. After dinner, we needed to transfer my delayed Father’s Day gift from her apartment to mine. The gift? A very cool, actual shell casing fired from the 5-inch gun on his ship. What does this look like?

The shell-casing is heavy and kind of awkward to carry (it’s about three feet high). We determined we would visit Ralph’s on 1st Avenue for ice cream on the way to my apartment. As we ate our identical “small swirls in a cone” we talked about the amazing journey he’s been on since joining the Navy. I pointed out how much he had changed, how he had grown. Then I told him all the embarrassing stuff I’ve been writing about him, about how proud I was of him.

We were taking turns carrying the shell casing down First Avenue and eating fast-melting, soft-serve ice cream at the same time. We got a lot of looks as we were walking. This could be because of the shell-casing or my son’s Hollywood looks. He was asking about my gig, how much fun I’m having, how hard I’m working. He laughs when I talk about picking up my Door Dash dinner from the delivery racks in the lobby, along with all of the fleece-vest wearing, young bankers.1 He gets a real kick out of me living the law firm life again (as do I). That’s when I shared this observation with him:

We get to write our own narratives in life. We get to write our own story and it is never too late to pull out another sheet of paper and start a new chapter.

I realized I’d lived a life where I had seen a lot of things in this old world, fancy swanky things. But when I touched them, girl, they meant nothing. I realized I let other people write the story of me, or I collaborated and tried to write a story I thought they would love. That never worked. It took me sixty years to figure this out, but realizing that I get to write the story of me this time is profoundly exciting and liberating and just so incredibly cool.

Anyway (getting back to the sotw), it took me a while to really like this song and it doesn’t have a backstory (yet), like some other songs might have.

“Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” typically interpreted, is about someone who maybe made a mistake (or several) and disappeared for a while and then maybe realizes the error of their ways and hopes that there is maybe a way back. FYI, this is also the plotline for The Partridge Family’s incomparable “Echo Valley 2-6809”

You can ask, as I am now, why wasn’t this the song of the week? Too dark, that’s why. Although, if I was going to be doing karaoke in the next 48 hours, this would definitely be the song. Anyway, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” is a much more upbeat song, and I personally prefer the “C’mon Baby” attitude expressed therein.

Anyway, despite “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” being about feelings for another person, and a desire to get back together with that old flame, well, that’s not what comes up for me when I listen to this song now. By “listen to this song,” I mean putting on my airpods, heading out for one of my walks (and I could literally be anywhere in the city) and then having this song on repeat while I weave my way through the clueless and careless pedestrian sheep that clog our beautiful sidewalks.

This song is about something else for me these days:

I’ve done a lot of foolish things, that I didn’t really mean.

Ha Ha Ha Ha. That is the story of my life. I love all of the classic Stevie Wonder screams in this song, they add a layer of exuberance, like the one that comes after the “done a lot of foolish things” line, and then he adds “didn’t I,” to drive the point home.

There were an awful lot of mornings where I literally couldn’t stand to look in the mirror. There was no exuberance in the early mornings back then, I had a mandatory date with a barstool at 8am and I’d try to look down while I brushed my teeth and did what amounted to “pulling myself together.” When I did catch a glimpse? Haggard, pale, red-rimmed eyes, a puffy face—I really didn’t like what I saw, what I had become.

That’s what’s different, when Stevie screams,

That’s me talking to myself these days. And you know what else? Where I was, where I had to go, has about zero to do with where I’m headed.

I’ve done a lot of foolish things, that I really didn’t mean, I could be a broken man, but here I am.

Happy Friday.