three days in NYC

the kids and i have been planning on coming down to NYC for a few months. the little one wanted to see a big hole in the ground left by a group of men who changed so many things in the world with four hijackings we watched on thursday morning a life time ago.

rather than going into detail, i thought i would break this down in summary form:

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day one:

up and packed, picked up the girl a bit late, gas and donuts on the side of the highway, ipod and GPS driven trip to the city, hotel, cab to battery park, lady liberty and the positive brothers, walk to ground zero, walk back to hotel with a stop in a french bistro, balloon wielding magician, hotel, cab to central park, skating rink, zoo which was closing, FAO schwartz for a toy, tiffanys, rockefeller center, dean and deluca for hot chocolate, times square to see the lights, cab to hotel, trip to bodega to get drinks and snacks for room, adam sandler movie and sleep without dinner.

day two:

up early while the kids slept, little man and i having coffee in lobby, donuts on the corner, cab to empire state building, short queues and on top in under 10 minutes, back down through two gift shops, cab to the metropolitan museum, eqypt, asia, hindu, café for half a sandwich, dutch masters, impressionist, byzantine, islam (closed, hmmmm), medieval and renaissance, sculpture garden, armour, cab to times square, juice bar, toys u us for bribery payment, slice and a canoli, cab back to soho, custom bag store near hotel, america’s top model in the room, bodega (but no hot meals on sunday), mexican tacos in the chinese restaurant, drunk guy with an evil bike lock, hotel to order pizza from joe’s pizza, 16 inch pie and sleeping son.

day three:

negotiation in a dark room, coffee and a paper in the cab to rockefeller center, today show at the fense, little man shakes with al and matt, ann slips away without saying hello (she is beautiful), walk over to seventh and a cab back to hotel, coffee and computer in the lobby, trying to decide what to do now until our late checkout.

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does that seem like a lot to you, or barely anything. the cab rides alone are more than i spend in KL in a week. NYC is a great city, read a book, have a portable GPS, be willing to go with the flow and simply duck into a place to sit and relax when you need to, dress nicely, and wear walking shoes, keep your eyes open.

i am still not convinced that i would want to live here, but it is nice to visit. staying in tribecca/soho area was a good idea. let me know if you need a good hotel, i have one now, see we are almost new yorkers already.

living alone

i have been living on my own for three years now. i have friends and family visit, the kids come for the summer. those 8 weeks or so of time that they are here, or the 4 weeks of the year i live in my condo in the US are the times during the year that i have someone to live with. these are the weeks that i need to leave work before midnight, and i have concerns which take precedence over anything personal or work related. the other 40 weeks in the year, i am living alone.

when i first moved out of the house, it has been almost 10 years since i has been alone for more than a night or two. i had traveled for work, and honestly getting away sometimes felt like a mini-vacation. i did not have to drive 100 mi home that night, i could stop working when i wanted, eat what i wanted for dinner and watch what i wanted without worrying about negotiation.

when i was confronted with the reality of living a lone, i realized i would only be forced to stop working when i wanted, eat whatever i wanted for dinner and watch whatever i wanted without worrying about negotiation. the reality of this was frightening. the things that previously were a vacation suddenly turned into things that i dreaded; a dream i wished i could wake up and realize was just some deep seeded insecurity bubbling up at night.

no such luck, it was real and it was something i had to deal with. the first thing i did was avoid the move for as long as possible. the next was to try to live like i was not alone. my kids took turns staying over. it was more a matter of them making sure i was okay than of me taking care of them, but it was a relief to not be alone.

months later, a move to malaysia was in the making. the day i took off, i had friends calling me and telling me i would be okay. i tried to be confident, but i was going to be 12 time zones away and knew no one in this part of the world. how do you start a completely new life when you are not ready to leave the one you are moving away from?

as the weeks and months passed, i found ways to never feel disconnected. i would have email and phone conversations with people in the US and europe as often as i could. it was my way of not really feeling like i lived in asia. i was here, but it was really an extended work stay. i was living in an apartment, but it was not home. rather, it was the functional equivalent of the hotel rooms i had lived in earlier when i was on the road for work. i would call home and say how much i missed them, and how i loved them.

it all felt like a temporary situation that would end soon. i went out of my way to remind people that this was temporary, as though none of it was real. it was just a rented life that would be replaced with something more permanent once i figured out what that would be.

the past few months have changed that. i am living alone. i feel it, i feel the difference. i no longer fear coming home to my apartment, i have become comfortable with it. i have been adding touches that are mine. my photography, my guitars, my books are there. i have begun to replace some of the things i left behind in the US. movies, sports equipment, clothes which were too much to carry on my “trip” have now been added. the weight of possessions and life are now here, and i think of KL as home rather than a temporary location.

as i walk toward pasar malam, drive on rain swept KL highways or sit in mamak, i realize that i really do live here. i am building a life in malaysia, i am not sure about the future but i am comfortable with the present. i no longer talk about where i will go next; i am simply enjoying being here today.

the one downside is that i am living alone, and i am enjoying it more and more as the time passes. gone are the days when i would call someone to accompany me to the ikea for shopping, i do that alone now. gone are the times that i schedule myself so that i am not alone. i have been finding that i tell people i am busy when i have no plans at all. this allows me to just be alone and do what i want to do.

i am now completely at ease that 40 weeks out of the year i can stop working when i want, eat whatever i want for dinner and watch whatever i want without worrying about negotiation.

i can grab my camera and take pictures whenever i want to, i can plan trips on short notice and do none of the things i had wanted to do while i am there. i can play my guitar badly at any time day or night and not disturb anyone around me. i can spend all afternoon in bodega, reading or working and have no one to be upset that i am not doing more. i can lay in bed with my feet in the air and blog about things around me, or random thoughts i have, and i don’t have to explain myself.

i am comfortable with the situation, and i am happy i have time to work and relax. i am lucky. the thing i feared second most in my life happened and i am alive and feeling lucky. i am alone, and i like it.

the thing is i do like it, i have given up on worrying about being alone, now i worry about not living alone. this is a good thing right? this is healthy? hmmmm, there is no one here to ask.

maybe what I need is a roommate. but then i would not be living alone.

distant parenting

i called the kids today to say happy new year. i was sitting in a café, it was 1:30 in the afternoon and they were 30 minutes after their new year. i timed the call to allow their friends to have first shot at them as they gave each other good wishes for the year to come. but the call led to questions on my role as a parent who lives so far away and how i should act towards my kids, people i see as adults both out of choice and necessity.

my daughter sounded happy and healthy. she was laughing and playful as she answered the phone. she is known for the ability to have divergent moods, there are times when you need to access the situation before pressing a conversation. today was simple and easy. she had been playing with her friends, she said they were outside sledding in the newly fallen snow. she sounded at ease with the world.

i asked if she had been drinking, the mood was almost too good. she said she had not, but the relaxed tone of the conversation and the level of laughter would point someone with a suspicious mind in another direction. she is not a big drinker, her 7 year old brother had more alcohol on our trip to europe last year, so i am not worried. she is smart and in control of her life, she will make the right choices.

the next call was to her older, but possibly not smarter, brother. this call was harder to understand. he was driving with his friends, it was clear from the slurred words that there had been consumption. we talked for a few minutes and i told him i love him, when he loudly replied he loved me too, the car erupted with other calls of love and friendship from those around him.

the driver of the car thanked me for all the years of allowing him to snowboard on the hill that made up our front yard. as a further sign of gratitude my son’s friend promised to light up a “peace pipe” with me the next time i am back in the US. although it’s a generous offer, it is one that i have no intent of accepting. this did not stop my son from begging me to “promise to do it”.

as i recounted this to my lunch companion, the face of concern came out. how can you accept that your son is driving around at night, drinking with his friends and smoking a peace pipe? how can you be a father if he asks you do such things with him?

i tried to explain that i have no intent of being anything more than a concerned father, that for years i tried to change my kids to be the way i thought they should be, that i wanted them to be safe and to act in ways that would guarantee that. but that now, now i just want them to be happy and to talk to me. i also want them to know that i love them. being this far away, and having few chances to actively parent, i have finally taken the advice my wife used to give me.

she spent years telling me to pick my battles and to make sure the kids knew i loved them first. that’s what i try to do now, what i want to do every day. if that means i don’t tell them something dumb is dumb when i find out about it, well that’s just part of parenting from the other side of the world.

i am happy that they talk to me, that they will share with me what is really happening in their lives, and that they know i love them. if the passive approach is all i have, i will take it. it has helped me get closer to my kids, and has helped us connect more deeply than we were when i would have gotten mad at them making what i thought was a dumb choice.

allowing your children to grow up does come with the need to accept them as adults. unfortunately, or maybe it’s fortunately, our kids have just gotten there a little ahead of schedule. maybe i was also a little behind schedule, i could have taken this approach all along. having friends and family in my life, even if they are occasionally under the influence is more important to me than being in charge.

distant parenting means focusing on, i love you. of course, i always end the conversation with, be careful. parenting from any distance comes with concern as well as acceptance.

trusting companion

i have two friends who i was talking to this week. the conversations where completely separate, and on the surface had nothing to do with each other, but deeper down there is much in common. this happens to me a lot, i have things happen to or around me and i somehow connect the dots. i think of this as a gift, its one of the reasons i was good at my job when i was a hired gun, i could see one thing happening and remember something completely different and intuit a connection no one else saw.

this is not always seen as a positive thing by those around me. i have been told i spend too much time and effort analyzing things that i should just allow things to happen and accept that “shit happens”. but this is not really something new that i just started doing. i remember my pediatrician trying to remove a piece of seashell from my foot when i was about 6. i would not let him touch me until i completely understood what was happening. years later, he needed to give me a physical for school, we were standing in a locker room there was a long queue of pensive teenagers waiting to “turn your head and cough”, but he picked me out of the crowd and said “oh no, not you” when he saw i was next in line.

one of my friends is in hospital, she is having a procedure that she has spent a year worrying about and avoiding at all costs. most of her other friends and family do not know where she is or why she is so disconnected. while talking the other day, she asked me a question, “is companionship worth it?” i asked “worth what?”, but i really knew what she meant, i guess the question was to buy time while i thought about it.

i have another friend who is avoiding another type of painful procedure, she is keeping the world at bay and attempting to stop any risk by hiding herself inside a cocoon she has created. she has found a way to defer life by creating plans that say she can have fun if she accomplishes a list of goals by some arbitrary (and safely distant) timeframe. the trick to the success of this deferred safety appears to be to continue to add goals which are always in the future.

this second friend asked me a different question, “what are you afraid of?”, again i asked a question in response, “what are you afraid of?”. the answer i got was that she was afraid of pain, she did not want to let someone close to her for fear they would hurt her. it was safer if she kept distance and allowed life to pass by. i thought this was interesting because the question about companionship from the first friend was based on the same theme, she is fragile and someone has offered her a hand to hold onto, she is laying in a hospital bed trying to decide if it is more dangerous to take the hand or to try to stand alone; consider that this friend is post-op with surgery and med induced balance issues and the metaphor really does work.

the answer to the second question for me is, “i am afraid of missing out on life”. i do not want to run into a brick wall and realize that’s as far as i can go. i have always felt that there is a future, that life is fun and that if you are willing to work for something you can enjoy having it when you get it. but life requires you to take risks, to make choices and to accept the consequences. sometimes there is pain in a choice, and you just need to realize that if the choice is right, the pain is a requirement of the choice.

the answer for the first question is “yes, companionship is worth all of the pain it may bring.” i have had companionship in my life. i have held my best friend and known that the moments we spent together were worth all the risk and pain they could bring. i have also needed to come to terms with the end of the relationship, and accept that our lives were going to go in different directions. even living half way around the world is not enough to take those previous moments away, those moments, those times together are the good times you look back on when you feel the hole in your life.

the heart of both of these questions is; should you trust someone to come into your life and give you the chance to believe that the moments will last longer than the time it takes for the person to begin to show you the full person beneath the veil. should you reach out and take the hand, should you begin to believe that the person will be there when you need someone. you can only do this if you have trust that the person and their hand will be there.

but you also need trust in yourself, trust that in the event the hand is not there that you will not fall over. even when life has made you dizzy you need to remember that if the hand is gone you can sit for a moment longer and prepare yourself, but that eventually you need to stand up and start moving again.

balance requires trust that your legs will be there when you need to stand. companionship (okay love) requires trust that people who care for you will be there when you need them. without either of these, you are stuck sitting alone and watching the world pass by you.

fear of failure (or pain) is worse than the actual failure. if you do have the moments, at least you can look back and remember that you tried, and how the moments made you feel.