I perceive, and maybe hope that there is a great density behind a wall that I have barely put a scratch in the paint of.  In the timeline of my life, the great barrier that divides invincibility to when I knew vulnerability that has no measure, seems protected even from me seeing it, let alone revisiting it.

If I could go back to December 5th, 2003, you can be sure that I would give my 38-year-old self a blank journal and emphasize that this will be so important. Despite the past chemical dependency, I seem to clearly see my teens and twenties with ease.  I have worked hard to release them into letters, words, paragraphs, and stories to set them free.

The next logical step and desire is to savor the days that are the most precious to me.  Although I have done a lot of living prior to May of 2003, in many ways, my life started then.  When I contemplate important things that happened prior to that, it feels like paradox.

As the days prior to Liam being born unfolded, there was a duplicity to everything. One feeling that it was someone else’s life, and the flip side, like the Gulf War, I felt like this was the reason I was born, the latter winning out because it was true. 

Bringing him home felt like I had been traversing my life slightly out of the track groove that I should be riding, catching friction that I believed was normal. When I had him, my existence snapped into the grove and made full contact with the track. Suddenly there was almost no friction, the way it was supposed to be.  I had no idea.

At 38, I had amassed a sufficient base of wisdom and felt that I could apply it so eloquently in my new journey here as a father.  What I did not know is that the intensity of having this part of me that required protection would obliterate any application of that wisdom and bend it into a protective armor.

I should have seen this coming.  I had a small glimpse of it back in 1994.  I attended my newborn nephew’s shower.  After spending a few hours with him and my family, as they drove away that day, I became filled with terror.  I knew then, that this is the vulnerability a parent can feel when you let something that small out there into the world to grow into a person.

Before May 7th, 2003, I would walk anywhere in the world with a certain level of confidence that I could handle it.  Be it unpredictable people, war, missiles, chemical weapons, or civil unrest, I was trained and had a plan for all of it.  After May 7th, my perimeter expanded and suddenly everything was wonderful, serious, and terrifying.

The best thing that ever happened to me was becoming a father.  It is the many things that I learned that burn inside of me. Stories that need to be told. These two young men keep showing me so many things that I did not know.  It is fascinating.

In November 1982, I was at my Grandfather’s house in Bristol.  My father called from Port Aransas Texas.  He had now been gone for 26 months, and I still would not see him for nearly another 2 years. I was telling him something and his reply seemed to nullify what I said with just one sentence.  It was a virtual slap that sent me reeling.  I am certain that he had no idea that it happened and of course, this probably happened more due to teenage angst than anything else.

Still stinging, I went home and that night wrote a piece called, “Destroyed at the Wall of Creation.” In contrast, Liam being born was like being created at the wall of destruction.  Destroyed were all of the unimportant things, and what was created was a treasure that could not be counted.