My Higher Power has made Christmas a season of respite rather than regret

I haven’t had a drink for 3921 days. That number is a fraction of the people who are responsible for my sobriety.

Today I am experiencing the gift of walking serenely and quietly through what used to be a season of drunkenness, humiliation and profound regret. Each day I have the opportunity to decide that anger and resentment are not worth the effort. Most of the time I am comfortable with mystery, and it doesn’t really matter if I ever solve it. I’d just as soon not.

Most of the people who gave me this gift aren’t aware of their importance or that they even participated.

My wife, my children and her family, and my brother and his beautiful kids fill the old emptiness with love and affection and a desire to do better and be better.

My dear and oldest friend, the son of my cousin and a sister-in-law that I never met, but nonetheless know, they are among the multitude who never received my inexplicable remission.

My favorite married couple who cared for me in the dark times and light; newspaper staffs; cousins, aunts and uncles who showed me kindness; friends; coworkers and supervisors who were and are more than coworkers and supervisors.

A certain counselor/mother and a certain attorney who calmed my raging heart and showed me I was worth their sacrifice. A school principal who fought for me and never judged me for my sins.

Monks and priests, who reminded me to seek progress rather than perfection and to sing prayers of gratitude. Nuns and other women with generous hearts whose hospitality and tenderness healed me.

Doctors and nurses who warned that if I didn’t change I would die, and who celebrated when I finally listened.

Basketball coaches, players and referees who gave me something to measure my progress and maturity by; and schoolchildren who called out my name and made fun of my attempts at Spanish with a Missouri accent, and their teachers who demonstrated that I had a long way to go to truly serve. People like them, and people on welfare with two or three jobs, they showed me what a real work ethic is.

Highway Patrolmen who handcuffed me and made the highways a little bit safer; a judge who sentenced me to jail, but with a kind voice; the men who shared my holding cell, somehow bringing humor, friendship and warmth to a terrifying moment; probation officers who were the first people to bear witness to a change in me.

People suffering poverty, oppression and homelessness and the people of means who help them. They humble me and stretch my heart open; people who trust me to serve them, and people who make me work for that trust.

Acquaintances and strangers on the street who walked in and out of my life, dusting it with a bit of magic. Musicians, authors, poets and people who make me laugh and cry.

Mother Nature and Father Time for teaching me to accept life as it is and to value the moment.

The tattoo artist who inscribed the Serenity Prayer and the word “Surrender” on my forearms as a daily reminder that I’m not the center of the universe.

Those I’ve hurt for making me accountable and for forgiving, and those who hurt me for whetting the tools of sobriety and helping me find the relief of forgiveness.

Most of all, I am grateful for other alcoholics and addicts—newcomers, old-timers, sponsors and strugglers–sober or still suffering. Those like Carol, Jacob and Kathy who have paid the ultimate price, sacrificing their lives to remind those left behind that they still have a chance.

Though most of these people don’t know who they are, I remember each one.

They are the God of my understanding, my Higher Power.

Old country roads are magic to me

I walked 14 miles of silent back road Sunday

I didn’t intend to walk that far but the horizon kept whispering, further

I’ve always been drawn to country roads

As a teenagers, we drove the graveled web that stitched together farmhouses sprinkled over hollers, hills and river bottoms where I grew up

Either in my best friend’s Old’s 88 or my totaled out Buick with a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t laugh, Mister, your daughter might be in here.”

Rickety plank bridges from times when pickups were slower and smaller

We ran them big and fast with a thunk that probably should have scared us, but we had no regard for safety, dry rot, or poor aim

At each crossroad, for fun we flipped a coin, leaving it to heads, the devil and lukewarm beer how lost we could get

So many corn, soybean and hay fields they came to be something I barely noticed but would later miss

My friends argued over whether John Deere or International made a better tractor; some outlier always made a case for Case

As a town kid I had no opinion other than that I liked the color red

In later years, in more pensive moments, I headed back home

Turned off the blacktop, appreciating nostalgic detail

Cicadas screeching, heat heavy like damp cheese cloth and manic June bugs bouncing around off their meds

I turned off the headlights, drove by moonlight, glancing at the cooler of beer in the back seat

Gravel popped under my tires as I rolled to a stop. The night was silent as a falling star.

Backing off the road, snug against a farmer’s gate cinched shut with rusty wire

The smell of rain in the air, the most beautiful scent in the world

Slipping in the Patsy Cline CD that I’d saved for this moment

Patsy’s song make me long to feel everything, love, loss, the heat of a sweltering honky tonk, loneliness in the middle of the night

Patsy and Hank Williams and scratchy old songs are what truly make country roads magic to me

I imagine people listening to them on dates when those old records were new

When pickups were slower and old bridges were sturdy

When they poured beer from buckets

And country roads were just called roads

You returned to me on a sunless morning

Rain, my old friend, it is good to see you again
We meet at the back door and sit in easy silence
You tell tales of our times together
Your snare drum brush on my tent
In a forest with no sky where Ents drank from ancient waters
The times we got drunk together
Me on my whiskey, you on white lightning
You were a ferocious drunk, people hid from your purple face
You ripped the sky until my hair stood on end
In my long lonely days, you stayed for months
Like sad country music you let me know
The darkness was authentic, and shared
Remember when you surprised me after my last college exam
We danced in a burst of relief and I impersonated Gene Kelly
It was a comfort to know you were here when I awoke this morning
There is a patch of blue to the north
I resent the sun.

The Poetry of Damaged Wood

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

When I lived in the Seattle suburbs it seemed that every wind brought a power outage. Young, fresh, evergreens toppled like stemware at a toddler’s birthday party.

Spoiled by soft living in saturated soil, the roots never reached deep enough to hold their ground.

Replanted in clear-cuts, the emerald trees glowed in the dawn’s light off my back deck. They were certainly beautiful and they drove up property values, but there was something lacking –untested– in these feathery trees adorning housing developments.

The towering Douglas fir I saw on a hike high in the Cascades lacked their symmetrical grace.  It was bony and naked from where the shadows began up in the canopy down to where I stood on a cushion of dry needles. Its was pocked by beetles and blackened by memories of forest fires. Leaning eerily into the steep slope of the mountain, most of its branches jutted off to one side. It and sister trees grew out of a long, narrow ridge, the earthen remains of an ancient sequoia corpse, a “nurse log,” returning it’s nutrients to the next generation.

The suburban trees were likewise more sleek than the massive tulip poplar that stoically haunted my front yard in Missouri. A dark wound gaping from the massive trunk oozed bees. Late at night I imagined it home to demons.  One jagged branch careened over the neighbor’s house like an unfinished freeway off-ramp. Leprous bark crumbled in chunks.  It was a rough tree that had lived through rough times — tornadoes, droughts, ice storms, lightning strikes.

No one writes poetry about pretty suburban trees. Naked Douglas firs, scarred by forest fires, living off death, and homely tulip poplars possessed by demons, those are more romantic.

Today my wife and I celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, the wood anniversary. We live high on a hill where the wind always blows. There is nothing smooth or lush about either of us. Rather than topple, we lean into the wind – or more often into each other.

JJ is strong because she has been abused, scarred, burned – by relationships, circumstances, tragedy. Her face is creased by wind and sun and sorrow. Her eyes sparkle with a joy that only someone who has experienced despair can know.

JJ and I both are among the 51 percent of Americans whose first marriage ended in divorce.

We both came out of that experience damaged,  dried up, our trust eaten away. We lost friends. I lost family. Some might say we nearly lost everything.

I’m not sure if it matters which tree  is JJ and which tree I am. I’m from the Midwest so I guess I’ll be the Tulip Poplar, the battered tree with the bark falling off. I’m bi-polar so a few bees buzzing around inside is an apt metaphor. Wind and ice and drought and lightning out of nowhere have made me patient.  I know soft rain and warmth outnumber storms. Children eventually gather around, and one day the exact right person comes along to see beauty.

JJ is lovely like the fir high up on the mountain, straining for light. She is damaged by memories, secretly alone at times even in a crowd. She leans into life, sheltering everyone around her. Haunted as she is by it, she still finds nourishment and transformation in tragedy.

There are many discussion about the state of marriage in our country. The statistic above is quoted often. Social change is blamed for stealing the institution’s sanctity.

Today, none of that matters to me. Not today. Today  is about wood. It’s about miles of roots that hold true when wind and rain and lightning blast from all sides, roots that find sustenance and water when there’s none to be found. And bark toughened by time, elements and those who would do harm. And heart, soft but enduring.

It’s about broken branches and nakedness and dark places inside.

It’s about poetry.

Our marriage is not easy. Finances, unemployment, addiction, sickness, fear.

Drought, tornadoes, forest fires, lightning, pestilence.

The problems have always been there. They will be tomorrow.

So will the trees.