2. Opti-mystical
May 23, 1952. I am born a pessimist. It is my nurture. My father is a cynical man. Squeezes the jolly-rogers out of any sign of hope in anyone he has power over. I love him dearly. I love that he drives a big car and smokes a big cigar and comes to watch my baseball games in his restaurant whites. My mother, who has a jolly spark, is powerless, and de-sparked by he-that-rules. My brother and sister fight for their lives, flee. Leaving me. Leaving me, behind.
I grow up in a glass half empty. Someone throws a rock and it shatters. I can’t swim and the only lifeboats I reach for are shards of glass. They cut me to pieces, even as they save.
It’s Saturday 10 am and I’m working in Dad’s restaurant. At 3 pm I will be pitching in my little league game. I have elbow pain, Tennis Elbow they call it now. Dad seems angry. He’s always angry. He orders me to clean out the ice bin, not the one we use, the back-up bin that we hardly touch. It’s a solid block of ice, maybe three feet thick, 18 inches wide. He gives me the ice pick and tells me to clean it out. Get all the ice out of it.
Some days when I pitch, it hurts so much I don’t take warm-ups. That way I limit the amount of pitches I throw. It limits the hurting. Dad knows this. And now he orders me to swing an ice pick, jamming my pitching elbow into the rock of ice all morning. He knows this will hurt. He knows how much pitching means to me.
And for years I seethe at this episode, so insecure he must injure his own son so he doesn’t outshine the father. And so I chipped away, and with each swing of my arm, each crack of ice, each wince of pain, a piece of me is chipped off.
Chip-chip-chip.
Only recently, within the last few weeks, decades later, it occurs to me that maybe—maybe— he had a different motivation. Maybe he was trying to toughen me, teach me how to play in pain, pitch in pain. Live with suffering, while carrying on.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I am born a pessimist, it is my nurture. But at 18 I am reborn an optimist. I am on a beach, coming apart at the seams, when out of the stuffing I pour–whole, full, free. The sun calls me ‘cousin,’ the waves, ‘lover.’ My eyes twinkle like stars. The fog lifts. But by end of day, I come crashing out of orbit like a tin can space capsule, make a grand reentry as a pimpled dimpled18-year old, angry, defensive, fogged.
But there is hope. I glimpsed it. Once glimpsed, never lost.
Away from home, I discover a living firebrand of creator lives inside of me. I had no idea such a one as this was within. So little did I know myself, so poorly acquainted I was with who I was.
How can that be? How can you grow up not growing up?
We’ll talk about that. Hold the question.
This creator, he has no bounds. He has discipline, but no bounds. He is boundless. His horse has no saddle, he rides with a fury. untamed
At 35, another glimpse through the mirror. Images burned in. Life changes deeply. The fledging optimist becomes opti-mystical. Daughters are conceived in passion. Egg splits.
New life emerges. More crashes await than an overused crash dummy. More reasons to quit than to keep going,
Still, I remain
Opti-mystical.
It is my guiding light.
Once glimpsed, never lost.
