The Point of Writing and Eternity

For likely 20 years now I have told myself that I want to be, and that I am, a writer.

This started with my first attempts at fiction when I was seven years old.  I would take my father's printer paper, remove the little hole-punched strips that adorned the sides, and create illustrated books.  I don't remember the content of those books, not really, but I remember being immensely proud and, what's more, thoroughly satisfied and happy during and after their creation.

Creation, though I didn't examine it so closely at the time, in the extension of the physical self into another physical self - the duplication of our own physiology (nerves, neurons, neuroses, etc.) to something physically resembling but not quite like us.  This is, in essence, what we do when we have children with the glaring exception being that we have more control over our creative expression in the inanimate than we do in the animate.

Two Depressives Walk Into A Marriage

My wife and I are both exhausted.  It's cold, rainy, cloudy outside, and the trees are skeletons.  The road makes that "wooshing" wet sound whenever cars go by and it sprays cold whatever everywhere.  There's no Christmas coming soon, no New Year, we're just in the doldrums of winter.  The hallways at her college probably sound hollow and are a bit darker, even with lights - like an empty hospital in an X-Files episode.

I began taking anti-depressants when I was fourteen.  At the time my mother's brother was in the midst of an unnaturally colored descent into something like a quiet madness which would, by the time I was seventeen, lead him to take his own life.  My father's mother suffered from unspecified mental illness which has only recently been revealed as schizophrenia.  My parents understandably sought relief for me rather than watch their son, a sensitive, smart, and oft-bullied young man, push himself further toward desperation.

The Spirituality of the Non-Believer

I defaulted in the most cliche manner when trying to obtain the meaning of the word "spirituality" - I looked to the dictionary.  Like an obnoxious speechwriter, I appear to be beginning this post with a dictionary definition.

"The vital principle or animating force within living things."

Vague.  Not at all religious, not really, though of course there are other, more specifically religious, definitions.

There are those who say, when asked about their religious orientation, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual."

One says this as if it will automatically, and in the most contradictory manner, explain ones deepest nature while at the same time cloaking one within the most bright mysteriousness.

In my view it is a meaningless statement.  It is an attempt, it seems, to keep the spectre of dogmatism at bay.

To be a follower of Christ, or Buddha, or Mohammad, no matter how ethereally so, is to be dogmatic even if only at the very smallest.  Tenets, precepts, codes, rites, rituals - these are all the very lifeblood of any religious order, whether thousands of years old or relatively new.  It may be possible to be spiritual, which I would assume means "concerned with the vital principle", but once a formal deity is brought into the equation, even only in the least obtrusive manner, there is the element of the religious.

Of course, when people ask me about my religious orientation the question is generally more straightforward, with less room for theological wiggle:

"Are you a Christian?"

Stay-at-home

My New Minority Status

"You go into your classrooms, you shut the door, and you shut yourself off from your colleagues."

When I was a high school teacher the principal would often gently admonish the faculty in this way.  In truth, he was right to do so.

In teaching, being isolated was easy to accomplish.  For many of us, it was preferred.  In a job where your students feel more like your colleagues than your fellow teachers it was easy to barrel through a day without even communicating with your fellows (except to commiserate, of course).  Much of the time we didn't even want our fellow teachers' input or attention - our lesson plans were our own, our methods were our own.

I now find myself in a profession even more isolated in nature - that of the stay-at-home parent.

I could say "stay-at-home dad" but really the job is difficult for either side of the gender line.

Still, though, I'm rare.  Here's a little statistic from the federal government:

158,000 - estimated number of stay-at-home dads in 2009. These married fathers with children younger than 15 have remained out of the labor force for at least one year primarily so they can care for the family while their wives work outside the home. These fathers cared for 290,000 children. Among these stay-at-home dads, 59 percent had two or more children, and 57 percent had an annual family income of $50,000 or more.

This seems to have remained constant according to more recent numbers released in the Current Population Survey in March 2011.

 

How Did I Get Here?

I'll pretend as though some of the people who read this blog do not know me personally and, therefore, do not know how I came to be a stay-at-home dad.  Indulge me, it helps keep the narrative going.