Tangonista

Adam told me a story about a communication he had received. He had received a message from an unlikely person in an unlikely way. It was hard to understand his story. He wandered so far, but the science programs I had been watching on television made me see the physical world differently, and therefore I was more open to his ramblings. This is how we started off.

I had been watching a PBS program about physics. “Entanglement,” what a lovely word. It brings to my mind a skein of wool that has gotten “tangled.” Entangled like the wool my grandmother gave me when she tried to teach me to knit. I only learned the basics of knit and pearl, but not pulling the strands hard and tight was a lesson that stayed with me for the rest of my life. Practical knowledge. How to deal with tangles turned out to be a useful skill whenever I was working with climbing ropes to fell trees or using long electrical cords to build decks and, with impatience and frustration, wanted to pull hard at the tangle.

Not trying too hard, not pulling too hard, or simply having patience might have helped me change how I approached relationships, if I had been aware enough to make the connection. It took many more years than I expected for me to appreciate knitting lessons and many of the other lessons that experience offers.

Adam’s story seemed to have elements of the concept of quantum entanglement, a concept that was new to me. Quantum entanglement has to do with “…action at a distance,” a problem that kept Einstein up at night. Maybe not up all night, I am exaggerating, I cannot presume to know all of Einstein’s thoughts, but quantum theory at least concerned him. He would have conversations with his colleagues at meetings about “playing dice with the universe,”…and “spooky action at a distance.” Some of the mathematics of quantum mechanics did not fit into an equation to explain everything. Apparently, many brilliant minds were looking for the elusive simple mathematical answer to their questions about the physical world; assuming that there are simple answers to be conceived by the human mind: The old problem of the fish in the stream asking, ‘Where is the water?’

Somehow I think the formula for everything needs to reflect the experience of fractal equations. Patterns repeat into infinity, but our experience of those patterns is limited by our senses or even the tools we build to extend our senses. Fractals are an experience of infinity.

In any case, who am I to say anything about this subject, when I can only intuit that there can be worlds we might be able to experience but not have words to describe?

It is fact that Einstein had good mathematics to describe the larger forces of the universe. Yet as physicists explored deeper into the small bits, atoms and within atoms—the stuff we are made of, the stuff all things are made of—it all became clouds of probability. The solid bits only seem to exist when observed. What seems solid contains large amounts of nothing we can perceive or fully understand. There are interesting thought experiments to consider; but more interesting to me was the description of a well-designed actual experiment using laser telescopes to create random sampling observations of photons emitted by an atom to test a theory that was mathematically allowed by quantum mechanics—effects without causality. Proven. Spooky?

Think about dominos falling. Balance a domino here on Earth. Balance another domino on something solid near Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth. It would take 137,000 years for light traveling at 186,000 miles per second, to reach Alpha Centauri. Yes; thousands of years traveling at thousands of miles per second. Tip one domino: they both fall at the same time. Science has not determined if entanglement is a distance-limited phenomenon: I like the poetry of my example. But even if entanglement is local, it is still an odd characteristic of the cosmos.

This knowledge shook my faith in the causal world. It changed my sense of time. 

—

Please relax, this is not a story about mathematics or physics. For me, the fact of that cosmic experiment opened new possibilities. I admit it is a huge leap to go from the physical world...Is there a physical world? it does seem so solid…to a leap to the chemistry of a human body; and yes, on some level, to the physics of human awareness. I was forced by a concept and that successful experiment to look at direct knowledge and wisdom in different ways. The possibilities I was considering made me more open to a story like Adam was telling me.

Adam never directly suggested or indicated that the events of his tale were connected in a causal, predetermined way—as in destiny—and yet his feeling was that the events of his life were bound together. He wasn’t pushing a theory or philosophy. Adam seemed to be, what you might call witnessing his life, and he found the connections interesting.

—

We met at a three day organic gardening workshop. As often happens, we bumped into each other at the herbal teas and hot water refreshment table. I was attending the workshop alone so I proposed we share a nice meal and a cocktail together. When he responded, his tone was confessional. He admitted that he had been living alone for a good while; and then he broke into a warm and hearty laugh, and with a grin and a shine in his eyes, he admitted that he had been “… alone long enough that interacting with another human being seemed like fun.” 

I found his statement funny. I am sure humor was Adam’s intention; instead of what might have seemed like a scary admission from a well dressed but aloof and eccentric recluse.

He seemed eager to talk, and once things got going, he made no demands on me to hold up my end of the conversation. I was more than willing to listen to him because I have always enjoyed listening. The simple truth is that I feel more comfortable as a listener.

It was not until later one evening after a good meal, abandoning herb teas for glasses of homemade elderberry wine, that our conversations expanded and became more personal. In that relaxed mood I could ask him about his life.

Over time an impression came clearly to me that Adam was certainly odd, but also a thoughtful and articulate person. His openness made it evident that he had spent significant time and effort with professional guidance reviewing and trying to come to some peaceful understanding of his childhood. Like most of us, his childhood had shaped his view of his world and his approach to relationships. What he had experienced, and what he thought about what he had experienced, interested me. He did not require ardent nudging to talk. It seemed like he needed to talk and once he got going, my presence almost didn’t matter.

His conversational style was consistent with his experience as a street performer. Adam apparently still enjoyed busking; singing and playing his guitar at the local pedestrian shopping area of his town. Not for money, “…for the excitement and joy of expression.”

He reminisced about a time when he was in the office of a doctor who was also an administrator and they were talking about healthcare performance and quality improvement. The meeting started with Adam sensing he was being gently called “on the carpet” for some minor infraction related to Adam’s use of his own judgement—instead of getting permission. Adam, claiming to be quite shy, apparently had overcompensated. He was willing to push limits and take risks, but more as an outlet for his creativity, when he got bored, than to be disrespectful. Adam had learned in graduate school something similar to the adage, “sometimes it is easier to say you’re sorry, than to get permission.” Adam was willing to take chances, and he was willing to be apologetic. Still, his work environment was conservative, the power structure was established, and neither Adam’s impatience or provocations would change the common and safe inertia of bureaucracy.

The conversation Adam had with that supervisor took a turn when Adam was asked, in a relaxed and perhaps even caring way, “If you could do anything, what would you do?” Adam did not miss the sense that his past behavior might be threatening his current career choice, but Adam did not hesitate when he said, “Be a jazz guitar musician.” 

— 

The conversation with that administrator opened Adam up to pursuing his dreams of playing guitar in public a step further. He volunteered to play, mostly pieces he had written, “because I can’t remember songs by other people,” in the entrance atrium of a medical center where family members, staff, and patients often blended together going places, keeping appointments. Some, absorbed in grief and concern, sleeplessness and anxiety: He played for them.

Let it be said; I am starting to talk like Adam. Adam was able to find out that, by taking that risk and volunteering to play guitar in the lobby, just that simple level of performance, satisfied Adam’s need for creative musical expression.  

Realizing his old dream—being a working musician—Adam discovered, as it turned out, was not really necessary. Adam was content to simply play. The compliments he occasionally received were nice, in the sense that he felt the music might have helped someone enjoy a moment of distraction. The truth was that Adam would play if no one was listening other than he himself. He enjoyed the challenge of performing: putting out of his mind the judgments of others, and putting out of his mind the fear of forgetting and of making a mistake. He said he very slowly learned to “surrender to the flow” and by that he meant that a fumble would not derail the tunes rhythm, and that fumbles might even become improvisations or even new songs.

Getting us back on track, the point of describing Adam’s musical dreams is to show that he no longer seemed shy or retiring. He seemed confident and theatrical. Adam used conversation like another form of performance art. By making conversation a performance art (and this idea only occurred to me much later in our relationship) he created the distance he needed to be able to share, with an audience, deep and sensitive discoveries about himself. That audience helped him think and the audience only needed to be an audience of one. Adam benefitted from telling his story to someone.

—

Adam’s father, Izzy, was a merchant mariner. His father hated being a seaman. Izzy had been a pilot and a flight instructor during the second world war, so the sea both limited Izzy’s spirit and his need for an expansive vision of the world seen from the cockpit of an airplane. The sea limited Izzy’s sense of freedom. What became Izzy’s way to earn a living, because he did not have connections or licenses or transferrable degrees, kept Izzy earthbound. It was a limitation Izzy regretted and angrily grieved and doubtfully ever resolved.

Izzy worked his way up from able-bodied seaman to officer. He had attended a European military college: he had aeronautical skills. Izzy was able to study, take examinations, and become a navigational officer in the merchant marines.  Applying his skills as best he could, Izzy would earn a good living; even being a “Green Horn,” and a “Pollak” with broken English. Izzy played violin fairly well and also, apparently, sang. There is a picture of Izzy dressed in a suit in front of a theatre curtain posed with the expressive open hands gesture of a person doing what is called “selling” a song. Adam doesn’t recall his father ever singing.

Now Adam paused and said, “…recounting my father’s life, and the many twists and turns,…is the stuff of a different day.”  Yes, Adam talked like that. 

“Perhaps on a subsequent leisurely evening of good music and a taste of wine…,” Adam suggested and he used flourishes with his hands, “I might recount—The story of Izzy: His passions, His broken heart, and His injured mind.”  

I was captured by Adam’s theatricality.

After another quiet pause Adam continued. It was on his father’s merchant mariner travels from the docks on Manhattan’s west side on a “coastwise” voyage, and after Izzy had crossed the equator to reach the big trading ports in Latin America, that Izzy visited Buenos Aires. He brought home, as souvenirs, products of European immigration to South America… “The inevitable and wonderfully sensual evolution of the intercourse between immigrant and indigenous music,” is how Adam put it, letting me know with voice inflection that it is the perennial force of attraction and sensuality between human beings that often is behind good music and interesting art.

Izzy brought home vinyl recordings of Latin musicians. There were tango albums. There was Luis Bonfa and the wonderful sound of the carnival spirit captured in rhythms on a guitar. That compelling music was played on a stereo Izzy had assembled from a kit, at home, long before monaural and later stereo sound systems were being mass produced. Long play records, played through a speaker cabinet that was almost six foot tall and four foot wide that seemed like it could vibrate the walls of Izzy’s solid brick house.

It was Luis Bonfa’s masterful playing of classical guitar that did something to Adam’s mind and spirit. The pull of the music led Adam to many mindless happy hours plunking notes on a cheap warped guitar that could barely be tuned. Adam decided to change the steel strings that cut his fingertips and put on nylon strings. He modified the bridge and nut of that guitar and it was easier to play. The sound was better with new strings. At that point of early beginnings Adam was content simply making sounds ‘by ear.’

The guitar Adam was using had warped when his uncle stored it in a classic breezy free-standing dirt floor one-car garage. The garage on “Grandma’s” quiet farm acres in Connecticut. It probably was a catalog “mail order” guitar purchase. It did not matter that it was cheap and warped and that Adam did not know a thing about music. His uncle had his own cheap guitar which was barely useful for playing the Elvis songs his uncle would sing. And his uncle would sing them with the arrogance of someone who had been called “The Bronze God” in his college days playing football at the University of Connecticut on the GI Bill. To Adam, it only mattered that he would be making sounds on an instrument.

Adam’s mother, Janeen, played piano and banjo, and Izzy, the violin, but they never played together. Adam clarified with me that he, Adam, was far from being a “talented musician” himself, but my sense was that Adam was being modest. In the beginning it was not the sound of carnival coming out of Adam's guitar, there was only a most rudimentary interpretation. Even Adam admits that an onlooker, more accurately someone within earshot with kindly generosity, might describe his musicianship as pitiable. Still, it was Adam’s appreciation of tango music that brings a certain woman into his story, and so we need to go back to previous conversations for more detail.

—

There were marriages. It was toward the end of Adam’s second marriage, a second marriage for both of them, which Adam described as a “marriage of respectable years” when things got rough. Everything said was taken in the worst way.

Yes, they had tried. They had one child from his previous marriage to parent now and then because of shared custody, and eventually one shared adoptive child to parent together. Naturally, they disagreed on parenting methods. Adam had a more laissez-faire parenting style. His wife, Adam described her with comical flair as  “having control issues.” Their differences spilled over into their adult relationship and before long they were unhappy roommates in separate bedrooms.

Finally, it became clear from their awkward feelings toward each other that the friendly way for them to proceed together—was to allow for separate lives and eventually separate living. They were hurting each other. They would need to separate and drift into more distant lives.

Adam used the word “drift” and then he explained that he still had positive regard, even love, for his former wife. Perhaps in a more European sense they still respected and liked each other, but two strong-willed captains on one ship were bound to see double, and they did.

“It is an unfortunate symptom, and a challenging place to escape from,” Adam said expressively, “when the reservoir of goodwill between a couple has drained dry and the spring from which goodwill might be replenished is blocked by the hard stones of unresolved hurts.”

Adam added, “My stance has always been that I am happy to take one-hundred percent responsibility for fifty percent of the problem!” He laughed at what he considered to be his clever aphorism. “Oh, yes. There are times when I am surely more than fifty percent responsible; but, I hope to think there are times when I listen, and when possible, attempt to learn and grow…perhaps now even more than then.” It was at that exact moment when a sag of sadness came to Adam’s otherwise smiling, animated face. My sense was that his openness to look for change in himself was one of his strengths. He recovered quickly. He said they both, after a few years of separation, would begin to consider their marriage as a marriage of convenience. Perhaps wanting to think of it that way was their defense against sadness. Of course there had been good times. Many good times. However, it always seems true that good times do not create the same durable memories as bad times. Why not?

—

Some of Adam’s language was the type one might learn in therapy; the therapy he had turned to for perspective, learning, and support. Coincidentally, Adam had initiated new sessions with the same therapist he and his wife had used for couples therapy ten years earlier—almost to the day. Adam took comfort in what seemed like a meaningfully positive coincidence. “The perfection of the timing of my return to therapy.” Apparently Adam drew a sense of cosmic intent from signs that appeared to him to be affirmations. Perhaps, like the rest of us, Adam was only manufacturing meaning from thin air. Nonetheless, it gave him hope. It seemed to signal to him that he was on the right path. Adam took comfort from a hope that the therapist might eventually remember some of Adam’s background and perhaps a feeling of familiarity with Adam’s previous individual and couples sessions, and that the recollection might bring a deeper sense of connection and continuity.  

There were other connections Adam had with his therapist. They had attended the same university at about the same time, but they had attended different schools. The therapist had moved to the same city in Virginia as Adam, but before Adam. The therapist had had clinical experiences at an old-fashioned training school near their university. The training school was a place where mental and emotional retardation, words of the time, was kept quietly out of the mainstream of life. It offered good educational experiences for students of the university, at least for those studying the education and healing arts.

The therapist relayed a story from his experiences at the training school to Adam. Adam said he might fail to remember it accurately, but the story told by the therapist had stuck with Adam. It was a story of a young boy who had not communicated verbally at all, but when he was eventually given sufficient consistent comfort, after many weeks, he would exclaim, “Me, Me, Me” when that boy sensed he was not getting enough attention. For Adam it seemed that the feeling activating that child, even if Adam did not understand what the feeling was; was the same hidden source of Adam’s sadness and anger. An unsettled urge was still present in Adam imploring, ”me, me, Me?”  

—

Adam did not recount what he was learning about himself in a self-absorbed or self-important way. He couldn’t. Adam had adopted a philosophy requiring him to take full responsibility for himself. His philosophy did not allow him to blame others or to indulge himself in self-pity. It led him to accept that his path toward renewal required that he make changes in the one person over which he had any hope of influence…himself.

It was a few months into therapy when the psychologist recommended a book to Adam. They had already discussed Adam doing his own research into his anger and sadness. Adam had read a number of books, even text books, about attachment theory. The new social science theories were starting to make sense to Adam. Janeen’s (his mother’s) psychological challenges, back then called “mental illness;” and Izzy’s father’s issues, “let’s use the modern concept, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder,” Adam offered, were the result of Izzy’s emotional experiences of war, and were at the core of his parent’s troubled relationship.  

Adam’s parent’s flaws and weaknesses combined to form the behaviors of parenting styles that do not lead to a satisfying family life. Izzy’s acting out of emotional damage, when he was home from the sea, and Izzy’s career away from home six to ten months a year; and Adam’s mother’s distance caused by her absorption in her own reality and history, had injured Adam. Adam’s childhood experiences had warped Adam’s ability to trust the human beings closest to him. Adam had learned awkward truths about human beings, but those truths did not help Adam develop useful emotional skills.

Maybe Adam’s childhood seems fairly benign; long absences, single parenting, exciting reunions, difficult re-adjustments, tearful but often relief-filled departures; not unusual in the lives of quasi-military families, experiences a person might easily forgive and forget. Not Adam, apparently someone who could be called a “sensitive soul.” For Adam, it created sadness and caution and anger that informed every aspect of his life, but in a deep and unconscious way.

The saving grace for Adam seems to have been the distraction created by his parents' talents and diverse interests; they were artists and intellectuals. As noted, Janeen played piano, tenor banjo, and sang. She acted in local theatre, she was a published poet. But as time went on it was clear that her brain chemistry had confused reasonable limits of behavior.

Izzy was a good violin player, and a talented oil and watercolor artist. Izzy was somehow afraid to paint if, in Izzy’s eyes, the effort could not be perfect: so Izzy did not paint as a regular hobby. There was a notable and restricted time period when Izzy produced very good, locally award winning, accurate reproductions. Then he stopped. He seemed content with his art. Izzy was a victim of procrastination. He not only had a hard time starting, he had a hard time finishing what he started. He would build an apartment over a garage and leave the built-in kitchen cabinets unpainted for years. He would not put finish flooring over the subfloor of the apartment, again for many years. Izzy and Adam had built the apartment together over a number of summers. Adam eventually completed enough of the work to make the apartment livable. To be fair Adam did the work because he wanted to live in that unfinished second floor open space; rent free, while he was in the transition from college to a world with few job prospects. Still, beginning and completing a project posed insurmountable barriers for Izzy, and so the start or completion of many even simple projects, simply escaped him

—

Janeen and Izzy had over many years built a brick house together, “arguing about everything.”  ‘Greener Pastures,’ was the name given to the property by Janeen. Their home was built on a three acre section of Janeen’s mother’s farm. Greener Pastures was a reference to her favorite psalm, the twenty-third. ‘…maketh me to lie down in green pastures.’ And the fields were green, and there had been pastures, there was a meadow, creeks, skunk cabbage, trout flowers, and a shallow cranberry bog good for ice skating on during winter. Janeen insisted on “Greener” Pastures.

They hired only limited assistance from contractors. They worked together toward a goal of building a house on a pay-as-you-go basis. Living in a small two car garage with a pot belly stove, and no plumbing. There was an outhouse on the farm.

It took many years to complete, Adam was not clear about the number of years, but it was never really completed. Not painting the raw wood inside, on the interior of the “porch” windows, seemed to be one truth, of so many, revisited in tense exchanges to bring back lasting memories of frustrated desires, and then used to fuel arguments that even young Adam sensed only increased painful feelings between his parents.

“It is a solid brick house. But there are strange memories about it as a home…my parents’ home is filled with built-in conflicting emotions,… get it, ‘built-in’ like cabinets,” Adam jested while trying to defuse the mood with humor. It seems that what Adam remembered most were long drawn out arguments that would eventually become long “lectures” by Izzy to Janeen but in a foreign language that Adam never learned or understood. But Adam caught the sense of a negative tone, whether it was a fully accurate perception of the tone or not; a tone of uneasiness, disappointment and anger; Adam’s perception became his lingering feeling of what was true. 

Sometimes Adam was the sole audience for his father’s lectures. Adam endured lectures about neatness or using his father’s tools, tools Adam had used during the time his father was gone for five months straight and Adam was trying to do repairs around the house that his mother requested. And so Adam resented the lectures from the father who—for good reasons or not, right or wrong—from Adam’s emotional perspective, abandoned his family and his role of father and substituted money for his presence.

It has taken many years for Adam to find a more compassionate and forgiving perspective of his parents, not as parents, but as flawed human beings like the rest of us.

Adam dealt with criticism the only way he could; with his own version of passive resistance. He learned to tune the old goat totally out. Adam’s only escape from those tirades was a request for a bathroom break. Adam’s brief absence would break his father’s momentum. Then, eventually, Adam would be allowed to retreat into the quiet of the woods where he could take an ax and vent frustration on helpless trees and bushes, or at least retreat to the quiet of his own room and his own thoughts.

Lying in his bedroom alone at night, Adam would stare up at the ceiling and pray for help, for an end to the bad feelings between his parents. The bad sounds between his parents. He prayed for some peace and quiet. Adam would do what he later realized was yogic breathing: deep breath, hold, slow release, and again. Adam would follow the purple scintillating image on his closed eyelids into nowhere, and eventually fall asleep.

Adam’s parents argued, and argued with passion. But there was one set of behaviors that had been important support for Adam, given the inconsistent and anxious mood his parents created at home; Adam had the good fortune to receive the sincere and warm physical affections of both parents. It was part of his parent’s culture for both men and women to hug and to kiss on the lips. Both his mother and his father gave “good” warm hugs to their children. Son kissed father on the lips. Mother kissed son on the lips. And for some reason the aunts all enjoyed giving young Adam kisses on the lips. He must have been a good kisser for a lad. Or maybe it was just the innocence and the softness of his youth. It was just part of this family and also some of the extended family’s culture. A kiss and an embrace were family customs.

Neither his parent’s physical, and clearly not their emotional gestures toward each other, created a sense of love, at least not healthy love, or a love that helped—them.

During at least one of his mother’s many psychiatric hospitalizations or her family therapy sessions, Adam was told, by appropriately credentialed experienced authorities, that the sincere physical affection from his parents likely saved Adam from the worst of psychological injury. Adam was reassured that he had survived some of the worst, and it did help him to know that, but the worst was not all there was to survive. Do any of us come out of our childhoods without challenges to resolve and overcome? Be that as it may be, Adam had a lot to learn. Unlearn, and learn.

As I mentioned, the therapist at some point recommended a book that explored current social and psychological science regarding the impact of the failed development of healthy attachment. Apparently a good deal had been learned since the experiments where the child monkey had a choice between a “mother” that is a wire cylinder with a face and a functional nipple with food, and a similar but cuddly mother with a shag rug covering the wire cylinder body and no food. The monkey would choose the cuddly rug mother over the cold, food mother.

“Man does not live by bread alone, ” Adam offered. Apparently, neither do monkeys.

In the introduction to the book Adam’s therapist recommended, the author wrote that she enjoyed Argentinian tango. Adam claims that reading about her hobby immediately created a connection for him with the author and her theories. It brought back so many memories.

Argentinian tango is a full embrace dance style. Imagine virtually hugging and dancing at the same time. It was the combination of Adam’s familiarity with tango music from back in his childhood and the fact of the author’s hobby that lead Adam to find tango lessons near his home. By this time Adam was separated from his wife.

The beginning of tango lessons continued a story connecting parts of Adam’s childhood to his adult life. From his memories of home, of being lost in the joy of music, to the lingering soreness of injury to his trust in the ones he loved, to the hugs that may have saved his soul; there was a continuity. Is there any doubt or any wonder that Adam would enjoy the tango?   

—

Adam was also on dating sites because, as he suggested, he ”had never been very good at dating. Meeting through a web portal seemed like a better option than bar scenes.” “I was not comfortable at bars meeting women…,” he admitted, but mostly, it seems, because he was not successful. His innate intensity, perhaps his longing, more likely the aura of his raw impulses, were easily sensed by a woman “a proverbial mile away.” Adam complained, “I could start conversations but I would always end up in the friend zone. It seems the bad boys take home the women.” How simplistic and naive of him.

Ever the person to rely on “the literature,” as Adam would call it, he started reading the pick-up and “player” books. There were evolutionary theories of biological programming in the animal kingdom; the female selecting whatever biological sign and smell that stimulated her drive to find the best genes to fertilize her eggs for the survival of the species. Many of the books had ideas for the practical application of that knowledge; ways to take advantage of those limited biological theories to circumvent female defenses with tricks of confidence and methods to satisfy a woman’s need for acceptance.

The books made it clear that women are naturally attracted to confidence, but Adam’s confidence had not gotten to the point where it overpowered the limitations imposed by his uncomfortable sensitivity. It was not until he, by chance, read a book about the “nice guy syndrome” that Adam began to realize how he had been trained, during his upbringing, with the exact skill set he needed to assure his failure in starting romantic relationships.

Adam also found websites. I can help with one-on-one sessions. Enter your order and payment information below. He admits he was tempted to join.

Learning about his failure to establish trust in others and airing, in Adam’s therapy sessions, stories about his unhealthy family experiences, added to the progress Adam was making in allowing himself to truly experience his sadness and anger. He was learning how his past could come to the surface, not always consciously but, as choices he made in the present. Not satisfactory choices.

Adam was able to remember events of serious pain, separations from people he loved, both emotional and physical separation. It was deemed important when he remembered how his young mind had made a pact, something like a blood oath commitment to himself; to avoid that kind of pain in the future. How would he accomplish that? Not feeling?

He was also able to appreciate that something in him, a strength, had helped him to survive. Adam allowed himself to acknowledge that, even given a degree of adversity, he had created a good level of career success. He at least had success satisfying the challenges of the first few rungs up the hierarchy of human needs: Adam had an optimism that led him to believe that self-realization was possible.

He could not change the past, but he could learn to be his own parent. What choice did he have? But what was important to Adam, was for Adam to allow himself to be reassured that he could remedially parent himself. He was learning to create a new sense of self. I give him credit, he was still trying to learn and trying to grow beyond his habitual responses. It is not an easy path.

Of course we are discussing the results of therapy, but his life was still coming at him on all the other one hundred and sixty-seven hours a week. There are always new challenges and there are always new ways to try to respond to life, and at every moment.

—

Adam went on a few dates with contacts he made on a popular dating website. It was a strange new electronic social world. Adam had been married twice for a total of over thirty years; dating had changed. As he said, referring to a Prince song, “I had already…’partied like it was 1999’…twenty years ago.” Women had evolved over forty important years, two almost three generations. The worst aspects of patriarchal tactics and the collusion of the brotherhood was coming out in public. The institutional tolerance of some men’s bad behavior toward women was out in public. Simply calling some men’s behavior, “bad behavior” was sugar-coating their immature behavior, Adam asserted. It is a mild over-generalization; calling it only “bad behavior.” “The phrase minimizes the entrenched culture of disrespect toward women.” Perhaps it was Adam’s love of and for his daughters that made him aware of and touchy about what his girls; and they were “girls” at the time, might face.

With sincerity and empathy Adam said, “Women have reasons to be angry and cautious.” Adam had gained his perspective directly. He had been surprised by the number of women he would meet who apparently had been treated quite badly by men. He was even more surprised that the women would share stories of their bad treatment—on first dates! He explained to me that he had not been sure how to handle his sense that he was facing a high hurdle, for even a casual relationship with a woman. “I am the gender that hurt them.”

Sadly, Adam was even more confused by women’s experiences because he thought of himself as a good man, a nice guy: he shared household chores like cooking and cleaning and childcare. And Adam could build a deck, shingle a roof, do some automotive, plumbing and electrical work. “How were those men getting away with being…unloving?” But this thinking was really only Adam’s self-pity indulging itself; there would always be unkind human beings.

Adam, for the most part, enjoyed domestic life. He was not boasting when he talked about being thoughtful and romantic. “I would buy flowers for her even when it was not a special holiday or celebration day.” He was confused that he had so many seemingly good characteristics, and yet it had not worked for him; it had not worked to help him start or sustain successful, satisfying, well-rounded relationships.

—

Those “dating” dates did not progress past the coffee and pastry or lunches Adam had carefully planned in order to be able to run, at least mentally, but sometimes almost physically, for the exit. Adam’s research had lead him to experiment with a paradigm shift in his decisions and behavior. He was learning to please himself. He was not sure what pleasing himself meant. He was not sure what being himself meant. It was counter intuitive for him to think about pleasing himself first, but it was part of the learning that he believed was required to become an integrated male.

Integrated male? Adam was striving to be nurturing and giving without always following the path made so easy by his childhood training; that of caretaker and of problem solver. A caretaker for people who didn’t really want or need his care and a problem solver for problems beyond his or anyone’s abilities to solve. It took Adam years before he learned the hard way that he could not fix anyone. Adam had been in a position to be forced to try to fix people he loved—and failed, and failed. At this point in his growth Adam playfully shared that he, “…was having a very hard time trying to improve (himself),” so he had given up on “trying to change others.” Those others were his parents, to start; but a habit is a habit, and “there were plenty of people who seemed to need to be fixed, and women who seemed to need to be cared for.”

These days Adam was working on being able to “accept reality.” Adam had gained hard, cold knowledge that, “even the best love may not change a person.” Adam had learned he could love someone, but not like them. “It was a liberating realization.” Adam found peace in accepting that he loved his parents, but that it was painful, demoralizing, and draining to spend time with them. Adam had made a choice to try to save himself, and use what energy he could conserve to try to be the best father he could be to his own children. Based on his recovery from his childhood, Adam felt his children needed him to be a good parent. Based on his recovery from childhood Adam knew what his children really needed was for him to be the best human being he could be.

After a few dates, Adam needed to take a break from the sympathy he felt for the women he was meeting.

—

Adam started taking tango lessons and Adam found out, through the osmosis of social learning, and with only a trace of consternation because he was looking for love, that tango culture had fairly strict and important rules. Adam came to appreciate that the mood and norms of the context of tango lessons, and also tango social dances, had evolved in a way to create a safe place for women. Even the social “melonga” dances were not contexts where “picking up” a causal encounter was an accepted objective. Alienating male or female dance partners was simply self-defeating. There were a limited number of dancers in a unique group of potential dance partners who would sign-up for a full-embrace dance. Even fewer who could tolerate the fact that it was fully acceptable for men to dance together, if only for the purpose of instruction. As for women; women, as part of the forms imposed by the style of dance, would be holding partners tightly. Appropriate holding of one’s dance partner was necessary to communicate intended movement: walking, turning, spinning.

The dignity and sophistication of the dance relationship was comforting for all dancers. The accepted rules of tango society were for safety. Argentinian Tango is a full-contact sport. The safeguards created a unique social context supporting the enjoyment of dancing with any partner.

Adam stated dreamily, “tango culture attracts a more mature, sophisticated person.” Then he became pedantic, “Sensual enjoyment of life as an adult in a mutually-respectful, honest, and consensual way is something we in America are apparently just starting to learn. There are cultures far ahead of us in many aspects of the art of living.”

This is how Adam complained about his inherent albeit learned inability to relax into intimacy with a woman: unless he could sense, unless he felt, she was enjoying herself. Me, me, me…confidence, appropriate selfishness, if that is a useful way of thinking about what he was trying to accomplish, was not yet a part of him. He had been a care-taker all his life.

Tango made sense to Adam. It made sense for Adam. The social contract created safety for dancers who were committing to direct human contact and what could be the deeply satisfying enjoyment of being very close to another human body, enjoying movement to passionate music—without worrying about sex. Simply enjoying the wonderful sensuality bodies afford. “There can be moments of bliss,” he sighed.

—

As I said, it might have been that the physical affection from his parents had allowed Adam to transcend the emotional Armageddon he had endured. Adam had been involved with square dancing from his middle school years, dancing with the troupe at nursing homes, state fairs and even, by an invitation to do a square dance demonstration, at a regional fair. He had grown comfortable with touching others in an appropriate context, appropriately.

Adam was in junior high school when he had faced an impossible mountain of fear to click his heels, bow, and kiss the hand of a teenage girl he liked; as part of a class play. Adam liked the idea of getting to kiss this girl’s hand, and he was also nearly paralyzed with irrational pubescent fear. The play was a highly-abridged adaptation of King Learof course referring to the minds and hearts of women.. Adam played the Earl of Kent, and his class’s version was scripted with Adam kissing her hand—in front of an audience.

Adam described that he was “very anxious” around girls in high school, but he admired and was attracted to them. He said, with a respectful grin, that they, “… stirred something deep and compelling inside me (him).” Rumor was that they also liked him, but Adam was oblivious. Adam was lost, as so many other nerdy school-aged boys; lost in hormones, self-doubt, fear and anxiety. He said his anxiety handicap had persisted for many years, but his natural physical attraction to women had also persisted, and motivated him to figure “it” all out. “It,” of course, referring to the minds of women. He remained incredibly naive, considering his age.

—

Adam observed, “…busking helped me realize that everyone is in their own world. Getting attention, getting someone to listen to my music is very difficult; they are walking in their own dreams.” But once he had this realization it was much easier for him to perform in front of others, knowing that even if they shouted “you are terrible” which he was not, at least he had gotten their attention—and that was something. Adam had heard and used an axiom attributed to publicity, “Good attention, bad attention, as long as you are getting attention.”

Adam concluded, “There is no sense worrying about what other people think, because we are all absorbed in ourselves…but at the same time it can be fun to penetrate that bubble of self-reflection.”

I was losing his stream of consciousness. I assumed that what he meant to convey was that he was learning to “act confident” by caring less about what others thought of him. Adam was aware that sometimes it is necessary to act as the person we want to become in order to determine if new behavior can lead to better results, better feelings. Adam was also aware that he could, as difficult as it might be to accomplish, use his 100% commitment-taking responsibility for his actions to stare directly at, at least, his 50% percent of relationship contribution, and ask himself if what he was doing “was working?” And if it was not working he, “…was willing and motivated to try to do something different.”

—

Adam had female friends, almost exclusively female friends. He worked mostly with women. Back in his college days, he had taken classes in massage and had found to his surprise that there were women who would, with minimal convincing, take their clothes off to receive a massage. It was so true to Adam’s character, that once he had employed a sincere attitude of “no strings attached” in order to enjoy giving pleasure to a mostly naked woman: he was not able to betray that trust.

Adam had no idea how a woman might communicate willingness for more—unless she was bold. If women had desires, and Adam’s immaturity allowed that they might not, he was too emotionally blind to find a way into their minds and from their minds perhaps into their pants and possibly into their hearts. The real issue turned out to be not if women had desires, but how to kindle their desire and encourage their willingness.

He hadn’t seen much chivalry at home so that, at home, is not where Adam learned…graceful flirting. It seems as if Adam had inherited a sense of biological chivalry that blocked his normal biology…No, that is ridiculous, that isn’t it at all. Adam had been forced by circumstance to be a caretaker. He knew how to be in a role of concerned caring, although mostly his concern, paradoxically, was about himself, whether he knew it or not. His concerns were easily summarized by a simple rhetorical question, “When will someone care for me?” And so his actions carried a subtle but fundamental neediness.

His awkward immaturity and heightened vigilance, stemming from his fear of being hurt, combined to make Adam an uncomfortable acquaintance; and therefore a highly unlikely sexual partner. Except, if Adam was lucky with the most sensual, wise, knowledgeable, merciful or motivated woman; where his primary relationship responsibility was to be friendly and go along for the ride. Adam had met a few of those generous women.

From his wasteland of relationship skills, Adam eventually was able to reach the oasis of his first sexual experience—after he had already graduated from college. Gradually there were other experiences, and marriage and divorce, and marriage and divorce. Adam was learning about relationships, not from seeing the work of loving in his own family; no, in the painful way: trial and error.

—

As Adam continued to build his life away from his second marriage, he struggled with his confusion, not heartbreak, and not really even with loneliness. Toward the end of the marriage he had found himself lonely while in the midst of children and wife. His confusion had a source. In his therapy he realized that he had not had adults to role-model healthy male-female relationships or even general relationship maintenance skills. Knowing that this was a common weakness of parenting did not translate into knowledge that informed Adam’s behavior. He could not easily exhibit that would be considered emotional intelligence.

Adam told me, “I was shy and sensitive; or I was sensitive and that made me shy. I had limited social skills.”

It seemed that the focus of Adam’s growth was to accept his past, appreciate his survival, his modest worldly success, and to acknowledge that he was able to parent himself. But you and I know that it is easier to talk about such personal change than it is to carve a lasting pattern of good choices deeply into the tender bark of our own life, our branch of the family tree.

You will not be surprised that none of Adam’s insight had much useful impact on his sincere and healthy desire to “get laid.” So he once again turned to popular literature about dating and seduction; only to find that some elements of certain male perspectives, within a year of Adam “getting back out there,” would be labeled misogynistic as part of a new openness and willingness of women to speak-up in public about abuses they had suffered.

It was a relief to Adam! He was never going to become a “player.” He remained too sensitive to the feelings of others, and the important others for him were women. Perhaps there was a way to be a desirable man with feelings. A manly, respectful, desirable man who had the strength to feel his emotions and to share them with the people he cared about. A man who might cry with love for his daughters, to their faces, and explain to them that the alternative, suppressing healthy feelings of love, was not the type of man he cared to become.

The question is would that type of man seem sexy to those with whom he wished to cavort?

—

Eventually, during his period of therapy, realization, growth, and experimentation with new behaviors, Adam ”…went on a date with a very lovely and accomplished woman.”

“It happened on one of the dates that originated from web chat on a dating site,” Adam continued, “The chat had been meaningful enough to continue chatting.” They discussed home remodeling, something about caulking old single-pane windows; and from those shared interests came a connection. They decided on a dinner date, not the safer coffee date. They were to meet at a nice restaurant. Adam arrived early to take a quiet table.

Adam’s date entered, “projecting the stunningly attractive allure that a motivated woman can create.”

Adam felt, “It was a good sign that she had put effort into her appearance.”

He continued, “I have been married enough years to know that it would be her mind and emotions that might,… ‘direct her charms to good or evil’…and I am not saying evil is bad…sometimes,…” and yes Adam did say this with a sly smile that was slightly over-played for comic relief, “… bad can be very good.”

I appreciate that he was conscious of talking to another man, but the joke seemed a bit forced like locker room talk from someone who had never actually participated in locker room talk. Given so much of what Adam had already shared, I was not surprised when he continued in a very different direction and he said, “…so much about women is so totally out of my control, all I can really do is be pleasant, relax and have fun.” Adam made the statement in a tone that suggested he had struggled long and hard and found out that his best choice was to surrender to being himself. Adam had given up trying to do anything other than try to feel his way through his life, using feelings as his handrails.

He had doubts about so many of his ideas and thoughts. He realized he was uncertain about everything. He resolved not to take anything for granted. In his spirit, he decided that accepting the world as being vastly more mysterious than the human mind is able to grasp, was a useful alternative to believing there was one true answer—one theory of everything. Adam had a nagging sense that his reality seemed better when he, once again, went along for the ride.

—

“She was not unlike the other women who were hurt by men….” Adam said in a confusing double negative way. Like other women Adam had dated, she had been hurt by men. She had been married twice. Her first marriage ended when she caught her husband, “doing” was her word, his office assistant in the parking lot of his health professionals workplace. The humiliation was that everyone, mutual friends from his office, knew what had been going on well before she did.

Her second marriage was, at the moment of our dinner date, in the last stages of transition: her second husband took to wearing her clothes and walking around the neighborhood. Fortunately for her second husband this was at a time when the struggle of individuals with gender incongruity was being compassionately covered in the news because of the publicity around a former olympiad. But it was no comfort to my guest and dinner date. She was pissed. Hurt and pissed. She did a good job of trying to find humor in her experiences. Adam mostly just listened, and Adam got the message, her sadness.

Adam tried to arrange another date with his dinner acquaintance, a date that would require driving an hour to an art museum in a larger neighboring city. She was reluctant, she had things to do. As part of his new behaviors, he stifled his reaction to his sense, right or wrong, of rejection and he proclaimed, “I will be going anyway” (at such and such a time) and if she “…changed her mind they could meet and ride together.”

It turned out that commitments did change. They met, drove together to the museum, and talked. Adam enjoyed the way she had taken his arm and held his hand as they toured the exhibits.

There was something about her; unknown to him at the time but that would become important information for Adam later, that reached into and hooked into Adam’s very core. He began to feel something Adam had remarkably never felt before: a helpless lack of control of his emotions and his intellect.

Adam was, “… having (his) my first experience with romantic love.”

This is how Adam put it, “I was going to have a truly romantic, chemical, Hollywood, show-tune kind of love experience.”

“I was totally under the influence of that strange biology; and I did not like it,” or so Adam claimed.

Adam was able to say that he did not like romantic love; not while he was being tyrannized by that so-called love; no, much later, after a meaningful period of…recovery. He said, “It was odd. I was driving us back from the art museum and I was suddenly fully conscious of a vivid realization. It came to me that I would fall in love and that she would break my heart.” Adam clarified that the experience was, “… almost like a voice, but not.”

There are some who say all of us know the outcomes of our actions for a fraction of a second before we make decisions, but it seems we cannot easily access that moment of knowledge. Even if we could assess that knowledge we are not likely to believe it, and even less likely to use it to make changes. His realization did not cause Adam to hesitate, not one bit, as he dove headlong into the shallow waters of his first romantic love experience, fully knowing he was going to get a painful wack on the head, and in his heart, before coming up for the air of, I guess what could be called, love sobriety. Oh my, romantic love. Love?

Adam told me about strange and embarrassing things he had done as they continued to sporadically date. Not creepy, but oddly generous actions that were premature and awkward. She went along with his goofy behavior cheerfully, but she kept him at a distance, and Adam was aware of that distance. That distancing called up his feelings of the fear of abandonment, but he was at least aware of what was happening, this time.

After a pause Adam continued, “…within a few months, the intuition became reality.” Then, almost too quickly, Adam pulled out his usual glass-half-full attitude, “Lucky me, I was already in therapy and this was just the emotional shock I needed to connect with my deepest feelings, feelings at the root of my choices and behavior.”

I remember thinking to myself at that time that Adam was giving me a nice neat intellectual assessment, …but “how does it feel,” was the question in my mind. The journey of recovery from romantic love is my interest and question, dear Adam, sir.

Adam was telling me about his “brush with romantic love” from the secure emotional outpost of many months away from being dumped by his date. The worst effects of her “very thoughtful but unequivocal rejection” had passed.

For the most part, Adam had already recovered from many intense weeks of breaking into tears, stifling those tears while at work; but allowing them while he was driving or at any time of day or night, because he was “consciously choosing not to close himself off to suffering.” Adam was allowing himself to have a deep connection with grief, energized by his “chemical love” experience. Allowing his pain to reanimate itself.

Adam’s suffering was more than the loss of a girlfriend, as you and I know and he would later realize, the depth of his grief was coming from the hurt in his past. It seemed strange that “love” offered the access to hurt he had not allowed himself to feel. Still, his attraction to this particular woman, at this particular time, and allowing all his feelings, helped him get to the realization of a pattern he was repeating over and over, and naturally getting the same results—and not what he wanted.

Importantly, Adam realized the main relationships in his life had resulted from making choices with one theme in common: Adam’s childhood search for something he never got from parents; and really, should not expect from lovers. Adam certainly could give generously, but not out of his strength and abundance. Adam’s giving had strings attached. Pleasing and looking for approval from women was his way to get their attention, approval, love.

Three or four times Adam said he, “considered himself lucky to be in such perfect circumstances with his new ability to be open and to have the support to be able to allow himself to feel his emotions, and to follow them where they might lead with with professional guidance.” But my sense was that he was convincing himself that the challenge of growth was worth it.

Do all men have those vulnerable feelings under the surface of their accomplishments or bravado? What an interesting challenge to the stereotype of the strong unfeeling man—those even stronger men who are able to have, discuss, and resolve feelings. Of course that kind of man was not yet Adam; but I admired Adam’s willingness to be open and his bravery as an explorer of his own humanity, and I forgave the repetition of his affirmation. Looking for a “silver lining” is not always a bad thing, maybe it is never a bad thing?

—

The full-embrace nature of Argentina Tango had therapeutic benefits for Adam. Dancing for Adam was a positive way to visit a proven refuge—the reassurance of touch; even if the touch was within the prescribed culture of tango dance, or more likely because of the safety provided by that prescribed culture. How many social contexts exist where one can experience the healthy joy and affirming physical warmth of an embrace? Few. Tango dancing is one.

Suddenly Adam orated, in the midst of all of his self-disclosure that, “The poet (Edna St. Vincent Millay) surely had it right when she said, ‘…and many a man is making friends with death, even as we speak, for lack of love alone.’" The force of his longing, the need for the skin on skin touch, the hand to hand, arm to back, chest to chest embrace of tango: I was nearly in tears feeling his vulnerability. Sensitive straight man, what is your place in society?

—

Adam’s "caulk the windows” date knew that Adam was going to tango lessons, and she encouraged him. Another foreshadowing?

—

It was at tango lessons that Adam met a different woman.

“A strikingly feminine and shapely woman with European sensibilities to go along with her accent.” He explained with admiration that, “she is a wonderful dancer.”

In time he came to realize that she suffered from a sense that the joy of dance could only be realized through perfection, or at least with masterful competence in dance steps. So Adam and Gala shared a vulnerability both of them felt because of their lack of proficiency in delightful entertainment. Did it really matter, did they need to be perfect? All the dancers attending tango lessons were learning, and rotating as partners or leaders, among fellow “tangonistas,” and it was all pleasantly exciting fun. Adam admitted that he was somewhat self-conscious about not being as accomplished a dancer as some of the other men, but he dealt with his frustration by getting some individual lessons, and finally, just accepting his beginner status.

Eventually, Adam was complimented by one of the female instructors after a simple “tango walk” practice. She told Adam in a sincere, friendly way that she felt him grasping the impelling rhythm of tango music by the way he had held her, “walked her,” and she enjoyed it. He needed the encouragement as he was having trouble getting into the flow of more complicated but stylish moves. Adam doesn’t remember following steps during the “walk” but he remembered feeling freer and having much more fun simply approximating the dance walk, in full embrace, with a partner, to the rhythm of the tango.

Naturally, Adam went along with Gala’s need for achievement, even if she wanted to lead. It was fine for her to lead, but if he was struggling to learn the nuanced skill of leading through subtle body movement, he was even worse at following. Still, the dancer performing “lead” is guiding the dance experience, someone must lead. And Adam needed practice leading more than Gala did (she could follow quite nicely with an experienced tango dancer), so Adam practiced lead. It was all about dancing to the relentless heartbeat of tango. It was still all very good.

Gala had let Adam know, on a date after they had stopped going to classes, that she could get a specific feeling of comfort and protection from his tall stature and broad chest. Gala liked that he was a perfect fit for her as a dance partner. Apparently, Adam’s physical features, she claims he is handsome; the fact that he wears cologne and “smells good,” which is very European, and Adam’s continuing attention and generosity, were enough to keep her interested in seeing him. But while they were still fellow dancers she only commented that, when she was in women’s tango dance heels, they, he and her, would be the perfect heights to make a comfortable starting position in dance couples form. Happy to have a friend with shared interests, it was good for both of them. They continued to see each other at class.

True to Adam’s sensibilities, and the social norms of the dance studio, Adam’s conversations with Gala during class were friendly superficialities, but he garnered enough information to know that she worked at the same hospital he did.

He remembers, and at times is reminded by Gala, of their brief meeting in the hospital cafeteria. Adam was asserting his new “me” behaviors and relationship boundary assertions with a cool if defensive indifference. Adam, fundamentally a captive of his biology, spoke to Gala about how he was seriously unwilling to deny the part of himself that was a “man.”

By his comments, Adam gave Gala the impression of himself as being, well, “a real…jerk.” How Adam managed to be forgiven for his awkward manliness remains unknown, but Gala did agree to more outings away from the dance studio and that was good news, at least for Adam.

“We like the same kinds of food and walking on local trails.” Adam liked that Gala wore lipstick. He liked how she moved her hips when she was enjoying salsa dancing with him. He liked her femininity. He liked her cleavage. Of course she embodied the complexity of a woman, and he knew what a challenge it would be for him, but he was attracted to her.

As Adam and Gala learned more about each other they went through natural ups and downs of life and relationships. One important “down” had to do with Gala’s career. “She takes her work seriously, she takes responsibility for doing a good job,” Adam said with a degree of admiration. “Similar work values are not shared by everyone these days.”

Gala had irritated her immediate boss with her complaints about “lazy co-workers” and to some extent about her supervisor not adequately supervising his staff by holding the less motivated colleagues to their job descriptions. She was rubbing people the wrong way including her supervisor.

Then one colleague accused Gala of unwelcome touching, “I was trying to get her to come help me,” (European culture is more comfortable with bodies, friendly touching, and sensuality) and this developed into disciplinary action against Gala by a manipulative “get away with the least amount of work” work-mate who brought her complaint to the human resources department.

Gala speaks excellent English but did not have a nuanced understanding of the unwritten rules of American work culture. Gala had come from a communist country and her sense of entitlement or sense of a right to fight for fair treatment, did not exist. Adam sensed she was an easy target for bullies.

Adam had pushed boundaries and come up against human resource tactics before. His experience with policies was substantial and would prove useful when supporting Gala. He agreed to help her as her advocate at her disciplinary hearing. Was he falling back into the caretaker, problem solver, white knight role? Perhaps he was just being a friend.

Adam shared with me the long and complicated story involving human resource laws and policies, but what is important is how he effectively ignored the meeting structure human resources tried to impose. Adam was able to refocus the attention of the discussion, and interviews with Gala’s superiors, on Gala’s stellar work record, the respect she had earned from the medical director of her department; and the written evidence that Gala had been bringing forward to her manager as patient care issues over the previous year, issues that were not addressed.

“Is Gala’s mistake, ‘over-commitment’ to doing a good job? But the fact that she had “patient safety as her goal” was how Adam summarized how he was able to shift the meeting toward something more positive for Gala.

The resolution of the disciplinary action was satisfying. Her boss somehow decided it was time to leave his post and Gala only got a mild reprimand for “touching.” Some positive changes occurred at her place of work because of a new, better, manager. Gala was safer at work and happier.

Adam’s perception that Gala might need his help, offered Adam a challenge he was trying to understand: the difference between being a friend and being a boyfriend. He did not have a good sense of the difference between the type of manly-man he wanted to be, or thought he needed to be, and the worst aspects of the “nice guy syndrome.” At least introspection had brought Adam’s concerns about the boundaries of a relationship to his consciousness, more often now—at the time they were occurring, not only after the fact. He had been able to create a pause before habitual responses, a pause he could use to choose new behavior. He was doing things differently. They were dating. Whatever he was doing seemed to be working for him, and them.

And so Adam had the chance to learn more about Gala, “There are certain people who learn to experience the world as one catastrophe after another: either happened, happening, or going to happen.”

Hoping, I expect, to sound non-judgmental Adam continued, “One often finds people repeat habits of thought. Some folks lack basic trust, but can slowly learn that, for the most part, things will work out for the better, sometimes worse, but not always worse.”

“Worrying about outcomes is simply a waste of energy expended over something not in one’s control.” Adam also observed, “I often marvel at the passion with which a person, confronted with the simple truth of their habit, worrying about something they cannot control, will get angry; I guess—for having their dream short-circuited, for being diverted from their path of self-pity and the complaining that goes along with resisting what is going on in the here and now.”

Gala seemed to have that habitual style: grieving the past and facing a future of potential catastrophes. It was not part of all conversations but often enough that it made Adam anxious, impatient, and frustrated. He would hear himself saying to Gala, “but things are pretty good, don’t you think?”

There were times when it took more discipline than Adam had to listen to a useless script of possible disaster that seemed so obviously to repeat and repeat. But Adam said he had taken on patience and compassion as aspects of his character that he needed to address as his weaknesses. Adam tried to maintain his own perspective of optimism while respecting the right of an individual to see doom and gloom around most corners, but while not being pulled into the gloom or becoming frustrated. It required restraint and patience. He needed to work hard on all of it, and he got plenty of opportunities.

At the very beginning, and occasionally during his friendship with Gala, Gala would talk about marriage. Adam made it clear that a third marriage was not in his long-term plan: saying “Two marriage failures are enough, I know better than to inflict myself on others.” But Adam granted that security could be someone’s primary concern. Sometimes Adam uncharitably thought that Gala primary relationship motivation was her belief that her insecurity could be solved, or at least improved, by marriage. Even if his assumption was correct, Adam knew that, even at this point in his life, “living together and negotiating which art to put in the living room, simply would drive him insane…and I don’t have that far to go….”

There were more worldly challenges for both of them, at work and with families. Adam actually laughed at the drama and pettiness of his last year of work. He took satisfaction from the drawn-out process of claiming his own workplace rights by following the words, perhaps of Mark Twain, “A verbal agreement is worth the paper it is written on!” By following policies, documenting face-to-face meetings with email conversation summaries in writing–offered for accuracy, declining to sign certain administrative documents, he delayed the inevitable with process. And, most of all: he practiced never losing his poise while being both cooperative and productive,  soliciting sincere frequent performance feedback; in writing, to have a guide of what ‘pray tell’ was actually expected? Adam found respectful but assertive ways to “evolve out of his career of over forty years, and into something gloriously undefined.” Simply put, he quietly retired. Of course, Adam dramatically and assertively refuses to say the “ R” word, “It connotes retreat, and I intend to move forward.”  Nearly forty years at the same academic health care institution had been filled with opportunities, interesting challenges, and ways for him to employ his restless curiosity.

He borrowed from a popular television series, “To Boldly Go where Adam has Not Gone Before.” Adam was “evolving.” He rejected the customary “retirement party” of boring fatuous small talk and fatty foods. He suggested in a letter to his supervisor that she might “use any money that might have been required for a retirement party for staff education.” Privately, he had more vulgar thoughts about what someone might do with ‘his’ retirement party.

He was surprised, happy, and grateful that things seemed to work out well.

—

I have felt it necessary to make many digressions into the details of Adam’s life. Details I hoped might help the type of reader who is trying to achieve an up-to-the-moment emotional experience of Adam’s life. Still, there is a final piece of information that changed my perspective on Adam’s story, and that I think is important.

—

“I have told you about my strained relationship with my father, haven’t I?” asked Adam.

No, Adam had not told me.

Adam had not spoken to his father for over fifteen years. Adam did not attend Izzy’s last frail years, or Izzy’s death in a nursing home. Adam had convinced himself that he had not performed those courtesies out of respect, not as some foolish gestures designed to be painful for his father. Adam felt it was a gesture of respect to remember Izzy as a man telling his son, and not without cause but not with unlimited retributive cause, that if Adam, the son, “did not like his (Izzy’s) free accommodations…the house has three doors, and he (Adam) was free to leave!” Adam, much later in life, after having his own high school age children, embraced the truth in his father’s statement, but he certainly resented his father’s statement of truth at the time he was first hearing it. Adam was coming to grips with an enduring fantasy that we all seem to expect ‘to have our cake, and eat it too!’

This same father would threaten to be relentless in pursuing physical retribution for what Issy perceived as punishable acts, even attacking Adam during Adam’s sleep. Where does talk like that come from?

But Izzy’s anger was part of Izzy’s legacy to his son, Adam. It would have been humiliating for Izzy to have been at the mercy of his son’s relative youth and strength as Izzy went through his frail helpless last days. It would have been embarrassing for Adam to experience Izzy’s helpless end, and ugly for Adam to hear strange attempts at reconciliation on a deathbed. Adam felt certain that Izzy wanted his son to remember him as the vibrant, powerful—if broken—man Izzy once was. At least, that was the story Adam was telling himself, but Adam was also content with that story.

Adam had, before the years of silence, found his father in a mood during which Adam thought it might be possible for his father to be present enough to hear about the love of a son, and Adam’s appreciation for meaningful support by his father over many years. Often those brief relaxed moments with Izzy came after the first generous offering of good Polish vodka blended with local honey as a type of liqueur.

By the third toast the conversation would turn more maudlin. Izzy would once again begin to dwell on his own pain and regret through an unconscious script that had been repeated over and over and over and over through the years. It was tired old useless news and a story of futility. It was only through Adam’s forced but patient waiting that Adam found opportunities to offer his father gestures of love. Sharing what he could when he could, Adam believed he had said all that should be said by a son to a father by way of gratitude. Adam had said his goodbyes.

A deeper issue was Adam’s imperfect indifference. An imperfect indifference Adam had learned in order to help him survive. Indifference that might have seemed self-evident: Adam’s absence from usual expected family duties. The imperfect part of the indifference was that it didn’t erase feelings within Adam. Some love is simply too deep to deny, but that love does not negate a history of abuse or feelings irreparably etched with sadness. So Adam’s indifference was partially supported by his acceptance of human imperfection: Adam was learning to accept his own imperfections and therefore he was more understanding of the imperfections in others.

For perspective, consider that no funeral, no services were held for Izzy by his wife or daughter. Certainly Izzy had many talents and had provided, at least financial stability, for his family; but the damage Izzy did simply alienated him from those he tried unsuccessfully to love. He loved in a way that was always somewhat tainted with frustration, fear, anger and sadness.

—

By this time the conference was over. Adam was talking to me in the early evening of the day before we would go to our respective homes and lives. I could sense his sincerity when he said, “Yes, Izzy was a flawed human being just like the rest of us.” Perhaps Adam’s long association with yogic principles had, by simple repetition, become part of who Adam had become. So when Adam said he had an experience of a supernatural “benevolent” aspect of his father and that his father’s suggestion was “tinged with a love, I could feel.” It was notable for Adam. It was so much of an absolute deviation from the Izzy in Adam’s past that Adam clearly took the experience of that different feeling to his heart.

And what was Adam talking about?

—

It was getting late, I was getting tired, not with Adam’s stories, but from long days sitting on hard chairs. We had come to a comfortable and quiet intermission near the end of our evening ritual on the last night of the conference, but I sensed there was still something Adam needed to talk about.

Adam had mentioned a “communication.” Adam started to speak again. I looked toward him and I saw on his face and in his eyes, a look common in those who have had a certain type of experience.

Adam looked slightly away and inward; his eyes glistened, and Adam began…

“I do not remember the context or the mood, it was not remarkable, just daily living. I might have been working in the garden. All I remember was getting a message; yes, almost like hearing, as weird as that sounds, but not a voice, a knowing. An unusually benevolent vision of my father, telling me to ‘take care of this woman.’” Izzy was talking about Gala. My father, when he was a young pilot, likely had lived in the same capital city as Gala.” Adam vaguely remembers Izzy saying the name of that European capital, Vilnius many times, so it was possible. “I was surprised because my father was not like that, not benevolent in that way.” Adam seemed to be talking to himself.

“I was not shaken. I was curious. I had this strong feeling of a connection beyond the grave. It was very real and strong.

Adam took his father’s recommendation as a worthwhile challenge. Given what we know about Adam, it will be a challenge that is good for him.

Adam briefly considered the idea that Izzy’s directive was an instruction for penance, it would seem more consistent with Izzy’s personality to impose on his son some task. Regardless, Adam had already worked hard to abandon guilt, self-inflicted or projected onto him by others, so penance was not motivating Adam.

No, it felt better to Adam to think of the message, the strange cosmic directive, as simply a suggestion of an opportunity to exercise the practice of opening his heart.

Fin