Sally Field of Dreams

Around seven years ago, during a late night exasperating discussion about who was picking up who, what function we were attending when, did you pick up the dry cleaning, my wife and I decided that we were not truly enjoying the lunacy our life had become. Mostly we were feeling guilty about shipping our then two year old boy off to spend the day with Fely, our first nanny, and how our obligations to the big fast city and our big fast friends and our small, slow family was turning our life into something that we both did not envision growing up. It was too much, too soon and resentment and sleepy hatred were starting to sluice through our veins.

So we cut bait.  Quit our jobs, sold our cute little house on the Danforth, eliminated all our debt and hopped on a plane to Nadi, Fiji, to begin our year-long journey of Australasia.  It was the best year of my life.

But duh, you knew all that, didn’t you.  You knew that we came back with nothing but our clothes on our back and a new lump in Stephanie’s belly.  And here we are. 5.5 years later.   New jobs, a new house (this time a rental, did I say a rental?  I meant to say rental, yes I have a complex, – a rental complex!! Ha! ) a wonderful new nanny Rebecca and of course the aptly named trip tribute, Tasman, my luminescent five year old son.

Maybe it is the whole peaks and valleys of life thing.  Maybe before too long, Steph and I will find a weekend of reconnection and intimacy to – along with Stella –  get our groove back. Maybe the oppressive guilt of not being able to guarantee there wont be another move in the next couple of years will dissipate.  As will the thought of injecting even more angst into Hudson that he will use against me in his teenage years.  Yet the next time we move, the impact will not be lost on Tasman and he too will curl his cute lip up and snarl at me for ruining his childhood.  Perhaps all this harried, tag-team parenting and social obligations that we secretly lament but never deny will cause a real wedge between my honeybunch and I, and, while staring through respective wine and scotch glasses, the acerbic emotions once rooted in passion will melt like weak wax and gather on the apathetic floor.  Door slam.  Couch sigh.  And scene.

I know, I know – ladies and gentlemen, the oscar goes to…I get it.

The other big maybe is the big D word.  Not diet, had stomach surgery for that.  It’s depression.  Maybe all the years of faking being the lamp wearing class clown is finally taking its toll and soon I will find myself making four day tents underneath my new sheets and letting my toe nails grow long enough to carve tiny movie quotes into them. Growing my hair to Three Stooges Larry code blue crazy length and having delightful yet sometimes argumentative conversations with my dog Alice.

Still too dramatic?

I don’t know where I am or where I am going.  I feel inadequate as a father and as a husband even though I know deep down my wife and my boys desperately love me.  My confidence did not increase with the loss of over 90lbs.  Even though I like where we live now, I still feel like we don’t fit in. I find it difficult to find motivation to change my life for the better.  I want to, I just don’t know how.

I feel like I did before I went to New Zealand.

Oh and what the fuck is with the NBA strike?  Seriously?  You can’t figure out how to share 4.8 billion dollars?  Fuck!

And this is by far way too much information to share on a blog.