From Shambhala SunSpace blog post So Your Parents Are Crazy by Lodro Rinzler:
"In your meditation practice you can work with that heartbreak, dropping the storyline around the emotion and just resting with it. There are many other ways to explore your sadness or disappointment. For example, you can contemplate where it resides in your body. Is it that tightness in your throat? Is it a weighing down of your heart? Is that what disappointment looks like? Notice if you can pinpoint where it exists. If you see that it does not have a physical location then you may realize that this sadness is not as real and solid as you thought it was. It’s actually just another fluid emotional experience that will ebb and flow throughout your life, just like the waves in the ocean."
I don't necessarily think that my parents are crazy but it's true that they are difficult sometimes, and their idiosyncrasies make me laugh (or cry). (Or both.) Yesterday I went to Dad's house in anticipation of TAX SEASON and I taught him how to copy and paste links so he could email me all the tax booklets I need to print from the office. He was enthralled, especially with the "ctrl-click" technique to open a link in a new tab. He has this particular way of reading aloud, lopping off whatever part of the sentence he deems unnecessary or just skipping ahead to speak what his eye sees rather than what is next in the sentence. "An addition is required on the 2011 income tax Bonus depreciation and section 179 Faster processing with fewer errors Do not use red ink or pencil." I'm all like DAD YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY with this babble. Instead of interrupting him I breathe loudly. He slouches in the cheap rolly chair in a dimly-lit office space (there are literally three office spaces in his Tribeca loft) and I drink diet Dr. Brown's Cherry Cola. Dad's small linoleum desk is cluttered with papers, many packs of extralong Post-Its, erasable red pencils, green purple blue black pens. The computer loads .pdfs while he asks me when we'll see each other next, when I will print the forms, when we can get together to do my taxes and he can help my freelancing girlfriend file her twenty W2s. The walls hold framed photos of B.B. King, Billie Holiday, 1920s gang-busting police in Chicago, dogs playing poker. I love my dad. And he drives me crazy.
"You must attach Form IT-272 to your 2011 Form IT-201 Enter for each student listed on line A the lesser of $10,000 Do not complete Form IT-272 if you are claimed as a dependent..."
As I leave twenty minutes later, having rinsed my glass and watched him write out on an extralong Post-It how to ctrl-click, he decides to come downstairs with me and make some copies around the corner. On the stairs he literally grumbles "oooh" and "aahh" in response to his creaky knee and the warmer weather. I'm going to the R train by City Hall, he's heading west to Greenwich Ave. We say goodbye, a hug and kiss, and part ways. After ten feet he calls, "Let me know if you need any MetroCards!" I'm like DAD I get my own MetroCards! Let me get you MetroCards with my TransitChek discounts from the office. But he's about to be 65 and will soon get half-fare Cards; he doesn't need my Cheks.
In high school he micromanaged my academics, hiring math and science tutors from the first month of ninth grade. He insisted I use the hourlong train ride home to do homework instead of socialize with friends. I ferociously resisted this domination, refusing to see him and ultimately refusing to go to school. This assertion of my independence allowed our relationship to blossom as he saw me as an individual. I was going to control my life and make my own choices. When Dad understood that, our relationship became more adult; we developed respect for each other as discrete people with responsibility and choices outside of our biological connection. As I became less hotheaded I also understood that he was just ensuring that I had options for my future and thus the ability to be in control of my life.
I also understood that his desire to control me was related to the chaos in his own life--unlimited clutter and spread, hoarding of office supplies, the three office spaces--and where I once was impatient with his fanatic fact-checking, double-checking times and dates, printing multiples just in case, making sure the car was locked, obsession with SHARING arcane radio shows and minute music facts, I became compassionate. Of course he has become compassionate with me as well over the course of our relationship and now we are quite close. But when he does drive me crazy, or when I am sad thinking about him getting older, or when I am frustrated because he tries to reason his way out of an argument and negates my feelings of dismissal with rationalistic techniques, I remember our similar human qualities and unique biological bind. I focus out of my body and into light or cloudless sky. I just breathe for a minute and move on.
This post started out as a humourous rant of Dad's quirks but has become a(nother) record of our relationship, to be stored with the multicolored multifonted emails Dad sends me as remidners of an interesting law panel at his alma mater or his upcoming 65th birthday bash. I read Lodro Rinzler's Shambhala SunSpace post and thought, Yeah! I've got crazy parents! I thought his post would help me quell anger at my parents but I am instead discovering how to tame my manic love--future inevitable sadness--and transform it into compassionate unattachment.
"In your meditation practice you can work with that heartbreak, dropping the storyline around the emotion and just resting with it. There are many other ways to explore your sadness or disappointment. For example, you can contemplate where it resides in your body. Is it that tightness in your throat? Is it a weighing down of your heart? Is that what disappointment looks like? Notice if you can pinpoint where it exists. If you see that it does not have a physical location then you may realize that this sadness is not as real and solid as you thought it was. It’s actually just another fluid emotional experience that will ebb and flow throughout your life, just like the waves in the ocean."
I don't necessarily think that my parents are crazy but it's true that they are difficult sometimes, and their idiosyncrasies make me laugh (or cry). (Or both.) Yesterday I went to Dad's house in anticipation of TAX SEASON and I taught him how to copy and paste links so he could email me all the tax booklets I need to print from the office. He was enthralled, especially with the "ctrl-click" technique to open a link in a new tab. He has this particular way of reading aloud, lopping off whatever part of the sentence he deems unnecessary or just skipping ahead to speak what his eye sees rather than what is next in the sentence. "An addition is required on the 2011 income tax Bonus depreciation and section 179 Faster processing with fewer errors Do not use red ink or pencil." I'm all like DAD YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY with this babble. Instead of interrupting him I breathe loudly. He slouches in the cheap rolly chair in a dimly-lit office space (there are literally three office spaces in his Tribeca loft) and I drink diet Dr. Brown's Cherry Cola. Dad's small linoleum desk is cluttered with papers, many packs of extralong Post-Its, erasable red pencils, green purple blue black pens. The computer loads .pdfs while he asks me when we'll see each other next, when I will print the forms, when we can get together to do my taxes and he can help my freelancing girlfriend file her twenty W2s. The walls hold framed photos of B.B. King, Billie Holiday, 1920s gang-busting police in Chicago, dogs playing poker. I love my dad. And he drives me crazy.
"You must attach Form IT-272 to your 2011 Form IT-201 Enter for each student listed on line A the lesser of $10,000 Do not complete Form IT-272 if you are claimed as a dependent..."
As I leave twenty minutes later, having rinsed my glass and watched him write out on an extralong Post-It how to ctrl-click, he decides to come downstairs with me and make some copies around the corner. On the stairs he literally grumbles "oooh" and "aahh" in response to his creaky knee and the warmer weather. I'm going to the R train by City Hall, he's heading west to Greenwich Ave. We say goodbye, a hug and kiss, and part ways. After ten feet he calls, "Let me know if you need any MetroCards!" I'm like DAD I get my own MetroCards! Let me get you MetroCards with my TransitChek discounts from the office. But he's about to be 65 and will soon get half-fare Cards; he doesn't need my Cheks.
In high school he micromanaged my academics, hiring math and science tutors from the first month of ninth grade. He insisted I use the hourlong train ride home to do homework instead of socialize with friends. I ferociously resisted this domination, refusing to see him and ultimately refusing to go to school. This assertion of my independence allowed our relationship to blossom as he saw me as an individual. I was going to control my life and make my own choices. When Dad understood that, our relationship became more adult; we developed respect for each other as discrete people with responsibility and choices outside of our biological connection. As I became less hotheaded I also understood that he was just ensuring that I had options for my future and thus the ability to be in control of my life.
I also understood that his desire to control me was related to the chaos in his own life--unlimited clutter and spread, hoarding of office supplies, the three office spaces--and where I once was impatient with his fanatic fact-checking, double-checking times and dates, printing multiples just in case, making sure the car was locked, obsession with SHARING arcane radio shows and minute music facts, I became compassionate. Of course he has become compassionate with me as well over the course of our relationship and now we are quite close. But when he does drive me crazy, or when I am sad thinking about him getting older, or when I am frustrated because he tries to reason his way out of an argument and negates my feelings of dismissal with rationalistic techniques, I remember our similar human qualities and unique biological bind. I focus out of my body and into light or cloudless sky. I just breathe for a minute and move on.
This post started out as a humourous rant of Dad's quirks but has become a(nother) record of our relationship, to be stored with the multicolored multifonted emails Dad sends me as remidners of an interesting law panel at his alma mater or his upcoming 65th birthday bash. I read Lodro Rinzler's Shambhala SunSpace post and thought, Yeah! I've got crazy parents! I thought his post would help me quell anger at my parents but I am instead discovering how to tame my manic love--future inevitable sadness--and transform it into compassionate unattachment.
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