Month: April 2011

Her sad little downtrodden face led a three foot frame toward me in the kitchen. Maddy faced her mother’s blue eyes up to me, surrounded by a mess of blonde angel hair, along with a small fist clutching a dandelion hours beyond code blue. “Papa, the flower I picked for Mumma died. Will you go outside and pick another one I can give to Mumma?” This little child, so full of love, was desperate to share it with her mother in a flower. It was a simple request, and not really unusual from a little girl, but what followed filled my heart.

“Papa, pick one that won’t die.”

“I’ll try, baby. I’ll try.”

This post is brought to you by New England Coffee Colombian Supremo.

Recently I received a blog matter request via Facebook from my friend Christine:

“I would like Leo to write a blog on “decaf” being essentially just a reduction in caffeine, but yet not close to caffeine free — can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing to make you think you are doing something right…”

My initial instinct was to research the outrage of “de-caf” actually containing caffeine, but that’s been pretty much covered here. Yes, the average “decaf” contains about 10% of the caffeine in full-on Joe. By the way, New England Coffee’s decaf selections are 97% caffeine-free via a “direct solvent” process. Their website states, “The green bean is softened by steam and then flushed with methylene chloride to remove 97% of the caffeine.” Wow. I can just see the commercial… A beautiful woman looks seductively at the camera as she sips with perfect painted lips from a steaming cup. Her gaze heats from the pleasure as she pierces your soul and says, “Mmmmm… methylene chloride.”

Personally, I don’t get the decaf thing. As I sit here pre-dawn, sipping my first cup and feeling more and more “ALIIIIVEEEE,” I’m thinking, “What’s the point?” OK, so Joe and NoJo aside, Christine’s bigger question is, “can’t anything be straight forward and not just marketing?” We’ll answer that, right after this.

We’re back, jacked up on Joe, and sadly, the answer is largely “no,” not in the world we live in. I contend our capitalist system requires sustained economic growth and one of the most effective competitive tools to control the masses in the battle for ever higher revenues and profits is marketing, and its ancillary practice, advertising. So, as long as there is a profit to motivate them, entities will continue to bombard us with their multi-media messages to persuade us to not vote for the other guy, ask your doctor if [insert pharmaceutical here] is right for you, sue someone who’s potentially done you wrong, or buy their (not so) decaffeinated coffee.

There are some things still outside that giant silo of spin, and most occur in nature, although that’s not to say those things aren’t exploited. I think about this scene from last week. It was stunningly beautiful and didn’t need any commercial to promote it. That is until I took a picture of it and plastered it on Facebook as a reflection of me. “See? I took that. Doesn’t that make me good? Cool? Worthy?” I just wanted to share it, but there’s a subconscious need for us to stand out from the crowd, to compete for attention, to advertise. Maybe it’s just me.

Oh, and Christine, you’re doing quite a bit right. Now it’s time for another damn fine cup of coffee.

A couple decades ago, my wife gave me an engraved doorknocker for my birthday just like the one pictured here. It bummed me out and I wasn’t very good at hiding my feelings. I’m still not. It was a feeble swing and a miss at life that day. I didn’t get it. I do now.

I know I could be wrong; we likely don’t remember out childhood literally as it happened. As we look back, we probably get some of the foundation right, but many of the details blur as they hurtle down our creaky neural pathways. Still, in conversations I’ve had with my brothers, none of us can recall hearing “I love you” from our parents. I don’t need to get into the “why’s” of their silence, but I don’t judge them. Through the years I’ve pieced together much context of their lives and understand from where they came. Suffice to say, neither of my parents heard “I love you” much, if ever, during their childhood. I don’t know if they ever spoke it to each other. I do think some of it was a generational thing, especially for emotionally repressed 1950’s dad.

In spite of the emotional vacuum from which my youngest breath was drawn, I don’t recall ever having trouble saying it to women. Not that I spewed it like Cupid’s fountain, but when I felt it I could say it, so when we had children they heard that affirmation constantly, and still do. That was easy, unconditional love. An interesting phenomena I’ve witnessed over the years has been the crumbling of those old walls built to protect the heart and keep pain locked away. When Megan was about 3, or Maddy’s age now, she’d bop her little blonde pigtails toward her Nana and let fly with a carefree, “I love you, Nana.” Early on, my mother would choke up, unable to speak. She’d hug the tiny child, snap off something jokingly sarcastic, and sniff herself back to composure. Today none of us ever end a phone call or visit without telling each other, “I love you.” Even my dad says it now. Every call. Every visit. We still do “man hugs” though. Let’s not get carried away.

On Sunday, someone I love received his 90 day “chip” to mark a milestone of sobriety. He’s confronting emotions soberly for the first time in over 30 years and it’s both painful and exhilarating to observe. He gets choked up easily these days, but he’s allowing himself to feel; to experience this life across its entire emotional spectrum. He’s no longer hiding in a safe corner, anesthetizing himself to emotional deadness with drug or drink. As we said goodbye after Sunday’s call, I encouraged him to just focus on the success of day 90 and the hope of day 91. Then I said, “I love you.” I know his recovery will never be complete, and he will have moments of no light. When those moments come, I want him to know he is loved. There was a painful pause, and then a tear choked, “Yeah… I love you, too.”

Daley
Love Is Spoken Here