IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

“There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that…” said Red in Shawshank Redemption. Powerful words! I feel for Red every time I watch that scene, but that movie also conjures up questions about my own life.

A few years ago, some friends and I were sitting around, drinking a couple of beers and telling war stories of our youth. We covered all of our triumphs, our glory days, our conquests and even some of our bigger mistakes. At one point in time someone asked me, “If you had a chance to go back in time and change one thing in your life, would you do it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I would.”

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Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I am superstitious but I widely believe that Friday the Thirteenth is an invention of the movie industry. It does not exist. Therefore, I don’t believe that Friday the Thirteenth is a day of bad luck.

Last Friday morning, I woke up to the first cool and overcast morning we have had in weeks. The Piedmont has been ravaged by a heat wave that has brought unusually high temperatures, so to wake up and find the mercury hovering around seventy-eight was a welcomed sight. I had been neglecting the grass and the jungle that has been growing up around our house needed to be cut down to size. Cooler temperatures meant that I could finally mow the lawn.

I went into the garage and pulled out my lawnmower. When I went to fill the lawn mower with gas, I realized my gas can was empty. Frustrated, I trudged back into the house for my car keys and I was off to the local filling station. As I stepped up to the counter to pay for a gallon of gasoline, the attendant said, “Watch out, it’s Friday the 13th!”

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It was a hot, sticky Wednesday afternoon when I dropped everything and drove to the AT & T store. It was June 23, 2010 and after a couple of days of unpacking, Stephanie and I decided it was time to order our internet service and to plug back into the world again. After placing many calls to various stores and companies, I felt like the store in Apex offered me the best bang for my buck.

I walked up to the counter and when the representative asked me if he could help me with anything, I declined. I had spoken with a knowledgeable sales associate on the phone and realizing that most sales associates work on commission, I decided to wait for the person I had established a business relationship with prior to my visit. So I walked around the store and looked at some of the phones they had on display in their showroom.

I was finally called up to the counter. As I placed my order, the price for my DSL service increased by five dollars per month. When I inquired as to the price difference, it was explained to me that I was only ordering DSL service and not a phone as well. I had stated that I was only interested in DSL service when I initially called and the prices had been explained in detail. The sales associate apologized for the misunderstanding but since I didn’t need phone service and I was getting a “dry loop” DSL plan, the rates were a little bit higher.

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There is a place in my house where I cannot sit. I cannot read there. I cannot think there. I cannot focus there. All I can do is laugh there. The last time I sat there I laughed so hard that my children had to inquire about what was so funny. But I could not tell them.

There are four pictures in the room that make it impossible to sit there. Like the classic paintings in the Scooby Doo Cartoons that have eyes that follow you everywhere, these pictures stare at you. Their expressions are comical. The irony of the situation is comical so that whenever I sit there, I can do nothing but laugh. It is because of those pictures that there is a place in my house where I absolutely cannot sit.

The first picture is on the window sill. It is a picture of our friend Angie holding baby Chloe in a rocking chair with a big radiant guffaw. She is laughing at me. She is questioning me. And as her gaze pierces me from the window sill, I feel as though she can read my mind. I have tried to look away, but I can feel the picture staring at the back of my head and I can see the laughter upon her face.

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I just found out that one of my favorite television shows has been cancelled. I knew it had to happen one day but I am still dismayed. The show has given me many hours of great entertainment and in retrospect, it even created one troubling period in my life where I learned an invaluable lesson.

Five years ago, a friend of mine got me hooked on the show Numb3ers. When he first told me about the series, I thought the plot seemed pretty laughable but I promised to watch a couple of episodes. The premise of the show is simple; an FBI agent named Don has a brother named Charlie who is a math genius. Charlie is a consultant to the FBI and through mathematical theorems, he helps Don solve cases.

It sounded pretty far-fetched to me at first but after watching a few episodes, I was captivated. Charlie’s premise was that arbitrary activity is part of a larger, more complex design. By adding variables to an equation, the cases can be cracked by deciphering the underlying pattern of behavior. As I became more engrossed in Numb3ers, I started creating my own mathematical theorems to see if the random aspects on my life were actually random.

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Moving is for mad men. You spend hours storing, packing, boxing and purging and once the move is complete, you spend hours trying to figure out what the chicken scratch on the side of each box actually means. It’s pure insanity.

On our third night in the new house, we just had to quit unpacking. We brought a heat wave with us and after two and a half days of temperatures in triple digits, a night off to relax in the pool was just what the doctor ordered.

Uncle Walt had been entertaining our kids so we could unpack and probably needed a night off as well. So Stephanie and I left a billion half empty boxes strewn around the house and walked up to the pool as sweat rolled down our faces. I wasted no time as I kicked off my shoes, threw my shirt into a vacant chair and jumped into the pool. As I came up for a breath of fresh air, my body temperature instantly dropped thirty degrees. It was invigorating.

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As I was driving along I-95 last month, I saw a clean-up crew dressed in orange jump suits working off their community service by collecting trash along the highway. As I drove past the gaggle of orange jumpsuits, I locked eyes with a young man in his late teens who had looked up to stare at the cars driving past him and something in his vacant glare struck me to the core…

As a sophomore in high school, my life changed drastically and I found myself at a crossroads. My mother had passed away and as the final months of the school year were ending, I had to prepare to move to a new town. Prep School and I were like oil and water, so my lack of friends was evident as I tried diligently to change my circumstances. So I started hanging out with a new group of friends.

Things were going well at first. I stepped away from my unique style in order to become one of the crowd and for the first time, I was finally playing by the rules. It was uncharted waters for me but it gave me a place to feel grounded while I juggled my changing landscape. And, I finally had a core set of friends.

One night, my friends and I decided to go on a pizza run. Ordering food and having it delivered at our school was against the rules. So the idea of ordering pizza brought along a new set of challenges. Pizza runs had become missions. If we got caught, we would be punished, we would lose money and there was always a lot of ridicule at the hands of our friends. A successful pizza run meant an after hours party in the dorm.

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It was a show about science versus faith. Good versus evil. Free will versus destiny. Redemption versus damnation. LOST packed all of this in a six year run that has left so many unanswered questions and personal interpretations about what happened on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific, that I believe the show will be watched again and again and talked about for years to come.

The irony is that LOST is the perfect metaphor for life. We may not be stranded on a remote island in the middle of nowhere trying to find a way home but how many of us can say that we have truly conquered the mysteries and meanings of our own lives? I know I can’t.

I am a man of faith. I believe I have done a lot more good in the world than harm. I believe everything happens for a reason and through the journey of my life, I find myself seeking redemption in my faith on a daily basis. And yet those everyday struggles still remain and with each new challenge I face, my belief in myself and my core values are tested.

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I could here the crack of the bat as I watched the ball whiz past third base; “foul!” On the next pitch, Josh rifled a single between the shortstop and the third baseman. His first at bat ever and he was on base with a single through the left side of the infield. I gave him the thumbs up sign while I was leaning against the chain link fence on the third base side of the field and he cracked a smile at me as he dug his foot into the dirt next to the bag.

Stephanie and Chloe joined us in the middle of the second inning. It was a sunny Mother’s Day morning but a frigid wind was whipping across the field. It sent chills up my spine but nothing would have kept us away from the field on Sunday. After all of the rain we have had, the first game of the season was finally upon us and Josh had a great game. I was proud of him.

When the game ended, we climbed into the car and quickly whisked Stephanie away to celebrate Mother’s Day. I held Stephanie’s hand while we walked through the Arnold Arboretum for Lilac Sunday. The wind had subsided and the sun was shining down as the fragrances of over four hundred types of Lilacs wafted through the air. I smiled as hundreds of strangers went about their day around us because I was content. I was exactly where I wanted to be with the people who matter the most in my life.

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Stephanie and I were sitting on the couch watching Parenthood on TiVo last week and in one of the scenes, the entire family had gotten together to spend a routine evening together. While the parents were in the kitchen washing the dishes, cleaning up and talking about a new boyfriend who had been invited to join them, Stephanie turned to me and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have regular family dinners like that?”

“We do, Stephanie,” I replied.

“No, Doug,” she said forlornly. “You know what I mean.”

“I do and we have them,” I said as the commercial break ended and the show started again.

Ever since Stephanie’s mother passed away, some of our family members have dispersed like dandelions in the wind. Kathy was the glue that kept those traditions alive and made sure routine dinners as well as holiday celebrations were the foundation for a cohesive family unit. Since her passing, life has scattered many of the family members to the four corners of the universe for one reason or another.

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