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September 7, 2014

I Mostly Sit For a Living. How About You?

Posted by Nathen under lists, sitting, standing desks, therapy, work
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We tend to think and talk about our jobs in terms of what we produce, not what we do. In some ways, this is misleading. I am a therapist for military families in southern California, so I produce therapeutic conversations with people and clinical documentation to convince the county that I had those conversations. But what would you see me doing if you watched me work for a week? It varies a little but it would look something like this:

19 hours sitting across from people, talking sometimes, writing on a clipboard occasionally

19 hours sitting at a desk, mousing and typing as fast as I can on a laptop

2 hours sitting in my car, driving between offices or client’s homes

30 minutes sitting at a desk, talking on the phone

30 minutes walking to the printer and back to my desk

As you can see, I mostly sit for a living. It’s not what you think when you set out to be a therapist, but that’s the job, and it’s a health sacrifice. The peak of physical exertion in my day is standing up to walk to the printer, and believe me, I value those moments. It’s pretty clear from research that sitting is not a great way to live one’s life: Time spent sitting takes a toll on your health in a way that can’t be made up for by exercising after work. Here’s a pretty good review of some of the research. (It’s a small sacrifice, of course, compared to the sacrifices my clients make in the course of military life. It’s helpful for me to think about it like that–one small sacrifice in return for many big sacrifices.)

It’s also not good for some of the ways I like to be creative, like writing this blog or composing music. I get home and think about sitting down to write, and no thanks. I’ll fly my kite, check for tomato worms, take a walk, help prep dinner, or lie in the hammock. Standing, squatting, walking, lying down, anything but sitting!

Straw bale standing desk

Straw bale standing desk

 

I have experimented with standing desks a bit. At work I can put my laptop on my in/outbox stack and an external mouse/keyboard setup on my briefcase on top of my desk. It doesn’t work for paperwork out in the field–too much stuff to carry around–but works OK at my main office, as long as I have the energy. That’s been the main problem with it at work; I pretty quickly get tired of standing and want to sit down. Standing is not the solution to sitting, but it’s some variety.

 

October 20, 2013

42nd Year Retrospective

Posted by Nathen under Abandon Ship, aging, Benjamin Lester, Camp Latgawa, Candy Crush, Christina, Couples and Family Therapy, Damian Lester, Darlene Lester, death, desert living, Ely Lester, Ethan Mitchell, family, food, Gabriel, goals/intentions, heart rate training, Joshua Tree, learning curves, marriage, Maya, Morongo Basin Mental Health, NBTSC advisee groups, neurosequential therapeutics, Not Back to School Camp, Oliver Lee, Pacific Clinics, paleo diet, photography, Reanna, San Bernardino County, self-care, Steve Lester, therapy, Tilke Elkins, Transition Joshua Tree, work
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This is a long post, so first the short version. In the last year: I started working full time and am adjusting to that. I’m glad to be working towards my MFT licensure, but uncomfortable about how it pushes my relationships and other projects onto the back burner. My marriage gets better and better, despite this. The company I work for goes out of business so I get part of the summer off, and I get the exact same job (family therapist for US Marines & their families) with a new company.

And for the year ahead: I plan to continue this work, taking good care of myself, dance with Reanna every night, as promised to my friend, Tilke, in her “How to be a Real Artist” workshop, get in best shape in 5 years, and learn how to treat myself and Reanna really really well while working full time.

October: I started my year out at Farm & Wilderness, VT, staffing and teaching a really fun psychology project at Not Back to School Camp. As is traditional, I got really sick, but this time it was from a waitress in Rutland, not someone at NBTSC. I recuperated while visiting Ethan & Susannah, also in Vermont. Back in Joshua Tree, I started working out again (SERIOUS style), planted my first winter garden, fixed some electrical and plumbing problems in my trailer, and started setting up a private practice. In the process of hiring a supervisor, I found out that in California, unlike in Oregon, I cannot do my internship in a private practice. So I started looking for work in a local clinic.

Looking out over Woodward Reservoir from my cabin at Farm & Wilderness

Ethan, cataloging NBTSC lost & found in his library

The famous Quodlibetarian tub

Reanna

Reanna at Playa Del Rey

Ollie, a year ago

Ollie & Pap

Gabe, Damian & Maya on the Hwy 62 Art Tour

Trailer at sunset, looking south

November: I move into a new computer, archive my years of audio journal entries, and learn Sketchup while applying for and getting a job at Morongo Basin Mental Health: providing free, confidential therapy for US Marines, veterans, and their families. In what would become a series of small-town coincidences, a high school friend I hadn’t seen in decades worked there, saw my name on the interview list and sat in on my interview, interjecting stuff like, “Oh, yeah, good answer!” Nice way to interview. The manager of the military program assured me that the our contract was solid for at least two years. That’s about how long I need to get my hours for licensure, so the job sounded good–no chance of having to ditch my clients like I had to in grad school! I spent the rest of the month getting in as much time with Reanna and my family before starting full time work.

Rainbow over the Bartlet Mts

Maya & Ollie in hammock

Ollie helps Nana Honey cook

Me & Reanna

December:  My 93 year old Grandpa Bob gets really sick, and I get really sick taking care of him. I was pretty sure he was going to die. He had pneumonia and had to go on antibiotics for the first time in his life. It took me weeks to fully recover. He eventually recovered, too, but I’m not sure he’ll ever fully recover. He’s been on antibiotics off and on ever since and is progressively less mobile. It’s got me thinking a lot about dying–how I can support the people I love when they start having a hard time taking care of themselves, and how I want to die when my time comes.

I start at MBMH, reading 40 hours a week of protocols. I have Christmas with family in Joshua Tree. My brother Damian starts a weekly evening with family, listening to an integral Christianity lecture and meditation that turns out to be a presentation of integral theory to Christians, rather than Christianity to integral thinkers, but valuable nonetheless.

Reanna & Christina, Xmas

Reanna & Maya, Xmas

Ely, Christina, Pap, Ben, Rebeca, Xmas

Gabe, Ely, Ollie, Christina, Xmas

Reanna, ukulele, heater

Ollie, bundled up

January: I get my first paid vacation ever–one week off, fully paid by MBMH. Weird, pretty nice. I write my first attempt at a comprehensive political statement. Reanna and I start a three-month experiment with a strict “paleo” diet, which mostly means we cut out sugar and grains from our diet. The theory is that human adaptation to grains and refined anything is shallow at best. I also start cooking Mexican food (the paleo-friendly recipes) from Rick Bayless’ Authentic Mexican. I love it. And Reanna loves eating it. I start learning to play Reanna’s ukulele. I play and sing “Amazing Grace” most nights for a month. Fun!

I’m working full time, which I’ve never done. It’s not my favorite schedule. I had to let go of most of my projects. I started building a solar batch water heater in the fall, for example, that is still not finished. The schedule has simplified my life quite a bit. Work all day, spend the evening with Reanna. I gained more respect for my friends who’ve been working full time for decades and still manage to write some music or read books. I’m ramping into a caseload, though, and am seeing seven clients a week by the end of the month.

My endurance training is going great by this point. Mid month I got my heart rate up to 179 bpm without hurting myself. Very exciting.

Smiley and Gallant visit

Reanna in our clean, cold kitchen

Dinner’s almost ready. (Photo by Reanna.)

Grandpa Bob turns 94

Me in therapist costume, with Ollie. (Photo by Reanna.)

February: Full time work continues. I get trained in the Trauma Resiliency Model, which I find very cool and useful. I re-up the trademark on Abandon Ship. I feel sad that I can’t write music with my brothers right now, but have plenty of optimistic plans to do so… Reanna starts designing our future house, another exciting project that I have to watch from the sidelines. I love watching her get super deep into a topic like this, though. She is now the resident expert in passive-solar-optimized-very-small-house design. We start car shopping, too. We need to be independently mobile in Joshua Tree.

Trench. Hose feeding trailer finally to be buried.

Reanna & treehouse near the Mexican border

Ollie, Damian

March: I’m up to 16 clients at MBMH and I’m fighting for mastery of the intense paperwork load. The clinical work is going great. My supervisor is good, I am fully engaged by my clients, and I get to see a good variety of folks–kids, adults, families, couples. The paperwork is fairly unpleasant, though. Mental health providers that get government funding spend a huge amount of time and energy creating and maintaining a paper trail for their work. These clinics get paid based on the work they claim to have done and then various agencies can audit their files and take that money back if a box wasn’t checked or a T wasn’t crossed. I spend my first very late day at work in March, trying to catch up on paperwork. Reanna is not happy.

Highlights: A great lecture by Bruce Perry, planting my first spring/summer garden, endurance training going great (I work out during my lunches at MBMH), meeting the Transition Joshua Tree folks. And Reanna. Reanna is wonderful.

Lowlights: My truck fails smog and I begin what becomes an expensive debacle trying to get it to pass.  I start having sync problems with my Mac that I am still dealing with as I write. I start working on our taxes on weekends. Reanna is Canadian and that makes our taxes super complicated and somehow even though we hired a professional we ended up owing big fines.

Abandon Ship cover art, for the TM folks. Art by Tilke.

Damian & Ollie in old billy goat pen, future garden

Me, just having sunk the garden beds. (Photo by Reanna)

Reanna planting pepper starts

Ollie

Ollie & Reanna take the trash out

Ollie & Reanna rest in the hammock

April: I find out that Morongo Basin Mental Health has decided to go out of business after more than 40 years, at the end of June. That’s quite a shock and less for me than for the many decade-plus employees I work with. At home, our three months of paleo is up and I feel fine, as I have on just about every diet I’ve tried, but it clearly had not solved any of the problems we’d been tracking for the experiment. And I am sick in bed for a week for a third time this year. Reanna’s parents arrive for a month long visit. I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like, but we get in some fun events (like the Morongo Basin Conservation Association’s “Desertwise Landscape Tour” and Transition Joshua Tree’s Water Catchment Workshop), good talks, good swimming.  I get trained in sand-tray therapy by my supervisor, Richard Gray, which I find quite useful.

Reanna preps cholla buds for dinner

Family dinner at Damian & Maya’s (Damian with Bugzooka)

Doug & Kathryn up San Jacinto

May: We get a great little car, a gift from Reanna’s parents. It gets 38 mpg unless we use the AC.  At work, emotions are high and rumors are flying around. I try to avoid it as much as possible. My coworkers are mostly looking for work with great intensity. I decide that I will chill instead, concentrate on my clients, and do what I can to get my job back with whatever company picks up the military contract in the summer.  Meanwhile,  something is eating my garden. My weekends and after work time is often spent critter-proofing.

The highlight of the month by far is meeting my new nephew, Julian.

Julian in sling

Ollie in work gloves

First scorpion of a scorpion-rich year

June: I’m at 21 clients at the beginning of my last month at MBMH. The management has had me continue taking new clients but I’m starting to get nervous about it. It’s starting to look like my clients will have a significant lapse in services, and it pisses me off. I write people in charge at the county and local journalists but no-one can say how long it will take to get the military program back up and running. I know I’m fine. I can look forward to a full season working at NBTSC if things go badly. It sucks, though, that my clients are just getting dumped. It’s screwed up. I just have to set them up as best I can for the lapse and do the tons of paperwork to close their charts. Meanwhile, my co-worker, Jackie, introduces me to Candy Crush, which starts sucking up the cracks in my schedule.

Highlights: Jonathan & Ayako’s wedding in Idaho. Motorcycle safety class with Reanna. And being married to Reanna, of course.

Living room pano: Ely, Christina, Julian, Ben, Rebeca visit

Ben & Julian

North end pano from on top of Reanna’s sewing RV

Ayako & Jonathan, getting married

July: I’m unemployed again, but within two weeks I get interviewed by Pacific Clinics, the company who got the military contract that I’d been working for at MBMH. It looks like I’ll get the job based on the reputation I’d made for myself in that position. That feels good! It means I’ll miss most of NBTSC this year, too, for the first time in 14 years.

Reanna leaves for OR to do prep work for NBTSC and I delete Candy Crush from my phone so I can get some things done: install AC in our trailer, create an outside pantry, build a greywater cistern, make a front step for the trailer, get my motorcycle license, and a few other things. Satisfying. Then I fly up to OR to work the Camp Latgawa session of NBTSC.

Reanna hangs our laundry while I goof off with the camera

Cistern in progress

Julian & me

August: Finish at NBTSC (wonderful, as usual), and spend a few short days in Eugene at an NBTSC leadership summit, then back to Joshua Tree for my last week of unemployment. I completed some last-minute landscaping and plumbing projects, built a dry toilet and installed a weather station, then started training at Pacific Clinics in Arcadia.

At the end of August, Reanna got back from her travels, and we started shutting down all lights and electronics at 8pm and just hanging out until going to bed. This was lovely. We usually laid in the hammock outside, talking and looking at stars. The desert summer evenings are really, really nice. Especially with Reanna.

My advisee group, NBTSC Camp Latgawa

Ely & Julian before dinner

Reanna & Ollie, downtown Joshua Tree

September: I start making contact with clients and by the end of the month I’m back up to 7 clients. This is exciting, and it’s nice to be working with some of my old co-workers from MBMH, and the new crew at Pacific Clinics is an entertaining bunch. Working full time again limits what I can do in terms of projects, but I manage to put a new roof on the old goat pen/the new outside pantry, go visit Quail Springs permaculture farm, and start building a new composter with my 2-year-old nephew, Ollie.

At the end of the month, I have my first birthday at home in many years. Usually I’m at camp. It’s nice. My family threw me a little party and I’m glad to be here, even though I miss my people at Farm & Wilderness.

Yes, Ollie wants to help build the composter!

Rain Event, 29 Palms

With Reanna & ocotillo, on my 42nd birthday.

 

June 27, 2013

Goodbye Morongo Basin Mental Health

Posted by Nathen under Military Services & Family Support Program, Morongo Basin Mental Health, work
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I had a tearful farewell today with my team at the Military Family Support Program–the Twentynine Palms office of the now-defunct Morongo Basin Mental Health. These folks have been great to work with. When I was hired six months ago the office was like a graveyard, and by the time we got the word that MBMH was shutting down, we were so busy we needed a second clinician.

IMG_20130529_110107_372

Jackie, Heather, Laura, me, Jennifer

I’m just as sad to leave our clients, but of course I can’t post pictures of them here. Our office had come to feel like a little community center, with people of all ages coming and going all day.

I am assured by those in charge at the county that there will be a military family support program up and running again soon–probably in about a month. I believe them. They all seem enthusiastic about the project and on the ball. When that happens I will definitely apply for the job again. It has been good work.

 

 

January 6, 2013

I Have a New Job

Posted by Nathen under Military Services & Family Support Program, Morongo Basin Counseling & Recovery Center, Morongo Basin Mental Health, San Bernardino County, work
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I am now working at Morongo Basin Mental Health, as a therapist for their Military Services and Family Support Program in Twentynine Palms. It’s a cool program, offering free and confidential individual, couple, and family therapy for active duty or recently retired military personnel and their families–basically anyone with a military ID.

I had no idea that this kind of thing was going on. It’s fully funded (by San Bernardino County, I believe) so that cost is no bar to getting help for military families, who can sometimes struggle financially. And it’s fully confidential, unlike the mental health services on base. There is a widespread and not necessarily irrational belief among service members that seeking support is not good for your career.

I’m happy to be part of this program. (And it’s a trip to be working down the street from my alma mater, 29 Palms Jr. High!) The only downside is that MSFSP is severely underused right now. We could be helping several times the number of people we are now. If you are in the Morongo Basin, please spread the word!

MSFSPflyer

Morongo Basin Mental Health Services

Military Services and Family Support Program

5910 Adobe Road, Suite A

Twentynine Palms, CA 92277

(760) 361-7124

 

April 27, 2011

How Writing My FCP is Like Shoveling Gravel

Posted by Nathen under Formal Client Presentation, graduate school, John Given, work, writing
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The first time I worked for money outside of my parents’ home I was 12 years old.  The Morongo Basin Ambulance Association hired me and my best friend John to move a pile of gravel from one spot to another with shovels.  I think we got paid a dollar an hour.  It was summer in Joshua Tree, and so around 100 F (maybe 45 C for Canadians), and the pile of gravel was huge.  After a couple hours I still could not see that we had made a dent in the pile and I complained that we would never finish this job.

John was bigger and stronger than me and remained more in touch with his logical faculties.  He said, “It doesn’t matter if we can’t see a dent.  As long as we keep shoveling gravel, we know that we are making progress, and that we will eventually be done.”

It is hard to argue against that, so I am thinking of John while I am working on my Formal Client Presentation, which is the Master’s thesis of my Couples and Family Therapy program: a monster paper incorporating all of the theory and practice that we have learned in two years, plus a presentation of video of me using all of that during therapy sessions.  It is going so slowly that each time I come back to it, I feel as if I had made no progress. But I know as long as I am typing new words each time I must be making progress, and that means eventually I will be done.

Thanks John!

 

April 23, 2010

Gearing Up For My First Overnight Crisis Line Shift

Posted by Nathen under crisis line, helping, listening, lists, sleep, statistics, work
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I’m settling in for my second shift for my university’s crisis line, and my first overnight shift. It was a beautiful day, and it was difficult to drag myself into our underground lair, but here I am until 8 tomorrow morning. It’s a pretty nice little room, painted earth tones and with lots of nice nature photography framed on the walls. I have my own bathroom, TV, computer, fridge, microwave, bed, and, of course, coffee maker. I don’t plan on drinking any coffee. If no one calls, I’d like to be able to get to sleep tonight. I’m anticipating being able to sleep fine. It’s very quiet here, and the room gets very dark with the lights off. That is, unless someone calls–the phone rings very loudly. And it’s also possible that the possibility of getting a call will keep me up–I haven’t had a call yet. We’ll see!

The first thing I do is make sure the phones are working. We have two, one for crisis calls, and one backup. I have a backup colleague and two supervisors that I can call or text if I get in over my head. I can also bring them in on a three-way call, if it seems the right thing to do. I don’t anticipate that, but it’s nice to know I can. They are all very experienced at this job.

The next thing I do is look over the call sheets since my last shift. Every call gets its own sheet. It’s been pretty slow in the last week–only a few calls. It’s tempting to think that that means it’s unlikely I’ll get a call tonight, but I have no idea. I also looked back a couple months to see if there was any easily recognizable pattern for Friday shifts, but there wasn’t. Just in our current call sheet book we have calls going back about a year, and I believe that we have sheets for many years around somewhere. This line has been running for about 40 years. (And, unfortunately, the administration is shutting us down at the end of this term, for beaurocratic reasons.) I would love to enter all this info into a stats program and look for patterns! I don’t believe I would be allowed to do that, though. There would be no way to get consent from our past “research participants.” The line is totally anonymous.

The next thing I do is look at our “regular caller” book. I didn’t know this about hotlines, but there are people who use them regularly, mostly very isolated individuals, taking advantage of a free, professinal listening service to help them deal with their troubles. Pretty smart thing to do, really. It had never occurred to me. We have extensive files on these folks, sometimes going back decades. They have “contracts,” too–agreements they’ve made with us about how often and what times they can call, because they don’t tend to be in crisis, just needing some listening. The regular caller book has all the regular caller call sheets, a record of their current contracts, and a list of their calls with how much time they have left until a certain date.

Then I wait for someone in crisis to call. We define a crisis as a situation where a person’s stress overcomes their ability to cope. This can happen a lot of different ways. Our call sheets have the following categories, in addition to “other”: academic, alcohol/drugs, anxiety (popular one), bereavement/grief (another popular one), depression (popular), domestic violence, eating disorder, harassment/descrimination, homocide, information/referral, interpersonal/relationship (popular), loneliness, medical/somatic, psychosis, sexual abuse/rape, sexual concerns, sexually exploitive (this is where a caller tries to use us as a masterbation aid), sexual orientation/gender ID, and suicide (also popular).

When someone calls, I am to go through a six-step process with them. 1) Assess for immidiate danger (“Are you in a safe place to talk?”), 2) establish communication and rapport, 3) assess the problem (keep it to one–the biggest problem–and make it specific, as vague problems are almost impossible to solve), 4) assess strengths and resources, 5) formulate a short-term (tonight) and long-term (tomorrow) plan, and 6) mobilize the client, obtaining commitment to the plan and contracting for safety if they have been thinking about suicide. Throughout the process I am to be assessing the potential for suicidality, listening for clues like “feeling overwhelmed,” “worthless”–any indication that they might be thinking about hurting themselves. If that comes up, I have another process to go to. Maybe I’ll write about that in another post.

Well, wish me luck. I’m not sure what being lucky would be. It’s easy to hope for no calls–“no news is good news,” as my dad likes to say. On the other hand, if someone is out there in trouble, I really want them to call. I’d feel lucky to get to help someone out of a jam. That’s something to know. Crisis line workers want you to call if you need help. We’re not particularly doing this for the money. I make something like $85 per shift. Not a lot.

If no one does call, I’m planning to study until I get tired and then go to bed. I’ll let you know what happens. I won’t be able to tell you the details, of course, but I can say if I got a call.

 

August 23, 2009

I’m Off to NBTSC 2009

Posted by Nathen under community, Not Back to School Camp, unschooling, work
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I’m about to leave for five weeks at Not Back to School Camp, so I won’t be posting for a while. It’s one of my favorite times of year. NBTSC is a camp for teenage unschoolers, or autodidacts. What they do for their education varies a lot but it tends to be a kind of homeschooling, where the learning is interest-led and non-coercive. The campers are amazing people–creative, open, intelligent, fun. There are about 100 of them at each session, and there are four sessions this year, two in southern Oregon and two in Vermont. (I’m missing the fourth session this year, much to my dismay–it’s my second session missed in ten years. My graduate program starts before the 4th session ends.) My job is basically to be available to them. I teach workshops, this year on Lindy Hop, the scientific method, and the human bowel movement (based on the in-some-ways-dated but still cool little book, Man’s Presumptuous Brain). I’m doing a music project, too, where the teens that sign up will learn to play together in a band and we’ll write a piece of music to perform for the camp. The staff is amazing, too. They are mostly old friends of mine, now, and a pretty tight and very loving community. I’ve had a great day seeing them again on my breaks from packing.

Have a great rest of your summer, everyone!

 

July 8, 2009

On Breaking Down in Portland and My Dad

Posted by Nathen under cars, community, photography, Steve Lester, work
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My twenty-two year old truck broke down in Portland recently and it got me thinking about my dad. We’re close and he’s never that far from my thoughts, but he comes up especially during breakdowns. It’s his voice I hear in my head, “Hmm, it’s turning over but not starting, so the battery’s probably fine…probably fuel, maybe spark…check for anything dripping, check the plug wires, distributor cap, coil…” He was never a professional mechanic, though once he told me he wished he had been. That was one of the two times he’d said something like that to me. “That’s real work,” he said. “Something’s broken and you fix it.” (The other time he talked about being a park ranger when we visited Crater Lake. “Imagine living in places like this all the time!”) He’s been a working musician, studio engineer, and commercial photographer since I was born. That’s real work too, of course, but having done some of it myself, now, I know what he was talking about. With aesthetic work, it can almost always be better, you can always fuss more over it, you’re never quite sure how much is enough to make the current client happy, and you don’t want them to just be happy. You want them out in the community raving about you and how you went the extra mile and how the project turned out so much better than they ever imagined. You want that both because it turns down the heat on having to constantly hustle for new clients, and because you want to be proud of your own work, and this is your work, making other peoples’ art look and sound as good as possible. For a mechanic, you just have the right tools, know your shit, put an ad in the yellow pages, fix the cars that come in, and do it right. There is much less room for fussing and second guessing. If it came down to it, though, I doubt my dad would change much about his past. He’s a craftsman and artist and thinker. He is, as my mom often says, a genius at fixing things, and he does like to get his hands dirty, but he prefers fixing sound systems and soldering broken music gear to working on cars, and he much prefers for things not to break at all, so he can concentrate on the mix or master he’s working on.

Another reason I was thinking about him when my truck broke down was because I had to call a tow truck. If I had been home, in Eugene or in Joshua Tree, I would have called a friend with a tow chain to get it home and tried to fix the thing myself. In Joshua Tree, that friend would have been my dad. It’s something of a family tradition. I’ve only owned used cars, so I’ve broken down with some regularity over the years, and I know for a fact that my dad has towed me over 200 miles because one of the ten or so times was from Bakersfield down to Joshua Tree, when I cracked my block on the I-5, on a trip down from Eugene. It’s been continually surprising how slowly my reliance on my dad has diminished over the decades—the price, I suppose, of having such a reliable dad. The thing is, I was never aware of him relying on his dad at all, and I’ve known him since he was a lot younger than I am. There has also been a continual recession of ‘living up’ to my dad. It’s not that I get any outside pressure to be like him—he has scrupulously avoided that. It’s that there are a bunch of ways that I just assumed I would be more like him by the time I was an adult. A small but salient example: Will it ever be that when I tie something down in the back of my truck that there is no chance it will fly out a mile down the road? I know it’s possible. When my dad ties things down, they stay down.

Maybe living up to your dad is a mind trip that every son lives with—that someone further along than you always looks invincible and unreachable in important ways. There were ways, though, that I reminded myself of my dad when I broke this last time. Unlike me, he would have known that the distributor had gone. In fact, he likely would have known as soon as the truck started faltering a little, a couple weeks ago, and fixed it then, probably with a distributor he’d had laying around the shop for years just in case this happened. But even though I was more confused, I did remain calm and fully engaged in my environment. This is one remarkable element of my dad’s personality that took me a while to appreciate: Wherever he is, that is where he is. I mean if he’s in the shop, returning the tow trailer after towing me home from Sacramento for seven hours, he’s not in a hurry and he’s really interested in the guy who rented him the trailer, and probably knows his name, where he lives, and a decent amount of his history before he leaves. And from that day on he will probably not only remember him, but refer to him as “my friend Jim, who owns the towing company down Fox Trail.” It’s been a source of some boredom and occasional consternation for me over the years, because a trip to town for some plywood and a drill bit is likely to take a couple hours. I would be lurking in the background on those trips (unless he drew me out, usually by bragging about me) and eventually saying some version of “Let’s go, Dad.”

I reminded myself a lot of my dad, in Portland. The mechanic I found was not through the phone book, but through the guy running the gas station where I broke down. The tow truck driver I found through the mechanic. When the driver arrived, I asked for his name and shook his hand. I called him Valentino when we talked. I asked him if he took his kids on jobs with him when I saw the baby seat in the cab. By the time I’d paid him for the job, not long after, I knew that his older son was eight and hated homework but was great at soccer, that Valentino supported him in soccer even though he was a basketball player, that his younger son was four and came on jobs with him because they didn’t have baby sitters, that he moved from LA to Portland 12 years ago because the gangs were not as bad there. My dad would have loved the mechanic he took me to. He was a giant white guy in his 50s named Vale, hands easily three times the size of mine, with thick, oil-encrusted nails and skin. Works seven days a week, all day. (Lucky for me—I broke down at 5:30 pm on Saturday.) His shop wasn’t one of those clean, spacious places with uniformed men and a receptionist. It was tiny and cluttered with tools and parts and books and rags and stuff, staffed by Vale and his partner, his son. His daughter is nineteen and apparently brilliant, studying psychology on scholarship at OSU. He diagnosed my truck out loud to me, with us both leaning over the engine compartment. “Well, it’s getting fuel… Looks like you replaced the cap and rotor recently… Start it up so I can check the distributor.” It was late in the day, Saturday, and it looked like he couldn’t get the part until Monday or maybe Wednesday, but he had it running perfectly for my by noon on Sunday for $300.

This is what my dad knew instinctively and I was proud to see come out in myself: The people that you meet and know aren’t just interesting. They are your source of information, adventures, and luck. They are your community. It doesn’t matter if they share your beliefs or aesthetics. It doesn’t matter much that they live in a different city. That you are at the same place at the same time means that you share something with them and it’s almost weird not to find out what that is. I get it. Thanks, Dad.

Dad, Me, Mom

Dad, Me, Mom