Am I the only person who doesn't find these photos side by side a little creepy?

Thanks to the influence of my lovely but overbearing older sisters, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of cultural events from the ’80s that I would’ve taken no interest in, had I been given the choice: I can sing every single song from the Olivia Newton John movie musical Xanadu, I can look at any photo of a young Shaun Cassidy and tell you what issue of Tiger Beat it appeared in, and I was forced awake in the middle of the night 30 years ago to watch the royal wedding of Charles and Di.  At the time, it gave me no joy to be party to these things, but it would be a couple of years before I’d be big enough for my sisters not to beat up. That’s probably why I take a wicked pleasure today in ignoring the recent hype surrounding Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton.

heh-lo!

Now, I will admit some of my indifference is borne out of sheer envy – just thinking of the approachably hot Kate reminds me of that Young MC lyric from Bust a Move: “The bride walks down to start the wedding, and there’s one more girl you won’t be getting.”   More importantly, though, I think they would want me to ignore their nuptials.   Word around campfire is it was not Wills and Kate’s idea to have an over-publicized, media-blitzed, Beckhams/Elton John/repressive-African-leader-attended wedding.   Wills wanted a humble, modest affair, a desire borne out of his intense disdain for the media- he blames them in no small part for his mother’s death. That, and they usually report on him and Harry when they’re screwing up somehow (more Harry than Wills though – Nazi costume notwithstanding, that red-headed freak looks like he’d be fun to party with).

Rather, this big to-do was the wish of an aging monarchy desperate to retain some measure of relevance with its people. Elizabeth is much closer to the end of her life than the beginning, Charles as King is a singularly unpalatable idea for most Britons, and really – the Royal Family is a little crazy. Not so crazy, mind you, that they don’t realize people blame their profound dysfunctionality on the travails of Diana, who remains ten times more popular now than any Royal (other than her sons) could ever hope to be.   Liz and her inbred kin may be dumb, but they’re not stupid.  She knows that royalty doesn’t matter that much anymore, and she needs something to help whitewash the Charles/Di debacle and put the family back in people’s good graces.  The marriage of her handsome grandson to an attractive, seemingly well-adjusted commoner is just the memory-erasing spectacle required.    So really, this wedding is a Royal Do-Over, a chance for the House of Windsor to draft on the relative normalcy of the bride and groom.

the royal do-overs on vacation with a friend who apparently likes to stare at kate's crotch. I'd judge if I wasn't sure I'd do the exact same thing...

Some may argue that going through an EVENT! WEDDING! against your wishes makes William a dutiful wimp. Personally, I think his choices suggest he may be a Better Man. Sure, all he wanted was for us to leave him the fuck alone so he can fly helicopters and patronize Welsh pubs in peace – it speaks to his low-key regularity (or at least, as regular as you can be when your mom was the most beloved royal martyr in the world, and your dad has the biggest ears).   Choosing to go through with a big wedding anyway has less to do with duty than it does with common sense (he musta got that from Di) – because being left alone to fly helicopters and drink in Welsh pubs is hella more fun when you’re worth millions, courtesy of British taxpayers who are increasingly indifferent to your existence.  William understands the Royal Family is a highly profitable institution whose principal commodity is that it still has weird meaning for people like my sisters. Were that to go, he’d be just another underpaid RAF pilot with a hot wife.  For him to not do his part to prevent the family business from circling the bowl would not be his own interests.

Of course, that doesn’t give me license to pile on and peep his wedding without an invite.  I think I did enough of that in university, when I was so broke I would crash weddings during the summer semester so I could eat at the reception.  So Wills and Kate, if you’re reading this – I promise to ignore you, both tomorrow and into the future, for as long as the rabid media hounds who nip at your heels will let me.  When you tie the knot tomorrow, I shall be asleep, dreaming of Olivia Newton John in leg warmers and roller skates.

But Kate, if it doesn’t work out – call me.  Baby Mama and I have discussed it, and you’re my free pass.

Well, this is a problem...

I’m like most people in that I oppose war – no biggie, really, since war is kind of easy to oppose, and to paraphrase Marx (Groucho, not Karl) I wouldn’t serve in any army that would have me as a soldier.

More perplexing to me is the mindset of soldiers, the ones who have the most to lose from war yet seem to support it so firmly.  Sure, there can be a moral imperative for war, but we haven’t really had one of those since WW II.  A soldier has to be willing to die for something, and I don’t think they do it for (sometimes misguided) foreign policy, or to keep a job, or for the kind of “my country, right or wrong” rationalizations that red state politicians run on.

I found the best rationale for why modern soldiers fight in Sebastian Junger’s excellent book War, wherein he documented the tour of a company of US soldiers in one of the deadliest parts of Afghanistan.   Junger writes that soldiers don’t risk their life because they love war, or country – they do it because they love their comrades, and are convinced that failure to act could get those comrades killed.   The very real possibility of death gives such actions a level of significance rarely found in regular life.

Almost all the soldiers Junger interviewed said they missed combat “not because they actually miss getting shot at – you’d have to be deranged – it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted.”   What’s more, they said they would feel no need to return to combat if they could find the same clarity of purpose in normal society.  That’s understandable, since  few things in civilian life come with the same life-or-death stakes – a fire fighter perhaps, maybe a police officer – oh yeah, and a parent.

Think about it – what parent wouldn’t fall on a grenade for their kids?  Surely knowing that a defenseless child depends on you completely for its life must give meaning to a parent’s willingness to sacrifice – perhaps not as much as might be found from saving your buddies while being shelled in the open, but for both soldiers and parents that meaning comes from more or less the same place: unconditional love.  Now, that’s not to say one needs to be a parent in order to be a Better Man – although in my case I have little choice but to find out, since I’m going to be a dad.

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Dad & mom on the day they got engaged - 1953

If you go through the blog, you’ll find I’ve spent more time  writing about my dad than my mom. Now, for anyone who knows me that well that would seem odd, since Mom figures way more prominently in my upbringing and subsequent neuroses.

My preoccupation with Dad has mostly to do with how removed he felt – not that he was absent, he just wasn’t fully there. All those words I’ve written exist to fill in the vacuum. My mom, on the other hand, is ever-present – someone I can’t seem to get away from, in fact. Sure, we had some good times, but by and large my memories of growing up with her aren’t all that fond. Not because she was a monster, mind you (although she could be monstrous on occasion) –  I just remember her being shrill and disappointed, both with me and herself.   It took me a while, but I finally learned there was little I could do to please her, so I abandoned the effort, choosing instead to find ways to satisfy myself.   My MO growing up was to avoid her as much as I can, something I probably still do to this day, if only subliminally.

So I was somewhat unsure as to what to do when my older brother approached me last month, asking me to write a few words about our mom.  He’d asked all our siblings to write something, as he was putting our comments in a book he was making for Mom’s 79th birthday.  These things usually call for kind words, and I confessed to him that I wasn’t sure I had that many.   He offered up a sage piece of advice: as a minister, he’s been called on to preside over the funerals of people he knew were less than saintly in life, and he still had to find some good in their shitty existences.   “So maybe try to imagine Mom’s dead, and see if that works” he said.   He didn’t realize he was asking me to indulge in one of my favorite fantasies as a teenager.

It took some time, but I finally managed to come up with something:

I think Dad was aware of an unspoken truth amongst fathers – compared to mothers, the standard for being a good dad is really kind of low.   Not to diminish his contribution, but I suspect he knew his role in the parental equation was what Michael Chabon describes as “that of someone who pulls into a parking space with a nickel in his pocket to find an hours worth of quarters in the meter.”   Mom was already ahead of him, integrated completely into our lives.  She’s spent most of her adult life knee deep in our vomit and unwashed clothes. Her presence was as crucial and abstract to us as the functioning of our own organs.

That’s the probably the biggest difference between Mom and Dad – all of us can point to a specific memory of Dad, something he said, something he did for us.    They linger with us like old friends,  mostly because Mom – ever the publicist – helps perpetuate them.   The measure of Mom, on the other hand, isn’t found in a single instant.   It’s constant, perennial, and it would be unfair to judge her worthiness based on a snapshot, especially when the picture was taken through the narrow prism of a child’s memory.

Imagine waking up to this every day of your childhood...

A nephew once asked me what it was like growing up with Grandma.  I compared her to F. Lee. Ermey, the drill instructor in the war film Full Metal Jacket – tough, demanding, bordering on occasional lunacy.  At the time I was being glib to get a laugh, of course, but there was more than a modicum of truth to it.  I knew she held me to a higher standard than other moms might, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t resent it.

Thankfully, I can see the larger plan, the blessing in what she was doing – in expecting more from me, I grew to expect more from myself.  Whether it’s what she intended or not, she pushed me to want more from my life – to see more, do more, learn more.   The result is I’ve done some pretty amazing and often unusual things. More importantly, though, I can look at myself critically, without sentiment, and discard those ideas I believe are at right angles to common sense, while holding onto the ones that matter: reserve judgment until you have all the facts;  heed the advice of those who know, but keep your own counsel;  keep your humour and don’t give into cynicism when times are bad; work hard as you can, even if no one’s looking; do the right thing, no matter how hard.

Most of those values I got to on my own, but I needed mom to point me in the right direction.  That, to me, is good mothering, even if things were never perfect. How can they be? There’s simply too much going on, too many moving parts for perfection to be possible. I suspect that’s partly why a lot of moms feel like they may’ve let their kids down, as my mom confessed to feeling.  A few years ago, she apologized to me, saying   “I know I may have made mistakes as a mother with you, but I did the best I could.”

I know in my bones this is the truth.  I try to honor her every day by doing the same.

I think the measure of being a Better Man is finding the grace to accept that your mom is fallible (just as you are), and simply letting go of all the stuff that happened between you.