Monthly Archives: November 2011

Lament the children

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It was one of those absolutely dreaded events of parenthood, and I can say it was as bad as feared, if not worse. Sooner or later most of us will be called to account by our children as part of their passage to full adulthood. I’ve done it and most of my friends have done it, and a few wish they could do it.

I’m speaking of being called to account by our children for the myriad of ways we have failed them. According to several models of human development, children have to flip parents the bird in order to let us go and become fully grown on their own. In many cases this happens in the teens through acting out, being extraordinarily disrespectful, and telling parents off. But part of that process can also be the need to sit the parents down and tell them how badly they messed up. It turned out that my daughter needed this, and it’s a hellish place to be.

My daughter is an amazing, brilliant, artistic, creative, gifted woman who has struggled with some significant mental health issues over the last few years, and in her mind her parents are to blame, at least partially.

We met in her counsellor’s office, everyone took their places, and with real anxiety and dread (every child fears rejection when they know they are about to unload both barrels), she told me what it was like to grow up in our family, what it was like to live through my separation with her mother, what it was like to have a man like me as her father.

Her words were like bullets.

I had heard some of what she had to say before, but not all, and it ripped my heart to see the depth of her pain. Wanting to support her, I listened in silence as she unloaded years of dark emotion. I could not understand where so much of it was coming from nor why she thought many of the things she described, but it didn’t matter; for whatever the reason this was her experience. After she finished I was asked to leave, so I hopped on my bike and made my way home.

That was three days ago and I still haven’t recovered, and I don’t know that I will. The thing is, I know I am a deeply flawed human being, and that applied even more so when I was still young myself. Incomplete doesn’t begin to describe it. But I myself had been raised in a deeply dysfunctional and troubled family, and since my early adulthood I had pursued healing for myself through various forms of counselling, determined that I would transcend the ugliness of my history.

And I adored my children, with both myself and my wife throwing ourselves into raising our children with the absolute best we could muster. There was no violence in our home, there was no shaming. We supported our kids without qualification, and exposed them to a whole host of experiences and opportunities. We indulged them in so many ways, determined that they wouldn’t experience the same lack that we did. We played so much, did so much as a family. But none of that seemed to overcome the fact that we were both spiritually damaged people, and somehow our daughter picked that up.

That is the real tragedy for me. An acutely sensitive child (rather like her father), somehow she was able to feel the damaged, dark parts of me, despite all the attempts at healing, despite our attempts to hide it and despite that it didn’t come out in overt behaviour towards her or her brother.  That’s the only way I can explain it. If we had called her stupid, or bullied her or shamed her, I could understand the depths of her pain, but we truly loved and supported her.

Still, I know I was impatient and too judgmental. And I failed her enormously when I split up with her mom. It was a time in my life of enormous personal upheaval and change, and it swept all of us up. I had no choice, it was something I absolutely had to do, and it is a mountain of grief to me that it hurt my daughter so.

What are we to do? As parents all that is available to us is our very best, but what if our very best simply isn’t good enough? I swore that the darkness of my past (and my parent’s past) would not carry through to another generation, and I failed despite a massive amount of very difficult personal work. And this is with deep awareness and intent; how inevitable is it then that suffering shall pass through the generations of those who didn’t have my luck to know about psychology and emotional healing? Is it impossible to prevent the transmission of trauma? It certainly seems to be, and is easily the greatest failure of my life.

It’s difficult to know where we go from here. I’m hoping that this unloading will help her healing, and I will do it again in a heartbeat if it will help. As we go through life we encounter various mirrors, each with its own truth and its distortion, and that provided by a child is one of the most honest. I know that the narrative of my daughter’s life is complex and what she shared with me that day is only one part, but it’s a part that’s that hardest to view.

 

 

Is being rather than doing really an option?

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It never rains but it pours, or so the saying goes. We were out yesterday looking for a car for my mom, when our own started idling rough. Sure enough, after a little while of that (my mind churning away trying to imagine the source: vacuum leak, idle control module), the check engine light came on, which is a big help as I have a scanner that can lift the error code and tell me what needs repairing. But that satisfaction was short lived as yet another warning light came on, this time indicating that the rear brakes need servicing. That means new rotors and pads and I’ll be lucky to walk away with less than $200.00 in parts. And that doesn’t include the noisy alternator bearing I was going to have to address soon.

This while my motorcycle still needs attending to; I have a large number of parts on the way: condensers, carb, piston pin, and clutch push rod seal (it’s fairly spouting oil from that part), and I need to return a clutch cable that was made up for me on Thursday and which turned out to be the incorrect length.  There’s a grim satisfaction in that, because when I balked at what I considered an exorbitant price for the cable repair, the fellow behind the counter claimed theirs was a “premium” service, accounting for the high cost. Taking it back because it was done wrong might allow a little more flexible pricing in the future.

I also have an engine half out on a Westy in my shop, and I have a number of articles that need writing, and when you are trying to promote yourself as a writer, you cannot afford to let things get stale

It’s the latter chore I find somewhat troubling.  I’ve long ago learned that anything to do with ego is bound to lead to dissatisfaction and unhappiness, and I’ve attempted to let go of “intent” and let the world unfold around me.  But then there’s writing and without a doubt any kind of artistry tends to float on an ocean of ego, at least how we imagine art in the West. Art is seen as one of the higher expression of the human heart, of the individual, which is why so many creative types are so easily crushed by criticism. To them, they are the art.

My writing remains my last real toehold in ego. Really, my last real engagement in the world, my justification to myself for taking up space. I like to imagine I have something important to say and that my writing might be my one significant contribution to the world.

What nonsense. Deep down, I know it is just one more hanging onto things, attempting to give value and meaning to my life by what I do, an effort doomed to fail sooner or later. I know I need to do what I need to do because, well, I need to do it, and a desire that someone sees or approves or wants to send me money for it is a bastardization of that essential impulse. To create is to be human, but it’s only in this consumer culture that that essential drive has been so commoditised.

There are so many things I can do with social media to become more well known and sell more books. But pursuit of recognition is what so many of us writers and bloggers do, and it becomes this giant virtual rat race. I don’t want to compete with my fellows, I don’t want to stick my head up above someone else.

This touches me deeply not only because it takes so much investment in time, but because it flies in the face of another recent revelation I’ve been confronted with.

I’ve been on this planet for more than half a century, and throughout my adult life I’ve tried to fit in, especially career and job wise. And yet time after time it all ends up the same way: I hate my job and make a balls out of it. I’ve had many careers, each one trying a different milieu, hoping to find a place where I can apply my skills and talents towards a career and making decent money. The latest incarnation was opening a shop where I restore VW Westphalias.  A strange gig for someone with ten years of university education, but I enjoyed working on these vans.

Like each time before when I went to set myself up in the world, I succeeded. I have always achieved whatever I set myself to do, and when it comes to work I’ve always hated what I created. Whenever I find myself in a situation where my life is dictated by external circumstances I start to die inside.

Being from a blue-collar background, where the measure of a man is in his work and his paycheque, I’ve fought against this from the beginning, and after this years Westy debacle, I finally found the courage to give up. If it was a choice I would have found myself a good economic situation a long time ago. But it’s not. This is a core part of who I am and it’s not amenable to will. I do and will make money here and there but I simply cannot be employed in the manner of most others, an aspect of myself that’s proven so very difficult to come to terms with.

Letting go of striving for a career is letting go of a huge part of my engagement in the world. This challenging year has been a final attempt, one more try to join the mainstream, and it ended as I would expect, and so I have no choice but to lay that down and forget the meanings and beliefs I’ve held about it. I’m aware of the irony that probably most people would love to not “work”, and yet it’s something I’ve always fought against.

In a way writing is my last attempt to justify my existence by doing or creating something. It is a hobble, a noose that keeps me fettered to that archaic belief. Once we divorce ourselves from what we do, what is left? I wonder how many can answer that question? If I turn away from writing as a formal career and stop trying to be a success at, it what will that mean?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electrical problems aboard

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I was going to enjoy an unexpected and lovely day yesterday by going for an unplanned and impromptu sail. It didn’t turn out that way. As I was preparing for departure I unplugged the shore power cord, which turned out to be a real bear as the plug had partially melted onto the receptacle.

THis could have caused a fire!

 

I was glad to discover this as it’s quite a dangerous situation. Its a typical problem especially once the weather turns cold, as our electric heaters draw a maximum amount of power through the system, and any weak points reveal themselves. That cord was less than a year old, and I knew the boat’s receptacle was the problem.

You see, as the contact metal in the receptacle ages it corrodes, which increases electrical resistance. Recalling Ohm’s law E=IR, where E is the voltage drop across a conductor. Using this we see that E increases as either the current I or resistance R increases. When we turn on the heaters I is at a max, but hopefully the R of the plug connection is zero, so Voltage drop E across the plug is also zero.

But as soon as corrosion gives a value of R greater than zero we get a voltage drop, which becomes heat. The greater the value of R or I, the more heat until stuff starts to melt and the possibility of fire occurs.

Keeping the R of the connection at zero is a real problem, especially since the boat’s receptacle is on a bulkhead in the anchor locker, waaaay back where you really can’t reach it to sand the contacts clean. In fact I’ve always hated that location for the receptacle because in order to connect or disconnect the shore cable you had to lie on your belly and reach as far back as possible, and you could never plug the cable in properly. The build quality of CS yachts is superb, but that was an incredibly stupid place to put the thing.

So given that the receptacle had to be replaced, I was determined to move it to a better location (I’ve wanted to do it from the beginning but the parts are pricey and I’m rather lazy). I’ve also been aware that the internal power cable was solid wire which is another no-no in a boat, although usual in 1980.

First thing to do was decide where the plug should go. I decided on the top edge of the coaming to make access easy, reachable from either end of the boat, out of the weather, and not in the way when we have cockpit parties. I also wanted it to be as close as possible to the boat’s distribution panel.

Once that was decided, the first thing to do was cut a hole for the new receptacle.

 

Unfortunately, I no longer had power to the boat to run the damn thing, so I cut off the damaged end of the shore cable and did this disaster. An appalling thing to do but I had no choice.

Don't try this at home!

 

Once you have the hole cut out, it’s crucial to remove the balsa core around the hole and replace it with epoxy. That way if the seal ever goes, water cannot getting into the core and rot it.

Cutting away the core

 

Core removed from the edge of the hole

 

Once the core is removed, you mix up some epoxy and filler. I had some epoxy leftover from a long-ago project and although it had discoloured, it still worked okay.

Epoxy and filler

 

The mix should be a very thick paste so it won’t slump out. You need an applicator that is flexible enough to fit the contour of the hole. I used a piece of thin cardboard.

Thick epoxy past ready for filling

 

The edges of the hole are filled with waterproof thickened epoxy so the worst that can happen if the seal is not maintained is someone sleeping in the quarterberth gets wet.

Edges of hole sealed

 

The cable 3 wire 10 gauge cable is attached to the receptacle and threaded through the hole. Screw holes are drilled and the screw threads are sealed with marine caulking even though they also pass through the rubber gasket.

Receptacle in place

 

Then the electrical panel needed work. The old solid wire cable was disconnected, taped off, and rolled into the hull. Normally I would pull it all out, but the other end is unreachable to disconnect. You can see evidence of previous problems with corrosion by the burnt plastic.

The old cable must go!

 

I decided to use a piece of the shore cable as my internal wiring, because I believe the quality is superior than standard Romex. I also cleaned up the bare grounds  from the other wires. I need to find a grommet where those cables pass through the box. Tsk.

New cable installed.

 

With the boat’s wiring completed, I decided to repair the shore cord. It was less than a year old, and with the price of copper taking off, new ones are approaching close to $100. I decided to use both a waterproof housing as well as replacement plug even though the receptacle is inside the boat’s enclosure. These two parts were still 1/2 the cost of a new cable.

Waterproof housing for plug.

 

 

Assembling plug components

 

The cord is warranted for another 4 years, and if by some unusual and unlucky chance the plug burns out again, just the plug itself can now be replaced for 1/3 the cost of a new cord.

Plug assembled and cord good for another 4 years

 

Power restored!

I was grateful for the warm, sunny day to do this. As you can see from the picture I finished just as it was getting dark (and cold). Hopefully that repair will last this boat another 30 years.