Snakes

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

4.3 : Snakes

Everyone has their spirit animal.  For some people the animal is obvious from the moment of conception, while others may never find theirs.  Many ancient cultures placed the most sacred animals in the heavens, as seen in the patterns of the night sky.  We see this represented in various Zodiac pantheons.  These are only the most popular, and, at times, the most primal.  We still see these beliefs in small carvings and pictures placed around people's homes.  This can be seen as primitive idolatry, which, I think, is a blindness to the fact that we have a connection to animals on a level only few can recognize.  My youngest has always been drawn to snakes.  Whether they be rendered in rubber, fabric, or drawn on a piece of paper.  Every trip to the now defunct Rain Forest Cafe, she added another plush snake to the collection.  So when visiting a zoo, a natural history museum with carved fetishes of snakes -- both new and from antiquity, I cannot help but think of her and smile.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

 

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

4.2 : Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

I had twelve weeks of paternity leave.  Twelve weeks.  Reflecting back on the experiences of my first child, I was looking forward to walks, one sided conversations about whatever came to mind, visiting people and sharing the joy a freshly minted person brings.  This was not to be.  Every day was a struggle just to feed her.  Her cries a call to war.  A war for her survival.  Every day would be a battle just to feed her.  One feeding would take a couple of hours.  I knew she was hungry.  She was telling me she was hungry, but I was the last person she wanted to take food from.  Two ounces of breast milk took almost an hour, as I dripped it into her mouth with a basting syringe.  The war was epic and exhausting.  "Trust me, you want me to win," I would plead.  "If I win, you live."  By the time my wife came home, we would both be asleep on the couch.  My daughter on my lap.  In the end,  I did win.  I kept her alive.

The End of the Beginning

 

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

4.1 : The End of the Beginning

Remembering the conception of your children should be a nostalgic, heart warming memory.  Nostalgia at its most personal  Unfortunately, as I think of everything leading up to the birth of my second child, I am left cold and disconnected.  I wasn't part of the planning stage, nor was I allowed to be part of the entire pregnancy.    I was kept at arms length purposely, even after we brought her home.  The door was closed.  I had to rip her from my wife's arms just to take her for a walk.  Of all things post divorce, this is still the thing that makes me upset.  No parent, unless they are incarcerated, dead, or otherwise deemed unfit, should be kept from their child.  I was still in the house.  We were still married.  Yet, the door was closed to me.  I was kept a stranger to my own child, as I took care of our first.  The fight for connection would lead to a struggle of epic proportions.

Change

 

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

Aside 1.3 : Change

"You don't like change?  Do you?" she asked in a voice tinged charmingly with an Italian accent.

The ice rink had just closed for the night, and everyone was tired and ready to go home.  "No, I don't," I responded quickly  An automatic, almost automated, conclusion to multiple years of having to absorb and move with the flow of drastic even catastrophic change.  At the time of the question, I had just gone through a divorce, been laid off from a job I had held for twelve years, and, most recently, been evicted from my first home post divorce.  Now I was working in an ice rink for close to minimum wage and living in the San Francisco Bay Area.   A deep need to be static just for a short period to take a breath infused my psyche.  I wanted to supply her with this context but would have no opportunity to do so.  Change may be constant, but we are only human.  I was ready for some positive change, yes.  Yet, change in general had no allure for me.  I am resilient.  I roll well with the punches.  That doesn't mean I have to like it.  

Life Continues

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

3.4 : Life Continues

The child who inaugurated the most significant and important change in my life is now standing on the edge of her own adulthood.  I have had the privilege of watching her go through her own changes, as she has born witness to mine.  In a sense we have grown and changed together.  She, of course, unaware, as every child lives in the moment.  An ideal all of us adults strive to do.  Every day has been new to her.  I remember the joy in her eyes when I purposely took her outside to experience rain.  We had just finished dinner, and I stared out the window as the droplets passed by the street lamp in the parking lot of our condo.  She couldn't have been one, so I picked her up and went outside.  The trust she showed in me, as I held her in the gentle rainfall.  Her eyes blinking with every raindrop that tickled her eyelashes.  An infectious smile on her face.  Every new thing she experiences, goes through still makes me smile the same as that evening in the rain.  Every day, month, year is precious.  I see that when I look at her and her sister, and I am overjoyed I have been allowed to be part of their journey.     

Lovies

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

3.2 : Lovies

My former mother-in-law called them Lovies.  That one toy your child can't survive without.  My eldest's was a Winnie the Pooh plush.  It kept her company on walks, on the changing table, when potty training, and, of course, when asleep.  She would trade out for other stuffed animals and eventually be replaced with a Simba plush after fully potty trained.  Yet, he has still stuck around.  Whether stuffed in a toy chest, shoved in a closet or under the bed, he hangs around reminding us of all the changes and growth she and I have gone through.  He has stood ... actually, sat ... witness to the strength of love connecting the two of us.  I can look at him and remember how she clutched him, sucked on his ear.  Yes, that wasn't specific to Pooh.  She'll remind me of that, of course.  I wonder, sometimes, if she keeps him because I won't let him go or because she won't.  After all, I am a nostalgic person.  Once I was the Winnie the Pooh Uncle.  Always giving Pooh related items to my nieces and nephews.  In the end I was a Winnie the Pooh Father.     

Life

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

3.1 : Life

I wasn't for or against having children.  While other people's babies and children didn't excite me, I was neutral on the concept of having my own.  If having a child was important -- a necessity -- for the woman I partnered with, then having a child would become important to me.  What I didn't know was how, in a positive way, that decision would effect me.  My own naivete was important, and I feel is important to all potential parents.  If most of us knew the true consequences, we wouldn't do it.  I made the deal with my wife -- One yes, a second is negotiable.  You can't negotiate a child.  They are there or they are not.  You rise to the occasion or you don't.  I had no drive to be a parent.  I had no intrinsic love of children.  Babies ... I just didn't understand.  Then, my first arrived.  My reality changed in the most positive, drastic manner my life ever has.  I found a talent I didn't know I had.  More important, I found meaning. 

Art is Life

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

Aside 1.2 : Art is Life

I knew about the life drawing session at the Palo Alto Art Center since high school.  My art teacher tried to push us all to go, especially since most of us wanted to be comic book artists.  The session has been running since the late 1960s and a staple in the San Francisco Peninsula art scene.  Post college, upon my return to the SF Bay Area, a friend tried to get me to go.  I came up with all kinds of excuses not to go.  When my marriage started to fail, another friend at work finally convinced me to go to one of the quarterly drawing marathons.  This was the break through, which brought me to the weekly Tuesday night group.  A group that has helped me come back to myself.  Now I go every week and book the models.

I Found My Heart

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

2.5 : I Found My Heart

San Francisco is said to be a magical place.   For me, it is a place of renewal.  I have lived in Los Angeles, Portland, and other cities around the west coast.  San Francisco renews me, energizes me.  There are times I feel the city by the bay is done with me and I am done with it.  Then something happens.  In this case it helped open my eyes to what I had imprisoned within myself -- the ability to connect, desire to have a partner once again in my life.  Nothing comes without a price, of course.  The pain experienced, still experiencing, is deep.  This feeling is important.  Pain is the price of living.  Working with it, through it, will make me grow, as I learn more about myself.  I don't want to go back to where I was before.  Before I wasn't looking or open to connecting with another human being.  People were hurt along the journey, outside of myself.  This is something I will carry with me and wish hadn't happened.  I do not regret where it has brought me -- back to the eyes of the child seeing San Francisco for the first time.

Wish They All Could Be . . .

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

2.2 : Wish They All Could Be . . .

When a person starts dating they learn a lot about themselves.  For each of us it's different.  We are a synthesis of many things coupled with preconceived notions of how reality is supposed to be.  This leads us to a misguided way of  thinking dictating our motivations.  Our culture leads us to believe dating is primarily about sex.  For me, I quickly learned I was motivated by a deeper connection.  Connection includes many things which sex is just a part and not the most important.  I learned this from my first girlfriend where the connection was only sex.  My second girlfriend, we made an overly rational decision to work on the connection of personality, shared interests, looking at our differences.  Discussing who we were as individuals and how that influences us was most important.  By my fourth girlfriend I had learned how to compromise, but not in a healthy way.  My own interests became secondary to my partner.  By the end of my marriage this led to me becoming nonexistent and ultimately fearing and distrusting emotional intimacy.

Summer of Love

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

2.1 : Summer of Love

Moving to the San Francisco Bay Area at four was the greatest influence on my life.  My eyes widened, as my family walked around Ghirardelli Square, Aquatic Park, The Cannery.  San Francisco was still expressing the values of the Summer of Love.  People were dressed colorfully.  The borders of Aquatic Park were lined with puppet theaters, people selling artwork, clothing, jewelry, and other handmade arts.  Groups of people were just hanging out on the grass enjoying life.  To my young mind, this was normal.  San Francisco was the home of free expression.  All the arts were represented and for all ages.  This awed me.  The energy was palpable.  I thought this must be normal.  Little did I know this was just a moment in time.  History would soon correct itself and go back to a more conservative, middle ground.  I would watch the 1960s fade in San Francisco, while holding in my heart and soul the love, colors, creativity that had impressed itself on me when I was four.

The End ... ?

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

1.6 The End ... ?

Standing at the dining room window looking out at the parking lot being drenched in rain.  All I wanted to do was leave.  Being there in the now all but empty condo was a harsh reminder of the expectations of married life.  My two children had been born there.  Family life, seeing my kids daily, I now stood on the outside of that reality.  It was over.  I didn't want to walk out the door.  I needed to.  For the first time I truly knew.  As I stood there, taking in the detail of the wet surface of the street, the light of the single lamp, and the reflections of what was behind me in the window.  She was a ghost, still my wife.  When she reached out to me -- to comfort me or her, I don't know.  Instinctively I stepped out of reach.  I was done.

The Beginning

Everything Changes

by

Matthew T. Lipson

1.1 The Beginning

Evenings are momentous times.  A lot things happen in the darkened hours.  Children are conceived.  Wars can be won or lost, and bombs of a more personal nature can start a significant change in a person's life.  On this particular evening in June, I was called into the bedroom by my wife.  To say I was surprised by what she said would be untrue.  I had been wondering when the subject of divorce was going to be brought up by either one of us.  To say I was prepared for it would also be untrue.  Commitment to me is sacred.  I flew into a defense mode proclaiming my love to her.  Was what I said untrue?  Not at the time.  Divorce was still not an option.  Now that it was out there, though, I was not ready to acknowledge its reality.  She was ... up to a point.  Even though she was the one asking for the divorce, she did not ask me to leave or was she prepared to leave herself.  Where was this to lead us?  Neither one of us knew.  Nor were we prepared for what was to come next.