the family afterwards...

the chapter in the big book that i probably dislike the most is called "the family afterward." i can never relate to bill's halcyon prescriptions, and his generalizations, loading with dated gender views, make me roll my eyes every time they come up in a meeting. "When boy meets girl on AA campus," and all that bullshit. it's really aimed at the dude who already has a family, who terrorized his wife and children with his drinking, and is now trying to make good. There's not much about dudes like myself, who get sober and then find a family.

at one of my meetings there's a guy named jim, a retiree, who's serene and content, in contrast to his old ways. his family used to call him old faithful because he went off like a geyser every fifteen minutes--rage. now he's chill. he's been taking the AA soma for long enough or something, but the main key, it seems, to his serenity is "life without the wife."

sometimes i get jealous. how easy it would be to be single. there'd be only myself to worry about and squabble with. i wouldn't have to justify the ways that i spend my money. i wouldn't have to share my ipods. no one would tell me to clean the car or take out the trash (not that my wife really tells me to do either). i'd have more time to write.

then i think of something another guy from that meeting once said, about being irritable and discontent: "The wife gives you a little bit of shit, and next thing you're thinking why the hell did I ever get married!"

it's not the wife, though. she's fairly consistent. it's me. my spiritual condition. that's what changes. when i'm off the beam, i'm always trying to pin it on someone else, but that's not fair to any of those people: my wife and son especially, but also my co-workers, my students, my friends, and anyone else who happens to cross my path.

i need to stay grateful for marriage, and for my wife and son. they both bring tremendous happiness to my life, despite whatever problems come up. there's physical comfort as well as emotional, there's joy and pride (the good kind) in watching them grow--she as she adjusts to life in the US; he as he learns to read or ski or play soccer. today we're going on a family bike ride along the Cape Cod Canal, and it won't be anything like the mountain biking adventure i took last weekend with a friend, but it will be beautiful nonetheless, and not just because of the scenery.

crazy thinking is romanticizing the single life, thinking i'd be better off on my own. right thinking is that i have a loving wife and son, and i'm so much happier now than i was in the dark years of single living, it's like comparing sobriety with the chasm of alcoholic blackness.

the thought process is the same: my disease talks to me, tries to con me with nostalgia, badger me with the "fuck-its." nostalgia is straight evil, like Cuervo Gold. shoot that bitch down, and i'm done. one shot of nostalgia, and my entire spiritual balance falls off. not only does it cause me to live in the past--always dangerous--it romanticizes and lies about what life was like. nostalgia conveniently deletes the unpleasantness of whatever picture it paints. it fails to recall moments like when Breakfast at Tiffany's triggered such deep sadness over my lonliness that i couldn't stop bawling for about forty minutes. when it shows its slideshows of my drinking past, it edits out the nights puking blood or the drunken cryfests with various girlfriends.

the "fuck-its" are even worse than nostalgia, though, because these impulses do take all the negatives into account. the "fuck-its" say, yeah, life was miserable single, life was miserable drunk, but FUCK-IT. fuck it all. fuck the progress you've made, the spiritual growth, the family, the sobriety. just go blast off into oblivion.

if not for meetings, i guarantee my sane mind would collapse under this dual-flanked assault. as Robert Hunter wrote for the Grateful Dead in "The Wheel": "If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will."