Yummy Summer of Turd

Audio version now available.

She looked at the back seat of my open-top, two-door Jeep Wrangler and asked, “How do I get in?” Her face lit up with delight as she watched her bandmate step on the back bumper, throw a leg over the roll bar, and plop into the seat next to hers. “You mean I can just climb in? Ooh fun!”

My youngest kid’s high school band played at halftime of the Colorado State University football game Saturday night. Just before the performance, my son texted asking if we could take a couple of other kids home when the bus got back to Denver around midnight? I didn’t recognize one of the names, so I asked for cross streets to gauge against my feelings of hospitality. I’m a nice guy, but I’m not building a resume for sainthood. And I follow the Herm Edward’s doctrine that nothing good ever happens after midnight. She lived close, so I “generously” agreed.

The girl I had never met talked the whole way home. She gave me different route options, she talked about how her elder brother played football with one of my older sons, and she reminded the other passengers that they had the first of many unexplainable, unrelated-to-any-holiday days off of school on Monday. “I love my house,” she exclaimed cheerfully as she bounced out of my Jeep. I planned to wait for her to find her key and unlock her deadbolt, but her mom met her at the front door with a smile and a hug. After midnight. A smile and a hug. Even though I was the parent driving the kid taxi, that warm interaction still made me feel like the grump of the story.

She could have walked home. She only lived a few blocks from the high school. I would not have been at all comfortable with her walking (please see Herm’s doctrine above), and it would have deprived us of the best four minutes of my Saturday. That girl was a delight. She was just happy to be alive and participating. If I had pulled over and asked them all to dig a ditch, I am quite certain she would have remarked positively about the angle of the spade blade or the richness of the soil. As much as I enjoyed her company, I was also jealous of her attitude. I don’t think her mother greeting her at the door, and the girl’s overall effervescence, were a coincidence. That girl has grown up in an emotionally safe family where she has learned the power of connection and love.

I’ve had a really great summer despite some turd sandwiches that have been served up in recent months. Our house has been for sale since April, and we’ve agonizingly ridden the tariff-stagnated market down for six months, price decrease after price decrease. Nothing inspires buyers to jump on a hot property like 163 days on Zillow. My mom is slowly progressing through dementia. My mother-in-law is suffering through more acute medical trauma that included a helicopter flight to a specializing hospital. And my wife’s most beloved and cherished cat, Gordon, has developed diabetes with the complication of urinating outside of the litter box. I guess Gordon really doesn’t want to move.

Three things come to mind when I recap my summer of 2025. The first is that I often say in my emotional maturity, improved self-confidence, and overall enlightenment that I now know how little there is that I actually control. With a summer like this, I better believe that slop I am dishing out. If I thought long-term sobriety and offering to drive teenagers home after midnight would result in some Pollyanna ease-of-existence shit, I was wrong. The uncontrollables don’t care if I’m a nice, sober guy or a selfish drunk. Either way, the uncontrollables keep on coming.

Second, I am aware of the degree to which I am recapping first-world problems. In fact, I mumbled, “whiney little bitch,” to myself while typing. At least I live in a society with a helicopter to fly my sick mother-in-law. And do you know what the treatment was for diabetic cats in 17th and 18th century Europe, Africa, and Asia? Cat stew according to the interwebs. So yes, I appreciate that my summer did not include any shovel use–for digging after-midnight roadside ditches following band performances or otherwise.

Third, I really have had a great summer in spite of the kicks to the jibblies. I think it has been great because of the people. My people. The girl who spent four minutes lighting up a dark night from the back seat of my Jeep really drove this realization, this awareness about connection, home for me.

We live a thousand miles from my mother-in-law. My wife, Sheri, is carrying a heavy burden of guilt. She has made trips to see her mother, and she has future trips planned. She is helping her sister with insurance and doctors and rehab facilities, but there is only so much she can do from across the country. But here’s the cool part. She looks to me for comfort, trusts me to talk through all the details rationally and with empathy, and genuinely cares what I think. She is sad, she is frightened, and she is mourning, but she is not alone.

I watch from afar (even further than my MIL) as my father cares for my mother. She has more good days than bad days, and they are learning how to cope as they go. My sister lives closer than I do, and she carries more of the support burden than me. I feel guilt. Guilt for the distance. Guilt that I am not doing as much as my father or even my sister. And guilt that with a progressive brain disease, there is nothing I can do to just make everything magically better. But in spite of the guilt, I feel comfort knowing my mother has my father, and that my sister is much better about staying in contact and shouldering the emotional load. I wish and pray for something different, but I am not alone. None of us are alone.

We have a calm and reassuring real estate agent who is willing to listen to me rant anytime I need a place to put my frustration. If our house was, “for sale by owner,” I would be firing myself for being an idiot on the daily. But with the support of professionals, and clear, logical, emotionally safe reasoning, Sheri and I are able to talk about the situation rationally. We even laugh about bad luck, bad timing, and our own bad decisions with the perspective that it really isn’t as big a deal as it feels in the moment. That perspective would be elusive without connection.

Cat insulin is readily available and affordable. This means we avoided the necessity of making a decision about some expensive cat surgery or treatment. Perhaps more dreadful than cat diseases is the practical fact that there is a fiscal limit that doesn’t apply to humans, and it is within the realm of possibility that my wife and I might draw the line at different dollar amounts. Cat insulin does not approach either of our lines, so we may never know. While I believe in the value of preparation, I can think of few ideas that are worse than having a thus-far unnecessary conversation about how much is too much when it comes to Gordon. I’d rather cut off some of my own toes as a sign of diabetic cat solidarity than have that conversation prematurely.

Instead, our conversations regarding the cat have been about feeding routines, insulin injection schedules, litter box placement, and how unfazed and unashamed Gordon seems to be about contracting a lifestyle-induced metabolic disease, and about pissing himself unapologetically. Sheri values my input in these conversations. Even when Gordon peed on a bed pillow in the middle of the night, Sheri trusted me to remain emotionally safe as we dragged sheets to the laundry and scrubbed the mattress in wordless acceptance of the unavoidable, uncontrollable disruption. If you are wondering why I tolerate all of this, even if it is affordable, my tolerance stems from my knowledge about what Sheri would decide if I gave her an ultimatum. So I scrub my hierarchically dominant feline’s urine in knowing silence.

As my son’s bandmate who spread after-midnight joy across Southeast Denver reminded me, I’ve had a pretty great summer because of safe connection. There were no glamorous vacations. I did not get a raise or hit the lottery, and our nation’s political dysfunction and division did nothing to add to my comfort and pleasure. When I contrast my navigation of the cow-plop minefield of this summer to a smooth and easy summer back when I was a drinker, the differences are stark and terrifying.

Alcohol is isolating.

In spite of the misclassification of alcohol as a social lubricant, booze actually makes me withdraw into myself–my own opinion, my own needs, my own selfishness. I might be interacting with others, but alcohol inhibits my awareness and compassion in a way that makes me prone to outbursts, encourages inconsiderate jokes, and gives me a hair-trigger for getting my resilience-free feelings hurt. In a word, alcohol makes me unsafe. Unsafe physically, unsafe rationally, and unsafe emotionally–for me and everyone around me.

It is impossible to feel the joy and confidence of connection simultaneously with the isolation of alcohol.

The deeper my awareness of the power of connection becomes, the more I wonder why I ever thought an isolating toxin like alcohol served a viable purpose in my life. Don’t get confused–independent, confident connection is not the same as glommy, pathetic attachment. If that sentence confuses you, ask yourself this question: Am I showing up as a stable, sober, asset to the people who love me, or am I an untrustable liability draining the life from the people who still feel enough guilt to be hanging around? As an alcoholic, I didn’t need my wife’s support to get sober. I needed to find resources for support, then lean on the resources and my own determination to be the man that my family deserved to lean on.

Being connection-worthy isn’t about sucking the oxygen from the room. Being connection-worthy is about injecting cat insulin and weed-whacking the grass around the perpetual for-sale sign in the front yard. Being connection-worthy is about doing both without being a whiney little bitch.

My mom was having a bad day recently. I can’t imagine the frustration associated with memory loss. I was startled but heartened to hear what she said about my dad. I have heard that the frustration of dementia can make its victims lash out, even at loved ones. But not my mom, not yet. In a very characteristic show of gratitude, even on a bad day, my mom said, “I have the best man to take care of me.” It occurred to me that even as the one on the receiving end of support and care, my mom is finding ways to show up, and to be deserving of receiving and giving safe emotional connection. What a blessing. What an example. What a gift for everyone who loves her.

Circumstances are unavoidable and uncontrollable. Safe emotional connection is what drains the power from unfortunate circumstances. I can’t think of anything about which to be more thankful than the awareness of the joy of connection–with my own mother, or a four-minute interaction with a stranger.

I guess there are exceptions to the Herm Edwards doctrine. I guess occasionally, if we are safe and aware, something good can happen after midnight.

If you are seeking self-confidence, awareness, and the enlightenment of connection after alcohol, please consider joining us in SHOUT Sobriety.

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P.S. My two middle boys, both students at CSU, went to watch and support their little brother playing at halftime of the football game Saturday night. Meanwhile, their oldest sibling, their sister, flew to visit her grandmother at her medical rehab facility for the weekend. All four of our kids sought the joy and love of connection with family. They initiated all of the interactions without encouragement from their very, very, very proud parents. Some people scoff when I talk about the impact of emotional safety on families. This past weekend, my family served as powerful evidence that emotional safety is no scoffing matter.

If we change the culture, we can change the world.