The Birthday Post.

Tell that to my arthritis, dude.

Today I turn 53 years old. I only mention this because it is perhaps one of the most insignificant birthday milestones a person can achieve. It's significant to me only in that - and I am NOT making this up - I never expected to live this long. Honestly, since the age of about 30, I've just been winging it.

See, the plan (such as it was, and if I'm honest, it was never really a plan; it was more like a movie scene I wrote in my own head and played over and over, ad nauseam) was to flame out in a blaze of glory while I was still young. I'm fairly certain I got this idea from Bad Company's song, "Shooting Star," at a time in my life when I saw absolutely no good reason to grow old. 

But then I had a kid. There's nothing quite like being responsible for a helpless human life to rearrange your brain on the idea of cashing out while your hair is still all one color. Suddenly, I wanted very much to grow old. Really old. Like, Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man old. (Spoiler Alert: if you understand that reference, you're old.) Also, I was not about to do to my daughter what my old man did to my sister and me (which, if you haven't already, you can read about here.) So that meant that blazing out to Bad Company was no longer an option. I had to figure some shit out.

Now I have a teenage daughter, and two teenage step-sons. Which means that I'm having to figure shit out on a minute-by-minute basis. Most days, it goes okay. And on the days it doesn't, well... Scotch.

Here are some other things I've figured out at the insignificant age of 53: for example, I have figured out how to arrange my fluid intake so that I don't have to get up three times a night to hose the porcelain. I've learned that, if a particular joint or muscle group in my body cries out for attention that I should listen. (And that there are grave consequences for ignoring those cries.) I am a much bigger fan of slippers than I ever thought I'd be. Certain shapes of ibuprofen will fit very nicely into your favorite PEZ dispenser. Jokes about adult diapers are less funny than they were ten years ago. It's a good idea to keep at least one pair of reading glasses in EVERY ROOM OF THE HOUSE. 

And finally, I've learned that we're measuring age all wrong. If you are past 40, your age should be determined by the number of times per day, on average, you walk into a specific room for a specific purpose, only to immediately forget why you went in there. 

So. Happy 5th Birthday to me.

Lar

Let's Set The Record Straight.

And don't make eye contact.

I am an introvert. I didn't always know that about myself, because for most of my life I was told (by other people) that I was something else. It took me a stupidly long time to stop letting other people tell me what I was, or what I was supposed to be. If you are funny, or have a natural tendency towards performance - whether it's acting, music, comedy, dance, etc. - the general consensus is that you are an extrovert. You are a person who likes an audience; who loves being the center of attention. After all, why else did you get on that stage, right? You are always on.

I should now like to state, forever and always, that this assumption is uninformed, unenlightened, ignorant bullshit. 

An introvert is, at heart, a person who enjoys being alone. And who, in truth, actually needs to be alone, and fairly regularly, in order to continue functioning as a member of society. An extrovert is simply a person who enjoys being around other people, and actually gets energized by all that interaction. My wife is that kind of person; I am decidedly not. I can kill whole evenings on the patio with a little whiskey (or a lot, if I'm being honest), some music, and nobody else at all. I don't just enjoy doing this; I need to do this. When I have gone too long being around lots of people, whether professionally or socially, and I don't get the chance to sneak off by myself and just be alone for a while, I will become an absolute bastard. Ask literally ANYBODY who knows me well. If you and I are ever at a gathering and it's been a couple of hours, and for whatever reason I simply cannot get away, or there is no place for me to slink off to and recharge, then in that situation there's no need for you to scan the room looking for the biggest asshole. It will always be me.

Now that I actually understand this about myself, I'm much less of an asshole these days. (There are some, no doubt, who will violently disagree with the previous statement.) If I am on a television or commercial set and we're at lunch, I don't bother trying to explain to anyone why I prefer to eat alone.  If you understand it, then we have something in common. If you don't, what you think about me is no longer my fucking problem. (And what kind of self-centeredness must you possess to think that my not wanting to sit next to you at lunch has anything at all to do with you?) 

Though some creatives are natural extroverts (and a good deal more are just straight-up attention whores), I'd be willing to wager that there are more of them like me than of the other stripe. They, too, need to occasionally be alone, and they will get cranky (or, in my case, at least theoretically homicidal) if anyone tries to intrude on that aloneness. This may be one reason I have, in my Middle Years, become fonder of writing as a means of creative expression. Most of my career has been about collaboration, and to a person like me collaboration is wonderful AND goddam exhausting at the same time. When I write, though, it's just my thoughts and me. (Don't get me wrong. That can also be goddam exhausting. And more than a little frightening.) I find I enjoy creative solitude more and more.

Or maybe I'm just turning into Groucho Marx: Don't look now, but there's one man too many in this room - and I think it's you."

Goodbye.

Brenda Patrick Cook. Mom. 1941-2019

Those of you who follow me on social media will already know that my mother passed away almost two weeks ago. This past Sunday we held a memorial service. Several of Mom’s old friends or relatives (they’re all old now, truth be told) turned up at a tiny church in New Waverly, Texas, run by a pastor whose attitudes toward modernity clearly have not changed since the Civil War. I confess that, while many of these kindly folks walked up and embraced me, telling me that I had not changed in looks since I was a boy (I thought religious people frowned upon falsehood?), I recognized almost none of them. I would invariably have to wait for them to give me some sort of contextual foothold (“I worked with your Momma at the Sheriff’s Office;” “I’m your Momma’s third cousin on the Patrick side.”), after which I would employ my skills as an actor of some minor repute, feigning shock and delight at our reunion, albeit under such sad circumstances. The truth is, almost all of them were strangers to me. The other truth is, I adored every single one of them for their willingness to grieve with me at the loss of my mom.

I was – no great surprise here – asked by my siblings and my step-father to deliver the eulogy. I wrote a first draft, in which I said some things that, while honest, upon reflection had no place in a eulogy. And I did manage to refrain from my customary saltiness with the language – which is to say I refrained from uttering the word “fuck” at my mom’s memorial service. But the real surprise was my sister, Larenda. At the last minute she decided that she also needed to say some things about Mom. She was moving, and funny, and sweet, and I daresay she could make a go of it as a public speaker, if her current career suddenly went away. And had that been the end of it – had we been allowed to deliver our heartfelt words about our mother to an audience of people who knew her well, and loved her – I think it would have been about as honorable and genuine a send-off as one could hope to give.

But the other fucking shoe had to drop.

Remember that pastor I mentioned? This pompous old geezer was as easy to read as a Stephen King novel, and far less interesting. When he finally began his remarks, two things became immediately apparent, hopefully not just to me: 1) he didn’t know my mom at all, and 2) he spent twenty minutes trying to out-speak my sister and me. As if we were at an oratory competition, instead of grieving my dead mother. Whereas Larenda and I had spent a little time telling stories about Mom, stories that give her life still, this obtuse windbag launched immediately into a theme that could be best summed up by an illiterate three year-old: heaven is good. Hell is bad. As he wandered back and forth across the tiny platform, making the most puerile arguments in defense of his beliefs, mentioning my mother (when he remembered to do it at all) as though she were a concept instead of a loved one, my daughter had to literally tighten her grip on my arm, believing, probably not without justification, that I was either about to rise up and forcefully remind him to leave the fucking sermon at home, we’re here to talk about Mom, or just thump him. 

Eventually his barking ended, heads were bowed, a prayer was offered, and we were dismissed. I found I didn’t want to run straight out of the place, as I thought I might, but really wanted to have just a few moments with each of those strangers, those well-wishers and Mom’s fellow travelers. I wanted their stories about Mom. I would have preferred an old-fashioned Irish wake, where everyone present told their stories about Mom in turn, we all drank and sang songs for three days straight, and there would have been at least one fist fight. But those were my desires, not Mom’s, and Mom was nothing if not proper. Right up until the end, when she was bed-ridden, barley able to move or speak, she still insisted that her hair dresser of over twenty years come out to the house and perform her monthly artistry on Mom’s head. Bedridden and dying, yes. But she was damned if she was going to walk out of this life without a proper coif. A lady must have standards.

I did not get to see the final results of her hairdresser’s talent, because Mom was ever practical. Before she lost most of her mental faculties, she had requested, upon her death, to be cremated. She knew she was wasting away, and she didn’t want that emaciated carapace on display at her service. She wanted her friends and family to remember her in her prime, the woman who was unceasingly smiling (even in her most painful moments, a trait it took me decades to appreciate), with the easy laugh and the eye-twinkle; the woman who never met a stranger, the country girl who never tried to rid herself of her Texas twang. My sisters collected a mountain of photographs to display at her memorial, images I hadn’t seen in 30 years or longer. 

And there was mom. In those pictures, those little captured moments, were the stories that made the life that was Brenda Patrick Cook. I hadn’t planned on it, but it seems appropriate to close this one off with the last paragraph of the eulogy I wrote for her:

“You see? Stories. These are the things a life is made of. And this is why Mom is only gone in the most immediate, most inconsequential sense. Everyone here has stories about Mom. And as long as you have them, you have HER. Remember that. As long as you have them, you have HER.”