Playing Fair and Being Kind

I have a major day arriving soon. A major day. Not the major day, just a major day. My 80^th birthday is February 19^th. I am entering my ninth decade. I’m not sure how to feel or think about this. I am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I am going to be eighty years old. What happened to fifteen and sixteen for crying out loud? I don’t know!

Let’s go decade by decade and I will list the most memorable accomplishment for each. I hope this works to be a little bit entertaining. Hang in.

0 to 10

I think kissing Nancy Donlan on a daily basis when I was about four years old. When I saw her outside playing on the street I would run as fast as I could down the long stairway from our triple decker on Juliet Street in Dorchester, streak up the street to where she was playing jump-rope or some other game with the other kids, and grasp her by the shoulders and kiss her on the cheek. It was an event that made everyone on the street stop everything. Nancy would see me coming like a bullet. Someone would yell, “There she is, Georgie!”. She would see me and stand still with eyes wide with a tolerant expression. Nancy didn’t grow up fully with us. She became a nun. That was the last I ever knew of her. I hope you are o.k., Nancy. Thanks for putting up with me.
Maybe another event that I remember was the day I mastered the art of wearing a belt for the first time. I was about six years old and I’d gotten my first belt. Before this I had been wearing suspenders or straps over my shoulders. This day I was wearing a belt. I decided to take it off and see if I could put it back together by myself. I couldn’t. I ended up field-stripping it. I had it all apart. The buckle was in one hand and the leather strap in the other. I got it back together in some fashion but not the way it was intended to be. That is all for this decade. I meant to keep it to one item but forgive me for violating the protocol.

 

11 to 20

I was made leader of a Boy Scout patrol early on in this decade. There was a half dozen of us boys who made up a small patrol in the local troop at our church in Dorchester. We were eager and felt like the misfits more or less even though we were not. The troop was growing and we were forming an additional new patrol. What to name ourselves, was one of our first tasks. Every patrol had a name. Something cool. Usually kind of macho or wild animal related. We had no success in coming up with a good name for ourselves. We were out camping in Dedham. Probably hard to believe in this day and age. Back in the forties Dedham was the sticks. We kept after each other to invent a good name for our patrol. No luck. We slept in our tents which were in a circle around our campfire. During the night I needed to crawl out to piss. It was dark and quiet outside the tent as I peeked around and out from under the tent fly. I got out of the sleeping bag and crept out far enough to stand erect. I was standing in the campfire which we had covered with sandy loam. The ground was very, very, very hot!!! I yelped and hopped out of the fire circle and sat down to examine my right foot. People woke up and came out in response to my howling. I needed first aid (good thing we were Boy Scouts!). The scout master wrapped my foot in gauze and some sort of topical ointment. You can guess the name of the patrol thereafter. We became the “Hotfoot” patrol. The insignia was a cartoon foot with flames shooting up from it. Success!

Almost a full year into the Navy.
19 Years old.

21 to 30

O.K. More serious events come into view now. I got married. Fathered three children; Scot, Mark, and Gwen. Reenlisted in the Navy. What a jump from first belt and boy scouts, eh? I will restrict the area of accomplishment outside of marriage and children. I will have to choose that this decade saw me lose the low self-esteem I carried from childhood. I stopped stuttering. I proved to myself that I could learn adult subjects. I did well in the Navy. I gained so much self-confidence from being on board submarines with really cool guys. I gained self-respect and I learned how to do many things that escaped me in high school. Sine, cosine, and tangent meant something now. Boyle’s Laws meant something now. This period was the most educational for me. I took nearly every correspondence course the Navy had to offer. In addition to all the other schools I attended in this time frame I got credit for nearly thirty courses as well. I was on a steep learning curve and I loved every minute. I was rewarded for all this work by being selected for Warrant Officer a month after being selected for Chief Petty Officer. I was twenty eight years old.

 

31 to 40

My first notion that I was no longer a boy. I was grown and made to make responsible decisions. I was “over 30”. Do you remember that phrase: Don’t trust anyone over 30? I came into that awareness when I was thirty-one. It was 1970. The Vietnam War was raging and pissing people off. I had stayed above the fray for most of the war because I was no where near it. My generation was ten years older than the guys going to war in that place. Kent State was arriving at the place where tragedy would occur. I was drinking heavily. Smoking heavily. I was on the road to self-destruction. I was old, lost, unaware, frightened, suffering existential angst. During these years, 1970-1979, I became a threat to people. I became mean, with guilt. I started to work on my body to stave off the impending aging. I ran long distances daily, took up Judo, lifted weights, and began to regret my life. I was very uncomfortable with myself. I recall not being able to look myself in the eye while shaving. I avoided my own eyes for this whole period. I was running away every day of my life. It was during this period that I left my wife and children. It was later in this period that I found AA and got sober. I was sober but still unhappy. I was not accepting anyone as ‘good’ and I hated myself. It was bad. It was during this period that I learned how to mask my fears and look good while feeling ugly and full of dread. I was saying all of the right things but totally not internalizing any of them. I was steadily coming apart.

41 to 50

This decade, phase, could be best described as ‘the lost decade’. I was on automatic. I may have been functioning but I was still pretending, faking it. My spoken words were clever and wonderful but the internalization was still pretty slow or non-existent. Let’s see; this would have been during the years 1980 to 1989. I had just left the Navy after 23 years of service. I lived in Boston and got a good job as clinical director of a large half-way house for alcoholics. I was beginning to mellow a bit. Being in the service of men less fortunate than myself helped immensely. My Navy training in counseling and human services administration paid off well. I was successful in this endeavor. I felt the tide was turning in regard to how I saw myself and my place in the universe. There were moments when I was falling into the lonely place and not liking myself and I would seek lovers to feel better. My success at getting by through using women hurt me. I didn’t know what was happening. I was just following instinctual trends. It was a mixed decade of continued angst and gaining a sense of self. I met my second wife and made a trip to Mexico for a month or so and fell in love with that country. I suffered major violent experiences that will not be discussed here and now. I lost my mind and also gained parts of it that were misplaced in other years. I believe I became more comfortable with my mortality during this period. I suffered a bout of PTSD in the middle of this decade which remained with me for a long time. I moved (escaped) with my new wife to Maine and bought a small house in 1987.

51 to 60

Finally beginning to grow up. I divorced my second wife and became closer with Sam, our child. I was living in Maine, started a new career of wooden boat building. I bought a house on a small connected island in Boothbay. I was living alone with intermittent lovers who could not satisfy my loneliness. I may be wrong in saying that. I believe now that my lovers were interfering with my privacy. I came to the conclusion that I was not lonely as much as I was becoming independent and private. I needed to be alone. People overwhelmed me. That is with the exception of Sam. I discovered Sam was the first person that I could say unequivocally that I loved. This was a major insight. Both enlightening and sad, I must say. The only person whom I loved. How could that be. It was true. Sam and I spent a lot of time together. He was little and I was big. We played “Fred and Ted”. I read him books and played on the floor We had many pets all at once. It was a period of reflection for me while I was enjoying life in a way I had never experienced. I was healthy and vigorous during this period. I began training to run long distance. I was working to realize my goal of running a marathon. I built garden beds. I remodeled the little house. And I had more temporary lovers, of course. This time-frame was in the years of 1991 to 2000. Sam was nine years old at the end of this decade. I was still active and unable to comprehend how far along I was getting in life. My age in years did not fit my life-style. I looked young and healthy and I was coming around to self-realization very slowly.

61 to 70

I was beginning to accept my mortality during this decade. I was comfortable with ageing although I was resisting the notion of growing ‘old’. ‘Old’ did not seem what I was becoming. Not yet. Let’s see. What could have been my major accomplishment during this phase? It may have been my discovery of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). I found a small group of folks in the Portland area who were older and active in conducting prison workshops which occurred on weekends. These workshops helped the incarcerated men and women learn about conflict resolution and more. It was the best modality I’d ever been exposed to in my life. I was an experienced counselor with a ton of work under my belt dealing with men. I’d been at this type of assistance since 1971, mid-way through my Navy career. The program fit my style and the activity spoke to me as none other before it. I became a poster-child of sorts for AVP. Look it up here if you like: www.avpusa.org.

Getting on in years.

71 to 80

My most recent decade, 2010 to 2019. My youngest son turned 19 years old. He wanted to join the Army. I was devastated with the news. I was now a peace activist and a member of Veterans for Peace, (VFP). I was fully engaged with liberal activism. I was outspoken against war, poverty, homelessness, and all those cultural mores our country hangs onto that allow less fortunate people to fall through the cracks. I held my tongue about the enlistment. My son washed out of bootcamp due to a medical issue much to my relief, and his. He’d seen enough Army in the short time he was in bootcamp to last him a long time. I have made a solid connection with the Maine Department of Corrections. I have an impact on the incarcerated men in Maine State Prison. I have made many good friends across the country via road trips the last 6 years. I am happy with my life. I have wonderful, bright people with whom I cam connected emotionally. I helped start a men’s group in our little town that is solid and great to be a part of. During this decade I’ve had a heart attack and two bouts with pulmonary embolism. I have learned to live with these. I believe I have arrived. Let the good times roll.

G. M. Goodwin
18 February 2019