Posted by: Dylan Stafford | October 27, 2010

India 2010

Last month I went to India for the first time, sixteen days from start to finish—the longest I’ve ever been away from my wife Marisa—the longest time apart from our three year old son Jackson. My gut literally hurt when I waved good-bye to him through the daycare window the morning of my departure, knowing I wouldn’t hug him for over two weeks.

He was fine. “Bye-Daddy-Going-To-India,” rolled off his tongue in one long word. I blew him kisses and left with wet eyes.

India was a business trip for my job at UCLA. As admissions director for the part-time MBA program, I accompanied one professor, 24 MBA students, two spouses and one alumnus for a week-long, study-abroad experience—Doing Business in India. I stayed a second week and visited an ashram in southern India—my very own Eat, Pray, Love experience.

I wasn’t ready for India, wasn’t braced for the enormity of it. I’d gotten plane tickets and a visa, Typhoid and Hepatitis vaccinations, but all the intercultural preparation I’d imagined hadn’t happened. The only preparation turned out to be living in Mexico City back in 1992, after college when I went to live with a Mexican family to learn Spanish.

Back when I had landed in Mexico City, my former Texas A&M roommate Humberto had greeted me at the airport. He was working for Merck and he tossed my suitcase into the back of his company pickup truck. We climbed inside and he fired up a Marlboro red—Mexicans at that time never smoking Marlboro lights—and handed me one too. My rule of thumb was only to smoke when I drank, or when offered.

“Are you ready,” Humberto asked me with his accent and five o’clock shadow, exhaling a huge plume of smoke and looking very gangster in his black leather jacket, “for driving in Mexico?”

“What choice do I have?” I replied.

“That’s right! No choice gringo. Your life is in my hands.” He laughed.

“There are only two rules for driving in Mexico City. The first rule is that there are no rules.” He smiled. “The second rule is that the right of way goes to the bravest.” With that introduction to driving etiquette in the world’s biggest city, Humberto proceeded to make an illegal u-turn, jump a curb and exit the airport.

India would feel a lot like Mexico: incredible poverty and extreme wealth, street life and open-air shops, spicy food and smiling people. And at the same time, India would prove to be very different.

Los Angeles to India took two flights: sixteen hours, LAX to Dubai, and then four hours, Dubai to Mumbai. I left Thursday afternoon at 4:00pm, and arrived 23 hours later, Saturday morning about 3:30am local time.

My seatback television showed me our flight path and the history of US foreign policy in my lifetime. We flew over our Cold War nemesis Russia, and continued to our current war on terrorism and other fears as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq could be seen on my monitor. I also watched The Men Who Stare at Goats, Invictus, and most of a season of Dexter.

We landed in Dubai International Airport and I had three hours between flights to experience the Mall of the Middle East. The hyper-clean, shiny glass and steel world of the airport made me think of Logan’s Run, that movie from the 1970s about a futuristic world where no one lives beyond the age of 30. Pilgrims were directed with signage for Prayer Rooms, while the Starbucks marquee announced caffeine in English and Arabic. I ordered my first-ever Pinkberry, an over-sweet frozen yogurt, but still a taste of home.

I made a brief phone call to my wife Marisa and boarded my second plane. It was the Friday night commuter flight, 10:30pm Dubai-time, full of Indian guest-workers going home. The meal was 100% Indian, the first masala moment of many coming my way.

Four hours later the plane flew low on a rainy night in Mumbai. Out my window, I saw random streets ablaze with what appeared to be Christmas lights. There were people in those streets, not a lot, but certainly more than I would expect in the middle of the night. I learned the next day that we arrived during the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi, the four-armed god with the head of an elephant and body of a person.

Instead of Humberto greeting me in the airport, there was a man with a small sign with my name on it, the first time I’d ever been greeted at an airport by someone with my name on a sign. I was happy to see him, tired as I was at 3:30am local time. We crawled into our taxi and drove an hour south to our hotel.

All along the route I saw pickup trucks carrying statues of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god. In some of the side streets I could see the Christmas-light adorned ally-ways, all in honor of this festival of Ganesha. Our driver told us how the ceremony differed by household, but that it was usually from 3 to 10 days, and the culmination was placing the statues in water.

At the hotel, already in my room was Paraag Lal, the UCLA alumnus on the trip, and my friend for eight years from when I started this job in 2002. Paraag’s flight arrived only a few hours earlier than mine and he was still awake. We talked and caught up and he loaned me an electricity adaptor to charge my cell phone.

My first skype video call to my wife and son was from a hotel room in Mumbai back to our home in Los Angeles. My laptop video camera sent my image to my wife and son, while Mommy’s laptop did the same and showed them to me.

This was also my son’s first video call and it was more exciting to him than we’d anticipated. Seeing his own face reflecting back to him on the laptop screen, he started to move back and forth, like a monkey at a mirror. Pretty quickly he started sounding like a monkey too, his three year old speech devolving into hoots and shrieks and giggles.

The internet signal on my end wasn’t too strong so after about 30 seconds the video image froze, leaving me to look at a still snap-shot of my red-headed monkey child, tilting to the right, mid-monkey-move as he contorted on my wife’s lap.

We finished the laptop phone call and I reflected on the world we live in. Instead of waiting a week for a postcard from India, my wife and son had already received a cell phone call from the Dubai airport/mega-mall and now my son had seen my face live on a laptop video call. He’s only three and a half years old, and this is the world he’s inheriting. I wonder what technology will be like when he is a father some day.

The excitement of arriving finally wore off and I could go to sleep about 7:00 am local time, 36 hours with only a few cat naps. Paraag had told me my typing and phone-calling wouldn’t bother him and he had slept though my emailing/facebooking/skyping.

There was a knock on the door about 10:00 am that I barely noticed. Paraag had gotten out of his bed at the knocking, to find someone offering apples. Our actual wake-up was a 4:00 pm phone call from a work colleague, asking if we’d like to join the planning team for dinner that evening. I don’t know how much longer I would have slept, but this was long enough to ensure that

<to be continued. last writing 10-28>

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Posted by: Dylan Stafford | March 15, 2010

dead sober and laughing

Now I know how I want to die.

Obviously painlessly–and in my sleep at the age of 112–but more importantly, when I die I want people to be laughing at my funeral. I want to watch from the great beyond, and listen to the sounds of giggles and laughter as family and friends come together at my memorial. I haven’t thought too much about my own demise, but last Saturday, I attended a funeral that not only got me thinking, it got me excited–I’ve always loved planning parties.

Saturday was my first sober funeral. Most funerals are somber, but this one was sober, and taking the “m” out of somber creates a different animal entirely. This was a celebration of the life of a friend I made in the rooms of recovery, Joseph*, and the service was a delicious mixture of love, laughter and respect, with just the right dash of irreverence. 

Marisa and I got up early Saturday to get a the jump on the morning. We had a trifecta of activities–a birthday party, a funeral and work–and we needed to be out of the house by 9:20 a.m. with our son Jackson dressed, fed and ready to go. We live in Culver City, on the westside of Los Angeles, and the birthday party was at a kid’s room over the hill in “the Valley”, in Sherman Oaks.

Jackson is almost-three-years old and he doesn’t like to get dressed anymore. He’s figured out that when the pajamas come off, daytime clothes go on and it’s time to leave the house and face the big, bad world. Our precious little angel is fully into the “No” and “I don’t want to” stage, and getting him dressed has gone from quality time together to being a multi-room, high-speed chase with a wrestling match at the end.

Since I would not have time to change clothes between the birthday party and the funeral, I dressed in my dark suit with a conservative tie. I had to be even more persuasive with Jackson to get him dressed, as I couldn’t wrestle his wiggly body like normal.

“Jackson, we’re going to go to a party,” I said in my high-pitched, this-will-be-fun voice. “It’s Elena’s birthday. All your friends are going to be there. There’s going to be cake!”

“No. I don’t wanna goooooo.” He stood there looking at me with his wrinkled nose.

“Jackson, you can’t go to the party wearing your nighttime clothes.”

It was 9:00 already. He’d been awake an hour and his nighttime diaper was hanging between his legs, looking like a water balloon about to burst.

“I don’t want to wear my daytime clothes. I want to go like this.”

Just under three years old, his sentences are coming out coherent and determined. He may or may not ever be athletic, but he’s gotten verbosity and stubbornness from both of his loving parents.

We continued this debate from room to room as I berated myself in my head for putting on my fancy clothes before I got him dressed. This could have all been done faster if I’d just turned getting dressed into a game of “tickle monster,” I thought. 

Jackson finally relented and I got him ready at about the same time Marisa finished her hair. We loaded into two cars, since Marisa and Jackson would remain at the party while I went to the funeral and then to work. I checked that we had the address and we headed to the valley.

Los Angeles has gotten a lot of rain this winter and from the overpass of the 10 curving into the 405 I could see the distant mountain peaks in the back range covered with snow–these beautiful mountains are on LA postcards, but in regular life we see them rarely. Only on calm weekends, or after lots of rain, are they visible. It makes them that much more striking because of their infrequent sightings. They’ve been there all along? I always find myself thinking.

In the car, Jackson and I were playing a game where we whispered everything. Between the front seat and back seat we whispered at each other a disjointed game of “I spy.” Marisa followed in her car behind us.

Traffic was light, the view was fantastic and for 20 minutes I could almost imagine that it was worth the crazy cost of living to live here in Los Angeles. We crested the Sepulveda pass and the valley spread out before us, itself magnificent with its own back ranges of mountains similarly shining with snow.

We exited Ventura Boulevard and found the double-decker strip mall and the birthday party. We were only about 10 minutes late and some of Jackson’s buddies from school were already arrived, plus the birthday girl herself, Elena.

We shook hands all around and met some parents we didn’t know. Elena’s grandparents were present and I met them for the first time. The kids were going ape-crazy already as the room was decked out with toys. The bouncy room was blown up and waiting, the rock wall already had a spider-child climbing it. One of Jackson’s friend’s older brothers scampered up and rang the red bell at the top.

Almost as soon as I’d arrived, it was time for me to leave. I made my apologies to Elena’s mom and dad, kissed Marisa and explained to Jackson that “Daddy has to go to a meeting.” Jackson was rolling around in a tub of those plastic balls with three other friends and he barely noticed me go.

Jumping back in my car to return to Santa Monica for the funeral, the traffic had already started to slow–just an hour later but in LA an hour makes such a difference. The funeral was scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m., and it soon became clear I would be late. Damn it. I hate being late. This is the first funeral I’ve attended for a fellow sober person, and I really had the intention of making everything fit.

One of the many lessons I’ve learned in sobriety is the difference between my intentions and my actions. When I drank, I always had good intentions, but my actions usually fell short. I’ve learned slowly that nobody cares about my intentions; it’s my actions that get measured. My intention had been that everything was going to fit time-wise, but I was going to be late.

I found a metered street spot on Wilshire, plugged in quarters and jumped out to go find the church. Only a few blocks away, the Pacific shimmered in the distance. Again, the fleeting thought crossed my mind that maybe the beauty of the ocean is worth all the hassles of living is such a big city.

4th and Wilshire was all I had for an address and standing by the parking meter I could see no church, only office buildings and shops. A flamboyant homeless woman was ahead of me and I thought about asking her for directions. She looked like “Girls just want to have fun” Cindy Lauper, with bright neon accents and ribbons bedecking her body. Santa Monica has homeless people everywhere; a progressive city offers support to many.

My potential helper floated off in another direction, and as I stood at the corner I remembered where the church was. I crossed with the light and found it, nestled in between a Thai food restaurant and a parking garage. I slipped in the back, only 15 minutes late, and took a seat in the outer lobby, the “crying section”, next to another friend from the rooms of recovery.

The minister was giving his sermon and we listened to his voice through a speaker in the ceiling. I’d missed the opening hymns, but that was all.

The bulletin was 10 pages total, including the back page with a photo of our friend Joseph tandem sky-diving. Most pages were filled with hymns and prayers. Directly after the minister’s sermon there was one word, Remembrances, and this was what was coming up next.

The first speaker came to the microphone.

“Good morning my name is Bill Jones*. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to do this. My name is Bill and I’m an alcoholic.” There was a ripple of laughter of recognition through the room.

Recovery and 12 Step programs have a tradition of anonymity; Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

The tradition dates back to the 30s and 40s, to the lessons the founders learned about what it takes to make sobriety safe and available to the newcomer. There has to be enough safety for people to walk through the doors of recovery, and anonymity helps provide that safety. The tradition is powerful and we respect it, but at a funeral for someone who was in recovery it is kind of impossible not to “let the cat out of the bag.”

The first eulogy was loving and the laughter flowed freely. Second and third was a family member and then another friend, followed by the fourth and final tribute.

The last eulogist was also a friend from recovery and he spoke to how Joseph had utilized the 12 Step program to deal with a terminal case of cancer. In the last year, Joseph had learned that his time was coming down to days or weeks and his body was weakening rapidly. In much pain, he still welcomed a parade of visitors through his hospital room in his last weeks.

Joseph had been a successful man and even in his hospital days, he continued to carry out his affairs. On a conference call from his hospital room, his chemo bag had drained its toxic cocktail fully through the IV and then emitted a beeping noise designed to tell the nurses it was empty.

“What’s that beeping noise?” came a question from someone on the conference call who didn’t realize where Joseph was.

“Oh, I think that is a truck backing up in the alley,” said Joseph. His situation was what it was. He wasn’t looking for sympathy.

Joseph dealt with death and pain with grace and dignity. Only a month ago, I had heard him sharing in meetings and he had always had a lighthearted, yet heartfelt appreciation for the gifts of sobriety. I only knew him from meetings and I had no idea how ill his body was. After his death, I heard people in meetings give examples of lessons he had gratefully “paid forward” to them.

The favorite quote he gifted my life with was, “I’m just one thought away from having a great life.” I heard him say it two or three times the last year and it always made me chuckle, and I always benefitted from it days after the meeting, when, wrapped around the axle by some annoyance, it would float across my mind, “Dylan, you’re just one thought away from having a great life.”

The funeral had tears–death takes a physical body away and its warmth shines on us no more. But the funeral had more laughter than tears.

Laughter is a gift that grows as you use it. Laughter is contagious. It spreads through people, even from beyond the grave. In sobriety we talk about one day at a time, about being here now, in the present. The future hasn’t happened and the past is past; all we have is now and it is a gift and that’s why we call it the present. A corollary quote I love is One foot in the past and one foot in the future means you’re in a perfect position to piss all over the present.

Joseph, dealing with cancer taking his body, didn’t have time to live in the past or the future. His every day was precious. He brought laughter and shared the gift of sobriety to the end.

I hope I make it to 112 and that I die in my sleep. But no matter how many years or days I have left, I want to go out laughing. Thank you Joseph for your dignity and your example–thank you for how you lived your life. Thank you for showing me how beautiful life can be, all the way to the end.

*Not their real names.

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Posted by: Dylan Stafford | March 6, 2010

9 Years and 91 Seconds

The Aggie Ring–the class ring at Texas A&M University–is a mighty work of art, a huge hunk of gleaming gold on your finger that proudly identifies you from across the room, or across the Grand Canyon. Using Google Earth, most Aggie Rings can now be seen from space on sunny days. My wife considers it big, clunky and way too large for a normal ring, but she’s from New Jersey so we just agree to disagree.

When I was an exchange student in Spain I had people honestly ask me, “Is that an NBA championship ring?” In America I never get confused for an NBA athlete, but in Europe, the glistening of my Aggie Ring made them assume I had just won the title.

The ring is solid gold, with a large oval crest befitting Texas, where everything is bigger. A&M was an all-male, all-military school until 1963, and the ring is covered with military details: a canon, sword and rifle, and lots of stars. Since every Aggie Ring is the same, it is easy to spot a fellow former student. As an underclassman, the hype and anticipation of the ring builds slowly as class credits accrue. At the end of junior year, the magic threshold of 75% of the degree complete means it is finally time to order the ring. A trek across campus to the Alumni center leads to verification of eligibility, then measurement, then the purchase and the wait.

On the day that the rings arrive, the excitement is a Christmas + Birthday + First Date cocktail that perfumes the air on campus. I still have the box that held my Aggie Ring and I still remember sliding it on my finger the first time. The ring is worn with the class year facing inwards until graduation, and then turned around and show the world the class year.

An optional step is to christen the ring, or as we say it in the south dunk your ring. This requires going to the Dixie Chicken, the watering hole on the north side of campus with the dusty deer heads on the walls and the beer-sticky floors, and dropping the ring in a 60 ounce pitcher of beer. With friends circled around chanting encouragement, proud Aggies chug a pitcher and retrieve their new ring. The class year, I was the class of 1991, determines the number of seconds available to gulp your pitcher. I had 91 seconds, but I don’t know what the students did when 2000 rolled around–100 seconds or 10? Knowing Aggies and beer, I’m confident they thought of a solution. 

I raised my 60 ounce goblet with both hands and took a very big drink. One gulp, two gulps, three gulps and more. As long as I kept breathing through my nose and didn’t cough, I could do it. I poured the entire contents into my gullet and at the very end, as the pitcher first leveled off and then raised, the cold gold prize slid down the side of the glass and clunked against my teeth. I grabbed the ring with my lips, setting down my pitcher and waving my ring around in the air proudly, like I’d just won the NBA title.

Back in my adult life in California, I often take off my ring during the day when I am typing. It is big enough that it rattles around on my finger, and when I have a full day at the keyboard it gets annoying and therefore I’ll take it off and set it to the side. At rock concert, or anywhere I am clapping a lot, I’ll drop the ring in my pocket because it’s so big it will bruise my other hand when I clap too much.

Last November, almost 6 months ago, I couldn’t find my ring. It wasn’t in any of the normal spots where it should have been, where I keep my keys, the bathroom, the bedroom. I checked the pockets of all my pants in the closet. I retraced my steps. I assumed it would be sitting on my desk at work waiting the next day. But it wasn’t in any of those places. I kept looking and re-looking and began to get discouraged. I asked my wife if she’d seen it. I asked my colleagues at work and filled out a “lost and found” report. Nothing. Weeks became a month, and 2009 became 2010, and it dawned on my that I’d lost my ring.

One of my best friends at Texas A&M, Jeff, is the son of an Aggie father. Ronnie was class of 1959 and he was an airline pilot for American Airlines. While on a trip overseas, his Aggie Ring got stolen from a locker in Spain. He was sentimental for the original with all of its nicks and scratches from over 30 years of wear and tear, but he dealt with the loss with grace and dignity.

Jeff’s sister Sarah was two years ahead of us in school.  After her junior year, Sarah ordered both her ring and her dad’s replacement ring at the same time. She bought her dad’s ring and he bought his daughter’s ring and they got them together. Ronnie’s shiny new ring looked out of place on his weathered hand, but his smile fit perfectly.

Life is busy so I didn’t stop everything and have a funeral for my missing jewelry, but it crossed my mind often that something was lost. I kept re-looking in places I’d checked already, hoping somehow to have overlooked it. I finally had the thought about a month ago, “Humm, I wonder what the phone number is to call and order a replacement ring.” That was when I realized I had accepted the ring was gone.

Ronnie lost his ring after 30 years and I had lost mine after 20. My dad tells me that my grandfather had a saying, Take care of things while you have them, but once they’re gone, don’t worry about them any more.

This week I’m celebrating 9 years of sobriety, or slowbriety as I like to call it. My life is different now than 20 years ago in college when I dunked my Aggie Ring and whooped it up wearing a clown’s face of wet beer around my mouth. Monday morning, I was driving to work with my 34 month old son Jackson behind me in his carseat.

“Daddy I’m hungry. I want peanuts.”

I survive Los Angeles traffic by keeping water and snacks in the car. Lately, I have been buying the 32 ounce glass jars of peanuts for my commute on the 405. I’ll grab a handful and reach backwards with my right hand, while my left hand, and eyes, stay focused forward on driving. I’ll feel Jackson’s little fingers gently scooping away all of the contents of my palm, the way a kitten or puppy will take food from your hand. Sometimes he eats everything, and sometimes cereal, peanuts or trail mix end up in every nook and corner and cover the floor. He always asks for more, but when I’m driving I can’t tell if he’s eating or playing.

My Toyota Rav 4 had been in the repair shop for a week, not the “unwanted acceleration recall” but for a banged up bumper. I’d cleaned out the car before I dropped it off with the mechanic.

“Jackson, I don’t think I have any peanuts, but I’ll check.” I opened the console between the seats. The 32 ounce jar of peanuts was gone, as was the navigation device, the CDs and the granola bars which normally are stored there. The console was almost empty, but something caught my eye on the bottom, something gold and adorned with military insignia.

Reaching in and pulling out my long lost ring, not believing it as I slid it back onto my finger, my brain rapid-fired thoughts. How had I not looked here? Why had I ever put it here anyway? I never put it here, did I? Why didn’t somebody at the repair shop find it and take it? The thoughts came quickly but needlessly. I didn’t need answers to any of those questions. The weight of my too-big ring back on my finger was all I needed to know.

I called my wife Marisa. “Happy Birthday to me! Guess what I found?”

Birthdays in sobriety are a big deal. Birthdays show newcomers that it works if you work it, that there is a good life available without drinking. My first sponsor told me to not just celebrate on my actual birthday, but to celebrate for the whole week, to take time and to celebrate the miracle of the milestone, be it a week, a month, three months, a year or even multiple years. If I couldn’t stay sober, I couldn’t be a faithful husband. I wouldn’t be a consistent worker. I’d be a much more sporadic father. It’s a good thing to celebrate, another year.

Do I miss the conviviality and companionship of my drinking days? Only when I am waxing nostalgic. That chapter is closed. None of my friends are waiting for me at the Dixie Chicken. If I went there now, there’d be a new generation of kids. The floors would still be sticky, but I’d be an “Old Ag” as we like to call them.

I’m grateful for today. I’m grateful for the serenity that life offers now. It is all new behavior, unfolding and revealing itself in small, beautiful slices. My son is a gift. My wife is a gift. My life today is a gift.

I’m grateful for slowing down and experiencing more. Ronnie relaxed and ended up sharing his new ring with his daughter Sarah. Jackson got hungry and helped me find my ring. Those 91 seconds were exciting, but these 9 years are fulfilling. It’s good, being here now.

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