Tag: adventure

Posted on

Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me

David Bowie has been playing on life’s jukebox since the Labyrinth’s Fire Gang gave my eight-year-old self nightmares.

By high school I was hanging out with the drama kids, singing “Magic Dance.” I was also in Poetry Club writing my own versions of Nine Inch Nails’ songs, so when Bowie toured with NIN in ’95, I was there. “The Hearts Filthy Lesson,” had just hit MTV and it was intensely dark. I put on some sort of black t-shirt and made my way to a muddy hill in a Camden, NJ, amphitheater.

At 16, I had no appreciation for the moment or the performances. The hill had turned into a slip ‘n slide and I was goofing with the goths. Fortunately, I had my head in the right place for NIN and Bowie playing “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” together. That, I will never forget (nor the dirt-covered goth girl who pinned me down for a kiss at the bottom of a wicked slide).

I went on to see him at the Roseland in NYC (a show just for BowieNet subscribers), Moby’s Area2 festival (there was a cosplay Jared, but still no Labyrinth tunes performed), and the Tower Theater in Philly (the closing lyric, “Ziggy played guitar…” still holds on to my auditory nerve center).

Bowie had virtually quit touring when I met Mary. We were at Lollapalooza in Chicago when The Raconteurs revived a lackluster set by playing “It Ain’t Easy.”

I was mostly hands-off when it came to wedding plans, but I had a couple requests. One, that her dress show off her “shoulders and boobs” (direct quote). Two, that “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” be our song.

—

“Oh, when you rock and roll with me

There’s no one else I’d rather be

Nobody here can do it for me

When you rock and roll with me

When you rock and roll, when you rock and roll with me

No one else I’d rather, I’d rather be

Nobody here can do it for me

I’m in tears, I’m in tears

When you rock and roll with me”

—

For a marriage that involved so few tears, yet lead to so many, this song has come to mean almost too much.

Today I reflect on “Nobody here can do it for me.” I’ve learned the truth that self-love is a connection with the internal divine. There is an infinite engine of Love. I call it God. You can glimpse it in others, feel the radiance of it, but direct access is found only inside one’s own soul. Only once you’ve done that can you really share in the warmth of another’s love.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Posted on

Grief and Comic Books

My sons used Christmas money to explore our favorite comic shop today. I remembered how I discovered the Hero’s Journey in a similar place, feeding my imagination for what one person could accomplish with the proper will.

We came home with piles of adventures and closed the day with a viewing of Avengers: Endgame.

The heroes who had survived cataclysmic defeat are the archetypes of grief. Captain America remains the eternal optimist, the unshakable hero who can only believe that good will come. Hawkeye gives in to darkest resentment, taking out his pain on the reality that has betrayed him. Black Widow works and works and works, she works herself to death fighting against the tragedy. Iron Man escapes from the past into his new reality, he discovers what he had before he lost so much. Thor escapes into self medication and pity, drinking himself into solitude.

Each of these archetypes has lived in me at times, but there is one character that I most aspire to personify. Bruce Banner turned inward, he stopped fighting the monster inside. He spent time with the Hulk. He learned about it. He learned about his darkest parts. In doing so he integrated his most destructive power with a mind focused on the good.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Posted on

Embrace Your Freedom

In the weeks after Mary’s death I wrote about how music had lost its power over me.

I was living a robotic existence. It was too too risky to feel anything at all. I had intuitions about the importance of love, but I wasn’t ready to experience it.

The road trip we embarked on started with a weekend of music that would break me out of the armor I had built.

As Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band tore through “Lay Your Burden Down,” I had my son on my shoulders, my feet in the mud, and tears framing the smile on my face. Mary and I had danced in front of them on a special date weekend. All the emotions I hadn’t let myself feel poured forth. I let myself be free to feel.

Music touches me even deeper now. Everything does. Freedom means being able to explore further, especially within.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Posted on

Listen to the Impossible Story

Pull that crystal handle back on your time machine and go all the way back to 12 January, 2018. Go and tell me I’d lose my wife within a month and that before the end of spring I’d be in her parent’s RV guiding my sons on a journey I’d never imagined.

My reaction? Impossible. Mary’s healthier than I am and, God forbid, if I lose her I will be lost. I had considered my own death. I had considered the loss of a son, or two. I had imagined how treacherous the lives of those left behind would be, but I leaned on Mary so hard that I never had the courage to imagine life without her. She was my miracle, she brought me to Christ just by walking like him. She didn’t know a darn thing about soccer and made me a better player, turned me into a coach. She humbled me. She showed me what love could do.

Impossible. All of it. You could go back 13 years and tell me all of this. I would not have listened.

I’m glad you didn’t warn me. I’m blessed our tragedy came down the tracks over six days. I didn’t think about impossible: I prayed for a miracle while planning for the likely. Everything was possible in that moment Mary went to Heaven. I was a super hero. She gave me that magic space ring, that radioactive spider bite, that tragedy that turned Frank Castle into The Punisher. Okay, bad example…kinda. I am more keenly aware of my mortality than ever. This present is the only present I have to make the world better, or worse.

So, let’s make it better I say to myself. The first way to make the world better is by making yourself better (I often ignore this primary fact). The second way is to make your family and friends better (hard to do if #1 isn’t in order). The third way is to help those in your community, physically close to you, but strangers nonetheless.

I had internalized the hero’s journey. From comics to Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to the Star Wars trilogy, I bought into it so much that I committed to taking my sons on a road trip adventure before Mary had taken her final breath. It was that thing that happens to us. Not internal, but received. The type of inspiration that told me there was something out there, that my work and my thinking and my mind were not enough on their own, that the work that must be done is opening oneself up to receive the message. That takes more effort and patience than you may think. Your desires and fears will cloud the message and pretend to be the message. Again and again I have found that praying to hear clearly is to ask for the greatest blessing. The more I listen to people; not their declarations, but their stories, the more I love people.

Impossible. We put this barrier before understanding at inconvenient junctures. But how many impossible stories have you heard? Or lived? Impossible isn’t a dream, it’s a mystery we haven’t explored.

God bless,

Jason

Posted on

Solo Dadding at Mountain Jam

This one was intimidating. Assumptions had crept in as I planned and envisioned our spring and summer adventures. I expected to have more support, a co-parent, to teamwork on grand excursions. I thought things might be getting easier. After 16 months of having my parental assumptions repeatedly blown up one would think that I should be used to this; or better yet, that I would give up on assumptions and the future. But I can be a slow learner.

Cap the dissolving of expectations with waves of grief and a busy unschool schedule, and I wasn’t feeling up to the task of four nights of festival camping. Especially since this music festival, Mountain Jam in Bethel, New York, would feature bands that had significant ties to memories of my late wife, Mary.

Screw all that. I have slept in tents since I was an infant, attended day-long festivals since I was a preteen, survived the riots of Woodstock ’99, logged thousands of hours alone on the road with my sons, and honed my situational intuitions over those many hours. I set my back straight and climbed into our Dodge Caravan with confidence.

The road smoothed and eased before us. The trip was shorter than expected. Somewhat miraculously, an online friend spotted us as we drove by her camp site and hollered. The rain came down and the van got stuck in the mud, but, with help, we got the tent up and had ourselves set for the first night of music before sundown. We continued to find the right people at the right times. Friendly staff and volunteers, helpful young people, generous vendors, fun and engaging performers, and very special families made for easy going days and nights.

Above all, I was reminded of how good my sons are at this. They made friends, charmed adults, and carved their own unique experience out of the weekend’s offerings. For my own part, I simplified personal obligations and expectations, enjoyed as much music as I could consume, and let myself have a whole lot of fun. We stayed up late, danced and played recklessly, and took care of business when circumstances called for it.

I came away from the weekend with my shoulders back and my head high. Our story seems impossible, I saw that in many faces as I told it to new friends, but there is an immense power in mastering an impossible task. Or just in taking it on and failing, as I have many times.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Posted on

Bold Healing

“You know, I think this just might be the best summer eva.”

This declaration of a widower to motherless children may seem ludicrous. Maybe I have more confidence and chutzpah than I have any right to, but my ten-year-old responded with an easy, “Yeah, Dad, I agree.”

Summer’s not even here, yet we’re between road trips, on our way to a four-day music festival, and getting ready for my sons to appear in two Shakespeare productions, a jiu-jitsu tournament or two, and innumerable Delaware events.

I’ve been asked how I do all that I do with my sons. My first thought is that they’re not mine. They’re beautiful individuals who are stuck with me as their caregiver for a time. I feel a responsibility to not just prepare them for the world, but to launch them on mini quests into it. It is eternally challenging, frustrating, exhausting, and fulfilling. Their ability to navigate difficult situations rivals most adults I observe. They’ve had a crash course in unfairness, yet know they can make this world better by exploring and mastering it.

So, yeah, I think we’re looking ahead to the best summer eva.

God bless,

Jason

Posted on

At the Park: Unschool Style


Even when we’re at the park for fun with friends these little learners won’t stop problem solving.

Beyond resolving conflicts, dealing with playground bullies, and inventing games, some of the boys decided this log needed to return to the river. With teamwork and simple machines they accomplished their goal with no adult guidance.

Surely a minor benchmark, but a fine example of how we look for problems to solve everywhere we go.

Have a God blessed day,

Jason

Posted on

Road Trip Exhaustion

As we wrap up another adventure I’m feeling worn right down, but oh so blessed. We’ve found traveling companions who go as hard as we do and can smile as they roll with the punches. We giggle and play, hike and seek, and somehow survive the new dynamic of six in a vehicle instead of the road-tested Zerbey Three.

We even squeezed in a two-hour ecology tour before an eight-hour excursion today. The learning lifestyle takes us many places and follows us where we least expect.

God bless,
Jason

Posted on

Keep Going

Musket and cannon firings, a dolphin sighting, free admission to a wildlife preserve, eating on the fly, trail hiking and running with walkie-talkies while only getting half lost, coffee and smoothie power-ups all around, hopping a fence for some open field ball and game playing, hitting the Redbox kiosk, grabbing a couple freezer pizzas to complement the movie, and surviving some children who have been over doing it like real warriors.

Today was one of those days that doesn’t make sense on paper. The kind of day that shouldn’t have been possible. But we did it all and wouldn’t trade in a minute of it.

We’re blessed with a world full of wonders. Get out there and find a few.

God bless,
Jason

Posted on

Z3 Adventures: The Near Disaster(s) at Raven Rock

That is the look of a boy who did not look before he leapt.

Tentatively, “Uh…Dad?” My heart was in the process of slowing as I had turned away from my mountain goat of a son jumping over crevices as if hundreds of feet of rocky death were not waiting below. Now that heart stopped. If he was being cautious I imagined he was now hanging from an outcropping, not sure how to recover. Fortunately, he was just trying to get back the way he came and his change in perspective showed him just how high we were.

I counted it as a free-range-parenting win (child alive, unscathed!, learning his limits) and helped him back across to our snacky lunch and our other impending disaster.

See the boot on my older’s right foot? Yeah, no lace. See the sole between the raisins and graham crackers? Yeah, not on the boot.

We weren’t halfway through a 2.5-mile hike when the sole began to separate from the boot. Turn back to possibly never see Coopers Rock State Forest‘s Raven Rock? Carry him when the boot inevitably failed? Or go pirate MacGyver and carry on?

Not the first attempt, one of my laces and a backpack drawstring.

They don’t come tougher or more determined than my sons. As each rig failed he stopped and followed my directions as I asked him to sit, stand, hold onto me, let go, etc., etc… 

Fourth or fifth configuration.

They both inspired me as they took the slow pace in stride and we discovered a lot along the way.


Red eft stage (terrestrial) of the Red-spotted Newt. Identification care of Delaware Nature Society’s Jim White.
A snake, self-identified (by me, not the snake).
Mountain magnolias often brightened our path.
Lots of sole support, looking like we have a winner.

We’re moving along, rain is coming down, and he tests each rig by dancing, walking backwards, and spinning at every opportunity.

And then…

Yep, the other sole gets loose and I trade another lace. I figure I’ll be carrying him pretty soon as our extended time on the trail put us closer to a forecasted storm. Nope, we all trudged on and finished an estimated 90-minute hike in just under four hours. It was remarkable and we all knew it. The patience and determination they showed on that trail gave them a confidence that no pep talk could.

“Dad, did we leave North America?”

It was a hearty lunch of baked beans, mac and cheese, and hot dogs for all of us. But the day was not done, there were hours of sunlight left and a world to explore. What to do next?

That’s right, an hour of Brazilian jiu-jitsu at Team Junqueira Cheat Lake, West Virginia, with some great competitors to wind down.

Super Fight

It’s insane. There’s no other word. We hit a museum, arboretum, and new campground the next day. I look forward to telling all the stories.

God bless,
Jason