I'm still trying to digest the ramifications of my visit last week. Since then, I have noted that people are responding to me differently - in good ways.As I look back, the sequence of events unfolded in a way that one could make a case that things were orchestrated.

As previously mentioned, both my father and my brother in law share the same birthday 30 years apart. So my father's 90th birthday was also my brother in law's 60th, which gave the rest of the family more impetus to get together from various parts of the US and go to Cleveland. Most of them had arrived the previous weekend, so they all had plans to return home on Sunday the following weekend while I made plans not to leave until Monday, so that I could have some extra time to visit with friends I hadn't seen for a long time.

The family all left after breakfast on Sunday, leaving me staying with my parents. I borrowed my dad's car (he actually went and filled the tank first) planning on visiting friends for the rest of the day. I noticed the brake light was on (it hadn't been earlier at breakfast), but thought nothing of it. However, after lunch, I noticed that the brakes were kinda mushy and I decided I'd better just head home. By the time I got home, the brakes were pretty much completely gone. (Turns out a brake line separated, the car was fixed.) But I got home safe, and the friends I'd made plans to meet were OK with coming up to see me instead of meeting somewhere. But I was 'stranded' at home Monday, so I ended up having the conversation about feeding the homeless, what I enjoyed about it, and how I felt like I couldn't desert them despite what had happened, and the kind of statement I was hoping to make by their seeing that I wasn't going to bail on them, prompting my mother to respond by giving me $200 specifically to support what we do as a group.

Those of you who do not accede to a higher power will probably choose to call it coincidence. I do not.

One of my favorite shows is a cable series called Breaking Bad. To summarize the plot, a Nobel-Prize level chemist sells his interest in a startup for $5000, a startup that eventually becomes worth $2.1 billion dollars. Said chemist ends up teaching high school chemistry in Alberqueque NM, making about $40k a year, when at the age of 50, he discovers that he has contracted cancer and has maybe a year to live. Chemist decides to start cooking meth to create a trust to take care of his family's financial needs, but starts down a path that leads to him becoming someone known as Heisenberg, a meth druglord that has ruthlessly killed a number of people to attain his status under the auspices of protecting his family. Heisenberg made the following quote I want to share:

“I have spent my whole life scared, frightened of things that could happen, might happen, might not happen, 50 years I spent like that. Finding myself awake at three in the morning. But you know what? Ever since my diagnosis, I sleep just fine. What I came to realize is that fear, that’s the worst of it.”

Substitute the word attack for diagnosis, and the quote could be mine.

I've lived my life with fear, inherited from my mother. My mother's life and her decisions have been characterized by fear. Not difficult to understand why: her father killed during WWII when she was about 10, having to worry about where the next meal was going to come from. That fear was reflected in how my mother was very protective of me as a child, how she was in my memory naturally suspicious of everything, trusting no one. My mother's tried to encourage me over the years, but it had very little effect. The question always remained: "Why should I believe that things will go well when it's so obvious that you don't believe that of yourself?"

Where I'm tryiing to get to with this is that for the first time, my mother made a statement that made me believe that she understands my passion, was able to accept the inherent risk in pursuing that passion, and supports what I want to do in a tangible way. It was as if she was saying: "I'm not afraid for you, you don't have to be afraid anymore either."

My dad turns 90 today. I went home to celebrate his birthday this past weekend. While I was looking forward to the trip for that, I was apprehensive because it also meant having to deal with telling my mother what happened back in March. Oddly enough, she took it pretty well, and she agreed that it was better that I had waited to see her face to face rather than try to tell her over the phone.

On the last day of my visit, our conversation turned towards what I actually do on Tuesday nights, how we all prepare food and bring it to the park to serve to the homeless who show up. I also went into why I felt it was important that I continue to do this even after my attack. What happened next caught me completely unprepared; my mom left the room, came back with $200 in cash and told me that she wanted to support what we do, and since we pay for everything out of our own pockets, she wanted to donate some money to defray our expenses. Beyond the initial surprise, this was to me very unusual because my typical experience is that I am left wondering if my mother even understood what I said. So this was more like a double or triple blessing. I imagine that I'll chew on this for a while.