You know, an idiot husband of mine who shall remain nameless...

...once said with pride, "My son is just like I am. When he's ready to leave, he goes." His son is married with a little girl and this yahoo was proud that his son had inherited his lack of a sense of honor and strength of character.

I wonder if he ever gave that concept any thought or if he just crawls along through life taking the path of least resistance and doing what feels good at the moment. He can work his biceps all day long, that won't make him strong. Strong people have the capacity to consider reality and the impact their behavior has on the people around them. They want to get ahead in life and they know that in most decent places, people consider things like morals and ethics when making important decisions. Not everybody can get away with such Presidential type behavior...you pretty much have to be a Clinton or a Massachusetts Senator to do so.

So, his son should leave his wife of just a few years and baby girl who loves him because he has "had enough". I guess to judge his son otherwise would put him in a position to consider his own less than honorable choices. We all rationalize to some extent, but I couldn't imagine what it would take to convince myself and my son that he should give up his family. The woman is strange and over 20 years older than the 23 year old son but she is his wife and he did make a vow to her. And he has a little girl who thinks Daddy will always come home at night. I think the biggest mistake that I ever made in my life was giving up on my children's father so easily. I wonder if nameless dude ever considered that his tawdry conduct will be costly to his own children, if only by his tacit support of their own failures.

When the boys' mother was being such a lunatic, I told nameless dude that there had to be someone in the kid's life who was stable and that they could depend upon. Nameless was the only other possible choice. When my mother died, I lost the foundation of my family. I find myself in the position of trying to live up to that title myself. I actually consider what effect my actions have on other people. Good things never happen when you live your life without contemplation. I think someone said something similar to that once, didn't they? So, I know I'm not the only one who has thought of such stuff.

I like to think that my children are people of their word and have learned to face life head on, dealing with it rather than running away from it. Sometimes, they might not be happy everyday. They might have to put some effort into getting past the hurdles. I've worked with many couples married for decades and dacades. Those lucky couples put some effort into that. Nobody is happy everyday for 75 years. But after 75 years, you can't help but be happy. That is a guarantee. But when you live life jumping from one soft place to another and burning your bridges, how could you possibly be truly happy? You can't. And, you can't learn to keep your word when you are closing in on 50 years old. Well, perhaps you could if you learned that you had two months to live, but barring that, you are pretty much a dishonest person through and through. There isn't much call for dishonest people who have burned almost every single bridge in their entire life.

We talk a lot about heroes in America nowadays. It's one thing to be a hero in any given situation for a moment in time. It's quite another to be a quiet hero day in and day out. That takes the strength of character that people don'ty really think about anymore. It takes the insight and passion that my friend Anne puts into her poetry. It takes the sense of righteous indignation that Solaris and JQ feel. It takes the kindness and compassion shown by so many anonymous people who write to me with thoughtful and encouraging words. These things are all foreign to that nameless husband of mine.

So, to further answer the stupid question that someone once asked me, "What's different this time and why wouldn't I be taking nameless dude back?"...that's why. He threw a table at me 3 days after I had a tumor removed from my throat. He left me when I was so sick that we didn't know if I would live or die. After 23 years, that was the exact moment that he had to leave. Now I ask you, if I couldn't depend on him to be kind during the most frightening moments of my entire life, why on Earth would I think I could depend on him to leave for work and not come home without screwing some nasty redneck wench? He is nothing...I mean that literally. In a universe big enough to have nebulas that spurt gas clouds over 9 light years tall, the only thing that makes us anything is our bond to each other and our sense of honor. Without those things, no one would ever know we had been here. Therefore, if you do not have those things, you are nothing...and you are nameless.