TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: My neck is better, but my leg is hurting. I think there’s some obsolescence built into human reproduction.

THERAPIST: (Laughs) And your kid’s only a few months old.

CLIENT: Yes, my biological evolutionary purpose has been satisfied. My mother has been here and she – I can’t remember if this started before or after I spoke with you last Monday. She has volunteered to stay with the kid through the night so, A) we’ve had some respite and, B) I think we have a plan for a better trading off if one of us sleeps in the spare room. So among other thing, Jennie and I had our first date since the kid was born. That was nice. (inaudible). It was actually (inaudible). One of the things that she said was that she’s really been struggling a little bit since shortly after the birth which is kind of natural in parenthood and I think my enthusiasm has been a little bit difficult for her in some sense comparatively. So that was interesting, especially a conversation a couple of weeks ago. I guess it made me think of it. I thought that I had lost the video from the naming ceremony but I figured out where to bring it up on the SD card. So I was looking at it again and it was very apparent. It kind of culminated with – so everybody, all the relatives we had invited, 10 people gave their own blessing and Jennie and I gave ours to Grayson, gave our blessing. And I was surprised to see myself. I had been disappointed at the prospect of not being able to get an externalized sense of what I looked like in that role of a parent and was very assured. It was really striking to me. I don’t know if I feel that assured but I looked (unclear). [00:04:18]

And Jennie and I have kind of come to – I don’t know whether we can make it work financially, we need to sit down and look at it – you know we touched on the discomfort I’ve been sharing over the last couple of weeks with this odd tension and dialectic between this sense of sureness in what to all appearances would seem to be the most terrifying and uncertain business of suddenly being transformed from one social (unclear) role to another and the much more prosaic question of what I’m going to do professionally.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And so my cousin Beth-Ann had brought this up – I think I mentioned it Monday, and I was chewing on that, made a little uncomfortable by how securely I had managed to evade such questions except when they pop up – peeking through the clouds I think was the metaphor. And I had a novel on the shelf for about 15 years and so tentatively we decided that if I can really push to get a good draft of it in the next three months, then we can do three months and that – I mean I don’t know. I think it’s realistic financially. I’m not pushing Jennie about this and I haven’t wanted to because of the dynamics of the situation to involve myself in it at all, but I know her father has offered to help us out so I’m guessing – it’s delicate. I think I’m handling it the right way. At any rate I’m assuming from her relative equanimity that she feels okay about her dad supporting a 3-month hiatus. And that means I can also find something simultaneously, something. It doesn’t have to be the be all and end all. But that felt good. That felt like a nice – it felt like something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and this potentially – whether Grayson’s relative equanimity compared to other newborns continues as it has – become colicky or what have you, given my usual speed when I’m not all fucked up, seems plausible. So that would be fun. At any rate, it’s a nice fantasy. We’ll see if it’s plausible.

So I think since I spoke with you last, that’s moving forward a bit – at least conceptually. You know, regardless of what the outcome is, it’s moving forward – at least we’re talking about it explicitly, it’s not completely on the shelf and I’m not totally avoiding it. You know, the resolution is still the same one of not – it’s a postponement. In other words the resolution is a postponement of whatever, or a deferment of whatever has been so difficult about working on finding a place to work.

(PAUSE): [00:09:21 00:9:36]

CLIENT: That’s a very noncommittal response.

THERAPIST: I guess, I don’t know – it’s a work project. What I was hesitant about was like I understand that it’s a postponement of looking for – let me back up.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: So I think what I was pausing to think about and what you imagine I was pausing about or the noncommittal quality of my response may be importantly different.

CLIENT: Likely, unless we have a mind (unclear) symptoms.

THERAPIST: (Laughs) I guess I had the impression that you had maybe a slight worry relating to the noncommittal quality of my response like maybe I made you a little more anxious about your plan or I was skeptical or something like that.

CLIENT: Maybe. I wasn’t conscious of that. I was honestly a little amused.

THERAPIST: Of really?

CLIENT: Because I see as kind of if you imagine someone sitting on the couch with the therapist with their back to him (laughing) going on and on and on and the therapist says, ‘hmm, I see.’ Puffing on their pipe. It’s possible, even likely, that you’re right. I’m not totally in touch with my response. But that’s kind of what was in my brain.

THERAPIST: I see. Yeah, I mean, I guess I imagined that if that’s the case, the important difference that I have in mind is that actually I was thinking more like, ‘hmm, this is the first work-related thing I’ve heard Galen be enthusiastic about in quite this way.’ And then you’re saying that isn’t exactly what you’re saying but -

CLIENT: Half apologetically.

THERAPIST: Yeah, maybe like it doesn’t like count or something and so that’s the difference if it’s there (unclear). [00:12:13]

CLIENT: You’re right. You’re right.

THERAPIST: Huh. (Laughs)

CLIENT: (Laughs) Yeah, you’re right. It’s true. And I think one of the follow on thoughts that comes with that acknowledgement is that the concreteness and quasi-decision aside, I have had what are unquestionably, fantasies about just doing that full time – like actually making that work. That definitely – whatever the complexity of my sort of orientation to it is, but actually it’s only a fantasy and that – and I have had it. It has been occurring so you know, I am explicitly at some level, not quite willing to commit to it – sort of imagining what it would be like to have that sort of thing as a vocation is more or less conscious at this point. I feel burned. I feel regret and discomfort and what have you with the last phase or two so I guess it’s kind of natural to just sort of imagine something that doesn’t depend on other people and doesn’t have all of the complexities that seem to embedded in my participation in other kinds of gigs. It’s a very attractive proposition at this point. So you know, it’s an escape fantasy to that degree but it’s also – as you say, it’s also a consideration of what to do completely apart from parenthood, so to that degree, it seems like the process is evolving in a way that I would be much more comfortable with than I felt when we spoke on Monday.

On Monday I think I felt as if I was avoiding something and it seems that, at least on this evidence, I’m working on it.

THERAPIST: It also seems to me that –

(PAUSE): [00:15:09 00:16:05]

THERAPIST: I have the impression like you’re also a bit hesitant to quite say this is something you might just enjoy. I guess you kind of imply it saying you’re having fantasies about it but, again, you’re saying, ‘yeah, yeah, I can see how avoidance is something I have trouble with.’ And I know what you’re meaning – you may be right and it makes sense.

CLIENT: And I’m not stopping that.

THERAPIST: But it also seems like as of a few minutes ago there’s likely a kind of enthusiasm you feel for it that you seem wary or of mentioning –

CLIENT: Yeah. I feel really wary. I feel very hurt by my previous attempt to throw myself into something with abandon.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And I feel working or being a freelancer, what have you, is a craft and it’s not one that I’ve applied myself to in particular. You know, I have some skills but they need to be developed, so it’s a little bit – and I have friends, you know, who – it’s their vocation and all of them have another gig. I can’t think of anybody who actually supports – no, I know one person, he’s very well-known and it’s his thing. But it’s one in a thousand so you know, I’m aware that living on one income with a kid is very difficult and I certainly is not – and on the one hand I do feel enthusiastic. It’s a totally cool idea. I feel excited about the idea or the novel. I feel like it’s a good idea. I feel excited about trying to figure out whether I am any good – and beyond that, whether I can sell it to somebody – which are actually two different things.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: You know, I think I have a pretty non-fantastical sense of what the process is like. So I guess those two – and I’m trying to balance those two and part of being a good novelist just being excited and part of being a good partner, parent, whatever is not going off the deep end and I’m trying to balance those too, right now. But yeah, cool and wild. I’m psyched about that. And I’m grateful that I have a partner who’s cool with that and that she’s kind of seen how much stress and trouble was being placed that I was ill-suited for for whatever reason, that was either my fault or just it was a difficult system or some combination of the two and I think she wants me to be that (unclear) so that’s pretty cool too. That’s an exciting discovery in and of itself that I – yeah, so I guess by discussing it with Jennie I kind of brought it into the universe, this idea that I had and by discussing with you I kind of ratified it in my own cosmos so I think it’s going to happen in some type or form. [00:20:40]

So the hard part of actually producing art and figuring out how to make it work financially and so on (inaudible). One of the – totally random thought.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You had said something last Monday, on Monday that brought back a thought I’d had before that I probably voiced – now it’s gone again. It was something along the lines of – you know my certainty or security of parenthood being curious or interesting or relevant to my discomfort with the parenting that I got or I guess we talked explicitly maybe Monday about this – I don’t know if it was Monday or Friday, about not having any role models and yet feeling – it was so funny to watch that video. I really – I looked like very – it was nice to see myself just being – I don’t know. I’m struggling for the words to describe it maybe because I don’t have them. So at a certain point in my – I’ve said this a couple of times, a certain point in my (unclear), or whatever you want to call it – anti-(unclear) in San Diego, as I imagined it kind of came back to reconciling with my father, I had this very tangible fantasy while reading the meditations of Marcus Aurelius that that would be a good dad.

THERAPIST: Dad being Marcus Aurelius.

CLIENT: Marcus Aurelius would be a good dad. That’s funny if you’ve ever seen Gladiator because (laughs) it didn’t turn out so well in that interpretation anyway. But you know, like I read these and there was one in particular that kept on recurring. I can’t remember how it’s numbered – but he considers all of the parts of the body in the Hellenistic, stoic model – all of the parts of the person, really, you know – the flesh, the breath and the ruling part – you know – the mind. And so he goes through them and the first two are ephemeral and then he adds this non sequitur – he says, ‘don’t read. Don’t read books.’ Don’t get distracted by them. He says, third is the ruling part. Consider thus, you’re an old man, no longer let this part be a slave, no longer let yourself be pulled by the strings like a puppet by uncertain impulse, no longer be dissatisfied with your present lot or shrink from the future. It’s a wonderful meditation of an old man. And it’s not so much – I didn’t take this as somehow as just sort of the solitary reflections that they clearly were but just as the guiding spirit of a person because I imagined him being just about the age my father was at that particular junction. Just like the calmness and control something that I would have wanted at that particular moment with my father and me. So and I remember saying to somebody or other, ‘wow, this is really bizarre, isn’t it – I’m looking for love in all the wrong places.’ It’s not – it wasn’t about parenting. It was about who – the person I wanted the parent to be and what was striking to me was not any parenting in that video of myself, it was the person I seemed to be in this sort of ritual of parenthood as I held my son, you know, in the ceremony. It was kind of remarkable. I hadn’t – I don’t know where it came from. It was very, it was mysterious. There was mystery there. It felt wonderful watching it. There was mystery there. I knew the person and yet I didn’t know the person (unclear) in a very direct conceptual framework. So it was just – and I remember thinking that as you were talking and we never got around to it in the end, but –

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know, there is something about this that – there’s something about long processes of coming to terms with my dissatisfaction with what I received which seems to have had productive issues, so to speak, seems to have given birth to something but it’s funny. And I guess at some level I’m superstitious so I worry that having just given voice to this I will fall apart or poison my (unclear) or something. I forgot my cellphone for the first time since Jennie was – in the last days of being pregnant. I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about my dad quite a bit this week. We have all these pictures my mother brought. We had a very interesting interaction with her.

As I say, she offered to stay overnight with Grayson and she did for a couple of nights and I talked with Jennie about it and she was like, ‘you know, I worry about your mother because (unclear) this history of my family I’m not entirely sure that she really is – it’s like she says that she wants to do this and she’ll sleep through it or she’ll go back to sleep and she doesn’t sleep well anyway but she’s so practiced at – and she didn’t say exactly like this – that she’s so practiced at propitiating or pleasing people that it’s basically I’m not sure that we can actually trust her to take care of her own needs and she said it in a very – she said it in a three way conversation in a very good, direct clear way. At first when we were talking my mother said, ‘oh no, this is completely different. This is something I’m offering to do. It’s not that I’m knuckling under to an urgent request by you. And then later she came up to me and she said, you know, I was really, really thinking about that and I still want to do it but I appreciate very much this intervention. And you know, there had been a previous conversation – a more difficult conversation even where I can’t remember exactly what she’d said – basically the content was – oh that’s right, it was about Hebrew school.

And I said, you know this thing where Daddy just tried to straddle two completely different cultural and social systems, sending me to this school and you just kind of went along with it. And she said, ‘ouch,’ or something to that effect and the conversation kind of stopped and somebody started on a completely different topic. There’s been this series of interactions about parenting and about marriage I guess, or partnership – partners is a better way to think about it in parenting, out of parenting – it’s implications for parenting that are really striking, I don’t know, and somehow that’s bound up in this ineffable mysterious process of becoming a parent and having this role or my sense of ease or I don’t even know how to describe it in this role. There’s something about coming to terms and the discussion and intervention that feels significant. [00:32:19]

THERAPIST: One thing that keeps coming up over and over again and I suspect relates is the dynamic in which there is someone else – one person really looking out for the interests of another so I think that’s part of what’s been gratifying that you felt like reassuringly confident about is really from a month from when he was born, being able to focus on what Grayson was going to need. I mean, in your mind, getting the house in order, and how you’ve been with him.

CLIENT: Literally and figuratively, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Right. And that sounds similar to the way that Jennie was both with you around work and your mother where she was very thoughtfully and altruistically trying to figure out what was going to be right and I find there’s probably a very small echo of that between you and me where you were concerned that I was, in a very kind of mild way, like questioning or slightly skeptical, when in fact I was, I think in a way kind of supportive and trying to point out that some of your – try to, you know, like –

CLIENT: Who’s the analog of you – is my mother the analog of you in this instance?

THERAPIST: No, I think you’re the analog of you and I’m the analog of Jennie.

CLIENT: Oh yes, yes. I see what you mean. Jennie looking out for my mother you mean.

THERAPIST: Either Jennie looking out for your mother or Jennie looking out for you, yeah. I was to Jennie you were your mother.

CLIENT: (Laughs) Okay, good.

THERAPIST: Yeah, right. In the juggling of us.

CLIENT: It becomes very complicated at this point. Things are the things are things.

THERAPIST: Yeah, so and that this was something as you point out that your father was especially data, it’s a really important moment, really trying to put himself aside and see what was going to be best.

CLIENT: One of the blessings that we got was a very brief message, unsigned that said, ‘love,’ from my Uncle Tim, my father’s brother. He sent this remarkable blessing and it was and I can remember it verbatim, ‘May Grayson or he called him by another name, he gave him a [proceeds in Hebrew] something like ‘have the same absolute commitment to truth at all costs as his grandfather.’ Which was so beautiful because it was the relationship between them. There was never trouble personally but was kind of roiled by difficult family relations with Tim’s wife and unwise financial partnerships. It was kind of a remarkable statement but it really does describe my father very well. I don’t know about truth but he was committed to something at all costs. What I said to Jennie after I read this was my view would be that he was committed to other people acknowledging his search for truth at all costs which is unfair and uncharitable. He was a little more conscientious than that. [00:37:12]

I don’t know if I ever told you this but one of the things that I found and very weirdly given what an important artifact that it was, lost shortly thereafter, was in his otherwise kind of uninteresting and often duplicative papers that were in a storage unit in Worchester that I cleaned out, was a note that – I hope was never given to my mother in response to his affair with the graduate student – saying something like, ‘Krissy, I love or care for you enough to tell you the truth. The truth is that I will lie; that I am not going to tell you the truth.’ It was like he was crazy. I think people who are in very difficult situations sometimes write crazy things and I don’t think it was ever sent to her, in fairness, but that was just one of the first things that came to my mind when my uncle sent his – I don’t know. It’s interesting.

THERAPIST: Well, I guess that’s another aspect of this that again, I think, cuts across a number of things that you’ve said is the steadiness or lack of steadiness – that seems kind of like the other end of the spectrum from Marcus Aurelius there, the sort of agitation in the way that your father was overwrought.

CLIENT: My memory of him, and it’s sad really, because he was in many ways really a remarkable person, was a person who was overwrought. Really, that is my memory of him. Sad. Sad that that should be what’s left.

(PAUSE): [00:39:16 00:39:28]

CLIENT: Anyway, you’re right I agree.

THERAPIST: I have a sense that Jennie at the moments you’re describing felt pretty steady like with your mother and you when (unclear).

CLIENT: Steady. What do you – steady emotionally?

THERAPIST: Yeah, like that there’s a certain sort of solidity that she’d have to have to be able to really think that way about what was going to be best for you or for your mother.

CLIENT: I think, right now, that she feels unstable.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Like she feels upended by parenthood and (unclear) but the reality of it is that she’s very trustworthy (unclear) kinds of things even though she’s not in touch with that. And I mean, it’s difficult because I mean, like with the – so we named Grayson, Grayson Martin after this friend of Jennie’s, this history professor who introduced us. I don’t know if I’ve told you about Martin. He’s Alsatian. I think he came, about ‘85 he came to the U.S. in his 30s from Alsace so he was a very young boy. He was very friendly with a Brown professor and her husband who I know because I was TA’ing for him after I got my doctorate. And I’d been staying at their house for two weeks after I was previously living on the island and needed to look for a place and while I was there Martin came over to take care of their son because Robert had an overnight hospital stay so Martin and I had a talk and I went to brunch shortly thereafter and he in a very kind of old world way took me aside to the pantry and asked me, ‘do you have a partner?’ Very bluntly. And I said no and he said, are you interested in meeting a friend? And completely set us up. He chaperoned us on our first date and (unclear). So he came over with his wife who –

THERAPIST: Yeah. We should stop for today.

CLIENT: Oh, shoot. I’m sorry. Yeah so my mother – very quickly, my mother said something like, ‘oh, Galen is so nurturing’ and I think that has been the consensus and I think Jennie’s mother said it and I think there’s this endorsement of my nurturing nature and I think Jennie is not feeling very nurturing right now –

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: I think there is something troubling to her – not in a real way, but troubling to her about the dichotomy between how she feels with her parenting and this public sort of acknowledgement.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: But we should continue this another day.

THERAPIST: Monday.

CLIENT: Monday and then not Friday.

THERAPIST: Right. I hope those times starting (unclear).

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s great. See you then. (inaudible).

THERAPIST: You too.

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