Yesterday was a very productive day, especially the morning when I knocked out virtually everything I needed to do for work. With my job out of the way, I took the afternoon off to head up to the mountains with my daughter. But I was unprepared for the tsunami of emotion lying in wait for me.
Zero ; Octet ; M: 109 ; C: 72 ; P/U: 50 ; W : 3.5mi – No Weigh In Today
My daughter and I got settled in and chilled out for a little while, and all was good. But after dinner things got a bit rough.
You see, she and I have spent a large chunk of the past 3 years coming to the mountains to play with her teddy bears. During this time (and for about 2 years leading up to it), we created an entire universe around these toys. She affectionately calls our imaginary world “The 500 Acre Wood” as a omage to Winnie the Pooh.
Believe it or not, I’ve developed over a dozen different voices for the various characters of The 500 Acre Wood. She’s come up with about a half dozen of her own. Spending this quality time together has been a tremendous blessing, and I’ve managed to fill three journals with our adventures. But it’s been quite emotional for me to let it go now that she’s growing up.
Our Play Heyday
Our family was lucky enough to buy our mountain place four months before covid hit. Little did we know when we bought it that this little cabin would become a place of solace and refuge from the pandemic.
This was autumn 2019, and my daughter was in her imaginary play heyday. She’d want to start playing from the moment we packed the car until the moment we unpacked it upon our return days (sometimes a week) later. In fact, the three main teddy bears (pictured above) their own seats and wore their own seat belts.
Our level of play was completely immersive. Our record for hours played in a single day stands at 18.5 (6am – 12:30am). Many weekends we logged over 40 hours, that equates to a fulltime job! And I’m convinced that during the height of covid, when much of our record setting play took play, this emotional refuge, in many ways, was a lifeline for both of us.
Why so Emotional?
Well, as happens, in the eloquent words of Peter Yarrow:
A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys
One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar
As every parent knows, middle school is a place where most kids choose to leave their childhoods at the door. For your average sixth grader, teddy bears simply aren’t a priority anymore. Of course, this is completely normal and I would be worried if her interest wasn’t waning at this point. But I’m not quite so ready to let go of this magical time and it’s become quite the emotional rollercoaster for me.
The good news is she still likes to play with them every once and awhile, but there can be breaks of a month or more between playing sessions. So when we do finally sit down, it takes a bit of time to get things rolling.
It’s a Little Awkward So I get Emotional
Last evening as we awkwardly started playing, I suddenly felt it all slipping away and I got super emotional. So much so that my daughter asked me if I was going to cry (frankly, I’m on the verge as I transpose this journal entry and relive the emotions of that night five weeks later).
I wanted to say yes, but instead I told her I hadn’t slept well the night before and was a little tired. I told her I needed to use the bathroom and excused myself. Once in the bathroom, I shut the door and felt a tremendous heaviness in my chest. There were tears in my eyes.
I did some R.A.I.N. exercises and Box Breathing in a effort to pull myself together. Thankfully, these techniques helped and I soon returned to the game table. I looked my emotions in the eye, felt them, and let them pass. Afterward, we had lots of fun playing with her teddy bears for 3 or so hours.
My Little Drinking Buddy
It seems crazy that a man in his 50s would get so emotional over a few old teddy bears. But that’s only part of the story. The other piece of this is that I’m experiencing emotions much more intensely in this sobriety of sorts. As the title of this blog points out: sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in a swirling sea of emotion.
Being that I’m sober most of the time now, the emotional numbness is fading. I’m feeling emotions, real deep emotions, for the first time in a very long time. And there are apparently a lot of them built up inside me and seeking to escape. The impermanence of childhood innocence seems the perfect pressure release valve.
I have to admit, quite embarrassingly, that during the hundreds of nights we spent in the mountains playing for hours on end, I was binge drinking myself stupid. So much of the creativity and character development came as a result of me drinking beer the entire time. And it worked, because once I was a few beers deep, I completely let go and became a child again myself. Time would just fly by. And it worked because:
My daughter had a tireless playing buddy and I had a strange kind of non-drinking, drinking buddy.
I don’t think she really understand how much I was drinking when she was 6, 7, or 8 years old. But at 9 she started calling me out on it.
“Are you drinking another beer, dad?” she’d asked pointedly, “how many have you drank?”
When someone calls you out on your binge drinking, it gets you thinking. That moment started me examining my relationship with alcohol, and I reigned it in a bit as a result. Her comment may very well be the genesis of this blog.
Since we video recorded so much of our playing, in some you can see just how lit I am. Not horrible, but still really embarrassing how ‘out of it’ I look sometimes. At least that not what she remembers about those times.
What to Do Tonight?
Being on this emotional rollercoaster last night and today has me tempted to buy a couple of Crowlers from the local brewery. Not enough to get drunk, but just enough to relax a little. Maybe just enough to recapture some of the ol’ playing magic. I’d really love to lose myself in The 500 Acre Wood once again. Just one last time…
Sometimes I think my sobriety is an equal contributor to the end of our playing as is her growing up.
A big part of me believes that drinking with mindfulness and purpose tonight may be just the thing to unlock that old magic. Another part of me knows that eventually I’ll need to face this impermanence and let it pass as all things must.
I take solace in the knowledge that if our experience in The 500 Acre Wood wasn’t so awesome it wouldn’t hurt so much to let go. In a way, I’m grateful for this emotional pain. It indicates just how incredible a time she and I enjoyed together. How truly special it was (and still is sometimes). Now, it’s up to me to make the most of this beautiful sunset during its final fading moments.
I imagine A.A. Milne must have felt the same way and was why he was inspired to write Winnie The Pooh.
