THE SUN IS OUT

As I write these words, the sun is out, there is a bit of a breeze and it is a picture perfect late May morning in New England.

Before typing, I searched “Uplifting Playlist” on Spotify. Most of it is predictable pop like “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Send Me On My Way.” Blah, blah, blah. Of course, taste is in the ear of the beholder, or something like that, so who can say what music is really uplifting?

Well, there’s my rambling introduction to a few thoughts on happiness. What is it? Like music, I think it’s different for all of us. I’m a big fan of comedian Denis Leary (fun fact…he’s a Boston guy and BIG Bruins fan…). In one of his standup shows, he does a bit on happiness. I think about his words from time to time as I tend to agree with his view as I’ve gotten older: (Language AND content warning here for some of you…..)

“Happiness comes in small doses folks. It’s a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to work the next morning, THAT’S IT! End of fucking list! ”

Well, I have never smoked, so I can’t comment on that part….but the rest is pretty funny to me. Uncle Denis also says “Life is hard, buy a fucking helmet.” I use that one without the explicative. OK, sometimes with the explicative…..it depends who I’m speaking to/with.

In another routine, Leary goes on another ridiculous rant that is obviously an exaggeration of life, but is also hilarious to me. Language again…sorry. If you’re offended, please stop reading.

“Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty five years and you pay it back and then one day you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then one day you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe”

Funniest word of that bit for me is ‘maybe.’ Brilliant.

I have lived my life alongside so many people who also think that the majority of shit that rains down on us (many inches of rain, right sis?) needs to be put into a humorous frame of reference in order to remain sane. If we are fortunate to be around for a while and keep our marbles in our heads, we experience ALL the feelings.

As I type this, my boys are almost 12 and 9. They are ‘happy’ 95-100% of the time that they are awake. Jokes fly around, they are active all day long and both of them laugh easily. At their stages in life, that is how it should be. Nothing has happened to them yet.

Here’s what I mean…

Last fall, my wife and I transferred a bunch of VHS tapes from the late 80’s and early 90’s to digital. Many of them are homemade films of my high school rock band on stage. You have to be pretty close to the inner circle to see ANY of that stuff haha. It’s….well, it’s something. Anyway….one of the tapes was labeled “Recital Hour, December 9, 1993.”

I knew exactly what it was: Durgin Concert Hall at U.Mass Lowell. Every Thursday during college, from noon until 1PM, all students were required to meet in the concert hall to listen to a live performance. Sometimes we had guests, but usually it was us music students performing for one another. It was a great break from classes, and gave all of us a chance to see what other ensembles and groups were up to. It was also stressful. Being on stage is one thing, but being on stage in front of a few hundred peers who are ALSO musicians was tough. Musicians hear harmony, melody, rhythm and form on a deeper level than the general public. This meant that each week we were judging every single note that went by while thinking one of two things: “Shit, I need to practice.” OR “Wow, that kind of sucked but they’re my friends, so I’m not going to say anything harsh, but I can play better than that.”

Now that I have set the stage for you (see what I did there?), I will tell you that the recital hour VHS that I captured for all time is a holiday performance of 2 ensembles: The University Big Band, and the Swing Choir. Wooo.

I was a junior and had turned 21 a month before this show. I was playing well, and knew everyone in the ensemble because I make friends everywhere I go. It’s a gift. Anyway, I was the drum set player in the big band that semester. On this gig, we were swinging away on some cheesy arrangements of popular Christmas carols, while the choir provided vocals. I watched a young version of myself, complete with a Santa hat, pound the drums with a big grin on my face. Pure happiness. Playing drums always brought me pure happiness. I was happy a lot up to that point in college. Nothing had happened to me yet…

In the video, I was playing with a bunch of college kids who were already good friends of mine. All of us had met and bonded over music, drums, and common interests. As I watched, I also realized that this recording caught a brief moment in time, a snapshot, of a crew of people who had barely begun adult life. At the time, we all thought that we were hot shit; good players in a music school, working and partying while enjoying the moment that was college. Happiness was all over the recording. Nothing had happened to any of us yet. Sure, I was already living with muscular dystrophy, but I was only 8 years post diagnosis, and I was managing it just fine. Like most youngsters, the future to me was an abstract concept.

The day of that recording my sister turned 18. She was a senior in high school. Our father had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer that September. My friends knew he was sick, but I downplayed the situation. It was Christmas season and the end of a tough semester. As juniors, all of us were well into our major fields of study. For me that meant music education: psychology classes, philosophy of learning styles and methods of music education, along with music theory, music history (which was ALL classical…3 days a week at 8AM….ugh), ear training, a jazz improv. class, private lessons AND ensembles. That semester I was loaded down with big band, wind ensemble and jazz lab. I was also taking intro. to woodwinds, where we learned how to teach beginning flute, clarinet, and saxophone. Who had time to deal with real life outside the bubble of college?

The recital ended with some cringy arrangement of a sing along medley of holiday favorites. All good fun. A normal Thursday gig that we had attended every week of every semester. Finals were a week out, and there were dorm parties to go to, as well as trips to Boston to drink, since I was now 21.

Eleven days after that gig, my father passed. It was December 20. That was a tough holiday break. Upon my return to campus that following January, people weren’t sure what to say to me. It was all pretty awkward and if my memory serves me, the subject of my father’s death was mostly avoided. Time, and college marched on but I was different. Happiness wasn’t always with me anymore.

1995, I graduated and learned that landing a teaching job while having a muscle disease was not going to be as easy and straightforward as I thought. I took several interviews and disclosed that I had muscular dystrophy. I spoke openly about my limitations. I was still walking at the time, and I didn’t really understand how to advocate for myself. I wound up landing in the same district where I grew up and began teaching that fall.

Speaking of fall, on September 22, 1995, I fell and fractured my right femur. I recovered and went back to work. My sister went to college, my mother had an empty house and continued working as a home health aide. I fell in love, spent a few years thinking “this was it”, made some money, began to travel and lost more muscle and more strength. The woman that I was dating took a teaching job an hour and half away. We talked about me moving and she told me that she didn’t want to remove me from my support system and that she could not handle being my main support system as I was progressing. I was crushed. For the first time in my adult life, I felt like a burden on others because of something that was largely out of my control: muscular dystrophy.

In the early 2000’s, I remember spending a day with my college friend Mike. Later, he and my sister would meet, fall in love and get married, but that was all unwritten at the time.

I had learned that Mike grew up in a small town in New Hampshire that, as luck would have it, was one town over from my camp property. We took a day trip up there to roam around and so he could show me where he grew up. In the car, we began discussing life in our late 20’s. Both of us had found success in our careers, we had a bit of cash, steady places to live, active social lives and we were….happy. There was that H word again.

“Even though we have done what society tells us that we should be doing, do you ever feel like there’s something missing? Something more that isn’t clear? I mean, besides being married, buying a house and maybe having kids, I’m starting to wonder if that’s it.”

Mike said that. He also wondered aloud that if that really was the whole ball of wax, then, what the hell is the point?

“What is the point of what?” I answered.

“Life. Happiness. Doing stuff. Is it more drums? Better gigs? Travel? Money? Hobbies? What?”

“I dunno man. I think it changes over time. Life has taken my father, but given me talent to play music and teach others. Life has brought both of us love with women, and then heartbreak. I think we are all built to take the good with the bad and try to enjoy it when and how we can. You don’t feel satisfied? C’mon, you read about these guys that went to the moon, came back and became alcoholics…..they said nothing would ever top that so they fell apart. The Beatles? The whole thing ended before any of them were 30! We’re not 30 yet.”

“Yeah dickhead, and we’re not The Beatles. We’re not astronauts. Assholes, yes. Astronauts…no.”

Mike had a point, but I thought I did also. How the hell do you define what makes you happy over a period of time when you change, your surroundings change, your needs and wants change, and, in my case, your health declines?

I kept teaching, began to advocate in Washington D.C. for funding muscular dystrophy research. I fell in with a group of wonderful people who also have lives interrupted by rare disease. The work made me (and still makes me) happy. I was sent to Europe, Australia and around The United States to tell my life story of resilience to others. I love to travel and help people understand that no one is alone. Happy.

In the fall of 2008, I met Vanessa. I put her in my phone as “tease”. I thought she was nuts. I thought she was crazy. She was (is). We began dating in 2010 and were married on August 3, 2013. This made me (and still makes me) happy. We have built a wonderful life.

Is happiness always with me? No. Is it harder to find as I age? Yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t look for it…..usually in the small doses that Denis Leary talks about: an ice cream. A stroll in the sun. Watching my kids play. Time and conversation spent with people who are important to me. Connection. A great piece of music that’s cranked LOUD (thanks Doc!) or performed live. A compliment. A smile. A kiss.

At times, it’s all a roller coaster, and at times, I have wondered where the brakes are. At times I have crested large hills and at times the coaster has touched the sky. It’s never constant. Nothing is.

I hope that my kids will stay happy for as long as possible, and when the dark clouds gather, I hope that I’ve given them the foundation to be grounded in humor with a touch of resilience and maybe a chocolate chip cookie.

The angel in that Christmas movie was right: It’s A Wonderful Life. The year of that recital on tape ended in a rut. Christmas Eve 1993 was dark and shitty and I watched that movie alone in my apartment. Each year, I catch at least the last 45 minutes of it or so when it is on TV to remind myself that happiness might not be ongoing, but it is all over the place if you are willing to choose it. I’ll take the small doses until I achieve astronaut status, or, ya know, become The Beatles.

Shout out to Billie. The Beatles, and I, are proud of you. Love you.

Stay safe, stay awesome, and stay tuned. The sun is out.