Good Kharma

An old AA story is of the man who didn’t believe in God at all. A friend wondered how he could be so sure. The man told his friend he had proof. His friend asked what was that. “Well I was hunting in Alaska right next to the Bering Sea and a wind came up and I didn’t realize I was on an ice shelf and the piece I was on broke off. And there I was on an ice floe floating out to sea. I couldn’t see the shore and I began praying to god to save me. I prayed and I prayed and he didn’t save me.”

His friend asked, “Well you’re here now. How did you survive?”

“Oh, some Eskimo came along.”

I got up this morning, showered and got ready because I was going to coffee and socialize with parents after I dropped my kid off. Escuela Bilingüe is a great school. The parents are wonderful people, professors, lawyers, engineers, and artists; they’re an interesting mix. The once a month Coffee Cart is always an enjoyable social occasion, we stand outside at a picnic table near the drop off and do a cocktail hour with coffee instead of drinks. We mix, we talk, we listen and I float from conversation to conversation. We talk about school, kids, jobs, work, politics, it’s one of my favorite social connections. This morning at  EBI, as we call it, the Coffee Cart was canceled.

At the gate to the school Irma said they tried to get Peet’s this morning, but Peet’s canceled and they had to cancel the Coffee Cart. There was one other parent, someone I didn’t really know. He said he’d wait and see if anyone shows up and would talk to Irma in the meantime. I walked past them at the gate and went to the picnic table. Even though they canceled it, someone’s bound to show up, the notice was in Parent Square online.

In the meantime I talked to Carolyn, while she unloaded kids with Luis at the dropoff. She is from Coachella, down in the desert Southeast of Palm Springs. She’s Spanish speaking as are most of the staff at EBI and I tell her I’m trying to learn Spanish. She’s a young woman, a teacher’s aid but she begins to relax. I learn her husband got a job here and she moved with him. She prefers the warmth of Coachella to the chill of winter in the Bay Area.

Then I go over and talk to Luis for a moment and find out Luis is actually José and I’ve had his name wrong for five years I said. He said we’ve known each other for 7 years, well maybe, but he’s a good guy and we laugh. He speaks Spanish with a wonderful Cuban accent and to my amazement I understand some of it.

The other parent comes back and I offer to share the coffee I’ve brought for myself. His daughter is in the third grade and we chat for a few minutes. I tell him I’m Irish and that they say if the Irish weren’t in AA they could have their meetings in a phone booth and that in AA even if only two people show up they go on with the meeting and before I finish my observation, he interrupts, “I went to a meeting last night in San Mateo.” “A meeting?” I ask, “An AA meeting?” “Yes,” he says. So I tell him “Next week is my 39^th AA birthday.”

Matt is two years sober. He’s dropping his daughter off, whom he is just getting to know and getting involved in her life. He left Kerry’s mother when she was pregnant and they don’t have much of a relationship but it looked like maybe things were changing with Kerry and her mother. But Kerry’s mother is getting on with her life and has a boyfriend and the boyfriend moved in and likes being a foster dad and Matt wasn’t nice about it when he saw him this morning. He doesn’t like him, even though he seems like a pretty good guy. This guy stays overnight with Kerry’s mother, gets up in the morning, serves Matt’s daughter cornflakes and puts her to bed at night.

Matt has been struggling, but he’s got it, he’s sober now, but this is hard. We talk about patience, and meetings. He has a sponsor, but it’s hard. I say, “You know I don’t much believe in god as some sort of chess master, but it’s hard not to feel like you and I a couple of pieces he just moved to where we need to be.”

Matt doesn’t slow down. He is hurting and he needs to talk. He’s a good guy and he knows he needs to be patient but when it looked like he might get a chance to be a husband and a father there wasn’t and Kerry's mother is moving on, it hurts.

I tried to be a good listener. Matt is a good guy. He’s staying sober and trying to lead a good life. But doing that in the beginning is hard, particularly for people like us who began drinking before we had grown up and getting sober hasn’t fixed everything yet. I tried to interject a few AA clichés. It will get better if you don’t drink. Working the steps helps. The shit doesn’t stop when we stop drinking. Patience. Things like that.

I could feel Matt was in pain and this was a crisis. It takes a few years for us alcoholics before life is no longer one crisis after another, before we learn how to live life on it’s own terms, the gifts of sobriety as they come. Everyone around us seems to get it, have the good things, doing well and we’re still struggling. I told him after 39 years I didn’t have a strong urge to drink anymore, but that was only good as I long as I worked the program.

As they remind us in AA, meeting Matt sure helped me, made me grateful, and reminded me that Sobriety is a great gift, a grace from god. It reminded me of my early years in AA and the struggles I had. It reminded me when Church Carmalt, my sponsor, said “work with newcomers."  Of course, I’m still growing and I still struggle a little, but I didn’t drink and over time it got better, and it’s still getting better.

I hope I did Matt some good. It sure helped me.

I had to laugh. Newcomers see god’s hand in everything that happens to them. I had that kind of higher power for awhile and it helped. I don’t believe that’s true anymore, but it’s hard to deny when something like this happens. I may not have been his Eskimo, but maybe I’m someone who listened along the way and shared a cup of coffee.

Another coincidence, this morning I meditated on listening, becoming a good listener. I may not believe in god exactly.  But kharma makes sense to me. I am grateful for good kharma when I see it.

Note:  A few days later I ran into Matt again.  We sat in his car and talked.  He's still in crisis.  Exploring ways to deal with that, he said he wouldn't smoke pot that day and hadn't for some hours.  I'm not sure if pot was his word, like everything else I'm dated but nonetheless he hadn't smoked pot for some hours.  It seems for the last two years Matt has been on what we call the Marijuana Maintenance Program.  In my experience that's not sobriety, better but not good enough.  The first rule of working the 12 Steps is to be sober.  In my experience, if I don't drink things get better.  I'm pretty sure if I do drink they're going to get worse.  And as I heard it in the beginning and believe, mind altering drugs and alcohol are the same thing, just a question of getting to Omaha by plane or train, you're still in Omaha.  I shared my opinion and my phone number with Matt, I haven't heard from him since.  

My meeting with Matt kept me sober, my Higher Power at work.

Disclaimer:  I’m certainly not a representative of Alcoholics Anonymous nor can I say I’m even a member but I know people. Saying that, this is a story. It could happen.