Crockpot Tuscan Chicken

Day 1 of something new

I'm thinking about Virginia Beach this morning. Specifically, the Hilton hotel right on the Atlantic Ocean. As far as beach front hotels go, it's probably not in the top 100 in the world, or even the country, but for me, it was peak luxury.

I think that a conversation with a client at work the other day sparked the memory. He needed to raise his business debit card spending limit for the day because he was buying a cruise for his family. $10,000 up front. A wife and five kids. I held my tongue about the problems that arise from using business funds for personal reasons, as I'm sure that as a small business owner he knew all about it. It was likely more important to him to give something special to his family, and tapping into the business coffers was the only way to do it. I once bought a house that way.

He said, off-handedly, "I might as well spring for the all-drinks-included package."

I snorted. I got it. I downshifted from Professional Chris to Buddy Chris. "Vacations with kids aren't exactly relaxing for dads, are they?"

He laughed. That was good. They don't always laugh when I pierce the veil of familiarity.

Me: "Every time they ask for a refill or a side of fries or you drive by a water park or something, you see a P&L in your head, don't you?"

He laughed again. "Brother, you know it."

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I've been thinking about that Virginia Beach Hilton ever since. I'd pay extra to get an ocean-facing room as close to the top floor as I could. After months or years of running my company without rest, I needed to see water stretching to a horizon. I needed to see to infinity.

Just off-shore, dolphins would play in the surf just a few yards from swimmers and surfers. We would watch pelicans and F-18s buzz the top of the hotel. The kids would bob in the rooftop pool while Mom & Dad sipped daiquiris on patio chairs. Later, some beach time. Sand castles and wave wrestling. Digging big holes for no other reason than to dig big holes before the tide came in and erased them.

When the sun sank low on the horizon, the wife and I would take the kids to the outrageously expensive outdoor restaurant at the hotel, load everyone up with artisan cheeseburgers. Pecan-crusted trout for Mom & Dad.

It was during one of those dinners where my wife gave me one of the two or three compliments I ever received from her. She looked across the table after helping my youngest cut something on her plate. Her eyes were filled with pride and admiration. She said, "You did this. You made this happen."

I distinctly remember looking out over the ocean, there, just over her shoulder. I don't remember what I said. Maybe I didn't say anything, because I knew how fragile and likely temporary it all was. All the success of that time felt like a fluke. It had almost nothing to do with strategy or executing plans. It was all tenacity and perseverance—acting on wisdom from my Dad. We would ask him, “Dad, how did you do it?” regarding his own business success. He would demure. “I’m just too dumb to quit.”

I'd fought like hell--and fought Hell--to reach my own modest level of success, but I knew better than anyone how much of that was likely God, not me. I'd stumbled through to that point. To me, it mostly felt like blind luck enabled by persistence.

Nowadays, almost as far from any ocean as you can get within the continental United States, the wife calls me a deadbeat. I wonder how I'm going to feed my kids next week.

This isn't that kind of a post, though. Quite the opposite. I might be delirious with fatigue, but in all the ways it counts, life is beautiful.

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The new apartment is really a duplex in northeast Tulsa. The units house four families each. So far it's been quiet, but there are a few units down the street whose residents seem to want to make it sound and feel like New Tijuana. Some, or perhaps most, make the place smell like a dorm room.

It's a two-bedroom place. There are five of us crammed in here, and one injured morning dove my youngest is determined to save.

We use paper plates and plastic utensils. The ink was well-dried on the leasing contract before I realized the place doesn't have a microwave. That's alright—monastic living transfigured my ideas of what is "necessary." There are times I just want to push some buttons and get an instant whatever, but the slow pace of survival in this time is probably just what I need—it keeps things from getting too frantic. The kids disagree. They insist I get a microwave ASAP.

I’ll put it on the list.

I found a box of serving utensils that survived the family's Great Reset. Makes me feel like a French monarch.

I gave the kids the two bedrooms. I sleep on the couch. They have to double-up: boys in one room, girls in the other. The monastery lent us some of the twin beds in storage. That was definitely a gift from God.

A garbage bag hangs from a kitchen cabinet knob. The bag is from our camping trip in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Preserve last year. I'll have to get a garbage can soon.

Put it on the list.

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I'd been wrapping up an audiobook project when I was ejected from the monastery. I still have a few chapters to narrate and edit. The loss of my perfect little storage closet studio hurt. When I was looking for a new place, my main requirement was a secluded spot, preferably carpeted, where I could record. (It ranked several places above a microwave, evidently).

Yesterday, as I was unpacking and organizing, I spent hours rebuilding my "recording studio" in the back of the master bedroom closet. It seemed small but adequate, but after lining the walls with moving blankets, stacking boxes for a desk that could support a laptop, external monitor, mic stand, pre-amp, and a couple miles of cable, it feels more like a hastily constructed Apollo capsule.

Here's the good part: it APPEARS that the sound quality is far better in there. Have a listen: this is the first test-run using one of my favorite passages from "The River Why" by David James Duncan:

AUDIO SAMPLE.

The kids were playing hide-and-seek while I recorded that, which is pretty impressive, if you ask me. The place is tiny, but they still found cubbies to hide in. They rustled and giggled and slammed doors, but you don't hear it in that recording, do you?

Every day I note the oddities of returning to the world after two years in a monastery—the first time I loaded a dishwasher in two years, buying certain tools and utensils for the first time ever (a can opener, for one), rebuilding a spice cabinet.

For the first time in two years I came home from work to find my children waiting for me.

I have to confess that before everything blew up, I’d barely been domesticated. All of my wife’s requests for the stupidest things like organizing a spice rack, or having a proper laundry schedule, are now vitally important to me. Thankfully, that brutal year of 2021 where we switched roles—I becoming Mr. Mom at home, and she going to a day job—taught me a hell of a lot about domestic management. Granted, it was brutal in large part because I relied so heavily on her. (A text: “Hey hon—I hope work is going well. How long do you leave frozen chicken breasts in the bowl before changing the water?”) She would send lists—so many lists. Shopping lists, lists of good recipe sites, lists of kids’ homework and cleaning tasks. I hated it all.

The other day I was ecstatic to find a brand new croc pot at a thrift store for $25.

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When I was at the monastery, I felt constant pressure to achieve, do, and rebuild. As for so much of my life, it seemed like a giant, invisible hand held me back. I theorized that it might be God holding me back, preventing me from rushing into something that would be very, very bad for me. Or, I cynically pivoted, maybe it was my own internal stuff continually hobbling me from Taking the Next Step.

It might have been both. I thought the monastery was a place for me to rebuild my career and emerge not in a broken down Ford F150 with 215,000 miles on it and a crunched up rear bumper, but in a Cadillac Escalade fit for a family of five plus doodle spawn.

When I was ejected, at first I thought it was a failure, perhaps a consequence of my failure to rebuild due to my laziness or something.

It didn’t take long to see it a different way. On Day 1 of my latest exile, sitting alone in that Extended Stay Hotel, the stink of skunk weed finding its way through the poorly sealed windows, I knew I was ready. I had innumerable challenges ahead of me—finding housing, rebuilding a career and a workable kitchen, just for starters. Two years prior, the workload would have crushed me.

Tonight had I had a family dinner at my own table for the first time in two years. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted that again. Sure, we’d had many meals at the monastery in the last 24 months. The girls always forbade me to be the reader at trapeza. I would sit there, always between my two girls, silently eating while the reader read stories about martyrs being flayed alive, or the dangers of gluttony.

It’s not quite the same.

I made a meal for my children tonight. Crockpot Tuscan Chicken over spaghetti noodles. The creation I made looked nothing like the recipe, but my children devoured it despite their barbarous palates.

We laughed and ate and laughed some more.

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