30 years ago my mother died of lung cancer. 30 years ago I started this website.
The two are intertwined: I first started my website as a place to memorialize my mother. It grew from there.
There are a few others who have had Internet presences like my own for thirty years, going right back to the dawn of the Internet as used by common folk. Back in the age of Mozilla and AOL. I was there. I was 29-years old. Justin Hall was there. Paul Graham, too. Jerry Pournelle, Jeffrey Zeldman, a few others. It was an exciting time. Revolutionary. The Internet at first seemed a brand new medium for common folk to gain access to all the information in the world and to allow for more communication than ever before. Change was in the air, positive change. An optimistic time.
That was many years ago. I am now 59-years old. I have come to regard the Internet and social media as net losses for humanity. I have stepped back from contemporary technology and embraced earlier times. It was entirely the opposite back in 1996.
Yet still my website persists. Over 30 years.
I am now three years older than my mom when she died. My dad is still alive, although at 87-years of age he is in inexorable decline. The years they continue to pass, no matter if the times are good or bad. Next year I will be 60. That is different from 30 or 45, or even 50-years of age. Retirement is near. My children start to develop adult lives of their own. A new era beckons, with pros and cons.
Ah, yes, the “pros” and “cons.” There always seem to be “pros” and “cons.” It seems almost always like that: there are no clear “better” or “worse” in practical life choices but only tradeoffs. We make choices and then we live with the consequences. I think of my choice to become a teacher in California public schools, as compared to other options I might have taken. Tradeoffs. As a high school teacher I enjoyed certain advantages and payoffs, but I also suffered from stark negatives which were irremediable. The good and the bad in the job became only more so over the decades, and these peaks and valleys came to almost define my work life. Maybe the good and the bad are more distinct in teaching than in other careers. So it goes.
It is too late to change now. I made my choices. I played my role.
But it is all so less engaging and important than it used to be. I am beginning to recede from public life, and that has been happening for some time. It takes me less and less time to browse the three newspapers I read cover to cover each day. The scrum and hurly-burly of daily life: the latest political brawl, the scandal at this or that business, a new singer or athlete comes into prominence – I am only paying partial attention. The news from Nigeria or Ecuador interests me almost not at all: those places are far away. “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars.” Trouble and more trouble. Seemingly endless trouble.
The decades pass and I witness it all. The world continues to plod along and we create “smarter” machines. Artificial Intelligence might revolutionize the lives of many, but it won’t revolutionize mine. “Say I’m old fashioned: that is enough,” says Edith Wharton’s character Newland Archer, and I feel the same. I have chosen to embrace the harmonizing practice of Tai Chi Chuan, the stoic philosophy of Epictetus, and the austere discipline of Miyamoto Musashi. I choose ancient practices. I do not look to contemporaries for role models, nor do I dream of drastically better tomorrows. We are what we are, and I am who I am. Value can be derived from delving deeper into myself, but little is to be gained from the outside. I do pay attention to what happens around me, but only partially. Sometimes less.
Perhaps a theoretical model would be instructive. In India they talk about the traditional four stages of life: the “Brahmacharya,” or student stage (Ages 0–25); and then the “Grihastha,” or householder stage (Ages 25–50). I have completed these first two; I endured all the enormous “heavy lifting” they entail over approximately six decades. I am beginning to enter the third “Vanaprastha,” or hermit stage (Ages 50–75). This is typified by retirement and gradual detachment. An adult steps back from active work and family control, passing responsibilities to the next generation to focus more on spiritual growth. I am so ready for this! And then finally, the fourth and final stage, “Sannyasa” (Ages 75+) – renunciation. It focuses on complete spiritual liberation. Individuals let go of all worldly ties and material possessions to live freely, meditating and seeking oneness with the Divine. I am a ways away from that one still.
Regardless, here I am, and this is my webpage. Today it turns thirty years old, and I even made a cake to celebrate the occasion:
Do you like it?
It would be hard to underestimate its importance to me. Amid the many subjects I’ve explored and discussed on this website over the years are memorials to those I’ve lost: my mother, and my stepmother, too. Uncle Bill and Chris Prewitt. I think about my mom just about everyday. I have a photo of her on the cabinet near my bed. I often pray to her in the quiet darkness before I fall asleep. I have conversations with her in my head, and I do that with almost nobody else. For some reason I gain solace and reassurance from just saying her name: “Margaret Mary Geib.” I occasionally say her name out loud extemporaneously; it happens almost unconsciously. “Que me ayudes,” I intone in Spanish to myself. The dynamic link between mother-and-son is still there three decades later.
It amazes me to encounter other people who have little or no connection to one, or both, of their parents. But that is usually because that parent was not present during childhood, or was a malignant presence. My mom was fully present. She was a great mom. My mother was there for the good, the bad, and the ugly. She gave me instruction, patience, love, and life itself. Her talons are in me good and deep. I have tried to be the same sort of parent to my own children.
It does not matter if it has been a full thirty years since my mom died. Sometimes, and in some ways, it feels like just yesterday that it happened.
“Happy death day, mom!” I’ll see you on the other side.
You are NOT forgotten.
And happy 30th birthday to my website!
