Prequel to Rock Creek Park, “Man in the Making”

Connie, my ex, and I have developed at least a functional relationship in the nearly five years since we parted. It was a bad ending. I had been increasingly aware by 2017 when Con had a breakdown, meltdown, complete retreat from the family. Rowan our daughter was in an out of the mental health care system for suicide attempts and other forms of self-harm. Kai, the youngest, he just seemed to regard me with a cold serpentine loathing.

I was burned out completely by the end of 2017. Found myself sitting in a chair for days at a time. Not showering. Not dressing. Not talking to them. Covered in a blanket, sometimes borrowing Rowan’s weighted blanket and feeling like dying. ER visits for extreme anxiety (thought I was having a heart attack, several times…my blood pressure was spiking to 180 from my mind’s dark powers). I finally got out of that chair and saw a psychiatrist, A. Tran in San Jose, California, where I was living since 2009. I got on the right medication, Prozac worked well for me as it turned out. Tran was not just a pill dispenser, he was a fine human being with deep discernment and listening skills like a golden retriever. Over the next year and half, he brought me out of the darkness and back to my self, not my old self, a new man who I began to get to know.

In parallel, my second cousin Trudy had ended up in federal prison in 2017 for selling weed. 2 years for over a pound, popped for distribution. The family largely ignored her when she was in. We had been close her whole life, she and her identical twin Brenda are thirteen years younger than me and I had changed their diapers. They should not have lived past three days old, they had been born with holes in their hearts. Open heart surgery for both at three days old. Sitting on pins and needles waiting for news. They lived. They thrived. As they grew, I was a man and moved into manly things, going to school for premed, getting kicked out for drugs and alcohol abuse, becoming a chef, getting in and out of relationships with alacrity. By the time I was 25 years old I finally felt like a real person, the man I would be more or less for the rest of my life. Trudy was a teenager, blooming, and the twins were being raised by my mom, much better than she has raised me. Old age had taken the edge off of her narcissism and addictions. She was finally the mother I had needed, to them. I saw the girls frequently when I visited mom. Something about Trudy’s gaze was vaguely disturbing, I didn’t, couldn’t put a name to it at that time. Brenda was so different from her, not as smart, or creative, or cool. Trudy and I always felt like brother and sister and Brenda always felt like a stranger.

I went on with my life, got back in school for engineering, initially as a civil engineering student. I had a huge hard-on for bridges. I read books and collected photos of the famous bridges, and lighthouses, of the world. These things fascinated me at a visceral level. I went on to Cal Poly, SLO and ended up in Mechanical Engineering. The civil department was run by old men with whiskey bottles in the drawers of their desks. I didn’t feel comfortable trusting my future to them. And I got As in every ME course I took, the material fascinated me. I caught on fire.

I worked restaurants still to pay my way. My dad had bailed out of paying my way, understandably, after the pre-med debacle. I worked at a place called Hudson’s Grill, back in Ventura, California where I had returned to junior college in 1986. I picked up a job at the Hudson’s in SLO as a result, bartender and cook. It brought in enough to pay most of my bills for living and school. I took out loans for the rest. I was on a good track, frequently on the dean’s list, leading homework groups, active in clubs, and partying responsibly with great friends. I even sang in a rock band, and had some great times belting out metal and soft rock classics with the boys, Doug, Johnny and Dave the Hell-rider. We never amounted to much but it was hella fun.

I met a buxom and charismatic waitress at the restaurant, one thing led to another. She was six years older, claimed to be barren, but along about the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I proved that wrong. I graduated on June 12, 1992, married Grendel (not her real name) on June 13, 1992. I had an internship in Torrance California that summer, as Grendel’s belly began to grow, and worked for a turbocharger manufacturer down in Torrance California, roomed with my friend Jorge from Cal Poly in El Segundo. I built good relationships at Garrett Turbochargers, and it turned into a paid master’s degree back at Cal Poly, with a sponsored thesis project that would ultimately really help Garrett to improve the efficiency of their turbos with simple changes to the shape of castings. I was apparently a wizard at fluid and thermal mechanics. Who knew? The marriage was shit from the start, Grendel was a narcissist. She had a unique ability to act like who you wanted her to be when it suited her, a dark empathy…Her mother (Grendel’s Mother LOL) had described her as a ‘sha-meleon’. No shit. I did not correct her pronunciation, and asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it before we were married with children. She reckoned it was my job to figure that out for myself. Fair. I finished the master’s, took a good job for a company in SLO and LA, a design office started by my thesis advisor when he found himself suddenly unwelcome in the ME department. His brother ran the plant down in LA, we built heavy machinery and large astronomical telescopes. The plant was loaded with relics, huge machine tools for making huge machines, acquired for a song when WW II ended and never moved since. The sight of shop cats puking up hairballs lingers in my mind’s eye to this day… I met Rick there at L&F. We had been students at the same time, but he was a year ahead and had started just before me at L&F. He mentored me, as he had years of industrial experience before coming back to Cal Poly. He had worked at a company called Ballard Battery up in Burnaby BC, famous for its incendiary night vision goggle lithium-ion batteries. They had not been a big hit with the soldiers on the the ground. Ballard had moved on to hydrogen fuel cells in the early 90s, and Rick had moved on to Ballard in 1995. He offered me a job in 1996, and that’s where the story picks up in “Rock Creek Park”. This chapter ends here, if there is interest I will add subsequent chapters to this engineer’s memoir.Connie, my ex, and I have developed at least a functional relationship in the nearly five years since we parted. It was a bad ending. I had been increasingly aware by 2017 when Con had a breakdown, meltdown, complete retreat from the family. Rowan our daughter was in an out of the mental health care system for suicide attempts and other forms of self-harm. Kai, the youngest, he just seemed to regard me with a cold serpentine loathing.

I was burned out completely by the end of 2017. Found myself sitting in a chair for days at a time. Not showering. Not dressing. Not talking to them. Covered in a blanket, sometimes borrowing Rowan’s weighted blanket and feeling like dying. ER visits for extreme anxiety (thought I was having a heart attack, several times…my blood pressure was spiking to 180 from my mind’s dark powers). I finally got out of that chair and saw a psychiatrist, A. Tran in San Jose, California, where I was living since 2009. I got on the right medication, Prozac worked well for me as it turned out. Tran was not just a pill dispenser, he was a fine human being with deep discernment and listening skills like a golden retriever. Over the next year and half, he brought me out of the darkness and back to my self, not my old self, a new man who I began to get to know.

In parallel, my second cousin Trudy had ended up in federal prison in 2017 for selling weed. 2 years for over a pound, popped for distribution. The family largely ignored her when she was in. We had been close her whole life, she and her identical twin Brenda are thirteen years younger than me and I had changed their diapers. They should not have lived past three days old, they had been born with holes in their hearts. Open heart surgery for both at three days old. Sitting on pins and needles waiting for news. They lived. They thrived. As they grew, I was a man and moved into manly things, going to school for premed, getting kicked out for drugs and alcohol abuse, becoming a chef, getting in and out of relationships with alacrity. By the time I was 25 years old I finally felt like a real person, the man I would be more or less for the rest of my life. Trudy was a teenager, blooming, and the twins were being raised by my mom, much better than she has raised me. Old age had taken the edge off of her narcissism and addictions. She was finally the mother I had needed, to them. I saw the girls frequently when I visited mom. Something about Trudy’s gaze was vaguely disturbing, I didn’t, couldn’t put a name to it at that time. Brenda was so different from her, not as smart, or creative, or cool. Trudy and I always felt like brother and sister and Brenda always felt like a stranger.

I went on with my life, got back in school for engineering, initially as a civil engineering student. I had a huge hard-on for bridges. I read books and collected photos of the famous bridges, and lighthouses, of the world. These things fascinated me at a visceral level. I went on to Cal Poly, SLO and ended up in Mechanical Engineering. The civil department was run by old men with whiskey bottles in the drawers of their desks. I didn’t feel comfortable trusting my future to them. And I got As in every ME course I took, the material fascinated me. I caught on fire.

I worked restaurants still to pay my way. My dad had bailed out of paying my way, understandably, after the pre-med debacle. I worked at a place called Hudson’s Grill, back in Ventura, California where I had returned to junior college in 1986. I picked up a job at the Hudson’s in SLO as a result, bartender and cook. It brought in enough to pay most of my bills for living and school. I took out loans for the rest. I was on a good track, frequently on the dean’s list, leading homework groups, active in clubs, and partying responsibly with great friends. I even sang in a rock band, and had some great times belting out metal and soft rock classics with the boys, Doug, Johnny and Dave the Hell-rider. We never amounted to much but it was hella fun.

I met a buxom and charismatic waitress at the restaurant, one thing led to another. She was six years older, claimed to be barren, but along about the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree I proved that wrong. I graduated on June 12, 1992, married Grendel (not her real name) on June 13, 1992. I had an internship in Torrance California that summer, as Grendel’s belly began to grow, and worked for a turbocharger manufacturer down in Torrance California, roomed with my friend Jorge from Cal Poly in El Segundo. I built good relationships at Garrett Turbochargers, and it turned into a paid master’s degree back at Cal Poly, with a sponsored thesis project that would ultimately really help Garrett to improve the efficiency of their turbos with simple changes to the shape of castings. I was apparently a wizard at fluid and thermal mechanics. Who knew? The marriage was shit from the start, Grendel was a narcissist. She had a unique ability to act like who you wanted her to be when it suited her, a dark empathy…Her mother (Grendel’s Mother LOL) had described her as a ‘sha-meleon’. No shit. I did not correct her pronunciation, and asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it before we were married with children. She reckoned it was my job to figure that out for myself. Fair. I finished the master’s, took a good job for a company in SLO and LA, a design office started by my thesis advisor when he found himself suddenly unwelcome in the ME department. His brother ran the plant down in LA, we built heavy machinery and large astronomical telescopes. The plant was loaded with relics, huge machine tools for making huge machines, acquired for a song when WW II ended and never moved since. The sight of shop cats puking up hairballs lingers in my mind’s eye to this day… I met Rick there at L&F. We had been students at the same time, but he was a year ahead and had started just before me at L&F. He mentored me, as he had years of industrial experience before coming back to Cal Poly. He had worked at a company called Ballard Battery up in Burnaby BC, famous for its incendiary night vision goggle lithium-ion batteries. They had not been a big hit with the soldiers on the the ground. Ballard had moved on to hydrogen fuel cells in the early 90s, and Rick had moved on to Ballard in 1995. He offered me a job in 1996, and that’s where the story picks up in “Rock Creek Park”. This chapter ends here, if there is interest I will add subsequent chapters to this engineer’s memoir.