Ditching My Kids on Easter

Please forgive me, but I abandoned my wife and kids on Easter Sunday.

I straight-up deserted my family responsibilities and drove north without a care in the world. Leaving my young kids fatherless, I drank beer with strangers far from home. I acted like a road-tripping lone wolf in search of “the raw throb of existence,” as Jon Krakauer once wrote, like I was still in my freewheeling 20s. I did all of this with no remorse and without a care in the world.

Okay, so maybe that’s a smidge misleading. Grabby openers are crucial, though. I hope you’re currently grabbed and will allow me to explain.

This year the 4 of us enjoyed all of our Easter exploits with the family on Good Friday and an also-quite-good Saturday. So it worked out quite nicely that I was able to converge with my buddy Noah 90 minutes north on Easter Sunday as he just so happened to be driving across Pennsylvania on a pristine spring day.

An ideal afternoon for a road trip and a meet-up. Two of my very favorite things.

I have forged numerous meaningful in-real-life connections through both Twitter and Facebook, and my friendship with Noah is one of them. It’s a monument to the power of social media — that decaying and toxic realm which has also done irreparable damage — to, when used the right way, facilitate genuine human convergence.

Noah and I met up at a small state park vista overlooking a confluence of Susquehanna River branches. I thought he might only have 30 minutes to spare, but we hiked around and ended up talking for nearly 2 hours. The kind of chat that reminds me that when I am feeling myself, conversation is pure improvisational (and cathartic) delight.

Some people think male friendship doesn’t exist. Or that it does, but it’s built around beer and sports and aloofness and chest-thumping “locker room talk.”

I honestly feel bad for those people. I pity anyone who was raised on a steady diet of cardboard-cutout sitcom males who refuse to share their feelings and are somehow content to live without dynamic connection. What a sad, boring life that must be.

I have enjoyed deep and vulnerable male friendships for 40 years, ever since kindergarten. (Although I suppose the emotionally vulnerable stuff didn’t start right away. I was too busy with Play-Doh and Matchbox cars and Nerf to get in touch with my 5-year-old emotions.) To this day, I’m still BFFs with my childhood best buddy Dave. I even wrote a warm, glowing tribute to our epic saga here.

I’m also grateful to have a 25-year friendship from college, an 18-year friendship from working at a Colorado record store, and decades-long friendships with my 2 older brothers. There are others whom I’ve known and loved for over a decade, including multiple enduring connections forged while waiting in line for concerts halfway across the country. (Jimmy Eat World in Denver, and Sun Kil Moon in St. Paul.)

So yeah, I guess you could say I’m an extrovert.

In the past week alone I have gotten to chat at length with most of the people I referred to above, mostly over the phone since they’re scattered from California to Georgia to Austria. Maybe the best conversation, though, was in person with my buddy at the scenic overlook last Sunday. In-person is always better. We covered so much ground, and man do I love covering ground.

After Noah re-embarked on his journey, I treated myself to an IPA at a tiny brewery in nearby Sunbury (this is the “drinking beer with strangers” part) and met some friendly locals. I am deeply grateful that after 6 ½ years of excessive drinking during my 20s, I eventually found sobriety and a few years later discovered the joy of drinking 1 beer per week with no desire for more. Moderation is, ironically, quite an intoxicating pleasure. Especially when it helps further connect you to people you would have otherwise never met.

In the end, my Easter Sunday was a monument to the joys of the open road, driving soundtracks, scenic overlooks, conversation, friendship, finding cool random spots, and savoring a good IPA.

And the occasional need to ditch your kids and be a lone wolf, just for a little while.

(Don’t worry, my little wolf cubs recovered nicely.)

Thanks for the good times, Noah.