I post this on September 7, 2016—the 142nd day of the 9th year of the life of Landon Dominic Wingate, my youngest son. It’s a big day for me, and a big one for him too, even though he doesn’t know it. That’s because on the 142nd day of the 9th year of my life, I discovered that my father was not merely an angry, troubled man but plumb loco, a danger to himself and to those around him. 

Life is different for Landon at the same point of his life. He has a difficult father, to be sure. An angry, troubled father who’s frequently ticked off for no discernible reason, who’s occasionally harsh without knowing why. Usually when I get that way I have a vague glimmer of why it’s happening—almost always some small annoyance that I’ve overblown because whatever state of self-recrimination I’m in makes life with children too loud for me to handle. 

But I’m not a danger to myself or those around me, and today I feel like celebrating that fact. Regardless of what happens tomorrow, I know that I’ve at least given my youngest son exactly as many days of a not visibly insane father as my own dad gave me. 

It’s a small gift, and I could destroy it at any moment by doing something visibly insane. Dancing naked in the street with a homemade spear, that would do it. Ideally one that Landon hammered to a point on the charcoal forge we built. Honestly, it’s all I can think of at the moment. I haven’t cultivated my violence or rage to the point where they might overflow, and just about every personal resentment I have is slow-boiling on the back burner of my psyche. 

It’s a large back burner, no doubt. But I can see all those pans cooking away, so I know they won’t boil over. I learned from my dad how not to handle such situations. When one of them starts to heat up and roil I can say Oh, there’s that one again and deal with it accordingly, such as by adding ice the to pan or shifting it to a spot farther away from the heat of my own self-disappointment. 

Have I slaughtered this metaphor yet, dear reader? Have I boiled it like a frog for you? 

What I’m realizing on this special, once-in-a-lifetime holiday is that this metaphor is all I have left of the insanity that I feared was my father’s personal curse to me. Insanity just isn’t likely to come way, no matter how much I used to believe I was fated for it (and even sometimes desired it so that the suspense of my life would be over).

I’m too tired to go crazy. I have too much responsibility, and I’d feel guilty for letting down the people in my life. Any insanity I experience will have to be calculated, forced upon myself, and does that really qualify? Having seen a human being go insane, I would say that it clearly does not. So I want to use this holiday—reminiscent of that holiday last year when my older son Lucas surpassed me in the experience of sonhood—to bask in gratitude that I have the opportunity to decide my own degree of mental and emotional stability. 

Not everyone gets to decide whether they go visibly insane or not. I do. Therefore logically—with all the logic of Socrates, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dr. Spock from Star Trek—I choose on this day not to do so. And I choose on this day to let go of the ghostly, ghastly idea that some external force can simply make it happen without my volition. 

Adios, curse. I made my youngest (and almost certainly last) child live for nine years and 142 days under its cloud, and your dark services are no longer required.