OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

There are sections of my life that I don't talk about much, not because I'm ashamed of them, but because certain other people were involved and certain other people weren't involved. This is a period when nobody was really involved (which are rare in my life) much, so maybe it's OK.

My children had both dropped out of high school and had disappeared into the anonymity of the street. I had helped my second wife move into a basement apartment on Harriet, hoping in vain that she would "adapt" to being alone. I declared bankruptcy to cover the huge mortgage (15% interest, it was the early 80's) and hospital bills for my son and wife.

I abandoned my house on 31st Avenue, site of so many bad memories, and moved into an upscale apartment house on York in Edina. Top floor, 13th (believe it or not), as far from the rest of humanity as I could get in that building. And there, to my dismay, it hit.

Now, I had read about mid-life crises, thought I knew what they were and how to cope with them. But when it hit, I finally realized just how unprepared anyone will be. You see, mid-life crisis for men is not an affair of the head, not a reasoned quantity (which they are used to), but a thing of the emotions. It's as unreasonable as a thing can be, but, despite yourself, you find yourself embracing it. It's sort of like the emotion of love in that way.

All I knew was that my entire life was a failure, a sham, something I wanted nothing to do with anymore. I'm sure that my circumstances had something to do with the timing of this onslaught in my life of these emotions. But, they weren't the cause of them. No, this was something which had been building up for a while.

I saw my life out of control, out of my control. My accomplishments seemed dimly in the past and I could envision nothing in my future which might approach them. My whole being cried out, "Do Overs! Do Overs!" But, sitting there, isolated in that apartment, I realized that life has no reset button, no reboots allowed, keep shuffling your memory until you reach stability again.

So I decided to simplify my life. Kids gone? Check. Wife gone? Check. Most possessions gone? Check. What was left? This was not to be a once-over cleaning, nor even a spring all-out cleaning, it must be a slash-and-burn destructive campaign.

Try spending days going through old photographs, ruthlessly eliminated memories. The nine months spent in Alaska, totally useless, not relevant, gone. Pictures after high school, before the kids, totally irrelevant, except, surprisingly, the picture of our baby chihuahua sitting on the toe of my boot. Other than that, gone.

Pictures with my first wife were already gone with my marriage to my second. Now it was her turn. Pictures with my second wife, gone, gone, gone. Pictures of my kids, all ages, all sizes. A moment hesitation, then, ruthlessly, eliminate all but "good" pictures. Through the tears, watch the fuzzy pictures of Christmases past vanish, birthday shots from awkward angles evaporate, a lifetime of memories stripped down, packed into a small box about the size of a shoebox.

That was the hardest, but it was not the last. This rejection of my past life was to be as complete as I could make it. A collection of my favorite books, junk fit only for the garbage men now. Most of my music, no longer of interest (yet strangely keeping the collection of Elvis Presley records accumulated by my first wife). And so it went, every day another part of my past visited, or revisited, for consideration of elimination. Whole boxes never unpacked, slated for the incinerator anyway.

I realized that simplification of my life in material things was not enough. I must also simplify other things. My mind closed off any thought or possibility of future relationships. I would never again struggle with the hardships of being one with another, too complicated, too fraught with possibilities of pain. That left work and general living.

What could be the fartherest I could get from the way I was living, and the technical work I was doing? I wanted to drop all the modern accouterments of American life. If I were still doing the same things, I would simply slide on in life, not make a completely new one as I wanted.

So, I picked the Fiji Islands. Far enough? And since I had spent my whole life struggling to accomplish something in business, I would try to accomplish nothing. My fervent hope then was to become a beach comber on those far-away islands. If I starved, so be it. At least my struggle was over.

I went to the library, did research on different south Pacific islands, their cultures, immigration laws, etc. I spent months planning how this all might be accomplished. And at the end of this process, two realizations came to me.

First, South Seas islands don't want people coming there to be beach combers, neer-do-wells, neer-do-nothings, what they want are tourists and their money. Maybe they weren't so far away after all.

Secondly, that I wouldn't really be happy in such a life. This was probably the point in my life where I truly realized that I disliked being outdoors, a feeling which has done nothing but intensify as the years passed.

At about this time my second wife moved back in with me. Beaten by the world, unable with her diagnosed "group" personality (no, not split personality, nor multi-personality) to cope with the responsibility of getting herself to work every day, she appeared at my door, seeking solace.

And I realized then that wiping your history away doesn't really work. There are always too many strings, some of which originate within you, that you won't let go of. Here was a woman which I had professed to love (although, looking back, she was too much like one of my kids for it to have been true), asking for help, and I found I could not refuse.

I invited her back into my life, knowing full well that if I had ever loved her it was gone by then. But I still had a responsibility to her, still needed to help her leave the nest. So she moved in and we, together, began working on her independence skills.

In the six months or so that she was there, she met a man at work, one that I actually encouraged her to attach herself to emotionally if he was interested. He was (there's something strangely attractive to young men in a woman who is totally dependent, totally subservient to the man's wishes and opinions) and soon she moved on, with my blessing. I've often wondered how attractive her traits were to him after a year or two.

I was beginning to feel a little bit better about where my life was going at that particular point. Several years had gone by in this process and I guess it's true that time does heal all wounds.
I moved out of the expensive apartment into a much cheaper one, fitting my personality better, began saving money toward my NEW dream, retirement at an early age.

And, I thought, it wouldn't hurt to have a few dates along the way, just so long as we don't get too serious. But, of course, that was my head talking, not my heart. Maybe through a dating service, that's unlikely to lead to anything serious.

I met the woman who was to be my third wife. And I then knew where MY mid-life crisis had been propelling me all along.