As we invent our lives, issues that arise at critical points become the ones which, in odd moments of reflection, recur in our memories and dreams most often.

We commonly forget 98 percent of what we are doing with our time on this planet. How do we fill our time, after all, when approaching 85 or 90 years of consciousness, minus what we subtract for sleeping?

The brain, which is such a better organizer than we are, keeps at the front of our awake selves the things it considers the most important. While I can affirm this, I add that I don’t have a clue by what criterion it selects out what it does for my continued attention, or why.

That’s the thing about dogs which earn them the title of being a little lower than angels. I don’t know who taught them this, but they are just about the most perfect reflections of the joys and pains of their existences as any living thing, and they are the least judgmental of the behaviors of their owners, once loyalties have been assigned, except when experiencing really overt abuse. They simply refuse to think ill of just about anyone.    

So what do we homo sapiens glean from this? With the help of therapy, almost anything that allows for doors behind which forgotten memories are kept, could be worthwhile. Or maybe not. It steps in, for better or worse, as interpreters of our experiences, and when they happen over and over, perhaps there is a more urgent matter being called out.

There is the one about confronting my dad at a Christmas dinner. Maybe this is one of the more important ones, because it truly marked a turning point for me when it happened at Christmas in 1969.

I took a bus from the Bay Area to Santa Barbara. To the outside world, the only difference was that I had hippie-style long hair and a beard. The fact that I’d come out that previous summer had nothing to do with it.

Both my brothers and their wives were in town for this, too. Word was received, almost immediately at my grandparents house next door to my folks,’ where I’d gathered with my two brothers and their wives, that I was being uninvited to the usual, stuffy and ceremonial dinner.

A big debate was over what to do. All were agreed that it was just another arbitrary injustice by my dad. My two sisters-in-law became the most forceful in my defense, even suggesting that we should all boycott the meal.

But that was not agreed to and when they all left, I was there alone in my grandparents’ house as everyone else crossed the lawn to dinner.

It hit me then that I was alone, and that nobody was going to change anything but me, as much as everyone shared the fear and loathing of dad’s brutal temper and arbitrariness.

I faced an existential choice right then and there. I decided to act, facing the very real fear that my dad would pulverize me. I walked across the law, entered the front door, and faced the dinner table where everyone was sitting. I took the posture of a man ready to fight.

I hurled a few choice epithets to my dad, who never left his chair, as I thought he might, but who weakly retorted, “So are you here to ruin our dinner?”

I turned on my heels and walked out, slamming the front door behind me. As I walked back over to my grandparents’ house I realized others were coming behind me. It was my brothers, both very angry at me. But no blows were exchanged, just some angry words.

I learned much later that my dad left the table and went into his bedroom for the remainder of the evening.