The World Is Yours

"The World Is Yours"

I have never shied away from hard work.

I came from a working-class blue collar family and my mother and father instilled a great work ethic for us, as we saw our parents work hard to raise their children - sometimes holding down more than one job at a time.

I had been working since I was 13 years old (at the Mid-State Fair every year for 7 years) then at Lucky's supermarket (age 16), then at Round Table Pizza (17-22), Diamond Video (20-21) and the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles for over 12 years (ages 20-32). And, as you can see, some of these jobs overlapped and I was working sometimes 2 and one time 3 jobs at a time.

The three job thing? Well, it lasted a month. Never again.

We both worked hard when Melissa was born, and Liz's mother stayed with us to watch her while we were at work. When Alex and Andres were born, her mother had slowed down a great deal due to her diabetes, and I was given the opportunity to become a stay-at-home dad. This was a life-changing experience for me. My wife had secured a job where her income was great enough for us to consider one of us staying home to make sure our children were cared for sufficiently. Luckily, that was me.

This was very scary for me because I had never NOT been working. For the first time in my life I was going to not be employed and it was a real leap of faith that our marriage was strong enough for the stigma that comes with the 'male figure' being completely reliant on the 'female figure' in the house-hold, and trusting that we'd rely only on each other, and if it didn't work out I was in trouble.

It took some getting used to for me. Well, it took some getting used to for all of us, including her mother (who now was an amputee from the knee down on her right leg and in a wheelchair). So, with caring for two boys 15 months apart, my 9 year old daughter attending elementary school in Laguna Hills, and my now wheelchair bound mom-in-law who had a slew of health appointments to attend to, I really had no time to figure out how lazy I was going to be not being employed. Employment would have been a break.

When we moved to Bakersfield I found myself busier than ever. I became the (pretty much) only male parent continuously involved in room parenting and on the parent/teacher organization (voted vice president for two terms), and was often with the 'pack of moms' selling raffle tickets, cookies, and school shirts at the front of the school for whatever fundraiser we were thrusting upon our hapless moms & dads who were dropping off their kids for school.

I went to Camp K.E.E.P. (a week long nature/science field trip to Montana del Oro (right next to Morro Bay) offered by the school and paid for by the PTO annually) as a counselor on two occasions and spent a week with them, and twelve of their classmates following a much younger Naturalist on hikes and nature walks watching these 6th graders and trying to keep up.

When I returned to work in 2003, there was no state job to return to as there was a freeze taking place due to the Terminator's lack of experience governing this state, and it being thrust into one of the worst economic times in this modern era. So, I decided to try out for a job at Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

Three interviews later, I was hired for a minimum wage job. Yeah, they interview people for three points of view! Crazy! Within 6 months I was a 'lead', and within a year I was their Community Relations Manager where I took that store from 11th place (in a 12 store region) to 2nd place in community oriented sales in my first year.

When I first got hired there was a store down the street called Borders Books and a local 'mom and pop' store called Russo's Books (who had four locations across town). By the time I left B&N, Borders was teetering on oblivion and Russo's had dwindled down from four stores to their one main store in The Marketplace. It was my own personal goal to maintain all the school bulk business sales and monopolize all the community efforts to where our store would be the only game in town. And I almost met that goal.

In the summer of 2009, fed up with the lack of support from the administrative branch of this bookstore conglomerate, and given absolutely no 'kudos' or 'attaboys' for my record marking triumphs in sales and community involvement, and after being given a certificate (but no raise or bonus) to show my achievements, then told from this crusty old dry skinned witch, Mary McDonald, our district manager, "Good job securing $670k in sales this year. Next year make it a cool million", then being threatened to be written up because I didn't have my sales plan ready for submission (still due in a week), I flipped out, called Mike Russo and asked if he ever considered hiring a Community Relations Manager.

In less than a month I was working at The Marketplace as a proud member of the dying breed of independent bookstore booksellers. My hands on relationship with my clients and community partners was so strong that every one of my customers followed me to Russo's and they were able to enjoy the heavy flow of cash once again, as if these other bookstores in town didn't exist. Borders fell soon after and B&N was sitting there scratching their heads wondering how they were going to fill the void of the CRM sales.

As I was thriving in the book business, my wife was wrongfully terminated at her job and even though she won her case against her employer, never really felt welcomed back and soon was out on disability leave after a work related accident left her back messed up.

Then with our relationship now in a first, being home at the same time after so many years both of us running things alone, having issues with money, my constant running to event after event, and then my decision to get involved in a local theatrical production of a staged revue for rock and roll history, which (unbeknownst to me) would involve four nights a week of rehearsals for a month and a half, and two long months of production due to it being a hit and being extended throughout the summer, our marriage soon went the way of my relationship to B&N. Gone, but not forgotten.

Though I was successful in what I thought was important, work, talent, friends, health ... I was completely disheveled in all other aspects of my life ... in life. No love, no commitment, no kids (except on weekends) and no religion. Family? Looking at it this way, I was poorer now than I had ever been.

I wasn't at home any more, didn't see the kids every day, some talking to me, some not. Melly in college, and living her own life. The boys, first with me every weekend, then every other weekend, then ... whenever they wanted to come, as they were getting older and more into their friends than me, and though I was a fantastic stay-at-home dad, I was an 'okay' weekend dad. Mine and my ex's relationship was horrible and I was spreading myself too thin and involved in too many things to recognize that I was slowly but surely going to crack. And I did. And it was horrible.

Ten years later, I'm living in Los Angeles, in Glendale, and going to Los Angeles Film School for my Arts & Science Degree, and helping my son (Andres, who moved with me) first get through his last six months of high school, then get his AS degree, then learn how to apply and get that job he wanted at Verizon during school, then continue to offer him a place to stay as he secured an even better job with a stock broker company where Disney is their main client. With the generous help of a friend, I am able to live healthy and get through this course ... well, up until now.

Returning to school was a struggle - people say you can always go back to school, and that's true, you can. But know this, the demographic of returning to school as a 50+ year old with the majority of students (about 95%) in their 20-24's, you automatically feel out of place and find yourself working alone a lot, while you see your fellow students 'buddy up' to work on this project or that. It made me sad that I didn't go directly into school for right after high school, but this was the path I chose, and so I would stick it out. I have so far, but it hasn't been as easy as I hoped it would be. In fact, it isn't.

I bring this up because looking back at that time that I stayed home from the world, and lived in a world that I got to create and never stray from for over eight years, and to be with my kids during that time, every day, being who they saw when they woke up to who they saw when they went to bed at night, getting them ready for school, picking them up after, taking them to this event or that movie or this park or that classmate' birthday, or just lounging around and watching movies at home are now some of the most precious moments I will ever know - because now, one of the main components of those memories, one of my children, Alex Sanchez-Robinson, my youngest, is gone. And all these memories rush back to me as my guilt grows and my suffering becomes more and more unbearable, I have to convince myself that my leaving was merited, because in reality, I know it hurt my kids, and forever changed our relationship.

And I would give everything back, every commission check, every standing ovation, every award I've won, every friend I've made ...

EVERYTHING ...

... just to hold and hug my son just one more time. And it would be worth it.

As I sit here brushing the tears away as I type these words and string these sentences together, as I continue to mourn the loss of my youngest, and now take the time to look at his works of art, his writings, his musings, his concerns, I am riddled with guilt and sadness that I didn't do so while he was here. Not that I didn't want to, but because he had built up a wall so high that I could barely look over it, let alone go in. And that was my fault.

Thank God, that by the time he left us, that wall had a gate installed, and we went through it often enough for me to know that we were okay, and that we loved each other. That night, I actually got to tell him I loved him and that I was proud of him and he told me he loved me and we embraced. And, I always knew there would be time to dismantle the wall, we had already broken the hell out of it. And we had a lifetime.

Today, he sits in an urn in Bakersfield and I sit on my couch in Glendale reminiscing about the better days we had. I wish I could go back to 1998, when I became a stay-at-home dad and had the whole world in my pocket. The whole world was in my pocket, and here I was, looking for the whole world ...

I wish ... I wish ... I wish ...