Toys as Tools….
We all have our tool-boxes for our trades and professions…some of us might have literal boxes with the known tools of screwdrivers and hammers and levels and wrenches…bottles of oil that shoot smoke into engine compartments that help us find leaks in hoses, or figurative boxes with our paint brushes and palates, pencils and erasers, thumb-drives, bags with cameras and lenses and film (maybe), reference books, mortars and pistils, surveying chains, books of flight plans and maps, stethoscopes and syringes…or whatever. And some of us have other things…like years and years of advanced education and hundreds of books…and hundreds of toys…things that stimulate minds to thinking…or relax them from their stressors…things that unknowingly open the doors of others’ minds so that those who are interested in helping them can finally see inside, can finally see the things that have been hidden for so long…because they didn’t know how to open those doors and windows on their own. 
My wife is one of those people who has a tool box that contains those many years of education and hundreds of books and hundreds of toys…and who is skilled at opening minds and helping the bearers of those minds to find ways of expressing themselves…helping them find ways of communicating even with themselves…and then drawing maps for the rest of us to follow when trying to understand those minds so we can enter and share their previously closed-off worlds. She works with autistic children and their families…spends hours on the floor with brightly colored toys and objects, pushing, searching, compelling, and connecting with those little ones…gently pressing and urging them into opening their minds….
This past Saturday, I stopped-by my wife’s office to pick-up her laptop…and, since I had my camera with me…I took a few pictures of the toys that decorate her office, those “tools” that draw smiles and widened eyes on the faces of even the most reserved and stoic of fathers who accompany their little ones to their appointments, those tools that are often selected specifically for that particular little one to whom they would appeal. I think it would be wonderful to visit such an exciting and even calming place if I was going there for help….and I can understand the little ones’ distress when their sessions are over and it’s time to leave such a fun place…a place where they think they’re just playing…but are actually building a relationship, learning the social rules of give and take, finding words they didn’t know they had, and allowing someone into their world, sometimes for the very first and significant time.
The children often take these figures and play-out little portions of their lives with the other settings in the office. In addition to the doll house and fire/police station, my wife also has a sand-box and a little multi-leveled tree house that makes a great landscape for their adventures and re-enactments (the photos didn’t turn-out very well).
As she lay sleeping
From one day…so many years ago….
“The sun’s light has faded and gone with its setting more than two hours ago. The star of stars ended its daily cycle behind our valley’s western mountains as it has done every evening now for what must be the past several million years. Now, left in the twilight created by the nearly concealed bathroom light around the corner from where I sit, my eyes perceive this bedroom-world in hues of light and dark. Only gray, black, and lighter gray can be divined by my night-adjusted eyes. In focusing upon the slowly closing eyes of my little loved-one, they disappear with my concentration, but if I look to either side, I can see them clearly, rather, as clearly as the suffused light will allow. My baby’s purple dinosaur pajamas are only a darker gray than the blackened, navy sweat-shorts that I am wearing. She is singing ‘I love you’ in her fifteen-month-old’s dialect as she fights the valiant efforts of the Sandman. Holding her on my lap, I can smell the fragrance of her baby-shampooed hair, just as she, maybe, can smell the scent of ground weeds and back-yard vegetation that lingers on my hands as I caress her ever soft cheeks and jaw line. The contest is finished, and that enchanter of sleep, Mr. Sandman, is victor yet again. His wooings are too much for the protestations of my little one. She has succumbed to the calling of sleep, where, hopefully, she will rest the night through – so that my bride and I can do the same. Good night, Fair One. Sleep well and know that you are loved.”
And from another….
“The Angel sleeps in the lighted room, peacefully unaware that the sun is as bright here as it was in the out-of-doors where she spent the afternoon playing. Looking at her sleep, I am captured by the essence of a baby completely at rest. The tiny curls at the back of her neck are slightly wet and somewhat darker than the rest of her not so long crowning glory. Lying on her belly with the two middle fingers of her left hand motionless now, still from their suckling, she is oblivious to my presence and adoring eyes. Her feet are bare, thanks to her own playfulness; you know she is proud that she removed the socks, smiling with her eyes almost closed to slits…she sleeps. Tousled hair and tiny ears adorn her face and perfectly shaped head. Her right arm is thrown forward and up where it rests on her favorite blanket; miniature lungs cause her little back to rise and fall with sustaining breath; sleep my Little One. Rest safely for another day. Sleep at your ease. When she is gone, my chest will be empty where my heart now beats. I never knew I could love like this. I never cherished holding a tiny form as I do now when I hold her. I was reborn too late. My soul is miserable for not knowing how to love my own then, as I do her, now. Those ticks of the clock have ceased even their echoing. I hope they will forgive me.”
*****
This is a Favorite re-post from March, 2010.
The boys
Hmm…this might be one of my first “serious” attempts at photography…from twenty-some years ago. The boys and I went for a short walk out into the forest that was near our house and tried to get some decent pictures to frame for the approaching Mother’s Day celebration. We got some nice individual shots of each of the boys and then this group photo. I have caught more than a little bit of harrassment over the years for the serious looks…Mom said they should have been smiling. I wanted something more natural…serious even. I suppose it would have been more “natural” to have them playing and smiling and knocking each other off the rock…. Anyway, I was pleased with the result…thought it was actually a bit of an accomplishment to get the boys, from three to six years of age, to sit still long enough to capture them in a less animated moment.
Field Trip to Antelope Island
It’s always pleasing when a recommendation (direct or otherwise) from a friend results in a rewarding experience. About two weeks ago, Fergiemoto commented on my Salt Lake City Seagull post and mentioned that you can see LOTS of sea-gulls on the causeway that leads from the mainland to Antelope Island out in the Great Salt Lake. As I have lived in the Salt Lake area for just over a year and had not yet ventured out to visit the lake up-close and personal, let alone traveled the 40 miles north of the city to visit Antelope Island, it seemed like a good time to do so. It was a rather chilly and windy February morning and afternoon, and while there were plenty of birds flying about and resting in the lake’s water, I have to admit that I didn’t take particular notice of the gulls…there were too many other things that captured my attention and begged for me to stop the truck and take their pictures. Anyway…thank you, Fergiemoto, for your recommendation. It was a wonderful day-adventure. 
Antelope Island is about 15 miles long and 4.5 miles wide and is the largest of the six or eight or more islands that exist in the Great Salt Lake. This photo was taken on the road that lies on the eastern side of the island and leads out to a farm/ranch near the north end of the island that was originally established in the late 1800′s. Even though the island is smack-dab in the middle of a lake that has greater salinity than the oceans, there are more than 40 fresh-water springs on this eastern side of the island that serve as water sources for the natural and imported wild-life. Aside from the prong-horn antelope, from which the island gets its name, there is also a herd of more than 600 imported buffalo, or American Bison, that roam freely over the island. There are also long-horned sheep, mule-deer, bob-cats, coyotes, and many ducks, gulls, other water-birds, and raptors. The state-park literature also reports that Bald-Eagles frequent the island during their seasonal migrations.
We didn’t spot this antelope until we were actually leaving the island. As I got out of the truck to take the photos, I heard him making some barking-type sound…almost like he was calling to his friends to come back. A cyclist who had also stopped to look at the antelope and listen to his calls said that this particular antelope was a male, as only males have the black cheek markings and a bit of a mane that runs down the middle of the neck.
I think it’s remarkable that we could be on an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake and see buffalo resting in the tall and winter-dried grasses.
The boys were eager to get out of the truck and climb the rocks…having fun with their own little adventures and seemingly mindless of the chilling wind. There was a bit of haze on the lake…maybe an inversion layer of vehicle particle emissions…or salt dust carried in with the winds from the desert south and west of the lake. Those are the Wasatch Mountains in the background.
I’ve seen these deer in the mountains of Colorado and in the mountains and canyons of Utah and Arizona…but on an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake? Yep…
When I mentioned in my earlier post, Mass and Form, about trying to get a good profile shot of the bison/buffalo, this is the closest and best that I could get. He kept moving in circles away from me….
Everyone had a nice time driving and walking about the island…even my 3yo grand-daughter. This last photo was taken near the farm/ranch on the north end of the island. You can see that the winter grass has been mown beyond the fence.
Under the Cherry Trees
The man stood in the doorway for a moment before grabbing the elongated brass handle to open the door. He was looking at the house to the west of his and noticed how the image of the lowering sun was about to touch the roofline. The slate roof seemed to dip in the moment of the sun’s contact, causing the illusion that the weight of the sun was bearing down on the roof, or maybe the roof was molding itself to the shape of the sun to give it a more comfortable resting place at the end of its long day. The sun was bright, of course, but softened somehow in the closer atmosphere and haze of industry and pollen and life that existed above the horizon’s curving line, so the man stood there with unshielded eyes and continued to watch the sun’s dip into and below the roof line. He turned away and the golden glow remained in his eyes as he looked through the door’s glass to find his son. It was time for dinner and the boy was somewhere outside.
The door handle lowered without a sound and the door swung open quietly as the man pushed against it and walked out onto the back patio of the house. As he passed the mustard-colored and rectangular-shaped charcoal grill, he noticed that it still smelled of burnt sugar from the last time he barbequed ribs. It had been a couple weeks or more, but the scent still lingered. The man was barefoot and noticed, too, that the cement of the patio was still warm from the day’s sun, but the grass was cool as he stepped into it and began his search for his son. The man turned to the left from the patio and looked into the back-yard proper, gazing at the rock-fronted embankments that supported the tiered lawn that rose from the yard up to the street that ran behind his house. As he walked toward the front of the house that faced the town’s park, he craned his neck to look further into the yard to where the boy liked to play around the young, conical pine trees that resembled miniature Christmas trees when they were dusted or coated with December’s snow.
The evening was peaceful, now that the neighborhood kids had left the park and gone home or wherever after playing soccer for most of the afternoon. Looking toward the east and over the hills that fronted that side of the town, the man noticed the swallows darting over the park for their evening feeding and play-time. Overhead, the clouds were pink and orange and white and darkening gray with the falling sun and approaching night. Further north, he could still see the white line of a plane’s contrail that was still intact even though the plane had been gone for hours…just the singular, lined cloud was left in its passing. The man didn’t see his son anywhere, not in this side of the yard and not out in the park. He thought about calling-out for him, but didn’t want to break the quiet by raising his voice or yelling. Instead, he retraced his steps around the house, passed the back-door patio, and toward the other end of the yard, the side that fronted their street. The man walked along the low hedge that separated his yard from the neighbor’s and then past the gooseberry bushes and toward the side of the house where he could peek around the corner to see if his son was playing under the cherry trees. His step was quiet in the cool grass and the moss that grew thinly among the grass where he was, but was thicker under the trees.
Because the sun had completely lowered itself beneath the roofline of the neighbor’s house by now, there was no chance of the man’s son seeing his father’s shadow intrude into his quiet play. When the man slowly moved his head around the corner, he saw that his son was sitting cross-legged, facing away from him, and leaning forward with his hands busy at some task. The boy had his tan and green army-men positioned in loose rows and partially hidden in the moss, or situated behind various military vehicles and broken sticks from the trees above him. He occasionally leaned back or to the right or left to straighten a fallen man or to move a truck closer to the grouped men, enacting some strategy or maneuver of protection or attack. The boy even rolled a golf-ball or lightly tossed a shiny, black cherry in the direction of the men, imagining that they were rockets or some other projectile, sometimes knocking over one of the men or coming to rest next to or on top of one of the vehicles, and sometimes not. With the impact of the cherries or golf ball, the boy made his eleven year-old’s version of a soft explosion…a hushed “pkshew!” that he thought only he could hear.
The man smiled to himself as he watched and listened to his son. He saw the purplish-pink stains on the boy’s white t-shirt and imagined the cherry-fight that he had had with his friends earlier in the afternoon…the cherry-fight that he wasn’t supposed to have had. As the man attempted to kneel down into the moss and grass next to the house, his shorts scraped on the prickly stucco finish on the house and startled his son. The boy was in mid-reach across his battlefield and gasped and dropped one of his army men as he jerked and turned around to face his father.
The boy’s heart was pounding and his mouth was suddenly dry. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said. His mind was racing back through his day, wondering at what he might have done wrong, wondering what little or grand sin had been revealed and was now set to ruin what he thought was an otherwise good day, and wondering why, if he hadn’t done anything wrong, his father was there on the side of the yard looking for him…and getting ready to sit down like he was planning to stay for a while.
“Well, I wasn’t here for very long. What are you doing?”
The boy tried to swallow. “Just playing…Army.”
“Weren’t your friends out here earlier?”
“Yes Sir, but they had to leave.”
“Which friends were here?”
“When?”
“You said your friends were here earlier. Which ones were here?”
The boy looked across the gravel and grass driveway and out into the park where the swallows were still darting around. He saw a couple boys at the water fountain at the far side of the park. “I…don’t know,” he stammered. “I don’t remember.”
“But they were just here,” the man said, “who were they? You’re not in trouble, Stephan, I’m just asking which friends were here.”
“Hansi and Martin.”
“Isn’t Hansi’s father the butcher?”
“I don’t know. I think so…maybe.”
“Isn’t he one of those older boys that you were playing with in the spring and got into trouble with?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember,” the father said, “when you guys stole the bratwurst and then went off into the woods and cooked it? You don’t remember that?”
“No Sir.”
“What?”
“Yes Sir…I…think I remember.”
“Wasn’t Hansi one of those older boys?”
The boys had moved from the water fountain and were now kicking a soccer ball out on the field at the park. “I don’t know.”
The man sat down in the grass and moss and leaned against the house. “Stephan…look at me. You’re not in trouble…we’re just talking…ok? You can answer me,” said the man. “Look…here,” he said, pointing to his eyes. “You’re ok.”
The boy turned his head from watching the boys with the soccer ball and met his father’s eyes. He didn’t answer him immediately, but just looked at him. This was unusual for him; the boy…he felt odd, bold somehow…maybe even brave. His father’s manner and voice were unsettling. There was none of the harshness or sarcasm that he was used to…and his eyes didn’t look angry. It looked like his father was really just asking him a question…not investigating an offense.
“Augie’s father is the butcher,” said the boy, “but Hansi was part of the group that did that, yes Sir.”
“Is that Hansi out there playing soccer?”
The boy looked at the two other boys out on the field for a couple seconds and then turned again to his father. “No Sir. Hansi had to go home. He said it was almost getting dark and he had to go in for dinner.”
“Oh, ok.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” said the man.
“Why’d you want to know if that’s Hansi out there playing soccer?”
“Nothing, Stephan. I was just asking…nothing. Relax, would you? And stop calling me ‘Sir.’”
The boy looked at his father’s hands for a couple seconds and then moved up to meet his eyes. The eyes were still dark brown and still set deep into his father’s head, but the prominent brow-ridge seemed less severe as his eye-brows were raised in a gentle and almost inquisitive arch.
“What? Just call me ‘Dad’ now. Say ‘Yes Dad,’ not ‘Yes Sir.’ That seems wrong somehow.”
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you something and not get in trouble?”
“Yes…ask or say anything you want.”
The boy just looked at him.
“I’m serious…really…anything…you won’t get in trouble.”
“What happened to you in the wreck? I know you broke a couple ribs, but what happened…you know…inside your head? Mom said it went through the front window, right?”
The man looked at his son…intently, gently…and picked a tuft of moss from the ground. He moved his eyes to the moss and then asked, “What do you mean, ‘What happened in my head?’”
“You’re not like you used to be,” said the boy, looking past his father, but still watching him, trying to sense if he was going too far. “You’re different.”
“Almost dying in the wreck like that made me think about my life; it made me think about how I was treating people…how I treated you and your mom…and I decided that I needed to be different.”
The boy looked out into the park again. He didn’t want his father to see the tears that were starting to spill from his eyes. “Just like that…you ‘decided’ that you needed to be different?”
The man looked down and watched his fingers as they slowly tore the moss apart and let it drop back into the grass. “I guess so. When I was laying there in the hospital with my neck in that brace and my face all bandaged-up and tubes sticking out of my lungs, I thought about how lucky I was that my heart was still beating and that I wasn’t hurt as bad as I could have been considering what I had been through. It almost seemed like I was being given a second chance or something, you know…somehow…maybe…to do things right…if that’s possible.”
The boy turned back and looked toward his father, not meeting his eyes exactly, but looking through him at some point directly behind his head. “If you could just decide that you needed to be different when you were laying there in the hospital, why couldn’t you have decided a long time ago that you would be different…why didn’t you decide when I was a littler kid that you weren’t going to be so mean…that you could talk to me instead of hitting me, or that I could talk to you like you were just my dad and not some…kind…of…whatever you’ve been?”
“I don’t know, Stephan. I guess it took me almost dying to realize how much I love you…I don’t know.”
“Oh. Well, that’s when I figured out that I don’t love you,” said the boy, “when you were in the hospital almost dying. I always thought I did, or wanted to, maybe. I thought that if I loved you more you’d be nicer to me, but it didn’t work. So when Mom told me that you might die, I was hoping you would, because I knew I wouldn’t have to try to love you anymore. It would be ok that I didn’t…and now you’re not dead and I still don’t love you.”
The man turned his eyes to watch the neighbor drive past in his blue Saab. He followed the car until it stopped at the water fountain by the corner of the park and then turned down the hill where it disappeared behind the Vivo store on the opposite corner. Then he turned slightly in the other direction and watched the kids chasing each other and kicking the soccer ball for a few seconds. Finally, he looked back at his son and said, “Wow…I don’t know what to do with that, Stephan.”
“I don’t either,” said the boy as he reached for one of his army men.
“I guess I’ll have to work on that, won’t I? Give you a reason to love me?”
The boy pulled a handful of moss and began to gently tear it apart and lay the pieces across his army trucks, camouflaging them against the enemy that was lined-up behind the moss and grass berm that he had built close to the trunk of the nearest tree. He then absently grabbed a cherry from the ground and slipped it into his mouth. He bit down on the sweet flesh and then used his tongue to separate the seed as he slowly chewed and swallowed the tiny fruit.
“Stephan? I said I’ll have to work on that, won’t I?”
“I don’t know.”
The man slowly stood and then leaned over to stretch his legs that had been folded under him while he sat and talked with his son. He said “Ok,” and then turned to walk back around the corner of the house. After a couple steps, he turned around and leaned down so he could see his son better under the cherry trees. “You need to come in now. The streetlights are coming on and it’s time to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The man raised his voice a little – “Stephan, I said you need to come in.”
“Yes Sir.”
*****
This is a Favorite re-post from May, 2010.
Lost
A tiny hand and arm used to clutch me tightly, and then less so as the minutes passed by and by. With my soft fur pressed against the little one’s flannel pajamas and fleece blanket, I could smell baby soap sometimes, and syrup, too, or the green of grass and the dusty rich gold and orange of fallen leaves…the rough and scrapey brown of tree bark on his little hands. I could hear his soft breathing, his tiny lips moving around his thumb…or the tiny baby snort when he moved again and grabbed for me absently, blindly in his sleep…. And then the car stopped…and the door opened…and I tumbled out…and away…and away…
…and now I find the sun rising and setting with the sounds of passing machines of large and small, with hard winds and whistling bugs and the grit and grime of flying things…
…and I wonder where his soft hand is now…and his smells….and I wonder if he’ll ever come back…or if I’ll always be lost…
…on the road, somewhere…between here and there….
Wonder….
“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” ~Walt Streightiff
The Everything Drawer
We gather some things in the years and decades of our lives, some memories, some real things, some scars, odd things and random things, very strongly random things, not common in their randomness, but core and solid and even wildly random in their randomness. We are intentional in some of the gathering, like in the collecting of stamps or model cars, bottles of rare wine or books long out of print, sometimes we collect pets or friends, buttons, thimbles, pictures of places and people, coffee mugs from our various ports of call, postcards from our literal and figurative edges of the places of our sanity and wonder, figurines of Mother’s Days passed and cards from holidays and moments memorable and then. Other things might be t-shirts or little pieces or chunks of lava rocks from ancient volcanic fields of prehistoric happenings whose events were recorded in mineral form and caused no ripples to form in the brains of conscious or sentient beings that might be rendered and recalled later as memories…or corsages from proms and weddings, hood ornaments or the twisted letterings or emblems from the storied cars of our childhood dreams and lies, bottle caps from the beers we drank, or notches on our belts that signify important things that might or might not matter as the years progress.
And then there are the things that we collect on accident, things we place somewhere for safe keeping because they might be needed at some future and random moment, things that we might just as well toss into the garbage can, but don’t because they still hold some potential purpose, they are still able to be utilized for their intended or modified purpose, they might be just that little something that fits in the middle of our jerry-rigging of whatever it might be. Some of the things might on other occasions have been tossed away without a second thought, but for some reason, on this particular occasion, they were put aside, put away, put in that drawer in our kitchen or laundry room or bedroom or bathroom where it was convenient to put them on that particular day. After that day or event or moment, or that completion of an episode of something or the assembly of some toy or project when we found ourselves in possession of that one extra piece of something that we might need again, we consciously placed it in that drawer and somehow managed to never need it or want it again…for years, but over those years, and sometimes decades, every time we opened that drawer, there was that thing just laying there waiting to be used; unconsciously waiting, of course, unknowingly waiting, even more of course, because those things can’t think, they can’t possibly know of their own potential or the potential that we saw in them when we cast them there, intentionally, all those years ago.
Part of my family and I, some of us, not all of us, recently moved from one place to another, one home to another, one state and sometimey time-zone and environment to another, one place of ever-abode to another where chance and life are the same and different, where opportunity knocked with its familiar sound, where things might be different, even though we know things will be very much the same. We packed our things and sorted our things and discarded some other things and gave still other things away to people who might want them or not. We stacked and boxed our lives into corners and rooms and then into trucks and carted them in their thousands of pounds of assorted randomness and purposefulness to that new home far away, to that new place that is familiar and strange and welcoming and daunting and then unloaded all of them into the places where things are placed in this new place, in this new home and abode and dwelling and sanctuary and haven against all that might assail us. We carried our material lives from that one place to this other place, room by room, box by box, closet by closet, and drawer by drawer.
I missed a first event and witnessed a following event of one of my sons taking one of those drawers in our particular kitchen and then looking into it and then at me, as he wondered silently and then with words as to what he should do with all of what he found inside of it. He wondered what he should do with the randomness of the many things therein…do I throw it all out, pack it in a box, sort it out piece by piece, what do I do with this, do you still want this, do you need it, will you need it when we get there, what possessed you to hang on to this for all of these years, I remember seeing it when I was what, eleven or twelve…and you still have it. I thought I might need it and it was still good and if I threw it out and needed it again later, I’d have to go buy one and they probably wouldn’t make them anymore, so there it is. Why throw it out and have it sit in a landfill somewhere until it rots, perfectly good, but not accessible to anyone to use again if they might need it. I’m not a hoarder, no, but it doesn’t make sense to throw it out. Just keep it in the drawer. Just pack it all into a box, who knows, we might need something from it sometime…sometime, something inside the box might just be the something we need for whatever something that might happen sometime.
So the contents of two of those Everything Drawers made the trek with our other things from that place in our used-to-be to the place in our here-and-now, to this new home, this new place, this new sanctuary that doesn’t yet feel like a sanctuary, these random walls that don’t yet hold the memories of our old house and walls, even though we brought the Everything Drawers with us with their randomness and memories…their randomness like memories, those odd things that used to be something important and needed and might become so again. Or other things that we just put there for a minute so they wouldn’t get lost or separated, or needed to be within reach because we were going to use them again tomorrow…or in a tomorrow of our tomorrows.
It’s odd, but some of those random things really did mean something when they were placed there, they really were being saved in case they were needed again, in case they were wanted again, to be used for their particular or other purpose. I found both teddy-bear barrettes with the pink bows that used to hold that silky-fine hair out of the dark brown eyes of my baby girl who is now 14…the end-caps to the axels of the motorized jeep that my nine year-old little one received for Christmas some five years ago…a mousetrap that I hoped would remain empty one evening when a fast kitty took care of the job for us…outlet covers to protect the various babies in our family’s lives, pushpins and safety-pins and bobby-pins and rubber-bands, and batteries for Christmas trains and bathroom scales and alarm-clocks, and calorie-counter books and skillet plugs and a tube of lubricant for the pool parts and aluminum coasters that only collected the condensation and let it drip onto your shirt as you took a drink of your iced and sweating glass of tea, and spare and bagged buttons that were attached to numerous new shirts for the various children and selves in our lives, and the twisted Allen-type-wrench thing that is used for freeing a jam in the garbage disposal, a misplaced funeral announcement for a dead relative or friend, and shoe strings and kite strings and spools of fishing wire and nylon string and sticks of wax for hot-wax crafts, and model glue, and the old collar and tags of an old and gone favorite pet, and extra Christmas light bulbs out of their strings, and an eighth-grade dance photo of one of the brothers and his date that we pass around and smile at and wonder where she is….
Those many things and random things in our Everything Drawers are like our memories, themselves. We can liken them to the pieces of our pasts that we carry with us from one place to another and bring-out from their tucked-away places when we need them to fix those particular things that need fixing, to comfort us in their special and specific ways when their specific and special comfort is just what we need when we’re jerry-rigging our distressed or troubled hearts. And in this particular instance, with this move from our past to our present, we brought those things with us from our former place to our current place because we just didn’t and don’t know how to or why we should throw them out of our lives…those many things from our Everything Drawers, the keepers of memories and the safe places for those things and some things that we might need again someday and then.
I’ve seen you before….
I saw your face and thought of a name, but was it yours, I wondered, and couldn’t say for sure. Was it at work, in the clinic, in front of the vet, or down the road at the gas-station, the gym, or…? I know, I remember now…it was when you were getting out of your car that day with your little ones in the grocery store parking lot and I hesitated before pulling into the spot next to you because your kids were standing there with big eyes looking at the car, my car, that was coming at them. I just sat there in my patience and waited for you to grab their hands or usher them in some other way out of “my” spot. You looked up and glared at me and angrily waved at me to drive on in. I still waited, as I do, for you to get the little ones’ hands, to offer them your security, that sense of “Daddy’s got you, so it’s ok” before in continued in with my car. You were swearing at me when I finally parked and you were walking away, little ones in tow. As my car alarm beeped in my leaving, your words of “What the fuck are you looking at?!” bounced into my ears and around in my head and I couldn’t imagine “what the fuck” you were talking about. I shouted “Hey!” and you yelled “What, bitch?!” and I said “I was waiting for your little ones to move.” You suggested that I “stop being such a fucking idiot and park your goddamned car” as your little ones’ eyes went from you to me as they were being tugged bodily up through the asphalted parking lot and into the store where the air-curtain above the door wooshed and splayed at their hair and yours and mine as I followed, not following, per se, just going in the same direction.
And it’s you I see again one day, inside of another store, with you waiting in line for the lady to ring-up your stuff and me walking past to go into another aisle. Your kids aren’t with you and we, consequently, have nothing to talk about, but you see me and I see you and I remember very clearly where I know you from. I see you looking after me as I turn into the aisle and my face is calm and your brow is furrowed. “Where do I know you from?” you’re wondering, maybe, as you were wondering, still, when I left the opening to the aisle and was gone again.
Today, literally, these years later, I still see your little ones’ eyes. Their tiny, large brown eyes looking at me through long and curly lashes and framed with clean black hair. I see them looking at me behind the windshield and then walking through the parking lot, seemingly at and after them and I wonder at their wondering. I see them looking up at you and your full brown angry face and silver black hair, first one and then the other, and then back at me. I see their little arms tugged in their tiny t-shirts as you hauled them out of the parking spot and across the lot and into the store. I see them still.
And we touch a life….
It’s amazing sometimes, how we can be affected by the people who come into our lives, and vice versa. Whether they or we are there for years or months, days, or even moments, the interactions and actions can leave a permanent mark that is felt and known, sometimes only by the bearer, for the rest of our/their lives. People have studied the human attachment and socialization processes for years, and in an objective sense, we can all understand and relate to the academic ponderings and writings that filled lectures and library shelves over the span of curious and inquiring time. We can perceive that we begin to learn to be a human and a social person within the boundaries of our homes. We understand, too, that we continue that learning when we step outside of our homes and have those first interactions with other kids or adults out on the front porch step…and down the sidewalk that leads to the park or the neighbor’s house…and then further down the sidewalk and street toward our first school experience…and it goes from there. The people in our surround begin to touch our lives, sometimes good, hopefully most-times good, and sometimes not-so-good…and many times not necessarily either, just touched. Just enough of an imprint or lesson was left behind, or maybe just an impression, a feeling, or even a suspicion, is left in our memories, and that represents the “touch” that was theirs, or ours, on us or them, me or you.
When we continue to read those journal articles, psychology books, sociology books, or whatever, and then compare their essential content to our lives, the subjective part of our studies, we notice that there are, indeed, similarities between the texts and “real” life. We comprehend the depth of impression and effect when we look at the patterns of family and work-life that repeat themselves from generation to generation. Our experiences are full of knowing people whose fathers and grandfathers were physicians or mechanics or plumbers or academics or military men or police officers…just as they are, those people we know – or their mothers and grandmothers were physicians or nurses or teachers or professors or seamstresses or military women, just as they are, those people we know. We notice the same movements or gestures or uses of words and phrases, or even similar postures or habits of a family member, or ourselves, returning home from their or our workday as they stand there in the kitchen eating from a bag of chips just like their father did. We know, too, that some of our friends or co-workers, or clients, or family members, or other people with whom we are familiar, also have substance abuse or violence problems just like their parents did, their father or their mother and alone or together, those pairings of influence that leave a permanent mark, a dent, a troubled soul, a perpetuating something that wasn’t good when it started and hasn’t been good since it’s been passed along and along. People never learned to listen or care or nurture, or they were suffocating and rigid and unbending and unforgiving…or they weren’t…and they weren’t. Sometimes people learn the most and best how to love from their families, their moms and dads, their brothers and sisters, grandparents, and then. And sometimes they learn to love from other people who come in and touch their lives, other people who come in and accept them for who they are, love them for and with their faults…and encourage them to grow and look inside and outside, to see how their own actions are affecting others and others, and eyes open and open over time and see and learn, and still err, but learn and learn and strive and try and hope and work and love and watch and enjoy and cherish and endure and love…and get tired and fed-up and say “screw it” and so…and they still love and cherish and endure and hope…. And sometimes love comes late, or it becomes known late, but it is still love, and can still touch us the right way, so that we can still pass it along, and along.
Sometimes those touches that come to us are not good, but they turn to good when we recognize them and remold them and twist them and apply them as lessons in what not to do, or what not to allow, or tolerate, or what not to be; they become things that we specifically do not want to repeat from one generation unto another, from home to workplace to home and mine and yours and another.
And then sometimes, sometimes, regardless of the lesson, regardless of the example, regardless of the impression, or whatever, we do things or other people do things that go so strikingly against the examples and lessons and intentional impressions, that we and you and the other observers are left scratching our and your heads, thinking “What the…?” And then what of the examples, what of the lessons, what of the conversations and explanations and illustrations and demonstrated failures and successes, and hopes and yearnings, and shared strivings and conquerings of indefatigable foes and odds…what happens to all of that when a person or that person or some people or those people choose to go and do or be something so different or choose or pursue something so unlikely, or whatever…what then? What then? Where is that touch? What happened to that touch to sour it so, to corrupt it unto repugnance and scorn? “Who freaking touched your life after I did or we did, to turn you so?” we wonder to ourselves and then. Or the righteous mother looks at her unrepentant and atheistic child and wonders where her touch went, wonders at the child’s soul and eternity, as the child doesn’t wonder at hers. Or the touch is horrible and malevolent and wrong and that touched-one becomes or remains pure and upright and motivated and enduring and patient and tolerant and the most empathetic and understanding and…how did that happen, from a wrong touch and impression and example and…? In the end, after all the analyzing and hypothesizing and considering the bad and what must have been there, somewhere, as good, it just did.
How did your life become as it is? How did you or I, you and I, become as we did? Those people in our lives touched us in little ways and big and their touch and impressions are still with us. Someone touched a second-grader’s heart and caused that little one to want to grow-up and help others, someone else touched another second-grader’s heart and caused that little one to seek solitude in the hills and the woods, someone else touched another second-grader’s heart and caused that child to want to fly planes or study bacteria or write music or stories or make jewelry or build cathedrals or shape metal into cars or design hospitals or cure cancers or find new stars or…to shampoo dogs or plow fields or sail ships or paint pictures or…because they were touched so.
How did we affect someone’s life today or yesterday or last year or then…how did you and I?
Another Last….
From a couple months ago….
Another marker of time has passed; another milestone achieved; this one was known and anticipated, looked-for and then, but some have come and gone without our noticing. Some have become significant only upon reflection as passed and past, things that caused us to say “Oh, yeah…that was the last time I….” They weren’t esteemed as significant in their moment, their instant of being what they were; they became so only afterward – when they were a nuance, maybe, a wrinkle in our memories, appreciated only in retrospect, not in substance, not in the rich essence of being what they were.
Today was the last day of second-grade for my last child; the last day that he could be included in that group of kids deemed as “K-2″ on some papers, flyers, agendas, or other forms of organized little people collectives. Today was another irretrievably fallen grain of sand in the hour-glass of my little one’s life.
Is this significant? Is this day really that big of a deal? Is it worth the recognition that I’ve given it here? Does it really matter? I don’t know. I don’t remember the last day of second grade for my other five children who had a last day of second-grade in their particular lifetimes…and while I can’t guarantee that I will remember this day as significant several years from now, I am noting it as significant today. It is a celebration, a particular and specific something in my last little one’s life.
Under the Cherry Trees
The man stood in the doorway for a moment before grabbing the elongated brass handle to open the door. He was looking at the house to the west of his and noticed how the image of the lowering sun was about to touch the roofline. The slate roof seemed to dip in the moment of the sun’s contact, causing the illusion that the weight of the sun was bearing down on the roof, or maybe the roof was molding itself to the shape of the sun to give it a more comfortable resting place at the end of its long day. The sun was bright, of course, but softened somehow in the closer atmosphere and haze of industry and pollen and life that existed above the horizon’s curving line, so the man stood there with unshielded eyes and continued to watch the sun’s dip into and below the roof line. He turned away and the golden glow remained in his eyes as he looked through the door’s glass to find his son. It was time for dinner and the boy was somewhere outside.
The door handle lowered without a sound and the door swung open quietly as the man pushed against it and walked out onto the back patio of the house. As he passed the mustard-colored and rectangular-shaped charcoal grill, he noticed that it still smelled of burnt sugar from the last time he barbequed ribs. It had been a couple weeks or more, but the scent still lingered. The man was barefoot and noticed, too, that the cement of the patio was still warm from the day’s sun, but the grass was cool as he stepped into it and began his search for his son. The man turned to the left from the patio and looked into the back-yard proper, gazing at the rock-fronted embankments that supported the tiered lawn that rose from the yard up to the street that ran behind his house. As he walked toward the front of the house that faced the town’s park, he craned his neck to look further into the yard to where the boy liked to play around the young, conical pine trees that resembled miniature Christmas trees when they were dusted or coated with December’s snow.
The evening was peaceful, now that the neighborhood kids had left the park and gone home or wherever after playing soccer for most of the afternoon. Looking toward the east and over the hills that fronted that side of the town, the man noticed the swallows darting over the park for their evening feeding and play-time. Overhead, the clouds were pink and orange and white and darkening gray with the falling sun and approaching night. Further north, he could still see the white line of a plane’s contrail that was still intact even though the plane had been gone for hours…just the singular, lined cloud was left in its passing. The man didn’t see his son anywhere, not in this side of the yard and not out in the park. He thought about calling-out for him, but didn’t want to break the quiet by raising his voice or yelling. Instead, he retraced his steps around the house, passed the back-door patio, and toward the other end of the yard, the side that fronted their street. The man walked along the low hedge that separated his yard from the neighbor’s and then past the gooseberry bushes and toward the side of the house where he could peek around the corner to see if his son was playing under the cherry trees. His step was quiet in the cool grass and the moss that grew thinly among the grass where he was, but was thicker under the trees.
Because the sun had completely lowered itself beneath the roofline of the neighbor’s house by now, there was no chance of the man’s son seeing his father’s shadow intrude into his quiet play. When the man slowly moved his head around the corner, he saw that his son was sitting cross-legged, facing away from him, and leaning forward with his hands busy at some task. The boy had his tan and green army-men positioned in loose rows and partially hidden in the moss, or situated behind various military vehicles and broken sticks from the trees above him. He occasionally leaned back or to the right or left to straighten a fallen man or to move a truck closer to the grouped men, enacting some strategy or maneuver of protection or attack. The boy even rolled a golf-ball or lightly tossed a shiny, black cherry in the direction of the men, imagining that they were rockets or some other projectile, sometimes knocking over one of the men or coming to rest next to or on top of one of the vehicles, and sometimes not. With the impact of the cherries or golf ball, the boy made his eleven year-old’s version of a soft explosion…a hushed “pkshew!” that he thought only he could hear.
The man smiled to himself as he watched and listened to his son. He saw the purplish-pink stains on the boy’s white t-shirt and imagined the cherry-fight that he had had with his friends earlier in the afternoon…the cherry-fight that he wasn’t supposed to have had. As the man attempted to kneel down into the moss and grass next to the house, his shorts scraped on the prickly stucco finish on the house and startled his son. The boy was in mid-reach across his battlefield and gasped and dropped one of his army men as he jerked and turned around to face his father.
The boy’s heart was pounding and his mouth was suddenly dry. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said. His mind was racing back through his day, wondering at what he might have done wrong, wondering what little or grand sin had been revealed and was now set to ruin what he thought was an otherwise good day, and wondering why, if he hadn’t done anything wrong, his father was there on the side of the yard looking for him…and getting ready to sit down like he was planning to stay for a while.
“Well, I wasn’t here for very long. What are you doing?”
The boy tried to swallow. “Just playing…Army.”
“Weren’t your friends out here earlier?”
“Yes Sir, but they had to leave.”
“Which friends were here?”
“When?”
“You said your friends were here earlier. Which ones were here?”
The boy looked across the gravel and grass driveway and out into the park where the swallows were still darting around. He saw a couple boys at the water fountain at the far side of the park. “I…don’t know,” he stammered. “I don’t remember.”
“But they were just here,” the man said, “who were they? You’re not in trouble, Stephan, I’m just asking which friends were here.”
“Hansi and Martin.”
“Isn’t Hansi’s father the butcher?”
“I don’t know. I think so…maybe.”
“Isn’t he one of those older boys that you were playing with in the spring and got into trouble with?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember,” the father said, “when you guys stole the bratwurst and then went off into the woods and cooked it? You don’t remember that?”
“No Sir.”
“What?”
“Yes Sir…I…think I remember.”
“Wasn’t Hansi one of those older boys?”
The boys had moved from the water fountain and were now kicking a soccer ball out on the field at the park. “I don’t know.”
The man sat down in the grass and moss and leaned against the house. “Stephan…look at me. You’re not in trouble…we’re just talking…ok? You can answer me,” said the man. “Look…here,” he said, pointing to his eyes. “You’re ok.”
The boy turned his head from watching the boys with the soccer ball and met his father’s eyes. He didn’t answer him immediately, but just looked at him. This was unusual for him; the boy…he felt odd, bold somehow…maybe even brave. His father’s manner and voice were unsettling. There was none of the harshness or sarcasm that he was used to…and his eyes didn’t look angry. It looked like his father was really just asking him a question…not investigating an offense.
“Augie’s father is the butcher,” said the boy, “but Hansi was part of the group that did that, yes Sir.”
“Is that Hansi out there playing soccer?”
The boy looked at the two other boys out on the field for a couple seconds and then turned again to his father. “No Sir. Hansi had to go home. He said it was almost getting dark and he had to go in for dinner.”
“Oh, ok.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” said the man.
“Why’d you want to know if that’s Hansi out there playing soccer?”
“Nothing, Stephan. I was just asking…nothing. Relax, would you? And stop calling me ‘Sir.’”
The boy looked at his father’s hands for a couple seconds and then moved up to meet his eyes. The eyes were still dark brown and still set deep into his father’s head, but the prominent brow-ridge seemed less severe as his eye-brows were raised in a gentle and almost inquisitive arch.
“What? Just call me ‘Dad’ now. Say ‘Yes Dad,’ not ‘Yes Sir.’ That seems wrong somehow.”
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you something and not get in trouble?”
“Yes…ask or say anything you want.”
The boy just looked at him.
“I’m serious…really…anything…you won’t get in trouble.”
“What happened to you in the wreck? I know you broke a couple ribs, but what happened…you know…inside your head? Mom said it went through the front window, right?”
The man looked at his son…intently, gently…and picked a tuft of moss from the ground. He moved his eyes to the moss and then asked, “What do you mean, ‘What happened in my head?’”
“You’re not like you used to be,” said the boy, looking past his father, but still watching him, trying to sense if he was going too far. “You’re different.”
“Almost dying in the wreck like that made me think about my life; it made me think about how I was treating people…how I treated you and your mom…and I decided that I needed to be different.”
The boy looked out into the park again. He didn’t want his father to see the tears that were starting to spill from his eyes. “Just like that…you ‘decided’ that you needed to be different?”
The man looked down and watched his fingers as they slowly tore the moss apart and let it drop back into the grass. “I guess so. When I was laying there in the hospital with my neck in that brace and my face all bandaged-up and tubes sticking out of my lungs, I thought about how lucky I was that my heart was still beating and that I wasn’t hurt as bad as I could have been considering what I had been through. It almost seemed like I was being given a second chance or something, you know…somehow…maybe…to do things right…if that’s possible.”
The boy turned back and looked toward his father, not meeting his eyes exactly, but looking through him at some point directly behind his head. “If you could just decide that you needed to be different when you were laying there in the hospital, why couldn’t you have decided a long time ago that you would be different…why didn’t you decide when I was a littler kid that you weren’t going to be so mean…that you could talk to me instead of hitting me, or that I could talk to you like you were just my dad and not some…kind…of…whatever you’ve been?”
“I don’t know, Stephan. I guess it took me almost dying to realize how much I love you…I don’t know.”
“Oh. Well, that’s when I figured out that I don’t love you,” said the boy, “when you were in the hospital almost dying. I always thought I did, or wanted to, maybe. I thought that if I loved you more you’d be nicer to me, but it didn’t work. So when Mom told me that you might die, I was hoping you would, because I knew I wouldn’t have to try to love you anymore. It would be ok that I didn’t…and now you’re not dead and I still don’t love you.”
The man turned his eyes to watch the neighbor drive past in his blue Saab. He followed the car until it stopped at the water fountain by the corner of the park and then turned down the hill where it disappeared behind the Vivo store on the opposite corner. Then he turned slightly in the other direction and watched the kids chasing each other and kicking the soccer ball for a few seconds. Finally, he looked back at his son and said, “Wow…I don’t know what to do with that, Stephan.”
“I don’t either,” said the boy as he reached for one of his army men.
“I guess I’ll have to work on that, won’t I? Give you a reason to love me?”
The boy pulled a handful of moss and began to gently tear it apart and lay the pieces across his army trucks, camouflaging them against the enemy that was lined-up behind the moss and grass berm that he had built close to the trunk of the nearest tree. He then absently grabbed a cherry from the ground and slipped it into his mouth. He bit down on the sweet flesh and then used his tongue to separate the seed as he slowly chewed and swallowed the tiny fruit.
“Stephan? I said I’ll have to work on that, won’t I?”
“I don’t know.”
The man slowly stood and then leaned over to stretch his legs that had been folded under him while he sat and talked with his son. He said “Ok,” and then turned to walk back around the corner of the house. After a couple steps, he turned around and leaned down so he could see his son better under the cherry trees. “You need to come in now. The streetlights are coming on and it’s time to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The man raised his voice a little – “Stephan, I said you need to come in.”
“Yes Sir.”
A Confession
My name is Josef Müeller and I can remember when I was a child and used to run the path behind the town where I lived in Germany. The town was called “Bischofsdhron” and was named such because it was located near the ruin of a castle that had, in centuries passed, been occupied by a bishop of some renown. I can’t speak to the town’s acreage or square-kilometer coverage, but I know we entered the town after crossing a stream at the bottom of a hill and proceeded up the hill, taking the main road, to an intersection of sorts where we could proceed or turn one of three different directions and exit the town into the various meadows and hillsides or forests that were found along the town’s borders.
If one were to continue in the direction of the main road, which my memory of the various awakenings and settings of the sun would indicate to be southward, one would take a lesser-used road, Idarwaldstrasse, past the sportsplatz and into the forest where one would encounter even less-traveled logging trails that led to only god-knows-where. I do know that my friends and I found a set of railroad tracks and more forest in that southern direction during our several wanderings, but we never came upon another town or settlement of any sort.
Proceeding westward from that particular intersection, we would pass what my parents and other adults referred to as “knob hill.” I don’t know that I was ever made privy to the reasoning behind the rubric, and it doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did then…unless the people who lived up there were a bunch of dick-heads…but, I don’t know. The road or street we lived on, Sonnenstrasse, which led to a neighboring town named “Morbach,” passed several other homes where the Americans lived. It also passed the house of the Burgermeister, or mayor, of the town. If I remember correctly, the man was rather old and stooped and gray-haired. He was also something more of a symbol than an actual participating entity in the town’s affairs. I was told that his daughter did more governing or directing than he did.
I have wondered how strange I might have appeared, as a German nine year-old, wearing my cut-off blue-jean shorts and a yellow t-shirt, pulling an American G.I. Joe jeep and trailer by a string, as I headed out of Bischofsdhron one summer morning, walking the Morbach road. I think I may have seemed a bit odd. I might have looked rather “American” in my German-ness…or maybe it looked like my mother was German and my father was in the American military, stationed at the base nearby…whatever it was or appeared to be, it was just me wearing American clothes that I had gotten from the charity box at church and playing with American toys that I had received at the German-American community’s friendship toy-drive Christmas party a few months earlier. Anyway, the G.I. Joe was dressed in full camouflage gear with his black combat boots, shiny green helmet and plastic brown rifle, sitting behind the steering wheel, and appeared to be driving the WWII jeep that was pulling a trailer that contained a tripod-mounted rocket or bomb launcher. I don’t remember if there was another G.I. Joe in the passenger seat or not, but we were going to Morbach. I don’t know why I chose to make the journey, either, but it was summer and there was little else to do. Another little tidbit is that the road to Morbach passed through a forest where rabid bats were known to live. Whether that was a rumor supported by truth or entirely fabricated is unknown to me. What I do know, however, is that I spent several long minutes looking skyward, craning my neck and squinting my eyes to see if I could find any bat-like creatures hanging in the branches of the oh-so-tall pine trees that lined the Morbach road.
Anyway, again, I’m telling a story here, or making a confession, really, and it has nothing to do with the Morbach road or my pulling a jeep anywhere with a little string. It also has nothing to do with that time my friends and I stole two kilos of bratwursts from the metzgerei, or butcher-shop, and ran off into the woods to roast them wonderfully and deliciously over a fire made of pine branches…. Ahh…we stood there watching their skins split and turn dark brown and then black as the juices dripped into the fire and made that greasy smoke that clings to your hair and clothes for hours afterward, telling the world and our parents and the metzler’s son what we professed we didn’t do on a certain springtime Saturday afternoon. That’s another story and one that doesn’t deserve much in the way of confessing. Not today, anyway. I’m just giving you the setting, that’s all, so you can understand or see where I was, maybe.
So, there was a path that ran the length of what I understand to be the western edge of Bischofsdhron. In some places it was cobbled, but mostly it was a white-ish crushed rocky kind of sandy stuff that had broken slate and shale mixed in with the dirt. Maybe it was decades-old construction detritus that had been swept in between the buildings and crushed and worn into a walkway over the years…I don’t know…but it started as something like an walkway or narrow alley behind or near the town’s primary school and led to the bottom of the hill, again appearing as an alley or pathway that came out from between two buildings that fronted another road that also led to Morbach. This road took a course at a lower elevation and entered the town from the northeastern to slightly northern border. The majority of the path skirted our town, having the backyards and gardens or backs of houses to the right (east) and empty fields or rolling hills on the left, or western side. As the path re-entered the town proper, it passed between a couple houses and a rickety, aged storage-shed that resembled more of an out-building from a no-longer existent barn or farm complex.
I had passed the houses and shed dozens of times on my way to and from the bus stop on schooldays and during the innumerable weekend and summer-time forays throughout the town and its surrounding countryside and hills and forests. The wooden planks that comprised the sides and door of the shed had been bleached gray by the elements and were barely held in place by a remnant of rusted nails and twisted wire. The bottom edges of the planks had been gnawed by rodents or had otherwise been chipped and were rotting away and any passerby could see some rags or old clothes or other manner of fabric material that was being stored or had been discarded in the shed.
On this particular day, as I was hiking up the path, I turned and looked into the window of the house on my left and saw an older man in a faded and dingy whitish gray tank-type t-shirt holding-on to a little boy’s arm with one hand and hitting him with the other, bashing him in the head and shoulder and arm as the kid ducked and thrashed and squirmed and tried to block the assault. The man’s free hand wasn’t open…the fingers were curled into a fist and his arm was cocked-back as his eye caught my movement through the window. He lowered his arm and turned to face me full-on…watery, red-rimmed eyes swimming in their hate and rage, glaring at me now, forgetting for an instant the little boy in his other hand. He yelled through the window at me – “What are you looking at, arshloch?!” The boy turned, as well, and I saw his crying and pleading eyes and reddened cheeks and bloodied nose. I felt his heart pounding in mine and could smell the old man’s rage and sweat and filthy breath filling the tiny room, suffocating the little one’s desires to do anything but survive the moment. In that instant of wondering why the man had called me an ass-hole, I kept my eyes fixed on his and started to turn my body to walk away, but my foot slipped on the slate and sandy dirt of the slanted and sloping pathway and I lost my balance. I fell sideways and back and crashed into the ancient shack on the other side of the narrow track. A board broke and my hand slid along the rough surface, picking-up splinters and scraping the skin from my palm and forearm as I tried to keep myself from falling full-length onto the slate and other rocks in the pathway. I regained my balance and looked back into the window as I reached blindly for my school bag. All I could see was the boy’s back as the man dragged him through the doorway and out of my view. There were muffled shouts that came out from the other room and back into the little kitchen where I had first seen the man and boy. As I stood there and looked through the window at the remnants of sausage and potato on their dinner plates, I couldn’t understand anything that was being said, but I heard the boy cry-out a couple times after particular shouts from the man and what I thought was the smacking of a hand on flesh. Memories and sensations of dread and having done something wrong crashed through my mind and added to the pounding in my chest. My father had done the same to me many times and I’m sure it wouldn’t have sounded any different if some passerby had been close enough to our house to hear it when it happened. Their rage was the same, the other man and my father…and it looked the same as it fell on the boy and me…from our fathers.
A few days later, I happened to pass through that alley pathway again. I walked slowly and listened carefully before I rounded the corner and turned up and into the walkway that led between the boy’s house and the shed. I don’t know where the thought came from…other than from having witnessed the boy getting a beating those few days before, but for some reason, I decided to light a match to the cloth that was sticking-out from beneath the worn and tattered edge of the shed. Aside from my anger at the boy’s father…and my own, I’m sure, I can’t imagine what other motive would have possessed me to do so. I knew the dangers of playing with matches. I had received a couple beatings for merely lighting them in the house while my parents were outside or somehow occupied and out of my sight. I was nine years-old and knew what fire could do, yet I lit the rags anyway and sped off, pumping myself up the hill as fast as I could, out of the alley pathway and beyond.
I don’t remember the events immediately following that particular afternoon’s misdeed and I can’t recall how long I waited to make a trip up or down that walkway again, but eventually I did. There were no longer any rags or clothes visible from the path side of the shed, and given the fact that I was the hoodlum who had started the fire, I knew well enough not to linger too long or show too much interest in whatever I happened to pass in this particular juncture of the alley or passage. My hasty survey of the damage showed that the bottom 18 inches of the shed door had been burned in a near triangle-shaped pattern that didn’t seem to have burned very long. The man, or boy, or someone must have seen the smoke from their back window and rushed outside to extinguish the fire.
One might say that I’m lucky I didn’t get caught. I do feel a certain level of doubt that I would have survived the beating I would have received if I had been discovered. That’s probably too strong of a statement regarding my father’s harsh treatment of me when I was a child, but it might be more accurate than I’ll ever know. I feel fortunate, today, to have found that the fire was no more extensive than it was those many years ago. Considering the proximity of the other buildings along the path, the results could have been much worse. And I wonder, still…what does it mean that I set fire to the shed? What outcome was I hoping for that afternoon? What was I looking for…why did I do it? Could it have been the desire to burn those images of hate and rage from my memory, or was there some deeper drive or force that compelled me to do something that I knew was so wrong?
Faces on the Wall
The man sat in the dark and thought of the pictures on the wall and the eyes that looked out from their frozen images of faces and whatnot in the chemicals that held them in such places from their making until they left in some manner or other, moved to another wall, moved to another house, passed among the things that leave when he would leave on that unknown date and then. The eyes that could bore through their selved-images into the eyes of the man who sat in the chair with heavy lids and pondered those things as night wound into itself and him and the sounds of day’s passing had become the creaking and yawning of the presence of its neighbor and twin, the one who exists on the other side of the thoughts of himself. Picture frames glowing or reflecting the light that sneaks in through the windows from the posted light in the yard, that one thing that illuminates the darkened corners where what was present in the day has crawled into itself and themselves and exist only in shadow form or memory, but not sight, as they are hidden in the black and gray of their shadowed selves. Those eyes accuse and remember in their fixed gazes and the man stares at the blank middles of the frames at what he knows is there but cannot see for the passed and past day and the dark inside the four edges covers but doesn’t hide the faces he knows. Night doesn’t cover his heart and his wandering soul and it doesn’t relieve the ghosts that walk in his mind and in the fibers of the carpet and lay like a film inside the paint and wooded textures of stair railings and benches, those things that capture sounds and emotions as they are fleeing in their shouted births and deaths of echoes and remain. Hollowed eyes and grins and thoughts and cheekbones and lips that lie in a stuck rictus, like painted and dead clowns and he doesn’t know who is inside, who is behind those portals of life and then, and he turns away and closes his eyes and hears the ringing in his ears as the cat talks not walks down the hall and a hidden beam somewhere in the wall creaks or sighs as the house wonders at the man in the chair in the dark, wonders at his thoughts and sitting there while others sleep and dream and think of nothing in the passing of the stars and moon in their circuits as the heater kicks on and whines through the vents and blows in its blowing and warmth of breath and stops with a shudder and how, as the man’s foot twitches as sleep tries to pull him deeper into the chair as his heart beats and beats and his eyes open at the cat’s passing and scratching on and of the one corner of the rug that has its frayed spot and spot as the eyes on the walls sleep in their openness and hide their thoughts in front of him as he looks away and remembers a younger self that fled a smile in furrowed brows and pursed lips of anger and rot, his eyes scorned and shaken and cast away and aside and down and away from any who would look. He remembered the thick hand that smacked his mouth when his eyes were closed and thought the Divine was blind as the prayer was stuck in the swirl of ceiling paint as the black eyes bored into the smaller one’s eyes as his mouth throbbed and his heart ached and his mom sat at arm’s length away as her man’s hand smacked her child’s mouth and she kept her eyes closed as the sound echoed in her ears and she squeezed her eyes closed as she smelled the dinner cooling on the table in front of them and wondered how the paint could keep the prayer inside the ceiling as it rolled about and thinned against the summer air and finally withered and faded and was gone in the tears that rolled down his cheeks as hate breathes by itself in blank picture frames and white rocks cast along the way, tripping the travelers who dare not watch where they are walking, who are blind to the path and stumble in the dark footsteps that lumber ahead of them.
Another View
Yellow flowers sway on the stems of bushes whose names I do not know in gardens of other flowers and shrubs of Rosemary and Mexican Fan-Palms and large chunks of purple, volcanic stone. The cement is gray like the January sky and the blue of the water is calm with no breeze ripples. The handle on the black and iron gate clinks with its signature sound as the rod slides back in the guide; the gate swings open and my oldest walks in. He stood without for several minutes calling my name, or Mommy’s name…. “Let me in!”
Peach, white, and yellow paint chips were sealed in the garage floor and the smell of gear oil and fiberglass and tools hung in the air. The large, black wheel with its pedals still…I don’t know what color the ‘Big-Wheel’ was. The not tiny, but small form of my second son lay floating in the corner of the pool – beautiful, blue water, not moving. I was wearing my brown corduroy overalls and I consciously ran to the other side of the pool instead of jumping into its February chill. Did I grab his arm or his body? I don’t know. I clutched him to my body and yelled “Oh my God! Oh Shit!” I saw the gray sky and the garage in the rear of the neighbor’s yard. “Oh my god!” This can’t be happening…what would I do with only two sons? I pounded on his back then lay him on the gray, cement patio…blew into his mouth…turned him over again…why isn’t he holding his head still? His forehead banged on the cement as I turned him over.
His mom was hysterical…long, blonde hair, panic-stricken face, gray eyes, red face, screaming, hitting herself…starting her period as her soul clenched down upon itself inside…and the blank, gray eyes, wide open…I wondered what they saw. I wonder what they saw. What was his almost two-year-old mind thinking? What rush of terror-induced hormones were crashing through his body as he sank below the air into the beautiful, blue water? As he was floating when I found him, how much air was in his lungs? The water being so cold would have caused him to gasp-in the air as he fell into it. Maybe that’s what saved him. And how many minutes had passed?
And where was God? This is when I first began to doubt. All I wanted was to be closer to Him…and He ran away. He became less. Bad happens to the good and the bad alike. Then why pray…why pray if He isn’t going to listen anyway…?
Skunk Creek Crossing
It was a rich gray and thick that lay upon our morning with no sun in the east and slow and thoughtful drops that fell on the roof and slid in force and collusion and collision with each and every other drop as they ticked and ting-ed and splattered in a wet symphony into the puddles of their forbears and cousins and then. Rain for two days then none and again today and the ground and sand and dirt and clay are loose and saturated and floating in and among their separate selves and the plants are singing hosannas and praises as the dormant seeds are waking and cracking and spreading their softened shells and driving their single primary roots into the soaked and soggy substance of their surround.
Living in the desert as we do, and in the plains or valley of it at that, bodies of water and streams and creeks and rivers are usually sights that we must travel to in order to see and behold in marvel. It has rained off and on for most of two days, and then yesterday the sky was clear, with not a single wisp of cloudy vapor lingering anywhere in that vast horizon as I took my little one to school. After running a couple errands, I put some air in the tires of my faithful bike and headed-out for a journey through our neighborhood. I hadn’t planned on riding far, hadn’t planned on going where I did, but I ended-up on the bike and walking path that goes along either side of a natural waterway that someone years ago named ‘Skunk Creek.’ For probably ten months of the year, there is little to no water in this stream or creek bed. Only during the summer monsoons or winter storms and occasional gully-washer rains is there enough water to flow in any presentation as a stream or creek or river…as it did yesterday and continues to do today.
After riding the mile circuit through our neighborhood, I made another round of an adjacent neighborhood, then pedaled up and into the infamous ‘Dog-Town’ region of yet another nearby neighborhood, one that was named by a group of Hispanic hoodlums and gangster wannabes of yesterday’s lore, and found that it was very similar to neighborhoods populated by the same socioeconomic caste that we/you can find in the southern and western reaches of our larger city and metropole with the same sainted yard figurines and shrines, half-done or more ornamental iron fence-work, stucco and plywood patchwork on the houses, some with bougainvillea and rose-bush elegance amid the potted plants and cacti, and others with cars in the dirt or scantily-grassed yards, or with beautifully decked-out trucks that I could afford if I didn’t live in the house that I do, and Pitt-bull puppies and bitches with teats flopping as they ran down the chain-link barking and threatening my two-wheeled presence. I exited Dog-Town on Roosevelt Street and headed north on 83rd Avenue…three miles and beyond to the north side of the creek and alongside the backside of the sports complex and apartments and Arizona Broadway Theatre on the south side of Paradise Lane and around and back down the other side of the floodway on the sidewalk that skirts beautiful tile-roofed homes, an older stretch of farm plots with their own wet and wonderful smells of turned dirt and manure and workers covering or uncovering orderly rows of tender shoots of green and life and further along to the orchards of orange and grapefruit and tangelos and limes or other citrus with shorn grass between the rows and baby Mexican fan palms struggling and winning against nature and the landscapers where its germinal beginning was dropped in a dropping from a passing bird or carried on a summer storm gust from nearby or wherever relative trees.
The cycle path had been upgraded from rocks and dirt at this point and was now a two-laned and striped thoroughfare from one side to the next, going beneath the overpass that spanned the waterway preserve of rocks and plants and life in miniature and climbing an upward grade to the city park and complex and another footbridge span that crossed the creek yet again and took me south to places I had never been. I’ve passed them times innumerable on the western freeway that travels nearby and have looked into and onto their expanse of bush and brush and things covered and undone in the rains and winds of our seasons, but never have I ridden so closely or walked among the grains of sand and leaves and washings of the mighty rains and streams as I did today. The fresh water scent and heavy air and wet vegetation of weeds and wildflowers and scattered pieces of tree and grass and crumbled and crumbling masses of horse droppings from the pathway and pieces of Cholla cacti that were brought here by some other force for there were none growing here or nearby…and out in the middle of the watered wash where the water had passed and lessened into another stream was a little baby palm tree struggling against the other stuff that wasn’t of his kith and kin…and laying nearby and amid the tumbled rocks and bushes and scrub were a handful of perfect and bright oranges, one here one there and some in the beyond of that purview…oranges glowing in their orange-ness and wonder in the waterway passed and past, having come from afar.
I took the sidewalk pathway to the middle of the plain and stood at water’s edge as it streamed and rumbled and washed into itself from rivulets and splashing and had a mini-roar to itself as it moved along its way…the sidewalk was there somewhere underneath the brown and frothy churning and I thought for a hazardous moment of running across and through that mess of water and wonder and had flashes from my childhood where I tried to cross a neighborhood stream on my bicycle with my brand-new shoes and got bogged-down in the middle of that oh-so-clear stream in the mud and whatever as I tried to balance myself with feet on the unmoving pedals and suck of mud as I fought against gravity and what I knew would be an ass-beating when I got home with one muddied brand-new shoe…so I said in my child’s mind the child’s equivalent of ‘fuck-it-I’m-getting-my-ass-beat-anyway’ and put both feet down and walked my bike through the mud and crystal water and stood there sweating with heart pounding at what I knew was coming with monster-fucking-butterflies in my stomach…and those memories are so far away and so near as the raindrops fall and stream off of my roof and the neighbor’s as I look out my living room window, right now, with the piano music on the stereo and the never-satisfied cat on the counter behind me…literally saying ‘meow,’ as cats do….
And I stood there yesterday and knelt-down to smell the water and touch the mud and look at the other footprints that stopped earlier where mine were now…hiking boot tread and slip and I turned around and looked into the beyond and spied the path again that pointed south and made my way in following its lead. I rode to where the water completely covered the southward path in its filling and flooding of the river-plain and had no choice but to stop and head back. Before doing so, though, I got off the bike and studied the traveling water and marveled at its passing and roiling and moving into and over and under and beyond whatever was in its way as it went…wondering at the mini-habitat and consuming essence of ‘nature’ is it was here presented. I smelled the earth again and weeds and cleanness as the zoom and noisy fright of the passing cars on that western freeway and those city streets went on their collective and singular ways, making a background of gray noise that fought against the tunes and mystery of the water and I wondered, too, at what life was beginning in the flood, what brine shrimp or other desiccated and dormant somethings were stirring in their watery rebirths and hatchings as ducks rode-by, paddling against their mini currents with occasional heads tucked into the wash sucking and finding something to eat as bugs or other somethings came their way. The sun was bright in my eyes and glanced and danced off the moving and tossing water like millions of diamonds in their sparkling…tiny blasts of light and shine in cascading explosions and reflections and then.
And it was time to go now, as I had places to be and things to do that waited upon and depended upon the ticking of the clock and appointed imaginings of moments and then…and my shaky and tired legs pumped the pedals back along that pathway and passed the greening mesquite and cat-claw and palo-verde trees and creosote bushes and wild baby sunflower-ed plants of something or other as the chilled wind teared my eyes and brushed my cheeks with an ambulance siren behind me and the sparkle of an airplane passing overhead…the water flowed into and beyond itself thick and thin and brown and roiling…moving on its way downstream to other flood-beds and plains, carrying life and the lived with it and then….
Run, Run, Run-away
Do you ever feel like running away? You take a look at your life and the things that occupy your time and concerns and want to say ‘Fuck-it-I’m-out-a-here?’ After taking that long and hard look at your daily doings, thoughts, worries, checkbook, mortgage, bills, work, etc, have you ever wanted to pack the wife/husband/spouse/partner/mate/whatever and kids and pets and all the rest of your shit in the car and get the hell out of Dodge and never come back?
When I was eight or nine years-old, I ran from the house in a fury and found myself out beyond the housing area on the perimeter road of the airbase where we lived in South Carolina. Maybe it was a fight with one of my sisters or after an ass-beating by my father for some real or imagined infraction, I don’t remember, but I can still feel the churning in my soul as I pounded my black converses into the rutted dirt road as I went as fast and far as I could on my little legs and with whatever child’s stamina I had at the time, just wanting to get the fuck away from where I lived and the people who populated my existence. I had run to the concrete pipe that the playground architects had planted in our backyard common area and thrown myself to the ground, hiding and trying to sneak like G.I. Joe, peeking around the pipe, and then launching myself out onto the road without caring who might have seen me at that point. I was heading away…running away. The road went for probably half a mile or more before it reached a point where it curved and went in a perpendicular direction down another side of the housing area. Where the road existed right behind my house, there was a strip of trees between the road and the perimeter fence that kept the rest of the world out of the base. That strip of trees and growth of brush was about 20 yards wide or more, or not, in my memory, and was constant until reaching that bend or curve in the road where the road turned in that perpendicular direction, wherever it was. The stand or ribbon of trees and brush became forest as the road turned and remained thick woods all along the road running in that other direction. I remember oak trees and bushes and other wonderful things that changed colors in the fall and winter. This is where we found the cottonmouth snake that some of my friends and other unknown kids beat with the sissy-bar from a bike until it was approaching death. I went further down the road and found another place to hide, safely out of sight of whoever might come out from our house and look for me. I guess I was closer to the spot where there was a stream or little body of water where we found the snapping turtle on one of our other excursions into the wilderness…. Anyway, as I was sitting there, I realized that I had nowhere to go really, no means of buying food, no way of securing a place to live, and I understood that I would have to return home. The thought sucked, but even at eight or nine, I knew I had to…and did…and life went on.
A couple months ago, my wife and little one and I made the trek back up to Utah to look at the things that had become familiar to us and them as my wife, little one, and other kids lived there for a year as my wife finished her internship. My wife also had to meet with one of her former colleagues to receive training on one of her testing tools…so we took another trip…another nine or so hours north into the forested and mountainous beyond, that further region that sparks flames of recollection and comfort in my heart and stirs my physical being with a yearning to live again in parts so adorned with that particular brand or sort of nature’s splendor…massive white rocks and boulders and pine trees and oaks and other deciduous trees with their many and changing colors of bright and vibrant reds and purples and yellows and golden fading greens, spread and dappled in and among the coniferous evergreens and icy cold streams of clear and trickling, bubbling, and rumbling waters coming from their mountainous and craggy origins up beyond the thinning air, in and among the wispy and transient gray and white and comforting, threatening clouds that danced in and among themselves to cast eerie shadows and darkening corners into the fore and peripheries of our consuming and piercing eyes, mine and my bride’s and my little one’s as we drove the mountain highways and roads in and among that paradise…in and among…. And those thoughts of running away came again in and among our family gatherings with those adult children who lived there with my wife and little one and their grown siblings who were themselves on the threshold of changing life and lives, and I was absent when the conversation started and was there after solid and tentative and wishful dreaming decisions were made to pack and flee fast and far to that known region where nature’s god kisses and nurtures its inhabitants with a clean respect and calmness and ease of simpler life amid the beauty that consoles an aching heart. We talked and talked and searched our minds and rational places that considered jobs and money and insurance and opportunities and a weak housing market and upside-down mortgages and possibilities and a safer environment and better schools and a stream in the backyard with deer eating from the crab-apple trees and a ten minute drive into the wooded beyond where the quiet is touched by the burbling water and the whisking bicycle riders all strapped and decorated so we can see them and their striped bike-shorts and helmets and a work week was a steady thing and normal and quiet evenings of no rush and rest and all but one of the kids agreed…and there were tear-laden emails of broken hearts and he’s grown so old and independent and remains attached in a distant way and we considered family and what matters and peace and togetherness and looked again in our mind’s eye at that northern sky and thought it wouldn’t be as sweet if one couldn’t come with us…and he wouldn’t for all those reasons so detailed and clear and fuck-it we’re not going and other people’s milestones and deaths and comforts shared in their cases of what if and how, and a peace came at and with that decision and it’s ok now…really…I think.
But the yearning is still there and strong to break away from the daily requirements of life and adulthood and responsibility and making ends meet and thoughts of the future and mine and hers and the little one’s and the other kids whom we love and adore and cannot imagine living without…until they choose to go away and be away and decide some aren’t welcome, so stay away, both you and me, he said…and that long northern highway beckons still and says ‘follow me,’ and it’s not a yellow-bricked road. So peace and paradise is and are sought in words and imaginings and pursuits that entertain and appease and settle and comfort in their sudden and sundry ways, in unexpected presentation in our lives and hidings and places tucked-away…as our minds and souls so desire to run, run, run-away…sometimes…still.
How Much Longer?
Innocence smiles large as the boys rescue The Cube and ride their motorized scooter and roller-blades about the cul-de-sac, announcing to me in passing that they are on their way to destroy Megatron. Hood up on his sweatshirt jacket, my little one is on the roller-blades and moves awkwardly about, wheel-walking, not rolling, strange dance of plastic and clatter rushing off to secure some imagined zone.
The December sky is gray with fat and heavy clouds; an occasional breeze or gust of wind ripples the overgrown palm fronds and the garbage truck is making its Tuesday afternoon rounds in the neighborhood a couple streets in the distance. My grandson is on the motorized scooter and is wearing orange, star-shaped sunglasses to shield him against the glare of battle in his efforts to defeat the Transformers’ foes. My little one’s enthusiasm for the game is waning as a little trio of afternoon walkers enter and make a circuit of the cul-de-sac – a young mother-girl pushing her baby in a stroller as grandmother walks with her Down’s Syndrome old-man of a son in a straw cowboy hat who marvels at the Samoyed who is sticking his nose and white head through the hole at the bottom of the neighbor’s backyard wall. The cling-cling of the bicycle bell and the metallic crash as the bike crunches into the sidewalk and the garbage truck is still a few streets away.
“Can we go in now?”
“Don’t you want to play two-player on the Nintendo?” he says, as he kneels in the rocks and examines a pigeon feather, “Don’t you want to?”
“No, not really.”
“Dad, can we go inside in 15 minutes?”
Ok.
He likes to orient things and events and know when they are going to happen. It helps him predict his world. He’s happier and less anxious that way. It settles his mind as the blanket of gray clouds part and roll into white balls with gray bottoms and a mini-bike just ripped and popped down the street behind us, throwing angry and irritating ripples and waves through the neighborhood air.
“How long has it been, Dad?”
What?
I’m reading my new book, The Good Soldiers, between glances up and into the cul-de-sac and at the Transformer warrior-children and vehicles entering for deliveries or exiting for errands and whatnot.
“How much longer?”
“The post is loose on the scooter, Grandpa,” as he sucks the winter snot back into his nose and as the little one, his uncle, my youngest, talks to his dog through the side-yard gate….
“Hi Wilson,” sing-song, puppy-talk, baby-talk, talking-to-my-dog-through-the-gate-talk, sing-song “Hi buddy!”
Crunching gravel, walking scuffing, scraping, and dragging shoes through the landscaping stones. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! A piece of gravel rock on the basketball pole. Ping! Ping! Ping!
“How much longer, Papa? How mucho longa?”
I’m on page 27…For now, no one touched the tape dispenser. Eventually, Cummings would begin swatting flies just hard enough to stun them, stick them to a piece of tape, and drop them alive into his trash can, which would be something that did have an effect. “I hate flies,” he would say each time he did this. What?
“Is it time yet?”
Did you park your bike and scoot it all the way over so Mom can open her door after she’s parked the car?
“I will.”
Ok.
“Are you done Blakie? Hey!”
“What?”
“Do you want to go in now?”
Cling! Cling! Cling! “Beep beep!”
“There’s a warning.”
What, Blake?
“There’s a warning.”
What kind of warning?
“There was a rain drop.”
Oh, ok.
And the garbage truck is getting nearer and the little one is dragging his toes across the driveway and he’s got a Kool-aid moustache as he grins at me and says “What?”
“How many more minutes? Dad?” as he stands on the apache-red boulder rock in his one-legged pose with his arms raised like a stork’s wings…from The Karate Kid…and a game of chicken in the roadway as my grandson comes at him on the motorized scooter…and repeated “Yaaaaah!” screams and “How much longer?” asked with a Pink Panther French accent this time.
“Hhow mush longherre?”
One minute.
“Ok……Blakie!! It’s time to go in!”
some don’t go away
Winter finally arrived in our desert valley the other day, bringing cold and wind and rain and a crispness in the mornings that has been uncommon in our easy-bake-oven existence here and about. The day’s early sky was still rippled with clouds of gray and white amid the blue background and aimless sun. When I dropped-off my little one at school, the teachers stood around shivering and smiling and talking about the upcoming holidays and mid-word stopped to blow a whistle to tell the kids to get off the ball-field…you know better than that…the grass was covered in frost and the dirt of the infield was darker with a dew that didn’t freeze. It was the first morning of the year when there was real frost on my windshield that I had to scrape off…so unusual…bordering on strange, for here anyway. My little one commented that the ground would be covered with snow if we were up in Utah…a subject of some contention in the household and family of late…to go or not to go…to be or not to be here or there…to throw caution to the proverbial wind and step out on another risk…a risk-taking in a risky time…but we’re not going…we’re here…and another Christmas season is upon us already. It seems that the kids just started school a little while ago and it’s back again. The lights are up throughout the neighborhoods and the stores are crammed with people who are usually doing other things when I happen to frequent the place…more cars in the parking lot, more cashiers at their stands, more people in the aisles, and more stuff and stuff in the air. I put-up our tree that afternoon and got-out the Christmas CDs and still had them turning on the stereo when I wrote this…Jim Brickman, Josh Groban, and three others making the rounds over and again, shedding their spirit and making me wonder again at this person Jesus who is said to have been born in a manger and all of the rest of it. I think this might have been my favorite time of the year when I was a Christian, a believer, a person of eternal hope and non-thought…someone treading in the footsteps laid ahead for me…pulled along by the ring in the nose…non-thought…anyway, I’m not going down that pathway right now, just wanted to say that if I were still a Christian, I would love the words of the music and the thoughts of the season. As it is, I listen to mostly instrumental music and hear only the tunes while the words echo on their own in my mind….resounding symbols of a previous life. It would be so nice to be able to believe that it was all true because it sounds so beautiful in this one month of the year…so comforting, reassuring, or something…but empty…and even sad…sad at the loss of that wrongly-conceived comfort, and sad with memories of being welfare-poor when our kids were little and not being able to provide them with the tangible Christmas gifts that we thought we should be able to provide…and sad with the memories of being a child and feeling that I didn’t deserve the presents…I wondered on several occasions how I could possibly have anything under the tree, thinking the gifts were supposed to be a representation of the love that was being rewarded in substance for my behavior during the rest of the year…and I knew that I had gotten my ass beaten several times, too many times, innumerable times for shit I did wrong and for lies that I told so that I might avoid the ass-beating…and how could they then give me presents for Christmas…and the gall they had that one year to give me the presents I had found while snooping through my father’s dresser drawers and stealing some of his Lifesavers…he had said he was throwing everything away…and he did throw away most of my toys and all the posters and things I had on my walls and on the top of my dresser…all my special things, trophies, souvenirs, mementoes…every damn thing…the things that comforted me when I was in my room and away from him…and I had discovered a poster of a horse in his drawer…and it was under the tree…like I wasn’t going to remember the yelling, cursing, hateful brown eyes glaring, piercing, stabbing into my soul whenever I saw the poster? Merry fucking Christmas…. And it’s always sad in spite of the good times with all the kids over and the tons of presents for everyone…it just is…too many memories that reach beyond the present and cannot be exorcised even with the passing of time…the shit is still in there with painful gashes that are trying to heal…and making tears run with sad joy at remembering my Thanksgiving morning when my littlest one greeted me first thing with “Happy Thanksgiving, Papa.” He calls me Papa when he’s being tender…when he’s being precious, gentle, loving…. “Papa.” I never had a word like that for my father…and my heart is touched.
