Posts

Posted on

Cross-Outs & Kid Questions

My daughter caught me gazing lovingly at my dry-erase board, which was covered with multi-colored to-do lists.

“I can erase the stuff that’s crossed out, if you want,” she offered in a way children often do when they’re trying to be involved in that stuff daddy does in his office.

“No, thanks, hon,” I said, recognizing a teachable moment immediately. “Cross-offs are an essential part of success; they show me what I’ve accomplished.” I leaned in to get her full attention, which was already waning. “Accomplishments need to be celebrated; they need to be reflected upon. At least for a little while.”

I stopped there. I wasn’t going to tell her how prideful reflection leads to gratitude, which is the lifeblood of happiness. She’s 9 afterall.

When I’m feeling particularly accomplished, I’ve gone so far as to take a picture of my dry-erase board, crystallizing the moment in time, my past-self, a work-in-progress to remind me how many things I’ve had to do to get where I am, to become who I am.

“Well, can I draw on it then?”

The markers were out of her reach. She looked around for a chair, which was covered in papers. Then she looked back at me.

“How long you gonna be?”

I pointed to the dry-erase board, with a sheepish shrug.

“Really?”

“Well, not all of it.”

I probably could do most of it if I put my head down and grinded through, but there are more important things in life, the kinds of things that don’t make it on the to-do list.

I got pictures of those things, too. 🙂

Posted on

Artists, With And Without Art

Close up shot of flames

Is a writer who doesn’t write still a writer?

Is a musician who doesn’t play still a musician?

What about a filmmaker? If they’re not making films, are they still a filmmaker?

In other words, does being an artist run deeper than the deliverables?

Are artists walking through the world with different eyes and different brains?

Seeking novelty over scale

Choosing beauty over abundance

Driven to innovate, innovate, innovate

To breathe in what already exists and exhale what doesn’t

To live in every moment

At all costs

As if they are creating art constantly, whether it comes out into the world or not

Some of their greatest works, still inside, always inside, like a warm fire burning, a secret never told

And is this something to want?

Staying lit

Exerting energy to fan the flame

All that energy

Taken away from other things

Earthly things

Practical things

It’s a silly commitment

Like refusing an electric heater for a match

Only because the flame lives and dies

And in between those two finite points of existence, it dances.

Posted on

A Christmas Miracle

Christmas Day.

I pulled away from all the excitement — Hazy building little robotic things, Evaline, trying on pants, Molly donning new chicken earrings — to find a quiet part of the house and call my mom, who, likely, was having a very different Christmas. A lonely one, which was painful to willingly become a part of, if only through a phone line.

“Hey, Mom. Merry Christmas. It’s Cliff. Your son.”

“Oh, how wonderful.”

It always starts off that way, which I suppose I should be grateful for. She’s happy to hear from me. She’s pleased with her life. She’s more joyful than she used to be.

But then she starts forgetting stuff…

“Wait, you said you’re Paul, right?”

“No. Cliff. You’re son. The youngest.”

And then she starts running in her usual circles…

“I have the best view of all the apartments. Gramma and Grampa knew what they were doing when they bought this unit. It has the best view.”

I wish we could talk about other things, like how she once slammed a microwave-safe dish on my friend’s head when he talked back to her. Or how we used to watch gymnastics and Olympic figure skating together.

Somehow, I’ve not yet resorted to doing other things while she rambles on about the same old stuff in the same old order, with the same damn inflection. She speaks as if coming around to these topics naturally, every time.

“The other units don’t have views like this one…”

I sat on the couch with one leg folded up under me and immediately felt like a child, alone in my thoughts… like when I was little, and I’d come home from school, shrug off my backpack, and know, without a shadow of doubt, that no one was home. Sometimes, I’d stand and listen to the silence that came after the thud of my backpack, just stand there, like one of my action figures, unmoving, waiting for something to move me.

“When daddy bought this unit, he knew exactly what he was doing. It’s the best unit in the building.”

“That’s amazing, Mom!”

I still put an exclamation point on it.

But then something wonderful happened. The record skipped, and my mom got on a new track, one I’d not heard before. As if Ol’ Saint Nick came out of hiding, finally, to give a boy and his mom a real Christmas Miracle.

Instead of swinging from Grampa’s genius idea of buying th ehouse to the view of the restaurant parking lot across the street, she rope-swung in another direction, grabbed a differnet vine.

“Grampa hated watching the Indians get discriminated against.”

Wait. “Indians?”

“Yes, that’s why he didn’t hesitate to let me go East. That’s how I got my job as a Public Health Nurse. Because no nurses in Connecticut would walk into a black person’s house.”

“So they called in a nice, white farm girl from North Dakota.”

“Yup.”

And just like that we were having a conversation.

It was like being on the perfectly smooth surface of an iced-over lake, not a scratch out there.

“Grampa worked for the railroad, so he got them to take all my boxes. We had so many boxes,” and she laughed, which is a wonderful thing: to hear a person who’s losing their memory laugh at a very specific nearly forgotten memory, like it’s really there in her head: an image of towering boxes at the train station, a mom and a dad laughing forcedly with their daughter, before saying goodbye.

I’d never heard this story, or maybe I have heard it and forgot, or maybe she’d told me but I wasn’t listening.

I was listening now.

“Grampa and Gramma invited the indians to come on our property. They said, ‘ if you got no where to go and you have a good tent, come over this way.’ And she laughed again.

I didn’t know what to do, but I felt the need to do something to keep this going, scared that at any moment, there’d be a crack in the ice and we’d fall through.

“You took a train to Connecticut?”

“Dad worked for the train. Great Northern Railroad.”

“So you didn’t fly?” For some reason, I always imagined her taking a plane (not a train) with suitcases (not boxes).

“It took a few days.”

“I’ll bet.”

I pictured my mom leaning her head against the glass window of the train as it bumped along, feeling scared, excited, lonely, curious. Did she make friends with the passenger next to her? Did she get up and walk to the dining car? What kind of person was my mom as a recent graduate, a pre-marriage, pre-kids, twenty-something traversing the country for job she’d never done before.

“What was it like? Going to Connecticut?”

“I thought the principal wasn’t going to like me, but he completely supported me. I told him we needed to get these black children tested or they couldn’t go to school. And he said ‘Then test them. Let’s get these kids tested and back in school!’ And that’s what we did. We got them back into the school.”

“How many?”

She went quiet.

Shit. Cracks.

“So the principal liked you?”

“Yes. He was very appreciative of what I was doing. And it was because Grampa was so good to the Indians that I was willing to walk into black people’s homes. Gramps was the kind of person that didn’t care. And so I didn’t care.”

Phew.

“What year was it?”

Shit.

“I mean, around what time? It was the mid-sixties right?”

“Must have been. I’m not sure.”

We went around and around like this for nearly an hour. She repeated herself sometimes, but the content was so fresh and interesting I didn’t care. I ate it up, sitting by the Christmas tree, this Christmas Miracle happening right in the middle of my morning, no one else knowing, the world just going on around me.

So many moments like that for me and Mom. Just me and her, and the world going on around us. Just me and her.

On the family room rug.

At the kitchen table.

In the station wagon.

We skated around our perfect little ice rink, just the two of us, until it had beautiful swooping, overlapping tracks all over it. And sometimes those tracks (during the very best of moments) ran in parallel to each other.

No cracks. We got to the end of our routine without falling.

“Well, this has been a real gift,” she said.

“Agreed,” I said in as tender a voice as I could offer.

“I’m so glad you called.”

“Me too. I love you, mom.”

It was the perfect thing to say, and the perfect time to say it, but for some reason, she didn’t say it back, which is strange because she’s said it to me a thousand times.

I was usually the one who didn’t say it back.

“Okay. Bye, son.”

And, poof, I was no longer on that skating rink. I was on the couch, my leg still pinned up underneath me.

I looked out at the crumpled wrapping paper scattered across my living room , and my kids, laying on their elbows, completely consumed by what’s in their hands, unaware of the depth of this phone call, and the ache of regret that will one day reach them too.

I reflected on her words, the back-and-forth of a real conversation, our beautiful dance on the ice. No judges, no Olympics, just me and mom making it up as we go.

Like we used to do.

Posted on

Going the Perfect Speed with the Perfect Song

I normally go right onto the freeway after I drop off Hazy, but I decided to go left today, which is the direction I used to go to drop Evs off at high school; the same road I took to drop Ziggy off at the groomers.

Maybe it was because I was digging the radio guy’s Irish accent.

It’s my last day here at the station folks, and I’m playing nothing but bangahs. Hits hits hits. Here’s another one…

He put on the Cure, who have basically cornered the market in Nostalgia. They make you want to have a broken heart, to walk through a storm, to miss your hometown.

The song was “Pictures of You,” which has an extended intro that allows you to really drop into your thoughts, to swim in the past and ready yourself for Robert Smith’s lonesome call.

I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you…

I got this song as a gift, recorded on a blank tape from a girl-crush in high school. She handed it to me through the car window in the rain. The ball-point pen title at the top was smudged. That girl, a year older, from the South, always seemed to be pulling away, an architect of longing for my high school heart.

Remembering you standing quietly in the rain…

It’s as if she gave me that tape just to be able to give someone a tape in the rain about giving someone a tape in the rain.

I let my mind float up from the past to the present, shifting from literal photos to mental photos, still shots of my life right here in Oakland. Images sprouted up as I drove by sections of the city that will forever hold memories.

Ziggy’s vet clinic, where a nice but distant vet told me Ziggy was in his twilight years.

During COVID, he forced me to sit in the car while they worked on Ziggy, which allowed for plenty of time to stir up guilt and concern.

Sitting there waiting for the verdict.

I pictured Ziggy behind me, even looked into the rear view for him, where he’d be standing up on the back seat, tongue hanging out. He’d tumble over on the seat as I stopped at the light. That made me laugh, thinking of good ol’ Zigs trying to regain his balance, getting all quiet as we entered the parking lot.

Bro, seriously? This place again.?

The Zig Man..

Not much further up on the right was Oakland Technical High School, with kids pouring out of cars, across the quad, and into the building, like a single apathetic organism of baggy clothes and mussed up hair. Evs was always easy to spot in that jumble of teens, with her rainbow socks and 6-foot frame.

Proud every day at drop off.

And what about over there, that deli on the corner, the park bench where Evs and I ate sandwiches and shared a bottle of red Vitamin Water. Or over there, that stretch of side street where Evs used my car to do college interviews between classes. And of course, right around that corner, the beloved backdoor to the school auditorium, where Evs would linger with the stragglers of her technical theater group while waiting for us perpetually late parents to show up…

The DJ came back on. It was a rough morning for him too.

Folks, it’s my last day here in the studio and I gotta say, I’m pretty bummed. Thanks for the journey, thanks for the call-ins. Thanks for everything. It’s been absolutely splendid delivering music to you all on CALX, Berkeley’s #1 station for independent radio. Okay, here we got; I’m leaving you with one last bangah. Here’s the Prince himself with Nothing Compares to You, because, well, nothing compares to you.

A bonus track. Thanks, Irish DJ dude.

I turned onto Linda Street, which would take me by the dog park. And the soccer field..

Prince gave it to me good.

The trees, bare in the cold against the morning sun, caused stripes of shadow to roll across my face and arms. I was smiling and hurting at the same time; it’s a beautiful thing you learn to love as you get older.

I drove slow.

Parents lined the sidewalks, fixing little backpacks, tugging on little arms to pull little bodies away from the big bad road.

New families — making memories — while me and the Radio DJ packed up our stuff, and looked up into the sun with all the feelings.

I was just coming to the hardware store when a new DJ came on.

She had a new voice and new energy. It was clear she wasn’t leaving the station. She was there to stay. Perhaps she had some songs for those new parents, but not for me.

I turned it off.

Once out of the shadows of the trees, I felt the good sun on my face. I pictured the DJ standing on the front stoop of the radio station, holding a cardboard box of things on his hip, quietly laughing at the people honking at each other in the road.

And as I pulled into the garage without a soundtrack, there in front of me on tall, metal shelves: our not-so-scary Halloween decorations, little, undecipherable wood sculptures, and an array of shiny bike helmets 2 sizes too small.

These things. This silly world.

Posted on

Mom’s Magical Phone

Technology as an act of love.

I normally wouldn’t pick up during normal business hours, but I knew she’d be excited.

“I’m calling you from my new phone!”

“That’s awesome, Mom!” I would have faked excitement, but I didn’t have to.

“I love my new phone. You must have been wondering why I wasn’t calling you.”

Me? Wonder?

Me, the architect, the choreographer, the puppeteer in the wings of the stage, like so many caregivers of children, of adults, a thankless job.

She barely knew I was there.

She didn’t know I spent hours on tech support speaking to someone in Bangalore, that they told me they can’t do anything if no one is in the house, that it’s probably the phone and not the line. She didn’t know that I’d arranged a visit 3 days earlier but they never showed up, never texted like they promised. She didn’t know I was in the forums with other people with grammas and moms trying to fix things in the too-late hours of the night. She doesn’t know about my text threads with Cara, her angel of a Dementia Navigator, and my emails with Lissy, trying to coordinate someone to be there at a specific time, which is an impossible feat because the phone company only provides 4-hour windows.

And if I tell her, she’ll just get confused. Wait, is this Paul? And then she’ll forget.

“The phone sounds great, mom.”

“A man came to my door, such a nice man, and he said the problem was at headquarters and then he said he’d be right back. And he came back! He came back and told me the problem was fixed and BOOP my phone worked.”

Sitting in my office at day’s end, I nearly laughed out loud at her BOOP.

She always booped. It was HER! Deep under the misty haze, she was there. The new phone brought out a boop, which made it all worth it.

Mom had things she said that I’ve never heard from anyone else.

Like BOOP.

And Betcha Boots (as in “Betcha boots the bus will still be there when we arrive)

And Wrong Way Corgan (which I have no idea how to spell or what it’s from, but it’s something she’d say every time she made a wrong turn, which was a lot, and it’d make her laugh and slap the steering wheel.)

She had things, weird things, mom things, of which I’ll never know the origin. Secrets locked in her brain.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on the cool white tiles of our bathroom floor at 35 Jones Road and playing the sock game. I’d put both socks on one foot and then tell mom I lost the other one and she’d look around and behind her and then I’d peel off the sock from my well-socked foot, giggling, and she’d look so surprised and then she’d laugh or do the raspberries thing and then throw the sock up in the air and let it land between us.

“Gullible, Gullible, Gullible,” she’d say, something she’d keep saying well into my teens, whenever she missed my straight-faced sarcasm, which, admittedly, was a lot.

If I had 5 minutes with her old brain, I’d talk to her about the sock game. I’d love to know if it really happened. Because, if that happened, it seems like I could believe every other memory too.

Now I’m involved in a different kind of trickery: the slight of hand of an off-set director. Cut to commercial, cue the rain, run it again!

“He was such a nice man. He said the problem was at headquarters. And then he told me he’d be back…”

A new storyline at least. I wonder how long it will last.

I put my feet up on the desk. Sometimes you have to just let the actors do their thing.

“And then he came back, like he said he would!”

[Zoom in on SON who is switching the phone to his other ear.]

“And then my phone worked!”

No boop this time.

[Slight disappointment on SON’S face]

“What a nice man,” says the son. “You’re lucky to be surrounded by such nice people.”

[Tight shot on SON’s eyes]

It’s a small thing, but I have to insert myself into the cast sometimes, like, put myself up on the stage, even if it’s in my own mind, an audience of 1.

“I just love my new phone.”

[And Scene! Roll credits over image of SON leaning back in office chair, camera pulls slowly away.]

Boop. That’s a wrap. Nice job everyone.

—

But, like a nice man, a good director’s job doesn’t end after the credits.

Wait ’til she gets her new washing machine.

Posted on

Ziggy

It’s not an appointment anyone wants to make.

1 pm: Put Ziggy to sleep.

We’d been delaying it for weeks.

It’s so easy to want one more day, one more week.

But Ziggy was falling apart. Approaching 15 in dog years. His back legs stopped working. He used to be able to bounce over curbs without even taking a running start. He had a spring to him you wouldn’t expect for such a big dog.

Not anymore.

For the past few months, he’d been sleeping downstairs — completely unheard of for a dog with serious co-dependency issues. Ziggy was always by our side. He just wanted to be on the scene, no matter what. So it was hard to hear him down there, trying to get up the steps and sliding back down. I carried him up sometimes. He’d lie limp in my arms, which was so weird. No squirming at all.

He stopped grooming himself. No more incessant licking on his mat. No more chewing on his nails or plucking out burrs from between his paw-fingers.

His appetite dwindled. His food would sit in the bowl. If we forgot to bring it inside, the raccoons would get it. I started leaving it inside, but that just gave me a constant reminder that shit was going downhill.

As a sort of admission of what was to come, I started feeding him raw salmon and beef, things that normally would make his skin break out and his ears get gunky. But those symptoms take a few weeks to show up. And we didn’t have to worry about that.

Time wasn’t on our side.

How do you prepare for something like this?

We gathered the family, Evaline on the phone all the way from Massachusetts, sobbing, Hazel wide-eyed at the stories about a time when she didn’t exist.

Remember when he ran from the water spicket?

Or when he ate my entire basket of Halloween candy?

Or your shoes. Didn’t he eat one of your shoes?

Just the leather part.

And let’s not forget my juggling balls.

He downed 4 or 5 of those.

Twice! I bought a new set and he ate those too. I still don’t know how he got them off the mantle.

Iron stomach, that dog.

Dare I mention the squishy ball?

The squishy ball!! We all chorused.

It was exactly what it was supposed to be — like a TV family on one of those shows trying so hard to be like real life: sharing the family lore, sitting on the floor in the dining room, laughing through tears. Quiet moments while we tried to think up more stories.

And then later, Ziggy’s aunties, Dre and Nikki, came by, and Uncle Alex, who lived with Ziggy for a minute while we were on vacation, piped in via FaceTime. More stories, more love, more laughter through tears. I heard Nikki crying in the kitchen later on. We all took our turn.

Everyone loved the Zig Man. His eyes seemed to be perpetually asking, “Is it cool if I hang out with you guys?” Such a gentleman, trying to figure out how to be in the mix in the most subtle of ways possible: plopping under the lemon tree while I shot hoops, taking cover beneath the pool table during karaoke parties, lying behind me in my office while the hours went by. (I don’t know if I’ll ever lose the reflex of looking over my shoulder when I back up my rolley chair.

It’s hard. I realize he’s gone, over and over again.

Every time I get up to change rooms, I find myself looking for him. Every time I come home, I expect to see him coming down the stairs. Every morning, I look over by the window. And he’s not there. We finally got rid of his bed-pillow.

It hurts, but I find myself smiling at the same time. It’s a beautiful thing to remember Ziggy. The ache tells me so much: that I’m alive, that I loved deeply without caution, that he meant something to us, that he lived.

The Zig Man. Always and forever leaning into me to get one more head scratch.

Here but not here.

Warming my heart in between this thing and that.

Deep red, gushing, intoxicating love, with no regard for time and space or life or death.

Love love love. So much love.

Both ways.

Posted on

Regretting College

The radio people love to ask provocative questions.

This time, they asked if people could go back to college, would they? And what would they do differently?

The answers generally fell into 2 categories:

1) Party more.

2) Party less.

So, what about me? Would I go back?

My immediate thought was “Hell no!”

Not because college wasn’t awesome. My god, it was! I never missed a class. Nor a party. I made friends with the greatest people EVER. Had a radio show (this impressed my daugther; I left out that it was from 2am to 6am!), wrote poetry for the campus lit magazine, challenged myself with Math, Programming (yikes!), Black History, and Death Penalty classes, luxuriated in Hemingway, Faulkner, and Shakespeare, Got a C is Human Sexuality (double yikes!), learned to write, learned to think, hung out with professors in their offices and living rooms, got drunk, got laid (take that, sex class!), fell in love a couple times, flew a bike off a ramp into a lake, did art, Saw the Violent Femmes, saw Digable Planets, did the midnight waffles, lived in the dorms, got an apartment, laughed my ass off, stayed up late wondering about the world…

(Sheesh, I haven’t reflected on that in a while…)

It was all good. Like ALLLLLLL good.

But I wouldn’t want to go back.

I suppose “back” is the keyword there. Going back would be more like finding a place to hide.

I’m still in discovery mode.

I’m still in figure shit out mode.

Besides, I’ve seen the trails behind me; I’ve read the lines in the trees.

Put another way, “Been there, done that, bruh.”

It makes me happy to not want to go back.

Not regretting my past is kind of a celebration of who I am now.

And even though I’m not always good, and life pretty much isn’t good these days, I don’t want to go back.

Feels nice to say that; like I did things right. Right for me.

I don’t need a do-over. I’m proud of my path.

I’m the guy who drove a bike into a lake. I’m the guy who drank a fifth of Jack on a fire escape with the girl he loved. I’m the guy who made his writing teacher beam with pride. I’m the guy who tried Math and then switched to English. I’m the guy who argued with professors over the details of Shakespearean sex scenes. I’m the guy who graduated scared shitless of what was next.

And I’m the guy who kept walking into those big blank spaces, one foot in front of the other, making his own dotted line from Boston to LA to San Francisco to Oakland, into love, deep into love, into fatherhood, into entrpreneurship, into a home with a 50-foot inflatable waterslide and a karaoke lounge in the basement.

I’m that guy. And he’s a pretty cool dude.

College — just like kickball, little yellow school buses, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — got me to where I am now.

Thank you, college. You did me right. But I’m good.

I’m me.

Posted on

Pasta After Power Tools

After Hazel’s Power Tools Class (I love saying that!), we went to our fave Italian joint in El Cerrito, run by an Indian couple.

It’s become sort of a tradition.

There are only 4 tables in the restaurant, but there are always at least a few people sitting up at the bar with nearly empty wine glasses, talking to the owners, one of whom is 8 months pregnant. She’s got a terrific smile and asks Hazel lots of questions.

It’s her restaurant. That is, the restaurant is named after her: Dolly. She’s the one who told us that the afredo sauce is made from Parmigiano Reggiano out of the milk of one specific breed of cow in Northern Italy.

“Only 300 farmers are allowed to make this cheese. It is a very special cheese.”

Her husband does all the serving; he’s a massive giant of a man, almost of cartoon proportions, with hands as big as plates. Sweet like a teddy bear.

“More of anything?” he says, putting down our second serving of toasted Ciabatta bread.

Hazel always forces me to play Eye-Spy for as long as I can take it. Sometimes she does homework, sometimes she asks me questions. And in those rare moments when she just sits there and chases her noodles around the plate, I can’t help but stare at her, really seeing her, studying her, like she may disappear at any moment.

My mom used to look at me that way. I’d catch her leaning back on the vinyl booth, staring at me.

“What?”

“I’m just looking at my beautiful boy.”

“Ma.”

For us, the tradition was Oakcrest Pizza, a portmanteau of the (surprisingly A-list) amphitheater up the street and… well, I’m not sure what else, maybe one of the neighborhoods.

Oakcrest wasn’t so much a tradition as a default. If mom didn’t feel like cooking (surprise), we’d hop in the car and drive down the hill to Oakcrest. (It was a very steep hill or we might have walked).

They had long cherry red (before they redid them black) booths; I’d sit on one end with my back to the wall and my legs splayed across the booth, sneakers hanging over the edge.

We didn’t go to Oakcrest for the pizza. There was an appetizer I couldn’t get enough of, a dish my mom tried to make once, but thought better of it.

“Fried Mozzerella?” the server asked, peeling off several sheets from her pad for me to draw on.

I’d nod, as my mom pulled out a ballpoint pen.

And as I’d draw or doodle or write my name in puffy letters, she’d stare; it was one of the only times she was quiet. I certainly didn’t appreciate it enough.

Now, I know what she was thinking of. She was thinking about me and the person I was growing into.

I wonder if she saw a counselor (probably). A husband? (yup). A dad? (definitely). A soccer coach? (sure). A resume writer? (was that even a thing back then?). The world’s best resume writer? (she believed I could be the world’s best anything). A writer in general? (absolutely; she called me her little observer). And what else? And what else, Mom?

I wouldn’t be surprised if she saw all of it. Even the things I still can’t see.

Funny how one person can be fortelling the future while the other is focused on keeping enough marinara sauce for their last crust of bread.

That’s the wisdom of being older: you’ve seen enough to be able to connect the dots across time. You can see the future. That’s what makes life wonderful and hard at the same time.

We can see things so clearly, but we just have to sit there and wait for it to unfold. And then, the hardest part: letting go when we’re wrong.

“Whatttt?”

It’s Hazel; she caught me staring. And time-traveling. I could tell the look on my face by the look on hers.

“I’m just staring at my beautiful girl.”

“Daaad.“

I probably would have kept going with the cheesy, embarrassing comments, but I had to move my foot out of the aisle to let our giant waiter pass by so he could bring a glass of water to his wife, who was smiling and rubbing her belly like a crystal ball.

Posted on

Great Gramma Lena

When I was young and complaining about having nothing to do, my mom would tell me, “Hush up. Your Great Gramma Lena started bowling in her 80s.”

My youthful brain would think to myself: “What’s that got to do with anything?”

My mom, as if hearing my thoughts, would continue: “She worked the farm into her 80’s, but that didn’t stop her trying new things. She was always doing something new. She was a character.”

Okay mom.

But she was. There’s a picture of her that used to scare me: Up on a ladder, in overalls, with a bandana on her head, annoyed that someone has interrupted her work. Not looking grandmotherly at all.

Whether you live an intentional or unintentional life, it fills up quick. Whether you work a farm or sit on your butt and complain, you build a world around you; you create a nest. That nest is mostly comfortable. It is our inclination to stay in it.

Partly exhaustion, partly reward.

Ahhh. I made it.

The proverbial EZ chair at the end of the day.

And there we sit, TV, phone, scotch, tea, whatever. Not all that proverbial.

I deserve thisssssss.

But there’s something in the human DNA that doesn’t allow this to be entirely restful, as if some of the thatchwork of the nest juts out, pokes into us. Prickly by design.

Or, at least, that’s the way my nest feels.

And Gramma Lena’s, I suppose.

I love to binge a show as much as anyone else, but it doesn’t last. Something pokes me.

Get up.

If it sounds annoying, it isn’t. It’s not like a child sticking a finger in my ribcage.

Daaaad….

It’s more like a wise, sagelike figure, fully dressed and showered, placing a hand on my sleepy shoulder through the blanket.

It’s a beautiful day.

Love ’em or hate ’em, you know they’re right.

Sometimes, when I’m not completely exhausted, I wander around the house looking for something to do, and everything seems like an excuse. Even reading a book.

Don’t hide from yourself.

It’s not that I don’t deserve to rest; it’s that I want to deserve something else. I want to find another reward, discover a different way to make my body tingle again, to change my tired old thought patterns. To surprise myself.

And being bored, being rest-LESS is almost always the precursor to discovering that thing, to quieting down the world enough to be able to hear the call.

A conjuring, an epigenetic electrical pulse, a soft hand.

Up and at ’em.

Okay, okay.

But I’m not going bowling.

.

Posted on

Remote Control Kid

It’d be easier if my kid came with strings attached.

Like a marionette.

Or better yet, if she had a robotic skeleton with a remote control. Yeah, and a speaker inside her cheek so I could talk for her, make sure she always says the right thing.

With the enthusiasm of a 9-year-old and the experience of a middle-aged man, she’d be top of her class, star on the playground, social queen of all situations. Class president, award-winning artist, a socioemotional genius.

I’d sit at home peering through her little camera eyes, hands on the controls… easy now, girl… you’re gettin’ hot… let me just turn the intensity of that temper tantrum down a notch… there, much better.

Like an emotional Cyrano de Bergerac, I’ll anticipate the comments of her peers and navigate the nuances of the playground politics, making sure — for damn sure — everyone likes her. That’s the big thing, isn’t it, the thing anyone who’s loved a little one wants? For them to be liked. For them to belong.

Alas, we, as a nation-state have wasted all of our tech prowess on silly things like self-driving vehicles and military drones, so no remote control kid for me.

Now, I’m relegated to asking questions after school and piecing together bitter pieces of truth like a torn-up love letter.

And then what did you say?

Kids aren’t stenographer material, that’s for sure. Their stories change direction; they end way before the real ending. Cut to credits… WAIT!

Without eyeball cameras, all I got is hope, like some superfan waving a big dumb sign, believing against all reality that I’m having some effect on the game.

I can scream all I want, the girl’s gonna drop the ball, miss the shot, push her opponent to the ground, step on her own teammate.

Ain’t no strings there to save me. Or her.

Wait, did I just show my hand?

I’ve got all aces, I’ve got Pele-level ball skillz, but I’m on the sidelines; it’s not my game to play.

I just have to watch her step on the other girl’s toes and see what she does afterward. It’s almost like watching a videotape of myself being batshit drunk and doing stupid stuff. Like my heart is on the outside of my body, spinning around out of control and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I can’t intervene. I just have to watch. And then deal with the aftermath, walk toward the dumpster fire with her tiny hand in mine.

It’s hard.

I still reach for the remote control.

Go tell her you’re sorry.

But just because she’s spitting out my words or moving her arms and legs in the right way doesn’t make her a good person.

She’s gotta reach that level on her own.

And the path she’s taking looks nothing like the one I came through. I guess that’s a good thing.

In the meantime, I’m going to stash the remote in my chest pocket, make a hundred signs in bright neon colored paint, and try like hell to keep my eyes open no matter the score.