I watched you eat your first strawberry today, rather I watched you gnaw it into submission. The strawberry never stood a chance against your gums and your burning desire to taste anything but the milk of your mother. Your pudgy hands held it tight and still they did not wrap all the way around it and your cheeks and lip slowly turned red and the juice dripped out of the side of your mouth and down you chin and onto your pants and you never stopped staring at me. I wonder about that stare. At times I will look at you and you will look back and your grey eyes don't break from mine and what are you thinking? Who is this man? I wonder what your memories are like.
What do you know. Do you know how much I love you? How when I lay still at night and think of you and your mom, you tucked against her body, your fat little hand resting on her breast, do you know that I fight back tears. Do you know that? Is that what you know? Is that all you know? Is that enough?
And still you stare at me. And the wind works through the new leaves on the tree above us and your mom is talking to me, and yet I am not longer there. I have pulled back and the moment has broken apart and it is no longer my life, but it is the life of your grandpa who you will never know and your grandma who was always young and now seems old. And I see your hands quiver as you suck on the fruit and I see your hands quiver as you let go of mine and go into the world and I see your hands quiver as you bring life into that world and I see your hands quiver as your life ends. And still you stare at me.
This is small, this moment. You won't remember it, and likely, if I had not written this, I would not remember it. Your first strawberry. But these moments, more than any other, seem to hold the eternities and maybe being able to hold and understand these moments, not momentous ones, is what separates the gods from us. Maybe the gods understand it the joy and peace the mundanity of the eternities bring.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Day 2.
When I was 9 we lived on a lake for a summer. I guess we lived there for a fall as well, but I remember almost nothing from that fall. Shortly after we celebrated Thanksgiving, we piled into our truck and moved to Minnesota. My dad was alive then. He was happy
At the time there seemed nothing odd about my dad not working for almost six months. About moving overnight to a small house on a dead-end dirt road. Weeds, left to grow all spring, reached to the window sills. A wood deck wrapped around the entire back of the house. The lake was still in the evening and I'd sit watching him throw a stick for our dog until it grew to dark to see, and Sandy would whimper and cry and beg and splash, and my dad would laugh and it would echo across the lake, and the lights reflected across the water, and the cicadas would sing and it was still. Fox hollow drive.
We drove over the Catawba and pass Stan's Bubble-up. Stan's was a biker bar perched on the side of the river. I know this because in April, two month before we moved from Charlotte, my dad stood outside Stan's at 4 am. That was a month before shots were fired at our house. Before police would knock on our door almost every day. Before a sheriff sat at our kitchen table, while I watched star trek, and showed my dad a handful of pictures of man who had been beat to death with a sledge-hammer. That was the month when my dad felt he would succeed. It would work. We'd buy a boat. His kids would go to college. He had won.
I wonder what he was thinking as he stood there watching the humid darkness begin to give way to morning. As he dug his feet into the gravel and reached down to touch the river. As he picked up a rock and mindlessly tossed aside. As he watched the lights of scuba divers appear and disappear. I wonder what he was thinking knowing the most expensive thing he had ever owned was resting, it's headlights shining through the murk, on the bottom of that river.
We are the same age now. Me and him. His wife and three children asleep at home. Drunk bikers stagger by as his features are momentarily illuminated by the blue and red of flashing police lights. I'm sure his shirt was tucked in. His shirt was always tucked in. Those years in Charlotte he smelled like sweat and asphalt. Even at church, in a clean plaid shirt and jeans, you could smell the roofs on him. Like tar. Like heat.
He had let Chip drive the truck home that night because by the time my dad got off the roof, the dump was closed. Chip had a gold chain and long curly hair that always seemed wet. Chip's wife was cheating on him. I guess that night he realized it or grew tired of it or was drunk or was angry. He drove the truck to bar, put it in neutral and ran inside. The truck, with it's aimless headlights illuminating the muddy water, slowly slid down the bank and floated into the river.
The room was quiet and dark and he could hear the rhythm of my mom's quiet breathing. The windows were open. He pulled on his pants, then a shirt, quietly closed the door behind him and started his truck. This was not how life was suppose to go.
At the time there seemed nothing odd about my dad not working for almost six months. About moving overnight to a small house on a dead-end dirt road. Weeds, left to grow all spring, reached to the window sills. A wood deck wrapped around the entire back of the house. The lake was still in the evening and I'd sit watching him throw a stick for our dog until it grew to dark to see, and Sandy would whimper and cry and beg and splash, and my dad would laugh and it would echo across the lake, and the lights reflected across the water, and the cicadas would sing and it was still. Fox hollow drive.
We drove over the Catawba and pass Stan's Bubble-up. Stan's was a biker bar perched on the side of the river. I know this because in April, two month before we moved from Charlotte, my dad stood outside Stan's at 4 am. That was a month before shots were fired at our house. Before police would knock on our door almost every day. Before a sheriff sat at our kitchen table, while I watched star trek, and showed my dad a handful of pictures of man who had been beat to death with a sledge-hammer. That was the month when my dad felt he would succeed. It would work. We'd buy a boat. His kids would go to college. He had won.
I wonder what he was thinking as he stood there watching the humid darkness begin to give way to morning. As he dug his feet into the gravel and reached down to touch the river. As he picked up a rock and mindlessly tossed aside. As he watched the lights of scuba divers appear and disappear. I wonder what he was thinking knowing the most expensive thing he had ever owned was resting, it's headlights shining through the murk, on the bottom of that river.
We are the same age now. Me and him. His wife and three children asleep at home. Drunk bikers stagger by as his features are momentarily illuminated by the blue and red of flashing police lights. I'm sure his shirt was tucked in. His shirt was always tucked in. Those years in Charlotte he smelled like sweat and asphalt. Even at church, in a clean plaid shirt and jeans, you could smell the roofs on him. Like tar. Like heat.
He had let Chip drive the truck home that night because by the time my dad got off the roof, the dump was closed. Chip had a gold chain and long curly hair that always seemed wet. Chip's wife was cheating on him. I guess that night he realized it or grew tired of it or was drunk or was angry. He drove the truck to bar, put it in neutral and ran inside. The truck, with it's aimless headlights illuminating the muddy water, slowly slid down the bank and floated into the river.
The room was quiet and dark and he could hear the rhythm of my mom's quiet breathing. The windows were open. He pulled on his pants, then a shirt, quietly closed the door behind him and started his truck. This was not how life was suppose to go.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Day 1.
The goal is to write a page for 30 days. I'm not sure what a page entails on this and it would be made easier if Ames was not constantly letting out deep, discontented sighs. Periodically, and by periodically I mean every minute, I have to put my hand on her stroller and push it back and forth. This baby loves to move. It seems the calm of sleep, laying still, breathing gently, those things that babies are suppose to do, bore her. When she is awake she is moving- constantly, and when she is asleep, if she is not being moved or shaken, or rattled, she wakes herself up so she can take care of it on her own. Kick, kick, squirm squirm. Smile. Squirm and Streeeeeeeeeeeetch.
I think this has been tougher than I thought it would be. You begin things thinking you have a handle on it. That other people don't attempt the things you do because they are weak and stagnant and unable to dream. Not because they are sane and rational and realize that both of you going to school with a newborn is a recipe for disaster. But in we jumped and maybe that is the key. Maybe in this life we have to jump in with both feet. Or maybe that is just me. I remember reading when I was a kid about this boxer. When he was 5-6 his dad decided he needed to learn how to swim and instead of lovingly taking him to the YMCA, he carried him out into the Ocean, picked him up over his head and threw him in. I must of been 8 or 9 when I read that story and remember being really impressed. It didn't really scare me, the idea of a little kid my age desperately trying not to drown, but made me wished I had learned to swim like that. That instead of suburban pools and swim teachers, I had been taken into the Ocean and thrown in. Moments of intense fear and panic usually quickly turn into moments of intense calm and satisfaction.
I guess Breckan and I have done the same thing. Here we are, this shuddering baby in a car seat, her in a Con Law class. Me at 8 am, drinking a Dr. Pepper because I slept 4 hours last night. No jobs. Very slim prospects. I think about how sand under that kids feet must of felt after he realized he didn't drown. How standing on his tippy toes, his nose barely above the water, must of made him feel taller and stronger than any person alive. The feeling that from here on out he'd be ok. As it stands right now, my head is barely above water, my arms are flailing and I'm waiting to feel something under my feet. Waiting for that feeling that this has worked. Waiting to feel I survived. Waiting to feel we'll be ok.
I think this has been tougher than I thought it would be. You begin things thinking you have a handle on it. That other people don't attempt the things you do because they are weak and stagnant and unable to dream. Not because they are sane and rational and realize that both of you going to school with a newborn is a recipe for disaster. But in we jumped and maybe that is the key. Maybe in this life we have to jump in with both feet. Or maybe that is just me. I remember reading when I was a kid about this boxer. When he was 5-6 his dad decided he needed to learn how to swim and instead of lovingly taking him to the YMCA, he carried him out into the Ocean, picked him up over his head and threw him in. I must of been 8 or 9 when I read that story and remember being really impressed. It didn't really scare me, the idea of a little kid my age desperately trying not to drown, but made me wished I had learned to swim like that. That instead of suburban pools and swim teachers, I had been taken into the Ocean and thrown in. Moments of intense fear and panic usually quickly turn into moments of intense calm and satisfaction.
I guess Breckan and I have done the same thing. Here we are, this shuddering baby in a car seat, her in a Con Law class. Me at 8 am, drinking a Dr. Pepper because I slept 4 hours last night. No jobs. Very slim prospects. I think about how sand under that kids feet must of felt after he realized he didn't drown. How standing on his tippy toes, his nose barely above the water, must of made him feel taller and stronger than any person alive. The feeling that from here on out he'd be ok. As it stands right now, my head is barely above water, my arms are flailing and I'm waiting to feel something under my feet. Waiting for that feeling that this has worked. Waiting to feel I survived. Waiting to feel we'll be ok.
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