Tag Archives: Fatherhood

Climbing the Alto

9 May

It’s an early, gray sky morning and, the streets are empty.  I know where I’m going because yesterday I made a trial run, wandering up the Viale Guiseppe Verdi, past the the empty movie theater and darkened stores before turning to follow the contours of the Parco delle Terme.  Montecatini Terme is quiet and I soak in the gentleness of this unfamiliar town, the morning mist softening the border between antiquity and myself.

I’ve yet to find my rhythm.  Our hotel on the piazza has a grand, sweeping staircase, graced in its day by Verdi himself, but frequented now by my 9 year old daughter, newly fascinated by this introduction to infinity.  Ascending to our fifth floor room by a slow succession of right angles, we climb together this seemingly endless square, twelve stairs to a landing, thirty six to a floor. Over and over again. The challenge I have set myself to never use the elevator wobbles almost immediately as I chase her up and down, growing ever more aware of my age.

But this morning is mine.  My goal is the Montecatini Alto, the medieval village high above Montecatini Terme.  There is a funiculore, but it’s closed for the season and is now only a small station undergoing renovation at the base of the hill, its long stretch of track disappearing into the distance.  But along side is a road; more of an alley really, pavement giving way to gravel as it climbs past the last few houses to what I had hoped to find.  A trail.

It’s easy at first.  True, it is steep enough to affect my breathing, but there are wide, long steps running alongside a stone wall adorned at intervals by small shrines to the holy mother.  And there, far above, is the ancient fortress of the Alto.

The path turns and continues on its way as the ground slowly disintegrates into a wilderness of reddish stones.  Aspiring to gravel, it remains, at this point in it’s decay, a severe threat to the ankles.  Carefully, step by awkward step, I slowly make my way.  Looking upward, I think of my son.

He would hate this.  It would madden him with it’s pointlessness.  A phantom at my side, he proclaims to the hills:

“This sucks!”

“I know that, but here’s the thing,” I gently reply.  “Look up.  Is that not amazing?  In a matter of minutes we will be in that ancient town.  The views will be breathtaking.  This is how life works,” I say.  “You do something hard, and it makes you feel good.”

He is silent as we continue on.

“This is the secret,” I say, winded now.  “I’m trying to give this to you.”

The wind whispers through the surrounding trees.  I pick an olive from amidst the rubble, and then notice they’re everywhere.  Inedible, though.  Hard, uncured.

Almost as tall as me, I wonder if he will ever be as strong.  As patient.  I wonder if my father thought the same.

Slowly the way begins to ease.  Rocks become pebbles, the path takes a turn, and, surprisingly, I arrive, following the soft dusty path rising to the street that leads into the town.

It is early, few people are about and nothing is open.  Built of stone, the streets are narrow and veer off in precipitous directions.  A lone car passes slowly and after a moment disappears into this sinuous cobblestone world.  I follow, weaving my way, taking every upward turn as I continue to ascend, the fun house streets climbing and dropping all about me.

And then the world levels and opens a bit.  The sky and the surrounding countryside reappear, and I stand atop the remnants of this failed fortress whose alliances shifted with each new battle between the surrounding powers until being finally overrun by Florence and left in ruins by the soldiers of the Medici who, in all likelihood, had marched up the very same trail as I.

How many lifetimes ago?  In how different a world?

The trip down is harder than the ascent, gravity adding a new level of danger to the outsized rubble.  Also, I’m running late and promises have been made.  So I stumble along at speed.

The mist remains as the world levels and I descend into town.  Traffic’s picked up, dogs are being walked, a bus hisses past in the the morning gloom.  Two women in bright yellow windbreakers appear in the distance, out for a run, making their way through the streets I have yet to explore.

But there’s time for that later.  I need to keep moving if I’m going to make it on time.

On time For Heath, his complaints and concerns.

On time for Hallie and her games on the stairs.

On time for the coffee, which, truth be told, is the main reason I’m here.

And on time for Amy, her laughter, and all the joys of this journey shared.

 

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Waters

20 Jul

The helicopter came out of the sky, pushing water and sand before it.  Three friends had swum out into the waves but only two had come back.  A line was forming.  Pulling off my shirt and kicking off my shoes, I joined, wading out into the water and taking a stranger’s hand.  Others moved past, extending our reach into deeper waters.  And then, on a whistle from the beach, I began to move with the others, shuffling along the sandy bottom, hoping my feet were not the first to touch flesh.

“Over here!” A shout from farther out.  And then rescue workers running from the beach, splashing through the waves, huddling for a moment, then quickly moving back to land.

I cannot remember if we were urged to leave, or if we just instinctively knew we were no longer needed, but as I headed back to our cottage I saw the medics working on the young man, his body gray as the water they’d pulled him from.  Wrapping him in blankets, they ducked their heads as the helicopter reared into the sky.  Then, lifting together, they moved toward the waiting ambulance.

Sixteen years old, father gone and my aunt dying across the road, I turned and headed back to our final days together.

* * *

The water is warm this year, and Heath can’t get enough of it.  At dusk we wade in.  Hidden by clouds, the sunset is not spectacular, but it’s doing its best working with a gentler palette.  Pastels rather than oils.  To the north, stripped of its catwalk and fenced off for renovation, the pier is a line on the water, its lighthouse and pierhead stark against the sky, the excavator, surrounded by supplies, shadowed and sleeping.   To the south, high and bright, the moon lights the sky and dapples the water.

Having started in the shallows, Heath pushes into deeper water, far beyond where he’s gone before.  I’m out here with him, chest deep, and though it’s relatively calm, there is a swell, and when the waves wash up toward my head there is a giddy moment when I lose my feet and have to struggle, gently, to regain control.

“Heath, do you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I can swim, you can’t.  If that was a little bit stronger we’d be in trouble.”

“I know, ” he says.  But he doesn’t.

“Come on,” I say, “let’s head back in a bit.”

“No.”

“No?”

It takes me a moment, thrown by the outright defiance.  But then I see what’s drawing him.  The buoy, a little farther out, marking the end of safe water.

I wait, rising and falling.  Then I say, “I’ve never been out this far.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  I’ve never touched that buoy.”  I pause. “You should go first.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

And he does.  Lunging forward three or four steps, up to his neck now, and grabbing hold.  I come up behind him and touch it as well.

“You did it,” I say.  He’s quiet, so I am too.  The water’s still warm, but a breeze has picked up and the air’s cool.  Dark now, the moon’s light is a path on the water, dancing gold that leads straight to us.

“Come on,” I say.  “Let’s head back in.”

“No,” he says, turning away, moving toward shallower water.

I glance up to the parking lot.  The tractor is out, brightly lit, clearing away the sand.

“I’m not sure what time the park closes.  They’ll be shooing us out soon.”

He hesitates, then continues on, saying, “Look, why don’t you walk along the beach and I’ll stay in the water until I get down to the car.”

Which seems fair, so I do, wading ashore, finding my shirt, and then following his shadow as it moves through the water.

* * *

On our way back to New York, we stop in my hometown for a small reunion.  A sunny afternoon with my mom and her friends, who are, without fail, striking in the grace with which they have aged.

My old friend Terri stops by. It’s been almost thirty years but, surprisingly, this matters not at all.  Talking of our lives simply reminds me what friendship used to be.  It was everything.  And despite all the time that has passed, we are little changed.  Certainly, we are every minute of our ages, but we are also still sixteen.  When we hug, I don’t want to let her go.

Driving away that afternoon, the sun low over the fields, the kids quiet in the back, miles from lake or sea, I think about waters.  Those we come from, those we return to, and all the people, arm in arm, who see us through this life.

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Fireflies

12 Jul

Last night the fireflies appeared, three or four at a time, flashing in the waning light.  I called out and the kids came running.

“Wow! Dad, Dad, look!” Hallie, pointing, charges across the yard, only to lose the light.  Then, turning, pointing and shouting, she runs again.  A shadow in the dusk, Heath searches for a flash, moves toward it, gently scoops the small creature onto his hand and watches until, suddenly, it flies away.

This scrubby lawn and the small garden that surrounds it, shaded by our Magnolia tree and contained by the planks and walls of our neighbors’ yards, has grown, each year, a little more mine.  A patch of the world I try to make better, dreaming life into the thick clay soil.

The first year, planting late, I managed a bit of basil and garlic.  The following year, composting for the first time, everything came up cherry tomatoes.  Confused, but heartened by the fertility, last year I got an early start and planted a bit of everything.  Once again, cherry tomatoes.  So this year I stepped back.  Mowing and planting less, but watching more, I did my best to listen to whatever it is this place is trying to tell me.  By doing so, I’ve managed a small harvest of sugar snap peas, a lot of questionable garlic, 4 small tomato plants, something that may be leeks, and, up in the kitchen window, thyme, sage, and marjoram coming on strong.  My compost, long a dry, lifeless thing, is now dark and moist, writhing with worms.  And of course, in the evening, there are fireflies.

“I think it’s hurt,” Heath says, kneeling down toward the grass where, dimly, a light glows and fades. He lowers his arm and the small creature climbs on.

“What should we do?”  he asks.

I have no idea.

It’s a process.  With manure, compost, soil and leaves I work each year to build a better soil.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  Not really.  But I’m learning.  And in the past few days little purple flowers have blossomed about the yard as never before.  It seems wildflowers do prefer things a little bit wild.

Later, in the hammock, Hallie cuddles close.  “What’s that?” she asks, pointing to the lighted windows above.

“That’s the kitchen,” I say, as Amy’s shadow passes by.  “And that is you and your brother’s room.”

“What?”

“That’s where Heath is.”

She looks up at the window, and for a moment she’s still.  The hammock’s rocking slows.  Then, as the  fireflies dance, she takes my arm and wraps it around her body.

Lying in the darkness, I think about her joy, which is effortless.  I think about her brother’s tenderness, and how hard he works to keep it hidden.  And I think of the world that awaits them.

 

 

 

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Flow

19 Feb

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“We Americans are trained to think big, talk big, act big, love big, admire bigness but then the essential mystery is in the small” — Jim Harrison

We were away, and it was much needed.  Doubt had crept in.  Our little world had taken a turn and much of the unspoken support we relied upon had become suspect.  Along with the broken snow shovel and old clothes, friendships had become frayed, and as if we were traveling familiar terrain in an unexpected snowstorm, we had come up short, lost in a sea of white, unsure of the direction home.

Walking along the Delaware, we swap Heath’s camera back and forth.  The hills are quiet, and the river speaks a language I don’t know, hiccuping, groaning, and burbling its way through a world slowly becoming solid.

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We see things differently.  Heath fascinated by the small and near, while I look for sweep and curve, trying to take it all in.  But his eye is good, finding the beauty at his feet while I continue to scan the horizon.

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Comfortable with the stillness of the day, he’s a pleasure to walk with.  The incessant banter of our life at home has settled down, and we listen to the water and the wind as he walks on, stopping occasionally to look around, as if searching for signs.

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Watching him, I search for signs myself.  What does he see?  In a brain whose synapses gather and splay like a flock of birds, what does a snowy day in the Catskills look like?  How does it feel?

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People are hard, and those that appreciate us are rare.  That’s true for anybody.  The natural world, though, that’s something different.  Perhaps it’s where we can best appreciate ourselves.

I hand him back the camera and he snaps the shutter, catching me unaware.  Taking a moment to check the image, he nods, and walks on.  I catch up, and walking beside him, we follow the river home.

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Sycamore

22 Apr

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“Why is the cross the symbol of Christianity?” 

“Well, it’s supposed to signify the sacrifice Christ made for all mankind.” 

“I know, but it doesn’t really seem like much of a sacrifice.  He was only gone for like a week.”          

—  Conversation with Heath, shortly before our trip to Oklahoma

I notice the tree as we pull into the driveway, its hacked limbs struggling over the roof and into the sky.  John and Sue bought this house shortly before I married their daughter, and the tree over their back deck shaded our wedding festivities, a party for which her father and I drove to three different places, including a gas station with a smoker out back, to get just the right assortment of barbecue.

They’ve been waiting over an hour for the ambulance.  Battling pain and plummeting blood pressure, John is struggling with both his illness and its treatment.  I call the ambulance again and go back to see him.

“Hey John, how you doing?”

“Oh, I’m doing OK.”

We talk for a moment, and he does seem, not great, but OK.  Heath has been worried, so I ask, “John, do you feel well enough to see Heath for a moment, he’s been asking about you.”

“What? Sure, sure, I’ll talk to Heath.”

When we return, things have changed.  Now in pain, Amy is helping him back onto his pillows.  Not recognizing the situation, Heath begins.

“Hi Pawpaw.  I’m sorry you don’t feel well and that the chemo is making you sick.  Dad says you’re even having hallucinations.”  Amy shushes him with a look, and I lead him back out of the room.  Through the front door I see the ambulance pull up.

In the days that follow, while the rest of Amy’s family camp out at the hospital, Heath, Hallie and I take care of her parents’ house.  I open windows, tie back curtains and lift shades.  Heath plays video games while Hallie and I watch T.V., walk down to the mailbox, or play catch out on the driveway.  Amy calls, we visit the hospital, and then return to await more calls.  Two days in, late at night, I get the one I don’t want.

I don’t want to tell Heath his grandfather is dying, but I have promised never to lie to him.  So when, in the darkness following Amy’s call, he asks again if his Pawpaw is going to die, I wait, remembering Amy’s firm denial of the possibility only hours earlier, and then, looking into his open face, say “Yes, it looks that way.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t look like he’s going to make it buddy.”

After a moment he breathes, and with his breath comes a high, animal sound like nothing I’ve ever heard.  My ten-year old son is keening.

“No!” His face is a grimace of teeth and tears, his voice a howl.  “Nooooo! Are you sure?  Is there no chance?”

“I don’t think so Heath.”

“No chance at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

And then he starts to pray.  I have never seen Heath pray, but he is praying now, laying on his back, his knees pulled in toward his chest, his clenched hands held above him.

“Please God.  Please!  Don’t let my Pawpaw die. Dad, do you believe God answer’s prayers?”

I hesitate.

“I believe he hears them.  I don’t think he always answers them the way we want.”

“But there’s a chance.   At least there’s a chance.”

“A very small one.”

“Well what are the rules?  Are there a limited number of times you can pray?”

“No, no.  You can pray as many times as you want.”

Though still crying, he is quieter now.  If he prays more, I do not hear it.  We must have slept, for when I look out the window the sky has begun to lighten.

“Dad, do you think God will answer my prayer?”

“I don’t know buddy.  But I do know it was a really good prayer.”

Silence.

“If Pawpaw dies I don’t know how I’ll ever be happy.”

The evening skies of Oklahoma go a fair way toward making up for everything else.  As the day cools, the air slides from a clear robin egg blue down into warmer pinks and oranges while the wispy clouds shade into gentle swipes of purple and gray, a vibrant display that, for a time, makes everything below seem irrelevant. Occasionally on such evenings John and I would talk, sometimes on his front porch, other times out back beneath the shade of the sycamore.  He’d always want to know about Heath and Hallie, his kiddos.  But though the skies are lovely over the following days, we don’t have a chance to talk again.  John does not make it home.  It’s just the kiddos and I.

The Monday after the memorial service a hard rain sweeps across the neighborhood, great gusts of wind snap limbs, damage the back fence, and struggle to carry away the stubborn old patio umbrella no one wants to run out and close.  After years of drought, the storm is too late to save the sycamore, and serves only to remind us of the danger it poses.  Sue tells me that over the past summer the tree “just burnt right up.” She couldn’t water it enough.  But she hates to see it go, for one limb is still alive, covered with buds and young leaves, offering the hope of a bit more shade in the days to come.

Sad for a few days, Heath finds happiness again in the family he loves.  He’s a different kid though –  more open, more present, and more thoughtful.  He won’t talk about John, though.  It makes him too sad.

Amy and I don’t talk much either.  Every time we try, I feel my own distance.  She did ask if I believe in heaven and, shamefully, I dodged the question.

But should it come up again, I’ll tell her that I don’t feel like her father is gone.  He’s here with me, much as he always was.  The conversations we had, the times we shared, and the solid feeling in my chest that I have for that man are strong.  Whatever he taught me is there.  The confidence he gave me as a husband and father is there.  He is with me, he is real, and he is not going away.

Heath and John Easter 2013

Walking the Dog

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Kindred

24 Feb

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I sort of split 50-50 between thinking I’m a complete twat, and the other half thinks I’m fucking brilliant… — Gavin Clark

Gavin Clark died last week.  Sadly, until his death, I had no idea who he was.  I met him through Shane Meadows’ film, The Living Room.  Beginning like a goof between buddies, Shane visits Gavin’s home, catches him still waking up: messy kitchen, the familiar routine of trying to get organized after the kids are off to school.  With some prompting, Gavin begins to talk about the project they’re working on, a concert in his own living room, as a first step toward overcoming his fears as a performer.

Immediately endearing, it took me some time to realize that this sweet, struggling man is also brilliant, his singing surpassed only by his songwriting.  Messy kitchen, unpaid tax bill and all, his songs took me to places I have long neglected.  A gift from a stranger, a friend I had never met.

Later I found myself telling Heath, (who’s running for 6th grade student representative on a platform of extended electronics time, computer classes for the 6th grade, and an end to racial and sexual discrimination) that whenever he finds something exciting, something that sparks his imagination, he needs to hold on to it, because people will tell him it has no value, and that his focus needs to be on working hard and making money.  This will be a lie, I told him.  Those sparks are what we live for.  Those moments take us where we need to go.

That evening Hallie wrecked my desk. She was sly about it, waiting until I was outside shoveling snow, nothing but cuteness and good intentions when Amy came down to find her quietly drawing.  But once the coast was clear, she muscled the desk drawer off its runners and onto the bed, scattering notebooks, paper clips, pads, pens and highlighters everywhere.  When I found the mess she had made, Hallie was all innocence, and took my scolding with big brown eyes and a quivering lip.  “OK daddy,” she said, looking up at me with tear-stained cheeks, my noble, six-year-old, pony-tailed martyr.  And then she shuffled off down the hall, no doubt planning her next bit of destruction.

As I listened to her pad away, I gathered up the pens and paper, replaced the drawer, straightened my desk, and sat down for a few minutes.  I dug out the details for that new journal that was calling for submissions, ran through all the half-finished blog posts I’d been meaning to get to, and took another look at that short story that had started so well.  And I thought of my friend Mark, who drowned when we were six, and my best friend Randy, who I haven’t seen for forty years, and all the other people who were so important to me, and who I never see.  I wondered what they were doing, and if they ever thought of me.

And then I thought: I’m as adult as I want to be.

And I began to write.

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Alone Again (Naturally)

11 Jul

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Cigarettes and beer on a warm summer breeze. 

To this day, walking the streets of New York, I’ll turn a corner and bam!  There it will be: that essence of summer 1972.  And I have to stop, because, for a moment, I am nine years old, sitting on the porch of our Lake Michigan cottage, holding my little Sears & Roebuck 9 volt transistor radio, listening to Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally.”

It’s an odd song for a kid to fall in love with.  A father dies, a mother dies, a young man’s abandoned at the altar.  I believe suicide may be contemplated.  But none of this really matters.  Because it’s not the words so much as the gently loping beat, like the saunter of a sun-kissed girl walking along the sand, a melody with the quiet insistence of waves on a shore,  and that distinctly English melancholy of something beautiful coming to an end.

Cigarettes and beer.

It was a crazy summer.  My cousin Joni, sixteen and wild, had run away to California, only to turn up several weeks later, with a copy of Joni Mitchell’s Blue tucked beneath her newly unshaven armpits.  She would play “California” and then solemnly intone to whoever would listen, “It was just like that.”  She was so cool.

But even cooler was her friend Memphis.

First of all she was from Memphis.  Second of all she would take driftwood  and turn it into art, painting it with a big letter “M”, and clouds, and seagulls and stuff.

But mostly, she would talk to me.

We’d sit on the porch as the sun went down and the beachgoers across the street packed up for the day, and in her exotic southern accent she’d tell me stories.  Like how her sister had been home sick one time when she heard that her boyfriend, whose Camaro Z28 was the baddest car in all of Memphis, was stepping out on her.  How her sister had pulled on her bathrobe, tied a scarf over her rollers, and headed out in search of that Z28, and how, finding it parked outside a local burger joint, she had stopped the car, walked inside, and dropped her boyfriend’s date with a single punch.

And we would talk about girls.  She tried to get me to believe that the prettiest weren’t always the nicest, and that I should always give the less attractive girls a chance.  I didn’t really believe her, but I lied and told her that I had a crush on a girl who wasn’t very pretty at all.  She smiled.

And as the night settled in, and the rangers locked the gates and began their patrols, we watched the spotlight on their pickup sweep across the darkness, while the adults inside the cottage gathered around the big table, talking and laughing, playing cards.  The breeze lifted the hair from Memphis’ face and I stole a glance as she looked out across the water.  It was 80 miles to Milwaukee.  Too far to see.

 

Heath came to me last night as we were getting ready for bed.  Having mistakenly tried to eat ice cream from a frozen scoop, I am holding a bloody washcloth to my lips.

“Dad, can we go out on the porch and talk for a while?”  There’s an urgency in his face.  He’s afraid I’ll say no.

“Sure.” I mumble, getting some ice for my lip, which is beginning to swell.  “Go on out on the porch.  I’ll be right there.”

The fireflies have finally arrived, and as I join him they glimmer up and down the block.

“There’s one!” he shouts, jumping up and following it around the porch.  Fascinated by this little piece of light, he is every inch the nine-year old.  But soon he will be ten.  He borrowed my sandals for the first time this week.  Still puppyish, he is growing into his feet.

We talk about his first day at summer school, his new teacher, his friends.  When things go quiet he pushes for more.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me or anything you think I should know?”

Struggling to maintain the conversation, he leans on the professorial cadences he finds so comfortable.

“Dad.  Is there anything else you want to tell me or anything you think I should know?”

I laugh, because of course there’s too much.  And then, gently, I say “You know Heath, we don’t always have to talk.  We can just sit together and enjoy the evening.”

“I know, but I like to talk.”

So we do.

 

In a few weeks we will return to Lake Michigan, and a town that is in many ways unchanged.  But it won’t smell the same.  Most of my family are gone now, and sadly, they took their packets of Kools and their Pabst Blue Ribbon with them.

But, for my kids, there are two houses, a grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins galore, as well as porches, sunsets and the breeze off the water.

I heard years ago that Memphis had become a nurse.  I’m not sure where.  But I like to think she’s still out there, telling stories, painting driftwood, and giving sage advice to precocious lovelorn little boys.

Her hair was auburn.  She was sixteen.  I think of her every time I hear that song.

 

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Rivers and Streams

6 Jun

 Waitresses

Britta Seaton, née Slaughterback, was born in 1888.  She lived in a little house in Lawrenceville, Illinois with a Mynah bird that could talk.  A small man with an outsize temper, her husband was both an alcoholic and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  Her life could not have been easy.

Rebecca Bell came from Wales at the turn of the last century, building a life in a new country and raising a pack of boys in the process, one of whom married Merle Ball of Brazil, Indiana, turning her, as she always liked to say, from a Ball to a Bell.

Merle’s father was a section boss on the Indiana railroad.  He had beautiful handwriting, and he drank too much.  She left home at fifteen, taking with her a strain of bitterness that would run through the rest of her life.  The anger in her voice was undiminished as she described, eighty years on, standing in the cold outside the local tavern, waiting for her father, as man after man stepped outside to relieve himself in the snow.  She outlived her husband, she outlived her children, and as things unraveled she lost much of herself.  But she never lost that memory.

Gladys Seaton, daughter of Britta, also fled a drunken father, only to flee again from the abusive uncle who had taken her in.  The eventual mother to six daughters, she ran a string of diners and coffee shops.  She smoked like a chimney and drank coffee in much the same manner.  Born in 1909, she wrote a letter to her children and grandchildren on the night of the first moon landing in which she marveled at all she had seen.  Outgoing and vivacious, she never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  And in the end, even death couldn’t stop her.  A great believer in the afterlife, for a year or so after her passing she would occasionally appear as a shadow, a scent, or a bit of mischief-making, whether checking on her grand-babies, or teasing and terrifying the daughters she had left behind.

One of whom was Barbara “Bobby” Stressman.  A beautiful, playful woman, she started dating my father when she was fifteen, lost him when she was thirty-eight, and was left to raise four children alone.  She remarried, taking in her mother-in-law, Merle Bell, as well as her second husband’s grandson.  Her children grown, she continues to care for others.  It seems to be her mission.  She told me once that as a very young girl she was taken by friends to a revival meeting downtown, where, with a certainty belying her age, she walked down the aisle and accepted Jesus as her savior.  I’d never heard  that story before, but when I see her now, volunteering at the hospital, or caring for a dying friend, I can’t help but see that same little girl, all by herself, taking the first steps on a journey that would last a lifetime.

From these women came my daughter, who tomorrow turns six.

They are, of course, but one tributary, for flowing north out of Oklahoma and Texas comes another just as beautiful, and certainly just as strong.  But this is the stream I know, for it also flows through me.  And on this day it is good to remember that despite all the obstacles that have stood in its way, it continues to rise anew, cold and clean, bubbling forth in the early morning light.

 

hallie attitude

 

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Winter Rain

5 Mar

Rain

Morning darkness, and the house is at its most gentle, whispering me awake.  Amy has gone upstairs to prepare for her shower while I lie warm beneath the covers, listening for the water, shaken by a dream.

I’m on a ramshackle camping trip, a bunch of us kids unloading gear from our beat up cars and station wagons, carrying it through the grounds of a small carnival to the old houses beyond the fairground.  And somewhere on this journey, it seems, I have made a friend.  She has short dark hair and great big eyes, and although we’ve just met, we’re like puppies in the back seat, leaning into each other, shoulder to shoulder, heads close, laughing, and then going quiet as the miles roll by because nothing has ever felt this good.

Then it begins to rain, and everyone’s a step ahead.

Tents have gone up, a garage floor has been cleared, and while I stand outside, my ratty, unrolled sleeping bag growing heavier by the minute, I realize I have nowhere to go.  She stands at the door of her tent, wringing water from a cloth, and even though she has plenty of room, there’s no way I can ask.  It’s embarrassing just to be standing there.  I move away, into the garage, out of the rain.  But looking around I see all the spaces have been taken.  Busy strangers ignore me as they smooth their pallets across the floor.

And then she’s there, her sleeping bag spread out, and she’s inviting me to join her.

“Really?”

“Yes!” she says, smiling, shaking her head.  I step lightly on the sleeping bag, and we laugh because it’s a little squishy from the rain.

Suddenly my knowledge accelerates, and in a flash, I see everything that’s about to happen . The longing, the intensity, and the unbearable sweetness of this friendship going somewhere I had never thought possible.

And then, for the first time, I remember my kids.  And Amy.  She would know.  And even were I willing to risk that, this young woman clearly has no idea I’m married.  My ring has been lost.  I’d be lying to her as well.

Morning comes.  The rain has stopped.  Friends and neighbors appear.  We share a big box of raisin bran.  It’s the best raisin bran I’ve ever tasted.  Revelatory.  As people pack all around us, I look for her, but she’s nowhere to be found.  Maybe she’s in the car.

The water downshifts to the low hum of the shower, and I have to get up.  Leaving the warmth of the bed for the cool morning air, the anger builds like a cloud in my head.  Tight and sore, my achilles tendons play hell with my balance as I head down the hallway, passing all the stuff we don’t really need.

She took me in out of the rain.

Hand on the rail, I climb the stairs,  squinting and unsure; not yet ready for the light of day.

B&W Rain

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Tumbling through Brooklyn

30 Jan

Digital StillCamera

People say time flies when you’re having fun, but that’s bullshit.  Time just flies.                                                                     — Heath Bell

The plan had been to walk Brooklyn, Coney Island to Greenpoint.  An early start with a stop for breakfast in Red Hook, and then a beer in Greenpoint, at that little place on the corner.  In this way I would mark the day.  So come the morning, despite a sore head, a late start, and little desire for a beer at any point during the day, I head out the door.  Coffee in hand, I take my seat on the train, and as the wheels begin to turn the world blurs past.

 I don’t know how to reach him. 

The train takes forever.  The initial pleasure in skipping work fades as the commuters disappear,  leaving only the Brooklyn bound: tired mothers, complacent children, and one very large, angry leprechaun, whose headphones are not taking him to a calmer place.

Even though I see myself in him all the time.

Coney Island is a sad place on a winter’s day.  Bereft of people, the remaining attractions hug the boardwalk like so many dinosaurs, asleep at water’s edge.  Dreamland, Luna, and Steeplechase are long gone, replaced by housing projects, empty lots, and sky.  The few old buildings left along Surf Avenue continue to fade, making room for  an Applebee’s and other improvements reminiscent of a highway rest stop.  A runner passes me on the boardwalk, shirtless in the cold Atlantic wind.  Older guy.  Tough or just crazy?  I vote both, and head inland.

The difficulties in maintaining a friendship, and the inevitable sense of betrayal.  A process of years in my life; minutes in Heath’s.

Once known as the Road of Dreams, Stillwell Avenue is now a bleak strip of auto repair shops and the occasional decrepit house whose demeanor hints at more prosperous times.  A waterside inn perhaps, built along Coney Island Creek when it flowed all the way from Gravesend Bay to Sheepshead, creating an actual island.  Now gray and salt-stained from the spray of traffic, it looks barely inhabited.  I pass by, looking for hints of life, and then continue on, crossing a bridge over the creek’s stilled waters.

How many times has Amy said “Please don’t go away from me”?

Over the next several hours I chip away at the grid, zigzagging through the streets and avenues, progressing at a glacial pace on my journey of discovery.  What do I discover?  Brooklyn’s big.  And Bensonhurst goes on forever.  You heard it here first.

It’s what we do.

Toward the end, hours late for breakfast, legs leaden and feet blistered, having slogged past the auto shops and porn parlors beneath the roar of the BQE, I know I should quit; find a train and head home.  But I don’t.

Not caring.

And then, finally, turning left at the first opportunity, the startling quiet of Red Hook.

Buoyed by familiar landmarks, I head in the right direction, but, strangely, the community fails to materialize.  I see the projects, the parks, the silos, and even the damn Ikea, but the battered little houses where Brooklyn’s more adventurous denizens raise chickens and children in what feels for all the world like some dusty little prairie town are nowhere to be found.  Until suddenly they are, disrupting my sense of geography by appearing at a completely unexpected angle. Having arrived at my destination, I have no idea where I am.  

* * *

He appears as I take off my coat, standing awkwardly to one side, shifting slowly from foot to foot, lost in his own living room.  

“Hey, Heath.”  I toss the words gently, as if they don’t matter, and I wait, not sure if he’s heard me.

And I’m standing at a screen door as my dad tries to coax me into a game of catch.  Embarrassed, because I’m not good at catch, but torn because I know I’m disappointing him,  I cannot bring myself to step through that door.

After a moment, Heath looks up, walks over, and puts his arms around me, awkwardly, as if he’s afraid to complete the hug.

“Happy Birthday, Dad.”

I pull him close.

“Thanks, Heath.”

Looking over his shoulder, I see Amy shake her head.  This was not prompted.

I continue to hold him as long as I can

We feel more than we can show.

And then, without a word, he’s gone.

 

Heath and I Buddy Walk 2012

Photo of Coney Island from http://www.city-data.com 

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