Happy Dude, Happy Spring

I've not worked all week on this, more like ten minutes.

That is all, thanks for coming around.


From Marci's "... thing you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."
 
Z: "I shuffled those like a boss."
 
N: "You shuffled those like an unpaid intern."
 
Epic burn...


Peace to you all.  It's been Spring Break this week and this is all I got.  I think he's cute.

What's Theirs is Mine

Lets play a game of "What's on the Coffee Table?"  (It'd help if you said that in your best game show announcer voice.)  ((Thanks.))

First, we'll need a table.  Oh, look, there's one right here.

There on the far left is a box of Z's Rubik Cubes, he's been heavy into them for quite some months now.  I made model airplanes when I was about his age - simple plastic ones put together with a glue that still wafts through my memory whenever Marci puts on nail polish.  I made ten or twelve I'd say, mostly WWII fighters and bombers and a Messerschmidt or two.  I suppose I learned a great deal attaching the bomb-bay doors and and tiny Rolls-Royce engines and Goodyear tires.  I'd like to say I considered war and logistics and the nature of good and evil and all that.

I asked Zack the other day why he was so interested in the cubes.  "I dunno, Dad, it just something to do."  Yeah, same with model airplanes, just passin' time not thinking about passin' time.

There's a deck of cards there to the right of that book of magic tricks Z got from the library.  I grew up watching people play cards.  My parents often hosted bridge games of two or three tables.  I used to watch my parents and my two older brothers play Hearts when we were camping.  One time, Dad went off to the latrine and handed his cards to me.  I played that hand and bid and won the next.  They didn't even know I knew how to play.

If you look closely you'll see three box lids, one says "Red Team" on a red piece of construction paper, the other says "Black Team" on, well, black (or, more accurately, that hopelessly dark gray black construction paper always is) paper.  Between the final lid is upside down and lined with orange duct tape.  These are components of card game called "Donut #s."  The pound symbol here indicating numbers.  There is a whole two page set of instructions I will spare you.

I am glad to see cards coming out more here in our household.  We haven't taught them many games yet.  I should get on that.

On the far right end of the table are two books by Newbery award winning author, Sharon Creech.  One is called The Unfinished Angel the other The Boy on the Porch.  Nick has, of course, read them both and was very enthusiastic about them.  I read them and so did Marci.

I can't say that I really ever gave juvenile fiction a second thought over the many years I've been an avid reader.  I never studied any of them, oh, wait, I did take a long look at The Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which wasn't intended as a children's book.  Anyway, since the boys started reading I've taking a look at some of their favorites and I'll tell you what - there is a lot to be learned about plot and structure and character from these simple books.  I'd recommend them both to readers of all skill levels.

There in the center, to the right of the deck of cards is Nick's Hexbug and controller.  Below that an eraserless pencil, a calculator, a lovely San Damiano cross Marci came home with, a little black box and a thermometer and mini-compass key-chain.

So, I guess that's everything on the table.  You'll notice there is nothing of mine on the table.  I got to thinking about that.  At first, I was tempted to play the pity card; to feel sorry for myself because nothing of mine was represented.  It is easy, as a stay-at-home-parent, to feel like you no longer matter, that you've simply become your children's keeper.

That's honestly too easy and insipidly shallow.  You see, although nothing of mine is on that table, I just made it all mine.  I made this a memory.  I made a moment, created a scene, gave their things my narrative.

In a way, I think that is what parents who are involved, who pay attention to their kids, who worry and wonder for them, who seek a story for them, do.  We make our memories out of their now.

Or something like that.

In retrospect I could've at least put my coffee cup on the table...

... it is a coffee table, after all.  My coffee table.


I know said I'd spare you the two-page instructions from the game the boys invented but they are just too damn cute silly confusing adorable interesting to ignore.

I'm a little confused but, I'll catch on sooner or later.


Peace to you all.

Untitled

A funny thing happened around here recently.  I have been struggling - perhaps a bit dramatically, yes - to add a level of disassociation here between the boys and the words I insist on lining up day after day.  I formed that clunky sentence on purpose.  I can't totally disassociate myself from them, that would not serve my purpose here.  But, at the age they are now, as they find out more about themselves, more about their talents, their faults, their desires and aspirations.  As they begin the difficult thinking - war, prejudice, hatred; acceptance, love, beauty... girls - I think I am obliged to step back and watch and remain silent, for now.  The funny thing is - no, not the original funny thing, I'll get to that, this is sort of a spontaneous aside -  that I feel like I have something to learn from them... something about myself, about the way I learned these things, about the forgotten people and situations that are returning to me as I watch the boys navigate this stage and remember navigating it myself.

So, to find the awkwardly coined "level of disassociation" I mentioned, I've decided to tell more of my stories and kind of flip them back to the boys now.  I have also decided that I should let them know when I am using an image or telling a story that they might find personal.  For instance, they both read my last post about Ping-Pong and my childhood basement.  Nick really liked it.  Zack liked that he was in it.

They understand, I think, why I am doing this.  It is indeed difficult thinking, to understand that a future is coming, that now is the past.  A painting, or handmade clay bowl, a stick-house for fairies under the cedar trees, is all temporal, fleeting - they sense that.  Sure, I could archive and curate, catalog and record it all.  I've tried to grab a bit of here in this long letter home I call a blog.  You can't get it all, though.  But if you can get a piece of it, an edge or corner of it, they can extrapolate the whole of it.  They're smart boys.

I also think they know that I won't tell any of their secrets here.  They own those, I can only give away my own.  They trust me.  They trust integrity.  They know I will not fail them... on purpose at least, or unless it's really funny.

Funny!  That's where this started...

So, the funny thing is, that since I've been more open with them about what I do here, they've started suggesting ideas and crafts and stories for me to include here.  So, just as I have been trying to find a better middle here, they start wanting more stuff about them.

A lot of folks might think that as long as they don't care, well, post away, right?  Here's the thing, they don't know what may or may not be appropriate, what might be too revelatory or personal.  I'm not sure I do either, but I think I have a better feel for it.  Oddly, this comes from overlaying my own childhood over theirs and noting where they meet.  This thing hurt me at ten, it may also hurt them.  This was hard for me at eleven, it is surely as difficult for them.  I found joy in the things they are enjoying and was mortified in the same places and circumstances.

I will proceed cautiously.  I think it best to not tell you which of the things the boys have asked me to include here.  I think they'll remember.

Zack has been into Rubik's cubes and such lately.  He's figured out several different styles.  He's proud of himself.  This picture is from an untitled series on his camera of image after loving image of all his new Rubik's's (sorry, I don't know what else to call them, they're all not cubes and shapey-shifty-twisty-colored-tile-thingees seems long).  Pride is a good to see in a son.

Marci had posted this on her FB page a while back with the caption, quoting him:  "Solved like a boss."

Here is one he took of all the ones he has now.  He purchased, like, three I think with Christmas money and Nick gave him one then as well.  He also did all the editing for the image before I put it here.

Nick made a very good fire the other night.  He was proud of himself and I was, too.  Pride is good to see in a son, you might remember.  He told me that he wants to remember sitting in front of the fire, warming their feet, adding logs and poking them.  I think I know what he really wants to remember - being safe and warm and happy and simple and loved and hopeful.  He knows that now is the past to come and he wants that past to come to be good.

Sadly, I don't have a way to show you that.  I guess I could get a picture of him staring wistfully into the fire but Nick doesn't, uh... pose well.  The problem is that he thinks his accomplishments go unnoticed and unheralded (see above paragraph) and sometimes wishes that he had something to take pictures of or hold in his hands.  That's tough.  I get that.  No one likes to feel second or marginalized.  No one like to go unnoticed.

Zack came home from school last night and made an art piece sort of thing a paper and crayon craft a mixed medium work of crayon shavings, paper and Scotch tape... this:

It is untitled as well.  It's really cool and he likes  it a lot.  We had a good art talk about negative space and balance and primary colors and all.

Untitled.  Perhaps that is how Nick feels sometime.  He thinks he doesn't have a thing yet.  Nothing tangible like Zack's art work or his Rubik's's.

I think he has a thing.  I am reluctant to tell him.  I am not sure I am the one to tell others their talents.  (I went down this road in a post called Wrapped Gift Post.)  If I were though, I tell him it was his love of reading.  Believe me, that's a damn super-power right there.  The cliche is true, you can go anywhere, learn anything, feel everything, learn all there is to know about others and yourself.  If I were to tell him, I'd say that reading as much as he does is just as impressive and noteworthy as any twisty-shapey thing or paper on the window.

In Nick's reading class this year they made a contract to read a certain amount of books this school year.  It's called the "forty book challenge."  Nick's read sixty-two.  Well, actually, the number of books he's read is not exactly certain.  They get to call any book three-hundred or more pages long two books.  It doesn't matter.  He leads the class and his teacher had to make more pages for the log in which he puts the book's title, author, dates read and number of pages.  He is proud of himself.  So is his teacher.  His pals are impressed and he likes that.  Don't we all?

Just as I couldn't show you the fire and the dreams they hold, I can't show you this either.  He knows the books and the stories they tell him are important to his own story.  I don't know how to show that.  But, I certainly understand how important it is to him.

You know what?  Maybe I can.

In the two weeks of Winter break Nick read this whole series.  Zack has started them so we still have them all.  It's like four adult novels there, in a little more than two weeks

He cooperated in taking the picture there.  He'll probably read all this soon, or maybe later, but those words don't sometimes apply around here.  Hopefully he'll understand how proud I am, was, of him, of both of them, of us.


Well, thanks for looking in on me again.  Listen, someday I might have to shut this all down.  Know, if I do, that I will continue on in private.  It is important to me that you know that.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."
 
"Dad, where do you keep your biggest hammer?"


Right over there, next to the TNT and blasting caps...

This Is Not a Device

(If you'd like to follow along as I read this piece click the SoundCloud player below)




Hey, boys... listen, well, it's pretty much just you and me now.  Here in the twenty-teens as I am currently writing, things are slowing down for me on this page.  There are a lot of reasons.

I don't have the promotional and marketing skills to further my readership, mostly because I don't want to give the twitter and tumbler and instagram and facebook all of my free time, which, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, were absolutely essential to all this...

What's that?

Right, sorry, none of those are around anymore, are they?  Well, just think about whatever you have your face planted in on your device and...

Huh?

No one does that anymore, you say.  Really?  Why?

Ah, because you found out in your twenties how empty and vapid it all seemed and the trend led more and more towards having better interpersonal relationships.  Well, that's nicely phrased but I don't understand exactly what you mean.

What's that Nick, it's "...like our whole generation got lonely and we decided it hurt too much."

I'm sorry for that, son.  I gotta admit I sorta saw it coming.  Back here, in this now, it all makes me lonely sometimes, too.  The false connectivity, the lack of courtesy, the short conversations, the endless abbreviated and misspelled words.  There are no handshakes and hugs in this fake cyberworld, there are no hands patted across the table, no side hugs walking down a street.  There are no sympathetic sighs or audible gasps of outrage, no bursting out of laughter at a clever unexpected joke, no heated arguments, no anger, no passion - just saccherine sweet emojis, and "lol"s and meaningless, empty abbreviations and shallow, unfinished thoughts.

Here's what I can't figure though boys.  It seems from where I am right now that there doesn't seem to be a hope in the world that any of this will change.  I see more and more people - good people, nice people, smart people - further entrenching themselves behind the safety of screens, wielding their phones like shields to keep others out but really making it so that they can't get out themselves.  Folks seem to, well, like this isolation, find false comfort in it.  I don't see it going away.

That's interesting, Zack.  "... I think we wanted to touch things again, hold them in our hands."

Yes, like letters stuffed with slick and shiny photographs.  Like an apple sliced in your palm and shared on the tip of a wet pocket knife.  Like a kitten or a tear-streaked child's face lifted in two hands, safe and comforted.  Like a baseball glove or work glove holding weathered balls or weary axes.  Like a little stuffed bear or a hopelessly worn pillow in the night.  Like the elbow of a friend through the crowded city streets or a hand for the first time on a bench in that park near the amphitheater.

You wanted to touch the vegetables and pull them from the earth, dirt dropping from them like water.  You wanted to climb the apple tree in an orchard buzzing with wasps and singing laughter in the wind.  The same wind you need to caress you as you look out on a mountain range, studded with pines with cold rock to your back and warm sun in your eyes.

You wanted to reach out and try to touch the stuff of dreams.  Never holding hope or lifting love, never feeling the embrace of honor or or the kiss of forgiveness but realizing that what is to be sensed are the hardworking verbs not the lofty nouns.

Yes, Nick, yes I can shut up.

Well, I don't get what changed it all.  It seems, now, so set in stone, so, frankly, destined-to-be.  The devices get better and better, more accepted and more ubiquitous year after year, I don't see what could stop them...

Cars?  Oh, not just cars, "self-driving-vehicles, SDVs, we call them floops."

What!?

Something to do with fleets and loops, alright.

So the floops changed everything.  For the price of a month's device support for the crazy-smart-phones and expensive gadgets that had entered the everyday lives of, well, everybody, you could call a floop and visit anybody anytime.

So, basically, you all just started seeing each other more?  Started hanging out and goofin' off and carryin' on and partyin' hearty and dancin' in the dark and drinkin' and...

... you didn't have to worry about getting home.  Yeah, I can see how that would be a game changer.

So, you just hang out with your friends and do stuff together and it's all 1950 again and everyone has a driver?  Oh, so, you still have phones and you still text and stuff, but mostly to just figure where to meet up, what to do, that sort of thing.  Sorta like a phone... in the fifties.

I'm finding this a little hard to believe, guys.

Oh, c'mon Zack!  Let me get this straight.  So more and more people started using the floops and meeting one another and spending far less time on their devices.  The vast infrastructure that had been so brazenly built for advertising and entertainment and social media and advertising, that had, by then, wifi-ed the whole world, was readapted by the commercial "loop fleets" rendering SDVs the safest vehicles in the history of journeying.  Right.  And it's important to note that they are "bitchin' fast."  Thanks, Nick.

But, and you're not making this up, the ad revenue dropped so drastically that new approaches and new campaigns and strategies have been adopted.  Things like quality and fair wages and honesty and loyalty began to influence buyers more than scantily glad models and false promises.  Alright, I can see that, but what's a "crafty?"

Now, stop!  There is no way I am gonna believe that regional craft breweries started opening up little bars and social clubs where people in a small geographic area -a neighborhood, a skyrise, a country village - could meet up and watch sports and have book clubs and sewing circles and folk-singing and pot-lucks.  The breweries made things from local produce, beer and ciders and wine and food and sold them in these local spots brought to them daily by "delivery floops."  There were computers at these places but after a while no one really used them except for research and the like and...

...and they were called "craftys?"  I'm done believing all this, guys.

But, I do hope you aren't lonely and that you hurt less, boys, and I do hope that you touch things that are warm and real and necessary.  I'd sure like to believe it boys.

Maybe I should...

 
I doubt you remember this, but early this fall we went on a walk around The Two and A Half Acre Woods and you, Nick, found a hairband and put it around your wrist and, just before you left the trail, you, Zack, picked up a twig and a golden leaf and a long flat piece of grass.

When we got home you added the hairband to the long rope of ones you've found over the past few years.

And, Zack, you came home with a vision of what you wanted to hold in your hand.  It doesn't matter that you ended up not using the grass and using the twine instead, in fact I like it better this way.

It is important to note that neither of these are devices, neither are hard and cold and sterile.

No, none of this is a device... unless it all is.


It was nice to see you boys, but, honestly is a little disconcerting so, maybe we should just both stay where we are... or not.  I'll see you again.


Oh, yes, hello to you as well, I didn't see you there.  Thanks for stopping by, as always, peace.

Contraption

con·trap·tion
kənˈtrapSH(ə)n/
noun
noun: contraption; plural noun: contraptions
1. a machine or device that appears strange or unnecessarily complicated, and often badly made or unsafe.
   
   
   

   

   contraption

   
   

   Thanks for looking in today, and yes, it's all sort of off-center here  Sometimes Blogger is most befuddling...
   
   

Bottle Buddies and Roses or There's Always Another Door

When the boys were given this assignment, they said they needed a "bottle buddy," all I could think was, well, don't we all...

As it turns out, a bottle buddy is not your drinkin' friend from college, no, it is the end result of a weeks long project on an inventor.  They researched and made informative posters and presented things and, well, they also made these:





















Obviously that is Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun there on the left and flanking him is his polar and profound opposite, Satoshi Tajiri.  Yes, the the pioneers and inventors of modern rocketry and, uh, Pokemon... respectively.
 Weird.

I am tempted to scan the whole project of each boy and share it with you.  The messy cuteness - cute messiness - of it all.  They were working on different writing styles - informative, directional, descriptive, the like - and some of the sentences are very endearing.  They made little sort of placecards on the computers at school with cut and paste images and chosen fonts and curlicues and fireworks and smiley faces.  

The whole project is a funny mix of cluelessness and purpose.  It will be a long while, I'd guess, before Nick really learns the whole story of his "V-2 dude" (yes, Nick did call him that as he was describing his project to a parent at their class presentation), from Nazi to NASA.  It's a helluva story, but one he wouldn't fully grasp right now.

It's also funny to note that Zack has really only a passing interest in Pokemon.  He has some cards and they battle each other, but, it's hardly obsessive or important to him.  They are more likely to battle with their own cards than play with the Pokemon cards.  Really, and I am hesitant to say this for fear it might embarrass him someday, I think he chose Tajiri because he thinks the creatures and such on the cards are "cute."  He likes cute things like stuffies and kittens and puppies and dragons.

I won't though, scan it all that is, and I'll tell you why - the pages are all laminated and won't freaking scan because of the shininess.  Either that, or I'm trying to do less of that sort of thing.  I dunno...


In a post a while back called Scrapel Guy, I showed this image of the last two roses of last summer that had been sitting in a window sill buried under, what?, stuff... I know, that's a terrible descriptor, but for this moment, it'll have to do.  The odd stamp had fallen out of a book I'd not opened in years.  At the time I felt the compelled to take a picture, probably because I didn't know how to tell the story.

Just a couple of days ago, I felt again compelled to take this picture of the first two roses of summer this year:

Beginnings.  Endings.  I struggle with both.  Maybe we all do.  Maybe we all like the safety and security, false perhaps, of the middle.  I know two boys, about ten, heading to a new school next year who are struggling with an ending and worried about a beginning yet to come.

Just a moment ago I said I didn't know how to tell this story, I am realizing right now that I perhaps didn't have all the story.  Maybe I do now.

***

The game had been lost, as have many this season, and only a few games remain.  Two days of school are all that sit now on the docket of fourth grade.  The boys are tired, sweetly so, sadly so, not mopey or whiny or weepy so, just tasting the rich fruit that is melancholy.

"Are you a little sad because things are coming to a close this year?" I ask Nick, on whose bed I sit, though Zack is listening from above.

"Yeah.  It's just that I'll miss my friends so much this summer.  That's it really, I know I did the work this year so I'll be ready when it starts again," his voice is little in the darkened, quiet room.

"They say that when one door closes another one opens," I lamely offer the tired aphorism.

A voice from the upper bunk asks, "What's that even supposed to mean?"

"Well, I guess it supposed to point out that even as one time or event ends, naturally another thing begins, it, uh... has to," I say. 

"Like seeds," Nick says.

"What's that supposed to mean?" The top bunk seems irritated tonight.

"Shush, Zack.  How so, Nick?'

"Well, like flowers turn to seeds and seeds turn to fruit and fruit turns to poop and then the seeds grow into a tree that grows more flowers again.  "Blossoms", is it?"

"What's that got to with doors?"  The cranky kid again.

"He's extending the metaphor, Zack.  Although I got a little lost at the poop part," I point out.  We may be getting off track.

"I guess I was thinking that before one thing can happen another thing has to happen before that," Nick adds.

"Right," I tell him, "Causality, it's called.  It's important in science and is basically what a plot is in writing."

"What if there isn't another door?"  Zack seems literally caught in a room with one door and it's closed behind him and he's tired.

"There's always another door, Zack," I tell him.  The phrase hangs heavy in the room for a moment.

"Yeah, I guess you just gotta look for it."  He pauses, thinking I'd guess.  I stand and put my hand on his shoulder as he continues.  "So, like, when the door closes behind us, when we leave school Wednesday - well, the door doesn't really close because they keep them open so we all don't have to open and close it out to where the buses are - we'll be done there.  And, like, at the end of the summer, when we go on to LIS, and walk through those doors for the first time - not really the first time, I mean, we had our tour there and the sports pictures are in the cafeteria there most times, unless we go outside, if it's nice - but, when we go through those doors, we'll be starting more learning and doing harder stuff - next year I think we start algebra and we need to type most of our homework and..."

Nick, who really must interrupt him sometimes, says:  "It's like we are seeds looking for a new place to blossom."

Nick has abandoned the doors and room metaphor and is going with his own.  Perhaps, he doesn't like the room between the doors, or that moment when both seem closed and the room is dark as is the room we are in now.

Seed.  Blossom.  Fruit.  A good blueprint for childhood.

Corridor.  Door.  Room.  Door.  Corridor.  A good map for childhood.

"Maybe we like carry a little bag of seeds with us as we go through the doors."  Nick's eyes are closed.

"Yeah, that makes sense."  Zack's are, too.

"Yes, Nick, that makes a lot of sense.  Good night, boys."

***

It does make a lot of sense.  We carry the seeds we've accumulated through every door we pass.  It's a good mixed metaphor, one I may extend someday.  But endings and beginnings are not my point here today.  Sure we are doing that, but, what I've noticed this year is that they seem to understand it more.  

We are foolish as parents to think our children don't feel and experience life with great depth.  They do.  Sometimes, though, they need to find the vocabulary to describe it and as time passes they begin to.

And it is a beautiful thing to see this as we watch the children blossom.


Today is their last day.  Marci took a picture of us all (I guess it is a "selfie" but I hate that word, so self-indulgent and showoffy, so I'll not call it that) just before the doors of that elementary school bus opened, only to close again one last time in a few hours.

Thanks for opening the door today and planting yourself for a while.  I am glad you did.  Summer is busy and such here so I might not be around as much for the next few months.  I'll holler when I do.  Peace to you, as always.


From Marci's "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ... "

(as a hymn kicks in at Mass)
 
Boy: "This is my Jam!"


Yep...

Clutching at the Bits

I wish there were pictures and recordings and ticket stubs and liner notes still smelling of vinyl.   I wish there were love notes and scented envelopes and diaries and term papers and essays.  I wish there were recipes and poems and the words to every damn song I've ever written - and the chords, too.

There aren't.

Usually, I don't envy my boys their childhood but I do envy how so much will be available to them to remember.  I liked mine, childhood that is, it was textured, even, pastoral, sweet - but it was not well-documented.  Not to say there aren't photo albums and such, no, not that at all.

The fault is mine.  I neglected to document my life as I blustered and crashed through it.  I was at a famous Who concert, I saw The Dead more than once in small venues.  I served Jimmy Buffet a cheeseburger in a restaurant in the early nineties in downtown Cincinnati, in a restaurant that I have no evidence ever existed.  I'd served a lot of celebrities and he was pleased to just chat with another good ole boy.  He gave me a note and told me to take it to will-call out at Riverbend the next night.  "Bring three of your friends, too," I remember him saying in those long vowels and twangy pitch.  They were third row center seats and he said hello to us and shouted-out our restaurant.

I lost the note for the tickets.  He signed a menu that was framed in that restaurant for years afterwards, a note that began "Hey, Bill, it sure was nice to meetcha..."  It was probably thrown in a dumpster when the building was gutted for a new set of occupants.  Sad.

I didn't save the ticket stubs.  Box of love letters? - misplaced in a move, thrown out in tears, I don't know.  I've forgotten more songs than I probably play now.  I long ago was unburdened the weight of a couple hundred long-playing records.

And, and... There's not a damn picture of any of this.

You see, there wasn't a camera in everyone's pocket.  There was a lighter, some loose change, a telephone number with an illegible name scribbled below it and some lint with seeds in it - but no phone with a lens.

I guess that seems impossible now.  I see folks taking pictures as they go through life.  Often daily.

I envy them those memories, especially when they are younger.  Nick and Zack will have a richer history of their life than I mine... or will they.

I am not bound by the limits and details in a picture or in a recording, I am free to remember differently, sort of sideways I think. 


I don't really remember what was in it.  Trinkets - a piece of chalcopyrite, a marble or two, some rose quartz, a non-working Zippo lighter, feathers, a fragmented robin's egg.  I could be making some or all of this up... or none of it.  I remember all those things.  I remember the cigar box, still slightly scented of tobacco and somewhere else, somewhere exotic.  I had the box into college where it held other things, things still exotic, still scented but the lighter worked.

It's funny to think back on it, it seems like all the boys I knew had a "treasure box" of some sort.  They were different sizes and shapes but they all contains the little bits and pieces that seemed important to an eight, ten, twelve, sixteen, twenty year old boy - for we are always boys.

The other night Nick decided to get out a box of these little yarn poofs he likes to make and in it was a Crown Royal bag, the nice tan one with a golden crown on it.  He snatched the bag out from among the googly-eyed yarnballs and dumped it in delight.  This is what spilled out:

Bits and pieces of a little boys mind.

"Oh, I've been missing this stuff..." he said.

It made him happy to see the junk spread on the table.  He wasn't happy to have these pieces of junk - arguably - to play with, though he did make some sort of MacGyver device featuring mainly the broken red heart, the plastic fork and the yo-yo, I think it was some sort of memory inducer... or not.

I don't think he was even so pleased because these things had come back to him.  No.  I think deep down he felt that surge we all get when lost ideas, notions, loves, hopes and fears come down on us out of the magical blue.

Like the way I felt as these things splashed out on the table and the green ball looked like an aggie I had once, the same tone of green.  His squirt gun became my cap gun, his glow light parts were my flashlight parts - bulbs and leaky batteries in a tarnished tube.  His Pokemon coin morphed in my mind into a triangle Fender guitar pick I had for years in various boxes but never used because it was so thick.  And, somehow, his little blue box became my little transistor radio - nine volt, FM/AM - I had for so many years.  Blue plastic with clear acrylic dials.

So we both sat and laughed at the arbitrariness of it all.  I told him about my own boxes and Crown Royal bags and guitar picks and the future that was a transistor radio in nineteen-seventy.

"Do you ever wish you had that stuff, Dad," Zack asked from across the room where he'd been engrossed in a game on his tablet, and listening apparently.

I suddenly imagined a room full of all the stuff, all the bits and pieces out of every box I'd ever owned, and it was too much.  I shut the room's door afraid to go in but glad to know it was there.

I think that may be what it is all about.  We can only hold so much dear at one time.  A box of treasures isn't so much about the trinkets and stubs and pebbles and batteries.  More, it is the acknowledgement that there exists a need to treasure things.  A need to hold on to an arbitrary thing as the thoughts gets wilder, up and down, sideways.  We are left clutching at the bits as they fall away but also we are left embraced by the notion of hope that is inherent when we hold something dear.

Cherish is the word that comes to mind.


(Sometimes, life tells better stories than we would ever even attempt.)


I got to thinking a little more about this and it occurred to me that I still do have a place where I keep a few bits of my heart.  It is ostensibly my tie and belt drawer, but I put cards and thises and thats in it.  But there, in the very back is a red box nestled in with the braces and bowties, Father's Day cards and handmade beaded necklaces and watches I can't quit.

It's funny, I thought I'd just get a picture of it, so I opened it and was engulfed by the rush of memory that came at me.  I just couldn't go in and look at everything in it, I knew that would overwhelm me.  I just wanted to show you that even quickly aging men still harbor in their hearts the relentless hope that we can clutch at the bits and maybe hold on to the moments in so doing.

I laughed aloud at the lighter in there, and old butane Colibri given to me as a gift.  I was going to label more stuff but once again got overwhelmed so I won't.

Is there more to this story?  Yes, I'm afraid there is, bear with me.

Do you see what I've done there in that picture above?  I balanced that box right there on the side of the drawer... what's the word?  Precariously.  Truthfully, I was trying to get a picture but I didn't want to go through the box figuring that was a story for another time, a time when there is more time, a time I can reflect and wallow in the old bits and pieces...

Yes, it fell.  Hard.  And those memories and ghosts and bits and pieces flew out and slapped at me as I gasped at it all.  Strewn like Nick's treasures on the floor of the bedroom I was struck with how similar it all seemed.  Oh, my very soul said, I've been missing this stuff.

It was too much.  I sat and looked through it, handling each talisman, letting the hope or sadness it held envelope me briefly as I placed each back in that old beat up red box.  I thought, briefly, I should tell each of their stories, that piece of paper, that coin, those beads.  I cannot.  I will not.

I am not ready, yet... But I smiled as I realized how rich is our journey, how sweet the past that builds to the now, how good it is to clutch at the bits and realize they are enough - the stories lie between them.

Finally, I grabbed the lighter, there was a receipt from nineteen-seventy-nine, the year I graduated high school, there clipped in the top of the box.  I don't remember all of its story, I am sad to say.  I can, however, remember the faces it shone on over the years - Kirby's, Kevin's, Mark's... my Dad's - and I clutched it in my hand and let the tears come.


I hope you are not sorry you stopped by today.  I tend to ramble on and I know that you are busy.  I appreciate your support and kindness, now, and perhaps some time yet to come, a time when there is more time.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."
 
"Interfere like you mean it."


And I'm the one supposedly offering them advice...

Honey, Salt 'n' Butter

In my last foolish post I promised to "get back to my regular programming."

I wonder what that is?

Is it these silly drawings the boys made the other day, finally putting away their tablets, feet warming in the fire, sketching away?

Nick drew the inexplicable light-bulb demon and Zack the swirly-scaled-bull-nosed-flying-rising-dragon thing - in green.  I could say how proud I was, so pleased, to see them crafting and taking their time working on these.

Is that what I do around here?

Is "regular programming" a couple of images like this.

Is this the part where I tell the story that while I was away the boys and Marci went out and, as she shoveled away the heavy wet snow, Z made this snowman and N the foundations for this fort, or couch, I'm not sure which?  Should I say that this was the first time they'd been out in the right kind of snow for this sort of thing?  How I am sad I wasn't there to shape the snowballs and shore the foundations?  They are pretty sad little things, aren't they?  Should I tease and poke and then take it all back remembering the tender heart of ten-year-old?

Would it be what I usually do around here to post a link to a song I recorded and put out on the web?

Would that seem as selfish as it always does?  Would I back up my selfishness with a long paragraph about sorrow and hope and pain and journey's end and faith questioned?

Or would I just say Oren died... and leave it at that?

Is it regular programming around here to tell the story of the day Nick wore a hat all day.  Just a silly prop hat that lives in a chest downstairs most of the time?  He really embraced it, we played That Game for half an hour or so and he had it on the whole time, wondering whether it was a "good luck" hat or just a "regular, plain luck hat."  Do I wrap the banal in the essential, throw a picture on for verisimilitude and call it another day?

I sometimes post a picture I don't understand, like this one, a selfie I don't remember taking:

Do I admit that it is not a picture of me but it is a picture of a sweatshirt?  The sweatshirt Zacky wore while I was gone, that Marci wore so the boys could give me hugs, the sweatshirt I wear every-almost-morning as I make the lunches, snacks, pancakes and omelets?  The sweatshirt that I wear when I weep in the dark nights for families broken and cuss at God gone mad?  The sweatshirt that my sons may find, long after I am gone, tattered and stained in the back of an old rag drawer in the cold basement of a now quiet ranch house?

Often my regular programming entails elaborate, nonsensical tangents in which I tell the rest of the story because I do not fundamentally understand how where when why a story ends.  So, I should probably tell the story of the two paintings Marci did with the boys while I was gone.  They taped out geometric shapes and painted the areas.  The boys had a lot of fun and she put them in the "frames of honor" (I think Nick called them that) in the dining room.

That's N's on the left and Z's on the, uh... not left.

If I were to continue on that same tangent I'd go ahead and show you these:

I have forever been drawn to dropcloths.  When I was younger, as a kid and into my college days, painters used canvas ones, not the plastic folks use today.  Every family had one, theaters and workshops had them everywhere, schools and churches had them folded in utility closets and stuffed here and there.  I always thought they were pretty - no, actually, it wasn't until well after I'd been initially drawn to them that I saw a Jackson Pollack painting.

It is hard to explain why I always have liked them.  Maybe it is the wildness of it, maybe the Presbyterian practicality of it, maybe what struck me was the honesty of them - or, probably, I like that they seemed to tell a story.  This light blue was the babies room, this cream the family room, a yellow bathroom, the black of a high backed table chair, the rungs still distinct.  The edges of a poster there, the spill that ruined the science project you'd worked so hard to make perfect, an unfortunate red that makes the cloth look like it was used in a crime scene, though blood usually fades to a brown, like that stain right there from when we did that chest of drawers.

These paper towels are like that, I am sure.  They could, and do, really, tell me the story of that snowy winter day when dad was in San Francisco and I missed them and Marci distracted them with love and understanding.

Yeah, that feels like what I usually do around here.

Another foundation of my regular programming is stuff that comes home from school, my beloved "take-home folder."

I often show things like this, a page from Nick's math test on which both boys got 105%.  Amy's struggling with decimals:

Nick struggles with spelling:

If this were my typical stuff, I'd start to fret right about now, worried that this is growing too long, that the flow is gone because I've had to do it in two sittings.  I'd start feeling the weight of time and responsibility, knowing the laundry needs starting, the dinner needs considering and the boys will be home early as a preemptive strike against a snowstorm that may or may not happen.

And then I'd realize I had more to say and that I'd never really gotten to my point... and wonder if I really ever had one.

Oh, yeah, I'd say, I think a lot about straying from my formula - formulas - here, about what I maybe should be doing.  So many of the good guys are posting about important things, like this campaign to get Amazon to stop doing something hurtful to dads.  These are the "dadvocates," the men in this community who, unlike me, are making a difference.

I should go on about this, but I won't.  Right now my voice is unheard, without Twitter and social media skills and a big audience, none of it would mean much.  I don't think the few dozen folks I reach who don't already know of these campaigns and such really care much about the state of things in the dadvocation community.

So, I'll move on.

I'll try to finish.

But, why do stories end?  Where does this one end?  When?  How?

Wait, I remember how:

With this note I pulled out of my pocket just before I started this a couple of days ago.

Nick was having an early breakfast by himself, a nice chunk of bread I'd made the day before and some fruit and yogurt.  "There's nuthin' better on bread than honey, salt 'n' butter."  It is important to note that I add just a pinch of salt in the butter we use on the table, he's seen me do it many times.

I smiled and told him that I thought it was a nice turn of a phrase.  He was pleased and asked me why I liked it.

"Well," I told him, "Everyone likes butter.  It's fat and we humans crave and find comfort in fat."

"Why?" he asked.

"I dunno how to explain it, I guess if we are eating fat, like butter, we are safe and taken care of... the hunt was good and successful.  Does that make sense?"

"Yeah.  Man this is good!" is said, his mouth too full.  "Whaddabout salt?"

"Salt has long been used as a metaphor, as a symbol.  Bible references, knights and round tables, lots of times it comes up in books and in chemistry and, well, it is pretty important stuff."

"I get that," he said, "What about honey?"

"Well that's a no-brainer, Nick.  It's probably the first sweet thing humans ever found.  Sweetness speaks to us like fat - butter in this case.  Honey makes us happy, sweet things make us happy, sometimes we use it as a nickname for someone, a "term of endearment" it's called..."

I choked back a sob at the realization, a wave of sadness hit me as I remembered.

"Oh, Dad, what's wrong?"  A look of concern and sadness reflected mine on his little, dear face.

"You know my friend died."

"Yes, Oren.  I'm sorry, Dad."

"When Oren's wife posted that he had passed away she said something like: "Today my sweet Honey lost his long and grueling battle with cancer."  I told him, trying to make him understand a sorrow no one can understand.

"Her Sweet Honey..." he paused.  "That's sad, but kinda sweet.  Will you think of Oren every time you think of honey now, Dad?"

"I hope so, son, I hope so..."


Regular programming is hard.  Thanks for coming around today.  Life is rich like butter, spiced with salt and incredibly, sadly, sweet.

Today's Post or Caveat Emptor

The boys must once again endure the "fun" of the traditional Valentine's Day Party at school.  They weren't very thrilled about it last year, and this year, well, they'd've opted out if the could've.  We were unable to find any cards they wanted to be associated with at the store, so they opened their trusty craft boxes and designed their own:

This is Nick's page of four:

I am a star... that, uh, star, well, may not be.

Zack did these:

Awesome = Valentie (sic) so... Be Awesome  Yeah, that's pretty clever, little dude.

They were quite proud of these, I even found a paper cutter to make them nice and neat.  They carefully chose which would best for each fellow classmate, Z even wrote a little message on each one.  It was fun both watching them making the cards and listening to them decide who would get each.  It softens my heart to know they have considered each child in their class with at least some tenderness.


From Marci's  "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat..."

We were reading aloud as a family and came across the phrase "sleeping like a baby."

Nick piped up, "Hey, that's a simile."

"You're right, Nick," I said.

To which he shrugged and said, "Ever since our teacher introduced us to literary devices, I see them everywhere."

*will played, educators, well played*


I'm a sucker for a well-placed literary device...


Listen, I'm gonna break character here for a bit.  I don't usually offer opinions or try to comment on things that are trending or the like.  In the past, when I have, I haven't felt so good about it, and, well, it does not serve the essential goal of this blog.  Anti-vaxxers and Bronies and MRAs and assault rifles and circumcision  and same sex marriage and extremists are all things on which I have an opinion.  I'd guess the vast majority of the folks who come around here could guess my position on all of these.  That's not my point, really.  In twenty or thirty years - or minutes - a lot of this isn't going to be in the forefront of thought.  Some, perhaps, might seem anachronistic, quaint even, looking back at them.

So, I avoid all of it.  On purpose.  Mostly because trolls (again, anachronistic in a few years) are not to be tolerated.  They are not welcome here, or in polite society.

All that being said, I'll go on and tell you something.  We didn't make the cards you see above by hand because we had some particularly high-handed motive.  We didn't do it because they really wanted to do them on their own or because they wanted to exercise their innate creativity.  Nope.  We did it because the choices for store bought cards, well... sucked.

As I stood looking at the display in the grocery store, two in fact, I felt so bad for my sons.  There were, what, a couple dozen designs and all but one had some commercial tie-in.  From Star Wars to Little Kitty to every Disney show, Cartoon Network show ever conceived.  There were Barbie Cards and Sponge Bob cards and superhero after superhero after superhero, ad nauseam.  Truly... add vomit.  I mean, there weren't even any Arthur cards.

Now, to make our family sound even more provincial, I'm gonna tell you this - the boys don't know who the vast majority of these characters and shows are.  Any they do know, they do not want to celebrate nor associate themselves with them.  Come on.  Would you?

I was willing to go back if they really wanted Captain Avengerman, Jaba the Jedi, or Ted the Builder... whatever, to represent them in a considered exchange of cards.  They didn't.  I told them there was one pack of sort of plain cards with cat and dog stickers to go along.  They just said they'd make their own.

I'll stop here, I'm already in trouble.  One simply does not joke about superhero or Starwarian names.

I'll say one last thing.  Nick and Zack did not watch any commercial television until they were well over six and it is only in the last year or so that they've started watching cable shows on the alleged children's channels.  From day one we have emphasized their role as fodder in the world of capital consumers in this world.  They are healthy in their skepticism of advertising, they know how and why they can be manipulated and, well, sorry world, they ain't buyin'.

One particularly enraging part of all this was that the one pack of non-commercial Valentine's Day cards was three (3) times as expensive as the others.  I mentioned this to my wife and Nick said:

"Well, that's because the Star Wars and Disney ones are basically just ads for their shows."

There ya go.


Thanks for stopping by, I'll shut up now...

Bookmarked

I read just about every night before bed.  So does Marci.  So do the boys.  We never seem to have enough bookmarks even though they are issued constantly and, with a few hours training anyone can make one out of anything.

In fact, every year at school they are the go-to gift at Mother's Day, not Father's Day, mind you, no, nothing is made for dads at school.  You know.  These are cute, really, they pick flowers in the beginning of the school year and press them and then make and laminate the bookmarks around May.  The flowers are always a little tired and weary, but, it adds to the charm.

Anyway, when Nick heard us talking about bookmarks the other day he decided I needed a new one:

Yes, the fifties did call and asked for their checkered sweater-vest back... and, yes, I do look remarkably like a puppy.  And, I do say "huh?" a lot.

Nick made one for his Mom when he was about three, it is worn out and faded, but, Marci uses it all the time:

What prompted Nick to make me a new bookmark, you might be wondering?  Well, I use a couple of computers, a Toshiba laptop Nick once called the "Tooshba," which is what we always call it now, and this one in the basement.  I was complaining to Marci that I didn't like not having my regular bookmarks for the sites I go to on the one upstairs.  Nick did not understand the new use of the word and, trying to be helpful, decided to make me a new one.

It is full out summer here in the Midwest, hot, humid, sweaty and slow.  I have trouble this time of year writing longer, thoughtful pieces, so, bear with me as I just archive some memories and the like.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"Boom! You just got downgraded!"

Boom...

Thanks for taking a look around here today, I am glad you did.


Oh, and here is the bookmark Nick uses... when he can find it:

READ like a Woreor (warrior)

Yep...

 

No Time For Now

It is Summer here, school's out, pool's in... and, once again, I feel like I don't have much time to get anything written.  I could post some nonsense, but, I like to give what I write a little more time than...

Wait.

Nonsense.  I can do that.

Nick and Zack had a Economics unit at the end of the year at school.  It culminated with an "Entrepreneurial Fair" held in the cafeteria.  It was a hoot.

Zack made "chatties," a paper fortune teller (see below, from a post called "The Paper Arts") with eyes drawn on it and a mouth that, well, chats.  He teamed up with a couple of his mates, one of whom brought in cookies made by his mother and the other little dude made paper airplanes.  They stood amidst the chaos and barked and cajoled and basically just had a good time carrying on.  Zack put some (read, not much) time and effort into it, and, well, he had a good time.

Nick, on the other hand, took it all quite seriously.  He made "Yarnballs."  Actually, he and his mother made them, lots of them.  Here's what they look like:

He had about forty for the sale and he sold out.  He made twenty dollars for the cancer charity they were donating to, and, well, he learned a lot as well.

And, as always, I learned a lot about him as well.  You see, as his brother barked and yelled and kidded and pretty much made a nuisance - in a nice way - of himself, Nick sat quietly behind his display of shoeboxes and soft-sold the hell out of his product.  Many, many, many girls oohed and awed at them and, by the end of the day, besides selling out, he had about a dozen more special orders to make for many of them in the coming days.

Yeah, that's my boy.  I wonder if his advertising campaign helped?

 "Have you ever wanted to throw a ball in the house, now you can with YARNBALLS  50¢"

That's just good copy right there.


From Marci's "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat..."

 "I am from Crazy Town. I am the President."

I used to be...


I am glad you could stop by for a little nonsense, sometimes I forget that silly and simple and easy is just fine.  Good enough is still good.

Family Portraits, A Dog(Sled) and Faith Explained

This came home from school the other day:

It's a family portrait Nick did in Art Class.  That's me under the great green sun, sporting a inaccurately un-gray beard and a green sweater.  That was nice of him.  That's Marci next to me, smiling as always, wearing a scarf that matches her outfit.  I don't remember that flapper hairdo, but, it's nice.  Nick is smirking a bit there and his hair is the color of straw.  That's Zack there, far right, he doesn't look so thrilled, and his hair is also the color of straw.  I like his Reds shirt, it is red with, uh, a shirt on it.  Well, that's clever...

Zack did one as well, although he says he didn't have time to finish it:

I can only guess that the nerdy fellow is me.  Somehow, it looks like someone drew a face on the back of a bald man's head.  Man, I really need a new look...


And Zack made this:

The boys have been studying the Iditarod - I can only assume they know how to spell it, I just got it wrong, like, three times - at school.  It's pretty cool how they sort of link things all up these days in elementary.  They studied geography - Alaska and all that, and math - word problems and percentages and such, and science - weights and measures and the metric system and states of matter,  and reading - remember Balto, saved Nome by bringing the needed serum to thwart an outbreak of something or other.  It's all very well executed.  Zack distilled all of this knowledge into a dogsled - a sled, get this, with a dog image on it... with ears.  Isn't learning fun?


And then there is this:

Nothing pleases me more than the sight of a table strewn with supplies, works in progress.  It is a comfort to my soul, and a fodder for my blog.


And finally, this:

I've been carrying it in my pocket for a week or more and I realized today that it was about to become unreadable, so, I scanned it.  It says: "unquestioned faith" followed by "unanswered doubt."

Why would I write such seeming nonsense?  And why would I shuttle it about from pocket to pocket, not even reading it, through five or six changes of pants.  What point  is it trying to make to me, and why, you may be wondering, have I hung it on the wall of this space, this place that is present and past and future?  For whom is this message?

I know.  I just don't want to say.  Shame doesn't keep me from saying it, nor embarrassment, nor fear.  Mostly, I am think I will be misunderstood.

I am terrible at faith, honestly.  I doubt, and believe, and then doubt again.  I understand and then  misunderstand and then understand, better maybe, ebbing back and forth from piety to selfishness sometimes in the same hour, the same minute, the same heartbeat.

I was thinking and watching a fire late the evening I first jotted this note.  I was thinking about Lent and sacrifice, Paschal lambs and bunny eggs, and two opposing types of people came to mind.  Those I meet - strong and upright - who seem to have a faith so strong in their hearts that it appears, appears, mind you, unquestioned.  And, there are those, in whose trenches I imagined myself, who seem to have a doubt so firm - strong and upright as well - that it seems, seems, to go unanswered.

The piece of paper I carried in my pocket softened into almost tissue paper, it faded, and the lead smeared as the writing, words folded against words, rubbed a faint of echo of one over the other.  Today, when I looked finally looked at it again, it occurred to me that actual faith is between the two, in that upheaval of heart, that dishamrmony of soul, there, there is where God sits, waiting, understanding, forgiving.  For me at least.

So why put that here?  Someday, perhaps, the boys will need to hear that doubt and suredness, hope and despair, fear and comfort, balance each other, eventually.  There is a holiness in doubt, just as sure as there is a sacredness to faith.  I guess that is nothing new really, but, what I want you to know, now, later, whenever, is that your heart, my heart, our heart, can take the pain of that struggle, withstand it and even nurture it and that that turmoil and connection is indeed our very soul.


Instead of the usual backseat thingee, I give you:  "...pictures of our boys Marci put on her Face Book page..."  (It just doesn't roll of the tongue as well, does it?)

 Yes, our home seems very crowded sometimes, as full as our hearts...


Thanks for coming around again, I apologize if I got too serious there at the end.  I think too damn much.  See you again, right?