On Maths and Misspellings

For nearly seven years I've maintained this page.  It is hard to say why - although I have tried, over and over and over - I have composed nearly five-hundred posts.  I suppose that is because of the quicksilver quality of intent.  Early on it was quirky and fun, bordering on silly, towards the middle it was about storytelling and these days, well, the mercury has slipped from my hand.

For instance, there was a time when I teased a lot about Nick's spelling mistakes - don't get me wrong, I still think they are hilarious - but, as I look at this now, today, a different perspective presents.  He tried. He didn't care if he couldn't spell a word, he used it anyway.  If he spelled "seconds" "cecants" or tried "explanishion" for "explaination," who cares? 

Here's the thing, he's still trying on words.  He has a wonderful, clever and almost playful relationship with words these days.  Sometimes, still, he may use a word incorrectly, but, often, there is a sort of loveliness in his mistakes.  The other day he used a mashup that still echoes in my mind, "aloneliness" for "you know, when you are by yourself in your room and missing your friends."

Indeed, Nick, I do know that feeling.


More than once over the years, I poked a little fun at Zack's weird math problems and charts and such.  There were a lot of numbers in the, well, stuff he crafted and drew and noted.  There are a couple of examples in this post, The Quirky Little Math Piece (or Move Over Einstein) (no, your title's too long).  In it he did a strange backwards equation, and another, stranger, algebraic-like thing.  When he handed it to me he asked, "Is it right?"

I told him it was.

He still likes to get things right and the math has gotten much more accurate.

Here, I'll show you:

This is on the opposite side:

Finally, he got out the graph paper to present his final answer, showing his work:

I don't really get what it is, something to do with the total possible permutations on a Rubik's cube.  He says it's right, I don't doubt it.


I spoke earlier of intent.  Boy, that's a rabbit hole of a word - but it comes down to purpose, reason.  'Intentionality' is actually a philosophical concept.  Although it all seems clear in the definition, my intentions have been anything but - they've shifted, morphed, evolved, wavered.  They've at times been pure and true and at other times they have been misguided, mismanaged, muddled.

I guess when I started out, I wanted to show you them.  Then I sort of got the notion that I was showing them them.  I think that may have changed into me wanting to show you me showing them them.  At times, more recently I've been trying to show them me.  Add wanting, at times, to impress or agitate or endear or cajole, well... you.  Confused?  You get used to it.

This is the part where I conclude with one all-encompassing theory of intent.  I shone a light on the misspellings and maths way back when because I thought it was cute and fun, which they were.  Today though, I see what they are doing now, who they are becoming, with such deeper clarity because of those very things.

So, here's my theory:  We can't know intent, we can only guess at it.

You're welcome.

Peace.

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

Sunday morning breakfast humor:
"Excalibutter"

Yes, indeed you are correct, Nick said it...


Thanks for stopping by, quite a "sellabrashin" wouldn't you say?

(If you were to view my blog in a real web browser, in other words, not the lame mobile mode, you'd see that there are "random" posts, and an archive and a whole bunch of "topics" off to the left of the posts.  One of them is "misspellings" and another is "take-home folder."  Some of them are really sweet and cute... just thought I'd let you know.)

Newest Post

Nick drew this picture for the front of his Language Arts folder:

 It's the species Triazureoculuspurpuraparvuaspirinentor.  Latin - maybe - for "threedarkblueeyepurplesmallbreathefire."  He nailed the spelling, don'tcha think?

Here's the front of one of his other folders.

Yeah... he got 'bell' right.


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

Dad: "Do you realize that you two have been improving* this whole time?"

Zack: "Be quiet, Dad. You're breaking the fourth wall."

*improvising 


I didn't even know they​ knew what the fourth wall is, hell, I barely do...


Peace, as always.

On Meatballs and "Stuf" (sic)

When we were kids - and by we I mean me and maybe two others - I listened to a lot of comedy records.  Weirdly, nearly everyone I knew had them, Carlin and Cosby, Bob Newhart and Red Skelton, Cheech and, of course, Chong, even an off-color black comedian or two like Redd Foxx.  There was a societal homogeneity to life when I was a kid, I mean we all knew them, these funny guys - and they were all guys.  Our parents listened to them late nights as the party was winding down and us kids, well, we listened to them when our parents were not around.

I'm glad I did, listen to them, that is.  I was thinking this morning about how to proceed and for some reason those old albums came to mind, and I got to thinking about comedy writing - something I think is about as hard as writing gets - and then just writing in general.  Comedians tend to structure their acts one of two ways.  Some tell a series of jokes, one leading to another, often in staccato rhythm, you know, the classic "and speaking of shoestrings..." approach.  The others tell longer stories, the jokes and bits woven into the fabric of a larger story.  I always preferred the later, Cosby's "Noah" bit comes to mind.

When I write, I prefer to languish, even wallow some might say, in longer stories, but, lately I've been struggling with that.  I could tell you that it's because I don't have the time I need.  You know, kids and life and the fast pace and unslowing rhythm of this hyper-modernity we all must suffer,  but that's just glorifying busy and I hate that.  I could also reason that the time to reward ratio is way off-balance, but that would be self-indulgent and more than a little sad. I could say that often these stories get away from me and spin to places I don't want you to know are in me, but, I covered that in my last post... bother.

I did short silly pieces when I first started around here, my blog was formatted not unlike those old joke-tellers, and I wonder if maybe that wasn't a better way to go, you know, "one and done," that sort of thinking.  It sure seems easier, perhaps even more engaging for you, but I have trouble doing that anymore.

"What's this got to do with meatballs?" you might be asking yourself, I know I am.

Here goes...


I made meatballs the other day.  I make them from scratch grinding the beef chuck and pork country ribs in my trusty Oster.  It's sort a pain in the ass but I grind five or six pounds and make a lot of meatballs, they freeze well.  Nick came in and was helping me make the balls.  There wasn't much teaching or even conversation, I'd already covered that a long time ago with Playdo.  We stood, watching the birds and the wind out the tired kitchen window, and, well...

That's it.  Here's the recipe:

There could be a lot to tell you about this recipe, like my inability to remember measurement abbreviations or why it says mysteriously "325g" there at the bottom.  Or that I use flatleaf Italian parsley and not the curly kind and put in more garlic than this recipe calls for.  I can only hope that in any number of years I'll remember that this stained and annotated piece of paper and ink holds a story, a pretty long story.

But today, all I want to remember is the watching Nick's hands shape meatballs as the porch chimes sounded and the wind blew brown oak leaves across the greening yard.

Here's a collage of things I found in pockets, which is quickly replacing "take-home folders" as my go to source for strange things around here:

"... but wait, there's more."  That's what I always say, isn't it?

Who did which?  What's the shark thing about?  Who forgets the second "f" in stuff?  Who's "Little Owlly" and is that his dog?  Is that an oboe fingering?

Truth is, I'm not really sure.  Like I said, I just pulled them out of the pockets of jeans before I washed them.  Could I make things up, conject, even fictionalize?  Sure, and that'd be fun.  In fact I had long stories about all of those little pieces of paper fomenting in my little mind, but, for some reason, I don't think I'll do that today.

Sometimes the story might be in not telling the story, hell, I don't know.  Maybe the story's not ready.  Or, and I think this is closest to the truth, maybe the story is just short, and concise and, well, just simple and I have trouble accepting that.  For now.

Perhaps that's what those old vaudevillians knew, sometimes a gag is just a gag.  Sometimes a joke is easy and plain.  There's plenty of time for long stories, but sometimes, the story is done with us before we are done with it.


I've been in a writing slump lately, "writer's block" they call it.  I don't really believe there is such a thing.  I don't like the connotation it has.  I may not be writing so much, but, I'm not in a creative void.  I've been looking at other things, listening to music, viewing documentaries, singing new songs, reading non-fiction and children's lit, watching baseball.

It seems like there was one more little thing I wanted to tell you...

Oh, yeah.

These dudes turned twelve this week.

I guess that's the story I've been trying to tell around here...

Peace and thanks for stopping by.

Why You Can't Pin Memory on a Timeline

Memory baffles me.  The process of it.  As I get older, approaching fifty-six, I look back with anything but clarity.  I've tried to hold onto the timeline of it all, but, I gotta admit there are months I am not really sure about.  Did I work for that drunken Algerian French dude before I worked in fine dining with that pretty, crazy girl at the Hilton?  When did I live in that apartment with the deck and a pretty little sun room where I painted horrible paintings and was happy?  A rich girl and a guest house in toney Michigan with a Chris Craft and a sinking pontoon boat?  Was it when I was twenty?  Was I ever that young?

It's overwhelming really.  I sometimes feel like I'm not up to it, remembering causes avalanches of images and faces and places and, well... feelings.

It is easy to get caught up in the factual details of memory.  You hear folks do it all the time, "Was it Tuesday or Wednesday?" or, "Where were we going on that trip?"  Honestly though, I'm not sure a brain is capable of keeping all those details at the ready.  If you're trying to tell a story about seeing a child, say, hit a home run or get thrown out at first, I don't need to know the model of the car you took to the game.  But, and here's the thing, the trick of memory, the car may be revealed because it rode along with the story because both were discussed in the back seat of a late model Ford F-150, red.

Stories reveal emotion, it is their divine business, and they can be persistent.  Just as I am writing this, in the back of my mind, I am going through the story of those two restaurants.


The owner was named Jacques, it was a four-star place with a menu full of rich, classic French food.  I liked working there and he was pretty good to me.  I waited tables on weekends and bartended a couple of weeknights and... here we go.  

The moment I stopped trying to figure where this all fit in the time frame of my life, all the emotions flooded down on me.  A wide, white bowl of Veal Navarin, with turnips and haricot verts with couscous, the aroma of fresh thyme and rich demi-glace coming up off of it as I set it on a white linen tablecloth.  Crusty creme brulee, fresh orange juice mimosas.  God, I loved that food.  I loved working there.  It was called "Voulez-Vous" - and that's the trick of memory I spoke of.

He fired me one night for neglecting to put a few entrees on a check, I'd served four Charcuteries and only charged for one.  He was drunk and so was I.  We shouted.  It was an accident but for some reason he thought I'd done it on purpose, to get him.  He was as red as the beets vinaigrette we'd served that night and as mad as only a French-Algerian can get.  I walked out with my apron still on.  I remember crying as I walked down Third Avenue.  Crying in anger I'm sure, but crying at the loss as well.  He'd taught me so much about service and elegance and grace, about cuisine and wine and technique.

From there I went to work at the Hilton - "Nicole's" was the name - and met the crazy, pretty girl.  Just to prove my point, I'm now recalling how all that went down.  A girl who'd worked for Jacques worked there and they hired me as a back waiter sight unseen.  I don't think I'd have gotten the job without the experience I had there at "Voulez Vous."  Her name was Cathy and she was an actress.  We went out for a few months and she left for California and shortly thereafter I left for home, Ohio.  Yes, there is more to that story, but it's best kept for another time.

Man, I'll tell you what, once you start thinking back like this, the waves just keep coming.  Just before I left town, I went to see Jacques.  I wanted, ostensibly, to ask him for a reference, but I also wanted to make amends and say goodbye.  I went early afternoon and the place was dark and empty.  He sat where he always sat at the bar, back to the hostess stand.  He'd heard the door or noticed the light had changed and simply shouted that they were closed and would open at five.  I didn't know what to do, in fact, I nearly just slunk out.

I hesitated and he turned.  "Bill, Bill," he said, pronouncing it as he always had, like "eel" with a 'b' in front of it, "You've come back to us!"  He was short and balding and a little tubby and I can still see him waddling across that dining room in all its elegance and shaking my hand.  It's funny, he apologized over and over.  He confessed to what trouble he'd gotten into with his wife.  He told me I was one of the best young servers he'd ever had and offered my job back to me right there.

I explained why I was there.  I told him, as I told everyone, that New York City had won, had beaten me, and I was heading home.

"To Hioho," he always mispronounced Ohio, probably to irritate me, "Merde, you are better than that.  Stay, work for me again and you will run this place someday."  It's important to note that he had an almost comically outrageous french accent.

I told him it was all arranged, lease let go, job quit, U-Haul ordered.  (God, I'd forgotten all this, which is patently false it would seem because here I am recounting it to you right now.)  He invited me to the bar and opened a bottle of wine, a Sancerre if memory serves - and it does.  We gossiped about old employees and regulars.  He winced as he told me how many of my regulars complained when his wife told them he'd fired me, she was the hostess and part owner, Julia.

I'd only planned to stop by quickly.  But the wine was good and the staff came in, many of whom I still knew.  I ate dinner with them, the chef made me serve. The rush started and I hung out for several hours, Jacques making drinks for me and introducing me to patrons, calling over regulars and making me feel important.  Julia was happy to see me and continuously chided the poor man for firing me.  It was an unforgettable night, though, apparently, I almost did, forget it that is. 

You know, for years he gave me a glowing reference and, in all seriousness, he made me the professional waiter I became. But, what I remember most is him walking me out the side door onto the sidewalk of Seventy-sixth Street.  He handed me a hundred dollars mumbling something about buying some good wine with it, and hugged me, tears running down his again beet red face.

I can't speak for you, but, the emotional back door to my room of memory is the best way for me to get in.


Over the years, I've let this digital diary act as a depository of memory, an archive of sorts, for both me and the boys.  But, as I illustrated above, memory is not as easy as just taking a picture or jotting down a story, putting the date on it, and filing it away.

The other day Nick was looking for something to do - yes, we let our boys get bored.  He was in the corner of the closet rifling through the bins of forgotten toys and projects and books they've made when he found his writing journal from second grade.  He brought it out and went through it, laughing at his misspellings - as I have been for years - and the confused little stories, non-sequiturs, inexplicable drawings and stickmen. 

Soon Zack was looking over his shoulder and Nick told him his journal was in the bin as well and went to get it for him.  Z began looking at his and realized because the assignment had been a daily writing prompt, they probably had the same or similar entries.  Starting at the beginning, they laughed their way through, day by day - "Wacky Wednesday" or "Tell a Story Tuesday."

And "If I Had Three Wishes."

Zack's third wish was "3 more wishes," classic, and Nick wants a "germen sheperd named roney."

Here's a couple more, "Field Day" and "10 Things My Teacher Taught Me."  (Nick went with "feald" and "tot.")

Here's the page with both from Zack:

And this is Nick's:

They've been teasing each other back and forth this whole time.  Nick tells Zack he just wrote the "same flipping thing, over and over" for the 10 Things one.

"Well, who spells field, f-e-a-l-d?"  Zack says back through a laugh, it's all good-natured fun.

"Well, you're over there bragging about hitting home runs."

"Yeah, well what part of 10 things don't you get, you only wrote down three."

"Yeah..." Nick replies back.  And then he says  "oh..." long and drawn out, the oh-I-get-it sigh.

"That was my first day back after I broke my arm."

We all go silent for a moment or two, the memories, Marci's, Zack's, poor Nick's and mine, settling in around us, so quickly, so effortlessly.

And that's why you can't pin a memory on a timeline.  They twist and wrap around each other, one carries another, two, three, several seemingly unrelated bits lace together and tell another memory, a different story.  

You know what?  Go back and look at that last image.  You can click it and it gets bigger.  Just those two entries, side by side.  His third and final thing is "helping." Man, that's a great story.

I can even overcomplicate it more.  When the boys perhaps see this in forty or fifty years, what ghosts of memory will they see?  Will it be their second-grade classroom or Mrs. G?  Will they remember all the "Feald Days" of those early elementary days as one event?  Will they remember sitting on a couch remembering and laughing at their silly journals?  Will they remember how jarring and emotional the quick memory of Nick's broken arm was?  Will they be more interested in the stories I tell of restaurants past and dreams set aside?  Will they get to choose?

I think not, I never get to...


There's one last - that's a lie there's never a last thing.  A long time ago, in the opening paragraph, I mentioned an apartment with a porch and a sunroom.  I painted garish abstracts on big canvases with acrylics.  I was happy.  I had a large work table I'd made from two-by-fours and a sheet of plywood covered in a muslin dropcloth.  On it, off to the corner nearest the porch, was a cactus, a "Christmas Cactus" to be precise.  I'm sure you've seen them.

Here's a picture of the one that is blooming here in the dining room.

I wonder if seeing that bloom didn't put me in mind of that table which made me ask myself when that was and then all the memories who weren't sure where they belonged piled back on me.  But memory is not kismet.  It is poignant, playful, powerful but there always comes with it a deliberateness.  As though we knew we needed to remember something.

I've kept you too long, thanks for sticking with me.


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

"He's pirouetting like a mad man."


I saw that ballet in college...


Peace, and all that.

This Is Not a Halloween Post

Sometimes I see a group of people at, say, a soccer game - perhaps the parents of the team - and marvel at the disparity in them.  So different economically, politically, socially yet all focused on one goal, or two or three.  It happens at the boys' school, too.  At a student council carnival the other day I witnessed little gangs of youths arranged in the damnedest ways, it was cute.  I see it at its most jarring on Facebook sometimes, I've laughed aloud at the notion of the seventeen people who "like" something I posted at the same party, mingling and baffled and flabbergasted that they all agree on things.

(This sounds like I am heading towards the theme of egalitarianism, or worse, peaceful coexistence... I'm not.)

The other day I wrote a piece called Metaphorically.  I got to thinking about how that all came to be, what different elements and characters and memories and ideas meshed to make those rows of words coalesce into one singularity.

It's a weird list that includes Andy Goldsworthy, the story of a sunset, the memory of a crippling blizzard, backyards, porches, loneliness, heartbreak, red leaves in wax paper, photosynthesis, puberty, my childhood friend JB, a girl named Kari, lightening and the deep and daunting conundrum of Faith.

Oh... and this...

On the back is this sketch which began the whole process.

I think that the word "Elements" so aptly titling Zack's work, added to the ruminations about the weather and the seasons that I have every year as Fall ends - or Spring begins, for that matter - mixed with the melancholy that is Time and the hope that is childhood fermented into a new realization for me.

Life is like that.  This was that and is now this other thing because this that was that and is now this.  I know that doesn't make sense, but coming to understanding never does.

That's all for today.  I just wanted to share the rest of the story of my last post.

Crap... there's more to this story.  Sorry.

When I was thinking the other day about writing about these colored pencil drawings Z did - well before they became entwined in the story above - I thought it might be fun to ask Zack to help me photoshop, if that's a verb, the images.

We started with this one, which, in sequence he made before the two above.  I use Picmonkey, most photo editing programs are way above my level of skill and it is simple and effective.  Here is his final edited piece.

Here's the original.



Yeah, weren't we all a little heavy-handed on our first encounter with an editing app - I know I was.  Hey, the image is much clearer in his and, the, uh color is nice and...

Thanks for stopping by.


Here's a TYDETHFTBS* (worst acronym ever) from Marci:

LOVE. MY. KIDS.

Nick just referenced Sisyphus in describing what it will/would be like when/if the Cubs win:
the Cubs winning is "like that mythical guy pushing the thing up the hill and actually making it."
 
Best sports metaphor ever.

That's my boy...


Dammit... there's more.

Yesterday Zack's anthropomorphic, and silly, stuffed bear decided to make a Baseball pennant that said "Go Mets!" which was promptly ripped to shreds before he could explain it was just a joke.  To atone for his transgressions (honestly, I thought it was a clever joke from a not-always-so-clever bear) he made a new one today.

Peace to you and yours.

*"...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat..."

"Inferenshial"

For the many of you (I considered few of you but I am trying to be positive) who have been following around here for the last several years, you know that I find Nick's misspelling quite amusing, and, well, a bit frustrating.  There is, in fact, a whole label devoted to it here.  In school this year there is a renewed focus on it with vocabulary and spelling tests.  I's are preceding their e's - except when... -y's are being changed to i's and ed's added, the sordid there/their/they're menage is clamoring to explain itself, that sort of thing.

Nick brought this home the other day:

I am sad to say, my days of picking fun at them are over.  I mean 100%.  And, honestly, I am hard pressed at spelling the bonus word, inferential, as well.  I also told Nick that in my fifty years of writing I have never used that word in a sentence, there's no doctorate certification on my wall.

I am glad for him, he studied hard and we've been working on them at home, and he deserves the score.  Also - and here's where I may go too far with this - it is all a good metaphor what is happening around here, where I write these words.  I look at this and see an ending, not of everything or anything dramaticky like that, but an end to one more part of childhood.  Not only is he not going to make as many spelling errors - a sign of mental maturation and personal growth - but I am going to stop seeing them as the piece of childhood I have always seen them as.

This forces me to look again at the boys, see them in the new light in which they shine.  To watch differently, perhaps more carefully, as they coalesce into the adolescents they will soon be.  It is easy to grasp the silliness and wonder and cuteness and color and cacophony of childhood.  It is, frankly, pretty easy to write about that all as well.  But now, as that layer begins to bury itself, a new layer of seriousness and work and purpose and understanding surfaces.  It is harder to write about.

But - to carry the miserable metaphor further - if they are willing to get the words right, understand the meanings, go deeper and further into themselves so, perhaps, must I...

Yeah... well, I hope you see my point.  Boys grow up.  It gets different.  And we must look at them anew from time to time and grow up alongside them.


But I'm not gonna do that right now.

Nope, I'm just gonna dive into the "take-home folder" (there's a label for that as well here) and see if I can find something silly.

Actually, on his test, Nick made a couple of drawings.  (On a side note, I asked him why - knowing that this would simply not have been acceptable when I was in fifth grade - he made them.  He said his teacher doesn't mind, "she knows I get bored with stuff I already know."  If only someone would have recognized that when I was his age I'd have not gotten into the trouble I did.  Thanks Mrs. C.)  I like this uh, sword-cross-stars-thingee, maybe there's a future in tattoo design for Nick:

I love the yin/yang effect and who doesn't love stars?

And there is this little guy crouching absurdly on his spelling test:

He plays for the "Backward C's"

How, you may ask, do I know he is crouching?  Well I found him on another bit of classwork standing up:

I'm pretty sure that's him, that signature tongue move is pretty unforgettable.

I found this one on a "Restating The Question Center" worksheet.

Here's the assignment:  "Below you will find a number of ridiculous questions.  Your job is to restate the question and answer in a complete sentence.  Your answer can be completely silly as long as you restate the question!"

He nailed it on number three:

It's funny, for sure, but, behind it is a truth I think many adults miss, don't forget the obvious rules.  I'll save that thought for another time.  Also, I'll save the notion that it might be fun to write a post using all the words on Nick's list... that'd be joyous, marvelous, adventurous and inferential (dammit, you're gonna have to learn that one too, Nick.)

Thanks for stopping by, I know you're busy.


From Marci's  "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."
 
"Stabby weapons are best for me."


Know your tools, son, know your tools...


There one more thing I noticed on the worksheet.  I think it is a self-portrait:

It is either that, or this is my fifth grade student picture.  You know what?  That's pretty much what middle school felt like to me, exactly the look on that face.  It's funny how it all comes 'round.


God's Peace to you all.

Belated Obligatory Post

I was going to write a long and lovely description of our Mothers Day Weekend.  But now it is Friday and I can't remember what we did.  You know, a baseball game that was emotional, a music concert that had been long and excitedly anticipated.  A trip there, a school project due tomorrow, a friend over, showers and meals and books taken and served and read, a walk here a hug there.  All this kinda happened between then and, well, now.  Just stuff, but, well newer stuff, stuff that now has the precedent over yesterday's stuff...

Wait.

Well, I'll be damned, this is helpful.  On Mondays in both boys Language Arts part of the day, the boys write a journal style couple of paragraphs to get things started, I guess.  Here's Zack's which somehow made it home although I suspect it is supposed to be in a binder:

"Over the weekend I did some fun things!  On Saturday I had a baseball game, we had to not didn't have time to play extra innings so we tied 13 to 13."

This is all true.  He didn't mention he pitched again and Nick was his catcher.  He didn't say anything about the funny pride we all - the boys, Marci and I, his teammates, parents watching, coaches - feel when twins make up the battery.  He doesn't say how many hits he got or talk about the catch he didn't make.  He doesn't have to, in his mind "I had a baseball game" covers all that.  It's like a shortcut.

"Then we got home and I helped nick and Dad make one of my favorite meals, Stack Casiddias.  The chicken on it was perfect."

(Hell, I can't even spell quesadillas, and they're stack(ed), Stacked Quesadillas, oh, well, his name's better really.)  It's funny he mentions the chicken.  He and Nick spiced up the breasts we used and helped cook them on the grill.  They were perfect.  Perfect because they helped and worked together and all that.  But, yeah, perfectly spiced and executed.  That's just good coaching.  Here they are stacking them up:

And these are they straight out of the oven:

They really are a beany, corny, cheesy, chickeny pile of gooey goodness.

Then we watched first game of the Reds double-header.  And that was fun.  The next day we made breakfast in bed  <for mom>...

... watched the Red's game, and my grandma came <over> for sliders.  Then we went outside and threw the baseball after the reds lost the baseball game.  All in all it was a pretty good weekend.

By:  Zack P. #17

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.  Was it forgettable?  Well, yes it was a little for me, I guess I should feel bad about that, but, well... I don't.  I'd guess though, it was unforgettable to them.

Sometimes I wonder how that works.  Which memories will collect where and in whom and when?  I suppose I could try to figure all those details, work out an algorithm of sorts, a hierarchy of needed memories, maybe that'd make childhood a better experience for the boys or help me make better sense of my own.  But, we can't do that, in my opinion.  We can't save just exactly the right thing, we can't do exactly the right activity, or take a photo of the perfect moment.  At least I can't.  I'm just trying to keep up and work with what I've got and am giving.

I wonder if that makes any sense?


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

Dad: (looking at boy's dirty knees) "We'll need showers tonight."

Boy: "So let's go get more dirty!"


Faultless logic...


Thank Zack for the relative brevity of today's post.  Sometimes I go on and on about this life because I want to try to explain it.  Perhaps, even, I want to try and justify it.  We don't go crazy with gifts and brunches and flowers and such on days like Mothers Day.  Of course to many that means we aren't doing it right.  Judging our weekend to the bar set up by social media over the past weeks, I'd say it looks like we didn't even try.

We did.  And, we made some sweet memories.

See ya next time.

What Was Revealed

You know, boys, there is a lot I am sorry for. I guess that is sort of a sweeping statement, isn't it? I don't mean for anything I've done to you or that sort of thing. No, it's just that, well, I wish things were different.

For instance, I am sorry that you get music in such an generic and soulless format. You hear it on the internet and through the airwaves on radio stations at the pool and in the car, distant, tinny, filtered, compressed. But, you don't hold it in your hands, see it, own it.

When I was a boy everyone, I mean everyone, had records. Pop music was on affordable 45s and long-playing albums, often in stereo, were what our parents and siblings all played. The music came in paper sleeves and you had to carefully pull out the disc of vinyl and put it on something called a "turntable" and drop a needle on to it and give it a listen on speakers that knew how to make some noise, most bigger than breadboxes. You had to actively do all this... and, that made all the difference in the world.

I remember getting the new Bob Dylan album - Blood on The Tracks - like it was yesterday. I remember eagerly tearing off the cellophane around it, throwing that aside and pulling the inner sleeve out, hoping for "liner notes" so I could learn as much about the music as I could. I bought the songbook to the album along with it and sat on my bed and listened to it on a portable turntable that sounded better than the speakers on a laptop or tablet today. I searched the words for meaning, looked up references to Romantic French Poets in the World Book Encyclopedia just down the hall, in the den. I met Hurricane Carter and fell in love with Lily and Rosemary and probably the Jack of Hearts as well. I sat and learned, with a shiny new guitar in my lap, the truth about love songs, their structure and the sheer weight of their necessity.

As I reflect on it, I was probably a couple of years older than you, maybe three - and that's a lot in boy years - but that's not my point. I was gifted to grow up in an era where music was so prevalent and good. No, I am not making a judgment on the music of the era, that is not for me to do, and, well, I have eclectic (read questionable) taste in these things. It's just that it was such a common experience for us. Everyone sat and listened to 45s and the newest John Denver or Jim Croce album. We played, and got to know, even chose, the soundtrack of our lives. We weren't forced to look for it underneath a new car commercial or search for good music on the internet or radio through a barrage of commercials and crap. The music was right there, always.

We tripped over stacks of music, we packed album after album into apple crates, or, even better, peach crates - I don't know why. Our tables and desks and beds were strewn with liner notes, the faces of the artists we loved peered up at us and psychedelic covers of rock band albums, the twisting words of the lyrics and notes, made us wonder and hope for a day when we understood them.

I remember playing the song American Pie over and over on my little portable player. My friend JB and I had it in our head to figure out the words. The song is so damn long it took both sides of the 45 just to get through it. We'd stop and start the needle over and over again, finally getting all the words down. I cannot begin to impress upon you how very wrong we got those words. We didn't know who Jumping Jack Flash was let alone James Dean; we knew nothing of plane crashes or Buddy Holly or Jagger or Woodstock. I played that song wrong for a dozen years I'd say, until people grew tired of hearing it.

Maybe ten years ago I found the real lyrics online and decided I'd try to play it again. Once again I struggled with the words, understanding them for the first time took me back to when I sat, spiral-bound notebook in hand, writing down the wrong words as JB stopped and started the turntable. We were happy and young and naive and singing about Chevys and whiskey and rye and a generation lost in space, oblivious to the context, happy in the moment. That was in late in 1971 and I was ten.

The world back then was so sensual - I mean involving the senses. I fear we aren't giving our sons that so much anymore. I was never so happy, for years and years, as I was when I opened that new album, the smell and look and feel of it was everything right then and there. It had a wholeness to it, a wholeness that I think is fragmented these days. The boys listen to a song here, watch a video there, but - and this is why I am sorry for it is my fault - but they never experience that music through time and space, through taste and feel, that was so common when I was younger.

I should work to change that.

It's funny, this all started out as a list of things I wanted to apologize for to the boys. Mostly technologies, sensibilities. Simple things like, I'm sorry the bats aren't wood anymore, or, sorry there is so very little KoolAid. Stuff both silly and profound, funny and deep, sad and, well, sadder.

You see, when I started thinking about this all, outlined it, made notes, thought of how I might structure and format it I looked at all those "sorrys" and saw them all as one thing, they distilled down to one thought.

I'm gonna pause briefly here before I tell you what was revealed. I believe that life must be examined. We are obligated as humans to think deeply, profoundly. The very basics of our lives exist because someone thought about language and justice and wheels and fire and love and suffering and war and peace and literally everything else. We owe it to our heritage as people to consider our lives.

We think, therefore we are is...

I truly believe this. The thing is... sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it takes us places we would rather not go - sadness, inadequacy, loneliness, pointlessness. That's alright. Joy and faith and tenderness and purpose all balance it out.

I'm sorry I am your father.

It's alright... really. I understand why I thought this. I'm old and grumpy and borderline misanthropic and afraid and, well, a little weird. But, do I believe it. I'll let you be the judge of that. But, I wasn't afraid of the thought. That's what's important.

Fatherhood is big - thematically. I am willing to think about it.

Listen, I know saying I'm sorry that I am Nick and Zack's dad is stupid. Words don't exist to explain the joy a father feels in having children. Long paragraph short: I'm not sorry.

But, I thought about it. I thought about regrets and opportunities lost. I thought about providing and being available and paternity leave and money and heart and hearth and the future and the past. I flipped through memories and afterthoughts and moments lost and time and now.

I'm glad I did. That one moment of doubt, that one thought of hopelessness, well, has, is, making me a better father.

Anyway, I did this so...

...how sorry can I be.

Remember, we get to think about stuff.  Zack's bear also made this helpful graphic:

"think mOAr thotS"  Nick must've helped him with the spelling.

Think more thoughts.

Zack went down to feed the cats the other morning.  He had his bear, Bear-Bear, under his arm and set him down to get the food and then left him there.  Face down on the cement.  It looked like a crime scene and, sadly, my first thought was to orange chalk a circle around the poor guy and tell Z there's been an incident.  I picked the old fellow up and was trying to console him as best one can an inanimate object.  I looked at his face.

I little piece of foil, a wrapper or tinsel or something, stuck to his face like a tear.  And I wondered if I'd feel as sad when someday I realized that the boys might forget me for a moment.  It was an overwhelming notion and I let my thoughts go with it.  Fathers and sons, sons and fathers.

Thanks for coming 'round again.  I suppose you'll flit off to some other cyberstop.  Cool.  Hey, don't forget to think.  Look deep into yourself.  You're allowed.

You're supposed to.

Of What Were We Thinking?

I try to come up with different ways to open here.  Different ways to frame the stories and thoughts I want to share.  As I pondered what I might try today an interesting thought came into my head, what if I wrote a piece...

Good God, get to the point.

... in the form of a list and illustrate each one with a silly image.  I wouldn't number them, so then it's not really a list.  Bullets maybe...

Listen to yourself.

Screw you other-one-me, I'm the one who has to get this all done.  You sit over there in dreamland and tease me while you stare out the window weeping and thinking.  You stay up late watching baseball or Disney movies or The American Experience, cavalierly drinking hard ciders oblivious to the fact that I have to get up a six in the morning.

Somebody's got to think about stuff.  You're all uptight and worried about the next thing.  This is supposed to be fun.  Who the hell uses "cavalierly," anyway?

Think hard on this for a second: this goes unrewarded.  My moral obligation is to do the job I need to do for my family, it is not to dream up lines of nonsense based on hours of quiet reflection, there's simply not time for that.

I suppose not...

See?  Thank you.

But I'm not gonna stop.

I know...  Now what?

You go on ahead, I'm sure your non-numbered listicle idea will be great.

You don't sound convinced.

Well...

What would you do?

I dunno, I haven't had time to think about it.  Whaddya got so far?

It's all right there on the SanDisk you just watched me load from the camera.  In a file called "3.23temp."

How very clever of you.

You don't give one measly single fuck, do you?

Surprisingly, I do.  I'll take it from here...

You don't even know what the pictures are.  You probably barely remember us taking them.  I've given this some thought and I think I can make this work.

The "List," right.  Cute...

You know what?  Have at, dude.

Alright... where's the folder?

Oh for the love of God, on the memory stick.

I knew that.  Let's see...  Alright, I'll randomly load this one:

Oh, I remember this one, I was considering writing something about transitions and was going to use a toaster image, in fact this was a "before" of what was to be two images.  I clean up the toaster, write a bit about taking care of your things and memories and stuff.  That'd've been a good piece.

What's next?

Yes, pulled this out of Z's pocket.  He did not draw it, I know his style.  It's sorta creepy, and why would someone hold up a placard with "ballon" on it with a balloon in the other hand?  Weird.  (I have evidence that this was given to him by a girl, I will not submit it.)

This is easy:

Aww, Snickers, our loaner dog.  Keep them coming.

Um... excuse me.

What!?  Don't sneak up like that.

Well, sorry... uh, it's just, well, is that all your going to say about the dog.  I mean, at the very least you could tell the story of what a "loaner dog" actually is.  Maybe a bit about friendship and mutual respect between people of different socio-...

Go away, the only reason you wanted this here is so you'd be sure there was a picture of the dog on your blog which is really a scrapbook which is really a memoir.  That's what all this is, just a way to get some images in here that you don't want to forget but you don't feel like you have the time to write the whole story so you use me, a cheap device, to get through it all hoping they don't notice.

DON'T TELL THEM THAT!

Already did.  What do you want me to gloss over next?

Ghaaaaaaaa!

Nick made this in the fall, why are you just now getting to this?  I mean you could google "fire prevention week" and do it then.  Well, it is cute and he did spell extinquisher right.

No, no he didn't...

Stop pestering me, at least I'm getting something done.

 






 









What the hell is this?  I've never seen this before in my life.

Well, that was sort of the point.  Remember, we found it in among the stuff the boys keep up on the shelves downstairs.

These shelves?

Yes, nicely played.  And this is the stuff that is usually up there on the ground forming the foundation of the fort they most recently made.

 Yes, nicely played on your part.  Let's see what's left...

But...

Yes?

What about the stories that go along with these pictures? You know, the shelves as a place where imaginations run wild - oh, remember, just the other day they were pretending they were...

Ahem...

Oh right, we decided that might be a little too personal.  That it might be time to stop telling their secrets.  Crap... But, at least you could tell how I wondered if that might be their last fort.  You know, all wistful and pretty about "endings" and the inherent sadness in it all.

We've been all through that.  Let's move on.

But what about the poster?  How we figure it was Marci's and how she must have had it up in a lot of different places and how I'd guess it brought her comfort and happiness and...

Isn't that her story?

Right.  I'm sorry, I keep interrupting, it's just that, well, I think we can keep telling them if we...

Well, that was rude.

Whatever, lets get through these.  N made a "leprechun" trap.  He baited it green yarn "pretending to be clover" and, get this, fake gold coins.  Just a few more to go.  

And, that's all your going to say about that.  It's cute, all misspelled and haphazardly covered with foil and all hopeless and strange and... oh, right.  I guess that could sound mean.  Go ahead.

An oakleaf the boys thought looked like a dancing angel.

And...

And... you took a picture of it.

What about angels and dancing and leaves and the book you, uh... we, wrote and the Christmas card and all of that?

Humblebrag much?

But...

Yes.

I don't get it, you're the storyteller, you go on and on.  You go deep.  You tell the stories I can't... or won't.  You know when to do it and...

... when not to?

This is a "when not to" isn't it?

It didn't use to be, I am afraid it might be now...

Wow, that's rough.

Yep.

A note that says "read" and a 'no' sign over kindle.  They boys are in a contest between their classes, whichever class reads the most total minutes gets a pizza party.  The other class doesn't.  We've not pointed out to them that if they read the same amount it sort of nulls their contribution.  Nick's figured it out though.  He's trying to outread his, well, oblivious brother.

Well, that's good.  So, there's only one more.  Throw it on here and we're golden.  Nice job, dude, this would've taken me forever.  I guess you are right, I need to think a bit more about what we are doing here.

Yeah, about that.

What?

This is the one.

The one what?

The one that needs a story.

Naw, it's just an image of a boy with his hair pushed back, looking pretty cool, anyway the image is blurred and... oh.  Go ahead.

Recently, I took a bunch of blurry pictures of the boys playing basketball.  It got me to thinking about how our own perceptions of the past are fuzzy as well.  I took these pictures basically so I could show Marci how cool N looked with his hair all pushed back, I mean he looked seventeen.  I kept getting bad pics and I didn't have time to delete them on the spot so I kept them.  I got a good one of him finally, but when I went to look at them, this one stood out.

There are many reasons why.  I know I must start blurring the stories I tell about the boys here.  The time for revelations and personal bits and pieces of them is coming to a sad end.  It was easy at first, telling the stories of take-home folders and camping trips and vacations and simple hopes and dreams.  Not so much anymore.  I fear that something I say, although lovingly crafted and considered, might come back to haunt them.  It is a struggle for me, us, bloggers in general, parents, memoirists, storytellers.  Who does the story serve?

It's tough.

The coincidental blurriness is not the main reason this image sings to me.  Truth is my immediate and gut reaction to this was 'why am I staring back at myself?'  I can't look at it without feeling like I am at both ends of the lens.  I am the boy, blurred and a bit confused, coming into my own as much as I am the archivist trying to look at the boy and hoping that I can understand what's good for him.  It is the duality of fatherhood - for me at least - this feeling that I am both the son and the father, the future and the past, the what-I know-has-been and the what-I-hope-to-be. All at the same damn time.

That's nice.

It is tough.  I'm glad you came by today other-one-me.  Thanks.  You usually annoy me more.

Hey, we're in this together and it's gonna take both of us to move it all forward, right?

Yeah...

Say goo'bye to the nice people and don't forget the backseat thingee.  I gonna watch some trees grow.

Right, you do that.  I'm gonna do some chores and run to the store.  Hey, how 'bout a cider tonight?

We'll see...


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

"Pants. They are one of the most important things."


Oh, you say that now, you don't really mean it...


I hope you didn't mind him coming around today, I think he was a particularly civil this time.

I'm standin' right here, man.

Sorry, you can see more of our exchanges in the label just below here called "other-one-me" if you'd care to.  Nice of you to come around today and flip through some pictures with us, thanks.

Can I have the last word?

Sure.

poop...


Of course you did.