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apples

If someone steals something from you, but you neither notice the theft nor miss the pilfered item in any way, does it matter?

Let’s say I have an apple tree in my yard. I take good care of it; tend to it well with regular water and careful pruning and fertilization. In return for my investment of time and effort, the tree is prolific and my family is blessed with more apples than we alone can enjoy. We make pies, cider, juice, sauce, and eat them with our meals and we thank God every day for that apple tree. We even give away our excess apples to friends, families, and the local food bank we know and trust. By doing this we feel good about ourselves as minor philanthropists and get to see the recipients of our bounty enjoy it as much as we.

Now let’s pretend that every single day, as a certain neighborhood kid makes his walk home from school, he picks an apple as he passes by. Most days he does this because he’s hungry, but some days he simply picks the apple and throws it into the street for a lark (sounds like a certain teenager I used to be). For the sake of this illustration let’s say I have no idea this is happening. As this is a daily activity, the percentage of fruit denied us is not numerically insignificant, yet compared to what we’re not deprived of it is effectively statistically so.

What am I deprived of by not having these apples? I’m hard pressed to quantify that.

Perhaps you’d say I’m deprived full “control” over the harvest. In other words, were I to control the destiny of each apple I could distribute them how I saw fit, and the quantity that my unknown benefactor so rudely chooses to waste could instead be spared and put to a more noble use. I suppose this would be true, and that this lack of “control” over the literal fruits of one’s labor might feel a true deprival to some. Perhaps, if you tend towards a cynic, you might formulate an extension to this and say I’m further deprived the altruistic “glory” and warm feelings I could be receiving were I personally providing those very apples to others.

For as far as I’m concerned, however, the “loss” isn’t hard to swallow at all. In fact, even were a kind neighbor to inform me of the secreted apples and their sometimes sorry fate I’m not sure I’d enact any preventative measures. What am I losing? How does the loss impact me?

Let’s take this one step more and complete the allegory: We’ll now pretend that the homeowners association in my neighborhood has heard about the hunger of our mostly well-behaved fruit-pilfering teenagers and has decreed that residents must leave a percentage of their apples un-harvested to maintain the custom. To say it another way, I am now compelled to give up the fruit which I was already giving up.

Does that knowledge make my “loss” any more real? Any more impactful to me? Maybe it makes it a little harder to swallow, as things deigned to be often are for humankind, but does it fundamentally change my family’s situation?

Goodnight.

Disclaimer: Please no questions around how this dynamic may change in thin-harvest years; no thoughts on eventual teenage fruit-dependency; no worry over teenagers becoming fruit-entitled; and no comments about canning the lost fruit for years when we’re too old to tend to the tree.

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productivity

8:40pm and the first free minutes yet tonight find me writing, listening to Spirit’s eponymous 1968 debut with the house wide open.

I’ve just finished reading to Keaton before Sharaun puts her down (which she’s currently doing), we’re starting to get back into The Hobbit after too long a break where she’d tired of it.  Surprisingly she remembered exactly where we were and what had been going on and so picking up where we’d left off worked well (the company just escaped the warg and goblin firefight).  Tonight, instead of lamenting each “chore” speeding me from my homecoming to my late-night meeting, I decided to purposely engage in these clock-moving tasks without care.  I played with Cohen, fed him a bottle and held him while Sharaun made some homemade caramel in the kitchen.  Keaton and I climbed trees with Gandalf and Bilbo and Thorin.  And, even though it’s 9pm and I’m really just now getting “time off” (a whole hour before my 10pm meeting), I feel better about not counting the minutes.

This weekend I pulled down all the Halloween props and, with Keaton’s help, got most things setup and running.  I still haven’t run the air to the pneumatic props nor have I setup the motion detectors or prop timers or anything like that.  But I’m happy to report the standard yearly prop maintenance wasn’t too bad this year.  Things look to be holding together OK, and where they’re not I’ve been lucky with repairs, spare parts, and replacements.  In a fit of creativity I decided to build a new prop for the cemetery.  In the span of a few hours, and with some help from a buddy, I’d built a little  mausoleum in which we placed the animatronic witch Sharaun found on clearance at Ross last year.  The little structure keeps her out of the elements, protects her electric internals, and gives me something to anchor her to to stave off theft.  You can see a snapshot of the unfinished creation accompanying this post.

It’s been a productive few days.

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saying “i love you”

Hey Mom.  Hey Dad.

Hey… what’s up?  How you guys doing?  Uh…

I’m sorry I don’t say “I love you” when we’re ending our phone conversations.

I have no real idea why I don’t, and almost every time I hang up after talking to one of you I regret not bidding you a more meaningful farewell.  Sometimes, when I’m saying whatever I do say, which is usually something like, “Well, just wanted to call and see how you’re doing… talk to you later,” the absence of the “I love you” seems glaring and awkward.  It bothers me that this doesn’t come naturally to me, that it sounds strange when I say it in soliloquy.

Once, when we were visiting you guys, I’m pretty sure I heard you say, “I love you too,” when you were getting off the phone with John.  Ever since then I’ve been disappointed with myself because apparently my little brother can manage to say, “I love you,” but I can’t.  I hear Sharaun tell her dad, “Love you daddy,” as they end a conversation, same with her mom.  And then I go and say something like, Take care.”  What a cop-out.

So starting now I’m going to begin telling you I love you.  At the end of phone calls, when we part ways on the sidewalk outside the airport, after Thanksgiving dinner… I want to be like a normal kid who says normal things like that to his parents.

Do me a favor and don’t make fun of me when I do it for the first time, OK?  It may actually be fairly difficult for me to break the habit of not saying it; tough getting around the strange awkward feeling I have as I begin to after having not for so long.

Talk to you later; take care.

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the house at night

Good Thursday to you.

Been stuck in some fast-forward mindset for weeks, keep thinking it’s a day ahead of what it really is.  Today was Thursday in my mind all day long, until I sat down to write what I figured was the capping entry of a bad week for writing (sometimes it happens, the writing-fail thing).  I kept checking my Friday calendar in anticipation of my schedule tomorrow, kept thinking I somehow missed trash day.  Strange.  Last thing I need to do is live any faster. This thing goes by too quickly as is.

Two nights ago I woke up in the dead-still of the 3am hour.  3am is one of those odd times; most night-owls and party-goers have finally turned-in and the early-rise commuters and gym-goers aren’t yet awake.  It’s truly a time for insomniacs, graveyard-shifters and the random waker.  That was me, the latter.  I lay still for a moment, listening through the window to just how quiet things were outside.  No cars, no dogs, not even a breeze to rustle leaves or chime the neighbors windchimes.  I tossed aside the comforter and, after using the bathroom an finding myself quite awake and free of the usual nighttime-pee drowsiness, decided to wander around the house a bit.

I love the house at night.  All cast in pale greens and blues from the digital clocks and standby lights.  Silent and shadowed and the emptiness of it makes it feel bigger.  Honestly, I walked around with my arms outstretched all INRI style just admiring how spacious things feel when you’re all alone and it’s the middle of the night.  Poured myself a glass of water, plopped in some ice, and stood there in the center of it all, in my boxer shorts with my belly hanging out, admiring my domain.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

Goodnight.

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∫time

Days where you feel like you get no “wind-down” are the worst.

Where the callings of work end and the callings of the home begin and things don’t slow down until well after 9pm on the evening where your brain has to be “on” again for that 10pm meeting.  But it’s my 9pm now and I have an hour to wind down and write and listen to some music.  I chose the 1993 shoegaze anthem Souvlaki by Slowdive.  If you’ve not heard this album you’re really missing out (there are some songs on Grooveshark here).  Sometimes the sonic wash of bands like Slowdive or The Ecstasy of St. Theresa is just what the doctor ordered.

You people with three and four and five and more than five kids… you people amaze me.  Y’know when we had Keaton I wrote about (too lazy to look it up and link it) how I had to learn to be a lot less “selfish” upon her arrival.  Maybe four years was long enough for me to get ultimately settled into my more selfless, less me-time, routine… because with Cohen’s arrival I’m struggling again with time-slicing things to where I feel like I’m being a good daddy, a good husband, and have a spare minute here or there to listen to some music and write on the internet and read some websites (we’re talking weeknights here).  Maybe I’m thinking about things too discretely… or maybe I’m just as anal with my time as I am with everything else.

Lately I’ve been feeling like things just aren’t “settling down” at night.  Or, when they do, I’m too tired to eke more night out of what’s left.  I suppose this will pass as Cohen gets older and I get better at juggling and in general with time.  Or maybe not.  But man, you quiverfulls are to be admired.  Keep doing what you’re doing… someone has to.

Goodnight.

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a wet-dream supernova

I remember the day I asked Sharaun if she wanted to go to the homecoming dance with me.

Facts: it was a hot Florida day; I was a high school sophomore; I had been pursuing her for a while but we were not “dating;” I was probably sixteen; I was truly nervous.

I remember taking the old portable phone out of the house and into the backyard to make the phone call with some privacy. The phone was this large unibody thing, a muted tan-yellow “manila” color (can that word be applied, as a color, to something other than a folder?) and it had a large segmented antenna you had to manually extend and retract. I walked through the screened-in porch and out onto the pool deck. It was late afternoon but the sun in Florida was still bearing down through the piles of humidity. I remember walking around the deck to the deep end of the pool, we had a planter there at the edge of the grass with some shrubs and a few birds of paradise, it was bordered with large coquina rocks, as many landscape installations are in Florida.

It was over there near the deep end, where the pool deck was wide enough and offered enough runway that my brother and I used it as our makeshift diving platform when we were kids and the novelty of a backyard pool was still enough to see us in it daily, that I made the call. Sometimes in the post-rain heat of the afternoon in Florida there was this ambient buzzing noise permeating the air outside. Like the chorus of bugs I imagine in equatorial rain forests it would camp out at the edge of your hearing and become part of the atmosphere without you really realizing it. But that day, during the second or so that elapsed after I dialed the last ‘9’ in her number and before the phone rang on her end, that buzzing jumped to the fore and became a roar reminding me how much on-my-own I was. Me and the background bugs, about to put ourselves out there in the most real way… the fragility of youth plus lust.

I forget who answered but I remember asking.

In the end it was a pitifully (or maybe blissfully) short exchange. And while I don’t recall my exact wording I remember feeling that I hid the awkwardness I felt in asking well and ultimately came off smooth.

She said yes.

She wore a black dress that blazed like a signal fire against her pale skin and shiny-gold, straight hair. She was the walking, breathing embodiment of all my coming-of-age fantasies to that point. A wet-dream supernova. The memories of the emotion of that night make me thankful there is no such thing as foreknowledge. Knowing that we’d end up together as happy as we are now would’ve stolen all the mystery and timidity.

Goodnight.