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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.

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the three crosses

My grandfather loved word puzzles, logic riddles.

When I was thirteen or so he attempted to teach my brother and I how to play blackjack.  I can remember sitting at a table writing down the things he told me (no doubt he suggested I go grab a pen and paper to commit his “system” to memory).  He’d deal hand after hand of twenty-one to each of us, bloody mary or whiskey neat not far out of reach, and instruct as we played.

It’s a pity I didn’t understand how important those interactions were.  What stories.  He told us of gambling on a riverboat on the Mississippi. This is the same grandfather that bought me a .22 rifle when I turned twelve and used to send me handwritten missives address in my last name prefixed by the regal-sounding “Master.”  Do you know how cool it was to get a letter like that as a kid?  He was a character.

Between explaining the concepts of insurance and splitting and doubling and when to hit and when to hold he would regale my brother and I with his riddles.  Most you’ve probably heard: the fox, the goose, and the sack of wheat; the liar and the truthteller; the hotelier and the three magicians.  But my grandfather’s coup de grâce was a puzzle he called “the three crosses.”  I can recall him building up to this one, happy that my brother and I were truly trying to puzzle out the lead-in problems.  It went something like this:

Three men go into an office, all to interview for the same job.  The employer takes all three into a room at together and explains that this position requires a keen intellect and solid sense of reason, and that they’ll all be put to the test for their interview.

The interviewer arranges three chairs in a triangular formation and seats each man in a chair so that each can see the other two.  He then blindfolds each man and explains aloud that he will be using chalk to draw either a white or black cross on each man’s forehead.

Unbeknownst to the men the employer draws black crosses on each of them.

He then instructs them to remove their blindfolds and to knock on their chair if they see at least one black cross.  Furthermore, he states that the first man to correctly identify the color of the cross drawn on his own forehead, and explain correctly why he is sure of this, will secure the position.

The men lift their blindfolds together and all three begin rapping on their chairs.  Thirty seconds elapse and one man raises his hand to announce that he surely has a black cross on his forehead.

How did he know?

At thirteen this riddle wrecked my brain.  No there are no mirrors; no he didn’t catch a reflection in another’s eye; no he didn’t cheat and smudge his hand against his skin.  I can vividly recall sketching out the triangle, trying to grasp the situation.  My brother and I even acted out the scenario with the help of my grandfather.  He was beyond amused at how hard we thought on that puzzle, and remarked accordingly, “Boy David you’re really thinking hard on this one, good!”  To him the mental exercise was the fun (I suppose with him for a grandfather and my dad for a father I was doomed to a similar stuffy intellectual sentiment).

Try as we might, however, my brother and I could simply not crack the puzzle.  I think what frustrated me more, though, was being unable to understand the answer when my grandfather finally deigned to accept our defeat and explain it.  I asked him to go through it over again for me, talk through the steps really slow so I could get it.  It didn’t work.  I would think I understood and then try and follow the logic in my own head and get confused.  Thinking on the answer now it’s clear enough, but back then it may have been a bit beyond my grasp.  It’s one of the clearest and fondest memories I have of my grandfather though… and for that I’ll always remember  it.

Before I go, I wanted to show you Cohen’s new smile.

And that’s mild compared to some of the ones we’ve not had the presence of mind to capture on video.

Goodnight.

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getting right

I was fifteen and I lived in a house of sticks for a week.  Danced around a fire most evenings.

Fell in love with a girl of immeasurable beauty, she came from a different continent, smelled strong of cinnamon.  We made filthy love on the dirt, churning the floor to clay in our passion.  Each day we made the burnt offering to buy continued redemption for our open sin, but the weight of it still weighed heavy.  Eventually it became too much for her fragile constitution, the sin-infused clay clogging her pores and starving her of oxygen.  In her weakest state I bargained with the devil for her corporal form, canted spells over her sagging skin.  To no avail.  On the sixth day God took her from me and I cursed Him for the agony of it.

In my grief I wandered.  I chased cars and spat at sunsets and tore down mountains in my madness.  I kept some of her bones; ate a broth of tears flavored with their long-dry marrow.  My legs stretched with longing, as tall as redwoods, and I stepped across oceans and seas and traversed the globe high above those toiling below me.  Head amongst stars, breathing the metallic air of outer space as I peered down to the world below.  Transformed as I was the people feared me.  Bravado swelled in my breast and my ribs ached to keep back the pride.  On the twelfth day God pierced me like a balloon.  Water and blood mingled flowed.

The Godless found me, drove me back to the sticks in a wagon, their women nursed me to health.  In their kindness I saw my folly laid bare and repented.  I took my leave of them, thanking them for my very breath.

I tore down the house of sticks; scattered the ashes of our fire to the four corners; rid myself of the bones of ghosts.  I regained my senses.

It was the fifteenth day.

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sorry tumbling jumble

There was a rockslide on Mt. Drama this past week.  A sorry tumbling jumble of shock and surprise and sadness.  Dust hung thick in the air well into Friday.

Weary from breathing the ruin, Sharaun and I fled the choke and stink of it all and made tracks up into the mountains.  A coworker has a small cabin on Lake Tahoe and we stole to its broken-down charm.  We pulled up the shades and let in the sunlight and began forgetting about that pile of rubble just over and hour down the hill.  Passed the time playing Chutes and Ladders and sleeping in.  Had a couple good meals around town and had a quick run-in with nature where Keaton and I challenged a mound of granite.  On the way out of town we spread a blanket on a patch of green grass and had an outdoor lunch.

It’s a shame, but the relaxation didn’t even sink in until we were sitting on that blanket eating sandwiches in the sun-mottled shade.  Took that long to shake the weight from my shoulders, the act of winding-down.  I think Sharaun could tell; maybe I looked it.  She asked me, sitting there, “You want to just call in sick and stay another night?”  She smiled.  Neither of us could really do that, of course… and we knew it, but I think it was nice for both of us just to imagine it for a minute.

We bought some Christmas gifts for family.  I ate an omelet that positively dripped cheese.  Keaton went on a squirrel hunt.

And now we’re back.