Tagged: family
Still Timeless
Happy that she chose waffles over doughnuts, he found himself preparing the batter when she called to him from the couch.
“Daddy, come lay with me. Don’t you want a little rest before breakfast?”
“H-, you know I’m cooking. If you wanted to lay, you should’ve said something earlier.”
“You’re cooking?”
“Yep. It’s almost done though,” he responded.
“Why you keep saying almost?” she asked.
“Do you know what “almost” means, H-?” he asked, genuinely curious about her response.
“Not done yet?” she answered, her voice betraying a modest level of hope.
“Sure. It means not done yet. But so would lots of words. How close does “almost” mean?”
“Fifteen?” she guessed.
His smile grew as her answer reverberated in his head.
Proudly, then, he cooed to himself, “She’s learning.”
Mommies Are Not Alive
Her new nearly-florescent neon tennis shoes did little to distract him from feeling the sting of what she said next.
“Mommies are not alive,” she purported.
“Mommies are not alive? I don’t think that’s right H-,” he returned.
“They aren’t alive. Mommies are not alive,” she said.
“What is a mommy?” he asked, seeking context at the least.
“K- is my mommy,” she answered.
“Hmm. So you know K- is your mommy, and that she’s alive, but you still maintain that mommies are not alive?”
“Yep, they’re not,” she said.
“Well,” he took a breath, “I hate to break it to you kid, but mommies are very much alive. Your mommy is alive. My mommy is alive. They’re alive,” he lectured dryly.
“Mommies are not alive,” she continued, a perfect stubbornness showing through. “Skeletons aren’t alive either.”
“Skeletons, eh?” he said. “Oh! I get it. Not mommies, mummies! Muh-muh mummies are not alive. You’re trying to say that dead bodies wrapped in tape are not alive, right? They’re called mummies, muh-meez, not mah-meez.”
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes betraying her brain’s increase in activity. “Bodies wrapped in,” she paused, “in tape,” she finished, her nodding head and squinting eyes calling out his inaccuracy. “Mommies-”
“Muh H-,” he corrected, “muh-meez. Mummies are not alive.”
“Mah-”
“Muh-”
‘Mah-”
“Muh-meez H-,” he said, feeling his patience about to buckle. “Forget it. Can you say reanimated?”
“Re-ami-nated?” she asked.
“Re-ani-mated,” he repeated.
“Reanimated,” she said.
“Good. Now say ‘mummies are reanimated, but mommies are alive.'”
“Mommies are reanimated, but mommies are alive.”
“Perfect.”
High Class
“Do we have cauliflower?” she asked after he mentioned broccoli.
“Nope, just broccoli,” he answered.
“Why don’t we have cauliflower?” she persisted.
“Because I didn’t buy any,” he said, not giving in.
After finishing her broccoli, she watched as he slid the grilled chicken on to her plate. Together now, they began to eat.
“Oh,” he interrupted, “did you want barbecue sauce?”
“Yes,” she said, “the new sauce.”
“I know, I know. You didn’t like the hot stuff.”
“Hot stuff?”
“Nevermind. Here’s your sauce. And here’s my sauce.”
To the sound of silverware squishing into chicken, they returned to the task at hand. Suddenly, she let out a shriek.
“What?” he asked, fearful that even the new sauce was too hot.
Spitting out the chicken, she replied, “I don’t like the roasted ones. That one’s roasted.”
“Huh?”
“See daddy? Roasted,” she said, pointing at the grill marks on the chicken.
“Oh. You don’t like the burnt part. Excuse me, the roasted part. Okay, you don’t have to eat it,” he allowed. “High class H-, you’re high class,” he thought, pride swelling.
A Letter To Combat
Dear Combat,
I’ve been thinking a lot about you recently. While I’d love to report that my memory of you grows fonder as the years pass, quite the opposite is true. To begin, I want you to know I feel like you took something from me. I think you took something I didn’t even know I had it until it went missing. I’m talking about care. And concern. Care and concern for things. Take work for example. How am I supposed to believe anything that is not life and death is worth spending energy on? Of course I’m capable, and of course I’m qualified. But the drive to ‘fight the good fight’, when it isn’t a fight, is gone. I think you took it.
I also feel like I’m not sure how people expect to be treated. While we were together, everyone was equal. It was beautiful. During missions the mission was all that mattered. Everyone checked their feelings at the door. Now, people’s feelings are the mission. Every experience since being with you has included not only completing the mission, but making the person feel like the mission was completed. Instead of results, people want to purchase experiences. I just don’t understand it. I know you don’t either.
Lastly, for now, because of what you taught me about what’s important and what’s not important when lives are on the line, taken together with the depth of the learning experience, I can’t shake the appearance of having a large ego. It’s like I’m expected to just forget all the lessons you taught simply because not very many people ever learn them. The trouble is, as you know, I couldn’t forget your instruction even if I wanted to. With you, there wasn’t endless debating. There was action. There was doing. Indecision was an enemy. Now, decisiveness is a detractor. It doesn’t make sense.
You know I love you, right? Don’t you? At the same time, I just can’t help wanting to blame you either.
In the end, I guess I really just wanted to say “Thanks” and “No Thanks”.
Your Son,
Pete
PS – This is just a little thing, and I don’t know if it’s you or just flying that is responsible, but I’m not loving how I can’t pass up a bathroom without feeling like “Might as well. Who knows when the next time I’ll have a chance to go will be.”
The Miniature Van
People don’t remember that twenty years ago the first minivans had two bench seats. And just one sliding door. And no TV screens. Worse yet, the speed limits were slower. Road trips, coast-to-coast family vacations took longer. It was quite miserable having to spend time with your family.
Only then came bucket seats. And CD players. And space. And younger brothers. Soon, everyone sat in their own seat.
But there were occasionally short moments, usually right after a sack lunch at a rest area, when the trip would become bearable. And in those moments, the family played car games that involved talking to each other. Single words became phrases and phrases became conversations. Conversations, of course, became love. And love blossomed into memories.
A simple, yet fun, way to prolong the sugar high was a game where players had to name cities which began with the last letter of the previous city. Bismark, led to Kansas City, which led to Yorkshire, to Edmonton and so on and so forth.
Anyone who has played this game can remember that after a few rounds, everyone seemed always to get stuck on cities that ended in “y”. Not the youngest brother. Receiving New York City, he quickly returned Yukon. Oklahoma City became Yonkers, and Sioux City led to Yorba Linda. Wait, what? Yorba Linda? How did Sam know Yorba Linda?
As one, father, mother, sister, and brother all turned back to see how he was doing it.
Looking up towards the silence, young Sam feigned ignorance to the rules of the game as he closed the giant road atlas and its alphabetical index.
That reminds me. The first minivans didn’t have GPS either.
The Small Things
“Can you turn off the car daddy?” she asked.
“Oh. Yes I can. Thanks for asking,” he responded. “Looking to get into the house, eh? Sorry, I just was enjoying the song. Here we go.”
Racing to the door, she called out her victory upon touching the glass. He proceeded towards her, fanning out the three keys necessary to enter the house.
“Daddy, can you turn on the light?”
“You can do it H-. You’ve done it for over a year now. Just reach for it.”
They each began to remove their jackets and begin their respective rituals. Stopping his, he realized he hadn’t hugged her yet today.
“H-,” he called, squatting down low, “what haven’t we done today?”
Only just a little, she bent her knees, unsure if mirroring him was necessary. Then it hit her.
“Hugged!”
Walking briskly towards him, her head mechanically assumed the cocked-right position as she opened her arms. They embraced. He stood, lifting her into the air. She let her legs hang.
Upon putting her down, she immediately beckoned, “Pick me up daddy!” He complied. This time, she was intent on staying and said so.
He hadn’t seen her for days, and wanted to be sure she knew the meaning of a hug. Taking a moment to get the lesson right in his head, that a hug is a way to say “I love you” without words, he was interrupted by her.
Pointing towards the counter, she said, “My phone!”
The Perfect Saturday Morning
“All aboard!” he yelled in his best train conductor voice. She loved riding on the front of the shopping cart as they made their way through the grocery store.
“All aboard!” she mimicked, smiling and grabbing hold. “Faster daddy!”
It was Wednesday night. They were buying enough supplies to last them for the coming week. Racing through the produce section, skipping past the deli on the right, and taking a hard left with a little too much speed, they made it to the back of the store in record time, narrowly avoiding a collision with the lobster tank.
“Let’s see. What do we need H-? I think we need lunch meat for my lunches, bread-”
“Milk, daddy? We need milk, right daddy?”
“That’s right, but that’s all the way on the other side. What else do we need before then?”
“Cereal? ”
“Yep, cereal,” he answered.
Passing the Pepsi shrine, he turned down the breakfast aisle. They were alone. With one big shove he jumped onto the back of the cart as they cruised towards the off-brand bags.
Beaming with joy, she could only ask, “What are you doing, daddy? What are you doing?”
“Oh, just having fun. Errrrrrt!” he sounded, halting prematurely at the sight of pancake mix. “I think we need pancake mix too.”
“Pancake mix?”
“Yep. What’s this? Look here H-. It says we can make 130 pancakes out of just this one bag. That’s a lot of pancakes, huh?”
“A lot of pancakes?”
“Yes, a lot of pancakes. Can you eat 130 pancakes?”
“No, that’s silly,” she said, laughing.
“Yeah, me neither. Do you believe this bag has enough mix to make 130 pancakes?”
“Pancakes?”
“What do you say we put Krusteaz to the test this weekend?”
“Test?”
“Your friends like pancakes right?”
“My friends?”
“Yeah, your friends. What do you say we invite all of them over for breakfast on Saturday, and see if we can really make 130 pancakes?”
For Better Or Worse
If I knew one thing about weddings, it was that they had tremendous opportunities for speech giving. Never being one to care about the actual rules, when my sister was getting married, this would’ve been 2004-ish, I knew I wanted to feel the smooth, dry, cold handle of a microphone in my hand.
After getting the nod from my sister, I wrote a poem of sorts for the occasion. Having just finished a season of Russell Simmons’ Deaf Poetry Jam on HBO, I labeled myself a “Suburban Wordsmith.” Being proud of that title, I even began the reading by introducing myself as such.
I don’t remember how the moment was chosen, or who did the choosing, but I confidently held the microphone in my hand just before the DJ was scheduled to lift people out of their seats. I knocked everyone’s socks off with my little speech.
She cried.
I think he was happy that it moved her, though I also think it was lost on my brother-in-law (he’s an accountant). But the rest of everyone liked it, or at least they told me so. I should say, the rest of everyone under the age of 70. Given that it was my first time in a room of that size, all I was able to give the old folks was a longing for the days when people spoke loud enough to hear.
Today, the speech—I think—still sits on their dresser, framed in a very gaudy, tacky, but somehow fitting frame that is made up of textured flower heads, all very pastel.
I didn’t know it then, but I do now, that that moment should be counted as one of the most revealing moments of my life. To me, doing that was what any brother would do. But when I really sit back and think about the fact that, for fun, I wrote and delivered a speech that honored my sister at her wedding in very heartfelt ways, the truth is I don’t know too many people who do that. And the ones that would do that probably consider themselves wordsmiths as well. I used to think I did it because I cared more, or had a bigger heart. That sounds like vanity to me these days.
Flying by, the decade since has confirmed that for better or worse I am a writer.
Review of Blue Valentine, the Once NC-17 Ryan Gosling movie
Yesterday’s post didn’t command any likes. Instead, it garnered a lot of love. Thank you. The only way to get there is together.
****
Even though I’ve seen how it’s done, I’m always amazed that a man with a full head of hair can be made to look like a man who is balding, Ryan Gosling is no exception. Like Charlize Theron in Monster, here we have a very attractive celebrity turned bum. Seriously fellas, if your lady-friend is a bit too enamored with the man, press play on Derek Cianfrance’s divorce exposé.
Not a new film, gossip clearly deters many would be viewers. Even with foreknowledge that it is going to be an uncompromising look at a close-to-home trial, it’s impossible to prepare for Valentine’s authenticity. And that’s what places it ahead of its preteen Judd Apatow et al. peers.
Spanning love’s spectrum, the movie passes through the always interesting topics of 1. single men and women’s respective concerns about love and marriage, 2. our undeniable wish for love-at-first-sight to make the jump from fairy tale land to factical life, and 3. a holy-shit-I-thought-that-was-just-something-that-happened-to-me disintegration of a relationship with ease.
And now a note to the MPAA: get it together. You’re not protecting anything but your jobs. Drop the letter system. Increase the descriptions. And allow movie-makers the opportunity to tell stories that have some basis in this world, not distract them with PG-13 revenues.
Make no mistake, this movie is not pleasant. Questions are not answered. But if you laugh at the saying, “Ignorance is bliss”, if you consider yourself a seeker, or if you’re the mother of a son and sometimes ask, “Are you sure you couldn’t have worked things out?” watch the movie. (It’s on Netflix.)
Random Thoughts Two
People who were raised in incredibly strict households, especially religious households, make for incredibly interesting friends. (Yes, I’m talking about you Andy.)
There is a singular, unparalleled feeling of joy as a child innocently and repeatedly exhales into your ear as they try to develop the secret that just had to be whispered.
Fruit punch soda. Where have I been? It’s amazing. Instead of going flat, it turns into Hawaiian Punch. Yum.
If you need to drink Red Bull or any other energy drink to make it through a day of skiing, you’re missing the point.
Some people’s kids. The high for the last two days has been five degrees. Yet over 150 people chose to get their car washed. What is it about people with cash to burn that they can’t be talked out of spending it? Seriously. Here’s a couple insights into the 21st century city-dweller’s mind.
- In response to a woman telling me she’d like to go ahead and get a car wash, despite the temperature being below the point that third-graders learn water freezes, I inquired, “Will you give me a chance to talk you out of it?” She replied, smiling knowingly, “No.”
- After a lady complained that the outside of her car was not very clean, despite the fact that the water froze before we could dry it off, we said, “Well, it is difficult to wipe off frozen water.” She responded, “Well then you shouldn’t be open today.” More surprising than her belief that she made a valid point was that even after re-washing her car she left unsatisfied.
Have a good weekend.
Captain’s Log 