Today is November 6, 2011, and it’s going to be a beautiful
day – or so they say. Right now, there
is a lot of promising sunshine, but it’s cold and the grass is beaten down with
frost and there is a lot of wind in the trees up on the hills. Down here, it’s less blustery and yet also
less sunny. Today I have to finish the
chicken coop – my main responsibility, but while I was sleeping, I had a long
dream that I don’t really remember, but the upshot is that I woke thinking
about how rare these days are with my boys, and how surprising it is to see
them grow up. I woke with the decidedly
unsettled feeling that I’ve done most all I can for them, and that for good and
bad, they are set on a trajectory. I wondered what would happen to them when
I’m gone, and that made me profoundly sad.
Of course, that’s partly just a squeeze in the limbic system, a tug of
the cerebellum, and not as much a thought as a feeling. I mean, this is the way things are, the way
they go, like waves of grass. But it is
hard to accept. I woke with a deep
feeling of love for them both, verging on desperation. I can’t control anything, but I can name
what’s happening.
Yesterday was Drew’s birthday. Zach spend the night, too, and we had to
argue with them to go to bed at midnight. Jacqueline had a dust-off with Joe over
bedtime. She was really bothered by his
attitude and eye-rolling. The next day,
they butted heads over whether or not they could have a nerf-gun war. She was worried that the dog would eat a
“bullet” and die; they were worried, or Joe was worried, about being subject to
capricious and even malicious rules. But
this wasn’t the center of the day, though I did field Joe’s furious phone call
about how he comes over here only to see me, and that “she” can’t tell him what
to do……etc.
So much happened.
I’ll start with what I remember best.
That evening there was discussion about who is tallest, probably started
by Eli who competes for my attention hard.
We started to take off our shoes, Joe and I, but got distracted,
something happening upstairs….and Jacqueline and I continued making
supper. Joe is easily as tall as I am,
lanky as his mom and my dad, which makes him seem taller. He talks easily, for
the most part, and asks excellent questions, figuring out what his audience
knows and can talk about. The flipside
is that he can be easily ashamed by just being himself,
a teenager. He’s seventeen, and easily
bruised, good at jokes, very kind, sometimes insensitive, and good at figuring
out who is worth his time and not. He
really likes Drew, does not have the time of day for Jackson, hardly talks to
Eli – though they are kind to each other, and surprise me and each other by
catching up with each other here in Tully: “So you are in basketball, Eli?” Joe
will ask and Eli will explain where he stands in the tryouts, something they
seem not to discuss at all at their mom’s house.
Joe had a chance to go to the mine with Drew, Zack, Jackson,
and Eli, but he and I were working on the chicken coop out back. I said, “Hey, I need one kid to stay here and
help me,” and Joe said “I’ll do it. Eli
had a lot of time with you earlier today.”
And he stayed as the other boys scampered off to do their CIA work in
the mine. Then Joe said that he sure
wished he could join them. I was happy
to say “Go!” and he goed. 45 minutes
later, he returned. He said he left
early so that he could spend a few minutes with me before he went to work in
Syracuse. Wow. So we talked and I explained my plan and he
got to drill down into the 4x4s that rim the pen and even use the vicious rip
saw to cut some threaded rod, and helped me put up the rudimentary ribs of a
roof. I was so glad to have a few
minutes to work with him. He sometimes
complains that he has to do chores and work while here, but I’m always telling
him that work is what people do together, that it is important, that I feel
lucky to work with him and look at things we make together. He said something like this back to me at the
chicken coop, noticing how things get done between his visits and how he likes
to come over and see what’s changed. I
was glad he could be part of it, even if briefly.
While driving yesterday I listened to Joan Didion’s
interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air wherein she discussed her daughter’s
death. It was harrowing. I got to listen to a lot of my iPod: I drove
to get them Thursday, drop them off Friday, get them Friday after school, and
finally to drop Joe off Saturday for work.
Their mom retrieved them Sunday before church. With the trip to MI last weekend, I put over
1500 miles on the car this week. It’s so
worth it. I’m lucky to be able to afford
a car that works and runs and gets good mileage.
Eli likes to take brown eggs to his mom and today he nearly
dropped about 20 eggs when the plastic bag tore as he was carrying it out the
door. Good save, Eli. For the first half day when he comes to
visit, he is a lot of swagger and bravado—telling us in cryptic streetspeak
what he does on the court. Mystery,
bravery, machismo is all that comes through, and all that’s meant to. The words are unintelligible. When he leaves, he is much calmer, attentive,
easy.
We get time to talk in the car, especially when it’s just
one-on-one. Eli told me on the way to
the hardware store that when I talk about building the coop it to him what it
must be like for me when he speaks his sports language. It was an important insight. He talks easily and well, confident but shy
of cocky. He knows his place,
ultimately, and the bravado is a posture, something he (mostly) understands.
I wish I could remember everything! The banter, the sentences, the gestures, the discourse back and forth. So little remains already: the way the man in
the hardware store handed down the long electrical galvanized tubing to Eli to
grab, and the way he was proud to be someone strong and big enough to receive it; the way Joe and
Eli are fascinated by the old wedding picture of Aunt Mary and Uncle Jerry
where Bobby at 40 looks like me now, and my own visage at 12 looks much like
Eli now. There is a certain consistency
in that that everyone is eager to perceive and understand. I remember Eli calling me over yesterday and
saying, “Yo, Dad, comere and see this,” pointing at the ground at something
noteworthy, and me going over, but I can’t remember what it was. It was beautiful to him, but what was
it?
…and in the background of this all is my parents moving into
the house in Little Rock, where they will sometime cease being my parents and
it won’t change a thing, the kids will keep growing up and going off to their
battles like waves of grass or seasons and it seems to me that all you can do
is try to talk about it without sentimentality or inattention, to accept it and
move toward it since any direction you take you are always already walking
closer regardless.
This feeling, this loss or nostalgia or keening – it’s been
with me all my life. Neither “regretting the past nor shutting the door on it" seems like a tall order.
That’s all for now. I
soon have to go to a meeting.
Here is what the dog Thor look like right now.
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