The door was open and my hands were full. I was walking out when they came in. It was the kid next door and she had her arms wrapped around her friend. She was looking at me. He was looking at nothing. I was looking at the blood.
"Can you help us?" she asked.
My hands were empty already.
He had been bit by a dog. The same neighborhood dog that attacked someone's pet last week. The same neighborhood dog that killed a grown deer against the chain-link fence of the playground on the corner.
Or maybe it was the other one. There are two peas in this pod. They are pack mentality and they roam freely. Their pee is everywhere.
It had been an accident. It wasn't an attack. It was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn't matter.
It is only a matter of time until it happens again.
They lick my children and bark at my mailman. They are tethered to rocks and they are happy to see me. I do not fear them. I do not hate them. I do not trust them.
My children, who have been around dogs their whole life, have been instructed that they are not to go near the two without an adult present. They are not to run when the dogs are loose. I encourage them to smell their toys before playing with them.
The dogs need more supervision and training. They need to be neutered.
People that worry themselves over the rocketing population of unwanted pets are only telling you part of the reason- the dead deer on the playground? That's the rest of the equation.
Testosterone can make a guy do funny stuff, even bite the hand that feeds him. Apparently.
We cleaned his wounds and dressed them accordingly. He slept in our living room and she sat next to him, rubbing his feet between bites of pizza.
The dogs were in the distance, which was too close for me.
We had been living the life transient and the pending move was wearing upon us all like the light at a tunnel's end that still required days of digging. We were sore and exhausted and our patience had long been packed.
Atticus worried, he fretted and he frowned. His was not a world to be upturned for the sake of flight or fancy. His was a world created by him and was lived to the extent that he found happiness in it. The move loomed upon him and rested heavily across his brow. His light lay at the entrance of said tunnel.
So it was that we decided to have his birthday party a couple of weeks early- before we left California. He needed to have his friends gather around him and wish him well. He needed the fun of a party filled with children he knew and not fear the possibility of empty chairs or faceless strangers.
He wanted all of this with a Star Wars theme.
And I added a little something that would have his name become the stuff of legend in classrooms and playgrounds:
We gave him a party and we created a memory nearly tangible. He shared it with his friends like so much cake.
There was a moment when I gathered the children around to weave them a tale of suspense and intrigue. I usually do this at parties.
I explained that due to our Star Wars theme there had been reports of Empire activity in the outer-limits of our drive. I nodded to their dry, beer-drinking parents and informed their little ears that all of the adults had pooled their money and hired a bounty hunter (when in truth none of those cheap bastards chipped in), one Jengo Fett to be exact, to hunt down the threat in our midst. To hunt down Darth Vader.
The kids ate that shit up.
I had them chanting, "Jengo! Jengo! Jengo..." when suddenly- he appeared!
Jango Fett emerged from the deepest reaches of my garage space and he walked stoically among the stupefied masses, one hand on his weapon and the other behind his back.
A hush fell over the children, a relative hush, and Jengo took his hand from behind him and he raised it over their frozen faces and they screamed as they realized that within his clutch was the head of Darth Vader.
Really. We did that. The kids loved it. The screams were joy and squeals and the promise of candy, which is something I didn't know about Darth Vader. His head is apparently stuffed with Laffy Taffy. That's probably the good within him that Luke was always whining about.
The party was a success and the children were happy and the parents were content that theirs was not an afternoon wasted, but rather an opportunity to drink free beer in the shade while their kids got sunburned and had the snot scared out of them. And it was good.
The only unfortunate aspect of the whole afternoon was that my good friend Joe missed Jango Fett, of whom he is a big fan. It was uncanny, really. Joe had just gone to the bodega to grab some salt and pencils when Jango arrived and then returned only moments after Jango left. Apparently it wasn't meant to be. The force works in mysterious ways.
There was a week left in California between the party and the move and it was filled with stress, long nights and backs that were tender to the touch, but the light grew all the closer and the tunnel? It echoed with the laughter of happy children.
I landed in Seattle at 10:30 on Sunday morning. It was Atticus' 6th birthday. I had been up since 4:30 and slept little on the plane. I hadn't had any coffee.
24 hours earlier I had been holding the hand of my aunt on one side and my sister on the other. I stared at crosses and through a window and into the eyes of my father at the podium, alone and crying. His pain was loss and loneliness.
My grandfather was behind me. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't look at anyone, but especially not him. Swimming in a sea of heartache is for country songs and bad poetry. There is no comfort there.
My grandfather was behind me and his pain was loss and loneliness.
24 hours earlier I had been drinking terrible coffee on a plane somewhere over someone else drinking coffee, hopefully better. I had been up since 4:30 and slept little the night before. I hadn't eaten anything.
Arizona in June is helpless and hopeless. It is hell with less trees. The earth peels in every direction and the wind slaps you with lies and hot air. There is no comfort there.
It is hotter in the sadness.
I landed in Seattle at 10:30 on Sunday morning. It was Atticus' 6th birthday. I hugged him and his brother and asked if he was ready to celebrate.
We arrived 3 hours early for a three hour flight. My mother would be proud. We ate oatmeal and pastries in a room that was equal parts Starbucks, pizza place and bar. It was almost early enough to drink. It would be his first flight. The kid was excited.
Somewhere in a car on a mountain my wife was driving with a sleeping boy and every pet we have. She was making good time.
My thoughts were lost in the day before. My father had called on Friday morning, the day before our move. He said she had about 24 hours left. That was what the doctor had said. The day before the doctor had said about 3 weeks.
40 minutes later she was dead.
She had only been sick a few months.
Cancer is cruel and heartless and someone should punch it in the mouth.
When she was first admitted to the hospital I had flown down to see her. She hadn't expected me. My presence in the doorway made her cry. She held my hand for a good hour. It felt like a time machine.
I haven't been that young in a long time.
Tomorrow I'll arrive at the airport about 45 minutes before my three hour flight. I will take a seat at the bar and I will drink a Bloody Mary minutes after I have eaten my breakfast. I will arrive in the place I left some 10 years ago. Again. I will sit with family and people I've never met and I will hear stories about my grandmother and I will nod at strangers and hug people that haven't seen me since I was this tall.
I will be a little boy without a grandma and I will cry accordingly.
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If you've been reading this blog over the past several months you know about my grandmother and her battle with cancer. Thank you for reading and for your thoughts and support.Wynema Honea was 80-years-old and I have loved her for nearly half of them.
So a long time ago I told the good people at Chick Chat that I would participate in a video segment featuring the dads of teh internetz (is that how they write that?), and then I forgot about it.
Then I loaded up all of my belongings into a shipping container and sent them to another state. My belongings include my video camera and lamps.
Then I had the week from hell. There is much stress in me. We're moving in a few days. We decided to sell the house rather than rent it sometime last week. Today we met with the Realtor. We've got a lot of shit to do.
Then my grandmother started the painful, downhill slide into losing her battle with cancer. She's not expected to survive the week.
That's why my video sucks. It's dark and grainy and I'm guessing a little cruder than the people at Chick Chat were hoping for. Sorry about that.
You'll also notice that my video does not have any fancy edits or credits or a soundtrack of any kind. That is because I suddenly had an hour less than I thought, thanks to someone explaining to me that there really is a Central time zone. Also, there's a really goofy-looking guy blocking the nice blue wall.
Who knew?
That said, here's my contribution, and despite the fact that you'll surely hate it, I had fun.
Holy crap, I just realized that this thing is over 9 minutes long - and apparently the sound was dubbed later. That's the kind of awesome I bring to the table.
Once again the state of California has proven that its label of liberal is nothing more than window-dressing and urban legend.
or It's the damn Mormons, don't you watch South Park?
There are fingers and there are pointers, and excuses are thrown against walls and heads are smashed in alleys lined with blood and bottles sharp with anger and stupidity.
It's not about politics. It's not about religion. It's about doing the right thing. You'll hear people say otherwise and they are wrong. There are few things in life less grey. This is black and white. This is right versus something far from it.
Freedom for all should not be contingent upon the fears of the some. Glass ceilings are meant to be shattered. Dreams are meant to inspire and mountain tops only remain unreachable to those without the will to see beyond the rocks that fill their mind.
Love is not unconstitutional. Civil rights are not wrong. Families are not supposed to be broken. Nobody gets left behind.
Isn't there enough hate in this world?
Will my children grow up in a world where love grows hungry, left to starve in open closets while government rations are thrown into the masses, kept straight and narrow by the sight-line of their blinders?
Do we need to paste the words of Gibran and Lennon on every street corner? Should the ebb and flow of Neruda's heartstrings be our ringtone? Must a Browning be tattooed upon every shoulder to whisper a constant song of poetry across the stream of our conscience?
Even Foreigner must know what love is by now, and it is not what passes for law in the state of California.
There will be those that disagree, which is their right. They will fill comments and message boards trying to justify the unjustifiable and their every word will prove us right. They will waste both time and space with letters to the editor, pungent with blunt ignorance and the pocketed scent of posies.
We all fall down, but only some of us will have rings on our fingers.
Driving through Salinas, CA is like driving through a memory - assuming your memories include the collected works of John Steinbeck, which mine do. It is a trip through prose and the scenery springs to life from so many paragraphs.
So it was that Tricia and I stopped at the Steinbeck museum and upon leaving I purchased the classic Of Mice and Men. Tricia had never read it. It became our narrative - an audio book without the tape and an aroma reminiscent of a French Dip sandwich and a couple of beers.
I read as she drove that lonely highway with the sun burning bright and the pages dancing all around.
I told her about the rabbits.
There is a murder in my yard. A murder of crows. Alfred Hitchcock is sitting on the bench under the mulberry tree and he is tossing them bread crumbs and forgotten lines.
They are loud and they have us surrounded. They talk and gargle and sing and yell and the sound of their wings echoes through our now empty home like the pending arrival of helicopters promising napalm in the morning. They are black birds and they sing in the dead of night.
Our house is bare but for the random can in the cupboard and assorted condiments in the icebox. We have two weeks left before we walk away forever and it will be spent on hardwood floors covered in quilts and children.
Our beds are gone. Our TV is packed. Our chairs are broken laundry baskets and forgotten boxes. Our clothes are on repeat.
We have been working hard. We get up early and stay up late. There is heavy lifting and dirt and sweat. We work until our backs cannot and then we lie upon a pallet of discarded blankets and the give of oak.
It is Salinas in a memory. It is broken wings and all my life.
If you've ever read this blog, or any blog written by a parent, you would know that some things are understood- things like sleep is a myth and all restrooms are public.
We didn't sleep last night. Granted, we never sleep. Our bed is too small for the ark that Jacob said to build upon it (see below) and a good rest is seldom had.
Yes, we co-sleep. I don't care what you think. Unless you're okay with it, then by all means think away. Our decision to do so is based loosely on the fact that we sold the kids' beds on Craigslist. It's a recession, people.
Plus, the move and all that. They'll have beds soon, put the phone down.
Anyway, last night there was little sleep had by anyone with a pillow (see above). It was a night of cries, screams and whimpering. Yes, whimpering. And whining.
Thing Two (top center) has been sickish for a few days. We assumed it to be allergies. The air here is disgusting and everyone is coughing, itching and feeling like crap. We figured that was the case with Thing Two, or possibly Swine Flu.
About, oh, 4am, he declared that his ears hurt. Not one ear, but ears. Then he continued to cry, scream and whimper, without even missing a beat. The kid has talent. Eat that Susan Boyle.
Six in the morning found me and the boy in Urgent Care. Double ear infections. Antibiotics. A donut. A nap.
Now he's sitting at my feet eating ice cream and whimpering noticeably softer. And I am more tired for it.
