the snail and the leaf, a parable

nothing happened. the snail made its way slowly across the sidewalk, ignoring the leaf i had placed in its way, and leaving behind it its silvery trail of slime. there are times in the late afternoon when the sun is just so in the sky that the sidewalks shimmer with snail’s trails, beautiful silvery ribbons of goo with little breaks every few inches where the snail has pulled up and off the sidewalk in order to move itself forward. at night they congregate in a mosh pit of snail love, all one upon the other; if you’re very still you can hear henry rollins and black flag just before he throws himself shirtless off the stage into the arms of his raving fans [although that may be my memory of seeing them perform at the mud club in chicago in 198_, but whatever. --author]

mothers and sons (place and time)

this is how i like to remember my mother, the time when i was most in love with her, when i did not know that i would become a stranger to her in just a couple of years (the pupal stage on the path to adulthood, the destruction of the past in order to become the future–you did know that ‘pupa’ is latin for ‘doll’–confirmation that this time is a special one.) it is the time when boys are closest to their mothers; they’re growing up, but they’re still a child. a balance between one, being a man and the other, a child, that only occurs this one time in their lives and it is the time that i cherish the most.

i’ve always felt that this period coincided with the second flowering of my mother’s beauty, the other time being in her late teens, so long ago that i don’t think she believed it had happened, if she did she would  have never admitted it, at least not out loud. she was modest about her beauty, although i would catch her sometimes pushing her hair up off her neck in the way women do when assessing their looks, judging the length of their neck and how it delicately holds their head, just so.

when i remember my mother during these few years before our estrangement (this break did not dim our love for one another, but it did shift the balance of power ever so slightly; i would find her looking at me as if i were an alien, the look accompanied — or perhaps tempered by — a sense of wonder at the mysteries of raising a child and perhaps those teen years are exactly that: your child becomes a stranger living in your house, you, the parent, of course, still love them, but it takes more energy, perhaps even a more thoughtful approach to navigate and guide your charge), i see her tall and thin; i had definite ideas about how she should dress, or what clothes she possessed that were my favorite. she was kind enough to ask my opinion as if it mattered to her.

at this particular moment, she’s wearing what i considered the look that most resembled her character, how i felt about her and what she meant to me at that time. it was a cowgirl/ranch wife-typical-day-on-the-spread-outfit (barbara stanwyck in ‘the big valley’ on tv): white shirt with pearl buttons and french cuffs, with her beautiful navajo turquoise, coral, and silver thunderhead pin positioned just below her throat (the part that men like to kiss and little boys like to lay their heads against. women must like how that feels otherwise why would they advertise its availability so often?) with gabardine slacks, the front pockets cut square, a leather belt with a silver tip, and boots.

she walked differently when she was dressed this way, it was more confident, less feminine, not that she lost her ability to flirt when she wore these clothes, but i know that she felt more on equal footing with men when she did. as her boy-child i had no choice but to admire (perhaps emulate) this change in her character based on what she was wearing; a lesson you might be inclined to store for future use. it is what learning is all about, is it not? the ability to process and consume information for its possible future use, use that comes naturally, sometimes even as a surprise, “how did i know that?” you might even ask yourself ten, twenty years later.

sometimes it was hard for me to share her. clouds would storm my face when someone would get between us, these shadows of emotions flying low over the prairie-colored face of a spoiled child so quickly and so harshly i often lost my breath, my balance, my mind. my mercurial nature embarrassed me, but it seemed, at the time, that it was something i had no control over and perhaps i might not have wanted to have control over it–that lack of control was a knife that i could wield with surgeon-like precision, not that it was premeditated, i don’t believe i would have thought to be that manipulative, but the results usually benefited me in some way, enough to make my tongue hang out in anticipation of the bell, pavlov.

this time and place then; we are at the stratobowl, outside of rapid city. the date tells me that mary is still living with us, but i’m not sure that mary is taking this photograph. it’s not that there weren’t many happy times with mary; we’re often photographed in full-throated laughter, mouths open, teeth showing, the sheen of pleasure sparkling in our eyes during the years she and my mother lived together. as serious as mary was about preparing for life, or what life might throw at you, she also was a prankster, her honking laugh one i still hear (should i stop and listen for it.) but it’s just as likely that it was just me and my mother alone, having asked a stranger to take our picture with our little brownie box camera, a certain freedom allowed in front of someone you may never meet again.

“shall we go for a drive?” my mother would ask after sunday dinner (the one day of the week we had our ‘big’ meal at midday, a habit that her mother and step-father always observed every day of the week, a light supper served later in the evening). and we’d pile into the car and head out into the hills with no destination in mind. oh someone might say, “let’s go out old highway 16 up to the lake and back,” or “we haven’t been down to hermosa lately, let’s go see what’s doing down there.” these excursions a time for talking about school, friends, family, or nothing at all, just a time to be together without having a responsibility to anyone but ourselves. it is the blessing of being an only child of a single parent.

i did not know that i had already used up one third of my time with my mother in 1962. what child at that age considers the future? it is too large to comprehend and the past is too small to bear its weight. it is enough to manage your now; it may be the one time in your life when you are living in the moment. (there is, of course, that nasty thing called “learning the lesson that your actions have consequences” which becomes a more frequent refrain at this point in your life, only because you are beginning to have just the slightest interest in the future as it applies to your comfort. ) and so this moment is now, when a mother and her son shared their love for each other and stopped it forever with a photograph.

notes on the discovery of my baby shoes & a letter written by my mother

i’m one of the lucky ones. i could have said, “i guess i’m one of the lucky ones”, but guessing has nothing to do with it. when a statement is preceded by “i guess” it implies inevitability, resignation, a sense of fait accompli, fate; as if the other party, the one that changed your luck, your hand suddenly full of aces, had nothing to do with your happiness, existence, being. so, no, i was right to not write “i guess” — a qualifier — in front of “i’m one of the lucky ones.

but i am one of the lucky ones. when you read the letter my mother wrote to my father’s sister on the occasion of the birth of her third daughter (nine months my junior), you’ll begin to understand how parents, proud as they are of their accomplishment, still only consider the one outcome: their child will be just like them. there will be no variation from the script, no ad lib, no scat, no flourish, no extra color, you will be just like them. at that young age, they are already defining the roles they naturally assume you’ll play (acting not yet your thing.)

what happens then when, one day–let’s say when you’re five or six, eight or nine, twelve or thirteen–the sudden realization hits them, you are not quite fitting the mold they had prepared themselves for you to fit into? they most likely will set this discovery aside, for who could think such a thing of a young child? they’ll adopt a wait-and-see attitude, their minds racing back to the beginning of your time; what signs did they miss, what roadside attractions did they drive right by with you sitting in the seat next to them? “impossible,” they’ll tell themselves; “this is just a phase,” they’ll reason; “why, there’s just no way that this difference could be true,” they’ll whisper to themselves as they turn their steely-blue gaze in your direction as you sit at the piano practicing your scales.

you, on the other hand, will continue on your way, blithely ignoring the scrutiny suddenly directed at your every move, thought, consideration; you might even think “what’s up with them?” in the most abstract of ways, “parents” you’ll harrumph should you be of an age to harrumph, and shut your bedroom door to read by the open window this one summer, the smell of honeysuckle and the click-clacking of cicadas your balm against the abrasion of their fear (should it manifest itself in the sudden “let’s go hunting!” or “it’s time you learned how to change the oil in the car!” or “you’ll need to dig 50 post holes for the new fence we’re putting up [around your life] the backyard.”)

i was one of the lucky ones. for, in spite of every attempt to ‘make me a normal boy’ — all of which failed, btw — my difference was never a topic of discussion between my mother and i.  regardless of the drama of being a gay child in a straight world and there is a lot of drama, i knew i was loved and that made all the difference. parents are you listening? it’s such a simple idea, you’ll be surprised you hadn’t thought of it sooner. i never felt i had to ‘come out’ to my mother and i never said the words, “i’m gay” to her. and for her part in this existential little stage play (so much waiting, so little arriving), she never asked, she never pushed, well, okay, maybe once or twice she might have said, “do you have a special girl?” or “i’d like to have grandchildren one day”, but it was always done with such a light touch of amusement, that i never considered it a disappointment to her when i replied, “no, i’m lucky just to have you.”

Würzburg, 16 Nov.

Dear June & 1,2,3,4.

It’s early in the morning. & I must go to commissary so will dash this off so I can mail it. We were so glad to hear you finally had a big baby girl. Of course, we were all for a boy, but girls are so sweet & nice. Butchie is sweet, but he’s so masculine. Right now he’s feeling pretty sorry for himself–he has a terrible cold–it’s loose–thank Heaven–but his nose runs & I know he feels miserable. He has 5 teeth & is trying to get more & of course that makes him fussy. He is so big he’s a handful to care for. I’m going to call the Dr. & see if he wants to see him or if there is something I can do more for him here at home.

Got a lovely big package from Mom the other day. All the little packages are wrapped so pretty & look so Christmasy. Seems like I can’t get the spirit until her package comes, but she sends it so early it’s an awful strain to have those mysterious packages around so long & not be able to peek.

Lee finally got home from school — he was gone 5 weeks & only home once in that time. It seemed like years. He is going back for advanced training but I’m praying today that he can’t go ’till January. ‘Today is the day he’ll find out for sure. He left me the car today so I can finish my shopping & get my packages off. I know 15th was supposed to be the deadline, but I never can quite make it. Surely hope you don’t feel you have to dash around & work yourself into a fit to send us a box–after all you’ve just had a new baby & if you just send Best Wishes we’ll understand & be perfectly happy. We’re not putting out much this year–even one baby is added expense–don’t know what we’d do with 3.

My little guy just messed his pants so had better stop & get him cleaned up & my house looks like a cyclone struck it–it always does on Mon. morn.

We have a parakeet who chirps loud & long & Robert Lee sits 10 minutes at a time & shakes his head at him. It’s funny.

                                                         Love to you all–send pictures & data–name, etc.

                                                                                                     Evelyn & family.

sir gawain, the green knight, and other dreams of the dead

they were smiling at me, so close i thought i could reach out and touch them. their love emanating from their smiles in visible waves of air (a distortion of my psyche); i ached for it to be true, although i knew that it was only a dream and that they were long gone from my life and this reality. i like it when they come to visit, but i always wonder what they want when they do. what can it mean when they seem so alive, but i know that they are dead?

sir gawain and his pursuit of the green knight came to my consciousness without warning or prompting, they were just there last night at around 9:17 pm pst. it wasn’t an unpleasant visit, even though it has been more than 4_ years (yes, that is a 4 in front of that underscore, it is there because memory is like that) since i had met them. all things camelot were the rage, we were all reading t.h. white’s “the once and future king.” why i do not know. i liked gawain, his honor, his fears, his duplicity, and his redemption. its alliterative verse underscoring (in a john williams movie score kind-of-way) the valor and the grandeur of the court of arthur. did my thoughts of gawain prompt the visit this morning, just before waking, of my smiling, lovely friends? i do not know, but today i believe i will let them accompany me, their love my knight-in-shining-armor.

p.s. my interview at artist career training is up.

disappointing dad

if, as freud believes, that only in our minds can the past and the present coexist, that there is no true forgetting, that every experience leaves a discoverable trace, that every memory of another person is partly a self-portrait (shredded as it may be by time, trauma, love), then this is how i want to remember my father: smelling of gasoline, cut grass and the sweat of a humid summer afternoon in springfield; happy, proud, and with a  loving smile, maybe even a little goofy as he is, having conquered the lawn, his army-booted foot atop the spoils of the grass wars, triumphant, a souvenir of his prowess, skill, masculinity.  (even the lawnmower is in on the fantasy, grinning as it is with its grill of metal teeth from rubber-tired ear to rubber-tired ear.)

this memory is wish-fulfillment at its worst and an outright lie at its best.   the few memories of my father that i have been able to dredge up from my childhood that are not based on photographs or what other people have told me over the years (at least the few years when i was interested enough to ask about him) are pleasing, warm, loving.  but there is always the undercurrent of anger, abandonment, violence (supplied as it is by the adults refusal to discuss his goodness, the goodness that you can see for yourself in the photo.  it is the image of man who loves someone, is it not?  as a child, life is not seen in the grays that adults do, it is always black & white, good or bad.)

would his nurturing, such as it might have been, changed my nature?  it’s not easy to imagine the difference his presence in my life may have had on the person that i am or that i was.  i have to believe that there would have been friction as my nature exerted itself even as my desire to emulate him smothered my instincts, my sense of identity, my not being his idea of what a son should be.

his father loved me.   as gentle a soul, as patient as job, generous, understanding, complicit in the life of the grandchildren around him, and from the photographic memories left for me to divine, the same with his own son.  why then, i have to ask, was my own father’s influence denied me?  what about him went wrong?  and here, now, it comes to mind: could my mother have been wrong?  although that seems doubtful based on the reports from the field…particularly after his return from vietnam…but even before then, he exhibited a dark side — discussed here — that seems to indicate she was not.

of course, it’s all “what if?”  what if we had had a relationship, in spite of the divorce?  what if summers had been spent with dad?  what if he had sent me a card congratulating me on good grades or some other achievement?  what if we had gone fishing, hunting or he had taught me car maintenance/repair (although mary was a fine substitute for some of these steps on the ladder to manhood)?

is it my failure as a writer that i cannot even imagine how his influence may have affected my life?  men were such foreign objects to me when i was growing up (inclusive of uncles and grandfathers, they were all too removed, either emotionally or geographically to have had any measurable impact) that trying to fathom their contribution to the life learning education of a child seems too fantastical to consider.  i look now at friends and co-workers who are fathers and i can clearly see the what and the how, the character stamp, the moral guidance, the humor, the sadness, the triumph and the failure of their influence on their children.  (some more successful than others, some got it right sooner, no need to practice on the first child and succeed with second where they failed with the first.)

and then there’s this:  i know no father of a gay child.   how easy would it be to accept that difference as a man, a father?  does having a gay child kill your dreams of a legacy, a future, a future where you exist as part of another human being?  your quest for immortality snuffed out by a chromosome.   oh yes, i know you’re reading this, you liberals, you enlightened ones, and thinking, “it would matter not, hetero- or homo-sexual, i would love them equally the same.”  but i challenge you to dig deep and not find that little bit of regret that is hanging around like a cough that you just can’t squelch.  (“ahem,” he interjected.)

i would never have looked as eager to be camping with a bunch of strange boys as my father does in this photo.  my social awkwardness with heterosexual men at that age (let’s say he’s 12 or 13) was a disability and immediately hung a big fat sign around my neck that read, “not like you”.

oh, i know you’re out there, the gay boys and men who fit as naturally into the hetero world as if there were no difference (or you’ve convinced yourself that you do), but there are many of us who never felt that way growing up.   adult life experience does change you, obviously.   i do believe i can hold my own in a group of straight men, but i still lack the knowledge of the secret handshake, the code words, the key that opens the door to “hey buddy, wassup?” said in all earnestness, care and brotherly love.

the disappointment then.  there is plenty of it.  i never called him ‘dad’.  if i called him anything as a child, it was probably some derivative of poppa.  the only opportunity that i had to address him as an adult, we settled on lee, his christian name and that only came haltingly from my lips; i avoided calling him by name, if i needed his attention i waited until he was looking at me.  we spoke hardly at all, the uncomfortableness of being in each other’s company a shroud, a winding sheet.  he tried then, during that short period of time, to exert his influence over me, but i ignored it and did as i pleased without a comment from him.  and then i left and he left and we left it at that.

it makes me cry.  i don’t feel cheated, i’m not angry,  i received a huge gift of love from my mother, my grandmothers, from mary and from my mother’s last husband, roy.  i am not advocating for the traditional family; i think children can be raised to be loving, caring, contributing members of society by single mothers, fathers, gay couples and any other permutation of ‘family’ as long as there is love in their hearts,  but i do feel the loss of the “what if i’d had a dad?” for good or for bad, however it may have played out.

29 days (how do you know when you’re in love?)

late in october 1982

here i am now, at the middle again, although this time i’ve slipped quietly into the future side of the middle of the story even though i am still looking backward.   i’m holding my breath, sleekly gliding under the surface of memory, the imperceptible movement beginning at the hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, arch, heel, toe, propelling me forward (a shudder, a spasm), the noise of the outside world muffled by the time above and the depths below; i’d dived in from the river bank unnoticed as you passed by on your raft, a hand dangling, your rudder;  my eyes closed at first, but now open, the distortion of viewing life filtered through the cleansing waters of time causing not the slightest disturbance on the surface.  if you’re looking down into this story, all you’ll see is the slick shadow of my passing, the light glinting off my skin, hair, bone, a trout among the river rock and shadow.

i close my eyes again, the water streaming through the hair on my head, flattening my eyelashes, rippling through my mustache and over the stubble on my chin, across in a caress of the hair on my chest, slowing down and tugging gently at my swim trunks, their soft pink color in contrast to the tan of my legs and the golden hair glimmering in the palm-diffused sunlight.   i don’t even think i’m holding my breath any longer, the pool too short to drown in, the first time in months that i’ve not been afraid to breath and surely not ready to surface yet, i flip around and push off from the stucco, a torpedo with my arms at my sides, as aerodynamic (if you’re in the water, shouldn’t it be aquadynamic?), the parentheses a breath at the surface, and sleek as an otter, a seal, sade murmuring from the poolside speakers, the throb of music like the blood in your temple, chest, groin.

how do you know when you’re in love?  it’s the question you ask your mother/father (whichever is available) when you’re a teenager.  you look closely at them as they answer, divining the truth from the arch of their brow, the tremor in their voice as they search for a long ago feeling that they can communicate to you, the smile on their lips as they remember their first love, “you’ll just know,” they say,  but what if you never asked that question?   what if you never fell in love as a teenager because you were afraid to expose yourself, your secret loves locked away, buried treasure, you the count of monte cristo, blackbeard; the call of the wild thrumming inside your head, your lovelife (a fiction, but as valid as the truth.)

as it turns out, “you’ll just know” is as perfect an answer as there ever was.

late in may 1982

death does you no favors.  when my mother died on the 23rd, my friends and i were yet unaccustomed to what was required, i am so sorry to hear about your mother.  i was so sorry to hear about your mother.  i am so sorry to hear about your mother. i was so sorry to hear about your mother, from the present tense to the past tense, she was a wonderful woman.  she is a wonderful woman, what is correct?  at the news, should you consider it a past event (which it is), but for the person whose mother has died, it is still a present event, ongoing, without end, but not occurring in the future, what to do then?

to ignore it risks offending the bereaved, but talking about it is uncomfortable and requires, at this stage of your life, skills that may be beyond your capabilities (haven’t we all gotten much, much better at this now?  just a few years later we were able to negotiate the rocky shoals of death of close friends taking the hands of their lovers, parents, sisters, brothers, stroking an arm, looking them in the eye, smiling in understanding of their grief.  after all, it was not unlike your own.)  but before then, experience lacking, my friends were worthless to me.  they could not understand my grief or if they did they did not have the words to express it–not that i would have heard them, my hearing impaired by the loss.  (it was as if all sound had been blocked by cotton stuffed in my ear canals. it remained so for weeks.)

two nights after her funeral, back in the city, i could not sit alone in my apartment and instead of turning to my friends, i forced myself upon two men whom i’d met a couple of weeks earlier.  i walked over to their apartment and insisted that they love me.  they did their awkward best to calm me; we smoked a joint, we drank a few beers, they touched me, stroked me, undressed me, swallowed me, ate me (little bites of nipples, armpits, necks, ears, thighs, balls and cock) grabbed me by the hair, a push-me pull-you of sweating, groaning, release.  they fell asleep on either side of me, a hairy arm thrown over my chest, the scratch of leg hair, a puppy pile.   but i could not sleep and quietly extracted myself, dressed and slipped back into the night.  i never saw them again or if i did i never recognized them nor they me.   i never thanked them for their hospitality, the love, a poultice, with which they tried to heal me (if they even knew what was ailing me.)

i went to work, hungover, distracted, anxious to be done with the day(s) so that i could start the night(s) all over again.  everything accomplished in daylight was by rote (lessons learned) without enthusiasm, shell-shocked by the hole of loss (an echoing cave), all of this time erased, wiped away, unremembered, eager to leave, cocktails on the way home, drunk and out again in the dark (do you see a pattern here?) once, during these 29 days i thought i’d fallen in love, spending hours of my night life and days off in his bed, the noise of the street coming through the open window, but i gave him up for you.

late in june 1982

“how do you know when you’re in love?” was not the question i was asking myself one early evening during cocktail hour at a halsted street preppie dive.  i’d displayed myself on a stool, ragged levis pulled tight against my spread legs, elbows propping myself up on the bar, leaning back, sucking on a bottle of beer or holding it against my crotch (subtlety not my strong suit) in a display of abject wantonness, still on this course of self-immolation, the fuse lit, doused in alcohol, ready to go up in flames without a thought of self-preservation; the future inconsequential, non-existent, illusory, a mirage.

but there you were, all business suit, vest, tie, beard, drink in hand, standing across from me and then standing between my legs, touching each other (was there a kiss?) and i thought i’d hooked you, but you slipped away, a card pushed in my pocket, “call me,” and out the door, gone.  if i’d lost in the past 22 days i didn’t recall, but losing you that night propelled me out of the bar, walking home in the late spring warmth, west on diversey to my apartment where i may have seen it for the first time with my eyes open and my head clear.  i did call you, we made a date for dinner a week later (29 days) and met cute (it does happen) at my friend’s restaurant.

we’ve told this story often enough, but it still charms me…my friend, the owner’s wife, sits down with us and acts as if we’ve known each other forever, including you in our stories as if you knew them already, acting as if our past had been completely reconciled with our future.  did she know even before we did?  or was it already apparent and only the participants were blind/deaf/dumb to the fact that we had fallen in love, always the last to know?

you just know.

“x”mas marks the spot

at least the dining table looks like christmas even if the rest of the house does not; what with the cards we’ve received in a bowl (the ceramic sleigh we usually bring out for that purpose still stored away), gift wrap, tissue paper, ribbons, half-wrapped boxes, re-gifting as necessary (btw, got my christmas present early this year, $715.00 car repair, thank you swedish-asian auto service!), greeting cards in their boxes awaiting addressing and note-writing–you did notice that today’s date is the 23rd, didn’t you?  we are seriously behind on this whole “celebration/holiday/giving thanks/hosanna/lamb of god mewling in the manger-thing”.

and i’ve been particularly reluctant to get going on it.  now mind you, it’s not that i don’t love all of my friends and what family is left (and of course, i do have all of m.’s extended family that i absolutely adore–if they’re reading this, anyway), but that sense of wonder of the season has just not arrived with little reindeer hooves on the roof of my soul this year.  for a moment yesterday, when i was being driven from work to the auto service place-a-ma-bob and was chatting with  armando, their go-fer, about christmas and his little two-and-a-half-year old daughter who loves the lights and has figured out what presents are hers under the tree already–to hear his voice soften with love as he told me about her joy was, well, it was joyful.  for the moment.

but back at home later that evening, even with the loving attention of our billy and joey and the sweet baritone of m. that sense of malaise (could it be ennui–the guilt of the downwardly mobile?) seemed to settle over me like the cold that i just cannot shake (3 damn weeks, enough already!)

however today dawned, as they do, the days that is, you know the sun came up, and after a night of serious contemplation and a look back at some christmases past and a lovely note from a friend this morning, well, i thought i should get over myself and wish you a merry christmas, which i will attempt to do in less words than you can shake a stick at and perhaps along the way i’ll manage to mix metaphors or over-indulge in hyperbole and other grammatical legerdemain that, like it or not, are a part of who i am (crown me with a non-sequitur of holly berries and mistletoe, which of course is not your traditional non-sequitur, but what did you expect in 2011 anyway?)

consequently and without further ado or not too much ‘do’, but maybe a bit more, it is the holidays after all and a little excess may be de rigueur when celebrating the birth of a son of a god–even zeus would agree, although by now zeus may be a bit of a stretch for you traditionalists–but regardless of whose god you may celebrate, the holiday is about love and friendship and i am prepared, yea, verily, i am ready to distribute my love and extend my hand in friendship to all who cross my path today, who may have done the same yesterday, and to those who may come tomorrow.  i love you.  i really do.

the subject was a rose (a conversation among friends of this blog’s author)

“oh, there he goes again,” declares one, “another fricking photograph of some rose he can’t even identify properly–stuck right into our noses, like he wants to rub our faces in it.”

“he’s just so confrontational.”  sighs another.

“what’s to be done?” laments a third.

“well, it’s obvious we must do something.  perhaps an intervention?” suggests his _________, without crossing the _______/patient confidentiality line.

“is there a cure?  i didn’t realize that there was any help for this, this disease,” whispers his _________ eerily from the great beyond.  (yes, they’re psychic too.)

“you know, we could blame you, after all you were the one that set him on this path of self-___________,” retorted the _________.

“you have a lot of room to talk, mister, why i’ve half a mind to give you a good spanking.  except why should i give you the pleasure?” the ghost of his _______ rejoins.

“people, people, please.  let’s not turn this into a blame game,” says his most ardent admirer, “we’re here to solve the problem of his constant posting of photos of flowers–it’s really just too too much to bear; to watch him suffer so, the constant photo-taking at the slightest sight of a bloom, the time spent adjusting and manipulating the photograph afterwards, his posting of the images hither and yon; it’s all quite out of hand.”

“short of taking his camera and his phone from him what are we to do?  aren’t you afraid that he might crack if he were to quit cold turkey?  that we might not ever have our dear, dear friend robert, as we know and love him now, back again?” cried an online acquaintance who had, up ’til now, remained quiet, standing at the back of the crowd.  [author's note: the use of the word 'crowd', of course, is wish-fulfillment at its most pathetic.  mea culpa.]

“there may be nothing we can do, really,” said a more reasoned voice, “shouldn’t we just let him do as he pleases?  what harm is there in his sharing the beauty he sees around him, after all?  i think you’re all quite silly. let’s take a watch-and-wait attitude and enjoy what he gives us without questioning his motives or his sanity.”

everyone concurred, sipped their coffees, picked up their bags, and went on about their lives.

mary, mary, quite contrary

the little bible was the envelope for the two-dollar bill (issued in my birth year and signed on the reverse “mary boyle, 1963″), a present for my 10th birthday from my mother’s lover/housemate, the woman i consider the best father i ever had.  it’s been neatly folded in there ever since just as it should be.  mary pressed me to excel in school, sitting with me while i did my homework, helping me with the ‘new’ math (god save us all from ‘new’ anything), reading my history reports, correcting my grammar, instilling the desire to learn, “it’s your ticket out into the world,” she’d say, her ham-hock sized arm laid across my shoulders, buddy-to-buddy (almost to the point of passing on the secret handshake, which i’m sure she knew, she was that masculine.  also, she brylcreemed her hair, wore men’s short-sleeved shirts with the sleeve rolled up twice, the better to show off her guns.  this is a woman who would go toe-to-toe with any man, fearless in her love for me and my mother.)  she was my college-prep tutor, years before i had even considered where i’d go and by the time i did go to college, she’d been long gone from our daily lives, but not so far as to not be concerned about my academic standing (a buck an ‘a’ every year from grade school through high school.)

she taught me how to load a gun, shoot it, and how to clean it; how to change the air filter and the oil in a car and when my mother wasn’t around, she’d let me drive her motorcycle–at least to the end of the block and back.  i felt safe and scared with her, the contradiction intentional as far as i could tell and perhaps a reflection of her own life.  i can’t imagine it was easy for her, especially when she was young, but as she aged, she cared less what other people might think of her and cared more about how she lived her life.  a fine example in spite of my bitter tears of indignation when she’d dog-whistle for me (the two-fingered whistle) from our back porch and the other kids would snicker, “you let her call you like that?”  but her heart was filled with love, and in the end that’s all that really mattered.

i’d forgotten that the two-dollar bill (there’s a metaphor for you) was in the little bible and when i pulled the odds & ends out of the jewelry box–the debris from my life that i’ve shared with you this past week–it surprised me and as i sit here now at the keyboard, i must admit that my eyes filled with tears at her memory.  i was a pretty lucky kid to have had such a great dad.

relics from an archeological dig

much of my life has been spent as a memory facilitator; this is true not only professionally, but also personally.   people seek out my services; i am good at pulling and prodding, nudging and cajoling, digging and gouging, murmuring encouragement when their memory fails them and delighting in their recovery of what they felt they had lost.  sometimes i get paid for this and other times the payment is nothing more than friendship (as rich a payment as you could want.)

to keep my ability honed and at the ready, i practice on myself  in a “physician heal thyself” kind-of-way, but success can prove elusive even for someone with the training and experience that you might imagine i possess.  you see, i am my toughest client, my most unforgiving of friends.

faced with a silver wristwatch with its grosgrain strap, a pewter compass, its bow a pin, and a dried funeral carnation that had once been red and that has now, over the last 29 years, left little crunchy bits of itself in the bottom of a german marquetry pear wood jewelry box, i freeze up, inexplicably–at least to me–they have lost their meaning; the spark has gotten wet and when rubbed against time no longer ignites a fire of recall.  i’m not saying i don’t know the who, what, why, when and how of them, i’m just telling you that they are no longer evocative of those who wore them.   the carnation, even though it came from a sad, angry day (dudgeon came to mind, but i thought better of it regardless of its accuracy), holds little power over me now.

you could look at them  and think they are madeleines — and in  some ways they are objects that remind me of certain times — and yet they lack that proustian preciousness, or the ability to ignite, to provide pages and pages of memories.  yet they are three things that i cannot, nor would not, ever let slip away from me; my need to belong to a family, to be anchored in some way to the past, the past of other people’s lives, is too important, too ingrained in my being to allow their loss.

hidden as they are in the dark tomb of the wood box with layers of geologic time obscuring them until i exhume one or the other, brush them off and share them with you, arranged as the day’s finds at this particular archeological dig (in some forgotten land.)  and faint though it may be, they still have the last vestiges of love emanating from them (a geiger counter clicking faster as it nears them.)   the frayed edges, the tarnish, the delicate dryness (pages in an old library) are time stopped and considered, weighed and judged and that is enough for me.