Chancellor of the Exchequer

She knows, this blue-eyed wonder that is my progeny.  She knows because I have told her that I lost my job and I do not have much money now.  It hits home when you have to explain that there won't be as many trips to the bookstore or the zoo.

Although, it is impossible to resist that look of glee when ice cream is suggested.  I have been unable to refuse Her Royal Cuteness on that score.

For her, it is visceral on an elementary level.  Daddy hasn't enough money equals fewer books.  For me, it is visceral in that it strikes right into my gut.  Always.  My gut has always been reluctant to play nice.  In times of stress that translates into physical reactions that go beyond the typical low-grade grumble.  It is a trait I dislike about myself.  It limits my effectiveness, flexibility and on the worst days, my ability to be a cheerful human being.

This reared its head not long ago, on a sunny Saturday with my daughter.  She was with me for her regular weekend visit, and the time had come for us to runs some errands.  Foremost on my mind was a run to the bank, to deposit the next to last bits of income I may have for a while.  Grateful that I had something, my stomach was also churning, gnashing at itself as I thought of the great black void of no money into which I was about plunge headlong.  I was gathering up my papers when Wee Lass asked if we could take the change from her sheepy bank (its a sheep, not a pig) and count it.  Of course, I said yes.

Mind you, the sheep was full.  Crammed full.  So full I had begun to stack the change on the nightstand next to it.  More coins would not fit, as I had been saving all my change for her.  Every day in over the past year on which I brought home change I had placed the coins in her bank.  My idea was to set up an account for her, in which extra change and possibly allowance could be deposited.

This was to be hers, and hers alone.

We took the coins with us, and I deposited what I had into my account first.  We then went to the coin counting machine, whereupon Wee Lass took great delight in dumping and scooping all the change into the hopper.  Holy moly, there was so much change.  By the time it was done, she had racked up over two-hundred bucks.  We were ecstatic.

I told her that for now we would leave it in my account, and when I had more time, I would set up her own personal account, from the proceeds of the saved change.  I let her know that I would have to come back later to get that done.  She looked up at me.

"Daddy, you can keep it."
"Sweet pea, no, that's all yours to keep."
"It's okay, daddy, you can keep it because I know you don't have much money right now."

I knelt down right there, in the foyer of the bank.  My bottom lip was trembling and I could feel the tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.  I bit the inside of my cheeks.  I had no desire to break down in a public venue, but this was tough.

"Are you sure?  That money is yours."
"It's okay, you can give it to me later."

I hugged her, tight.  Here was this amazing kid, this sweet daughter of mine lending me money. I thought my heart was going to burst. I didn't what else to say other than to thank her and tell her that I love her.  You can bank on this: no matter what, there will always be two hundred dollars in my account.  Always.

And my heart will ever be full of love for this wonderful creature who graces me with the moniker of "Daddy".

Petals of Silver Halide

There are fragments, shards,
emulsified drifts and stacks of paper
opalescent eyes in black/white,
smile an eclipse of the sun

Across the room, not daring to sit,
his gaze an offering of loyalty
upon an altar sacrificed,
his love ambered in silver halide

Love Breaks Stone

what cracked open in you when you began (as) a father? 

The question was asked of me back in January, by a reader (hi, TaraDharma!) and it wasn't until earlier this week that I came close to having an answer.  It was a more complex question than appearances would lead one to believe.  Combine that with my propensity to ponder, and you have a response time that makes glaciers look like race cars.

Before I answer it, I have to get historical.  This is really a story of two halves.  The first half involves my twins, whom many of you know passed away shortly after birth back in 2003.  The second half involves the entrance into this world of my beautiful Wee Lass not long after.  These events are the sides of the coin.

When the twins were born I suddenly thought I knew everything there was to know of love, and I was certain it was profoundly different than everything I had experienced up to that point in life.  Such small, lovely beings, frail and imperfect yet beautiful and I wanted nothing more than to hold them and know they were mine.  Life had other designs, and I had to bury two children in less than a month.

To say I was shattered is an understatement.  Death obliterates Love in the figurative blink of an eye, and I'm left wondering what the hell it was all about.  Love made my heart swell; Grief burst it.  I had no time to think about cracking, it happened too fast.  I was broken without understanding.

Pain is a harsh teacher, but learn you will, and I was a keen student.  This explains what happened when my daughter was born, this time on time and under much better circumstances.  I was holding back up until the very last minute.  By that, I mean up until she was safely in the warmer and I was standing there about to cut the cord.  Some of you may recall I wrote about that in this post some time ago.

I realized that I still had so much to learn about love.  I felt myself filling up, a surge of primal energy flooding into every corner of my soul.  I felt it spilling over my borders, soaking the floor, rising to my knees, my neck and over my head.  I was swept away.

This led to further revelations.  I had a deeper understanding of myself and my capacity to love beyond myself.  I knew what it meant to want more for someone else than you want for yourself.  I understood that I was much more capable of love than I ever knew, and I could be again if I just let myself.

The irony of this is that it wasn't enough to save some things, while at the same time opening up other doors.

The further irony is that those doors I couldn't keep open, leaving me with memories and another broken heart.  Sometimes, I think it is more scar than heart.  Broken?  Vaporized is more like it.

So...what cracked open in me when I began as a father? 

I think the hammer against the stone, in this case, was Love.  It broke my heart wide open, scattered it in quantam bits across the universe, and then hinted that those bits would slowly find their way back to one another.  Slowly, that is, against the flood tide of love unleashed from the reservoir I never knew I had.

The river is running free, and a bit wild, but eventually all rivers want to know into what ocean they will flow...the dam is broken, and I don't want to drain away.

Mountain, Seen

One foot in front of the other, that is all. Repeat as needed to arrive.

Walking through the seasons: the naive hope of spring, purgatory of summer, bittersweet cool of fall, the numbness of winter. This divine comedy of hope and desperation repeating itself on the great wheel of the year is enough to drive one mad because of its sameness.

But the sameness is what allows survival because it is broadly predictable. Forecasts can be made, prognostications can be ginned up, because of possibilities. They don't always pan out, any one can confirm it, but so much more a Known than the Terrain that must be crossed.

Terrain. A pithy word to encompass all that stands between the Sojourner and Realization. Especially when that Realization is the manifestation of all that is desired. This desire, this object, a Kilimanjaro standing proud of the emotional savanna unfolding before eyes grown weary of the distance involved. Distance being the material manifestation of Time, an unavoidable fact of existence. So much of it...it exists in infinite quantities but only extrinsic to the human containers that enclose all these Thoughts and Feelings seeking to be realized in another outside of themselves.

So the Sojourner keeps walking. It has no choice. Buffeted by sun and rain, beset by the demons and devils of doubt and fear, what other course can be taken, other than to lay down and melt into the Terrain? To forsake everything, succumbing to the minority exhortations of an exhausted, lonely soul?

One foot in front of the other. The path remains before the Sojourner, sometimes strong and true, other times seeming invisible except for a few bent stalks of grass. To stop now, even with the validation of others knowing just how draining the Journeys really are...that is betrayal. Not to the external world, no, but to the Sojourner. 

On the horizon, the flanks of the mountain shimmer in the heat, disappear in the mist, dissolve in the rain...but always remain. Wiping the salty mud from eyes grown sore, the Sojourner keeps walking. The air up there  on the mountain is redolent of green, water runs clear and sweet and a soul can find purchase in the rich, fragrant soil of Love. The Sojourner raises a sunburned head to breathe deep of possibilities. Hints on the wind of what awaits there high in the treeline...

Sustenance. Realization. Love. For these, one foot in front of the other, to get you there.

With These Hands I Keep The Wolves At Bay

See that? That pretty yellow bowl o' goodness? That there, my friends, is a top notch Sanity Preservation Device. Yeah, yeah, I know it looks like a bowl of soup*, but it helped me maintain my mental well-being during a long, lonely weekend last. 

What's it called? you may ask. Go ahead, ask. (waiting) Well, I'm glad you asked! It is called Curried Potato & Carrot Soup. I made it all by myself, no cookbooks were harmed during the making of this meal. It was on Saturday after a fruitful day of photo taking outdoors, and I was getting hungry and tired and a little melancholy as the sun went down. I eat alone most of the time nowadays, and that leads to feral behavior and sloppy manners. Saturday night, I wasn't in the mood for that so I forced myself to be disciplined and act civilized. I reckoned a little cooking therapy might chase the wolves away, or at least distract them.

As it was, I had some leftover broth from a big batch of seafood chowder. It wasn't enough for a meal all by itself, but in combination with some chicken broth it had potential for a big pot of soup. The chowder broth was based on clam juice, water and half-and-half. Perfect for a winter night, I think. The next big idea was the potatoes. I had some big Yukon Gold 'taters in the pantry, so I cubed them up. Joining them was two carrots, cut about the same size as the potatoes. To start things off, I diced some onion small and sweated it in a pan with a little olive oil. Once they turned translucent, I sprinkled in about a teaspoon of my favorite curry blend and Oh, my! The saffron in the curry turned the oil a deep yellow with gold highlights. Man, that was beautiful!

Long story short, I sauteed the potatoes and carrots briefly with the onion-curry mix, poured in just enough water to cover, and simmered until the potatoes and carrots were almost done, about ten minutes. Then I stirred in the chowder broth, letting it heat up and blend in while I made a salad. It was such a lovely shade of yellow, I gazed at it for a while because I didn't want to disturb it.

But I was hungry. So ate it. All of it. Licked the bowl.** Verdict: It.was.excellent. The wolves fell behind a bit.

The pretty blonde you see above? That is Sanity Preservation Device #2. I woke up Sunday morning still in a bit of a funk. It was grey and raining outside. The euphoria from the curry potato and carrot soup had worn off overnight, and I was feeling wolf breath on my heels. As I lay there in the early morning light, I had it in mind that I should make some bread. I wasn't sure why, I just felt like I needed to do it. Reading a recently bought book on bread making must have been the inspiration, and I had just purchased some flour and yeast.

So even before I showered, I was in the kitchen, mixing the flour and water and salt and yeast. The first time I had made bread in nearly twenty years. As I stood there, no radio, no computer, nothing but me, the dough and my breathing...I felt lighter, calmer, steady. It felt good, like I was getting some breathing room. Over the course of the morning I let the dough rise three times, and finally popped in the oven to bake while I ate lunch. The smell alone was worth the effort. Mmm, mmm!

I had the discipline to let it cool down enough and set up, which was worth the wait. The first two slices were so good...later, I snacked on some drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper. To have with dinner, I slathered two slices with olive oil, salt, pepper and minced garlic, then broiled them to crisp. Face-on-the-table good, my friends!

So why am I blathering on about all my kitchen doings? Because making good things to eat, with my hands while listening to my intuition, pretty much saved me from a serious bout of cabin fever. The satisfaction of honest labor well spent allowed me put the wind to my heels and leave the wolves far behind.

Join me for a bowl and a slice, would you? What helps you keep the wolves at bay?

*Even though it looks a bit like chowder, it is really a bowl of soup. It has chowder in its pedigree, though.

**Not really. That's the feral behavior I mentioned. I did swab the bowl with some bread. Yum.

Moons of Jupiter, So Close...

It was G-maw that made me want to be an astronaut. Not a "Going to the moon" type astronaut, mind you, I mean a full on balls-to-the-wall (or balls-to-the-bulkhead) strapped to God's own bottle rocket, out past the orbit of the Earth around the Sun kind of astronaut. I wanted to fly to Jupiter and poke it in the Great Red Spot. All because G-maw had a telescope...

I have a telescope myself. A new one, it was a gift. I asked for it because I used to have one when I was a younger Gumbo, but that one didn't survive my jaunt to college and subsequent moves from the nest to apartments to a house. My old one was a refractor, my new one is a reflector. Appropriate, because mainly that what it does and makes me do: reflect.

Which I do. A lot. It was about two weeks ago that I came home from work under a clear sky the color of bruises and wine, to notice a big, bright dot hanging out on the southerly side. I watched it as I sidled up the sidewalk to my back door. It didn't blink and neither did I. I recalled that it must be Jupiter, and that unlocked a flood of memories. I stood on the patio, hand on the doorknob, for a good ten minutes watching that golden speck. All the while images cascaded in sheets across my mind: National Geographic, G-maw and me, freezing nights outside all mixed up with blinking lights, dim lit rooms at night and the faint beep of machines keeping my hearts alive while I frantically scribbled in a notebook.

The Voyager probes flew past Jupiter in 1979, and the pictures they sent back were mental manna to an astronomy geek like me. G-maw had a subscription to National Geographic, which had some awesome spreads of Jupiter and a few of the moons. I remember seeing the Great Red Spot (and feeling awe) and volcanoes on Io (and being freaked out: sulfur dioxide "lava"!) and thinking Man, it would be awesome to go there. I had this fantasy of flying in a space capsule, me the Heroic Traveler, and planting a flag on Io under the glare of the Red Spot. I suppose the far-away alienness of the place seemed perfect for the shy loner that I was: better with things than with people. The cold, the dark and the distance didn't bother me. It only made me want to go there even more, to see awesome beauty and wondrous things never before touched by man, maybe only by the hands of God.

I shook my head and went inside. The telescope is just inside the door. I kept glancing at as I ate dinner, and decided to take it outside and try to see the moons of Jupiter. It was while trying to focus on the little bright dot, that the mystery crept in again. I looked up to see with my eyes and not the lens, and found myself on the frozen face of Io, staring into the glare of the angry red spot while tears streamed down my face. Epithets and insults rang deafeningly inside suit helmet as I violently waved my arms and screamed that this wasn't fair and no, you can't do this, no, no, no you can't bring me this far and show me so much great beauty and tell me its mineminemine only to take it away in a violent storm of desperate nights. NONONO it can't be not after all the blood and the tears and the needles and machines, constantly pricked in the heels and tubes shoved down their throats with diapers the size of a cocktail napkin and you even let me touch them, caress their fragile skin crinkling under the glare of the jaundice lamp you let me say daddy is here, my babies and he thinks you are the most beautiful things in the Universe...

...and the bubble popped, I came back to earth with a lump in my throat and images of tiny moons in my hands, fading with a burn as the cold black well of Night drained them of their lives. I had endured a long, hard trek to a place of indescribable pain and exquisite beauty. Seeing my son and daughter there in the NICU, I planted my flag on frozen ground and watched them fade into howling wilderness of an indifferent Universe. 

Watching the little golden light slowly descend to the horizon, I could not help but think that I had indeed been to the moons of Jupiter. It was a shock and a gift, to travel so far expecting rock and ice, and instead finding flesh and blood...and my heart.

On Her Majesty's Not-So-Secret Service

"Daddy, I want to go to the park."

A brief statement, laced with the solemn gravity that only a 5 year old queen can muster. My heart, the heart of the Captain of the Guard, flutters briefly as those words charge the air. I am a fool to think I can resist.

"I want to got to the park with the green tubey slide. The big one."

I turn away from the computer, task forgotten, no hope of completing it now. The television is muttering loudly, yellow sponges and pink stars running in circles around my peripheral vision. I smile. The Queen doesn't realize that I want to go outside anyway. She just knows that the antics on the screen bore her now, time to saddle up the royal entourage and show the royal visage to the lucky subjects at the park. The geese, the dogs: they bow and scrape before her glory.

"You mean the lake? With the big playground and the tent?"

She scoffs, as if the Captain was sorely lacking in brains. Why else would he have stated something so bleeding obvious? She sighs, and giggles.

"Yes, Daddy, where else?"

I laugh, as we walk out the door to the car. So the green tubey slide it is. I buckle her in to her car seat. Hair the color of a late summer cornfield brushes my cheek as the Queen fidgets. I double check the straps. Woe betide the man who fails Her Majesty's safety!

We pull out of the parking lot and on the access road leading away from Her Weekend Palace. The Queen, oblivious to my ruminations, chatters to herself, singing a nonsensical song that might as well be the aria of an angel. I am rapt, acutely aware of my allegiances. Loyalty? Of course, don't be silly. There is no tainted loyalty here.

Stoplight. I am watching the traffic, and I idly mention going to the boat dock at the lake, maybe looking for geese or Brother Heron. Her Royal Cuteness suddenly sits bolt upright.

"Wait, daddy, I wanted to go to the park with the purple playground!"

Purple? She clearly said green tubey slide. The purple playground, so called because the paint and plastic of the slides and bars is purple, is in the opposite direction. I will not argue.

"If we go there, we won't have time to go to the lake, alright?" I say, glancing into the rear view mirror.

The Queen looks at me with rose window eyes. She smiles.

"It's okay, Daddy, I have a plan."

I can't help but smile. It's good to have a plan, especially if you are a queen. We turn right, instead of left, headed for a child's delight decked out in the color of royalty.

On The Ocean Voracious, Epilogue

It was the screech of a seagull, perhaps, that awoke me. A high, thin keening that set my nerves on edge and had me gritting my teeth.

Grit was in my mouth. The banalities of everyday life intruding in the form of phone calls, bathing, eating. All the simple actions we take for granted when there is no crisis to confront. Simple they may be, but akin to mountain climbing while schlepping a sixty-pound backpack. Scuba diving in gelatin. Pushing frozen molasses with a snow shovel.

Blackstrap molasses, at that, so it fails to even offer the warm comfort of an oatmeal cookie.

My eyes fluttered open into the stinging kiss of a stiff salt breeze. Sand crusted my face, which was mashed into the cold shingle of the beach. A few feet away stood a feathery blur which slowly resolved itself as an enormous glaucous gull, standing guard over the beat-up carcass of a codfish. The gull shifted from one foot to the other as I slowly raised myself up on my trembling arms. The pungent reek of the deliquescing fish assaulted my nostrils. My aching belly heaved, and I vomited memories, hot, bitter, acid.

Days, months, years of anger and sadness spilled out onto the bright sand. The sun sparkled on the slick of sickness like filthy rubies and emeralds; gems made obscene by years buried in the muck and slime of my ravaged psyche. The stench was unbearable and triggered another torrent of spew which seemed to last for days. I feebly scrabbled backwards to get away from the toxic waste lying on the beach. The sand rasped my hands and knees, growing damp as I neared the tide line, toes tangling in the clammy rubber of decaying seaweed. The heavy seas of my heaving insides slowly settled down as if sprayed with crude oil. I leaned back on my heels and spat to rid my mouth of the taste of steel wool and quinine. The world was condensing into a familiar shape as I closed my eyes, rocking gently in the saline breeze.

Days later, tears seeping down my salt-crusted cheeks, I opened my eyes. The seagull was still there. peering at me with what could only be termed professional disinterest. A cock of the head, and it casually bent down to peck at the codfish melting into the sand. The sulfur-colored bill held something red and stringy, which quickly disappeared into the bird’s gullet. The gull screeched at me, a glasscutter blade on a cosmic windowpane. I shivered.

It was cold in the wind, but the sun behind scudding clouds offered some small warmth. My body and my mind ached with the fading pain of having run beyond my limits. Gingerly I flexed my arms and hands, rolled my head about my neck, and made to stand.

A fortnight later and I was on my feet. Now that the pain had faded somewhat, I took stock of my surroundings. The gull was gone, leaving the pathetic outline of codfish bones under a thin layer of sand. I averted my eyes from the evidence of my illness, focusing instead on the granite boulders that marched themselves up the beach to melt into a dense forest of slatey-green trees. Pine, fir or cedar I could not tell but the herbal sweetness of conifer sap coiled into my flaring nostrils as the wind blew gently offshore. I breathed deep and relaxed, ever so little. Gazing into the forest, unblinking for what seemed days, I realized that the only way out of the prison of my tragedies was to venture inland. There could be no going back to the sea. Not now.

Tragedy notwithstanding, I felt I could not truly abandon the waters that brought me here. Survival so hard fought, I had come to respect that which used to be a mortal enemy. I turned to face the liquid jade vastness that had spat me upon this not so alien shore.

There was no trace of the vessel I had once sailed upon this troubled ocean, and I was not so foolish as to expect it. The sky overhead was shocking cerulean, pocked by clouds of icy white and steely grey. Their etherealness congealed into a dense grey smear that seemed little different from the water, out on the far horizon. The sea and sky along the curve of the earth stirred slowly, a darkly grey serpent portending storms and heartache to come. Perhaps they would find me, perhaps not; for now I was on dry ground with little reserve to fight against that which had not yet come to pass. I turned on my heels, trudging slowly but steadily up to the trees.

Behind me, the glass shards and tumbled gravel of a million heartbreaks rolls back and forth in the ceaseless play of surf. Water mutters and hisses over the shingle, the voices of my beloved urge me forward into the balsam green breeze, and my chest grows warm as the splintered remains of my heart begin to stitch themselves anew.

Vox Vocis Pacis

The rush and clatter of modern life overwhelms us…

Ambushed by sorrow, overrun by anxiety…


Occasionally a flash of insight penetrates the clouds…

The soul knows to seek relief…

From that which would tear us down…

From that which would cause collapse…

And turn away from the machine…

which growls but cannot follow…

Soul cleaves to the mother-spirit, calling, seeking…

Diving into the balm of good shadows…

Through earth, water and leaves walks the body…

Coming to rest in a refulgent center…

…where listening closely to the sibilant whisper of water, trilling birds and the conversations between rock and stream…

…listening closely…

…it hears the voice of God.

On The Ocean Voracious, Part Three

For a few degrees of arc, I thought my back was broken.

The pressure of the waves had driven me backwards, hard into the mast. The water was cold liquid lead, filling my lungs as I struggled to free myself from its grip. The howl of the wind was now lost to the gurgling shouts of the ocean. I was drowning and there was nothing, nothing I could do about it.

My limbs were cold and numb. I lay in the dark, freezing and unmoving. Unmoving of any impulse from me, mind you. The matrix in which I was embedded refused to stay still. Any motion of my limbs was purely the result of external forces. I was unsure if I had been caught in an explosion or an implosion; the net result was devastation. My eyes did not want to stay open. It hurt to look and see a tiny person-shaped void where my daughter had lain.

Nurses, family, and my son…the constellations by which I managed to navigate once I could keep my eyes open. I could see the stars occasionally through gaps in the clouds as I clung unsteadily to the mast, rocked violently by the heaving seas. Having a fixed point is of great comfort to those racked by seasickness; so it was with me. My eyes clung to this human horizon as it was the only source of strength for miles around on this desert ocean.

Her funeral another violent tempest.

If not for my journals, I’d likely not recall much of the experience. A small, precious life is gone and we are discussing music. And how to write a eulogy for a life of six days? I sat down to write, and got up from the table when I was done; the thing itself I only know from having saved a copy.

If tears had been rain, the desert of my soul would have been covered in green. The door to the hearse opened, and I wrapped my arms around her spirit resting in a box much too small to contain it. The walk to the gravesite was a long trip between points side by side. How could my arms ache so much from a burden so slight? I knelt to set my daughter down and tumbled over the gunwale into a sea the color of molten coal. Blind and unthinking, I clung to my son the life raft. He was all we had, on this violent waterscape. The source of life, light and heat. I wrapped myself around him and prayed in a fever that he, that we would free ourselves from this maelstrom. Every minute, every hour that passed was another step closer to shore. I nurtured the hope, like a tea candle in a hurricane lamp, that our son would come home with us.

I was swimming as hard as I could, pushing clawing my way to the light and the entire time I didn’t see the walls of the whirlpool growing higher and reaching deeper. A claw reached out of the gelatinous dark and sank into my heaving chest: phone calls in the sodden hours of the early morning. The first to tell us that something serious was going on, the second to tell us to come to the hospital.

If the hours of the dark and the dawn are cruel to you, how can you ever sleep again?

We dressed hurriedly and surfed to the hospital on a syrupy wave of nausea and dread. It was almost impossible to conceive that the same things were happening again. Sailing the same sea, foundering on the same rocks, sinking into the same depths. The only difference was this time it was by the light of day. Horrors do not lessen under the glare of the sun. They only become easier to see. The staff gave us the terrible, terrible news: our son was in a very bad state.

Pitchpoling. The nautical term for causing to flip end over end. The bow gets buried in the back of the wave in front of it, and over it goes the stern. Pitchpoled. We sat there on the couch in the NICU as they told us that our son was not going to make it, and I could not stop tumbling. The lights swirled over and around and I heard someone saying “No, no, no, this can’t be” and I realized with a start that it was me. My stern was in the air and I was choking on the water. I clung to the hope that they were wrong, but to no avail. The waves got higher, the wind howled faster. I walked to the phone to call my parents with the bad news. Another long walk into a bottomless pit, and the sun was not yet over the horizon. We waited, we prayed, but the ocean refused to listen. At about half past noon, on an otherwise ordinary day, the sun went out as if flicked by a switch: we had to turn off the machines.

The life raft disappeared as if it had never been. I felt myself lifted up high by a cold upwelling from the sludge at the bottom of the sea. My head barely above the waterline, I found myself at the top of a tsunami and looking down at a rapidly approaching shoreline of broken stone. My son breathed his last; the tsunami broke and I smashed headlong into the rocks, not caring if I awoke.

St. Brendan was willing to risk his life sailing into the unknown, for the sake of the Promised Land, so I suppose for him dealing with monsters and other horrors was the cost of doing business. For me, the accidental sailor, it was a price I was most unwilling to pay. I didn’t want the Promised Land, I wanted a family. I can only hope that Brendan found it worthwhile for what he learned.

But for me, if this is the price of wisdom, I prefer to remain an idiot.

Pooh Sticks For One

I had dinner alone tonight, dear heart, as I do most nights. Alone, if you don’t count waitresses and busboys. I suppose I should count them for company, after all, many are friendly and nice to me, and what more could I ask?

Some asked about you, and I realized I missed you, terribly.

When I arrived home tonight, I wanted to go for a walk. The rains had stopped and the setting sun was nestling greenily amongst the trees lining the stream and path across the way. I knew what I was going to do.

Pooh Sticks, at the bridge, and I could daydream of your laugh…

A stream runs through us...

Except for the traffic noise, it was birdsongs and the murmur of water. I looked about for some sticks, and laughed to remember you scampering down the path, on the bank, looking for twigs and rocks and leaves. Your enthusiasm warms me up.

Cast into the stream, the echoes of “Look, daddy, look!”

I toss the first stick. My heart lands in the water, to recall your laugh.

So quickly, the twigs and leaves fall…

The stream was running a little high tonight, as were my thoughts of you, Wee Lass.

Pooh Stick gets away so quickly…

I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I could see you, hear you, and I felt so alone without you, your laughter and those rose window eyes. I stayed there on the bridge, and began to smile. Like the water flowing beneath my feet, this too shall pass. You and I will play Pooh Sticks, and grin like ‘possums under the canopy of trees.

It is not the same stream twice, but we share the water…

On The Ocean Voracious, Part Two

Deluge. The wave thunders over the bow to take my breath away. Gasping and spluttering in a frantic attempt to draw air into my lungs, I rushed down the hall to the delivery room. Or was it really an operating room? The distinction perhaps matters not at all. What did matter is that there was pain and blood and panic and a claustrophobic smothering of life out of control. Control for us, not the doctors and nurses doing their best to keep three lives in this world.

As I entered the room, my head full of whitecaps and howling wind, I was led to a chair set next to the head of the table. This was no captain’s chair, commanding the bridge on a clipper ship racing over the open ocean. Instead it had the feel of a life ring or a rescue dinghy. In other words, small, frail and to my overheated mind, distressingly inadequate for the task of keeping me afloat.

I had no choice. I sank into the chair with a prayer to keep me from drowning.

The mother of our twins lay there, dazed by fatigue, medications and anesthesia. She was awake though, and my heart broke to see the look of fear on her face. There is little so emasculating as facing a total inability to help someone you love out of their own extreme distress. What could I do sit by her side, murmuring what words of support that I could muster? To this day, I cannot recall if I held her hand, do not remember if anything I said truly helped. After all, what does the master of the ship say to the crew when they are staring up at a wall of water ten times the size of their own puny craft?

Not much, I suppose. But better to say something, better to acknowledge the human connection, than to completely surrender to the blind brutalities of nature.

I did what I could do, the best I could under the circumstances. The room was filled with choreographed chaos. It had the air of a bizarre religious ceremony, masked acolytes attending to the mysterious commands of high priestesses gathered around a strange and terrible altar. Machines beeped and hummed in the background. Hands were raised, blood was drawn. There seemed a never ending stream of small emergencies to defuse; all the while I sat there trying not to faint. If I felt possessed of manhood at all, I watched it slowly seeping away in a slowly growing pile of surgical gauze colored a shocking crimson. I fought to keep my eyes open.

The doctor spoke. I looked up to see that our son had been delivered. My eyes registered a pinkish blur the size and shape of a doll as he was whisked over to a waiting isolette. Another terse utterance from the doctor as our first daughter was delivered shortly thereafter. Again, I saw a doll-shaped blur. A shout withered in my throat as I learned that the babies were alive, the mother serious but stable.

There were no cries. The silence haunts me still.

St. Brendan was either a madman or possessed of supernatural courage. I, who am not destined to be a saint, certainly doubted my sanity. There were no bronze stars pinned to my shirt. The blur of the delivery faded into the gray-green roar of the sea pummeling my miniscule craft. I stood before the mast soaked and shivering in fear of opening my eyes. As I waited, I felt the motion of the boat began to slow. The wind dropped from a howl to a loud conversation. A dim silvery light seeped through my eyelids. Feeling no courage at all, I opened them to see a break in the clouds on the far horizon. The waters were restless, heavy, and the craft was still tossed. Still, it seemed we had survived the worst. I began to bail the boat.

Bend. Scoop. Stand. Pour. Repeat. A script of long hours, little sleep and constant worry. My wife in the ICU, my babies in the NICU. A seemingly diabolical arrangement designed to stretch and break the body and the soul. You really cannot be two places at once, the errant cruelty of which was ground into my mind. Things began to look up, as the twins stabilized and my wife improved enough to get out of the ICU and visit the babies. The meeting between the babies and the mother was a transcendent moment, a glimpse into the presence of the Divine in the fabric of the Universe. We began to hope, began to breathe more. Mother and father were able to go home. The sea relaxed, ever so slightly.

But on the sixth day, God created Pain.

A white-hot lance of agony delivered in the form of a late evening phone call. The daughter was in distress. We were told to get back to the hospital. I looked up from the bilge, pail in hand, to see the sky and the sea melding into one. A deep gray-green smudge of darkness. The wind began to race.

The drive to the hospital and the trip up to the NICU is a smear of panic and horror. My jaws at war with my guts, as they sought to escape through my lips. We made into the NICU, and the faces of the staff told us what we did not want to know, even before we saw the isolette. We rounded the corner, and the lance twisted hard between the ribs. Our daughter, not breathing, the machines turned off.

On board the boat, a tiny flame is extinguished by a hurricane. The ocean peels itself away from the horizon and wraps the boat; the coils of a ghastly Ouroboros come to crush it to end the world. I howl in despair and fury, unbelieving of such tragedy. As the wave rolls over the boat, the only thing I can think to do is hurl the bucket into its face and damn it to hell. The wave in its uncaring majesty ignores this puny attempt at defiance, and breaks.

On The Ocean Voracious, Part One

Six years I have roamed the ocean, seeking to escape its ravenous maw. Six years I have mourned the loss of the vessel in which I had set sail on the waters of life.

Was I St. Brendan, setting out in my wood and leather coracle in search of Paradise? Not exactly, as I would never confuse myself with a dyed-in-the-wool true believer. And I certainly never founded any monasteries. What I did do, akin to Brendan, was to believe in something so deeply, want something so badly I was willing to journey far through dangerous seas in an improbably small vessel to find it.

So it came to pass that I found myself on the verge of fatherhood, a wife pregnant with twins and a head full of naïve ideas about what fatherhood really meant. The early days were filled with joy and anxiety, but mostly joy. Against some steep odds I was the father of twins, where I had been hoping and praying for at least one child to call ours. I still remember the day we found out. The evidence was right there on the sonogram screen. A fine pair, indeed.

I was so happy I thought I would faint. Or throw up. Fortunately, I did neither. Instead, I started laughing and crying a bit, it was so beautiful and overwhelming. Wishes and dreams coming true in a most unexpected fashion.

Twins. Time to put on my big boy pants.

In the days and weeks following our discovery, I was growing anxious and overjoyed in equal measures. One child would have been a lot to take on, so two…! I was able to put aside the anxiety, mostly, and concentrate on the joy, the excitement. I could see the evidence there, every day, in a swelling tummy and the radiance that only a mother could have. Natural beauty on par with anything Nature could offer.

Plans were made, thinking of life with not one, but two babies in the world. Clothes bought, thoughts of a nursery, scrapbooks to document the growth and arrival of strange and lovely fruit in our little garden. Birthing classes and doctor’s visits: all served to put us on notice, and we did learn the many dangers, the pitfalls, the awful things lying in wait for the unwary traveler. Even all that terrible knowledge, in this era of information overload and access to good medical care, did not sap the enthusiasm and happiness I had begun to allow myself to feel. Breaking new ground, I told myself, when I realized I was slipping the bonds of a lifelong pessimism about the world, and about life. It was absolutely wonderful.

Amidst that burgeoning optimism, I fancied myself setting sail on a vast and glorious ocean, in a fine boat of my own construction. This is easy enough to do under sunny skies and calm seas, of which we had aplenty. Once out on the water, not even a quickening wind and darkening horizon could dampen my optimism, so I sailed on into the storm, instead of away from it.

Of course, we had no choice. Hindsight is perfect…

The day we entered the hospital was surreal, and scary, but almost as if scary through a thick filter. My wife sick, severely so, only we had no idea at first just how severe. She in bed, hooked to devices and tubes and wires, monitored around the clock. Me, parked on the rollout couch-bed, disheveled, worried and not really comprehending the violence of the storm about to break.

Three days in a hospital room is no forty days in the wilderness, but it sure felt like it. All the testing and monitoring and alarms and constant checking of things. Very hard for everyone, especially the mother, and to this day I am still astonished at my blithe ignorance. Almost up to the last hour or two, I was still thinking that we would be home shortly, problem solved and that we would still be taking our planned vacation that summer. My god, I was so wrong. Towards the end of that third day, with a solemn look on her face, the doctor brought us face to face with the awful truth: our babies must be born now if we wanted the best hope of mother and children surviving. That sixteenth day of the month…

Imagine being at the top of mountainous wave, looking down on the green, glassy trough below. The mind reels, the mouth gapes and the knowledge sinks in that little boats aren’t meant to sail mighty oceans. For one small slice of eternity, I was standing in that boat looking down on the water and I could feel the bottom dropping out. Too scared to scream, to move, I gripped the gunwales as the water below came rushing up to meet my little vessel. On that warm summer day, I stood in the grip of dread while sliding down the foam-spattered face of Neptune.

My son and daughter, brought into the world through controlled violence. I stood helplessly by, cursing the roiling sea and screaming to God “I don’t know how to sail…” as the first of many towering waves broke over the bow.

Language of Loving the Language

“Even at this early stage of their development, the Irish were intoxicated by the power of words.”
-from How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill

Aha. That explains why I feel so dizzy and lightheaded so much of the time. I am not native born Irish, just of Irish ancestry, but…words. Words. Words. I love them. I cannot get enough of them. It pains me that there are far more words that I don’t know, than ones that I do. And that there are many that I do not know how to pronounce properly, but would love to use. And lots that I do know how to pronounce, but have yet to work into daily conversation.

Like saltire. Heehee. Not much call for that in most of the meetings I attend.

Words. I read the dictionary, just for fun. Sometimes, I’ll go to look up a particular word but get so distracted by all the other lovely ones I see that I forget what it was I went to look up in the first place. Occasionally my daughter and I will sit down on the floor or the couch and leaf through the dictionary together. She is usually looking for the “animal” pictures (I have a dictionary that has small illustrations for some words, usually animals) but now and again I’ll pick out a word and tell her what it is and what it means. Someday, I’m going to scrape together enough cash to buy a full set of the Oxford English Dictionary. Just because I want it.

Words and language fascinate me. I think about them all the time. Or should I say, cogitate? Or perhaps ruminate? Ponder? Meditate?

See? I told you! I cannot think of one word without thinking of others like it or riffing on a particular word for minutes, hours, days. Once, after an all-nighter back in college, I had the word lachrymose looping in my head for hours until I finally went and looked it up. That it meant “given to tears or weeping” or something like that only befuddled me. It was only because I had seen the word in a book I glanced at in the library that I even knew it existed.

But I’ve been that way since I was a kid. Who was it that said the dictionary is like a poem about everything?

“What are words for, when no one listens anymore…what are words for when no one listens, it’s no use talkin’ at all…”
-from What Are Words For, by Missing Persons

Even if no one was listening, I would still be fascinated by words, by language. Precise and fuzzy, slippery and ironclad, words and language strung together like pearls for the mind. I like reading them, deciphering them, learning them. I love writing them.

Which brings me to the true subject for today: writing and writing paper and writing utensils. I know that hardly anyone actually writes anymore, with pen or pencil and paper. I thoroughly understand the value and utility of computerized word processing. Ironically enough, it was the computer that rekindled my love of writing. The ability to cut and paste, to edit, to make writing so plastic takes away some of the drudgery associated with actually putting words to paper (or pixels to screen).

In doing so, though, it helped me see how much I enjoyed the physical act of writing. And it really took fire when I started keeping journals back in 2003, upon the birth (and subsequent brief lives) of my twins. The act of putting pen on paper soothed me, slowed down my racing mind and made it possible for me to rein in my thoughts. Putting the brakes on a runaway train, so to speak.

There is something hypnotic and meditative about filling a blank sheet of paper with words. The best times, when I get a good idea, or need to spill the contents of my fevered brain, are when I can take my notebook or a fresh sheet of toothy writing paper and just write, write, write in the light of a lamp on the table or the nightstand. Just write. In silence, when the ideas are particularly strong or numerous. Just me, the pen and the paper. That little scratchy noise as the pen drags over the paper? One of my favorite sounds in the world. I especially like it when I can get into a groove, the words flowing, pen skritching over the page…and I hit the Zone. Time flies and I get lost in the act of writing and the sheer beauty of creation…

This was all triggered by a sudden impulse of mine, to get a fountain pen to replace the one I used to have, years ago. I had inherited an honest-to-jayzus stainless steel fountain pen from my maternal grandmother. I loved it. I wrote with it. I sketched with it.

And I lost it. Over twenty years gone, now.

It is quiet now, Wee Lass having gone to bed hours ago. I found myself this warm summer evening, sitting at the table with my laptop in the light of a banker’s lamp. It has a green shade, glowing with an emerald refulgence (heehee) and giving me great comfort as I stir the gumbo pot of words swirling around in my head. On the computer screen is the website for a manufacturer of fine writing papers. I am staring open-mouthed, agape at the myriad possibilities of paper, of envelopes…and pens.

There it is, right in front of me: a fountain pen, blue with a stainless steel nib. I want it. I don’t know that I can resist it. I see that pen, and I hear my daughter telling me a story, while my grandmother takes my hand in hers, and together we fill the page.

With words, and love.

"You Cannot Possibly Comprehend The Forces Arrayed Against You"

Mommy, I'm skeered....

Whiskey, Jesus and the Search for Sensible Solutions

This post is dedicated to the good soul Braja Sevaki (Lost and Found in India) and her husband Jahnudvipa and the driver that was taking them to the airport. In case you had not heard, they were in a terrible car accident (see HERE). Please let us all continue to pray for their speedy recovery.

Persuaded, paraded, inebriated, and down
Still aware of everything life carries on without
'Cause there's one too many faces with dollar sign smiles
Got to find the shortest path to the bar for a while

The Universe is not a place conducive to life making sense, except in some limited ways related to basic physics and chemistry and other narrowed fields of study. A thrown rock will hit something, and something may be damaged. Fire will burn a lot of which it touches. Slamming the door on a hand will hurt. These are things that are known. But we understand physics and chemistry and most other things only because we limit the field of study, to make it easier to parse the information. Inevitably, the chosen set of information will be incomplete because it does not, and cannot, include every possibility.

This would seem to go a long way towards explaining why the agglomeration of events that we call life very often doesn’t make sense, no matter how hard we try to explain it.

There's a trouble around, it's never far away
The same trouble's been around for a life and a day
I can't forget the sound, 'cause it's here to stay
The sound of people chasing money and money getting away

The current Global Financial Economic Crisis serves as a good example. It strains credulity to believe that anyone, even alleged financial experts, truly understands what is going on. Things are so complicated, interrelated and intertwined. It is impossible to know with certainty the effects on the system arising from disturbances within the individual parts. Broad guesses can be made, but fine-grain detail is a whole other matter, and there are the effects of synergy to consider.

It is this far-reaching uncertainty, this inability to completely make known the unknown, and having to act without knowing that drives people into the arms of anxiety. Or even mad in some cases. Understandable, really. Humans like problems to have tidy solutions. They like information in neat, discrete packets that are easy to understand and digest. Pity, really.

Life just isn’t like that. The significant events that shape us, good and bad, often leave us wondering just what the hell happened. Or more importantly, they leave us wondering WHY the hell did things happen. The death of a loved one. A broken marriage. A horrible car crash: these are the things that wound us, take our breath away and leave us in a heap trying to make sense of the nonsensical. This is where we get desperate for solutions.

In between the dirt and disgust there must be
Some air to breathe and something to believe
Liquor and guns the sign says quite plain
Somehow life goes on in a place so insane

Solutions. Desperate people will grasp at anything that seems to offer a solution to the problem of their pain. Since their respective inventions, alcohol and religion have been hugely popular among humans in general, as potential solutions to their problems. It is not difficult, at least in the United States, to get access to both. It also isn’t hard to see their appeal. Both offer at least the appearance of a solution to one’s problems. On a temporary basis, this is true. Indulgence in one or both can temporarily numb a person to past awfulness or impending doom.

There is always a morning after, when the head is pounding, the mouth full of cotton and the body shaking from whatever substance had been swallowed the night before. And then the remorse sets in, and the awful knowledge that the source of your pain, the problem, the thing that didn’t make sense before is still there. Sitting on you. Not making sense.

This is not an endorsement or a condemnation of any set of solutions. Whiskey is arguably more fun than Jesus; on the other hand, it might be said that Jesus has more salubrious effects on ones’ health. In the end, too much of either doesn’t make sense, just like the Universe.

Jack Daniels and Jesus Christ: odd bedfellows it seems. As a permanent solution, each path seems just as nonsensical as the universal problems they purport to solve. They can only offer temporary solutions to permanent problems. That’s okay, too, they don’t have to work forever.

They just have to work for Now.

A long way from happiness
In a three-hour-away town
Whiskey bottle over Jesus
Not forever, just for now
Not forever, just for now

(Italicized lyrics from “Whiskey Bottle” by Uncle Tupelo, from the album No Depression)

Sing Sweet Music To Rock My Soul

“Daddy, did you forget your briefcase?” A four-year old using the word briefcase like SHE carries one. It always makes me smile. Except this morning, it made me catch my breath. I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I played along.

“Yeah, sweetie, I forgot it.” The lie stuck to my teeth like bitter toffee. Wee Lass noticed no difference in my voice, no change of inflection. I put the car in reverse. Hopefully she would not mention it again before our arrival at daycare.

“Daddy, you forgot your music thing.”
“What? My music thing?”
“Your music thing, for the ray-dio.” The way she says it sounds like a word for beams of light. Damn, she is right. I do not have the “music thing”; the faceplate for my car stereo is in my briefcase, which is sitting on the floor in the dining room. Without it, no music.

“Yeah, well, its in the house. I’m not going back to get it.”
“Please, Daddy? Please?”
“I’m sorry, sweet pea, we don’t have time.”

I pull the car out onto the street running past our court. Gaggles of schoolkids huddle at the corners waiting for the bus. The usual suspects are out today, the morning shift of dog walkers and early joggers. Wee Lass and I make it a game to count the dogs we see every morning. Bonus points to the eagle eye that spots a dog wearing a hat or sweater. Fluffy Tail and Mistress Jogger are heading up the sidewalk on their vigorous morning walk-run. I don’t know how they do it. Wee Lass pipes up from the back seat.

“Daddy, I wanna hear some music.”
“I’m really sorry, honey, I just forgot the radio.”
“Hmmpphh.” She pouts, an unbearably cute scrunchie face she makes when she half-serious in her irritation.

“But, Dah-deee, I wanna hear Brass Monkey.” I grin. I should have known that was coming.
“Daddy’s really sorry, maybe next time.”
“Hmmpphh. It’s no fun without music!” Say what? Did my daughter just say that? I laugh.

“I know it isn’t, dearie, but we’ll have some later.” Silence. I glance in the rear view mirror. Wee Lass has her bottom lip pooched out as she stares out the window. Little wisps of ash blonde hair frame her impossibly beautiful face. My heart contracts as I feel like the Queen’s Guard who just failed in his mission. I return my attention to the road.

“I know, Daddy, I’ll sing us some music!” Wee Lass calls out. The car fills with the strains of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, sung in that quavery little girl voice that might as well be the stylings of an angel. Wee Lass gets through a round of that, a big smile on her face.

“That was beautiful, sweetie” I tell her but she isn’t quite listening. She has already launched into her version of “Baa, Baa Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool?” For the first time ever, Wee Lass does not shush me as I join in on the chorus. We look at each other across a few feet of mirror, her blue eyes shining in the early morning light. We have made the turn onto the road leading past the day care center. We grin like possums. I am looking for the turn into the access road and Wee Lass bursts into “Ants Go Marching One By One”. At this point I am on the verge of tears. Wee Lass has no idea of the effect on me. I pull into the parking space.

As she exits the car, she says cheerfully “Go get your briefcase, Daddy, so you can take it to work.” Thud. My lip is swelling I am biting it so hard. “Okay, baby, I’ll get it.”

And Daddy will struggle to get you settled in, get your things put in your cubby, lunch in the fridge, and that big bear hug before you shut the door to you classroom. Daddy will make it to the car before the first tears trickle down his cheeks, trying to back the car out of the space before anyone sees him. Daddy won’t tell you how he ran from the car and into the house gulping air and trying not to break down. Daddy won’t tell you how he sat on the sofa, sobbing into his hands, bathed in the weak sunlight filtering through the window overlooking the deck. Daddy won’t tell you any of this because he hasn’t figured out how to explain the forgotten briefcase, the missing radio. You are too young for this sort of despair.

All Daddy wants right now is for his beautiful little girl to keep singing, in the voice of that amazing angel fallen to earth just for him.