Filed under: Work Slog
How could it be any less pretty? I’m employed.
At the old place. Worked there for 11 years. In the office. That was almost 15 years ago.
I’ve now worked there 1½ days, Fridays being a half-day. Most common question, from the stalwarts who have been there ever since I left?
“Has the place changed much?”, followed closely by “You doin’ okay?”
Well no, it hasn’t changed much. Not in that ethereal thing we call work mojo, not a bit. Physically changed, oh hell yes. They now have CNC machines that do every thing shy of running a hand across a fine bit of woodwork to pronounce it sound. And the place is bigger. Like two new buildings bigger. With the resultant couple dozen of busybees to swarm therein.
Why they ask me if I’m doin’ okay is a sort of balancing act for me. They ask as if inquiring after my mental health. “Sure, ‘course I’m doing okay, thanks got everything I need, yup”. Safe, sane answers.
I’ll get a free week or so to re-learn stuff. To reorient my brain to building woodwork of a commercial nature instead of just installing it, as if it were any other building product. I miss the field work, the freedom, the very outlaw nature of that. But finish carpenters are common, and nobody’s hiring them in any event.
No one at all.
Best to be cheerful, and puckered for the inevitable derrieres that will wander by. Where previously in this place, I had the derriere. I was the one to be feared or respected. Not quite the same, you can imagine.
Stories will abound. This place has never lacked a wellspring of drama, and smarmy woodbutcher goodness. Stay tuned.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Before unveiling any news on employment, we have a new sweet linky to read, we do.
Possibly the most overall talent I have seen on one of these bl*g things, if you count graphics and verbiage-smithing and damn funny combined as talent indicators, and I know you do. Spent most of Saturday reading the whole thing which is immeasurably rare for me. Plus, she has this thing going with weasels and I just know Pam at Sixweasels would shoot me if I didn’t get her in on this. So there ye have it, possibly the only place online with these two weas-writers extraordinaire stacked together.
Go ye. I knows good when I sees it.
Filed under: Uncategorized
No, no real decision yet. Trying to decide whether or not to revert back nearly 30 years and do the sort of thing that got me started down this silly old construction road in the first place? It’s hard, I can tell you.
For one thing, I’m not 21 years old anymore. Tossing sheets of plywood around all day isn’t the effortless thing it used to be, if it ever was. Working indoors in summer heat makes arabian headgear a necessity. In winter it’s thermals and layers. The place has a reputation of being one of the best in the Southeast, and it’s well deserved, but that doesn’t mean paradise for the talent that shovels the wood all day long.
http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/2009/01/killing-two-um-in-bush-with-umthe-birds.html Sippican has a story that illustrates a conundrum. I remember well breaking into the industry in 1980, when the economy was even worse than it is now (hard to believe, isn’t it?). Nobody buying houses because of prohibitive interest rates, super high unemployment in construction. It was bad. Yet I strolled into a lumberyard two days after getting married and landed a minimum wage job in a cabinet shop. With the recommendation from a good friend who worked there.
Ally and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I don’t remember either of us bringing home $100 a week for a very long time. Rent was $250 a month, I had a $165 truck payment and the usual utilities, groceries. We did nothing. I mean nothing for entertainment or dinners out or weekend vacations. There was no cable tv, no internet, no VCR’s. Man it was weak, and you just sweated and pushed and kept going because there was no other choice.
Looks very much like we’ve come full circle, doesn’t it. There is no whining allowed because I accept it. I don’t particularly like it, my freedom’s down the tubes and I value that as much as anything, but there it is. Work to eat. Hope for better days.
Guess I’ve got a call to make.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve got a real gut burner of a decision to make.
Those of you from the old site, who followed the dallying of a business owner (that would be me) and the resulting hilarity as a way talented partner and I cut swaths across the wood strewn plains of carpenter land here in North Backwater (which is to say, the city) might better “get this” than the other 2 or 3 folks, but . . .
I got a maybe job offer.
This having exhausted every conceivable avenue in my talent field, across a lot of state lines and local as well, and leaving the last of all phone calls for the one I didn’t want to make.
The phone call to the legacy job. I think we all have one. The old time job that you giggle about in good times. Saying, while holding a beer in one hand and a fifty dollar bill in the other, “Well shoot if it all goes to hell I can always go back to Smithers Widgets!” and getting a riotous cackle from the adoring masses at the pub who all know you, and have heard this story a dozen times.
“Hey, ‘member that dude at Smithers that used to eat cat food for lunch? Then he got tossed in the pokey for pissing on the side of the building downtown one night? Yeah! Bwahahahaaaa . . . !”
“Oh yeah, I worked at Smithers. Ain’t ever’body? Bwahahahaaaa!”
And so on.
Truth be told, I worked at Smithers when it was only Smith. You see. Worked there for 11 years, started and finished in the office, saw that place built up from starving to way healthy. Like to think I had a hand in that. If I’d stayed there, chances are pretty good I’d be talking early retirement now instead of ‘Will work for food, yass’um’.
Honest, I was the shit. They were crying when I left. For greener pastures and all that.
In subsequent years, the Smithers boss was frequently heard to say “I don’t understand why you ever left. God, I thought you were here for life!”
Point of fact, when I left in ‘94, I wondered aloud to my long sufferin’ wife if it was the right thing to do. “Damn, hope I ain’t farkin’ up here . . .”, was the quote as I recall.
After a couple stints at other places (them thar greener pastures, you see) I started the gig of all gigs. My own gig. Which, after a few years, was running along like a Cuban cigar on a slow burn. Hell, we even had Smithers as a major customer! A good paying customer at that! For a good 10 years and then . . .
Well.
Ever have to make one of those phone calls that you have to steel yourself for? The – “Shit don’t make me do this . . . God I can’t believe . . . Oh just push the buttons and swallow your ever-lovin’ pride “. . . calls?
I made that one today.
Talked to the guy whose only son was born a month after my Middlest One. You could say that he and I are on the same plain, if not in the same income catagory. If I’d never left there, I have no doubt he would be my closest friend.
The guy who hired my son, the last of the three children that Ally and I zapped out. And he didn’t have to do that, and I told him so. Today. Told him that. “I really never thanked you for that bro, but it was a damn fine thing you done, there. And I wished he’d have worked out better for ye, and not screwed up the opportunity that you gave him, ’cause I was all up in his face about not doing exactly what he wound up doing, and . . .”
Yeah.
The only thing Smithers has got is a job I graduated from 30 years ago.
But he does have that. And is half assed eager to pay me to do it. I guess.
Aw shit.
Do I wanna eat or starve, here?
Filed under: Backwater Livin'
Probably one of the first signs, I know. Start writing about the food you’re cooking. I’ve been in this house for waaaay too long, unemployed and staring at two dogs and four walls. And an internet screen, like the Great Eye of Sauron freezing my great hobbit feet in place.
But yes, pinto beans!
Dumped in a pot with some chopped up ham and onion and suchlike. I gotta admit, much as I love the country and have lived that sort of life now and before, I’ve never had ‘em. Never once. Folks go on and on about how good they are and I just had to try them out. They’re part of my larder by recommendation only - which is senseless. Don’t store what ye won’t eat, right?
By gaw they smell wonderful. If I can get Ally to eat some when she gets home I’ll consider today a mild success.
If I wash the dishes and clean up this roost a bit I imagine she’ll consider it a success too. Course, that comes after getting the wood fire going good and walking the dogs and laying in a couple days firewood in the shed outside. Minding the slow, wet backwater drizzle outside, yes I tend to that.
I think I’ve contracted Elmer Fudd Syndrome. Y’all really don’t want me to write everyday, do ye?
Now to give a bit of self-betterment that is directly about-faced from the previous wailing rant (and sorry, it was the end of the year and I had to let it loose, and no I ain’t gonna retract it), let’s look at a Backwater Box.
If you haven’t heard of a Bug Out Bag just go ahead now and Goog it, wade through the half million hits and learn. I’ve ramped it up a bit from Bag to Box, since its application is a bit different. Maybe you live in an off-grid fortified mountain retreat with a fresh water supply and 3 years of food on hand and have no need of such a thing but chances are, ye don’t.
Maybe you live in or near a city, commute to work every day and have a dwelling to come home to. Is that you? Yeah? Time to feel good, you’ve got millions of folks just like yourself. Safety in numbers and all.
Until: You’re on the way home in a snowstorm and get stuck on the interstate for a few hours. You’re facing a hurricane scenario and it’s time to head inland for a couple of days. You’re sitting in your house and the smoke alarms go off and you’ve got ten minutes to haul ass before they find your charred corpse in what’s left of your bed.
Never happened to you? Hell I’ve had all three happen to me. And I don’t count myself all that unlucky. It’s a fact of life. There’s a dozen other inconveniences I could list that might interrupt your little daily suwaree. Power turned off, or water. Just plain running out of funds.
The Backwater Box. Trust me, you really need something like this. And I’m not going to get into all the explaining about why you do, or what each piece of it means. You’re intelligent folks, you’re using a computer, use the web and your own common sense. You know most of this stuff already. I’m just the old buzzard harping at you.
Here’s the start of it all. Take that $100 Christmas gift card from Aunt Mildred, head out to Wally World and get a cooler. There’s only a couple of things that really matter about this – that it has a drain, a latch, wheels and can fit somewhere in your vehicle without too much strain. The trunk of the car, for most of you. This one’s $57 and holds 60 quarts. That’s biggish. Already got one? Use it instead. See, we’re gonna keep this real simple.
While you’re in the World, pick this up for $26. Add two propane canisters for $5 (they’re 16.4 oz). It’s an indoor heater that claims to last 14 hours per canister.
Still at the World? Good thing, ’cause directly behind the heater, same aisle, is this bag. Rated for 0 degrees and $23. Yeah, I’m not sure I believe it either but it has a whole lot of good reviews. Again, got your own already? Or a damn fine set of wool blankets? Use ‘em. Save the dollars.
No picture, but check around for a flashlight as long as you’re in the camping section anyway. Ideally, one of those emergency flashlight/radio combo’s with both battery and wind-up power.
Now go pickup that case of Shiner Bock and get out of Wally World while you can. You’ve spent your $100, of course. Nobody goes to the Wally and gets out for less, so make yourself feel good by doing something everybody else does anyway. Toss all that gear in the trunk. It does fit, right?
Now go home. Open up your kitchen and take a look. Pull out that extra 2 quart cooking pot with the burnt hande you’ve been saving. A hand held can opener. The best knife you can spare that you know how to sharpen. A coffee cup and a fork. Dig that spare Bic lighter out that you never use anyway. See what we’re doing? We’re recycling some basic living utensils. Put the little stuff in a seal-up plastic bag. Put the pot in a garbage bag. Take all that stuff out to the car and put it in the cooler. You now have the start of a Backwater Box.
Take your empty half gallon Gatorade, Diet Pepsi or moonshine jugs and fill with water. I guess you could buy the water, the kind with the preppy name and the art deco bottle, but you ain’t that kind of person now, are ye? Hope not. Stuff as much of it in the cooler as possible, then fill up the rest of the trunk with more. Cannot, cannot have enough water. Screw on lids are important.
Every time you go to the grocery store for the next two months, buy one or two (or fifty, who’s counting?) extra FOOD items for your Box. Semi-nonperishable. Cans are good. Tuna fish in oil. Ritz crackers. Spam (yeah I know, right?). Energy bars, pop tarts, can of peaches. You can obviously avoid lunch meat and mayo and bread. We’re gonna rotate this stuff once in a while, but nobody wants to deal with moving your basic Sliced Danish Ham Sandwich Meat in and out of the cooler every day, right?
Don’t cheat. Every trip to the grocery. Get a little something. Be creative. Buy a cheap paperback novel. Buy spare batteries for the flashlight. Another 16.4 propane canister. Box of kitchen matches. Heavy duty garbage bags. Bottle of hand soap. How about a pack of Sterno fuel? There’s no end of it, and as always if you already have it, stick it in there.
There are, of course, other things. Things that ultimately wouldn’t fit. Tools. An extra jacket. A rain suit (or just take an extra garbage bag and cut out some holes, but you’d look so darn foolish, right? Maybe not.). Cheap rubber boots from Goodwill. Sandbags and a chainsaw. Ugh, there’s really no end to this catagory. I’ve got a really big truck and I don’t have half the stuff in there that I’d like, and I’ve got two coolers and a helluva lot of tools.
So, to what end, this Backwater Box and all this stuff you just packed in and around it?
You’re stuck on the interstate coming home in a snowstorm. Stuck for a couple/three hours, in fact, because you’re out of gas and the plows are running behind. Nab that Box outta the trunk and make yourself a Spam and cracker sammich. Fire up the little propane indoor heater. Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t. Bet you will though, and it sure beats hoofing to the next exit in your open toed mules to find out the 7-11 is closed.
Hurricane coming? Everybody else is going to be looking for a Backwater Box, and everything in it, and running in a panic while you’re halfway to safety 200 miles up the road.
Displaced from the house for a few days? No money? Perhaps you were prophetic enough to stash some money in your . . . yes of course you were. Open up a can of tuna and enjoy yourself in your cheap motel room.
Think. Reason. I can tell you for a fact that standing in the rain watching your house burn down is nothing I’d wish on anyone. But when I realized that my wife was barefoot and wearing only what she had laying next to the bed, I fetched boots and raincoat and a flashlight from the truck I was standing next to. From the Backwater Box. We ate a little food from there, too. We didn’t have to sleep in the car but we could have.
Shit hits the fan in many, many different ways. Do something for yourself. Make yourself forget the Armaggedon nature of what you’re doing and prepare for the inevitable. Because it happens every blessed day we live, my children.
This one small thing you do, it matters. Build the Box. Start right now. Keep yourself close to it. Consider it the spare tire of your daily life.
Because that’s exactly what it is.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I was gonna do a sort of rebuttal post along Christmas time, call it “Christmas Letters from Hell” since we get them every year from various siblings. We all do. The sort of letters that beg for a wall of enshrinement, going on for however many paragraphs that the sender has accomplishments to be publicized and rammed collectively down the maw of your concious. You do want to be reminded of fact that our doctoral presentation was a smashing success, don’t you? Or that Juniors wife popped out another bairne in February, while getting promoted to VP of Ops, and doing a transmission change on the collectable ‘63 Mercedes in a snowstorm and how . . .
Never mind. It dulls me, truly it does. Happens every Christmas.
But since Christmas is past, I have no chance for that letter. Let’s do a New Years review, instead. And mail it off to brother with postage due, because that’s how we hang here in the backwater. Nobody got promoted to VP of much of anything outside of a misery factor here, in any event.
And if you are here for happy reading, you might want to pop down one post, since I did two today. When you write a bunch of nothing for months at a time you oughta pop it all out at once. So I’ve been told.
~~~~~
Dear Brother,
Received your fine letter of the 22nd and decided, for once, to reply forthwith, since so many notables have been tossed on the coffee table this year. Let’s just review the year of our Lord 2008, eh?
January thru March: We remained ensconsed at the little house in the woods, dear brother. Have been since ‘06 in fact. It’s winter, my work schedule is spotty but a little better than last year. Which means I’m making subsistence money to go along with Allys subsistence money. So, we subsisted. When you’re right on top of aproaching your 50’s sometimes that’s good enough.
Oh, and our dog of some 15 years passed on. That was a bad day. Particularly when I was the one to have to lend a hand to it, so to speak.
April: Remember that fella that I talked into moving down here next door to us, dear brother? Yeah, the one with the bum hip, who was so excited to have a place out in the woods with a little land? Well, he fell victim to his own sense of thrift, I suppose. Flew over to India to get that hip replaced ’cause it would save him a bunch of fiat dollars and such. Had a helluva time by all accounts, spoke lovingly of all those Indian nurses and all. Trouble was, you’re suppose to keep off the hip and get bedrest and plenty of it, and old Walt was never one to listen to a whole lot of bullshit from anybody, doctor or no. Might be a lesson there, dear brother, with a doctorate of your own, even though it’s in theology and not something useful like turning wrenches on hips or something. But anyway.
So old Walt tossed the hip a couple of times, once in the shower for eight hours running and I had to haul him outta there nekkid and all, wound up in a hospital with more infections and assorted ailments than if he’d ate some of that good roadkill down here without boiling it first. Seriously fucked up, he was. And he managed to piss off just about everybody in his life in the meantime because his mind was going as just about the same rate as his body. We all know how that goes.
So come the 15th of April, he died. And if you knew Walt, the irony of that was just too perfect for words. He was 8 years older tha me but it could have been thirty, to look at him.
Oh but we picked up another dog in April, we did. So it can’t be said that the month was a total loss. We really like Sam.
May: Hey we picked up yet another dog! Not a Lab like Sam, as a matter of fact we don’t know quite what it is to this day. But we now had a crew of 4, if you count me and Ally.
Work was picking up too. Went down to the big summer project with a new fella the company hired, a project manager. Took him out there on his first day, in his Italian shoes. Shoulda warned him, it was right muddy out on that school jobsite, but whatever. Boy was he eager to learn. Told me so, he did. “I’m glad to have someone with your wealth of experience to help me”, sez he. Hmmm.
Plus, May is the finest month in the backwater. Warm to hot, fish jumping in the boat kind of weather.
June: Sigh.
You know what, brother? Our house burned down in June. I know, maybe I shoulda called and let you know about this, but what exactly . . . or what would you . . . you know what I mean?
Yeah we lived, and the dogs lived. Everybody lived. And thank Jesus (you’re glad I’m thanking Jesus, I know) we had that big metal shop off the back. Made a terrific storage shed all summer, for all that burnt up crap we haued out there.
Oh and that new fella, the project manager? Called me up a couple of hours after the big burn, you know when it was still kinda simmering? Wanted to know when I’d be back to work. Now he never did come right out and ask, you see. Just let it kinda hang there. The old pregnant pause thing.
Shit, I was back in 36 hours, bro. Dads work ethic and all. I even had new boots and some clothes. It was about all I had, but by golly I was proud to have ‘em. Yep. That was June.
July thru September: You might be curious to know how my summer went, brother. Well we lived in a ghetto house. Not the sort of house you’d want to spend more time in than necessary in daylight. We had a bed, two chairs and a TV. One of the chairs I liberated from the backyard of that place and let me tell ye, it was a royal bitch on my back. While I was surfin’ the net on this here laptop, looking for insurance replacement costs for everything we owned.
Work was going along pretty well though. Between the big school project and a dental clinic I had all I wanted. Plus, the ghetto house was so much closer to the Watering Hole than before, so their profit margins went up dramatically. That’s a good thing, I suppose.
And hey, the new house got delivered really quick! I mean we put in the order right around the first of July and the sumbith was on site mid-August! Just in time for me to wrap up that school and start some serious supervision of the rebuild.
Matter of fact, come first of September that new project manager said he didn’t have much for me to do the rest of the month. Why, it was perfect! I sez to him “Shucks that’s okay! I’ll just take an unpaid sabbatical ’til October and ride herd on this house, right? Works out good for both of us.” And I got to tell you, it was a relief, ’cause Ally was all kinds of ready to be in that house by October, the ghetto being what it is.
You remember Maggie, right? Our Middlest child, who being great with child lived with us for a spell? Long story, I know. But hey! She moved back down from the great frozen North this month with grandson and boyfriend in tow, and there was the backwater equivilent of slaughtering the fatted calf!
It meant the very world. We’re selfish like that. And they’re doing mostly fine, truly they are.
That little project manager and I had been fueding. Mainly because he was an inexperienced little asshole with passive/aggressive written in 2,000 watt neon on his forehead. Blinking neon, even. The Old Man at the firm was trying to ease out and retire, see, and needed a replacement body. I don’t know what he was thinking, fact is he even told me that PM boy “Already went through 2 bankrupt firms, wonder why, sure hope he doesn’t do it here . . . hehheh”.
Heh, indeed. So maybe you can see what was coming next month.
October: Got back into the house just in time for Allys birthday, go us. Spent all manner of money getting new everything, of course, because who doesn’t need a new china cabinet and a leather recliner and flat screens (strictly under 42″ flat screens though, to mount over the fireplace). And sofas and stereo receivers and flatware and software and bedsheets and shampoo. You see? Lotsa stuff. Thank you Mr. Insurance Man, sincerely. Why, you didn’t even blink when I sent you a bill for dirt! Dirt from the torn up front yard! Why, I suspect you’d have paid me for the two days it took to push the dirt around on my tractor, if I’d asked.
Matter of fact we were having so much fun spending that sweet insurance dime that we spent darn near all of it. Didn’t get us back to square one, ‘xactly. Close enough. Besides which, it was time to get back to work, right? Earn something.
Uh . . . no.
Fact is little Pass/Agg PM boy with the neon thing called me up just about the day we moved. Cunning, I know. He sez, “Hey, we’re going to all subcontractors to install what little work we have. You want in, you need to start your own gig up”.
Now, I know you follow world events and politics and such, dear brother. I do too, I did more reading in that ghetto house about world events than ever before. Got a feel for how the construction industry is doing?
Well I’ll tell ye. It sucks, and has been sucking for a whole year.
So I went in and talked to the Old Man and was encouraged, you know? Spent a fair amount of time with him and his son. Talked a lot about little PM boy and how we could improve the company, work on limited margins and so on. Walked out feeling pretty good about it, heard very distinctly the whole “We’ll call you, sure. Coupla weeks, tops”.
It’s been a hella long coupla weeks, bro. I ain’t heard back from ‘em since.
But I imagine little PM boy got what he wanted. Saved a boatload of money by not having me around I’m sure. Why, he never even had to hire any subcontractors. Just promoted a couple of kids from his past job to do what I did. Got rid of Tommy, my old helper, too.
Yep, that worked out pretty swell.
November thru Right Now: I sit in the house and fill out online job applications. Got a heck of a resume, stands to reason I would after 30 some years in the same field. Funny thing about online resumes though. You can send in a hundred of ‘em, and I just may have by now, but there’s always somebody cheaper or younger or more networked than you. If you can even get a response, which most times ye don’t.
The Watering Hole network and Knock On Doors method is more encouraging if only because of the immediate feedback and folks holding out hope for you, but I’m not scoring any touchdowns yet. And if you recall anything my brother, it’s that I don’t function well when not earning. It’s been four months and the kitty is running on fumes.
Oh, I’ve done some side work. Some. But it’s funny. We’re about down the toilet economically in this country. You have to be either really rich or really desparate to want the services of a carpenter right now. We’re about as popular as a new car salesman from what I can see.
Beth the Eldest is working, thank God. Maggie too, but the boyfriend just got chopped a couple weeks ago. Ben the Youngest? Hanging on, by a fingernail.
I think back on this year of 2008, dear brother, and you know what? I want this year in my rearview mirror so fast, and with so many flingings of the middle finger(s) on its demise that it would blow your Presyterian vestments clean off.
There hasn’t been much mention of Ally in this missive, has there? Maybe it’s for the want of sparing her as much of this as possible. She had a nice Christmas with the kids and family and friends and it was . . . like normal. Like life ought to be, and what she surely deserves. Not this gnawing, and waiting, and looking at the suck of the news every waking minute.
It ain’t pretty, is what I’m saying. I look at the dogs all day. After Ally leaves for the subsistence job, it’s me and “the boys”. I stuck a picture of them down at the end of this New Years Letter for ye.
Oh, and sorry to be so negative in this letter. Don’t mean to be. I reckon that after a year of death and dismemberment I’ve just gotten more cranky than usual. And I really ought to have cheered up quite a bit from your Christmas Letter from Hell, but frankly, when you got to writing about having to put your purchase of a vacation home in the fucking Poconos on hold “Due to the temporary economy problems”, and that after 14 successful births you hadn’t seen any new grandchildren this year, and that everybody was getting raises and new advanced degrees or considering hearty retirement I had to resist giving you one of those rare phone calls.
You know, the commiserating ones. I’m about running out of commisery, bro. Matter of fact? Fuck you and your vacation home problems.
I’m well and truly on the road to losing the only one we’ve got.
Your loving and distant brother,
Jim
PS: Next time, I’ll write something more pleasant. Asshole. Have a pithy 2009, okay?
It truly is getting to the point . . . where I’m no fun anymore.
Filed under: Family
This is an old post from the old site, and one I’ve wanted to reclaim here for quite some time. Mostly because it involves the birth of my first (and thus far, my only) grandchild. My second born daughter, known as Maggie the Middlest on the old blog was teh Momma.
I would reckon that I’ve delayed the republication for this long because:
A) It involves mass re-editing of a terribly non-editable source, it was in two parts over two days, and . . .
B) I would have to re-post a buncha pictures, which the old blog didn’t show any more, but which I had, so I had to remember the order thereto, and . . . good christly . . .
But mostly because it made me tear up when I read it again, and I ain’t the type to tear up about much of anything at all. With the possible exception of grandsons, and Middlest Daughters, and life played out on a sea of dreamy hopscotch. So . . . back to July of ‘06 we go . . .
It’s curious the ways these things seem to play out. You tend to daydream about dramatic settings, cool entries into birthing suites with a daughter in the middle of a screeching labor, a reflective pause and then, voila! Child, and all that is part and parcel.
But shucks folks, this is the Backwater. We don’t do daytime soaps. Maggie was ensconced in a birthing suite, that much is true. It so happens that I helped build this particular hospital back in the day. And, as I immodestly related to everyone within poking distance, “Damn, those cabinets I designed for this joint are still holding up! Look at how well that reception desk blends with the décor, right?”
Never, never take a builder to one of his past jobsites when the business at hand involves childbirth, or salvation, or any of the other mortal woes. I’m just saying.
Maggie had charged me with a “Hotlist”, a scribbled version of her close friends w/ cell numbers and I was to call them the very second I knew anything. Give them the lowdown, the room number and the proceeding range of uterine dilation for all I know. Having a list of cell numbers for a half dozen of the hottest chicks within cell range is a creepy sort of responsibility. I could have sold it for a fair amount of change to a number of local studly’s, I suppose. But predictably, the hot chicks turned the tables.
It was Lara, possibly the hottest of them all who called, well past the work day, while Ally and I trolled for time in a burger place. “Where are you guys? Maggie’s in labor here, she really is!”
I was munching a burger and probably sounded a little passive. “Uh. So how many centimeters is she? Five? Gimme a call when she hits 9. Wait a second, how come you’re at the hospital? Aren’t I suppose to be the one calling you?”
Lara sighed. “Who’s going to wait on a phone call from you? The baby would be up for a sixth birthday for crying out loud. Besides, Beth’s here already and . . .”
“Beth? As in Beth the Eldest? She’s there too?”
“Oh yeah, been here for hours. So, you coming or not?”
I got a glance from Ally, listening intently to all this. We’d agreed that there shouldn’t be much of an intrusion factor from nosy grandparents-to-be in the birthing room. Agreed that the Mom and Dad should have their own space. Agreed that we were going to be the mature, solidly respectful people that young folks want to look up to.
“We’re on our way. Dust off the hats and hooters, honey.”
So we roared gracefully slid out of there, stopped at a store and bought a nice bamboo shoot plant and a blank card which I made into a very heartfelt one, with a little poem that somehow sprung right out of God’s book of verse and into my fingers (and no, I won’t republish it here, it was a gem if I do say so, but it was something just for the Mom and Dad). I write better after a burger and a longneck.
Maggie was somewhere around 6 centimeters when we strolled into the room, which looked more like a frat house on Saturday morning than a place to pop out babies. Fast food bags and flip flops were peeking from every corner, Boyfriend Bob was attempting a nap on the fold out, and barefoot Beth was checking out the ballgame on ESPN. But Lara was game.
“Pops! Hey Daddy!” she exclaimed with a jack-in-box hug for me and one for Ally too. Calls me Pops, she does. A lot of Maggie’s friends do.
My Middlest Daughter was reclined, a weary smile on her face, and seemed to be getting on rather well with the drip from an epidural. Which made my fears of a lotta pain from such a large tummy (pressing down on such a tiny lass as she) sit just a bit better. She looked at me, and she and I talk all the time without words, but the “Hi Daddy,” never sounded quite so relieved as in that barely a minute look.
“Well for goodness sakes, how much longer are you gonna hold on to this child?” I asked. “You’ve been here all day! Time to get crackin’, girl!” and my wife groaned and Lara giggled as I assumed the catchers position and pounded an imaginary glove. This was a room familiar to me. You don’t have 3 kids without getting a little familiar with the scenario. I peered at the monitor with a professional flair, fingered the contraction rate paper tape as it slowly streamed out and tapped the heart meter to check on its functionality. Pronounced it all good, I did.
“Wait ‘til you see the doctor, Pops” from Lara. And her timing couldn’t have been better, because a song could be heard out in the hall, and a brown woman with laughing eyes breezed in, a stethoscope dangling, a two-step shuffle in blue booties. “Ah, mon. I see the Grandparents have landed, eh?” And Ally and I both smiled, because we have seen Jamaica mon, and we found it good. This doctor was so Jamaica it would not have greatly surprised me if she had Marley on her Ipod and a fattie tucked behind one ear. We were in good hands.
Doc Marley checked the instrumentation and excitedly sang another half verse of Calypso. “Oooh, you’re up to 9 centimeters darlin’, that were fast, no? Just since Mamma and Daddy came?”
I grinned. “The witch doctor has come, honey. I don’t be holdin’ wit’ no long labor around here. We gonna be rumblin’ any time now.” And Marley Doc gave me a smiling appraisal, figuring me as a kindred soul I‘m sure, or possibly some old coot off the street, but in any event she was pleased with the progress. “Thas right darlin’, you be ready to beep me when you need to,” and she smoothed Maggie’s pillow and chucked her lightly under the chin. “You listen to the witch doctor, now.”
. . . And you just know there’s gonna be a part two, don’t you mon?
. . . continued from the last one . . .
I’m a relatively modest man. Which is not to say a man of modest means, but boy howdy, kids these days. They’ll do anything for a hoot.
When Doc Marley would come in to the birthing room last night to check on Maggie, I’d flee. Self-righteously, self-consciously. Flee. I wanted no part of Maggie flashing a hoo-haw or anything else my way, and feel pretty secure in saying that Maggie wouldn’t want that either. Just ain’t the way things are done. At least not in this world.
Way back when (look, I’m gonna pontificate for a while before I get to the pictures, they’re loading slowly down below anyway so take a breath and just let me ramble, okay?) I learned about wimmen, and I learned from someone who had no business knowing anything about women because he had this phobia about S-E-X, using it as a three letter toss with vowel word in a Scrabble game which might get you booted from the house, but Dad had his ways. Dad knew a thing or two about women.
I was across the street from the ancient Outfoxed (ed.: this, the name of the old blog) ancestral house, might have been 9 years old at the time and the neighborhood was hell fulla kids. Post war production values and all that, there were tons of kids at the time. There might have been a dozen or so at any given time of day. And somehow or another, the neighborhood drama queen and I were in a bit of a scuffle. She might have been all of 6, but she had the heart and soul of a 39 year old gold digger. Honest. Somehow I have a hazy memory of an argument over a spectacularly muddy football (as in, “No it ain’t yours, it’s mine! Mine, I tell ye!”) and there was a tussle back and forth, and me being appx. 5 inches taller and 25 pounds heavier, I bested the little blonde haired rat for possession, and was running for the goal posts to perform the earliest recorded rendition of an end zone dance when I heard the summons.
“OUTFOXED! GEDDOVER HERE RIGHT NOW!”
And yes it was Dad, curiously ensconced in the front yard and performing yard maintenance which was absolutely not his forte, as the dramatic handing off of said duties some years later to a young progeny would make clear, but by God he was shredding some foliage that day.
It’s funny, somehow I knew that a wrong had been done, the tone of Dad’s voice made that abundantly clear. The why, on the other hand, was a matter best left to his interpretation, since I wasn’t getting a word in edgewise in any event.
“WHADDYA DOING TEARIN’ THAT BALL AWAY FROM THAT LITTLE GIRL?”
“Well gee, it’s my ball and . . .”
“I DON”T CARE IF IT’S YOURS. WHADDYA DOIN HITTIN’ A GIRL ANYWAYS?” WHADDYA SOME KINDA BUM OR SOMETHIN‘?”
“Well no Dad, it’s just that she . . . And I didn‘t hit . . .”
“AH, I DON’WANNA HEAR NO MORE. GET INSIDE AND TELL IT TO YOUR MOTHER. GIRL HITTER. NEVER SEEN ANYTHING TO BEAT IT . . .”
And that was the way of the wimmens, in mid-60’s America. You didn’t hit, you didn’t think about it in any way, you propped a pedestal and slid it under the woman and, for the love of all that is holy, those were the way things were done. I’m not to say that it’s a wrong thing either. Modern girls might argue, but they’ll never see an ill-tempered hand from this quarter. Or even a mildly flavored word. Dad would probably come down from heaven and kick my sorry ass.
I didn’t forget that afternoon with the football. Likely never will.
That’s not to say I don’t have fun with the wimmens in my life. I do. Young bartenders, secretaries enslaved in a construction office, kith and kin and friends of the daughters, I would likely staunch a hail of gunfire for any of them. Because they matter. They matter because . . .
They can do something mysterious and grand.
It isn’t a sexist thing that they do, although you’d be hard pressed to argue with a fellow crony on any given Friday night, when the PMS has driven him from the house and he’s wailing about horrible words at your elbow, the threat of street living fresh in his ear, a sweating longneck on hand.
So when Doc Marley bent me the look and advised “You best be chillin’ in the hall for a bit, mon” I knew exactly what to do. I’d best go out to the hall. And save my Middlest One a moment of grace, a measure of good strong pushing for the moments to come. Let the Grandma and the sister and the bestest friend hang, and give a nod to the Dad-to-be. They could stay.
I wasn’t going to be struggling with no footballs over here, across the street.
And eventually, the rest of the crew got the boot and they all had to come out and mingle in the hall with me, anyway.
God, what women can do. It touches me, just about now.
There was a moment just after Maggie delivered, and Lara and Beth were doing their best impression of Shemp and Curly on the public side of a delivery room door, Ally and I clinging in the midst, and I thought “Jesus, the things we do. What we go through in life, to make the best of all of this, and put to rights the septic tanks and the balky copier and the just damn sheer madness of your ordinary day, this is why we do it.” And I could hear Doc Marley doing the countdown from the other side of the door, “C’mon Hon, I’ll give ye a countdown to push from ten! TEN, NINE . . .”Oh sweet mercy. To hear the sound of life for the first time.
In the days when I’m no longer missed, I’d like to have this remembered. This right here, and the things made right, and all the days that can be brighter still.
I’d like to have a video of something I’ll never have, because we weren’t all that organized to begin with, but to see Lara and Beth dancing up and down and holding hands and just being women, who knew and could maybe understand what was going on just feet from them . . . without ever having birthed a child between them. And to look at the woman I call my own, and why she cried in my arms later on that night, and why 3 children later she still makes me sing of an evening.
Well now, then.
I have, and will again while I have the chance, slap palms with a doctor from the islands, and prod her about singing in the halls and why Doc Marley is the single coolest acronym I’ve ever come across. Because she is, you know, the coolest mentor to the finest of wimmens . . .
And you got that right, mon. Ya, you right. Me and my wifey, we thanks you. You did us good, and you be among the good peoples of the earth. I’ll hear your screech about how cute my Grandson is to the end of my days. Bless your good heart, darlin’.
We called everyone. It was 11 pm and well past the bedtime of adults grown close to their routine, If you had a phone and we had your number we called you, and it is the destiny of Grandparents to call, and photograph and generally make a nuisance of themselves in the name of love. Or generational history. Or maybe just the ecstasy of enduring, and making lives longer.
My Middlest lay in the bed just minutes after the delivery of her very first child, and the little boy was just out of reach in a haste of post delivery clean up, away from his Mama, and I saw.
I don’t know what I saw because I can’t reproduce it, but the look she cast to that little one. God.
It was the yearning.
I’ve never seen that look of a woman, I was always on the wrong side when my wife gave birth and never noticed it, but I’m sure she had the same stare, the longing and the release of a girl who just bore down and did the hardest thing she will ever do, and the loss of something, and the gain of something so much richer.
I think I know why women will go to the knife for their children, because I saw it in Maggie last night. There was pure desire for her soul, her flesh, and a light came from her and it was clean, it was naked and it bore tears.
I might never see that again, but it makes sense to me now.
In the days when I’m no longer missed, I’ll see this. And wonder and be glad.
Because life, and the lingering want of it, makes this the sort of thing to be glad about. There is, in all of my days, a certain fine satisfaction to enjoying life.
I’m enjoying the hell out of it right now.
~And there’s a reason for my bringing back this old saw, this old post. Lack of pictures and all. Can you guess why?
They’re back. Back ’round, that is.
It is a source of joy in a year that had no end of sorrow, as will be revealed shortly.
Filed under: Family
I’d like to take this opportunity to say (I mean, other than the fact that yes, we do still liveth) Happy Birthday to the Eldest Daughter.
Lo, some 24 years have passed since you elected to pop out and take a peek at life. It was a very different life we led back then, and . . . so help me, Mom was younger than you are today, laying in that hospital bed as she was.
Some six or seven years ago, on one of those 4 am mornings I wrote this:
I dreamed last night of family and woke to find them all in beds, in their own worlds. Their own separate and striving minds clicking off the days, their heads on pillows of unknown futures.
I think of them, sitting here with these white keys. Think of them in slumber and unconcious nothing, off and away they are to places I’ll never go. They are girls, they are boys, they are part of me and I of them. I was there at the birth, when tangled flesh came forth and tiny eyes full of light looked up at me in solemn trust. They knew nothing then, and knew all. I made them, I unmake them. I hold them close and let them go.
Where shining things go they follow. Limbs long and tresses of hair they trundle off each day where I’ll never go, never see. They leave me, I leave them. The most good and perfect workmanship I’ll ever do, they go from me. And watching them move about, laugh around, float above, it makes me shiver to see what can be done with creation. They are of this earth, and they are not.
My little ones grown large, you keep me fearful of things dark coming to you. Sweetness of days is always our aim, my children. I loomed big over you once upon a time, and once upon a time days, I wish for you. I shield you, I shield you not.
I would stop clocks to keep you. I would put up stronger walls to guard you.
I will let you run where wolves and shepherds are.
So it is. Seems like yesterday, yes it does.
