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.
