Category Archives: Life and death

hamlet and oreos

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Some nights you sleep. Some nights you dream. Some nights you lay awake and wait.

Some mornings you see the mist floating on the nascent sun and feel the promise. Some mornings as the sun rises so does the desperation of another day filled with dread.

Some days hang in the balance. Fragile.

This morning, Noah drags himself out of bed, rolls on the floor and stumbles to the bathroom. I hear him chatting up the cat as he serves him food and fresh water.

I set out breakfast on the small table in the living room. This morning it’s an unhealthy choice.

Yup. Some mornings it’s fruit and fiber, some mornings its milk and bread and cheese. Some mornings….

Noah dives onto the futon. Doesn’t even look at the breakfast stuff.

“Hey dad, I slept like a tree.” His bilingualism means that he doesn’t quite master colloquialisms in any language.

“Did you sleep well, dad?”

“I’ve been up for hours. I watched the sun rise.”

This morning it took forever for the light to assert itself in the sky.

“Poor you dad. What were you doing all those hours.”

Smoking a joint to pass the time, to weaken the anxiety, to fill the loss.

“Just thinking, I guess, waiting for the day to start…”

“Sucks.”

“It was okay.”

Actually was, probably due to my long friendship with solitude and doubt.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I had a weird dream, I think that’s why I, uhm, was so asleep. You know?”

“Ah! To sleep, perchance to dream!”

“Wha…?”

“It’s from Hamlet, a famous play by William Shakespeare.”

“Well duh! If you don’t sleep you can’t dream.That’s so obvious.”

“I dream when I’m awake sometimes.”

“That’s dead-dreaming dad.”

“You mean, daydreaming.”

“Haha, yeah, day dreaming. That’s like imagining, you know it’s really not the same thing.”

“True.”

“Yeah so you know my dream, yeah, it was all about the play at school. Yeah, I was dreaming like about when I was rehearsing and my voice it like went all screwy because you know when it cracks yeah because I was like growing a beard and yeah, I started to sing and I sounded like a goat.”

He’s exhausted his air supply. Gulps down some air.

“And then whoosh I found myself in front of Ms. Tanya and I was trying to remember if like interpersonal or intrapersonal was when you were with other people or when you were with yourself and like I couldn’t remember.”

“Interpersonal and intrapersonal?”

“Yeah, dad, it’s cool, we learned that uhm, yesterday when we did whole tests on like human intelligence. You know there’s like being smart like in IQ smart but then there are seven other types of intelligence, you know?”

“Which ones.”

“Uhm, there’s like space intelligence, not about the stars, ha, but about things and like being good with them when you use them.”

“Spatial intelligence.”

“Yeah, yeah. Then there’s linguistic, you know about languages and yeah and then uh uh uh, kineth…kinethtitic, no, kinethis….aaaawwww…I can’t say the thing dad.”

“Kinesthetic. How you move.”

“Yeah…that’s it dad. How do you know?”

My Velcro intelligence. Stuff sticks to me….not always the most important stuff, but still, useful to impress my kid.

“Learning is the one thing i love the most.”

Actually, not really, but I’m keeping the conversation on a PG-rating, avoiding the triple X thoughts that always threaten to overtake me. I score off the charts in XXX intelligence.

“Yeah, so then, there’s eh, musical intelligence and and…oh yeah, math and logic and then, the, uhm… how many am I missing, dad?”

“Two, I think.”

Yeah. so , uhm oh yeah now I remember, Natural, like all about how to ‘lalala’ you know when you’re in nature…”

His ‘lalala’ is a simulation of walking down a forest path.

“And the last one is the Exit intelligence…”.

He throws me a look of doubt.

“Exit, Noah?”

“This is what it is, dad…like to know stuff about stuff that you don’t see or like touch or, yeah, you know?”

“Existential?”

“Yeah yeah that’s it.”

To be or not to be…

“So you say you were tested?”

“Yeah and I scored really good everywhere.”

“I’m sure. But still. These tests are supposed to show your strengths. Even if you score high on all of them, you score higher on some.”

“Music and inter…intra…aaaawwww…which one is inside yourself, dad?”

“Intrapersonal.”

“Yeah.”

Music and deep knowledge of oneself. A fucking artist! Shit!

“Oh, Oh, Oh…..”.

He has gone suddenly still, wide eyed, slack jawed. He’s acting, but to emphasize real feelings. An artist! Shit!

He points to the table before him.

A picture perfect glass of milk complete with the droplets of rolling condensation and a new bag of OREO cookies.

“Yup, Noah. That’s breakfast. Today’s special.”

He launches himself at me. A full body hug.

“Oh dad! You’re the best ever. Really.”

He looks up.

“How many can I eat?”

“As many as you want.”

“Ooooooooouuuuuuu yeah…”

He installs himself in front of the glass.

“That’s good dad, because there are like three ways to eat Oreos….”

As he continues, I flash back to Hamlet.
“To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?“
Hamlet would have been better off with a dish of Oreos.
“Dad? did you hear…?”
“Yes, I hear.”

 

 

 

 

 

serendipity

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“If you don’t find the head, there’s nothing you can do.”

Street corner. 8:18 a.m. The school bus is late.

“Dad?”

“Huhn?”

“In Fossil Fighters, it’s such a cool game because you can dig up like the whole body, but it’s not really a body, it’s really a skeleton because it’s a fossil, get it?”

“Yes.”

“…yeah so, it’s like this… the head is never where the uhm, the rest of the bones are, so yeah, you’ve got to….”

And on and on and on…

Last night I drank scotch while she drank Perrier. We both smoked and talked about Icarus. She was drawn to his flight towards the sun. I was in the labyrinth, with the Minotaur.

Fundamentally irreconcilable.

Today, there is a silence in my body. An acceptance. Come what will.

8:20. Still no bus.

“… so when you find the head of the dinosaur, you can activate it and yeah then you do battle, soooo coool…yeah and you can also…”

By this time I’m generally already home, preparing to head out on a day of walking, writing and occasional writhing. So the passersby are all new to me

A few moments before or after and the whole human landscape is different.

A bright red-head girl comes running out of a house, squealing. Chased by her more burnished red-headed mom.

Crazy fun.

I smile. Meters away, the mom senses my look, she turns and smiles and then resumes her pursuit. Perhaps with a little more delight than a moment earlier.

Tomorrow the school bus will be on time and the redheads will disappear from my world.

Come what will.

“…oh dad, and you know what’s really funny about the game? Yeah, when you find the head if you screw it on the wrong dinosaur it goes all gaga, and then…”

Click click click. The sound of high heels coming closer and then…

“…and then the head drives you nuts, because you can’t get away from the head, man…”

…and then a woman turns the corner at surprising speed, considering her polka dot stiletto heels. She whips her straw bleached blondness as she clicks clicks by with nary a look.

Damn! One of the highest perched sweetest asses I’ve seen in a while. And I live in a neighborhood which is the sweet-ass capital of Montréal.

“…so yeah, it’s like that, dad,” says my boy.

“Yup.”

Noah actually stops talking.

Rare.

Yesterday was a day when nothing went quite like planned. I missed a bus because I had a conversation with an acquaintance, not seen for close to a decade. We crossed paths on a street that I never walk down.

Now and then I change trajectories in my daily peregrinations, for no other reason than that.

He told me he was dying.

He smiled. His life was in order. We hugged. He’s the one who patted my back, then we went our separate ways.

Forever.

I missed my bus. I couldn’t be late. I was auditioning actors for the principal role in my film. I tapped on the window of a taxi waiting at the red light. He waved me in.

“Hello.”

“Welcome, welcome,” says the heavily accented driver. I smell the rich aromas of cumin and cinnamon in his Northern African voice. Tunisia? Morocco?

He turns to me and puts his hand on his heart.

“A thousand thanks.”

“Oh, but what for?”

“For having tapped on my window.”

“Oh!”

The light goes green. He turns and merges into traffic.Throughout the ride we talk about children, his, 18, 26, 28…mine 9 1/2.

When I reach the casting agency, I realize I screwed up. I’m an hour early. I head back out and choose a direction, through streets I know nothing about.

Come what will.

The day ended in an erotically charged conversation with a beautiful woman, for no other pleasure than the serendipitous phrases we discovered on each other’s tongues.

“Dad, dad…the bus.”

8:30. Really late!

He blows me a kiss as the bus turns the corner. I turn the other corner and automatically head home.

Suddenly, I stop.

I turn and head down an alley I never take. The long way home. I’m late so who knows what or whom I will discover.

Come what will.

 

hungry and the mop

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Mess. Confusion.

I’m mopping the floor. I’m expecting someone. Ardently. Fearfully. The place is a mess. A bell rings. Too late. I’m too late. It’s too late. The bell rings with insistence. As I rush to the door, I fall to a horizontal position. Flow to the side… and turn.

What? Where?

My mind focuses down to a point before my eyes. My phone is on the night table, vibrating madly. It buzzes off the table, onto the ground.

Shit! It’s 7 a.m. again. I might as well get up quickly. Staying in bed means falling asleep and mopping the floor in fear.

As I step out of my room I bump into Noah, catch him before he hits the wall. He looks up at me with puffy eyes.

“Hey, dad. It’s dark.”

I look at the kitchen window. Actually there’s bright sunlight streaming in.

“Open your eyes, Noah, it’s nice and sunny.”

He lifts his eyebrows but fails to open his eyes beyond the embryonic slit stage.

“Oooouuuh, that’s too bright, dad. I wanna go back to bed.”

He leans his head against my belly. I rub the scruff of his neck, idly run my fingers through his hair. Something springs onto my hand.

LICE!?!

There’s been an epidemic at his school. I look at it more closely. A crumb from last night’s blueberry muffin.

“Gotta pee, dad.”

He runs off, dropping his pants as he goes.

“Make sure you open your eyes.”

As I move to the kitchen, I cross the open bathroom door and see him, head thrown back, eyes closed as he hits the toilet with a full night’s accumulation.

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh……” he says. Total satisfaction. I don’t look too closely at the accuracy of the fire hose.

Choose your battles, I say to myself.

As I prepare our breakfast and his lunch, I make mental notes: last juice box, okay on bread for tomorrow, out of coffee, almost out of cereal, definitely out of lunch meats.

“Dad, dad.”

He comes rushing in, wiping his hands on his pants. I say nothing. Choose your battles, I remind myself.

“Dad, you know what sucks?”

Do I ever!!

“No, what sucks?”

“That we, I mean, me, I’m going to have to wear long sleeves on the rides. Because it’s cold now.”

“What rides?”

“The scary ones that they like, like …” He hops on the spot in the irritated impossibility of finding the right words.

He looks like a writer on a bad day. Like me on most days.

“We have to go, and stay up until, uhm, until at least 11 o’clock. You know.”

I stand by the moka coffee pot which is just starting to hiss on the stove. Still minutes away from kick-starting my brain. Noah has no such issue. He went from sleep to 100 mph in one urination.

“Dad? We get to ride on the new ride that they always like open every year, yeah we get to ride it first, you know.”

The coffee is rising. Like Reagan in the morning…

“Noah, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I already told you dad. The special Halloween night at La Ronde. Yeah, they have special freaky scary rides just for Halloween and then you get to be the first that goes on the new ride for the next year. Cool, huh? But you have to stay late, or else, it’s not like freaky scary enough.”

Wooouuuaaaaaaaahhhhh! The coffee expresses itself as it pushes up into the pot. I preemptively pour myself the first milliliters.

“I don’t know why dad. I don’t know why it feels so good to feel so scared.”

I sip the kahwa. Ah yes!

“It’s exciting because you feel really alive when you’re at risk.”

“Yeah, that’s it dad. You’re all excited because something bad could happen and you could like even die but then you don’t.”

“Yup.” You don’t die.

So who exactly was I mopping the floor for?

“Dad, you know that nobody ever died doing the rides at La Ronde. Yeah, so it’s scary, but good scary because you scream and you freak and then you laugh because you want to start over.”

I throw down the mop, fling open the door, and….

…wake up to a new day, much like any other, but then again, who knows?

Freaky, scary, but you don’t die and then you laugh and start over.

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

 

 

morning

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I cast my eyes down. Out of shame. Out of cowardice. I pretend not to see. As most do.

I have a morning without child. Noah spent the previous day and night at my sister’s. He’s ikely being treated to a full and glorious dose of family love, surrounded by his beloved cousins, aunt and uncle.Last night he called me at bedtime.

“Dad, dad, I have this awesome haircut. Yeah, Melina gave it to me and uh, I love it. I’m just too sexy, now.”

I can count on the fingers of one hand the mornings that I have been without my boy over the last year. Not surprisingly I woke in the middle of the night, convinced I heard him cough. Took me a few revolutions of the windmills in my brain before I recalled I was alone.

Not surprisingly, I was up earlier than I needed to. Unable to sleep anymore. Over the last long while, sleep has eluded me in new ways. I wake in the middle of the night lost and abandoned. It used to be panic, sweat, anxiety, revolt. Feelings of someone who was still alive.

Lately, there has been no revolt.

So I made my self presentable, on the sliding scale of one who cares no more, and  headed to my usual café to work. I found a suitable playlist that I pumped into my ears. I cracked open the text I need to rewrite and proceeded to stare out of the plate glass window.

Perhaps a word would emerge, leading to another.

Instead, I see a homeless man that I know. He’s beautiful, young, with eyes like pools of liquid crystal.

Noah and I met him as he was wrapping a dandelion flower with a wire twist from the garbage.

“For my girlfriend,” he told us when Noah stopped to watch him. “We’ve lived together a year, today.”

As we leave, Noah pulls me down to his height and whispers loudly.

“Dad, dad, how uhm, does he keep the flower alive? I mean they like don’t even have a house and like a bed and all that. They sure don’t have a vase.”

“A plastic cup from a café and water from a fountain and presto, instant love and romance.”

“Dad, did you see the, uhm, the color in his eyes? Wow, huhn?”

“Yeah, wow!”

That was three years ago. Ever since then, we cross him every few days as he paces up and down the commercial street of our neighborhood. Sometimes he seems okay…clean, sane, happy. Sometimes he looks like hell…distracted, ill, tormented.

But he is always a sweet soul. And he always greets us with pleasure. Not just because he needs our money. We clearly care for him. And he cares for us. Especially Noah.

This morning when I’m without my child… this morning when I’m holding off the pull of the abyss… this morning when no sacred sentiment of revolt raises me to the challenge of staying alive…

This morning, I see him coming towards my café. He’s a block and a half away, but his unstable steps and stumbling stops indicate that this is a bad day.

I don’t have the strength of humanity. Of compassion. There, but for the grace of circumstance, go I.

He stops a few doors away and leans on a wall. He wipes his forearm across his face and blinks. His sacred, blue-white eyes are contaminated, puffy, almost closed by infection and crusts of dried yellow pus. He starts walking again. If he turns his head just a little he will see me. And I will share his sadness and the horror of his wasted eyes.

He crosses the widow behind which I’m hiding in plain view. I lower my eyes to not see his.

Luckily, my son is not here to witness my cowardice. My shame.

 

eros and thanatos

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I’ve decided what my epitaph will be. Assuming that there will be a tombstone, plaque, urn, coffee jar or dust pan that will contain my remains and on which there could be a label.

A macabre consideration? Only if death is considered somehow outside life. In fact it is contained in life, like a fruit contains it’s seed.

“Dad, can we go by, you know, that nice one, the one with the really crooked stones?”

That’s when Noah was four. I would have to plan our vehicular itineraries to include the cemeteries he had invariably spotted on previous trips.

“I don’t now why, but I really like seeing them, you know. You know, my friends? They find them freaky.”

“Horror movie freaky? Like Zombie freaky?”

“Yeah, dad. But, like I know zombies aren’t for real. You know dad, in Scooby Doo? Yeah, it’s always a human. Yeah, so that’s it. Why I’m not afraid. You know?”

“Yup.”

“Uhm, dad? We missed it.”

He would crane his neck from the kiddie seat in the back.

“Coming up on your right….now!”

“I see it. I see it.”

Like a kid and candy.

Like when I had my first third-base sexual experience. There was no other place in our world that offered privacy and the guarantee of no parental intrusion. The girl, whose name now escapes me, and I found a quiet grave on which to explore our erotic possibilities. She was afraid of spiders but not maggots. Two happy incompetents excited by life and untroubled by death.

A fruit and it’s seeds.

Now, Noah is nine, going on ninety.

“Dad, did you see like a dead person when you were like a kid?”

“No, I didn’t”

“It was weird you know, uh, seeing Nonna lying there in the uh, uh…”

“Coffin?”

“…yeah, coffin. I miss Nonna.”

His grandmother, my mother, died almost a year ago. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t move my hand back from the urge of calling her.

“It sucks dad, that I don’t have any grandparents.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Where are we going to do Christmas?”

“Like last year, Noah, we’ll invite everybody over to our place. It’ll be nice.”

“Okay, dad.”

We’re walking back from his school. As we do everyday. A half hour, forty minute trek through our neighborhood.

When he was younger and in his kid seat in the back, we would have very profound searching conversations about life and death and family and friends and eternity. Since we had no real eye contact it’s as if he was on a shrink’s couch.

Walking has the same effect.

“Dad, my legs are so tired.”

“Second day of school, makes sense that you’re tired.”

“Can we stop, you know at Kahwa Café. I really want like a merguez sandwich. They make them sooo goo. And this way I can rest too, and, I don’t know maybe we could play chess, remember like last time there was the sidewalk sale?”

We settle down on a couch that the owner has set up on the sidewalk. He and Noah, high-five, rough each other up affectionately. As we wait for our merguez sandwiches, Noah squeezes into me.

“Dad, it sucks that you have to die before me.”

“That isn’t going to happen for a long time, Noah.”

“I know. But still, it sucks.”

“Yeah, it does. But you know, Noah, the way we walk all the time?”

“Yeah, we walk everywhere, all the time.”

“So you know what I’ll put on my tombstone?”

“You mean like there’s always something like, son of… or, uh, uh, father of…?”

“Yeah, and sometimes there’s a sentence of what the dead guy believes. That’s called an epitaph. Mine will be ‘Walking still’, so that you know that I’m still walking with you, even if I’m still. Get it? Still as in always and still as in not moving.”

“That’s a nice one, dad, walking still, haha.”

A silence.

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I be like buried with you when I’m dead?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks dad. So, yeah, so like, this way we can share. You know? Walking Still will be really true because we’ll be like, Walking Together. Get it?”

“Great idea.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have a lemonade with the merguez?”

 

 

 

 

 

life after

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“Oh my god, dad!”

He’s on the balcony. I’m in the living room. It’s 8 a.m. The last day before the new school year starts.

“Dad!”

I push off the futon. The coffee in my cup sloshes around just this side of splashing out. I step out on the balcony.

Noah has broken through the camper chair. The fabric finally ceded after years of my butt, his butt and the cat’s claws. Practically his whole body has sagged through.

“I’m stuck.”

He laughs. I reach out a hand to yank him up. But the chair won’t release him. He falls back into the hole.

“Sorry kid.”

I start to walk away,

“Daaaddd!!”

I turn back and fake annoyance as theatrically as possible. I put down my coffee and pull with both hands while holding the chair down with my foot. As his butt pops out of the hole he propels himself with a little gaseous retro-boost.

“Hehehehehe…”.

All varieties of gross bodily byproducts are sources of ceaseless entertainment at nine and a half.

“Aaaahhhh….my god, that was funny, dad.”

I chase away the cat sniffing my cup. Cat hair and coffee don’t mix. I know, I’ve tried. Ruins a morning, it does.

“Dad, you know what’s even funnier?”

I’m inspecting my cup. Seems clean.

“Dad?”

“Uhm?”

“Boy it really is like true uh, what they say, you know, ‘there’s no life before coffee’. Ha!”

I throw him a look.

“Good one, Noah.”

“Thanks. But dad, listen.”

I sip, tentatively. No foreign matter in my mouth.

“You know how I say Oh my God all the time, yeah, the funny thing is I don’t even believe in God.”

“Oh!?!”

“Yeah, I think that it’s like this…I think that God is like a human invention, you see, because nobody knows what really happens, you know, after death and all that. And I mean, what? we go to this place above our head and it’s like heaven. I mean, you now, where is it? All like the spaceships we sent and nobody ever saw anything? I mean, you know?”

“Yup.”

No cat hair in my coffee…but it isn’t proof of divine approval.

“Yeah, and I’m like supposed to believe that underneath my feet..”

He jumps up and down as if the floor was suddenly hot.

“…like it’s Hades and it’s hot and I go there if I’m like really really bad. So dumb! I mean, what, is it like some weirded-out uhm, parallel universe? This guy with a beard in the sky, what? behind the rainbow? Haha, and the, uh, like, like, the other guy with horns and a pointy beard down below. I mean, gimme a break!”

Shit! I sucked in a cat hair. Gross! I move my tongue trying to spit it out.

“What makes more sense to me, dad, is like when you come back like in another body, but like you don’t know it.”

“Reincarnation.” I spit but the hair sticks.

“Yeah, yeah, reincarnation. Like this way nobody is ever lost, you know.”

Got it on the end of my tongue. One quick expulsion of air and spittle into a paper towel…

… free at last! I put down what’s left of my coffee. Don’t want to revisit my cat’s pilosity,

“Yeah, you know, dad, I miss Nonna.” That’s his grandmother, my mother, who died almost exactly a year ago.

“I miss her too, Noah.”

Everyday. Several times a day, I feel the urge to call my Mother to share some anecdote about Noah or some news about the world. Then I remember she’s gone.

“So, dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there like ‘life after coffee’? Hahahaha.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why can’t I shoot….

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…my friend ?

“I throwed it away, because it didn’t do dis anymore.”

Malcolm pumps an imaginary shotgun.

“Wouldn’t do dis anymore so there was nutting to do wit it.”

We’re at the corner, Noah and I, waiting for the school bus. It’s Monday morning and a cool wind has forced us back into socks and sweaters.

Despite the weather, the two kids are discussing water guns.

“That’s suckish.” says Noah.

“But, you know, the best ones are like these really awesome ones, because like they use new technology.”

“What does dat mean?” Malcolm has learned to be wary of Noah’s set ups.

“New technology, you know, like a new invention, like science, you know science?”

“Yeah, I know science.”

“Yeah well they made these like pellets full of water and you get like a charger, and it shoots like so hard that it leaves like a mark, a red mark, round like the uhm pellet. Cool, huh?”

An arms race for water guns.

“Dad, can we like get those with the pellets this summer, like I never got real water guns… ever.”

“We’ve always had water guns every summer.”

“Yeah, but they never really worked more than like a few days and, and, they never ever shot far.”

“It’s like that. They bust all the time.” says the world weary Malcolm who’s jammed shotgun started the whole discussion.

“Do you really want a water gun that leaves red welts?”

“But, dad, it comes with like two plastic shields to protect you. Cool, huhn.”

“Dat’s cool.” Malcom nods his head, impressed.

“So dad, can we like get some6 Like we need two otherwise it’s not fair, you know.”

‘Otherwise’…good word. Still.

“I don’t think so, Noah.”

“But whyyyyyyyyyyyy.”

The old extended ending…wailing is still an accepted mode of expression for nine year old boys.

“Water guns are supposed to be painless, Noah. Running around in bathing suits kinda fun. If you have to wear shields it seems a little much.”

“That’s what’s fun dad, it’s like a war.”

“No, the fun is getting wet when it’s hot.”

“But the war is fun.”

I’m about to answer. Noah holds up ‘the hand’ and waves it left to right, real quick. I know “the hand”.

“Wait dad, wait. Not real war. I mean, you know, kids know the difference. Nobody like dies like in a real war. It’s just that it’s awesome cool to you know, stalk and …”

He crouches, holds up an imaginary rifle and looks around, like a Marine on patrol.

“…hunt your prey.”

“Your friend.”

“Yeah, that’s what friends are for, ha, that’s funny like, you know friends are for prey. Hahaha. That’s funny, huhn?”

“That’s funny, yeah.” Malcolm snickers.

Noah has an audience. Motivating.

“Hey, dad, meet my best prey, Malcolm. Hah! That’s good.”

I smile. The joke is not that funny.

I can’t help remembering the dozens of children assassinated by the Syrian Army just this weekend in the village of Houla. I remember seeing small shrouded bodies lined up on the floor of a morgue. The tiny feet of one dead child peeked out.

“So dad, can we buy them? Those cool guns.”

“No.”

“But whyyyyyyyyyy?

“We’ll buy buckets and throw water at each other and if you want to play at tag with flags and slaps on the butt that’s fine, but nobody is going to be anybody’s prey.”

“But dad, it’s just pretend stuff, you know?”

“I know.”

“Awwwwww.”

Bitch all you want, my boy. You’re alive and your toes curl with pleasure at least once every day.

And I can’t get the village of Houla and the still feet of a dead child out of my mind.

 

 

 

Daily…

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…debates and war and peace

“Don’t touch my *&?%X?$$3@ car.”

“Wow, a Neanderthal with a vocabulary.”

“I should just run you over.”

“Says the caveman with a car.”

I can tell by the top half of his body, that the guy in the old Volvo is probably way taller, bigger and certainly more rabid than me.

But he overshot the stop sign by six feet, cutting Noah and me off just as we were beginning to cross the street. Pisses me off generally, but when it comes close to my kid I become an avenger without a mask or a suit.

I tapped the hood of his car that is so far forward that pedestrians are forced into oncoming traffic to cross. Signaled him to back up. There was no car behind him. Which is when he went ballistic.

Noah is on the street corner.

Part of my frontal lobe tells me to calm down. Wonders whether this is the model you want him to have.

Volvo man is enraged.

“You stupid f….ing &?%?&$*&% a….hole.”

Imagine! I touched his piece of old metal junk, which he jerks ahead a foot more to scare me, scattering the other pedestrians. He gets a couple of nasty looks but nobody says anything.

Herd of sheep more interested in running to their pasture than anything else.

I notice an empty baby seat in the back of his car. I wave to Noah to come cross while I stand in front of his car. I take my boy by the hand, stare down Volvo guy.

“Try to remember there are other kids in the world, and…”.

“…go f…. yourself, you hippie.”

Really!?! My hair is barely below my ears.

We’ve finally reached the other sidewalk. Moron-man roars off, flipping me ferociously.

Noah suddenly turns around and yells at him.

“Caveman. Idiot.”

He huffs and mutters under his breath. ‘Did you see that, dad? He almost hit us”

The passersby look at us as if we were a scandalous couple. They walk around as if avoiding contagion. People defending their rights are always bothersome.

My frontal lobe tells me that violence begets violence which leads to violence which… My lizard brain tells it to fuck off.

“Yeah, what a jerk, eh dad. And he’s like a coward too, because, you know he threatened you but from inside the car.”

“I’ve got to be careful though. One of these days, one of those jerks is going to come after me and I’ll go, ‘Oops’, just before he flattens me.”

Noah chuckles. He’s probably playing a cartoon version in his mind.

“I should probably learn to control myself, because these guys never react well when you point out their lack of respect.”

“Dad, you remember, like yesterday, or I don’t know maybe it was Monday, but remember that lady in the car who did the same thing and like she opened the window and said she was sorry? Yeah and she really was, like, sorry.”

“That’s true. She realized her mistake and apologized. She’ll probably be more careful in the future”

“Yeah, so maybe caveman, ha, that’s funny, yeah maybe caveman will be more careful too. Except he’ll be angry because he’s a guy. Maybe that’s the difference, dad.”

Or he’s just a jerk.

“Maybe, Noah.  He’s probably a good dad, too.”

“Yeah, he should remember that when like there are other kids and he’s in a car because like a car hurts if it hits you. Haha.”

He’s enjoying his own wit.

“Dad, do you do like what you did when I’m not there?”

“Nope.”

“Why not.”

“Because protecting you is the most important thing in my life, no matter what it takes.”

“So like you would die to save me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Me too, dad, I would like sacrifice myself to save you.”

“Thanks Noah. But you’re a kid. Let the adults worry about that.”

“Okay, dad. I’m just saying, because you know I love you.

“Yeah, I know. And right back atchya, kid.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pigeons…

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…and other vermin

“Wow, how fun must that be, eh dad?”

As we walk to school, a flight of pigeons does tight acrobatic formations in the sky over our heads.

“Beautiful, eh dad!”

They swoop down in elegant curves, and then loop up and around, wing tips to wing tips in perfectly synchronized flight.

Pretty…though as the squadron flies over us, the thing I’m most aware of is that birds have no sphincter, so it’s bombs away. This morning I’m bound to be a good target.

“You know, Noah, those are the same pigeons we hate in the park because they scavenge.”

“Yeah, I love to terrorize them because they chase away the sparrows. And remember, dad, it’s funny, when we called them, ehm, flying garbage cans.”

The pigeons dive down towards the square then pull up with no break in speed or formation.

Pretty.

Maybe being vermin and flying beautifully are contradictions only in appearance.

I spend my days scurrying like a hunchback, scrounging for money, hunting specials in grocery stores, or rifling through mountains of used clothing in church basement bazaars in the deadpan necessity of finding something that will fit my son and that I can afford.

At least pigeons can fly.

This month of December is slate gray….day after day, horizon to horizon. No shadows anywhere, nothing has a sharp edge…everything is monochrome.

Death. Feels like waking death….even the pain within is blunt and uninteresting.

“Dad, its only three days to my birthday party, then 4 days to my birth date, yeah when I was actually born and then 6 days later it’s Christmas, so cool. And you know what?”

Rhetorical question, I hope.

“For the whole week at school we do no work, only caroling and then the Christmas breakfast and activities. Cool, huh? Dad, when are we going to get the tree, you know at the place we always do, with the marshmallows we can roast. Remember?”

“Just after your birthday.”

My first Christmas….with both my parents dead. I spent a life time raging or running to escape their blinkered world.

What for!

Christmas elves on bicycles suddenly erupt on the sidewalk. They’re pulling over-sized mailboxes for letters to Santa.

When they invite him to post a letter to the bearded fat man, Noah waves them away.

Whispers, “Dad, Santa doesn’t even exist.”

Perhaps the pigeons will shit on the elves. Christmas cheer from the flying vermin.

Over a hundred people injured by grenades and submachine gun fire in Belgium, yesterday.

A madman blew up.

In Florence, two immigrant workers shot dead.

A madman blew up.

In New York, a 10 yr old boy begs his parents to let him walk home alone from school. He ends up dead and dismembered.

A madman blew up.

Noah blows me a kiss from the school bus. As the yellow submarine pulls away, the slate gray day becomes a little darker.

This madman wonders how not to blow up.

The CERN nuclear reactor in Switzerland is close to identifying the ‘god particle’, the theoretical basis of everything. Posited, never observed.

Will it explain why we die?

Here come the pigeons again. I still have not been blessed by their droppings.

The transsexual a few doors down from me, comes out to beat a rug. She waves timidly. She’ s still built like the beer-guzzling truck driver she was.

I wave back. She smiles. The crucifix around her neck bobs between her  unreal breasts as she beats the rug.

God particles choke the air beneath her balcony.

I must not blow up.

bury…

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…the dead

“Check this out, dad. It’s like the most fun I’ll ever have, ever, of my whole life like.”

This was last Friday morning on the way to the school bus. It has been the theme of his week. The upcoming unimaginably wonderful weekend.

“First, Alissa comes tonight and I can go on the computer…”

“Only if you…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know dad, only if I behave right at school. But listen, after I go on the computer, tomorrow … ”

Now that had an impact.

“…tomorrow it’s Edgar’s birthday and we go go go go…hah, did you hear me dad?…yeah we go go go go-karting. Aaaawwwwessssome.”

I must admit go karting is pretty awesome. Small, powerful, smelly vehicles careening around an indoor track in barely controlled mayhem.

Too bad it’s with a bunch of kids who have only recently learned to control their bowel movements, let alone hurtling vehicles.

“Yeah and then, Sunday, it’s the Pokemon Pre-Release Tournament where we get like, eh, you know, sixty, yeah, sixty, imagine sixty new cards that are not even released yet, That’s why it’s called Pre-Release. You understand?”

He’s told me everyday, several times a day for the last few days, so, yeah….

“I understand, Noah.”

“Yeah and then Monday its Halloween and we go to school in costume. Dad we gotta get gray and red and black make-up.”

“On the way home, tonight.”

“We need lots.”

“Of course.”

I’ve learned that you don’t argue about taste or quantities. My feast is another man’s poverty.

“And then, it’s Trrrrrricccckkkk ‘RRRRR  Treeeaaaatttt, oh yeah, oh yeah, aaaawwwweessssooommmeeee.”

He’s still dancing and singing as he disappears into the school bus.

That’s his weekend, so, by definition, it’s my weekend.

The hell with the things undone that rot my life. The unpaid bills, the unwashed dishes, the unswept floors, the unfilmed screenplays, the  women unloved, the depths unplumbed, the heights unconquered.

Saturday, I strap on a helmet and whoop in the noxious fumes of Kartomania.

Sunday, I rah rah and fist pump my future Pokemon Master on his quest through the Univa region.

Monday, I’m the bag man as he roams the streets as the Soul Reaper, harvesting candies in such abundance that I carry two spare bags for the overflow.

Halloween weekend… celebrating the departed through derision, fun and noise.

My illusions are lying in a shallow grave, in between the tombstones of Past and Future.

I have finished mourning them all.

BOOOOO…..you don’t scare me anymore. PPPPFFFFFFFTTTT…. you don’t seduce me anymore.

Focus, dad. Relax, dad. Enjoy, dad.

Just before he disappears in the school bus, this  Halloween Monday morning, my little Soul Reaper flashes me a smile and mouths a silent ‘Aweeeeeessssommmmeee’ complete with fist pump.

I may be slow, but I’m getting the message.