I have a rare weekend to myself.  There are three kids now so this rarely happens.  I'm sitting at home in my house feeling somewhat ill (sore throat that won't go away).

I was rewatching a few episodes of The Office, which is like comfort food in TV form.  There was this amazing quote on the last episode..

"I wish there was some way to know that you are in the good ole days when you are there and can actually take advantage..."  Andy Bernard

I am definitely in the good ole days right now.  Life is so sweet.  Coming in the door in the afternoon is a joyful circus, I absolutely love it.

So much has changed in my life over the past 10 years.  Wife, kids, job, house.

I miss them tonight, miss the sound of other people in the house.  Being a single 20 something is ultimate freedom.  You can do whatever you want whenever you want, and yet it feels like a prison.  I remember calling my apartment a black hole where I would disappear into.  When you are by yourself you are constrained by the solitary of your imagination.

P.S. I sent Ed to Alaska...

After his wife died of ovarian cancer Michael Rapport sold the large two-story they had shared, and moved to a smaller two bedroom in the suburbs.  He found the city reminded him in small ways of her.  He would pass by a place they had dinner, or one of the stores she loved to shop, and the sudden memory would make her absence so total, that he would feel swallowed by it.

The suburbs were better somehow.  They were bland things, filled with strip malls and custom homes that were anything but.  They had agreed when they had first married that they would never move to the suburbs, both found them lacking authenticity, and it was true, they were, and that was the point.

He had spent several months eating alone in the small place he now called home before the idea came to him that his hanging around the house was absurd.  He started to frequent the local places, but eventually settled into eating two or three times a week at a local Tex-Mex place.  The food was good, and the price was decent, but most of all it was quiet in the right kind of way.  They didn’t play music, the soundtrack was the people, half a dining room full of people music.  Families, couples, kids all adding their piece to the accompaniment.  It was nice.

Michael had started his habit of reading at the far end of the bar in the La Hacienda not to long after he began frequenting the spot.  It wasn’t something he did every night, but like all habits it had gained in regularity and frequency.  He wasn’t picky with the food, or the books, he ate the special, and he read whatever book he could find in a thirty minute scan of the local Half-Priced store.  

He sometimes sipped at a beer or two, mostly he drank the iced tea or sprite.  Sitting, immersed in a Larry McMurtry western on a Wednesday night Michael met the President of the United States.

“Is it any good?”

The voice had startled him a little.  He usually had the bar completely to himself, and he had never struck up a conversation with anyone, not even the bartender.  Michael looked up, but didn’t really see the man who was sitting there, not really, he more glanced, then looked back to his spot before he dog eared the page and set the book down.  The man was dressed in a suit, and had his tie flung over his shoulder, to keep from dropping salsa on it Michael supposed.

“Yeah, it’s really good.  I usually go for some kind of Louis L'amour stories, this looked kind of similar, but it’s richer or something.  It’s more unexpected that’s for sure.”

“What’s the name?” The man asked.  Michael looked down himself as he turned the cover towards the man, he didn’t really know.  The cover had a picture Michael would swear was a Remington, and the title Streets of Laredo.

“Oh yeah?  Streets of Laredo.  Yeah I read that one, that’s the one after Lonesome Dove.” the man said while eating another chip.

“Yeah… man I tell you it has some really funny passages in it, I suppose it’s supposed to be farce, but it works.  I’m gonna have to read more.  This is the second one you said?  Lonesome Dove, yeah I watched that a long time ago with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.  Maybe I should read that one too.”  

The man looked over at Michael.  “Oh yeah you gotta read that book, really something else, I enjoyed it very much.”  For a minute the world seemed to hum in his ear, the man sitting there looked just like the President, just like him, but it was odd, Michael had a hard time really placing him.  It took a full minute before he could complete the simple thought “the President?”

“I’m sorry, but man you look like…” and then he trailed off, and looked around.  A couple of beefy looking guys were standing on either side at the end of the bar, another was standing near the swinging doors at the back end of the bar.

The President smiled a little and ate another chip, then sipped at the bottle of Dr. Pepper sitting in front of him.

“Yeah, a President has to eat too.  They had something on the plane but I didn’t want it.”  There was space for a breath, “didn’t want to eat on the plane.  Drives these guys crazy when I make them stop in at places like this, doesn’t it Ed?”

“Yessir.” The serious looking guy near the bar doors said back without actually looking over.

“Wow, I’ve never met anyone more famous than a baseball player before.”

“Which baseball player did you meet?”

“Billy Wagner, I mean I’ve met a few others, but I mean somehow unexpectedly, out and about.  I met him while shopping with my wife at Bed Bath and Beyond one day.  We were both there, she had wandered off, and there he was with his kid.”

“Takes you aback doesn’t it?  I met just about every ball player when I was workin with the Rangers, was always something.  Was Wagner a nice guy?  I didn’t meet him I don’t think.”

“Yeah, yeah he was a nice guy.”  This was the most surreal experience in his life, Michael felt he needed something to center him, to give him some sense of reality.  “What are you in town for, usually it pops up on the news, maybe it did, I don’t pay to close attention now days.”

“Ehh, just a quick stop off, not really doing the whole big thing, just a meeting with money people.  You would think you get to stop when you become president, but you don’t, I’m always asking someone for money, that’s the way this job works.  Trading time for money..”  He looked down at his chips as he said this.  

“Don’t we all?  Trade time for money?”

The President stopped and smiled, “yeah I guess we do.”

“Tell me… I’m sorry I haven’t gotten your name.” and he paused then looking at Michael expectantly.

“Oh, Michael, my names Michael..”

“So tell me Michael, what do you do other than enjoy books at bars on Wednesday nights?”

“I’m an oil field manager.”

“Really?  An oil man.  Guess it’s no secret I like oil people, in a few years it won’t be politic, yeah, no more elections where guys can be friendly with big ole oil.”

“Yeah I got a friend from college always gives me grief about working for oil companies.  He works for a bank and he gives me grief.” Michael said.

“I loved workin in oil.  Gettin out on a ranch somewhere.  Nothin around for miles, there’s a place out west that I bought rights to, big ranch.  Didn’t have cell phones in those days.  I got out there about fifteen miles from the nearest road, and broke down, belt snapped.  Took me half a day to walk out to the main road and catch a ride into town.  Caught a ride with a trucker, he had Parkinson's, old fella, still drove, hands shaking, scared the hell outta me.  Said he only drove the back roads cause he may cause a wreck on the interstate.”

“Bet he tells everyone he meets about the time he picked up the President hitch-hiking.” Michael said.

“Maybe, you never know.  I’ve had people not recognize me.  I’ll sit down next to them in a donut shop or something and they won’t even notice.  They only notice Ed, ain’t that right Ed?”

“Yessir.”

The President paused and took another sip of his Dr. Pepper.  

“If an oil man is eating at a Tex-Mex place in Texas I would call that a recommendation, what’s the special here?”

“I don’t know, the enchiladas are good, they have a sauce they put on them that is just phenomenal, mostly I don’t even pay attention.”

“I think I’m gonna have the fajitas, I saw them coming through the kitchen, looked pretty good.”

The President looked around, took a big breath and let out a long sigh.

“I like it in Texas.  You ever had to be somewhere where people hate you?”  The President asked.

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I’m almost done with the job, another five months.  Looking like the Democrats are gonna take the White House.  My party is blaming that on me.  My Dad talked about the hollowness he felt after leavin.  It starts early.  It’s the not mattering anymore.  You go from President to lame duck pretty quick.”

Michael felt he should say something, but what was there to say, what could he say?

“I know it’s rude to ask Michael, it’s putting you on the spot and all, I mean, what do you personally think of my presidency?”

Michael leaned back on the bar stool.  He was not a man who talked politics often, he rarely turned on the news, but his gut reaction thinking about the state of the country was not positive.  The banking crisis, the wars, the cultural divisions that he hoped would not grow to fault lines.  The truth was that like many he wasn’t sure he cared all that much about any of it, not really.  He supposed he cared like he cared about the weather, enough to be annoyed, but resigned to the inevitability.

“I think you have a hard job, I’m not sure anyone can really imagine how hard it is.  I think you did what you thought was right, and that’s all anyone can ask.”

“That bad huh?” the President said eating another chip.

“I wouldn’t say bad, I think you had a hard gig, you didn’t ask for 9/11, or the economic stuff going on.”

“You know the last time I made a real difference in anyone’s life, when I coached a little league team.  I had a blast, those kids loved playing, and I loved watching them play.  The Dad’s would stand around in the parking lot after games drinking Budweiser and talking.  It was nothing serious, mostly sports talk, but there was something there, an honesty.”

The President stopped, lost in the past for a moment, then went on.

“I helped one of those kids, payed for his way, got him into college.  When you’re president you think you can do all these things, you can help this or that, but mostly you just end up as the butt of a joke.  I ran for my first office shortly after helping that kid along.  I think that boy was the last one I really helped.”

The President looked over, aware that he had been hogging the conversation somehow. “Enough about me, Michael, what is a young oil man like yourself doing eating alone, where is your wife?”

Michael paused looking stunned, and maybe angry.  The President saw the look, and something like confusion went across his face.  

“You have a ring, I just wondered where your little lady was.”  

Michael looked down at his left hand, and saw that he had his wedding ring on.  When had he put it on?  The treacherous thing seemed to gawk at him.  Had it been on him when he had gone into work this morning?  It felt very heavy, and he found himself choked up.  The ring summoned the angels and demons of memory.

She is there, hogging the green sauce and chatting about the way she wants to paint the guest bedroom.  She is with him in bed, sleeping in one of his old t-shirts, her snoring has a slight whistling to it.  They are on the couch, she is not weeping, she is wailing, the doctor has told her she is infertile.  The tumor on her ovaries will be their only malignant child.  She is lying on the hospital bed while the beeps and boops of machines irritate the solemnity and silence of her last breathes.

A thought seemed to glow and alight on his sadness, “I will never get to tell Rachel about meeting the president, I will never get to share with her this perfectly surreal moment.”  The thought of her unexpected laugh, the way her eyes would have gone wide, how she would have told the story so much better than himself when they had friends over.  Even in suburbia her ghost could find him.  

“My wife… my wife, died of cancer about six months ago, I didn’t even know I had the ring on, I don’t know when I put it on.”

He wept.

He felt an arm around him, it stayed there while his body heaved with the palpitations of fresh grief.  After he had regained himself, the arm fell away.  

He heard the sizzling of fajitas, and saw a nervous looking waiter putting a plate down before disappearing into the back.  The President seemed at a loss for what to do next, he sat looking at Michael until Ed leaned in over the bar.

“Sir we have to go, a storm is moving in, we need to get out ahead of it otherwise your schedule for tomorrow will be shot.”

“Ed you have horrible timing.”

“Sir, we have a thirty minute window.”

“I just got my food, hang the schedule.”

“Sir, the entire staff will have to stay at rooms on base, you will have to as well.”

He looked down at the pile of fajitas, then stood up, putting on his jacket while he did.

“Michael it was nice meeting you.” he said as he walked towards the kitchen.

Later that month Michael stopped by his short lived suburban home to pick up the mail.  He was getting the house ready for sale, having already moved into an apartment not far from his previous home in the city.

The mountain of mail was a foundation of junk fliers and sales papers, but buried beneath a cable offer and a rent to own catalog was an official looking envelope.  Michael pulled it out and opened it haphazardly, nearly tearing the letter inside.  A book fell out, Poems of Robert Frost along with the letter.  

On the letter was the Presidential seal.

Dear Michael,

Conversation works best when it’s two-ways, thank you for reminding me of that.  Try to do good somewhere.  If I am to go before my wife I hope she finds others to have dinners with, and enjoys the fellowship of belonging, I know your wife would wish the same.

My wife, Laura, sends her best, she enjoyed hearing about our chance encounter and wanted to send you this Robert Frost book, with a marker on the page for the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”.  

Sincerely,

President George W. Bush

P.S. - I sent Ed to a post in Alaska for making me leave before I had a chance to eat those fajitas, he refused to go, so I’m stuck with him.

Fear of Failure

Am I an unfit parent?

I ask this question after loosing my temper and shouting at my five or three year old.  They always have startled looks on their faces that make me shrivel inside.

The other morning I was woken at 5:30AM by the Speedbump (aka the oldest) holding the door closed on my Big Mac (aka the middlest).  Mac was slamming his fists against the door, Bump was smiling like an imp and holding fast.  After sorting out their disagreement (who would get to go to the bathroom first) I proceeded to make them breakfast.

The brother's constantly push each other's buttons.  Mac will disagree with his brother over the color of a crayon, or say his brother is a "gum-gum" and Bump will get frustrated and scream "he's saying things I don't want him to say."

This mind-numbing back and forth was happening at 5:30AM.  The coffee wasn't ready yet, so there was nothing to dull the pain, I snapped after I told them to hug and makeup and Bump gave a sly little smile and refused.

"GET TO TIME OUT, YOU WILL NOT GO TO YOUR PAW-PAW AND SUNSHINE'S ACTING THIS WAY!!"

Taking away grandparent time was like launching a nuke.  Immediate tears, but no remorse.  This is what gets to me, this interaction.  I'm an adult, I should know how to handle this better... right?  Is it effective if it's just this punitive action that breaks them down?  Is that what I'm looking for?

I fear failure with my kids more than anything.  I fear the eventual apathy that greets my daily homecoming.  I dread the incensed obedience where they do what I ask, just so they can leave the room I'm in and play on a phone.

I act, but I question my actions at every turn as a parent.  I don't remember uncertainty from my Dad growing up, I remember occasional regret, but not uncertainty.  He was always certain that he was doing the right thing.

A third kid has made things so much harder.  Neither parent is getting very much sleep, we have so little time to just decompress now.  Newborns are a bundle of excruciatingly boring tasks.  I resent those commercials with the mother rocking a baby to sleep, and it's so sweet, and lovely, and so big of a lie.  Spending 45 minutes rocking a kid, then having them cry, fart, and spit out their pacifier the second you lay them down will make you want to take sleeping pills with hard liquor.

Is there anything harder than parenthood?  Does anyone get to the other side and think "oh yeah I nailed it!!!"

Shades and Colors

This post was started but never published some very long time ago...

************************************************************

The gate at the front of the road is closed. I'm not surprised by this, I was warned it would be, yet the discovery feels meaningful. I am in Mississippi, standing at the mouth of a winding gravel road. My crunching footsteps bring me down the small hill, past a culvert and small grotto filled with Catholic saints and a small concrete bench. Sun has surrendered to shade. Green smothers brown as fern and moss grow along every imaginable crevice. Ahead is my first memory, at least I believe it to be my first memory.

Imagine a three year old perspective of sunlight growing beyond the canvas of trees, a field of corn to the left and open pasture to the right. These are viewed in the split screen view afforded a small body trying to see over the dash of a large 1970's automobile.

 There is a gentle rise that leads up onto a high point of the surrounding property. In my memory the tree limbs above create a sort of tunnel of shadow exiting onto a sea of bright opened pasture before being swallowed by the cool shade of three 200 year old oak trees that guard a small brick house like sentries.

The purpose of my visit is not to wax nostalgic, I need no trip for that. I am a sentimental fool, I know it, so does everyone else.

My Granny is no longer living in the small brick house, she is living with my Uncle not far from my home in Texas. Her place is a sort of halfway house now. It carries the passing resemblance of the place I knew as a child, yet has the strange feel of a house in a state of metamorphosis from a home-place into something else. This place has always been welcoming, warm, and full of that undefinable quality known as family. You feel like you belong when you're there, but now there is the gate, and an empty feeling.  It's like visiting an alien world where you recognize the shades, but not the colors themselves.

Gone are the mornings where I would wake to the smell of frying eggs, to the gurgle of the percolating coffee pot, and to the sound of a cuckoo clock chiming it's mechanical melody.  Granny is in the kitchen, working around the stove.  Gramps is there drinking coffee, and sipping grapefruit juice.

I'm here to visit my Grandma, not take a trip down that well worn lane called memory.  I'm here because my Grandma Mac has been moved into a nursing home. My parents have been cleaning out her house, getting everything in order.  If my Granny's feels empty, my Grandma's is desolate.  There is sparse furniture, and nothing else.

I'm closing in on 40, and it feels like it must be someone else's age, not my own.  I believe that my childhood is here, in these two places, Granny's and Grandma Macs.  I feel it every time I step onto either place.  Maybe that's the reason this place at 35 feels so wrong.

When you go to places that fill so much emotional real estate it brings so much to mind, and leaves the lingering feeling of loss long after you've left.  The places are the shading to a picture, they give the faintest outlines of what the places are, it's the people who are the color that give a place definition.

Lost Hope

It's nearly midnight. The family are all tucked safely into bed, even my baby girl is asleep. She is tucked into the pure dreams of the newborn, and here I am awake. I'm up thinking, considering, pondering, and perhaps praying. I'm not really all that good at prayer, I've always felt it impersonal, a paper letter waiting response.

 Friday, June 26th, 2015 the Supreme Court made it illegal for states to define marriage as being between only a man and a woman. There was celebration, a joyous chorus, weddings, congratulations. On CNN a reporter mistook a flag that held the image of a dildo and a butt plug for an ISIS flag. Dear Lord I need to learn to pray more fully, more faithfully.  This is what that community fought for?  A flag with those images?  There is no chance this is going to end well.

I'm going to predict something. This secularized culture will implode, I give it thirty years, maybe less.  I'm not a prophet, I can't say for certain times, this is just a prediction, a guess based on past events.

The next generation of kids will grow up in a spiritual vacuum, they will seek something concrete, something with absolutes, and they will turn to... Islam. Islam is the anti-Christianity.  It posits that what matters most are the rules, don't eat this, pray like this, take a pilgrimage, wear this clothing.  Jesus spends a good amount of time preaching against the idea that God can be pleased with the inane following of law, without a heart that desires God above all else.

Islam is poised to take off in the west because it will fill the empty chasm left by several generations of thought that tell everyone that you can make reality in your own image.  When things turn bad, when the next crisis comes, when the celebrations that have started this week end and everyone discovers that nothing has really changed, then what?  The chasm is deep, never ending really.  Nothing can fill it.  Christ is the right answer to that chasm, but I believe the time of our nation turning to the Bible for answers maybe in the past.

The young people of this generation seek a cause, they have sought to pour themselves into something, anything. Nature abhors a vacuum, you can't fill a spiritual void with sex, money, drugs, rock and roll, or social issues. I believe Islam will take off as the anti-secular movement of the next generation. I hope I'm wrong, I hope that Christianity finds its voice once again, that a new Billy Graham will appear and teach us repentance, but I am not optimistic.

If anyone finds this post who is not a family member, and believes I'm some sort of bigot, I can assure you I am not. For the past few days I've seen posts, tweets, memes, and message boards that call me a bigot in an overt sort of way.  By that I mean that I have not posted anything to a message thread and been called a bigot, but I've see messages that call my point of view bigoted.  Not so, you are free to have you're opinion, this is mine.  If you don't agree with what I'm saying it means we have differing opinions, not that I hate you or someone you love. If anything I feel that the hate mostly goes the other way now days. I would not wish to have someone fired for being gay, I would not ask a gay baker to provide a cake for an anti-homosexual group. Somehow it's alright to discriminate if these things are reversed though (and I'm using these examples because these have happened recently). Okay end rant...

Changes...

The problem with infrequent posts is that posts become monumental not incidental. Colin (aka Big Mac) was born about a year and a half ago. Speedbump has blown past three years old and is now such a little person. Big stuff, but... but, for me the biggest change (I know I know, a second kid is a big deal..) has been a change in jobs. If you're reading this Colin I'm sorry if you feel slighted. The first child is such a huge shock to the system (especially one like your brother), but the second, well you've adjusted, you've changed, just wait till you have kids... Still not buying it huh? Yeah I know, I'm sorry Mac, sorry I haven't written your post, I will get to it. In the meantime.. my job change.

What I want to document is my job change. Neither of the boys will remember my time at UT. I moved out, finished college, got married, had two kids, bought a house, got a dog while working at UT. So much life happened in and around work that quantifying that time is hard. I hated to leave. So many people and memories.
Some favorite memories..

"Don't anger the network gods.." me

"Shambala" Tony Murry

"Dudity.com" Michael Seils

"Enlargement is the only option.." Dr. Biggoms

Meditation in progress.. The Cone

Outfield Coca Cola Deck when Tony guessed attendance.

Screen shotting Will's desktop then hiding his icons.

Office Space day when Biggom's daughter was born.

Yoda theft... Heather

Diamond Level sitting next to Heather when no one knew we were dating.

Seeing Heather the first time sitting in Tony's cube.

I loved my 20's, and the first half of my 30's. My boys are like a movie trailer of a really awesome summer movie, I'm so looking forward to seeing them grow.

Maybe Speedbump will remember dropping by work the way I remember visiting my Dad up at the college he taught at when I was young. I don't think they will be able to understand the sentimental attachment to that place.

Thanks for so many great years UT.

Decades

Re-read The Gunslinger over the past couple of weeks.  Realized that I was 16 when I read it last time.  I will turn 33 tomorrow.  It’s been 17 years since I’ve read The Gunslinger.  17 years.  When experiences you consider close start taking on multiple decades you know you’ve gotten old.  17 years.  Has it been that long?  I know it has, but dang I don’t feel it.  Yesterday I was a teenager, today I’m a man of 33.  It gives a phantom perspective, a kind of strange feeling that time is so absolute in its ephemerality.  There is no moment of time in life that is not fleeting.  Yesterday my parents were young, they were young and having their own children, my sister and I.  Yesterday I was a kid running barefoot through hard clay, picking careful footfalls to avoid the sweetgums that towered over our backyard.  Today I am a husband and father, tomorrow I will be a grandfather. 

When history is studied its done event by event.  You take the spikes on the graph, the wars, the coups, the depressions.  Much of history is lost to boredom.  When momentous events occur people feel the need to commemorate.  The everyday is lost.  What you get is a kind of compression.  We look at events that seem very close together, they feel like relatives, even though they are separated by years, decades.  How often when you hear the history of the 20th century is World War I and World War II talked about within the space of a couple of breathes?  The span of half a century is easily a couple of weeks of a history class.  The decade we call the “roaring 20’s” gets maybe a couple of paragraphs.  A whole decade, a couple of paragraphs.  We don’t know what we’re living through right now, only our grandchildren will know.  They will ask us, “what was it like to live through the 90’s” and the confused expression we saw on our grandparents faces will be our own.  “It was like living through any other time, it was just living...”  

I guess what I’m getting at is I wonder where the spikes are on my graph?  To be honest I feel they have all occurred within the past five years.  I got married, had a son, graduated college.  That leaves 2 decades of what?  Maybe my spikes on the graph are coming later in life.  Maybe the next decades will be where a history of my life would focus, and my 20’s will be marked only like the roaring 20’s in a history book, short paragraph, they happened, and then they were gone.