Category Archives: Love

Rites of passage

There was a man who loved his daughter.

Not unusual, but this particular man was not very good at showing emotion, and thought that people would know, by his actions, how he felt.  He knew that this made them needy at times, and he blamed himself for it, but still he could not open up.

There was jealousy within the family because of this, and he bore the stress unto himself, trying to please everyone.

At the age of 15, his girl told him she wanted to be like some of her friends and get a small tattoo, to which he readily agreed.  Not long after that, she wanted to get her tongue pierced, and this caused an uproar. Her mother would have none of it, and pressured him not to consider it, saying he was too soft, and their daughter had him wrapped around her finger.  So, he did tell her no, as firmly as he could muster, and there was much drama and sobbing off and on for a few days.  The subject was soon brought up again, after he thought it had been forgotten.  Seeing the potential of another fight, he spoke to his wife privately, and struck the bargain that if their daughter still wanted this in a year, when she turned 16, he would see about it.  Both thought that she would lose interest by then, and go on to something else.

Indeed, when the time came, he had already put it out of his mind, but his girl’s resolve was strong, and, on the very day of her birthday, she said it was time for him to keep his promise.  Eyeing his wife sheepishly, he said he would look into it, then spoke to friends and acquaintances whose kids had gone for similar things.  Their best advice was to find a place that was government inspected, had an autoclave, and used disposable needles.  He sought advice from an actual government website, and found similar admonitions.  Within a few days, he took her, and the deed was done, not without some squealing on her part and a look of instant regret.  However, she put a brave face on it, and there was relative calm within the house for a time, even though his wife was resentful.

A year later, when it was prom time at the high school, the big kerfuffle was to find his girl a dress.  She was valedictorian, so it needed to be something special.  Off to the city they all went, together with a couple of her friends, and landed at a fancy shopping mall.  Mom & Dad left the trio to their own devices, telling their daughter they would meet back at a certain time, and hopefully she would find something she liked.  He and his wife then wandered about for a while, looking into the windows of some dress shops as they went.  He spotted a formal gown in black, beaded with beautiful silver designs upon it, and said to his wife “That’s the one she’s going to want.”  They walked for a half hour more, and made another circuit of the mall.  Coming to the same shop again, he decided to go in and ask the price.  The saleswoman said “you know, we have someone in here trying one on right now”.  It was $425, and, of course, you know who was trying it on.  While they were there, she came out of the room to look at herself.  Dad saw her first, and looked pleadingly at his wife, who, after seeing this sight, had no choice but to give in.  Their girl was glowing, and her friends gave her some envious looks.

After the prom, she announced to her Dad, when they were home alone, that there was going to be a party at a cottage belonging to one of her friends’ parents.  He gave her something of a cross examination, and, respectfully enough, she told him that there was “probably” going to be booze, and maybe even drugs, there.  For the first time in his life, he gave her a flat “No”.  She pleaded and said that she, of all people, had to show up, and would stay away from that kind of activity.  He believed her, but would not let her go, and she kept testing his resolve.  Something let go within him, and this man who had always kept his thoughts to himself, began to cry silently.

A change came over his little girl, and she crossed the room to him, hugging him tightly.

She said “Dad.  Dad.  You have nothing to worry about ever again from me.  I will not go.”

On his birthday, the card she gave to him said “Dad, I love you because you love me”.
Fifteen years later, he still has it.

Radiance

This paean of adulation and hope from The Feathered Sleep

TheFeatheredSleep's avatarTheFeatheredSleep

Sun filigreed through high tree lines

Touching our chosen space with bright finger tips

We swing, irregular rhythm, sometimes your momentum, sometimes mine

I watch you point your toes and know

It is hard to remain calm, not to act upon

Desires bound by respect and difference

You are a forest nymph, a hummingbird

You are a nayad of the lake, your honey my want

I imagine holding your bottom lip lightly with my teeth

Graze your unapproachable grace with whispering touch

Green water is still and birds sound from high

I hear it all

And only the gentle deep of your voice

How you move your mouth

The tilt of your long elegant neck

Sunlight turning your skin into caramel

Picks out the rushing river of your eyes

Glances off the high wistfulness of your cheeks

Your thin tshirt a wrapper, I long to pull toward me

Your fingers…

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My little Miss

The thing was, I couldn’t take her with me any more. Please understand. That frozen November morning, the ground was too hard for a burial, and after I had cried a while I searched through an old storage shed for a spade. Having tried the hard earth, and despairing of a proper grave, I wrapped her thin body in many layers of plastic from a roll that I had found there. The broken house next to the shed once had a rock garden, and its members were put to good use in building her cairn.

In late September we had met, she the first living creature of my kind fortunate enough to be here still, in this outpost of desolation. I had been aimlessly following the railway tracks, and had spotted a far off station.  I quickened my pace, thinking to find food and shelter there.  On the platform she sat, all dirty, with dangling legs ending in two different shoes.  Maybe nine or ten years old.   She was trying to crack acorns collected in a shopping bag, then saw me, dropped it, and began to run down the tracks.  One shoe came off and she fell, crying and picking pebbles from her wounded knees.

Approaching slowly, I held out a bottle of juice and a can of sardines from my pack.  She allowed me to pick her up and set her once more on the platform’s edge.  The crying had subsided to a hiccup-like sob.  She said nothing as I got our meal ready, but ate and drank readily.  I tried her with questions, but no.  She would not, or could not, speak.  I never knew her name, I am sad to say, and so I just called her “Miss”.  I think, now, that she was not a mute, but had been forced by the horrors to travel deeply into herself.

The station platform did, in its way, offer food and shelter.  The food was from a vending machine full of chocolate bars and chips.  I smashed it open by pushing it off the platform.  We enjoyed our unhealthy meals for a time, then had to move on.  Little Miss, with renewed energy, ran ahead of me many times.  Other days, in the weary cold, I carried her piggyback.

Just four days ago, I think, after a long and fruitless journey, we had come to the last of the food, a bit of roasted rabbit I had saved “for the end”.  Missy had become very lethargic of late because of the short rations and the creeping cold.  I had made a fire to help warm us up, and we had our best meal in a long while.  When dawn came, I awakened to find that we had come in a circle.  In the foggy morning, I could make out the decrepit station and its violated vending machine.  I confess that in my weakness, I hung my head and cried.

That night, I made a fire on the tracks, and contrived to build it around one of the railway ties,  so our blaze was very warm and merry.  Later, the snow started in earnest, and we had to shelter in a small maintenance room whose door I had forced.  Gone was the warmth.  We each had a blanket roll with us, but it was poor comfort from the cold floor and icy walls.  Through the night, I awoke to a strange silence.  The storm had abated, but so had something else.  My little Miss breathed no more.  I prayed stupidly to the lord of the starfields.

I am beaten now, I think.   That silent soul, that Someone I needed, and who needed me, gone without a hope of a loving word.

How can I…..
How can I….

My God.

A bad day

I’m a blue man he says to me,
speaking to the ceiling.
I pull my chair closer to his bed,
cupping his cold hand.
His swollen face lolls in my direction,
eyes like a slot machine.
I’m locked in the freezer. Get the keys!
I hang my head, squeezing his hand harder.
Why don’t you answer?
God damn (I think). God damn. Please.
Here. Are you cold? Let me get another blanket.
(I hear a noise from the hall. A cart clatters by. A door slams.)
Bang, bang, bang. Three distinct bangs.
Are you warmer now?
(The slots have stopped on Two Spades)
Ah haaaa. Ah haaaa.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Let him go soon.
When it’s my time, let it be a heart attack.

Shaving the dead

Sorry.  Not a story for bed time.

Have been in the bad place for a few days now with depression.  There’s the cue for you to abort this reading, if you like……the picture is not of me, but of my phantom friend.

If you’re a kindred spirit, you might identify with some of these:

Sleep (fitfully) for ten or eleven hours
Waken for a bit, realize you need one more, then drift back.
Shuffle to kitchen for coffee, which clears the fog somewhat.
Eat some little thing (for “energy”, not appetite)
It does not work as promised.
Back into bed, this time with the door open.  Two cats join you.
You think “Shit, I can’t do this”, and force yourself into the bathroom for a shower.
Brush your teeth, a must.  You never skip this.  Not yet.
God damn, I really need to shave.  I look like shit.  But not today.  Tomorrow, I’ll do it.

I think of getting dressed, when the back story about shaving hits me.

The first person that I shaved, other than myself, was my father.  In his 70th year, he was dying of pancreatic cancer.  Before I go further, I will say that all of the caregivers I have met are worthy of high praise.  Nurses especially, for what they do, their long hours, and their continual need for more help.

Dad was always a stickler for his appearance, but once he started to decline, of course he could not take care of himself.  I asked a nurse one day if I could give him a shave.  She was apologetic that they hadn’t done it in a few days, and was appreciative of the help.  Looking at his jaundiced eyes without crying was difficult.  That was the last shave he ever got.

My younger brother, about whom I have already written, died in his home, where we had set up a hospital bed at his request.  I had stayed there for several nights, when his partner asked me if I could give him a shave.  The same eyes studied me with regret and tears.  I wonder if he knew who I was.

At last, my old father-in-law.  He lived far away, and we used to visit once every month or two.  He always made sure that he was presentable when he knew we were coming, and that included a shave.  There eventually came a time when he had lost the will and the strength to do it, and I once more got out the hot cloths and warmed up the shaving cream.  This third set of hopeless eyes was almost too much.

Now, I have given myself a figurative slap, and said “God dammit, you’re not there yet.  Do the fucking shave!”

Nobody’s going to catch me looking like hell, and staring out of those 8-ball eyes.
Selfish, maybe.  Running scared, maybe….but I would not want to inflict those moments on anyone who still loves me.

Parental recollections

  • Having the privilege of being there at my son’s birth, after many hours of my wife’s painful labour.
  • Quitting smoking and deporting our cat to the in-laws while the baby was growing.
  • Being zombies for the first few months because of rocking chair duties to help calm him down from his colic.
  • Missing, by minutes, the birth of my daughter.  I had taken her mother to the hospital, with my son in the car, because it was a late night surprise, and then thought I had enough time to take him to my mother’s place and still make it back.  Arrived breathlessly at the hospital, only to have a nurse announce that I had a daughter (delivered by the nurse, because a doctor was not on hand at the time).
  • Walking through a park with my family and some friends, with my son toddling beside us and our daughter in a carriage.  She became fussy, and I picked her up and rocked her while singing “the bear went over the mountain”.  I think it was her favourite song at the time, and seemed to be the only thing that would calm her down.
  • Bedtime stories, starting off with the mythical Dr. Seuss, then books by Richard Scary, to name a few.  One of them involved complex cartoon pictures, in which you had to find a little critter called “Goldbug”.  That certainly developed a spirit of competition between the two kids, and a little jealousy when one got the better of the other.
  • I actually read the complete “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” books to them.  It took about a year.  Daughter lost interest, but the son couldn’t get enough.
  • Piggyback rides down the hallway to their bedrooms, as part of the nightly routine, with the wife in the background telling me to “get them the hell to bed”.
  • Singing them to sleep when the reading and games didn’t work.  Mostly Beatles and Wings.  If the singing didn’t work, we pulled out a small electric keyboard on which I taught them to play “Smoke on the Water”, I think.
  • Having my son come home from school, very upset, because he had lost a model dinosaur that he had brought there that morning.  This was in November, and we got pretty cold while retracing his steps back there until we found it.
  • Driving my son to a job interview quite far from home, then stopping on the side of the road.  When he asked what for, I said “you’re going to drive”.  It was a standard.  He eventually got the hang of it.
  • Taking my daughter on her first driving lesson (same car) around the oval up at the high school.  She found it difficult, and more than once stalled it, but that is to be expected.  She does claim, though, that I got impatient and said to her “the lesson is over.”  I do not remember that.
  • Physically barring the door so she could not get out to go to a friend’s place late one night.  It had been freezing rain, everything was slick, and I just said no.  She hated me for a while.
  • Being involved in a serious accident one winter night (not hurt), and arriving home at about 2 a.m.  Kids were crying in the hallway.
  • Coming home from work, with my daughter waiting.  I tried picking her up and slinging her over my shoulder (she was about 11 years old), and instead slipped, collapsed, and wrecked some stuff in the hall.
  • Having tickling sessions on the upstairs bed when I went up to get changed after work.  The two of them would run up there, and we would see who cried Uncle first.
  • Bedbugs.   Lice.  Fleas.  Numerous cats.
  • Driving my girl two hours through a snowstorm to attend a talent contest.  Spending 14 hours there, only to have her fail the audition.
  • Taking a load of teenagers to downtown Toronto so they could attend some concert or other, and spending several hours bumbling around waiting for them to get out.
  • Fond memories of going to plays and concerts with my daughter.
  • Going fishing with my son.  Not catching much, but just going fishing.
  • Golfing with both of them at one time or another
  • Many, many trips to North Bay, complete with serious sibling rivalry in the backseat.  Never ever again will I put the four of us in one vehicle.
  • Thinking about taking my son to a strip club, then changing my mind.
  • Having a bunch of kids knock on my door, screaming that my son had been hurt.  Running down the roadway to find that he had broken his wrist in two after a roller blading accident.  He then went on to a career of fairly regular calamities, including another broken arm, elbow, and various accidents with saws etc.
  • Taking him for a dental emergency to a guy that turned out to be something of a butcher.  I could hear the screams from the waiting room, got him the hell out of there, and took him to a place that did sleep dentistry, a thousand bucks later.

Looking back, I loved (almost) every minute of it, and surely would not change it at all.