Honea Express

Archive for the ‘children’ Category

Across the calendar a line of Xs stand upon the dates that we have kissed goodbye. Each line an ending, a memory, and one step closer to hugging someone at the last possible minute.

The year goes out with a bang, just as it arrived. It spends its last week sleeping off holiday treats and shopping fatigue. As the end draws near it makes a reservation, shaves what’s hairy, and puts on something that pops. It’s a party after all, and the year deserves it.

In the wings waits the next one. It is young and naive, full of hope and promises. It watches the current year and notes what it will do differently. It watches and it waits, one eye always on the hourglass. It too will dress in something smart, but not nearly as outdated.

People pull out resolutions and change the date accordingly. The one becomes an awkward two and everyone is the wiser. They are losing weight and quitting vices. They are eating healthier and trying harder. They have waited a year to repeat themselves. The first week is the hardest, and often the only.

The children want to stay up until midnight because everyone is doing it and the reviews are fantastic. They laugh every time someone makes a joke about seeing them next year. They are alive with apple juice and Chex mix.  They are why the new year rings.

The year will fall, another will rise to take its place, and the world will carry on regardless. There may be song and a spot or two of dancing. Laughter is strongly encouraged.

Happy New Year. You deserve it.

This old house is now an obstacle course full of twists and turns and too many boxes.  But it is new to us, and what we see as an overwhelming feat is overwhelming much smaller feet with adventure and promise. Overwhelming, it seems, means different things to different people.

There are stairs that never cease to go up or down, and light switches that turn day from night and shine small shadows upon walls unscathed.  Once there were echoes, but they are now endangered by a floor slowly covered with the filling, filling of so many things.

This old house was once a barn. The yard was once a ranch. The creek outside the backdoor was once running rampant from heavy winter rains. I am told it will rise again. I plan to place a wall between us and the now dry bed before two curious boys learn too many lessons. I have enough to worry about without the threat of sweeping currents.

There are rolling hills and countless canyons. There are coyotes, lizards and snakes that sound of a baby’s playthings. We have left the forest for the desert and instead of bears in our trashcan we now have spiders in our everything. Instead of clouds that sit heavy across the brow we have sunshine that leaves the skin warm and always blushing.

This old house snaps and pops like Bob Villa’s breakfast. The air is thick with the memory of horses. The trees moan against breeze and boredom as they coax the boys onto branches and tire swings. They have more to give than shade and apples. And it is good.

There are dreams quietly waiting and others that go boldly into the night. I have a seat beneath a window, nothing to say and words to write. Now and again I see a smile pointed in my general direction. And sometimes there are waves involved.

It starts with an email. Then there is a phone call. You might get some training on their system. There are some guidelines. You print out a contract and some tax forms, sign them, and email them back to sender. You write your first post. Maybe there is some feedback. Maybe you just keep logging on, doing what you were told, and you never hear from anyone. Your inbox may be full of jokes and community. Your comments may be full of hate and ignorance. You hope there is a check, and you hope they keep coming.

Other sites like what you do. They want your name, your talent, and your Klout score. They offer you various levels of pay and flexibility. The money is never good, but sometimes it is just enough. At some point you are able to cut the strings to a day job you have always hated and you spend the next five years working from home, writing for a living, and loving your children for stretches of time that you never knew existed. This is your benefits package, and it is everything you need but medical.

It could be you are in a new town and your wife has a new job. This is the fresh start you always read about. You might be staying with friends while you are trying to find the perfect home. There are big plans and family dreams and finally, it is the time to seize them.  Everything could be coming up roses. Everything could smell just as sweet. But everything is full of thorns, and pretty flowers tend to mask the dangers lurking underneath.

Perhaps you are standing barefoot in the cool grass of your friend’s yard, holding a phone to your ear and straining to hear the words that are changing your life forever. Perhaps it is the third straw in as many months, and it breaks your camel’s back accordingly.

It ends with an email. There might be a phone call: It’s not you, it’s me. We’re letting go of everyone. We’re revamping the system. We’re going in a new direction. We need someone that will do twice your work for half your price. We love your writing.

And then the checks stop coming.

It could be that things will be okay, except that your well has run dry and you are so frozen with fear that you cannot coax your drive out of park. In a moment your big plans and family dreams are reduced to the facts: you are as good as unemployed and you do not have a home.

Your options are few, but options are all you have. Options are the rope that life likes to dangle like so many participles: a noose, a lifeline, a tug of war, and things you are at the end of. Life has a twisted sense of humor.

Maybe you look in the mirror and you see your children laughing through your reflection, and all you know is that they do not deserve this.  Your hair is thin and it is growing grayer.

I do not need to see the paint to know it is there — a fresh coat of white where once grew the notches of their youth. Memories written in pencil tend to be erased, and those are the things you never like to think about. It was a trace of them, and it is gone.

The boys grow here, too. There is sunshine and warmth and toes sinking in sands ever shifting. The waves crash upon their laughter, and the boys wave back with salt-soaked smiles. Their hair is soft in strands of gold. Their shoulders brown and growing broader.

Somewhere in an overgrown garden are the fruits of their labor. Tiny leaves spring from seeds once carried home in love and paper cartons. They have been set free and forgotten — something new for countless raindrops to fall upon. They will grow and bloom and nobody will ever know that the boys were the ones to place them there. Only the roots will remember.

Here the ground is hot and it rolls towards the horizon. The boys are shouting as they run across it. There are paths worn in the hillside and their small steps keep the tall grass always parted. Rabbits dart, birds flock and the boys sing songs made of their own device. They glow in the midday sun and their brows glisten accordingly.

Such is the way of chapters closed, next and those being written. We have left pieces of us, some by chance and some with purpose. For example, there are places in the glen where our voices softly echo, and there are stories tucked away to tell when such things are needed. One is about an old dog asleep forever beneath the cherry tree, and it should be told fondly with just a hint of tears. Others are filled with countless bottles growing light and rather quick to empty. They should be told loud and often. We left all that, and a spot of quiet that wasn’t always so.

These are the things that fall from your postcard.

The sound was children laughing. The distance was measured in steps. There was skipping and screaming, and toys thrown asunder — the usual suspects of happiness that have lovingly littered our small street for the past two years.

“But there is something missing,” said the neighbor.

I said nothing and watched the children run by us. They took the hill with confidence, a blur of open mouths and hair blown by the wind. Between them flickered empty spaces of sunlight where my boys used to be.

I said nothing and watched the birds fly overhead. The clouds were low and pulled further down by greedy trees with nothing better to do.  The mist fell across my face, cool and sticky. It saved me the trouble of crying. The house just stood there with a blank look across its face, its door wide open. Inside it was nothing but boxes, echoes, and the ghost of a home slowly dying.

The children ran back up the hill, a pack chasing after laughter. Our eyes met as they passed me by, and for a moment the world fell silent.  I could read the writing on their wall, the smiles upon their faces. They were happy, but they knew it too, for they had left the spaces.

______________________

Reading this post again, I can see how those that don’t know our story may find it cause for concern. My children are fine. They have just moved to California ahead of me to spend time with their grandparents while my wife starts her new job.  Unfortunately, they left some great friends behind in the process.

It’s Father’s Day and I spent it at a beer festival, forgive me for waxing melancholy.