Honea Express

Archive for the ‘The Wonder of Me’ Category

Popular thought suggests that there is a spark inside all of us. Personal experience is that some shine brighter than others. That doesn’t devalue anyone. It just is. Accept it or change it. It’s your spark.

Mine twists like a lighthouse in a windstorm. It is either lost through waves of bourbon or cutting through so much fog to find you like a spotlight. When I shine I want you to shine with me. It is lonely at the top.

We live in a land of opportunity. The cobblestones are plated gold. The dust a blend of pixie. But dreams are not granted to the masses. We must walk uphill in every way, knocking on doors and selling our wares and what passes for awareness. Don’t sell yours short. The highest bid is often the most careless.

And there are dark doors that figuratively represent whatever you need them to. Literally they are but hinged barriers to the path ahead. The light from the other side glows like a burning picture frame. It is an invitation. It is a warning. It has a handle that only needs to be turned.

Opening doors is why steps are taken.

It may require pause. New paths are hard to start and old paths end too quickly. The scene from the doorstep is of rolling hills and promise. My feet are tired and anxious. There is a stack of shoes in the foyer, each covered in potential and glowing with dust (the smaller shoes shine the brightest). The surrounding floor grows sterile and absent as it stretches down the hallway. I cannot remember if I am coming or going. I am paused, and I am wondering where to put my foot down.

Some look to the heavens when they have nowhere else to turn. Some look there first. I look up and I see stars that stretch forever. I find more perspective than answers.

Perhaps it is the time of year. Perhaps it is the wind in your hair. Life is a dance of wonder and melancholy, and each step brings a gasp, each spin leaves a smile. We are tussled and chapped, and the deeper the dip the more we feel alive.

Perhaps decisions are best made when we don’t know that we are making them. We are lost in the movement. We are paused before doorways. We are always looking for a better place.

That is what I am doing here, writing in circles and wasting language best spent on documents and deadlines — thirsty words wandering from waterhole to wonder and always with the stars in their eyes, always with the day’s dust behind them.

Popular thought suggests that there is a spark inside all of us. Mine is helping to keep us warm, and perhaps that is enough of a wonder for anyone.

_______________________________________

Photo by ImaRawkStar

The thing about winning a major award without any sort of advanced notice is that you’re often caught with your virtual pants down and something difficult to explain in your hand. Seriously, have you ever tried to explain the perfect glass of bourbon? It’s not easy.

So it was that I received an email announcing that I, or rather this site, was ranked in Babble’s Top 50 Dad Blogs, while Honea Express was sitting here neglected, loading funny, and covered in reviews.

Still is.

However, being listed is pretty nice, especially since I haven’t been posting here nearly enough. It happens.

I’d like to say thanks to Babble, and more importantly, thanks to you. If it wasn’t for you nobody would give a crap what I did in this space, and I appreciate that every day.

I suppose this is kind of a lame post to have up on the blog now that I’m getting ones and ones of extra traffic, but I’m tired, Tom Waits is on the radio, and I’m thinking about drinking in the dark until the night takes me home.

This is what winning looks like, people.

I don’t think any of my other parent/professional blogging was taken into consideration for the list, but that’s what pays the bills, so if you have a moment please click below:

Kids Should Skip School (The Stir)

In Defense of Boys (DadCentric)

Occupy Childhood: Invest in Futures (BabyCenter)

Parenting on a Budget (BabyCenter)

Halloween and Other Scary Things (BabyCenter)

 Top 5 Superhero Movies of ALL TIME (JoeShopping)

Maker of “Word With Friends” to Launch Gaming for Acquaintances (Insert Eyeroll)

Thanks for all that voodoo you do, so well.

This is my best post. I’ll tell you that right now. You might smile. You might sigh. You may have to step away from your computer and touch something to make sure this is real. That something is your focal point. This post is your anchor. I am the captain of your ship and we are sailing on an ocean made from the tears of so many children.  All children cry. Yours, because you don’t love them enough. Mine, because I love too much. All tears taste of salt. All tears flow to the sea.

I’m trying something new. Do you like it? If you do then please paste this on your car bumper. Page a friend. Yell it from the assorted rooftops. This is me excelling in a new direction, and the direction is up. It is like the rapture, but with more hype.

I am a giant redwood among the pines and oaks of daddy blogging. Other dads cut holes at my root, because they cannot reach my heart. They drive their cars through me. They are part of a fast-food forest. I am a seven course meal and the wine is an “h” short. Dessert is layered in metaphors. It is nearly as sweet as my words, but without the linger or the bite.

I will not rewrite this post, which makes it even better, because it is raw. It is trending.

I know things about parenting that you do not. You have told me so with your actions. Save your words for Scrabble and friends. This is sticks and stones territory. This is tough love. There is no reach around. There is no spoon.

Some of you may not get this. It may seem too deep. It may seem too powerful. If that is you, then congratulations, you just Googled directions to where love lives. There are hugs nearby.

If this post makes you angry then you are reading it wrong. If it makes you cry then you are probably Glenn Beck. Or me. Let it out. That’s how love flows. It sounds like Kenny G on a train in the distance.

There is a box and you are in it. I am on the outside, thinking of ways to help you get more traffic. It starts when I open the lid.

“Aren’t candles bad for the ozone?” he asked.

“What do you know about the ozone?”

“I saw it on a cartoon,” he replied.

“Of course you did. Yeah, I suppose someone is making the case that candles are bad. Still, we’re saving electricity. It’s a wash.”

“You can’t fucking win,” he said. Except that he didn’t because I would have scrubbed his mouth out with soap until he was blind.

“Wash what?” he asked.

“Your hands,” I told him. “And take your brother.”

_______________

The thing about drinking heavily on surprisingly little food and even less sleep is that something has to give and it is usually the wallet. It gave a lot. Now there are memories where dollars used to be, and they were worth every one.

_______________

“Don’t go avenge’anin my name,” sang the youngest between bites of warm biscuits and fresh blueberry jam.

“I would,” I told him.

“What does that mean?” asked the older.

“It means that I love you,” I said.

“Is this the Avett Brothers?”

“Yes. They’re a band of brothers, just like the two of you.”

The jam nearly melted into the bread, and the taste was like pie in the shadow of the oven.

“It’s good to have a brother,” said the youngest.

“You are both very lucky,” I said as watched their faces through the reflection of the window. They were looking at the blueberries on their fingers.

_______________

It took two nights for me to accept that I wasn’t going to die in my sleep. Things tend to slow down when the party stops, and shifting into a lower gear doesn’t make the hill any less steep. The last time I flushed something solid was when I dropped my gum in the airport urinal. My head was full of clouds and cocktails.

_______________

“It’s past your bedtime. Again. Hurry up.”

That was me. They were mostly screams and laughter.

“Why is it past our bedtime?” one asked.

“Because it’s late,” said the other.

“Will you read us a story?” they asked.

“No,” I said, “but I will write you one.”

_______________

Once there was a man full of malice and mischief. He was made to wonder and wander, so he did both in spells and pieces. Sometimes he mixed mischief with wonder and malice with wander, and sometimes it was the other way around.

Most of the time he preferred just to wander and while doing so he wondered about things like where dreams came from, why stones break bones and where it was he was going. Now and again he gave way to a tune in his head and he would lose himself in a whistle. He was as happy as he thought he could be.

It wasn’t until he met a woman and fell to courting that he did the things that men of fancy find themselves doing in front of crowds of friends and strangers with caution but the wind upon his back. Then it started to gather a bit in the middle and he said to himself, “that is how you focus.”

Malice gave way to mischief and mischief gave way to just occasional nights of far too rowdy. The wandering went to destinations and the wonder was said aloud instead of swirling thoughts inside his head. He was happier than he was before, so he thought that was the end. But it wasn’t.

Eventually they had a son and there had never been anything like it except for maybe those occasional whistles if they had been shared by a choir of angels and, he thought, if cartoon birds put ribbons upon my wife and in her hair, then that, too, might be half as good as this.

That went on for the space of time that exists between one son and the other. Then there were two boys with the man and his wife and you would not be laughed at if you assumed that their happiness had doubled, but that would be easy and math seldom is. There were algorithms and remainders and factors to consider which is only one of the reasons you should stay in school, but when the dust had settled the number had grown larger than the paper on which it was written — so the man threw it into the sky and told it to return when it had settled on a sum and the paper is still floating out there somewhere like so many stars and expanding equations.  I hope you were listening to the part about staying in school.

So that’s where the story is now. The man healing from a few nights of far too rowdy and his wife ready to wander with ribbons in her hair and her destination fixed. The day was one where two little boys floated and whistled and filled themselves with a bit of malice, the best kind of mischief and mastered, once again, the tendency to grasp happiness while expanding through worlds worn with wonder. They went to bed too late, covered in warm crumbs, small kisses and the freshest coat of blueberries.

The man sat by a candle and did exactly as he had promised.

The ground was frozen and it splintered like shards of glass when the log fell upon it. The log, itself frozen, was on its second fall in as many heartbeats. It had rebounded nicely off the side of my foot, followed its shot, and turned a 360 before landing with a loud “thud” across the aforementioned frozen ground that serves as my carport. On the weekends kids skate free.

My hands were full of other frozen logs that had shown the common courtesy to stack nicely within my cold, layered arms. Some wood is born unruly. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about.

I could feel my foot bleeding through my shoe. My very thick, very favorite shoe. I have another one just like it. However, the other one was standing firm against slippage and the subsequent ridicule that such occasions call for. One shoe stood tall and the other sacrificed all. It was a wash. With blood. My foot was bleeding and to put it in medical terms that you may be familiar with, it fucking hurt.

I was probably going to lose it.

But my family was cold and I’d left my beer inside and a whole list of other things that surely sound like reasonable excuses, so I made my way back into the house. A slip. A slide. A slip. A slide. One foot carrying the weight of the other. Medals for such things would be unavoidable.

When the healing began it was mostly due to the bubbles of peroxide and champagne. The bandage was purely cosmetic. The scab was long and thin, like fresh marker lines upon a barefoot drunk. Suddenly one foot had a mustache, and that, I believe, is where the jealousy began.

It used to be that my feet went everywhere together. They were always a step away from the other. They ran together, danced together — hell, they even dressed alike. Theirs was full of codependency and function.

Then came the scar and suddenly my left foot was out chatting up heels while my right sat home watching Daniel Day Lewis movies. The shoes, wisely, chose to stay out of it, but the legs seemed split on the matter. The whole thing just cracked my ass up.

My body was no longer a wonderland. It was a battlefield.

Last night the fire was waning low and I went out for more wood. My left foot was there, standing where shattered wood had met splintered ground, and my whole world had begun to melt without me.

My right foot said nothing. I stood there and gathered the wood. Carefully. The silence was awkward and the tension was thick. We walked back to the house together. Slowly.

They remained a foot apart.

Against the brightness of the rebuilt fire I could see that the scar was shrinking. It no longer resembled Boston Blackie. It looked more like Charlie Chaplin or an Obama poster. Or Hitler’s foot.

I fell asleep shortly after that and I didn’t wake till morning, despite the sound of distant dogs barking.