Honea Express

Posts Tagged ‘birthday’

Cheese and wine are fairly good company.  We all improve with age and someday we will all be consumed.  Two of us by the other.  One by worms or hellfire.  It depends on who you ask.

This birthday started like most do, with somebody puking.  However, it was the wrong midnight and things were only technically so and not yet recognized by the committees and panels that decide such things. No gifts had been exchanged. That didn’t stop him from appearing in the hallway with a day’s worth of gruel caked to his hair, an ear full of corn and a body coated in shades of dinner.  His trail read like Hansel on a bender. We followed it carefully.

He was the second son in a matter of days to spend his night reliving that which was once glorious. Neither found the sequel to be nearly as appealing.

The first one woke in the wee hours with the cutting cries — the cries that cut through the stereo, TV, what passes for conversation and what’s left of the night, only to make your heart stop even as your feet start and you run through walls (not around them) getting to your child at the exact same moment that the scream began. He woke like that and he was covered with five pies worth of used blueberries.

The women in the audience screamed. Bossman Bob Cormier take one look at Bill Travis and barfed on Principal Wiggins. Principal Wiggins barfed on the lumberjack that was sitting next to him. Mayor Grundy barfed on his wife’s tits. But when the smell hit the crowd, that’s when Lardass’ plan really started to work. Girlfriends barfed on boyfriends. Kids barfed on their parents. A fat lady barfed in her purse. The Donnelly-twins barfed on each other. And the women’s auxiliary barfed all over the Benevolent Order of Antelopes. And Lardass just sat back and enjoyed what he created. A complete and total Barf-A-Rama.

That’s pretty much how it happened.

And then he was better and life went on and we healed and we lived and we fell down a rabbit hole, and then the other one was standing in the corner covered in tears and culinary memories. Everything is circular.

It’s been sunny since January.  Today it is snowing lightly.  The clouds are grey and slightly heavy and they catch on trees as they roll down the mountain.  It is a temporary melancholy.  A remembrance of what has passed.  It does not cut with cries or stand silently in the corner, but it too has come back from places we’ve long forgotten.  It too will be consumed.

Birthdays are like that — reminders of what once was glorious, a tease of what may be; a temporary slice of melancholy with candles lit upon it.  In between we heal and we live and we pour the wine more freely.  We hope it will all stay down.

The snow is a nice touch.

__________

Quote from Stand By Me

The night is long and restless. Bones grow, the body rests and all kinds of other things I’ve learned and long since forgotten. Tonight is different. The change in the air isn’t winter fighting with spring or the rotating anthems from podiums just across the border, but something bigger and yet, much more personal. It is the gentle turn in the night from one age to the next — a parade of years that has just started and is already moving much too fast. Memories blow on the wind like so much confetti.

This would be my scrapbook.

The sun will be up in a few hours and with it the son. He rises with the world and immediately starts to conquer it. There are a lot of fart jokes along the way.

And dimples.

He is my fearless one. He runs head first into the day only looking back to make sure we follow. He explores every nook, cranny and the musical offerings of legendary rock bands. His world is filled with games and things to throw. His creative process is fueled by equal parts curiosity and mud puddle. His imagination is only limited by my ability to comprehend it.

“I’m not a big boy,” he said. “I’m your baby.”

And then he went to bed a three-year-old for the last time, ever.

Zane is turning four and I’m the one getting older.

Happy birthday, Son.

“Oh, blood. Somebody must have died there.”

He is five-years-old and I’m standing outside the bathroom on the campus of his elementary school. The door is propped open and the floor is covered with paper towels and urine. There is blood on the sidewalk between me and the tile.

“I doubt anyone died there,” I tell him. “Today,” I keep to myself.

Maybe it is spit heavy with dye and candy.

He is unfazed by the possibility of death or by its looming presence. He is running in the cloudy haze of springtime, fresh from finding a favorite sweater among the memories of the lost and found. He is jumping cracks and lines drawn from chalk.

I am walking a growing distance behind him. My sweatshirt is pulled tight. The springtime wind is sharp and cold.

My head is full of medicine and mucus. The image is unpleasant and the reality is worse. It is a day after my 38th birthday and I am tired and my Facebook wall is full. It is a good feeling to be thought of, but even the warmth of sentiment is lost in the breeze. I pull my sweatshirt tighter.

We are home and the boys are not listening. My wife is listening to the J. Geils Band and everything is a freeze frame.

There are cards in the mailbox full of checks and signatures. I read every line, even the words written by a company that has never met me. I put the money in my wallet and throw the cards away. They’ve served their purpose and theirs is to be forgotten and recycled. Perhaps they will come back as a love note or parking ticket, a poem or a receipt. Maybe a birthday card is all there is.

I’m behind in my work. I’m behind in my bills. The daylight lasts an hour longer and it is not enough.

There is cold coffee and leftover spaghetti on my desk- a temporary stop before they are a part of me, like the spring and the wind, life and death, my boys, my wife, a wall written on and mailboxes filled. Like work and bills and walks of growing distance, everything is medicine and everything is mucus. It is heavy with dye and candy.

Everything is a freeze frame and for some reason I find comfort there.

We had a birthday party for Zane on Saturday. Yes, his actual birthday was on Friday, but I couldn’t very well ask people to drive a thousand miles on a weekday.

Speaking of long drives, the award for furthest distance traveled would have to go to my dad who drove in from Marana, AZ. However, since he came out for the weekend and didn’t even know we were having a party, I’ll let the honor fall on Matthew and family from ChildsPlayX2 who nearly drove from another country. Their prize was a banana and a couple of swings at a monkey. BTW, you know how Matthew is always joking about how his wife is so much prettier than him- turns out he isn’t joking.

Rattling the Kettle was on hand with family and spent the majority of his time between the beer barrel and the batters box. Apparently he’s a switch-hitter.

Bill from The Frowning of a Lifetime and his girlfriend brought swords and coffee. They also smiled.

The L.A.’s were in the house and they took a suspicious amount of laps around the yard to make sure we all noticed their Ellen gift. Show-offs.

There were plenty of non-blog related people there as well, but since they don’t every bother to read this I’ll let them rest in relative obscurity.

And now for some many pictures:

Zane & The Monk

The kids vs. the indestructible monkey

Success

Last night Atticus fell asleep, sitting upright, just as we were ready to leave Disneyland. Zane was already sleeping in the stroller. My wife and sister were lost beyond a sea of people, waiting for coffee and justifying caramel apples.

I stood with my mother and my two sleeping children and 60,000 people that I had never met. Except they were not standing. They were moving as one. A giant wave of wheels and balloons, hitting upon my ankles and lingering across my shore. It carried us from where we waited and melted us into its masses.

I picked up a sleeping three year old and I started walking. It is not far from the gates of Disneyland to the door of our hotel. It is a nice stroll on any given afternoon, with your strength intact and room to breathe in.

It is further at the end of the night, after 12 hours of non-stop walking and playing, joy and frustration. It is unreachable when smothered with exhaustion and your load is heavy.

I carried Atticus over a quarter of a mile. Forty pounds wrapped around my weakened frame. His sleep was sound. My back was killing me.

As were my feet, and my arms, and my head. Yet, I did not falter, for I knew that this walk would be the last embrace between a father and his three-year-old son.

In the morning he would wake up four, and even heavier to carry.

Birthdays are bittersweet, and as ready as I was, I was unprepared.

Happy Birthday, Atticus. Let’s take this year a little slower.