Category: Writing

Picture this. A small alternative high school with a dedicated staff of a dozen or so commited teachers are assembled at a weekly staff meeting discussing whether or not a student should be expelled.

The school has since changed considerably, but back then (in 1996), it was a place where students who were deemed as “unteachable” could attend school in small classes (no more than 6 students in a class) to get the personalized, 1:1 type of instruction they needed to be successful. Clearly, there was nowhere else these students could go.

And they were great people, mostly. They had made some bad choices, they had been treated as less than by peers, they had been damaged by past teachers and classroom experiences. Most of them were adopted, or from broken homes. Deep down, they were “good kids.”

But one of them had brought a gun to school. And, due to his learning differences, he lacked the self-awareness to understand why that was a bad thing.

1996.

That afternoon my life changed. The fact of the matter was that I hadn’t really thought, even given the sometimes violent nature of some of my students, that I was in danger. But I knew about guns. I knew about the kind of damage they can do. I knew well how to load, aim and fire, something that most people don’t, frankly. How guns are manufactured to be easy to use. So much so that you can make a mistake. And if you have any kind of impairment, physical, mental, cognitive … you name it … you can cause unbelievable harm.

The question before the group was what we should do to discipline this person who had made a mistake. A lapse in judgement. A poor choice.

“He has nowhere else to go,” the director said.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I spoke up.
“No,” I said.
Silence.
“No. There’s nothing good to be found here. This is a gun. A gun. So no.”
Stunned silence.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“I mean no,” I said. “We need to draw a hard line here. This is a gun. A gun. I’m not going to be the one to tell your husband, or your children, or my wife how we let this slide. How we are somehow to blame for not doing what we can to keep this kid away from our school.”
“He has given up the gun,” someone said.
“Good. But I can’t allow myself to let him back in here,” I said.
“Well … that’s … “
“Him or me. That’s where I am.” To this day I am surprised at how hard that was. How that sounded. What that said about me.

He never returned to school. I came to understand that he was enrolled in a public school in a SPED room and graduated from that program.

1998.

Again, we are assembled in a staff meeting discussing what we can do to avoid what happend in Springfield, Oregon, just 110 miles away. About a two-hour drive from where we sat on that May afternoon. A 15-year-old who was scheduled for an expulsion hearing had killed his parents and gone to school and killed two people. He wounded 25 others.

Our little school had grown. The population had changed. We developed an active shooter drill. Until that time, my classroom was tight, with a wooden door and windows that didn’t open. I moved into the second-floor “computer lab” with windows that did open. And I had a file cabinet with a ball peen hammer in the top drawer. My active shooter plan was to protect the students, break the window and jump. Again, I surprised myself. Why abandon those who need me? Why be among the first to flee? What kind of person was I becoming?

1999.

You were probably thinking that I would mention Columbine High School. I’m not.

What I am going to tell you is the story of Scott Carnine. Scott was a great kid. Loved to ski. Loved his friends. Loved the Phoenix Suns. When he spoke, which was rare, he was kind. A good kid. Gentle. Huge heart. I name him here because his is a name I won’t ever forget. Unbeknownst to Scott, or his parents, he changed my life one afternoon.

Scott was being bullied at a bus stop. Turns out, it was frequent. We didn’t know. No one knew, except for Scott and his abuser and the handful of students who took the city bus home from school. One day Scott absorbed that abuse and went home, got his dad’s gun, and killed himself.

After the funeral, and the counseling, and the tending to the various aftershocks of that … I decided that teaching was no longer my calling.

Guns and kids. Guns and schools. Guns and unstable populations.

The common denominator? Guns.

It has never gotten better. It has only gotten worse.

If I’ve learned anything at all about how to react, what to do, who to call on, (or call out) it’s this: I have a terrible, unsettled feeling from the helplessness I feel in these situations. I think a lot about it, but I would never say, “My thoughts are with you.” I pray a bit, but I would never say, “I’m praying for you.”

What I do think about, what I can still conjure out of my memory, are those discussions on those afternoons. With those people, some of whom have passed away. Those kind, compassionate, caring people who endured every single one of these unspeakable events alongside me.

And those afternoons that changed my life.

“Oof! This is mentally exhausting!” I said.

“Yes. For me it is an attachment to those movies and plays, but it was your life!” Alana said.

She was correct. Again. Sigh.

I won’t go into the horrid details of what it’s like when you live through a dishwasher disaster one year into a global pandemic, just shortly after a gigantic container ship blocked the Suez Canal. I figure you all have your tales to tell from these times.

Suffice to say, our stories — lately — have centered around a somewhat unfortunate remodel of our kitchen that required us to move a couple of items that had been undisturbed for years.

It’s true. Not only did we have to move a piano, we also had to move the cabinet that held our collective, hard-copy music from the Before Times. Which is a bit more complicated than it sounds.

For us, the Before Times included, but were not limited to:

• Before the unfortunate dishwasher incident of 3/31/21
• Before we built our current house
• Before we purchased a piano (during a Piano Emergency Sale!)
• Before we purchased our first house
• Before we met each other
• Before we moved to the Pacific Northwest
• Before I abandoned my hopes of being a professional musician
• Before either of us graduated from various institutions of higher learning
• Before both of us graduated from various institutions of secondary education
• Before we graduated from various insitutions of primary education
• Before we were acknowledged by various religious organizations as members

So there we were, crouched on the floor of our home office looking at each and every sheet of music that had crossed our various thresholds for well over fifty years. 

We started with three piles:

• Classical,
• Pop, and
• To-be-repaired.

Among the “to-be-repaired” pile was various pages of the Billy Joel Songbook. There were Brenda and Eddie. There was a New York State of Mind. There were pieces of Anthony working at a grocery store, saving his pennies for someday. Our agreement at the time was that we would repair the to-be-repaired and then decide which pile the repaired music would become a part of. 

Suddenly, and without warning, there were more than three piles:

• Classical
• Semi-classical
• Collections
• Collections of Broadway Musicals
• Stuff I used to like to play
• Stuff I couldn’t ever play
• Stuff we can’t remember
• Stuff Mrs. Dwyer (a neighbor we haven’t seen for a score of years), dumped on us when she saw we had a piano
• To-be-repaired
• To-be-repaired and then discarded
• To-be-repaired and then given away
• To-be-given-away
• To-be-returned to Tams Whitmark
• To-be-recycled and never spoken of again

It was, for me, excruciating. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but I sat on that floor in the beam of an overly bright sunny day and gazed into my past through a vastly different microscope. Every single piece of music held something of my emotional well-being. My hopes. My fears. My insecurities. My pride. My envy. 

My age. 

It’s a little more than worrisome that something that so clearly defined me had become something I used to be. And I flashed on just about every moment of playing those pieces. Stumbling over passages. Recovering. Stumbling again. Recovering.

In the midst of this I remembered a drive I was taking with my mother who made me promise to “Never give up my music.” Perhaps she saw that as my entrance ticket into a different world she had hoped for me. Or maybe just a return on her investment of so many years of lessons, and so many instruments and so many recitals and concerts and performances and time began to swirl into a vortex of something I have spent a good deal of my adult life trying to avoid. 

Was this regret? 

I used to talk my mom out of clearing the dinner dishes if I could use that time after dinner to practice. She never refused. 

And I would whip through my required pieces I needed to get ready for my weekly lesson. And my dad would sometimes say, “A little soft pedal there. A little soft pedal.” He could never really abide loud things. But when he knew I was tiring, or when he knew he’d had enough. Or when there was something on the television he wanted to watch, he’d say, “Let them Begin the Beguine!” And I would have to pull out the Reader’s Digest Family Songbook and play that Cole Porter number. 

And I knew it was the end of my practice session. 

Today, I vowed to commit to at least an hour a week of sustained piano practice. 

And it’s different. 

Long ago, I learned there is a vast difference between practicing the piano, and playing the piano. 

Today I learned that sense memory, regret, and attempting to keep a promise is vastly different than riding a bicycle. 

It was pretty early in our friendship when I had buckled Tim into the front seat of the car. One of our many trips from his artist studio to his home. He was in fairly good spirits and he must have been feeling pretty good because he asked, “How much time do you have?”
“I don’t have anything special to do,” I lied.
“I don’t want to go straight home,” he said. “Let’s take a drive.”
“Where to?” I asked.
“I don’t care … someplace in nature,” he said.

There are these moments in time. They rush back to me on days when I least expect it, and it’s like a slap in the face. Always respectful. Never wanting to be a burden. Completely polite. Tim was one of the people who thought very carefully about the impression he was making on the world around him. When I was with him it was never about him. It was always about me.

Odd, that.

We ended up heading the car out to Sauvie Island. It was still relatively early in the fall, probably mid-September. The date isn’t as important as the time we spent together that afternoon. We were aimlessly wandering the many roads that criss-cross the island, looking at pumpkin patches. Talking about theatre. Discussing projects we had in common, and ones I had lined up, and a few he had just finished.

We were listening to the Beatles on satellite radio, and he told me about the first time he ever heard them on the radio in Kentucky. How he had discussed them with his sister, and how they changed his life. We stopped at a little store and I left the radio running while I went in and bought wine coolers, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Hostess Sno-Balls. When I got back to the car, he said, “Why is my ass on fire?” And I told him I had turned on the seat warmer for him.

He didn’t care for it.

We drove. We drank. We stopped. We talked. I fed him handfuls of Cheetos.

On the way back to his home that afternoon we stopped at King Burrito to get dinner. I said, “I’m going to leave the car running. Don’t go anywhere.” It was instinct. He roared with laughter. And he asked me to roll down his window, so he could shout at people.

A year went by.

We started to talk about time. He would remark that his doctor (who he loved) had told him he had a short time to live, and he always followed that up with, “That was three years ago.” Or, “That was four years ago.”

I’d stopped marking time passing and started marking time remaining.

We dropped all pretense about texting. They would pop up randomly. We developed a fondness for movies starring Elvis Presley. I shared with him my Elvis-is-alive-because-he-is-worth-more-dead-than-alive theory.

And we never shied away from telling each other how much we meant to each other.

Almost a year after our trip around Sauvie Island, he sent me a text that read, “Sauvie Island. I love you.”

He went into long-term care. Then the pandemic. Then the separation.

A few months later, I sent him a text that read, “Love you right back! I dreamt of seeing you last night. You were too busy to chat, but I got to hold your hand for a while.” Almost immediately he sent a reply, “Your hand is always in mine.”

And what persists is the joy he brought to us all. On his birthday, we remember him. We honor him. We think of his kindness. And the time we had with him.

And we miss him.

This is the window to my father’s CPA office. My sister Bobbi rescued it from the basement of the Daly Bank Building in Anaconda a few years ago. She and her husband Mike brought it out west, and I had it framed. It hangs on the wall of my home office. Some of you may even remember it. I stare at it often and think back to the days when I would head up the stairs of the building, the smell of dust in the air. My sister and I would push each other around the second floor in office chairs.

That came to a full stop when I accidentally pushed her, chair and all, down the steps. 

Anyway. Today, when the sun caught the corner of it, I thought back to this day 34 years ago. And I thought I’d share this chapter of Smelter City Boy. 

This is the third in a triptych of stories loosely collected around cars and the times I’ve spent in several cars with my dad. 

My dear old dad. 

_____________

1962 Ford Falcon

March 1987

Dad regarded the new bag of plasma hanging beside his bed. The day nurse hooked the bag into the shunt on his forearm. She started the drip, looked at her wristwatch and entered the time in the chart.

              “Yum,” he said.

              “Yeah, well. Let’s try to keep this blood inside your veins this time,” the nurse said before leaving.

              The night before, he had scratched his shin and nearly bled to death. It sounded like it was a hell of a mess when Mom called and told me I’d better come for a visit. I’d been working around the clock on opening a show I was co-choreographing, so I hadn’t come to see him in quite a while. The latest round of radiation had caused him to hallucinate, so he landed in the hospital about a week before. I felt he was on hospice care, but no one would actually confirm that was the case.

              “I scratched myself and nearly killed myself,” Dad said.

              “How’d you manage to do that?” I asked. My father hadn’t had any feeling in his lower legs since his first few rounds of radiation. His war injuries were the first places to show weakness, then deterioration, then cancer.

              “Killer toenails!” Dad said and pulled the covers off his feet.

              It wasn’t a pretty sight. His feet were swollen almost to the point of looking bruised. The nails were atrocious. They looked like they hadn’t been cut in years.

              “Pop! What the hell?” I asked.

              “I can’t reach, and I know better than to ask strangers to do this,” he said.

             “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

              “Nevermind, Big G,” he said, glancing at the plasma. I pushed the call button. “Let’s see what we can do about that,” I said.

              He had taken to dividing his free time between watching the Home Shopping Network and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Both channels made him angry enough to provide plenty of conversation starters. Today he was studying Pat Robertson.

              “Look at that jackass. Have you ever listened closely to what that man is saying?” he asked.

              “Not really,” I said. “I don’t let those guys get the better of me.”

              “Well, he’s absolutely parasitic! He takes advantage of people when they are really down and out, you know? He’s always asking if people are lonely or in a bad way. Then he spouts some crap about God loving them no matter how desperate they are. Then he hits them up for cash.”

              “You know my friends Rob and John? They subscribe to the 700 Club under the assumed name of Percy Manlove. You should see the propaganda they send out,” I said.

              “Rob and John are—”

              “Gay,” I said.

              “Right,” Dad said.

              When the nurse showed up at the door, I asked her to bring me a toenail clipper. She opened the drawer in the nightstand and pulled one out, dropping it in my hand. “Huh, what do you know,” Dad said. “There was one there all the time.”

              I sat on the foot of the bed and took up my father’s swollen right foot. Cool to the touch, the skin was pulled so tight it looked like it would burst if I accidentally nipped it with the clippers.

              “Your toes are a mess,” I said.

              “Yeah, well. I don’t get around much anymore,” Dad said.

              Three toes in, he was sound asleep, and my mind was wandering.

###

It was the summer of 1984 when Dad told me he was sick. I was in Artesia, New Mexico, touring with MCT. It was a Sunday; I always called home on Sunday. I had been watching Dr. Zhivago on the small television in my motel room. Every room I ever stayed in drifted in and out of my mind. I was looking at Julie Christie when my father said, “I’ve got some news.”

              The rest of the conversation faded in and out of memory as I carefully clipped each toenail. I remembered telling him it wasn’t all that bad. That prostate cancer wasn’t a killer, as far as I knew. And I remember him being optimistic, too.

              There’s a montage in Dr. Zhivago where he spends the winter with his mistress in an abandoned house. I thought how cold it must have been in Russia during the revolution. The place looked like it was grand at one time but had faded into obscurity. A child was running through the halls. A little girl, I thought—the doctor’s love child.

              When I started to clip the other foot, I recalled how Dad insisted I talk to the oncologist all by myself. I’d taken him to Missoula to see his specialists, and he walked into the waiting room and told me the doctor wanted to speak with me.

              “Your father is going to die,” the doctor said, “of prostate cancer.” He went on to tell me how all men, even if they were reasonably healthy, would sooner or later have a brush with prostate cancer.

              “The only thing we can do is make him comfortable with radiation,” the doctor said. “We’re going to remove his testicles to try to stop the spread of the cancerous cells, but that’s really just a stop-gap measure. We’ll do some radiation, but he has requested no chemotherapy.”

              “Did he say that?” I asked. “I mean, did he actually say those words?”

              “He said, ‘No heroics,’ and he told me about your relative, his sister, I think?”

              “Lola, yes. Breast cancer,” I said.

              “Right. Well, apparently, she did all sorts of things to stay alive. Including some kind of trip to Mexico?”

              “I don’t recall if they actually made that trip. But I remember her eating so many carrots she turned orange,” I said.

             “Your father doesn’t want any of that, and he wanted me to tell you not to insist on anything beyond just comfort care,” he said. “And if I were you, I’d get a prostate exam once a year,” he said. “We’re going to start recommending people get a yearly exam when they are fifty, but you are high risk now.”

              I was twenty-three.

             “I want you to see something,” the doctor said. And he flipped on a lightbox with a series of x-rays clipped to the front. “These are x-rays of your father’s bone structure,” he said. “Every bright spot is a place that has been broken. Your dad was in an accident some time ago.”

              “Yes, Jeep accident in the war. He broke his femur,” I said.

              “He broke a lot more than that,” he said. “These weak areas are where cancer, should it metastasize, is likely to spread.”

              I looked at the x-rays. There was a constellation of bright spots on Dad’s bones.

###

The late afternoon sun was starting to climb its way across the floor. The plasma bag was long gone. The toenails were clipped short, and the feet tucked safely away under an extra blanket. While some woman blathered on about luxurious cotton robes—a Home Shopping Network exclusive—I sat next to my sleeping father and worked one of his empty crossword puzzles. Lulled by the gentle rise and fall of his breathing, I hardly stirred when he said, “Where’d you get those?”

              “From the nightstand,” I said. He was sound asleep.

              “These cherries. Where’d they come from?” he asked.

              “What?” I asked.

              “This bag of cherries,” he said, plain as day. I checked once more. His eyes were closed, and he was clearly asleep.

              “I don’t know,” I said.

              No one had prepared me for this. I didn’t know whether to wake him or indulge him.

              Either way, my heart started pumping extra fast. My mind raced to the night a few years before when I was student teaching. I was jerked awake to the sound of his bedroom door banging against the wall.

              “Good. Damn good! Must be late-crop Bings,” he said.

              “Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”

              I watched as he picked a cherry from an imaginary bag he had balanced on his chest. Slowly pulling the stem up, flipping the cherry into his mouth, pulling the stem out and spitting the pit across the room. Had we not been in a hospital room with visiting hours drawing to a close, I would have thought we were laying in a hammock somewhere on the shores of Flathead Lake.

              That night. Was it two years ago? Three now? They had a tendency to melt into one another. He had called out to me. He’d fallen. Frozen with fear, I recalled how he called my name. He broke his back that night and had to walk with a cane after that.

              “It’s the damn column shift,” he said, spitting. I was jerked back into the hospital room. “Confuses people, I think.”

              “What do you mean?”

              “Well, you know. The Falcon. The shift is on the steering column, and people just get perplexed.”

              “Yeah?”

              “Well, hell yes! Should have gotten the automatic … what’s-it-called … Ford-O-Matic transmission. But seeing as how I was the only one driving, I just didn’t see the point. We’re never going to sell that car,” he said.

              I hadn’t thought about the Falcon station wagon for years. Dad bought it shortly before I was born. It used to sit in the field on the other side of the street before the Lussys built their house. Then I think Dad moved it into his storage garage with a bunch of stuff from his bachelor days. We used to drive it to the dump whenever we had a load big enough to fill the back.

              “How much have we got there?” he asked.

              “What?”

              “On the meter. How much?” He was starting to get irritated.

              “Oh! Uh … three and a quarter?” I said, not entirely sure I should be making stuff up.

              “Well, slip out and pay the man, will you? My leg is killing me today,” he said. A split second later, he added, “You’re taking too long with my money.”

              Stunned, I turned and looked beyond his feet out the window at the foot of his bed. He was smirking when he drifted deeper into sleep.

###

I stood up and stretched. Paced a little bit. The day was escaping from me, and I had to be back in Missoula that night. We had just moved out of the rehearsal hall and into the theatre. There was a lot to do. I sat back down by the side of the bed and considered slipping away. Once everything quieted down, I remembered the day he taught me how to mow the lawn.

              We didn’t have much of a yard, so he insisted on a small, electric lawnmower. Of course, I wanted a big gasoline-powered mower with a bag to catch the clippings. Instead, he said if we mowed with the tiny, blue electric mower at least once a week, we wouldn’t have to bag any of the clippings. He made me walk alongside him, next to the mower.

              I was impatient. He was steady and slow.

              I had gotten just a bit ahead of him, nearer to the mower than I should have been, when he ran over a pork chop bone left in the lawn by Honey Yvette. I heard the bone run through the blades about the same time I felt two pokes in my face like I’d been shot with a b.b. gun. One shard lodged in my brow, just between my eyes. The other totally cut through my upper lip.

              “Good God!” He shouted. “I’m sorry, but you need to listen to me and do what I tell you at least once in a while. I know you don’t think so, but I do know what I’m doing,” he said.

              It was the only apology he ever gave me.

              The second announcement for the close of visiting hours had just finished when he woke up. His eyes darted around the room. For a second, I thought he looked like a scared child, unsure where he was or what was going on. Finally, he coughed a bit, yawned and looked at me.

              “What are you up to?” he asked.

              “Not much. I was just doing a crossword and watching the fabulous exclusive values I can order, using a toll-free number,” I said.

              “Never thought I’d see the day when people would be buying diamonds from the television,” he said. “Then again, never thought I’d see the day when a scratch could make you bleed like a stuck pig.”

              “Well, your nails are clipped,” I said. “You should ask the nurse to file them down for you .”

              “Wouldn’t do any good,” he said. His eyes drifted around the room, away from me.       

              Then he stared at his feet, propped up under the covers and said, “I’m rotting from the inside out.”

              “Well, that’s reassuring,” I said.

              “What are you doing here?” he asked.

              “I came to see you,” I said.

              “No. I mean it. What are you really doing here?” he asked again. I tilted my head a little and puffed out my cheeks. Then my mouth just sort of hung open for a second. “What’s the show about?”

              “What?” I asked.

              “The show? What’s it about?” he said.

              “Oh! Well, it’s about a whorehouse.”

              “You don’t dance in a whorehouse,” he said.

              “You do when it’s the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” I said.

              “Oh! That one,” he said. “I saw the movie on VHS.”

              “The play is better.”

              “Lots of dancing cowboys and whores in that one,” he said.

              “Well, they are football players dressed like cowboys and whores dressed like prom queens, but—yeah—I’ve got my hands full,” I said.

              The sun had traveled to the other side of the hospital. The room was full of shadows, so I opened the blinds and turned on the reading light above the bed.

              “You better get to it, then,” he said, smoothing the sheets on either side of his hips.

              “Dad, I’m afraid I won’t. I mean, I can’t. I mean … I don’t know what I mean,” I said finally.

              After a while, he said, “Listen, I think you have better things to do than come here and watch me sleep.”

              “I can’t think of anything better right now,” I said.

              “You lie like a rug, Big G.”

              I stood up slowly and put the book of crossword puzzles back on the nightstand. Not knowing what else to do, I leaned over and gently kissed his forehead.

              “I’ll see you later,” I said at the door.

              “Drive safely,” he said.

And that was it.

Later that night, I was leading the cast through a series of warm-up stretches on the Wilma stage back in Missoula when the phone on the Stage Manager’s station rang. It was B.J. Dad had fallen asleep after I’d left and didn’t wake up when the nurse tried to rouse him for dinner.

In the dark of night I am awakened by the sounds of harsh voices coming from my parent’s bedroom on the other side of the house. I was just getting used to sleeping in my own room, so it might have been 1970 or 1971. That puts me at about eight or nine years old. The voices quieted for a bit and as I was just drifting back to sleep, I hear what sounds like a bear in the living room. So I naturally cower down deeper into the covers. The sounds abate. Then return. Then abate. Then return. Then I distinctly hear the sound of the front door opening, so I figure that must be the bear leaving the house.

I had to see that.

Just outside my bedroom door, I meet my sister who appears just as curious. Together we creep down the hall to the front room.

That was when we both saw my dad stuffing the Christmas tree out the front door and onto the porch. I start to speak, but my sister stops me. Likewise she starts to speak, and I stop her. My dad closes the door, huffs a little bit and goes back to his bedroom.

Ever-so-carefully, my sister and I (probably eight and nine, respectively) silently restore the Christmas tree to its rightful place in front of the big picture window in the living room.

We would never speak of this.

Special Meaning #2

Same house. Same sister. Same dad. Different tree. The three of us are trying to at least get the old artificial tree up and lit before my sister’s new boyfriend comes to the house for dinner. It’s a big day, as this will be the first meeting of the boyfriend and the family. And we were kind of an odd family to meet.

If you’ve ever assembled an old-timey artificial Christmas tree, you know what a vexing task it is. Color-coded branches that don’t make any sense. The colors have long ago scraped away … so you have to sort the branches by length (a not-fun-at-all guessing game), determine which branches go in which holes … again … NOT FUN.

But we manage.

The tree is up. But the lights are a mess. It seems the more we untangle them the more tangled they become. Then once the strips of lights are carefully laid out (green cords against the green shag carpet … ahem), some of the strings work. Some don’t work at all. And a few only half-work.

The clock is ticking, Zero Hour is approaching. THE BOYFRIEND (later husband), IS ON HIS WAY.

My dad’s solution is to buy new lights. My sister and I dart a knowing look and then assume the former molester of the family Christmas tree has not only reformed, but also pried open a wallet that is so tight it squeaks.

My sister’s solution is to abandon the job altogether. Clean the place up a bit and, “Try to act normal for once.” I remind her that mom is making moussaka, so any sense of normality is pretty much out the window.

My solution? I proclaim, “Fuck it. I say we just start drinking. Maybe we’ll be drunk by the time he gets here.”

And I win.

Special Meaning #3

Just the other day, I told some work friends that this Christmas is memorable, if only for the unusual circumstances. Then I tell them about my favorite holiday movie, The Holly And The Ivy, and how there’s a conversation in that film about the calendar and the end of the year, and how the darkness and the cold are meant for reminiscences. I admit to them that I don’t have a solid Christmas memory between the first Christmas without my parents and the first Christmas with my wife — a period of about five years.

I must have gone home. I might have traveled back and forth between Missoula and Anaconda. I might have been alone on Christmas. The fact is this; I don’t remember much about those five Christmases. But I do remember Christmas 1989, or maybe 1990. (The year is irrelevant.)

I was living in an apartment I had come to refer to as The Bat Cave. It has nothing to do with bats. Or even the fictional Bat Cave. But the floor was super slanty, like the seedy lairs of all the villains on the Bat Man TV show.

I was sinking further and further into the Christmas Blues. (I was probably thinking more about Special Meaning #1 than Special Meaning #2 at the time.) It was a pretty rough patch. Rough and lonely. When a package from my friend Polly showed up. Inside a box from Frederick and Nelson’s department store were three papier mache heart-shaped ornaments, $40 in cash, and a note that read, “Buy a tree. LYS, Polly.”

Here Comes the Sun God

According to the History Channel, “In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god, and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last, the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong, and summer would return.”

Lately, I’ve heard quite a few people lay blame for more than a few misfortunes at the feet of the year 2020. Although I am loathed to admit it, I might have done that more than a couple of times myself. But, as this year winds down like a tired clock, I have to say that I, too, am anxious for the sun god to get well.

While I’ll never “celebrate” the sun (aka bringer of The Cancer, endless reapplications of various lotions and creams, manifester of overly large-brimmed hats), I welcome with little trepidation the return of the light.

But for now, I’ll just continue to admire the view in the darkness.

For me, there’s nothing like it. Sitting at the head of a very well-laid table, reaching out on either side and grabbing the hands of those closest to me, looking at the smiles, the heads bowed, the food steaming. I love it. It’s how I express my care for others — to feed them. It’s so much a part of who I am. 

Not this year. 

I have to admit that saddens me a bit. It’s like the definition of “me-ness” has changed. And, although it’s far from existential dread, it’s just weird. Weird piled upon weird. 

For the past decade or so, I would insist that Thanksgiving dinner was at my house. About this, I was unmovable. Crowd or intimate group, travelers, or those nearby. Thanksgiving was at my house. When others offered, I would say something like, “I’m a total control freak, and it would just make me happier to host.” About Thanksgiving, I was brutally honest. I haven’t really parsed exactly why I have confronted myself with that self-awareness until this year. To be honest, I never really gave it much thought. 

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was always hosted on some sort of bizarre rotation between our house, my Aunt Pauline and Uncle Orlin’s house, or Uncle Julian and Aunt Glenna’s house. It wasn’t a huge topic of conversation, usually around Halloween, we’d ask, “Where’s Thanksgiving this year?” Then, the answer came. After my parents died, and there was an unfortunate turkey-cold-cuts-and-jello-salad incident (I won’t go into that, but you know who you are and what you did, and I understand completely, and I forgive you), I would have Thanksgiving with my buddy Brien’s house. Then I moved west, and the hosting began. The insistence began. 

But, again, not this year. 

As I was preparing a shopping list for my latest masked adventure to the grocery store, it occurred to me that Thanksgiving dinner is one of the only meals I can make, start to finish, from memory. No recipe required. Granted, there might be a new pie to pull together or something I’d like to try, but I usually don’t mess with Thanksgiving. I just don’t. And I don’t really ever wonder why not. Is that tradition? Is it my tradition to be so fixed in my reasoning? My thinking? My capacity for change? Or am I just being stubborn? Or … why is it so important to me? This coming together. This wonderful joining of hands. The glances across the table. The contentment. 

Not this year? 

Next week I will fill the house with the smell of butter and sage, cinnamon and apples, roasting turkey, and the best fucking gravy you will ever know in your short life. No doubt, none of these smells will be as strong as in the past. The smell might not linger as long. But they will be there, even if it’s only for the two of us. 

And you all will be there, too! My family and friends, my aunts and uncles, my parents. Most likely stronger than ever before. And you are all welcome. 

And, this year, that will have to be enough.  

It’s funny how things have a way of sneaking up on you. Today, without any provocation whatsoever, my John Phillip Sousa Band Award crashed to the ground in my office — as I was staring at it. The souvenir paperweight had been bestowed upon me at the Spring Band Concert in 1980. This annual concert was only one of the many end-of-the-school-year events that the proud students of Anaconda High School (go Copperheads) would look forward to every year. And the John Phillips Sousa Band Award was given to a departing senior who had served in the band and was elected by their fellow bandmates to receive the honor. The awardee was given a souvenir paperweight, and their name was placed on a plaque with other Sousa Awardees. It was a great honor. (It most likely still is) and was the penultimate item on the program at the spring concert. 

Today, when I returned this memento to the shelf (perhaps the victim of some careless dusting?) I was surprised at the rush of all that came crashing down around me. 

To say I loved band would be a gross understatement. Fact is, I lived for band. Any and all band. My entire afternoons of much of my high school years were consumed by band. Marching Band, Concert Band, Stage Band, Orchestra, you name it. I lived it. 

Days like today, around this time of day, our marching band (there must have been upwards of 80 of us), would gather on a school bus and head to the football field to practice our routines. I was a squad leader. The duties of a squad leader were to keep four bandmates (in this case saxophones all) in a straight line. Squad leaders did this by periodically shouting “Guide Right!” as the percussion section would play a cadence.

Routines were choreographed in sections of eight. And strides were cleverly paced to cover five yards with every section. Squads would pivot and march and move backward. My junior year, our big halftime number was A Salute To Elvis, which, among other sections, involved a tricky maneuver of alternately tapping one foot over while playing Blue Suede Shoes. There was also a fancy slow-motion stride forward playing Love Me Tender. It was a vexing routine to say the least.  

(You must know, aside from band being a band geek, I am a proud Elvis freakazoid … don’t get me started.) 

The warm afternoon sun was a complete juxtaposition to the cold, cold Friday nights we would perform at the football games. But I remember rehearsing The Salute To Elvis went particularly well, save for the fact that we had run out of time and did not choreograph an exit.

Instead, our benevolent leader — the dear, departed Arlie Schultz, who had a wry sense of humor but rarely smiled, hence his nickname, Snarly Arlie — instructed us on our final dress rehearsal to “Let the crowd cheer for a bit. Let percussion start playing the cadence. Then everyone scream, and run off the field as fast as you can.”

We did just that. I remember my sister later asking me if we’d all been attacked by bees. 

I wonder, though. If marching bands still practice on warm, sunny afternoons. And if A Salute To Elvis is still a popular routine. And which force of nature caused me to Guide Right on this hasty afternoon, some forty years later.  

This can get a little complicated. I’ve been thinking this through and I’m not there yet. I’m not sure I’ll ever be there, but this is where I am today. It’s a mess, right? This place we call home. A mess. A bloody mess. And there’s anger and resentment and so much to learn about each other. There’s a lot on my mind. (What a weird phrase … on my mind. Social media prompts frequently ask me what’s on my mind. Like it’s a location that deserves a preposition. I digress.)

Lately, William Boynton has been on my mind. One of the things the pandemic has done is given me some time to take a glance at the old family tree. It’s an old tree. I mean. There’s a lot there. I’ve got it back to almost 1004. (Yeah … the turn of the last millennia … who knew?) And William was the first of my line to climb aboard this country.

In 1638. Plymouth Rock was 1620. So, you know … it was a while ago.

According to Ancestry.com William is my ninth great grandfather. He’s also part of a LONG line of Williams, and Calebs and Daniels, which makes it damn difficult to trust Ancestry.com. You have to really pay attention to dates and leave it for a while and then come back to see if connections have been made. And those are tenuous at best.

It’s like everyone is guessing at the same riddle —  Where did we come from and how the hell did we end up here? I’ve got it down with a bit of certainty to 1638. 

So here he is. William. A Yankee. There’s quite a bit written about him, actually. He was given 5 pounds by the church to build an addition to his house for a school. Contingent upon that “loan” he would have to teach the local village. Not only children but everyone who wanted to learn. If he ever decided to stop, he’d have to pay the church back 2.7 pounds. The Puritans were weird, huh? 

But here’s what I’ve been thinking. And here’s where I am today. Why did he come here? What persuaded him to grab Elizabeth and get on the ship John of London with Rev. Ezekiel Rogers (and the first printing press that came to the new world by the way). Reverend Rogers was a nonconformist. Apparently, he feared for the “future of Puritanism” and left England with twenty families (mine included) and settled in Rowley, Massachusetts. 

So here’s the known knowns. (Maybe … I warned you I wasn’t up to here yet.) William left a pretty sweet deal in England. (There’s a longer story here I have yet to flesh out, but he was probably the grandson of an aristocratic family. I’m not there yet and I’m running out of verifiable proof. He might have been a religious whacko. Or maybe just anxious for adventure. Who knows, really?) He set up a shop, was a tradesman, and a teacher. A craftsman. 

Here’s the unknowns. (And I’m relying on my vivid imagination here, so … you know … ). He believed in himself enough to get on a ship with his wife and head to a new place. One that was only 18 years into being a place (or actually a place that was stolen from people who were already here, but … like I said, I can’t really get into that at the moment.) 

I know his offspring sided with the Colonists even though they enjoyed a commission from George III. I know that the offspring of that offspring sided with the Union. I know that they worked the land. I know that the offspring of that offspring of that offspring defended this country in a couple of World Wars. 

But I’m betting William could never imagine what this place is now. Where we are. Where I am. I’m fairly certain he probably wouldn’t approve of what we did with this country. (Unless he was a religious whacko, in the which case all bets are off.) 

And I can only hope he would be proud of me for wanting to know his story. 

Isn’t that what we can all agree on? That we should all at least try to make enough of this country to be worthy of the considerable efforts of our ancestors?