Campfyre Stories

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub21sp-zru0&feature=related

It was three years ago that my dad passed away.  It wasn’t until this week that I realized that none of my peer friends had lost a parent.  The truth is, when you haven’t experienced that direct loss, you can’t ever understand it.

People want to empathize.  They want to say that they know how you feel, but having lost an uncle or a grandparent or even a close friend is nothing, nothing compared to losing your parent.  No matter how much someone wants to share that pain with you, most of them simply can’t and they won’t even really understand that until they join the club.  There are few who really understand that, but there are some.

When my father’s mother died, someone told him "I know how you feel, I recently lost my cat."

Death hurts those who are still living, no matter what your relationship to the deceased was, but not all deaths, not all losses, are equal.

I can see this more clearly now, seeing it happen to someone else.  I know the pain that she’s going through and I know that, as well meaning as so many people are, they just don’t understand.  You can’t really detach from this one, and it never gets easy.  It gets easier, but even that takes time.

My brother and I were talking about this yesterday with a friend who had just come back from visiting her dad.  We were trying to explain.  "It never gets easy and it never goes away.  One moment you’re fine, walking down the street, smiling, singing, whistling a happy tune and then something reminds you…"  "You look over and you see that cab driver, working for the same company dad worked for, and he looks *just* like him, and you raise your hand to wave….  then you remember…"  "And it’s like you just got punched in the stomach.  Or stabbed in the heart."

Or, maybe it’s when I watch my son play guitar and I notice that he bars his A chord the way my dad did.  The way I’ve rarely seen other people play it.  And I wish, so often, that he had lived just enough longer to see Spawn learn to play…  no…  learn to LOVE guitar.  Maybe he could have taught him some techniques or some songs or just given him a list of artists that he should become familiar with.

I wish, I wish, I wish.  If only, if only, if only.

It doesn’t ever go away.

So I, who is a very touchy-feely person, who can talk without breath, who volleys words with my friends and family so that it’s too hard a conversation to follow, I can sit with someone who lost her father and not say a word, and not reach out and force myself on her.  I can sit and listen or sit and nothing or force the issues that need to be decided immediately that you don’t want to have to think about.  I can let go of all the things that I ordinarily do and just be there.

Here we all are, approaching the age where our parents start to go.  I may have been the first of those I’m close to, but at least they’ll have someone who can really understand when their turns arrive.  For my friend who is in the middle of it right now, she’ll be equipped for that eventual phone call from someone who just joined the club and can’t think, and doesn’t know what to do, and doesn’t want someone to liken her father’s death to something entirely different.  You join the club when your dad passes, but it’s when someone else’s father goes that you really get it.

Rest in peace, Joe.  I’m glad I met you, I wish I could have known you a little better.  And, most importantly, thank you for my friend.  You shaped her into an amazing person and I am lucky to count her among my friends.

I was sick with the flu for a week.  Just about when I was getting better, my niece Moon wound up with the same flu.  I know that my mom has been trying to work at their soon-to-be new house every weekend, so I volunteered to spend the day with Moon yesterday so that they could still get work done, but she could just take it easy.

She came by around 11:30 and we had a breakfast of apple pancakes, then watched cartoons.  She doesn’t get to watch much tv at home, and she loves that I have cable.  I wanted to take her apple picking, but I know that I wasn’t all that energetic by the time I hit the point she was at and, since the sky was threatening rain, we decided not to do that.  Instead, we did a quick grocery shopping and haunted a couple of dollar stores.

She’s so much fun to go shopping with, even if it’s just at a dollar store.  We found a box of personalized pens.  Very cool pens, actually, that just happened to be personalized.  She started going through the box, asking, "What does this say?  What about this one?  What does this say?"  She’s starting to learn to read, and tried to guess that since one pen said "Lydia", all the "L" pens said Lydia, but it was the Kristen pen that most cracked me up.

"Auntie Fyre, what does this one say?"
"Kristen."
"HA!  That’s a silly name for a pen."

We tried on all the halloween stuff and talked about what was cool and what was silly.  We put a quarter in the gumball machine to watch the bells, whistles and converyer belts.  We bought silly, little dollar store things after an hour of just looking at what was available.  It was a blast.  She even ran into an old classmate of hers from dance class.

Often when Moon and I spend too much time together, we make each other a little crazy.  She likes to push my buttons over and over again, but yesterday was not like that at all.  She helped me cook, told me *exactly* what she wanted for dinner.  She was pleasant conversation and a lot of fun to be around.  She stayed until 8pm, which was completely fine with me.

When she left, she was as polite as can be.  "Thank you for having me over, Auntie Fyre.  I had a really good time."  Well I had a really good time, too.  And I had a day of not dwelling on all the crap that seems to surround me pretty often.  It was a really wonderful day.

Chaos:  Hey, are you on your computer?
Fyre:  No.  Why?  What’s up?
Chaos:  Well, I was going to ask you a kind of a weird favor.
Fyre:  Go ahead and ask anyway.  It’s not hard to log on.
Chaos:  Well, I was just going to ask you to look up the phone number for [a pizza place].
Fyre:  Um.  I do have a phone book.
Chaos:  Oh, right on, can you look up the phone number for me?
Fyre:  [Finds number]  You know, it’s been years since I’ve looked up anything in a phone book.
Chaos:  Heh.  Yeah.  You should blog about this.

Fin.

We parked on the grass and kind of snuck in to catch the part of the ceremony where the two of them jump over a broom.  They made the jump without touching any part of them to the ground or the broom (even clothing), so the universe approves of their marriage?  Something like that.  They ran off and jumped into the horse-drawn carriage and went off…  somewhere…

So, where do I start?  The groom and groomsmen were all in plain black suits.  The bridesmaids were in beautiful saris.  The bride was wearing a custom gown that was inspired by Star Wars, but I searched and I can’t find a picture.  It was beaded and gold and flowy and gauzy and unique.  I could go on, I have decided not to.

The bride and groom headed off in their horse-drawn carriage and the rest of the attendees headed inside for cocktails and appetizers.  I saw my former in-laws, some of them for the first time in very many years.  It was quite heartening how well-received I was and how happy they were to see me there.  Later in the evening, my ex-mother-in-law came to say that my presence there speaks volumes, my mother added, for all three of us.  The simple fact that Dragonmaker, Dragonmaker’s wife and I get along well enough for me to not just be tolerated, but welcomed at the wedding really goes to show that people can be grown-ups about divorce.  I do wish them well, and they know it.

So cocktails and appetizers.  My drink of choice for the evening was gin and tonic because I didn’t want to have to think about it.  I had to drive home, so I moderated my drinking and I think I only had about 3 drinks (over the course of 6 hours).  The appetizers were, frankly, strange.  I only tried the carrot/coconut shooter, which was like a very strange and watery pudding.  Dinner was much better.

Spawn, for the first time in his life, found himself playing the host at someone else’s party.  In addition to running with his posse and being followed around by female groupies (aged 2, 4, 6 and 8 ), he introduced people to each other, mingled like a pro and even had his first slow dance with a girl!  And what a dance it was.  Although this girl is practically family, it couldn’t have been a better person to have that first slow dance with.  He framed her well, looked into her eyes, held a conversation and (to a small extent) steered her around the dance floor.  The fact that she let him lead and he stepped up was so impressive to me.  "THAT," I told him later, "is exactly how you dance with a girl.  Remember all of it."

I did some dancing and even forced one of my two brothers out on the dance floor.  He claims that he can’t dance, but he made the effort and didn’t look nearly as much of a fool as he claimed he would.  The other brother dug in his heels and wouldn’t budge (I had to literally drag the other brother onto the dance floor).  A couple of friends of mine came with their 11 month old baby, who I was meeting for the first time.  She’s adorable (and I’m not a baby person!).  I went up to the dad and said "Give me your baby and go dance with your wife!"  He handed me the baby who fell completely in love with me, cracking up every time I sang to her or stuck my tongue out.  I think I made a new friend

My mother asked me if I ever regretted not having a wedding "like this".  She said that sometimes she feels like a bad mother for not having given me the fairy-tale princess treatment on my wedding day, but I’m really not a fairy-princess kind of gal.  I’m starting to think that I have so many stories from my past that deserved to be told that maybe my wedding is one of them, but for now I don’t want to take away from Dragonmaker’s day.

The bride and groom danced together.  Then the bride and her father.  Then the groom and his mother.  His mother was thrilled to be dancing with her son and it was wonderful to see how natural they were dancing together.  It made me heart soar and she told me later that it was a wonderful experience to have.  Good for them!

Dragonmaker is part of an improv troupe.  Several of his friends from improv were there and wanted to sing.  The first woman is someone I have met a few times, a wonderful woman.  She’s got a gorgeous voice and a matching personality.  She sang wonderfully.  The second girl went up and the leader of the band said "I don’t know if this is really a romantic song…"

Someone please tell me…  on what planet does someone sing House of the Rising Sun at a wedding?  She was pretty drunk and she butchered and forgot a lot of the words.  There was some measure of relief that I felt when she left off the line "I’m going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain."  Because, you know, inappropriate…

A third woman sang and, after a few false starts it turned out very lovely.  I was mostly trying to get my carful of people together, so I wasn’t paying all that much attention.

And then the bride and groom sang "Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off", which ended the musical portion of the reception.  Once they were finished the band packed up and I started making my goodbyes.  Spawn was having such a good time, that he decided to leave with the rest of my family, so I packed up Girl and my two brothers and we went back home.

Spawn got home about an hour after us and we all wound up staying up Far Too Late for having plans to hit Tulip Fest the next morning.

Some time back, Spawn was given a recliner + ottoman from his (almost) stepmother’s father.  It was leatherette and extremely comfortable and it was his chair.  He explained that it was his and he intended to take it with him when he left (for college or his own apartment or whatever).

And then it broke.  And he was devastated because this was his chair, so I promised that I would buy him a new recliner with some of the tax return money.  This past weekend, since I had the car, we went to the BIG store and picked out his new recliner (a much nicer and plushier one than the one he broke).

So we hunted down the sales associate and did all the pre-sales stuff, joking and laughing the entire time.  When we were standing in line, I mentioned that I was going to cry when Spawn finally did move out.  Not because he was moving, but because he would be taking the chair with him.  The SA was shocked and actually said that was something that he never expected to hear a mother say to her child (but he said it with a smile on his face). 

When we got to the cashier, we were still joking around and I was trying to include the cashier in our jocularity.  When he handed me the receipt to sign, I turned to Spawn and said "HA!  You see that?" pointing to the total amount, "And they say you can’t put a price on a mother’s love.  Well there it is, kiddo, right there."

Well I thought that the cashier was going to fall over when I said that.  If "I won’t miss YOU, but I’ll miss your chair" was bad, this was probably worse.  I suppose there’s some comfort in the fact that I said it to two different people probably mitigates the whole thing (Spawn, of course, knows me well enough to know that I was just playing).  When the cashier did recover, he chuckled, explained how long we have to reschedule the delivery and offered a warning of "So don’t get into trouble with your mom or she’ll delay your chair."

Heh.

So I was talking to Oz the other day and he mentioned how he was a contender for Father of the Year and why.  I told him why I was now out of the running and, when I saw Spawn later on, I conveyed this to him.  "You know why I’m out of the running for Mother of the Year, right?"  And he said…

"Because you already won it?"

Hot damn, but I do love my son.

I’m really done with winter.  My hair is done with winter, my body is done with winter, my spirit is DONE with winter.  Unfortunately, winter is still not done with me.

So last night, as we were listening to the weather forecast (for more damned snow), I mentioned to Spawn (tongue-in-cheek) that I blame the groundhog.  He looked at me like I had grown a second head.  Apparently, we had ALL been remiss in his education of US Legends and he had NO IDEA what Groundhog Day actually was.  (He has some fault in this as well for never having asked about it.)

So I explained the lore, and he thought I was loony for sharing this information with him.  Let me just say that explaining Groundhog Day to a 14 year old really makes you realize just how ridiculous a tradition this whole thing is.  His immediate question was "All the groundhogs in the world?  Or just a specific one?"  This, of course, led me to explain about the handful of "famous" groundhogs and the only actual name I know which, of course, is Punxsutawny Phil.  He nearly fell off his chair laughing at me as I stammered through the explanation that there is ACTUALLY a town called Punxsutawny, PA.  I can’t even imagine what would have happened had I been fully up on the lore and told him that Phil emerges from a place called Gobbler’s Knob. 

Frankly, it was a rather humiliating experience for me.  Has I been making it up, I wouldn’t have minded nearly so much, but to give my kid factual information on some US lore and be mocked for it  was not really something I particularly wanted to deal with.

So for all you parents out there who have failed to explain Groundhog Day to your children, I implore you, save yourself some embarrassment and tell them while they’re young.  And maybe don’t tell them about the name of the place from which Phil emerges…  ever…  especially if they’re boys.

Spawn and I have a new game that we’ve been playing for a little while.  We only just named it "The Definition of Ten" because, frankly, it needed a name.

It’s pretty simple, really, and I’m sure that others play this same game, but unlikely they do it to the degree we do.  "On a scale of 1-10…" is how it starts, but it was defined when Spawn would answer (how hungry are you or how badly do you need to find a bathroom) before I had defined what 10 actually was.  "Don’t you want to know what 10 is?" I would ask and he would say yes, then, after he heard the definition of 10, he would bump his originally given number down by one.

So it has become a game of clever definitions of 10.  Examples include: "so hungry I would eat [least favorite food that he's forced to eat on a regular basis - not by me]" [I need to pee so badly], just hand me a cup", [in reference to cold] "what are those penguins doing here?"

We have altered the game so that the definition of 10 is given before the underlying question (how cold is it, how hungry are you, how much do you like this) is asked.  That saves us the time of having to ask "But don’t you want to know what 10 is?"

We’re both pretty clever and witty and will take the extra few seconds to come up with something that will both get the other person wondering what the basic question is going to be and also maybe get a chuckle or at least a smile.  The best part, I think, is that we both win when we play because it’s not a competition, it’s just a way to get the other person to smile.

…until we were halfway through the Bucket List.

10 minutes before the movie ended, it wasn’t the grief in the movie that hit me, but the humor and I started sobbing silently.  Wracked with physical sobs, tears streaming down my face, the only sound I made in the theater was that of blowing my nose.

To tell the whole truth, the light humor in this movie about a dark subject…  this is how it went for us with Dad.  He joked until the end, so we did, too.  It had to be funny because that’s what his whole life was about.

I think, that had I realized what day it was, I would have suggested that we see a movie NOT about people dying of cancer.  Had I realized what day it was, I might have warned the other 5 people who didn’t know me a year ago and not put Princess in the position of having to explain why I was so lost in my emotions that I couldn’t even really move or put on my coat, let alone talk about it.

And I wish I could have explained that it was not only ok, but good for me to have that reaction.  That it wasn’t unhealthy and, while unexpected, it wasn’t too much.  That I’m fine and please keep laughing because, in my family, we don’t do solemn very well or for very long.  That I don’t want to be cajoled or comforted or any of that sort of thing in a movie theater.  That it was the shock of how fitting it was to see this movie, on this day, and not any kind of unresolved emotions or repression that caused me to break like that.  That it was the humor in the movie and the lessening of it in my daily life that made me cry, so much more than the grief.

But I didn’t come away from it feeling judged.  If there was an uncomfortable moment, it’s not one that I feel I need to apologize for and I think that it’s more a situation of others not really knowing quite what to do.  And what they did – just letting me have that moment and then moving on – was exactly the right thing to do.

So I came home and got in touch with someone that I hadn’t seen in a year and hadn’t talked to in a couple months.  I think it was something that we both needed.  And I sent an email to my father’s widow because I knew that she needed to be reached out to a little, too.

But I still wish that I had realized what day it was earlier, and not gotten blindsided by it.

I’ve tried, really I have, and I can’t come to any conclusion other than I have failed, miserably, at teaching my child to be responsible for his own actions and choices.  I doesn’t help, of course, that I’m consistently fighting the other parental half saying "He’s only [insert age], it’s something he’ll learn with time."

Well, at 14 he hasn’t learned it yet, and for the past TEN years he’s flat-out refused to do his part to contribute to any household.

Every now and again, he’ll clean up a hairball from one of the cats.  Usually, he puts a new trash bag in the trash can.  Outside of that, there is nothing at all that he does around the house without first being told.  Not asked, because asked means that he will decline.  "Spawn, will you please do some dishes so I can make dinner tonight?"  "Will I or I have to?"  Because "will you?" clearly means if you don’t do it, then I will happily wash the dishes and make you dinner, and then I’ll do the dishes afterward too.

Yeah…  not so much.

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Today would have been my father’s birthday.  We’ve all, I think, been thinking a lot about him lately, and the actual day of his birthday is kinda tough.  The week leading up to it, now that I think about it, hit me harder than the day itself.

Whenever I get into those states where I’m thinking a lot about my dad, he stops in to say hello in interesting ways, usually through people who knew him…  often people I didn’t actually know myself, or at least didn’t *really* know.

Earlier this week, I ran into a former co-worker of my dad’s who asked me if I could get him some pictures and also who he should talk to to get copies of dad’s music.  That was a beautiful thing, knowing that people were making efforts, probably unbeknownst to them, to keep dad and his music alive, not just for his family, but for even all the people who never knew him.

My mother intends to start a MySpace page for General Eclectic (the best incarnation of their band) and I think it’s going to wind up getting them the exposure they could have had, if the internet had come about 20 years earlier.  I think there are a lot of people who either knew dad or know one of us kids who will be amazed to find out that not only are we not exaggerating dad’s musical and songwriting abilities, but probably playing them down to some degree.

Girl told me that Dad will forever live in her memory for the worst jokes she ever laughed at.  That it was his delivery that, no matter how bad that joke was, still made her laugh…  and that’s pretty universally agreed on.  That no one could deliver a punchline like Paul.

There are a lot of things that no one could pull off quite like Paul and the people who knew him each have a different one thing that stands out for them.  I’ve come to believe that each of us has that one spark of uniqueness that never leaves this plane.  Whether you believe in reincarnation, heaven, or nothing at all…  I don’t think that anyone entirely moves on, because I know for me, and for everyone else I know who has lost someone close to them, that they are not just reminded but watched over, poked in the shoulder, if you will, by that loved one who is no longer here.

I think that it’s similar to Orson Scott Card’s use of the term of aiùa in the later Ender series and that’s the closest thing that I have to defining it.  Whatever it is, it never actually goes away.  The reminders, however, sometimes are hard.