Fear of Flying

Toward the end of fall the crews finished up work on the bike trail that connects Easton with 670 giving us biking access to essentially the entire city once we dash across the always rumbling Sunbury Road.  This afternoon Sophia and I headed out for a walk, managed the busy two lanes, and started to walk through a patch of woods that I had lived across the street from for ten years but had never been in.

I don't know how warm it was, but it felt easily like it was in the mid sixties.  The birds seemed confused and I could imagine the geese looking back over their shoulders wondering if the trip they were all geared up for was suddenly necessary.  We watched them v themselves high above the bare trees.

Sophia asked to be picked up saying she was afraid of the airplane that flew overhead, though she wasn't really. 

After a few moments she saw some crusted browning snow shriveled and hiding in the shade of old growth oaks.  I could feel her body go rigid with excitement and she squirmed to get down and stomp it, feeling it crunch under feet warm and dry in her pink zebra rain boots.  I stopped, watching her hop and slip along the spine of a winter defiant in the face of these odd temperatures.

The trail in this section straddles Alum Creek on its east and Sunbury Rd to the west with the hissing traffic a constant backdrop.  I had hoped the road litter would be contained by the brittle weed growth street side, but it has spilled ten or so feet into the woods along the street and I found myself looking forward to summer when the green would cover so much of what winter leaves bare to the eye.  It's an east side cliche these crumpled packs of Newports and empty bottles of Wild Irish Rose.  Black and Mild cigar cellophane tangled in the grass like phantom snakes and plastic grocery sacks rustling from twig flagpoles.

After awhile of heading South, I said it was time to head back to our development.  Sophia, just happy to be out and about, agreed and we started back the way we came. 

The little neighborhood we live in has no real place to play with it's postage stamp yards and cramped alleys running behind line after line of homes.  So, we stick to the sidewalks and see what's changed with our familiar sights.  I point out the Christmas decorations that are still out.  I answer her questions about fences and airplanes and wait for five minutes or so watching out for cars as she stomps around in a puddle in an alley.  She finds a stick on the sidewalk and immediately turns it on me - waving it at my chest declaring me a princess.

At the bottom of the hill, in a less traveled corner of the neighborhood, is a little stream we often check on when out making the circuit.  In the summer it mostly dries up, but today it bubbled along heading right toward us only to disappear under our feet.  The drainage pipe is lined with large squarish stones, their edges smoothed down by years in the stream.  Sophia steps up onto them, walking the length of the barrier, careful not to slip.

I join her, standing on one of the middle stones, looking at the water.  I tell her this is our magic river and that we need to make a wish.  She stands beside me and we hold hands.  I tell her to close her eyes and she does.  I close mine too and tell her to make a wish. 

"I wish for an airplane."

I smile and tell her it's a great wish.  We stand there for another moment, but Sophia is soon moved by the desire to jump so I step back onto the pavement and watch as she repeatedly jumps from the stones to the ground. 

It isn't until I'm taking off my shoes inside the front door that I realize I forgot to make a wish of my own.

Word? Word.

It gets quiet here at night.  Sophia is usually down by 7:00, and Jen not much later these days.  I roam around the house in the evenings alone, fighting sleep the same way I used to when I was five years old.
---
It finally happened after fourteen months. She squatted, her lower half hidden by the layer of suds floating on the bath water's surface.  The act may have been hidden, but I saw that now familiar look of concentration followed the smile that accompanies completion.  Bath time was over so I could fish the brown-snake out and flush it.  I had been expecting and dreading it for fourteen months, but in the end it didn't hurt at all.
---
I applied for an internal position that I thought was well outside of my grasp, and shockingly got an interview.  I trimmed back my ("soulful, indie-rock") beard, busted out my fancy pants, and went to talk to a VP who was also a VIP about the possibility of becoming an AVP.  I felt strong about the interview at first, but as 24 hours passed I was certain I had performed so poorly that he would contact my current boss and suggest she terminate my employment.

As is often the case, the truth is found in the middle.  I didn't get the job, and made some mistakes (which he was kind enough to discuss with me a few days after the announcement was made about the position), but in the end I had at least made a showing for myself.  I learned a lot, and have mostly contented myself with the knowledge that my next interview will be substantially better because of this one.

Still bummed though.  The job was amazing, and it would have been huge for the family.  Next time, Mr. VIP.  Next time.
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Playing Scrabble this week I scored 167 points for the word yuletide.  This is something I'm very proud of.  Two triple-word scores with just one word, y'all.  Mark it.

---

We sat outside in air the temperature of our own skin, losing track of where our bodies ended and where the soft evening began.  The breeze, occasionally reminding us that we weren't really connected to the currents, smelled of freshly laid mulch and ruffled the frayed cuffs of our shorts. 

There was no conversation.  If asked, we'd smile and explain that words between people who have been together this long are no longer needed, but the truth is we've just run out of things to say.

It happened in a psychiatrist’s office.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked. “Why are you even at _____?” and she named the place where I work.

I should stop here to add that I don’t know this woman, and have never been in her office. You see, I’m a fat guy; A fat guy who’s currently in the process of getting approval for bariatric surgery and one of those steps is to meet with a psychiatrist. I didn’t know anything about this woman other than what I've learned from sitting in her office:

• The waiting room had an unused feel to it. The shelves were dusted, and the magazines arranged neatly, but you got the impression the room was rarely used. Maybe it was the way the children’s toys in the corner were put away a little too nicely. Plus, it hadn’t been vacuumed recently, further adding to the forgotten vibe of the room.

• She had been a panelist on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in the mid-nineties. There was an autographed 8X10 glossy framed beside a signed form letter from Oprah thanking her for being part of the show.

• She was a force of nature. As I was sitting in the room, first filling out the initial paperwork and then beginning on the first of my three assigned personality tests, she came in through the door. Her voice was a cannon that blasted the stuffy air out of the room and hid the thin simper of her assistant’s soft rock radio. Wiping at her nose with a wad of tissues, she called me “Steve” and welcomed me to her office. “Come on back, come on back! You’ll finish those up after we talk.” Then to her assistant: “Sonya, he’ll finish up after, OK?” as if she hadn’t heard the booming instructions when they were shot at me.

We went back into one of the offices where between sniffles she explained that she didn’t see many patients these days and mostly worked with litigators serving as an expert witness. “I do maybe one or two of these bariatric cases per month lately” she explained. “I like to do them, of course. I’m just really busy.”

The conversation was fast and easy. I had never been to a psychiatrist before, but went into it with the thought that I would be completely open and as forthcoming as possible. We chatted about general addiction, my past, my daughter, and the back and forth came naturally. I felt like we were both enjoying the discussion. She was quick-witted and personable, sharing antidotes from her own past here and there when appropriate.

Interruped briefly for a nose blowing break, talk turned to work. She knows some people who have worked at the company I work, so was familiar somewhat with the environment. I explained that while not passionate about the work I do, I enjoy doing a good job and see myself as a constant that people can depend on. I could tell she didn’t like the answer.

“Look, it’s really none of my business. I don’t even know you and I’m not your therapist. Still though…Can I ask you a question? Why are you even at _____?”

She knew the answer before I did, but she waited for me to say it.

“Because I don’t know what I really want.”

We chatted some more about going back to school or changing careers before the rest of the answer came to me: “I think there’s something missing in me. There are people that I know who are creative and successful, not necessarily money-wise, but successful with what they do. They all seem to have this drive inside that pushes them to do what they love. I don’t seem to have that.”

This wasn’t groundbreaking. It was no epiphany. It was something I had considered previously before pushing the thought away. This was the first time I had really said it aloud though. It all boiled down to “I don’t know what to do” or, worse: “I don’t want to do anything”.

My newfound one-time-only therapist didn’t settle down on that topic though, and so we touched on childhood and moving around and she drew parallels between my father and I which while maybe not flattering, were again not groundbreaking material.  It was a really great conversation. At the end of the day, there are only a few people who don’t enjoy talking about themselves to someone who declares it all fascinating material.

We stood, shook hands, and as we stepped back out into the waiting area where I would have to finish my personality tests, she declared me a delight to her assistant who said “Oh, that’s wonderful!” before discussing the rest of her schedule. I sat back down in the chair I had left 55 minutes before, and started on my tests with something bothering me just slightly about the experience. It wasn’t until I was walking to the car that I realized what it was.

It’s a cliché now, a man sitting in a chair at a gentleman’s club getting a lap dance on a Tuesday afternoon, thinking that the girl rubbing against him has really come to like him over time. In the face of all that skin, it’s easy for some to forget that she’s working and that when you ask for one more dance she’s thinking how she’s one step closer to paying rent on time. I knew guys like this, especially in high school. They’d come back from the clubs they’d managed to get in with Polaroids of them paired with Destiny or Chablis, smiles wide on their faces. They’d talk about how she even stuck around for a few minutes after the dance was over and really seemed interested when they described the car they were going to buy next month. (“She told me to go back and I can give her a ride in it!”)

I realized, putting my key into my compact car (so normal it’s nearly invisible), that in my way, I was very similar to these guys. Here I was enjoying a talk with a bright woman who was being paid (well, I might add) to be interested. Whether or not she was actually pretending wasn’t the point. She was good enough at her job that I forgot she was making rent money while I was busy being engaging.

Don’t misread me; I’m not so cynical that I’m directly comparing the two professions. I’m just saying that when money is exchanged, intentions are clouded. Just because she gets you hard doesn’t mean she’s in love, and just because she helps you find insight doesn’t mean she finds you interesting. It’s a job.

Driving home, I decided it didn’t matter. I wasn’t less engaging if she made $250 out of the deal. I’m a charming motherfucker.

I also decided on that drive that I would write about my time with my single-use therapist who had her fifteen minutes of fame with Oprah.

See? I do want to do something.

You Know, The Shriners?

I don't remember how I found the place initially, but I'm guessing it was because of the banner that read "JOBS JOBS JOBS" hanging out front.  People in town didn't know the actual name of the business, but if you told them you worked at "JOBS JOBS JOBS" they would smile in recognition.

It was a series of folding tables - sturdy metal frames with particle board tops laminated in fake wood grain. Stained by years of coffee slopped from Styrofoam cups, they stank like the ashtrays sitting at each telephone. The phones themselves as stripped down and basic as the rest of the room, were black with gray buttons, their cords tangled on the floor.

The sales goal for the night was written on the bottom right hand corner of a small dry erase white board with each of our names listed above. We would fight over whose name was written in what order even though it held no bearing.  Everything was a competition, and nothing was given up lightly.. A notch was made by each name as sales were made. $32 sale was one notch, $64 was two and so forth.

On the phones, my first name was always Frank.  The last name would vary.

"Hello, Mr. Washington?  My name is Frank Stevens and I'm calling with the ______ _____ Shrine Temple Number 53, you know - The Shriners?  How are you this evening?  Great!  The reason for my call is you were kind enough to help us send 6 underprivileged children to our annual variety show last year and we were hoping we could count on your support again this year..."

We always said "you know - The Shriners?" because we wanted the person at the other end of the line thinking of the guys in funny hats and the little cars at parades.  We were told this was preferable to the fact that our contracted client was actually an African American community organization.

I was consistent with my numbers, but I never got the really big sales. I think there was one time where I sold a $128 package, but for the most part they kept the big ticket leads for _______. He would hunch sullenly over his phone, mumbling into the receiver so quietly you rarely heard him until the receiver would go back into the cradle and he’d exclaim “YEAH FUCKERS!” ruining two other potential deals in the process.  He would jump up, his chair tottering on the two back legs until they finally settled down on all four, and run to the board to mark himself four slashes for the sale.

We were children, and we acted like it. 

I was too young to drive when I first started working there.  Some of the other guys drove cars or lived close enough to walk, but I had to be dropped off and picked up each night.  My mom would complain that I smelled like smoke, and I would patiently explain how everyone there but me was a smoker, scared she would catch a whiff of Marlboro under the four pieces of Big Red I would be chomping on.

Occasionally a few girls from our school would get hired on, but the constant smoking or our childish leering meant they'd rarely stick around long enough to see two paychecks.  We were a core group of four or five teenage boys, with a rotating cast of characters who never really made the cut.

We'd work from 5:30 to 9:00 each night, and a few hours Saturday morning, running through the sales script for whatever organization had hired us out for their event.  It was always for the kids though.  Economically disadvantaged, disabled, disenfranchised, whatever.

"Hi, may I speak with Mr. Donaldson?  Hi, this is Frank Griffin calling for Special Heart for Special Children.  How are you tonight?..."

We would walk to the grocery store that anchored the strip mall for snacks during breaks.  We'd stop at the drug store for drinks and cigarettes.  We'd spend our paycheck at the sports card store, and fight over who got the better rookie cards.  We'd brag about the girls we'd been with (or lie about the girls we'd been with, at least in my case), and talk about the beer we were going to drink that weekend until one of the owners would come out of the office in the back and yell at us to get back on the phones.

I don't remember the exact process of how it all came to an end.  One day we had a meeting where the tearful woman who ran the shop explained check kiting to us, a term I had never heard before.  She explained that we would have visits from the FBI and that they were there to just review her books and that we as the sales group had done nothing wrong.  We continued to make our calls, but the two agents in the back office dampened the mood.

No one had been getting rich off the backs of underprivileged kids, she had just been trying to pay bills and cover payroll.  Shockingly, the half a dozen teenage boys they had on the roster hadn't been enough to generate a living for all those involved.  Instead of seeing it as a lost cause, she scrambled to keep things afloat.

The parent company that she worked for said they were going to work with her and she would be able to avoid jail time if she cooperated fully with the FBI and their internal investigation.  She complied on all fronts, and they promptly took her to court.  I had left the job by the time she was sentenced but I'd heard that she'd pulled some sort of weekend only jail time for awhile.

A few years later, I was working the counter at a gas station in Utica, Ohio when a lady came in and asked for a pack of Salem 100's.  I looked up to see it was her.  We chatted for a minute in the awkward way people do when they would really be anywhere else instead of rehashing the past.  I asked about her family, and she asked about mine.  She started to leave, then stopped and said:

"I'm sorry.  I always felt like I let you down.  You're just a really good person...a good guy, and I kind of fucked things up for everyone."

I felt this overwhelming desire to tell her I wasn't great at all.  I wanted to tell her of all the shitty things I had done just that week alone.  I wanted to make up even worse stuff just so she wouldn't feel so bad.  I didn't know where this accountability to me had come from, but I was uncomfortable with the label - unhappy to be seen as a person good enough to warrant this kind of naked apology..  I opened my mouth to say some of this, but she smiled and stepped out...the bell above the door cutting off my words.

Soundtrack

A few weeks before Sophia was born, I started an iPod Playlist for the delivery room. I asked Jen for her input and she said "None of that arty horseshit…this is about me" or something to that affect. So, I started through our library looking for things that Jen would love and that wouldn't be horrible for me. After just an hour or so I had 115 songs which I thought would be more than enough to get us through a night in the hospital. I shuffled them up and dumped them on my iPod.

Even by Jen's account, the pregnancy was fairly easy. She had her share of exhaustion and the usual side effects, but had largely been able to avoid the more serious complications that are common. Still, at over 40 weeks, she had been experiencing a few days of feeling really rough and convinced her doctor to see her a few days earlier than their scheduled appointment. After two hours of examination, ultrasounds, and stress tests, Jen's doc told her to get her bag and check in to the hospital at 8:00 that night. Jen cried in relief, knowing that very soon she'd be feeling better…one way or another.

I'll spare you all the push by push replay, but there were a few things worth noting. First, Jen was amazing. From the very beginning until the moment we watched Sophie gulp down her first air conditioned breath, she was perfect. Also, the staff we worked with was great. Jen's nurse laughed at our jokes (we always have jokes), got down to business when needed, and was Jen's champion the whole way. Also, she got down with the Prince that was playing on the iPod.

And that takes us back to the Playlist. We had the music going in the background as we sat in the darkened room watching Jen's contractions on the monitor ("Ooooh, daayuuum…that was a biggun"). It started with Manchester Orchestra's "I Can Feel a Hot One", but then despite the fact that I had shuffled the songs, it mostly went from artist to artist playing songs in blocks alphabetically. We cruised through lots of "B Bands" (Band of Horses, Beck, Ben Folds, The Beach Boys) and then the Garden State soundtrack. We napped through The Mountain Goats and Mojave 3. The nurse came in to get things busy about the time The Postal Service started playing. The moment Jen pushed for the first time, "When Doves Cry" filled the room. Jen finished with the first push and we looked at each other, laughing at the absurdity of giving birth with Prince as the soundtrack. "Pop Life", "Raspberry Beret", and "I Would Die 4 U", one song after another Jen pushed and then we laughed (yes, she had an epidural). The nurse boogied (though professionally) and we talked about how our Twin Cities based friends would be home-town-proud. The assembled grandmothers in the room were less interested, standing on the sidelines with shaking hands clutching their cameras.

Finally the Prince wound down to be replaced with REM, and on Jen pushed. I kid you not, toward the end, with Sophie starting to appear, "American Girl" by Tom Petty was the song playing. And then, finally, Sophie was pushed/pulled into life on the outside. I cut the cord (symbolism be damned), and she was placed kicking and fussing on Jen's chest all the while Wilco's "Please Be Patient With Me" played softly in the background. We toweled off her little arms and legs, alternately amazed and terrified of her, and everything else faded into the background.

I know it might be a little obsessive to pay that much attention to what music was playing and at what time, but a lot of strong memories I have are linked to the music that was playing at the time.

I remember I was sitting in Tyson Downey's CRX in a parking lot outside of Kroger in Brazil Indiana and he was telling me about a song he had heard for the first time. When the weather was just right you could pick up a station out of Indianapolis (not without some static, of course) and this Indy station had promised to play this new song again before 10:00. We sat there in the car chain smoking, our talking stopping as each new song would start to play until they finally played Radiohead's "Creep" and my world got a little bit bigger.

I remember the moment I realized my first marriage was over and a song called "Kerosene Hat" by Cracker was playing in the car. I rushed to turn it off as I drove no where, not wanting an awful moment to ruin a great song for me. (It didn't. I still love that song.)

And I remember walking the streets of Carbon, Indiana when I was probably 13 and coming up on a house that was playing Frampton's "Do you Feel Like We Do". We sat outside on the sidewalk listening to it in the summer night and I remember thinking that it was the best song ever written.

Good and bad, a lot of my memories are wrapped up what was on the radio, and I don't think that's unique at all. Still, I have to admit a pure personal pleasure in being able to tell Sophie one day that she came into this world while listening to Wilco. Since she's a captive audience, I plan on spending lots of time with her in front of the turntable as soon as my mother in law vacates the area that has become partially my den and partially Jen's craft room. I bet Weezy is glad Grandma Helen has been here to protect her so far...

The Whigs - LIke a Vibration

Just because it's so dang good.

Random Notes

I'm a fan of the seasons, but my short attention span keeps me from liking any of them for more than just a couple months at a time. Just about the time I start really yearning for warmer weather, winter takes a giant white shit all over my hopes. So, I shovel the walks and listen to the sound of our furnace catching its breath for 45 seconds in between cycles and keep hoping.

---

Tonight we were straightening up in the kitchen and I was going through some paperwork, shredding dated bank statements and the like. As I was cleaning things out I finally disposed of the remnants of the Paperwhites out a pot we had set aside. For those unfamiliar with the plant, it's a winter blooming bulb that has tall slender stalks and white flowers that grows in a pot of stones with a bit of water. It also smells like a giant pile of buttery ass. I was never more happy than when I got to cut them back and walk the clippings immediately out to the trash.


So tonight, I empty the pot into a plastic bag, planning to salvage the gravel, when everything slides out in a solid mass. The individual pieces of gravel are practically tied together with a slick white root structure that looked so much like a snarl of tapeworms it actually creeped me out.


Horror movies should be written about this plant. It's what should have crawled under the skin of the wayward hikers in The Ruins. It's what Indiana Jones really should have been afraid of instead of snakes. I pray to God Jen doesn't want that evil spawn in our home again next year.

---

I've decided Facebook would be more fun if people would be completely inappropriate with their status updates from time to time. I'm a total voyer so I don't even get upset with the mundane posts from some; I'm usually on board to see whatever it is you're up to. Still, it'd be nice to see something like:

John Doe...

...is pooping.
...is celebrating some "Afternoon Delight" with a giant sandwhich.
...got caught picking his nose today by another motorist when driving home from work.
...listened to Whitesnake today and loved every second of it.

Not that I'm personally going to open myself up with embarassing posts, of course. I just think you should.

A Bit of This

Hi. How you been?

The Antlers Part I

Jen and I headed to Akron Saturday night to see The Antlers play. It was at a place called Musica, and it wound up being a really cool spot. We met up with my cousin Johnny who is always down for something new, and leaned against the back wall of the venue (for Jen's sake) to watch the show. Jen and Johnny were both good sports, but weren't in love. I, on the other hand, was. I'm a sucker for what The Antlers do, and they sounded amazing.

There was a couple standing beside me that looked to be in their mid twenties. She, a little pixie of a thing, and he a dead ringer for a young Thurston Moore. After the show was over, I immediately turned to talk to him.

"Anyone ever tell you that you look like Thurston Moore."
"Yeah, I've gotten that a few times."
"Yeah well, I'm going home and telling everyone that I saw The Antlers with Thurston Moore, ok?"
"I wish I were Thurston."
"Yeah, who doesn't?"

We stood around and talked for a few. Turns out his name is Mike and he drove in from Cleveland to see the show. We chatted about Shoegaze, why people bother coming to shows if they're just going to stand around and talk during the set, and how it's a shame Spiritualized peaked so long ago. It's rare finding people that dig the same music I do, so it was cool to chat. It would have been cooler if he actually had been Thurston though.

The Antlers Part II

Technically, this was the first show for Weezy. After it was over, Jen told me Weezy started kicking up a bit after the band finished their opener "Kettering" and kept it going for awhile. According to the good folks who post baby facts out there on the interwebs Weezy has been able to hear for a couple of weeks now, though it most likely sounds something akin to what you and I would hear when swimming underwater. Still, I was excited getting her out to her first show already (especially since I'll have to wait so long before we can do another one together).

Then, the new inexperienced father part of me kicked in, and I worried that it'd be too loud for her. I called Jen's doctor's office to ask if it'd be an issue. I could hear the nurse's smile in her voice.

"Just keep her out of the mosh pit and she'll be fine."

Sophia Jerky

While reading about umbilical cord care I got a little grossed out, and was telling Jen about it the other day as we were riding around in the car. Just the idea that it basically turns black and rots off is disturbing. I've read that it can be a little stinky, and then eventually it just falls off, leaving a cute little belly button behind. It creeps me out that we could be changing her one morning and "Pop!' off it goes onto the floor where the dogs pounce on it like so many Honey Nut Cheerios.

Jen doesn't like it when I read.

Presents

It started with an unexpected call from Jen's doctor last Monday night. I had just made it back out to my car after giving up on Best Buy for a last minute gift for Jen when I saw Dr. Cummins' name come up on my Caller ID. It was almost 7:00 in the evening, and I was too surprised by her call to be concerned.

In the next ten minutes she explained to me that the last round of blood tests Jen had done came back indicating an increased chance that the baby would have Downs Syndrome. The first round of tests we had done put our odds at 1 in 1500 or so, but the more recent results brought us down to 1 in 200. She explained that it wasn't time to panic, but she wanted some additional tests done. Resigned to a Christmas in purgatory, Jen and I settled in, trying not to count the moments until the specialist's office would call to schedule the follow up testing.

Tuesday was tough. We knew enough to know we shouldn't be too upset, that results like this are common, but we were regardless.

Wednesday, Jen got the call and learned that they could squeeze us in Christmas Eve if we could be available. We could. We were certain that we'd have to wait a week to be able to speak with the doctor about the test result, but at least we'd get the process started. Plus, if the kid cooperated, we'd be able to find out if it's a boy or a girl.

Thursday morning, the Ultrasound Tech Jill explained some of the things that she'd be looking for, and to our relief explained that we'd get to meet with the doctor after they had a chance to discuss the results. As she worked, Jill pointed things out along the way. She told us immediately that the brain looked perfectly developed. She pointed out the kid's pinkie fingers had three bones, not just two which is a common sign of Downs. She told us enough good news that we were able to relax and just enjoy watching the kid wiggle around on the screen. So much wiggling, in fact, that she had a hard time keeping up with the twists and turns.

She agreed to not tell us what the gender of the kid was, but rather write it down in a card Jen brought along with us and had us look away when she headed south with the camera. A few minutes later and we were finished and in the doctor's office where he confirmed everything Jill had said while she worked. Relieved, we headed out to finish our separate days.

So, Christmas morning, after opening the few presents we bought for each other, we sat down on the love seat, A Christmas Story playing quietly in the background, and opened our card together. There was an arrow pointing to some indiscernible smudge with white text "IT'S A GIRL!" I saw it before Jen did. I said something, but now I don't remember what it was. Then we read the card.

"Merry Christmas! It's a Girl! Congratulations! Have a wonderful Holiday! Sincerely, Jill ____"

The Merryman Family Holiday Letter

Dear Friends, Family, Misguided Internet Trollers, and Virtual Stalkers,

Nearly 365 days have gone by so quickly that it's difficult to believe. It's true that years seem to get shorter the older you get, and I have to admit that I think it's crap. The tendency is to look back over a year when it seems to have passed too quickly and review what you've done, but that's not always the smart thing to do. Especially if you haven’t done anything. As a family, our accomplishments were meager:

Otis played a lot of fetch. Also, when he thought no one was looking, he ate a lot of poop. Rarely did we get to witness it, but we’d often be confused by the lack of waste in the yard when picking things up each evening. He views his buddy Lucy as a big furry Pez dispenser, and he's buying what she's shoveling. We know this is happening, yet somehow we’re able to be surprised when he has a gastrointestinal disaster and winds up at the vet hooked to IV's.

Lucy has found a consistency in her day-to-day life over the years, and rarely does she veer off track. So, while the act of barking isn't anything new to her (any more so than my mentioning her barking in a yearly Christmas letter is), she has refined her approach to the act, and has added lots of new items to her list of things she's barked at. Such items include a rabbit, fluttering leaves, a cartoon hamburger, imagined intruders, and CGI dinosaurs. She managed to work in this barking all the while serving as a mobile buffet line for Otis. We're proud.

For Jen and I, things were status quo for a big portion of the year, and we take a certain amount of pride in being uncommonly common. We lost and gained weight. We started and stopped exercise programs. We bitched about noisy neighbors and dreamt constantly of escaping our house. We yelled at dogs. A lot.

We watched a ton of movies. Some of them weren't all bad (Paper Heart, Away We Go, Up, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, Doubt, Milk, Friday the 13th, etc.). We both are lucky enough to have jobs that we don't completely despise, and as a result, made it to work more days than not. We made a lot of messes and cleaned up a good portion of them.

Then, because things in our lives were too quiet and pleasing, we decided to try getting pregnant. Within just a few months Stephen's super virile sperm knocked the dust off Jen's aging eggs, and immediately our little DNA omelet started to grow and take form. Seamlessly, we became those people. We displayed Ultrasound photos. We read books and articles about childcare and learned to avoid crack cocaine, cold cuts, beer bongs, and over-easy eggs. (Actually, Jen had to avoid those things; Stephen helped himself to most, if not all, of the above.) In short, we became the recipients of indulgent smiles and polite questioning from the people we annoyed with our happiness. Fortunately, we were so secure in our thinking that everyone was as fascinated with the process as we were that we took all their indulgence at face value.

And so that brings us to the last member of the family…the mass of baby shaped cells Jen calls "Bean" and I call "The Kid". Out of all of us, Bean’s had the most interesting year. In five months The Kid crawled from the primordial ooze of Jen's uterus and developed into a clump, then into a tadpole, into what now appears to be a black and white smudge with a giant head (if the pictures are to be believed). It's funny to think that the one person in our family who accomplished the most can't even work the remote control.

It’s annoying if you really think about it. It’s like having to listen to the rich kid from school read their “What I did on my summer vacation report” on the first day of class and go on and on about Paris while you look down at your two paragraphs detailing the joy of making your own Slip ‘n Slide with a water hose and a large sheet of plastic you found on a construction site.

I can imagine the kid being in the womb, saying things like “Today I separated my heart into four distinct chambers and swam a few laps around the pool. So, ah…whatcha been doing to stay busy these days?”

One day we envision this open letter being full of information about Jen and my many work promotions, lottery wins, and a list of everything that our kid can kick your kid’s ass at. We’ll regale you with tales of Stephen’s many arm-wrestling tournament wins, and Jen’s new rock band’s touring schedule, but for now this will have to suffice. We may not be interesting, but we’re happy. That’s good enough.

All sarcasm aside, know that we love you (well, most of you - there’s no way of telling who’s actually reading this thing), and we hope that you have a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, a rip-roaring Kwanzaa, or whatever it is you and yours get down with. Stay in touch. We like it when you do.

Love,Stephen & Jen

Wisconsin Bound

Jen and I are getting ready to hit the road for another trip to Wisconsin. When she makes the trip solo, we have her fly into Chicago, but when I'm tagging along we always drive it. It's just easier with the dogs and not needing to worry about renting or borrowing a car for the week.

I always complain about the trip, but the truth is I like being on the road. Even when the drive is as uninspiring as rural Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. There's just something about the hum of the car, music on the stereo, Jen asleep in the front seat, and the dogs curled around each other in the back.

But seriously, there is nothing to look at. The sky and the ground seem to be the same shade of gray, and the trees long ago gave up their leaves. It's all wavering lines painted down the sides of the highway, and cigarettes exploding on the pavement, tossed by the cars who lead us across state lines.

She'll bitch about my music, and I about hers. We'll snack from a bag Jelly Belly jellybeans and groan every time we get stuck with one of the buttered popcorn flavored ones. We'll make as few stops as possible, but the dogs usually require a quick jog around a truck stop parking lot while we dodge piles of shit left by travelers who didn't bother cleaning up after their dogs. I'll sing to stay awake, and Jen will ask "Are you OK?" if she thinks I'm drifting. It'll be good to be moving.

---

I love best of lists. While I have no plans of doing a full list of my favorite albums from 2009 I thought I would mention a record here or there. Instead of a half-assed review, I thought I'd just tack on a snippet of lyrics and leave it at that.

While I'm fickle and my opinion changes all the time, I think my favorite record of the year was "Hospice" by The Antlers.

"There's a bear inside your stomach / The cub's been kicking from within / He's loud, though without vocal chords / We'll put an end to him"

Old Habits

Greg's words limped from his mouth, smelling of Dewars and the Benson & Hedges menthols. Feeling fine, he let one butt fall to the ground, and immediately reached for the shiny gold and green pack in his shirt pocket. He fumbled with the pack intentionally for a moment, drawing Lisa's attention to it, letting her see he wasn't smoking generics like he used to when they first met. She did glance at his muddling fingers, and when she did, he snuck a glance at her chest thinking she wouldn't notice.

"Jesus, Greg. You're such a boy." Lisa muttered, turning her back to him and stepping further out onto the sidewalk, further out into the rain. Rain is a strong word for this, she thought as the mist swirled around her, making everything damp but not quite wet. It had been doing this since she crossed the state line and didn't seem to be showing any signs of stopping.

"Sorry, Love. Old habits."

"Growing old is getting old." Lisa muttered, turning back to him.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

Greg felt he had missed something, but he missed lots of things when he was around Lisa. He ran the fingers of his left hand through the black milk of his hair, tucking its length behind his ear, and then ran his hand over his face, wiping across his closed eyes and down over his mouth. He opened his eyes to find her watching him and flashed a smile at her. It was his smile, the one that only she would recognize. Lisa smirked and shook her head.

"You're drunk."

"Working on it, yeah." He let his eyes close again and leaned the back of his head on the cold brick wall behind him.

He's just like this city, she thought, watching him waver in the thin streetlight glow. He looks so good from a distance, but when you get up close it's all burger wrappers in the streets, cigarette butts collected in the scrub grass alongside stop signs, and everything smelling of spent batteries. From the sky though, it's just an orderly series of golden glowing squares stretching to the lake. It's a special kind of punishment to get fooled by what you see, she thought.

"The Chinese were the best at it, you know."

"Hmmm?"

"Calling something by a real nice name, especially when it was for something more terrible than you could imagine. A good old fashioned verbal bait and switch."

Greg managed to tip his head forward towards where Lisa stood. It was the sound of her voice breaking with anger and sadness that brought him back to the stoop, his cigarette, and his ex-wife. Not saying anything, he waited.

"This is the 'Frame of the Furrowing Eyebrow', Greg. That's what the Chinese called it. They'd strap you to a bamboo stand, leaving you to kneel for hours while they tighten the slats that went across your fingers, toes, balls, and neck. Nice and slow, just a nice steady pressure until pieces of you start to give out under the weight of it."

Greg dropped his eyes to the pavement between his feet, and followed a crack that ran from the tip of his dusty boot to where she stood wiping the last of the dozen tears she let herself cry. They stood, listening to the highway rumble and the sounds of Wednesday giving up to the threat of Thursday.

"C'mon Leece, let me buy you a drink."

"Yeah, sure. Just one."

Last of the Porch

It's an amazing fall day in Columbus. Radios and televisions this morning were awash with reports of an Indian Summer, and like a lot of people I tossed on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and headed outside. Jen and I puttered around, working on small projects we had been putting off with her recent sleepiness, my constant laziness, and the cold snap that sent us indoors. We got some dead flowers trimmed, potted plants disposed of and their baskets put away for the season, and I took a broom to the collected cobwebs around our front and back doors.

Now, we're on the porch. Jen suddenly has plans for other projects ("Maybe we should trim these hedges today.") and I agree to all of them knowing that it won't be too long before she runs out of steam and ideas. These days she's still good out of the gates, but not much for stamina.

Out of necessity, cigars are an outdoor vice for me, so this may well be the last good day to sit on the porch, have a beverage and a smoke. The sun warms the lawns, and the winds are strong enough to kick leaves out from under the hedges, rattling them down the street sounding like children playing tag in tap shoes. Planes come and go from the airport, but I've barely noticed them after living here the first month...they're just more background noise, part of the constant hum that surrounds the condo.
---
We proctored an SAT Test this morning, a job that allows us to pick up a bit of cash, help out one of Jen's coworkers, and gives me four or five hours to sit and read. It's a fun gig for me, because I get to roam around from room to room and watch kids as they stress over bubbled answer sheets and scribble furiously in the margins of their test booklets. They're all so young, and trying to figure out who they're going to be, but as I watch them I imagine that I already know.

It's easy to pick out the ones that will have too much fun in college. It's also pretty simple to see those who will have too little. The girls are all straight-haired and pony tailed, and the boys are all casually and carefully rumpled. I make up little stories about some of them as I half-heartedly scan the room for cheaters. None of the stories I come up with for them are very nice though, so ashamed I stop and go back to reading.
---
Jen and I have had a couple of doctor appointments, and they've gone well. We got to watch the twitching fussing fetus for half an hour on the flat screen in the doctors office as they took dozens of measurements. Jen cried when we saw him reach for his nose. I found myself groping backwards for my chair, not wanting to take my eyes off the screen where she just kicked away from the prodding ultrasound wand. A few days later, in another office, we heard the electronic chugging train of her heartbeat, and we laughed as everything became even more real.
---
Fortunately, Jen has forgotten the hedges and suggested a walk. I'm down with a stroll around the woods, so it's time to throw on some jeans and go see the sun while we still can.

I Will Go To Congo

I went for a walk today at lunch at the park across the street. It's a nice little 1 mile loop through the woods, and it's a good way to get out of the cubicle and avoid fast food.

Today, I headed out onto a short boardwalk that leads to an overlook of a little meadow at the center of the park. There I found this carved into the wood:

Stop the war in Congo!

Here I was, thinking I just wanted to take a walk during my lunch break, but now...now I'm thinking I might head to the Congo and see what I can do about this situation.

It's amazing to think that a person, somewhere out there, had the belief that if only they were to get a pocketknife and spend a half hour carving someone might come along and end a lifetime of brutality in Congo. Well, that person was me!

They'll write songs about my lunch-time walk once I've fixed Congo! The city of Westerville will be thrust into the center of global politics, and we'll all mythologize the person who had the foresight and wherewithal to deface my favorite Metropark! Congo, here I come. Watch your ass, cuz I'm packing heavy.

Closed Circuit Future

I can't remember if it's been raining for days, but it feels like it. It's that slow, cold, purposeful rain that soaks through tree bark, and slows everything that ducks and hides from its drippings. I stepped out the door this morning, and immediately smelled the worm holocaust on the sidewalk. Having finally given up going deeper into the earth to hide from the rains, they stretch bloated and dying across parking lots and walkways.

Fall showed up big over the past two weeks. Normally, I'm on the watch, studying tree lines for blotches of yellow and red, but this year the season snuck up on me. Today I noticed the orange along the highway, rich and full as any Bob Ross landscape, and it seemed to be even more noticeable against the dishwater skies.

I've been distracted, to say the least. I've been sitting back watching the cliches shared over the years by parents become a welcome truth. I'm smiling more. I often can't remember what I was working on the moment before. I'm thinking 529 accounts, nurseries, and how old a person should be before they sit down to listen to Kid A.

I've become nothing else but these disjointed thoughts mixed with panicked calls to my insurance provider.

I posted the picture of Smudge, but if it weren't for the doctor's guidance, I literally wouldn't have known the baby's head from its ass. People asked me later if I cried when I saw the heart flickering in glorious black and white, but I didn't. I stood amazed thinking that it was beating just like I had always imagined a hummingbird's heart would.

Jen and I held hands and looked at the screen, and when the doctor stepped out to let her get dressed, we held each other and laughed. Call us victims of our generation, but in some ways the pregnancy wasn't real until we could see it on television.

With all of the recent change, I find myself shutting down in some ways. Until tonight, I've not had the focus to sit and write anything. Instead I've spent hours surfing the web reading about what's going on in my wife's body, or looking at Ramones onesies (hells yeah!), or watching The Big Lebowski for the 400th time. I plot and plan, but do nothing constructive. Yesterday, I got a nice box of new records, so I know I'll be in the den a good part of the weekend lost in all the No Age goodness sent my way.

I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for this suburban life to become amazing. I'm waiting for everything to change, and for the first time, change really is coming.

Cutest. Smudge. Ever.

Baptism

Fall is, without question, my favorite time of year. After months of muggy Central Ohio soup, Summer finally throws in the towel and heads south. Leaves are starting to fall already, but they're mostly from the small trees, weak of constitution and exasperated with the last two months of little rain. True Fall change is still to come.

We went for a walk tonight and caught up on the day while I studied the woods and fields for changes. The tall grasses and weeds that thrived in baking sun seem to be wilting and shrinking in the cooler air. The meadows, usually exploding with life, seem tired and shrinking, letting you see more of the tree line beyond. Sleepy blackberry bushes choke out all ground cover but the Poison Ivy which slithers invincible through hillsides and fence rows.

As we were heading back to the car, we watched a little kid chasing after the ducks that had made their way up onto a large flat grassy patch. Watching the ducks reminded me of when I was a kid in Indiana. We lived on small lake, and each winter the ducks would swim quickly in a circle keeping the water from freezing over. The colder it got, the smaller their circle would get, until eventually the ducks would give it up and head for shelter amongst the dead rattling cattails and allow the cold air to seal the surface of the water.

I would sometimes go out onto the ice with a pick and break off sections of the ice, trying to give them more room to maneuver and avoid the neighborhood dogs that would come over to grab them out of the water when they swam close to the edge.

One morning, while breaking up the ice along their swimming hole, I fell through the surface. The water wasn't deep, and barely reached my chest, but my feet immediately sunk into the mud. Locked into place by unseen silt, my entire body heaving with the sting and shock of water, I felt every sense firing all at once and my brain went a painful copy-paper white. It had to have been only seconds, but time stretched and mattered little in the midst of the experience. Finally, through some magic automation of nature my lungs filled themselves with air, I pulled my feet out of the mud, and moved toward the bank.

When I was seventeen, I went on a trip to Israel and was baptized in the Jordan River. This was the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and it was to be an honor to share in that collective experience some 1,995 years later. Looking back on it now though, I imagine the minister who oversaw my baptism hoping to instill the same feeling of wonder and newness that I had that winter Indiana day. In truth it came nowhere near that moment of pulling myself out of the mud, awkwardly holding the pick axe with numbing hands, and remembering to breathe. In that moment, my winter coat soaked and slick with ice, I was alive in a way I had never been before.

Tonight, Jen and I kept walking along the path, smiling at each other and watching the kid run after the ducks. After voicing their honking displeasure, they took to the air to avoid the child who laughed and continued to run toward the lake's edge after them.

Parent in the Hood

The hours spent in Cubicle Land buzz drunkenly like a fly, sleepy and slowed by winter air. Time has somehow stretched and I live a hundred lifetimes between 6:00 AM and 5:00 PM five days a week.

I was really bad at my job last week, and am struggling to make it right. I'm having a hard time staying focused these days.

One night, a few weeks ago, I was sound asleep as any rational (read boring and old) man would be on a Thursday morning at 3:00 AM, when I heard the sound that I've feared for months. Someone was coming up the steps. Not just walking, but running. Big bounding thumps that pulled me out of my sleep. Burglars. Burglars who will hold me at gun point and take my records and whiskey. Burglars who were giggling and laughing all the way up the stairs. Giggling? I was trying to put it together still when she jumped up and down on the end of the bed laughing.

Jen.

"It said yes!"

"Huh?"

"It said yes, the test said yes."

She laid it on my chest and I fumbled for my glasses so I could see the digitized word "YES" on the little display panel.

I hadn't really thought about how I would respond at this moment. When I had pictured it, I had always imagined that I would be conscious and not fighting the confusion that sticks with me for a good 45 minutes after waking. In my mind I had pictured me telling her that I love her and that she's amazing and all those things that would come so naturally with such good news. But my reality is usually less than ideal. Instead, the lone thought that came to mind was "I have so much I need do." Then: "Crap, I bought a two pack of those tests. What am I going to do with the other?"

We discussed it over the next couple days and decided to keep our news a secret for the most part. We would tell some immediate family, but otherwise wait to tell everyone else. Within 24 hours of telling our secret, it had literally made it to Baghdad and back.

Some people suck at playing guitar, or driving, or being polite. Other people suck at keeping house plants alive or not talking during a movie. My family just happens to suck at keeping a secret. What you gonna do? So, as a result, everyone knows that Jen is in "the family way" much earlier than we would have preferred. At least that's what we tell ourselves.

You see, we're the couple that can't wait for Christmas morning to open presents. We are the king and queen of immediate gratification. We've never waited for a thing in our lives, but still we tell ourselves this is something we would have kept under wraps. I don't buy it, even though I'm the one selling it. It would have happened sooner rather than later, regardless of how indignant we are now.

And so, immediately it seems, we've changed. We go for walks each night at our favorite metro park and talk about how we're going to handle what's coming. I get the impression that Jen is less freaked than I am about certain things. There's a strange contentment that's come over her, and while I'm normally the laid back one, she's saying things like "Millions of other people have done it. We can't screw it up that badly." Yeah, that's what she thinks.

Jen's at work tonight shuffling parents around the school's Open House, and I'm doing what I do when she's not around. I'm up in the smallest of our three bedrooms (the room we refer to as "The Den") listening to Wilco, drinking a whiskey, and churning out a couple of words here and there.

It's really the first evening I've had on my own since she broke the news to me, and I just realized as I was writing this out, that I'm perfectly content about what's to come.

Labor Day Blues

I love having a Monday that feels like a Sunday. I slept in until I knew Jen would be getting antsy for some company. Sure enough, just as I put on my glasses she rounds the corner and pounces. We hung out there for a few, talking about what we wanted to do for the day. I really wanted to see Halloween II this weekend, but could tell from Jen's noncommittal response that it might not be happening. So, I opt for Plan B. After breakfast and some quality time in front of the tube, I head out.

First order of business was a haircut. I'm painfully overdue. So, I head up the road a piece, get out of the car, walk to the door, only to find it locked. Shit. So, I head directly across the street to a Sports themed haircut joint. First, I don't care that much about sports. The one sport that holds my interest long term is hockey, and I sure as heck don't want a hockey-inspired do. Second, they do the whole shampoo thing before they cut your hair. For a guy who doesn't care much for physical contact with strangers, it's a painful proposition. But, such is the state of my hair that I consider it. Lesson learned from my first stop though, I stare into the darkened waiting area and see the silent plasma screens that confirm that I won't be getting a mullet today.

I give up on a haircut, stop by Blockbuster only to leave with some popcorn and no movie, and then head out record shopping. First stop is Singing Dog Records. I pull into the garage and park and walk to the two blocks to the store before realizing hippies must believe in Labor Day too. Fucking hippies. So, back to the car and over to another garage further up on campus so I can check out Used Kids Records. They have some great stuff, but I'm being really picky and only leave with a Mudhoney / Sonic Youth split 12". I figure I'll hit Magnolia Thunderpussy on the way home, but they too are closed. I give up.

I hate it when people say "In this economy" (because we're always in "this economy", you douche bag), but for real...In this economy you would think more people would be heading off to work if they could. This is the US of A and I couldn't get some freaking manscaping done or buy a copy of the No Age record I've been coveting for months just because it's the wrong Monday of the year to try to get shit done. What's gone wrong with this country?