Tag: kids

The good stuff

Bill got up, his swollen legs screaming in protest, and moved to the sofa to sit beside his son. Lady dutifully followed and plopped down at his feet. He wrapped his arm around the boy and they watched TV. It wasn’t long before his wife appeared in the doorway and told D that it was bedtime. Bill looked at his watch. It was 9 already. He reminded himself that that’s what happens when you sit in a bar, dreading coming home. He told his wife that he would take care of bedtime. She gave him a sarcastic “thanks” and went back to the kitchen. He forced himself off of the sofa and motioned for D to follow him, telling him to brush his teeth and put his pajamas on. He didn’t put up a fuss, he reallywas a great kid.

He went upstairs with the boy and told him that he would be in shortly. He poked his head in his oldest daughter’s room. She was lost in a book. He went into her room, leaned in, and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“I didn’t hear you come home,” she said.
“Next time I’ll make more noise” he joked. He kissed her again. She gave him one of her famous smiles, he loved the little gap between her front teeth front and center. It was cute and reminded him of her as a toddler, mugging for the camera. She was such a happy child. Never more than one thought away from the negative, he also observed that she would need expensive braces soon.
“Good job on your report card” he offered. “I’m proud of you.”
“Mom went ape on the boys.”
Mike could only imagine. Yet she took them out to dinner? It must have been her friend Lisa’s idea. Lisa’s kids probably got shitty report cards as well but she didn’t believe in disciplining her kids. She wanted to be their friends. Bill hated that kind of parenting. Be their friend, sure. But be a fucking parent first. This was his wife’s best friend and he hated that she and his wife were so close. He thought Lisa was a terrible influence, but his wife fucking loved her. Almost to the point that he wondered if she switched teams. He chased all of that out of his head and returned his attention to his daughter.
“Jeez,” he said. You couldn’t have saved the old man a chicken finger?”
She laughed. He kissed her again on the forehead and walked down the hall to the boy’s room where he found Ry at his desk, furiously scribbling on a notebook. He looked miserable.
“Hey bud,” he said. “That’s enough for today, nothing will change overnight.”
“Mom is pretty mad.”
“I know. I already bumped into her. See the burn marks?” he said as he showed his bare forearm. It was a bad joke but Ry laughed. He wasn’t trying to denigrate his wife. He just wanted to cheer the kid up. It seemed to work. He sat with the boys as they went through their nightly routine of procrastination. Fearful of his wife getting angry at the time, he went to the banister and listened for signs of life. She was talking to Lisa, the toxic friend. No doubt talking about what an asshole she married.

He went back into the boy’s room and said goodnight. He made a couple of silly faces, drew a laugh, and turned the light off. He went downstairs looking for his youngest daughter. He poked his head into her room, she was fast asleep. Shit, he thought. I didn’t see her at all today. He sat on the edge of her bed and just watched her breathe for a while. She looked so peaceful. She was the unplanned one but immediately shot up to I can’t imagine my life without her status. She was cuter than a duck wearing a hat. His heart swelled. He got up and closed the door behind him and headed for his comfortable chair. He had to walk through the kitchen in order to get there and he ignored the glare of contempt his wife shot at him as she babbled into the phone.

As he sat down. Britt appeared in the doorway.
“My asthma is acting up. Can I do a treatment?”
Bill got up, went to the closet for the Nebulizer and a capsule of albuterol. He set it up, placed the mask on his daughter’s face, and sat down beside her. The hum of the machine soothed him as he watched her, glued to the TV as the mist gently wafted from her breathing treatment. He had changed the channel to Nickelodeon and had found Spongebob. Perfect.
He let her stay with him for about 15 minutes after the treatment was done. He didn’t want the moment to end. He knew, whether she knew he did or not, that she wasn’t really having an asthma attack. It was her sneaky way of getting an extra half hour with her dad.
This, Bill Marshall thought to himself, this is the good stuff. The rest of it doesn’t matter. He squeezed his daughter tight and waited for her to fall asleep.

A typical night at home

Bill Marshall pulled into his driveway a bit too fast. He heard the scraping of the plastic bumper as it met the small dip at the end of his driveway. It was just another moment in his 15-minute drive that he was reminded of how reckless it was for him to have driven home, half in the proverbial wrapper in a company car. A DUI wouldn’t make his life any better right now. Real smart, dumbass, he scolded himself. He put the car in park, popped an Altoid, took a deep breath, and walked to his front door. Again, he was unable to ignore the crumbling masonry adorning the walkway and the ugly door that desperately needed a coat of paint. He shook his head and went inside.

Bill took off his shoes, stumbled slightly, and went into the kitchen. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table. She didn’t even look at him. She had “the look” on her face. A sense of dread washed over him. Because he had avoided the “money talk” the other night, he knew that it was coming now. Bill reevaluated his condition and decided that he may not have drunk enough.
“You could say hi, you know. You must have heard me come in” he said.
“We need to talk” she replied.
“Not now”, Mike said with a defeated tone. “I know where this is going. Talking about it isn’t going to make a money tree grow in the back yard.” He regretted his snarky tone as it left his lips.
“If not now, when?!” she yelled. She was boiling and she wasn’t in the mood for the verbal foreplay. She wanted to fight.
“I’m doing the best I can.” He knew she didn’t believe it and he wasn’t sure if he did either. “You don’t know what it’s like out there right now.” He tried to change the subject. “Anything for dinner?”
“We went out.”
“Of course, you did. After all, why would you eat any of the food that is in our fridge, we only spend $200 a week on groceries after all.” He immediately realized that he was a raging hypocrite, he was just out himself. And she hasn’t asked where he was and why he was late. Is it possible she doesn’t care? Yeah, he didn’t want the answer to that one.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Nice. Right back atcha. Where are the kids?”
“In their rooms doing their homework. Report cards came out today and with the exception of Britt, the boys are going to be in their rooms until the second coming. Don’t bother them.”
“If I want to say hi to my kids I will, don’t fucking tell me I can’t.” He didn’t stick around for the rebuttal. At least he had avoided the money talk again.

He needed to sit down for a minute. He would see the kids in a few. He walked into the family room, plopped down on the plush cushion of his chair, and turned the TV on. He peeled off his socks and put his feet up. His swollen ankles hurt like hell and without rolling up his pant legs he knew that his legs were swollen as well. As if he didn’t have enough shit to worry about, his disease was getting worse.
He noticed a change of light in the room and he looked to see his oldest boy D, in the doorway with a Miller Lite in his hand.
“I got you a ‘water bottle’ Dad,” he said as he tucked the can under his arm and did his famous quotation fingers.
“Don’t you have homework to finish?”
“I’m done. Did mom tell you about the report card?”
“No specifics but she didn’t paint a rosy picture.”
“It wasn’t that bad. Mine, I mean. I can’t say the same for Ry.” He sat down next to his father, handed him the beer, and said “The Sox lost.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
“Weren’t you at work?”
Bill hated lying to his son.
“Between you and me I knocked off a little early.” He and D were close. D rarely told mom much of what he said when she wasn’t around. He was a good and loyal soldier and never betrayed his dad to his mother. Bill wasn’t proud of that, he didn’t encourage it. The kid just favored his dad and somehow knew the politics of the household. Bill wished more than anything that he didn’t. But it was hard for them not to see the antagonistic relationship their parents shared.
He also wished his kids didn’t bring him alcohol and joke that they were water bottles. He was some fucking example of a father. Yet, incredible, his children loved him. Despite the fights they witnessed between him and their mother, all of the hurtful words that couldn’t be taken back, they seemed to understand him. Above all, they really appreciated him. He wished and hoped the same for his wife. He didn’t want to be the favorite parent, he would be happy as an equal partner.
He just wanted their love.

home bittersweet home

Bill Marshall sat in his driveway with the engine running. It was a familiar routine lately. There was always a detour on the way home. Usually a bar, sometimes a walk. Tonight it was a walk and while he was proud of himself for not drinking (yet) today, he wished he had a snoot full to deal with the pending shit show awaiting him.
He really was in a bad place.
Sales were down. His motivation was shit. His health was in decline. His marriage was a mess. The only thing that gave him any joy was his children but in order to see them, he needed to go inside. Again, sober. How did it get to this, he wondered? When did he become the guy willing to miss the best time of the day with the kids because he couldn’t stand to see his wife? His pattern of late was to get there in time for bedtime. He would help put them to bed and spend a few quality minutes with each of them. Then, in order, he would feel guilty, pour a drink or three, and collapse in his chair/bed. He had been kicked out of the bed years before. He would get an inadequate amount of sleep, get up and out the door before everyone was up, and hit the repeat button.
Tonight it was especially difficult to get out of the car. His encounter with that kid was fucking with his head in a big way. It was as if he had met his younger self. Everything about it screamed impossible but how else could he explain the details that kid knew about him. And it was not lost on him how true everything he said was. He used to be a happy kid. Able to amuse himself, loved nature and being outside. He used to be active and fit. Of course you were, dummy, you were a child then, he argued with himself. Age aside, his lack of fitness was due to fast food, alcohol, a sedentary lifestyle, and kidney disease. Still, he knew he could do better. But the healthy and active observations were the least of it. The kid had painted a damn accurate picture of how much his natural cheeriness and enthusiasm had dwindled with age. He had completely lost the love of life he once had.
One element of the conversation ran through his head on a loop.
“Did you ever sit just like this? Playing with Matchbox cars in the dirt until your mother called you? Riding bikes with your friends? You hated to go home, right? Just like now. But that’s not why you don’t want to go home now, is it Bill?”
The kid was right, I don’t want to go home anymore. How the hell did that happen?
He looked at his watch. He had to go in or he would miss bedtime. Tonight, more than ever, he needed to be a part of it. He turned his ignition off and walked up his driveway, past the broken flower bed and the unpainted window sills in front of the house. Yup, in addition to everything else, he couldn’t even afford to make repairs to his house.
He opened the door. Lady, his spastic Springer Spaniel jumped all over him. At least someone is happy to see me, he thought. He stayed with her until she calmed down and then went into the kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a stack of bills before her.
“Why were you sitting in your car for so long”, she asked.
“I was talking on the phone.”
“Bullshit you were, I saw you out the window. No phone on your ear,” she said. “What were you really doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Well think about this, we’re fucking broke. What are you going to do about it?”
Here we go, he thought. Here we go. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of liquid courage.

Clouds

As I am prone to do, I triggered myself with yesterday’s post in which I spoke of my longing for the past and embracing my silly, if not immature side as a defense mechanism against the corrosive environment of today. I found that this is a subject that cannot be handled in one post.

In a famous intro to Pink Floyd’s haunting Goodbye blue sky, off their magnificent album, 1979’s The Wall, we hear the voice of a child, in all its innocence and wonder exclaim,
“Look mommy, there’s an airplane up in the sky”.

The voice inevitably and necessarily throws me back to the day when the world was a place of beauty and every day was a chance to experience new things. If you were lucky enough to have your mother at your side, she would join you in marveling at the sight of the airplane, as a bonus she would help you identify clouds shaped as animals and before you knew it the sky was cluttered with joyous shapes and future memories.
Ah, precious childhood.
Today, the mother probably would be glued to her phone and mutter,’Ummhmmm, that’s nice honey” without even looking up.

The release of Pink Floyd’s album in 1979 is a powerful memory to me and may explain why that song, and that clip of the child, is so significant to me. It is around the time that I lost my youthful outlook and began to look at each day with dread and fear, not optimism and delight.

I was a notoriously happy child. I was an only child with a mother that worked part time with plenty of time to be home with me and a father that worked his ass off but denied himself sleep to make sure that he did all that he could for me. I played sports. I rode bikes with the neighborhood kids. We went camping in the summer, I went to ball games and went to the park. I loved hanging with my grandparents at their house. We had a big yard. When my parents were unable to occupy and amuse me (something parents feel obligated to do these days) I was able to amuse myself by playing with Matchbox cars in the dirt or voraciously reading books under my favorite tree. Sometimes I would just lie on my back looking at the clouds. I could do it for hours.
As the years of my childhood passed, the toys changed but my attitude didn’t. I remained a happy kid,

The cheerful child in me went away around the time that I entered 7th grade. In my town grades K-6 were in Elementary and 7-9 were called Junior high (now known as middle school). I left 6th grade and the low-ceilinged and safe feeling Elementary school as a small statured but eager student and entered the high ceilings and almost anarchist hallways of the Junior High School as a terrified newbie. My fears were soon justified as the most formidable period of my life began, the age of being bullied.

It was horrifying. I was immediately attacked by the bigger and meaner kids. I didn’t fight back as I was slammed into lockers and sheepishly retrieved the books that were knocked out of my hands as I was walking down the halls. I became an easy target and other kids took a shot at me. I didn’t tell anyone, instead I retreated into myself. The gregarious kid eager for friends, the student eager for knowledge soon became a quiet, nonparticipating C student who sat in the back of the class doodling in his notebook. It was a horrible time of my life and I never recovered academically, socially or emotionally. I hated school, I constantly tried to call in sick and I became a sullen and mostly joyless teenager.

At the age of 55 I look back and know without dwelling on specifics how different my life would have been if I had not retreated into a turtle shell. But many years ago I learned to stop placing blame and acknowledged that there are no do-overs in life and time travel in Delorean’s is not a real option yet. I have shed the resentment for those characters that caused such heartache. I had to. It was weighing me down. I have largely forgiven them and myself. Happily, I have found and embraced the much younger version of me as a way of dealing with the current realities of my life.

The other day I was detailing a car and I was overcome by the heat. I stopped to take a break and sat on my steps with a cold glass of water, catching my breath. Exhausted, I laid on my back. I took a moment to look at the beautiful sky above me. The wispy clouds gently danced before me as they slowly made a pass over me. I reveled in their beauty. I embraced how small and ordinary the world must look from up there. I felt like a kid again, a kid without a care in the world. A kid who saw bunnies and teddy bears in the beautiful blue oasis above.

Look Mommy, I see a airplane up in the sky…

Not in my town

This is part of an ongoing series called Graveyard Shift. It can be read alone or you can roll back in my archives and start from the beginning.

August 29, 2005 2:00 AM

Officer McInerney impatiently directed traffic as he watched the Accident Reconstruction team doing their meticulous work. They will take a week or more to release their findings but Jimmy could save them a lot of time if he just told them the truth. His truth. I fucked up and let a drunk go and now he’s killed people. How do I reconcile this? His next move was unclear. His options were pretty simple, confess to his supervisors or keep it to himself and hope that he can push it way down and never think of it again. He immediately scratched the second one, there was no way that he could do that. He hurriedly waved a Semi Tractor Trailer around the scene. I’ve got to get out of here. I feel like I’m going to lose my shit.

Present Day

“Heroin mostly. A pretty good dose”, said Dr. Resnick. He, Sergeant Valentine and Officer McInerney were standing in the hallway outside Ruthann Reed’s room. Hospital staff scurried around them like water around a rock in the stream.
Mike Valentine scratched his chin. “Seem like a regular user?”
“The marks on her arm seem fresh. No scarring typically found on a regular.”
Mike’s fists clenched momentarily. Jimmy was studying him. Despite Mike’s notorious penchant for angry, spontaneous outbursts he was capable of staying on point when necessary. This was one of those times. Jimmy wasn’t about to mess it up by speaking right now. “What else?”, Mike asked.
“Ketamine”, the Doctor replied.
“The date rape drug?”
“That’s the one.” The doctor raised his clipboard and took a pen out of his breast pocket. “Can you tell me anything more about her behavior before she passed out?”
“Not really”, Mike said. When we found her she was sitting on the ground. Out of it.”
“The bartender and bouncers all say that she just came in, alone and starting dancing. Said she was falling down and hanging on guys,” Jimmy interjected. “They treated her as a drunk.”
The doctor scribbled on his chart. “That makes sense, given the combination.” He scribbled again on his clipboard.
“Rape kit?”, Mike asked.
“She’s just now lucid enough to do it without causing further distress. Why don’t you get a coffee and give us a little time. When she’s settled you can ask her some questions.”
“Thanks, Doc”, Mike said. He and Jimmy turned and headed for the elevator. As they walked Jimmy studied Mike’s face.
“One to ten. How pissed off are you right now?”
With a straight face and teeth clenched Mike slowly replied, “Modern technology can’t measure.”

Not in my town

This is part of an ongoing series called Graveyard Shift. It can be read alone or you can roll back in my archives and start from the beginning.

August 29, 2005 2:00 AM

Officer McInerney impatiently directed traffic as he watched the Accident Reconstruction team doing their meticulous work. They will take a week or more to release their findings but Jimmy could save them a lot of time if he just told them the truth. His truth. I fucked up and let a drunk go and now he’s killed people. How do I reconcile this? His next move was unclear. His options were pretty simple, confess to his supervisors or keep it to himself and hope that he can push it way down and never think of it again. He immediately scratched the second one, there was no way that he could do that. He hurriedly waved a Semi Tractor Trailer around the scene. I’ve got to get out of here. I feel like I’m going to lose my shit.

Present Day

“Heroin mostly. A pretty good dose”, said Dr. Resnick. He, Sergeant Valentine and Officer McInerney were standing in the hallway outside Ruthann Reed’s room. Hospital staff scurried around them like water around a rock in the stream.
Mike Valentine scratched his chin. “Seem like a regular user?”
“The marks on her arm seem fresh. No scarring typically found on a regular.”
Mike’s fists clenched momentarily. Jimmy was studying him. Despite Mike’s notorious penchant for angry, spontaneous outbursts he was capable of staying on point when necessary. This was one of those times. Jimmy wasn’t about to mess it up by speaking right now. “What else?”, Mike asked.
“Ketamine”, the Doctor replied.
“The date rape drug?”
“That’s the one.” The doctor raised his clipboard and took a pen out of his breast pocket. “Can you tell me anything more about her behavior before she passed out?”
“Not really”, Mike said. When we found her she was sitting on the ground. Out of it.”
“The bartender and bouncers all say that she just came in, alone and starting dancing. Said she was falling down and hanging on guys,” Jimmy interjected. “They treated her as a drunk.”
The doctor scribbled on his chart. “That makes sense, given the combination.” He scribbled again on his clipboard.
“Rape kit?”, Mike asked.
“She’s just now lucid enough to do it without causing further distress. Why don’t you get a coffee and give us a little time. When she’s settled you can ask her some questions.”
“Thanks, Doc”, Mike said. He and Jimmy turned and headed for the elevator. As they walked Jimmy studied Mike’s face.
“One to ten. How pissed off are you right now?”
With a straight face and teeth clenched Mike slowly replied, “Modern technology can’t measure.”