I have no idea where this is going but felt the need to write. I've got a few hours before I head off to the restaurant for the evening. I've got some chef jackets and bistro aprons drying in the clothes' dryer and am waiting for them to finish before heading out to run some errands before kitchen time. Tonight I'm going to make some sweet potato gnocchi for a special. I'm not sure exactly how I'll serve them, what protein I'll pair them with but they've been on my mind for several days so I'll bust'em out tonight.
Last night was my first night off in about ten days. Funny how I sit around on my ass for almost six weeks and then BAM! Get super busy all of the sudden. Guess that's the way it goes sometimes. I was settling in for a night of watching the Vancouver Winter Olympics after an afternoon of napping when I checked my voice mails to receive one from my sister. She relayed that my Dad was in the hospital again. Immediately I phoned her and then headed off to the hospital to find my Dad. He was in the emergency room all plugged up to machines again with my Mom at his side. Long story short he's not been eating properly or drinking enough water. He was weak and dehydrated. I stayed with them for several hours, helped my Dad to the restroom so he could produce a urine sample and went on an errand to fetch some dinner for my Mother.
I experienced the strangest sensation helping my Dad out of the hospital bed and onto his feet to go to the bathroom. I lifted his legs, his calves, which I recall were once so muscular and thick, so tanned and healthy. They were a husk of their former selves, thin and emaciated. I put my arm around his torso and lifted him from the bed. He's so much smaller now. It's heart breaking. Something I said long, long ago, in another life, came into my mind. It was something I uttered during my childhood in West Virginia when my Father and I had gone to the farm in Spanishburg to cut down the family Christmas tree. I guess I was waxing philosophically about the future (always a poet, even at age 5.) I said something to the effect of "Dad? When I get big and you get little..." I'm not sure what I said after that and no one else remembers either. Everyone laughed about it back then and the phrase was repeated over and over and smiled at for being so cute.
I'm not laughing so much lately. I've been through so much personal pain over the past decade. Massive amounts of physical, mental, psychological and spiritual pain. I'm a different person as a result, no longer the naive, idealistic young man. There are moments when I miss him, when I long for that naivete, that innocence, that ignorance to life's tragedies. You can't go back though. And truth be told I wouldn't go back even if I could. Truth be told I am more "me" than I have ever been in my entire life. I wear a new pair of glasses. Reality sparkles before my eyes. I've lost my illusions. My head may still often be found in the clouds but my feet are still firmly planted on the ground. LSD trips and week long cocaine binges are a distant memory. Lunatic drunks sailing headlong into the sun. Feverish nights of sex and drugs. Cold cornflower mornings in winter cursing the songbirds. Ten mile runs in the snow. White powder lines down mountainsides during the day, white powder lines up my nose at night. No future, no past. No colloquies in the sun. Madness, virtue, spite. Twisting trees all dolled up in lace. Furnace the sky sparkling space. I quit the race, saved no face, dropped the pace, got my taste.
And now I help carry the broken body of my Father to the bathroom. My heart is breaking into a million tiny pieces and I wonder how it'll ever become whole again. The memory of last year's romance is fading but still powerfully charged with feeling and emotion. Brief nights lost in love, swimming in lust. Hot bodies and perfumed mystery. Delicate strands of tickling blonde hair, Jupiter eyes, fingernails scarring my tactile flesh. All lost, all fleeting, all ephemeral. Burn bright the mid-day sun, flush out the shadows White hot our burning, pulsing star. Shadows recede from the mortal flame, three dimensions fall to two, diametric universes collide and explode in stinging bursts of atoms. Neutrons swirl around mindlessly obeying some ancient law that is written in rock. One grows bigger, another grows smaller. Mirrors line the floors and ceiling. Images transfix. Parallels to infinity. Repeat. Repeat. The mind searches for purchase, a safe place to take hold, a harbor to moor.
Dreams. Idiotic images of passing people in your life. Fairy tales of wine and women. Childhood mates are heroes and martyrs. Dragons swallow my pride. I conquer them one by one. I am victorious. I stand atop the hill and yell "I am KING of the MOUNTAIN!" My voice echoes through the hollows, descends from Woodlawn Cliff, usurps the train tracks and coal cars from MineComp, breaches the Whitestick, flows across valleys and fields, brushes the ears of deer, ruffles hides, spins and swirls through lonely passes, up yawning mountainsides cloaked in moss and ferns. The mountain is strewn with bodies and memories. Mouths open and blood drying on parched lips, scarlet stained cheeks, cracked hands, upturned earth.
And in an instant it is over. I am home again. I am in my place at the dinner table. My Father is home from work and my Mother has dinner on the table. The black and white television blinks and Walter Cronkite comforts me. President Carter seems asleep sitting at the head of the long wooden table on the TV screen. My father smiles, a big, eye sparkling grin as he bows his head and my sisters and I begin to pray. We sing "God is great and God is good and we thank you for this food...Awwww Men!" Outside the linoleum kitchen squirrels twitch and search for a nut on the wooden deck my Father built. There will be no school tomorrow as the snow is falling. It is coating the oaks, the pines, the hemlocks, the dogwoods, the rhododendron. It is drifting down King Street. It is piling up on my Father's Chevrolet. It is burying Mary Calbert's rose bushes. In long deep piles it is building up on fence posts and old rock walls. The heaters hum, Walter Cronkite speaks and all is right with the world. We eat.
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