Category: Being a dad

the pit

February 23rd, 2020

In the kitchen. Taxes on my mind. Knowing I need to get them done because if done right, we’ll get money back. We need this money to live this life we’re living. I understand that the sum of your belongings means nothing. But once you accumulate and have, you expect. It’s ridiculousness at its best.

So, I’m making French Press coffee from beans I’ve just ground. Starbucks French Roast. And I’m falling into the pit of guilt. It’s not the guilt’s fault. See, I do this often. Every day. Many times each day. Instead of enjoying an experience, like a silky, smooth cup of coffee, I start thinking of the people waking up on the street. In the cold. People with real problems, like aching, starving bellies. Pain that they can’t get prescribed away. Humans, that for one reason or another, have chosen the street. Their decision-making may have not been well-informed and certainly could have been affected by mental illness, substance abuse, lack of education, disease, and general hopelessness. Or sometimes, people just get a bad shake. They are, of course, without choice. Surviving by sheer will.

And that’s only the beginning. I’ll find one of these folks in my head. See them, hear them, feel them, and wonder, how can I help? What am I able to do from my place here on the 45^th parallel to get the war vet to the soup kitchen and a counselor? How do I help the opiate addicted illegal immigrant and her three young boys out of the car their living in and into a home? And what about the old man living in his shack out in the sticks with no running water, no phone, no electricity? He can’t walk anymore. He finds it impossible to do much of anything. He sits in his chair, looking out over his frozen front yard toward the road where his mailbox used to be. It’s gone, he thinks. The snowplow that came through last week blasted through it, sending his disability check flying off into February, only to be buried out there somewhere with another layer of snow. Not that it matters. He can’t get to town to cash it, anyhow.

I sip the coffee. Damn, it is good.

I check my watch. An Apple watch, of course. Those are the gifts we give each other. Obnoxious. Does anybody really need to have the world strapped to their wrist? But it is telling me to get moving. Yesterday, I smashed my move goal. Burned just over 1,600 calories. Jogging, walking, elliptical, and free weights. And I’m shameful. How stupid is that? I’m ashamed that I’m able to do these things, look out for my health.

And I love the watch.

I head down to the basement. Get here to these keys. This computer works well. It’s taken the thoughts from inside of me and saved them for the past five years. That’s the typical age when one should consider replacing a laptop. I admit it. I’ve been looking at the 16” MacBook Pro.

Wasn’t it an apple that supposedly got all of us into this?

I’ve been abusing these keys for about twenty minutes. I’m at that point where I know I could go for hours—probably write The Great American Novel—but it’s here again. The pit. My daughter has friends over. Two of them. They slept over last night. It was my wife’s idea. She’s up there now, sipping tea. Touching her iPad Pro. Playing Candy Crush or shopping for clothes for our Spring Break trip. We’re going to Jamaica. But, I’m not up there, you see. Those little girls are chatting, munching cereal, slurping milk. There’s nothing I can do up there. I have nothing to offer, but I’m supposed to be up there. My wife may not actually think this, but that’s what the pit is telling me. I shouldn’t be down here writing, cleaning out the noggin’, getting myself centered, doing what I love—stringing words together. I should be up there.

And once I’m up there, doing whatever it is I can to help—putting away dishes, vacuuming, sitting on the couch and watching TV, just BEING there—the pit will remind me of what I committed to years ago, when I was just a kid.

I’m going to be a writer, I said.

But it will have to wait. At least until the taxes are done.

~ KJ
the giving

December 14th, 2019

My kids go round the block. My daughter to her friend’s place. Within sight. Within earshot. But sometimes she goes left instead of right. A shortcut that eliminates 67 steps.

My boy rides his bicycle to Bay View to play basketball. He runs too. From our street, up 1^st, to Ripley, to 2^nd and back home. They have been out and about in this neighborhood for ten years. Playing, walking, skipping.

I know where some sex offenders live. Everybody that wants to know can. The ones that register their whereabouts, anyway. They can be seen on a map. I have advised the kids areas to avoid. Reminded them time and time again to not believe anyone that approaches them. To kick them in the nuts. Bite. Pull hair. Scream. To run. Run as fast as they can from whomever it may be.

Recently, a man approached children at the bus stop a block from our place. He wanted to give kids a ride to school, even though he was on foot. My kids don’t ride the bus. I drive my son. My wife drives my daughter. But the kids that were there were in danger. The bus came. He left. But people didn’t forget. It was reported. And he was arrested.

He may be out on bail tonight.

Sitting in his home.

I can see his place from here.

My wife is out with her girlfriends, celebrating Christmas.

My daughter is at her friend’s house.

My son is at the in-laws.

I am sipping a drink. Watching our Christmas tree. Loving this time of year. The lights. The warmth. Remembering where I am from. How hard people worked and sacrificed so that I could be here. Happy and safe. Strong. Very much aware that there are people waiting to take it all away.

And I consider taking a walk. Bundled up. Around the neighborhood. Stopping, only once—for as long as it takes—to improve my kids’ chances of success.

He wouldn’t see it coming.

I’d make it as quick and painless as possible. I’d be saving him, really.

And that’s what this season is about, right?

The giving.

~ KJ
Middle School Band Performance

November 26th, 2019

Parents

in camo and pajamas

reeking of cigarettes

and marijuana

and hard work

and BO

at the 7^th and 8^th grade show.

A bunch of kids

playing instruments

for people

that don’t really care.

Moms and Dads

swiping phone screens

talking

not giving a shit about anything

because they confuse being present

with parenting.

I wait for my boy to pound sticks against skin

as people return

again and again

to the spaghetti line

the ice cream line

the soft drinks line

and all I can feel is how much I love

being Dad

when I see him

doing this simple thing.

Making music

without knowing it

getting his insides out

in the middle of this

bullshit.
little boys

September 18th, 2019

Fingers through fences

pecked and nibbled

and bitten

by chickens,

beagle pups,

and bunnies.

We were

bare-chested,

blonde and tan

and we ran

barefoot and

we ran hard

turning green grass

brown and

flattening the yard

until the ground was hard-packed

like pavement.

Mom and Dad never had nice things,

a tidy house,

an immaculate lawn

because we three boys

were so filled up

with destructive love

pushing and shoving

laughing and hollering

that it was impossible for us

to slow down,

so windows got busted,

plaster cracked,

and treasures

met their fate.

Oh the damage

little boys

can do.
two-face and smiling darkside

September 7th, 2019

September 7, 2019

9:01 am

They walk by without saying good morning, even if I’ve said it first. They sit in front of the TV, a tablet, their phone and let the dog or cat eat from their abandoned cereal or snack bowl. Hey…wait a minute. When did they start eating on the couch?

There are clothes and bath towels piled high on the bathroom floor. Bookbags, lunch bags, and backpacks on the dining room floor. Toys, books, shoes, headphones, and stuffed animals on the staircase.

In short, there’s stuff everywhere. Every single day. It gets picked up. Eventually. Usually after three times of asking, two times telling, then finally a shout.

“Kids, it’s time to get this placed cleaned up!”

Then come the groans. The moans.

The teenage one—two-face, I like to call him because I never know what kid I’m going to get—he’s the smartest kid in the world. Just ask him. He’s so smart that he cannot stop himself from responding to me and my wife with smartassed comments. Sometimes he’s so smart with his responses that he takes us down long, twisty confusing rabbit holes. Just this week, asking him to stop stomping around the house when he’s simply walking from room to room led to his broken explanation of my alignment with forces involved in the oppression of the disenfranchised. I took his phone away. Then mine went missing. I was afraid to ask him if he’d taken it because I could have very well left it anywhere. I found it the next day, on the bathroom floor next to the toilet. I want to say it was him, but I’m not sure.

The ten-year old—smiling darkside, I like to call her (but definitely not to her face)—scares me sometimes. Cute and bubbly on the surface, she’s ready with wit that cuts, bites, and slices so quickly that I’m never sure what’s just happened. Did she just say that? I’ll ask my wife as my little princess runs up to her room and slams the door. I follow her up sometimes and stand outside her door. I think about barging in, but I’m pretty sure I’d see her fashioning a shank or stabbing a voodoo doll with pins. One that looks like me.

Raising kids ain’t easy. If you say it is, you’re probably not a good parent. Well, maybe you THINK you’re a good parent, but you are probably one of the people that cut me off in line while dropping off my kids at school. Or you’re in one of the NO PARKING spots. Or better yet, you’re so much better than everyone else, you make your own spot. Showing your kids how it’s okay to be impatient, stupid, a bully. I realize we don’t have to look far to see this kind of behavior—just look at the so-called leaders of this world—but keep in mind, you have taken on one of the most important roles there have ever been. Being Mom. Being Dad. None of us are perfect. Our kids aren’t perfect. And striving for perfection is senseless.

Does it bother me that my kids don’t always listen? That they don’t always pick up after themselves? That at times I think they have somehow subverted power and are actually in control? Certainly. But this back and forth, this everyday routine of never knowing what you’re going to get except for stuff strewn about the house is incredible, moving, and I can never ask for more.

Do good today. Spend time with your family.

~ KJ
my soccer field, my trampoline

September 3rd, 2019

Writing another book. Most of it’s been written. Only need to do the hard part, which is go through it story by story, line by line, word by word to make sure it sings, it speaks, it streaks. That it does what it’s supposed to do. Even then there are no guarantees. It could fall flat. Be another stack of papers I stuff away in a desk drawer. But that’s okay. Getting the shit out gets me closer to the good. Ten pages of nothing usually yields one page of something. This book will be about 80 pages, so be prepared for eight pretty decent pages. I hope you’re as excited as I am. Once this thing is done, I want to have a signing in Alpena. Maybe at Thunder Bay Winery. The one I had there a few years back for CUTTING TEETH went well. I like wine. I like books. I like people that like wine and books.

∞

The wind is crazy. Full of energy tonight. Big bulky clouds floated across the sky as I watched my daughter practice jumps and flips and spins on the trampoline. The enormous, billowy monsters had orange and pink bellies as they crept over the horizon. Thunder grumbled. But my daughter—growing up and away from me each day—kept at it. Springing around even as sprinkles turned into big cold drops.

“We can try again tomorrow,” she said.

∞

I got to watch my boy play soccer tonight. It was only practice. I was a hundred yards away, parked in the back parking lot of the high school. The sun was blinding as it fell down into my line of sight. But I squinted. Pulled the sun visor down in the car and watched.

My pulse quickens when his foot touches the ball. My adrenaline rushes when he kicks his body into high gear and blasts down the field.

The kid is kinetic. Fluid and quick. I know, I know, he IS my son and I am biased, but seeing him out there on the field makes me happy because I can feel how much he loves it.

I can’t wait for this weekend when his season begins.

∞

It’s funny.

Nights like this. When I haven’t got much to say, but I know that I need to do this. Just pound away at the keys for a little bit.

Get clear. Refocus. Release.

That’s why I do it, I guess. Why I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.

These letters. This punctuation. They are my soccer field. They are my trampoline.

~ KJ
summer vacation

August 25th, 2019

sun
Copyright @ Brooke Stevens, 2019

Handprints on windows. Fingerprints on the fridge. A pair of wet socks in the sink. Cereal bowl and spoon sitting on the couch. The smart TV shows THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL to the dog. She’s curled up in a big pink blanket, surrounded by a dozen stuffed animals, and has a purple bow on her head. She wags her nub.

Lights are on in the bedrooms, the hallways, the writing room, the den.

There are dollops of bright blue toothpaste on the bathroom countertop. Water drops splashed across the mirror. A toilet that hasn’t been flushed all day. I hit the handle, down it goes.

Strands of toilet paper are wrapped around the railing of the back staircase like garland.

There’s a bird’s nest in a bucket in the mudroom. The garage door is wide open. My hammer, two screwdrivers, a saw, eight rusty railroad spikes and a pile of driftwood are on the floor.

Outside, the garden hose snakes across the driveway and floods the flowerbed. I shut it off and walk to the backyard where a yellow sweatshirt and more socks—one red and one green—hang on the fence. The gate is open.

There’s a tent set up. Soccer balls, books, Tupperware, and pots and pans are spread throughout the grass.

And there she is. Ten years old. Flat on her back on the trampoline.

“Hi, Daddy!”

She’s smiling, moving her arms and legs—making a snow angel, I guess—under shapeshifting clouds and a sun that promises no end.

~ K.J.
color

July 9th, 2019

We walk past the boat harbor. Sailboats bob in the bay. Purple and yellow flowers line the sidewalk as we pass the water treatment plant. They are not enough to take the mind and nose away from the stench, but the smell doesn’t bother us. It’s something we have come to know as home. I think of the waste—from people and pets, from all that we consume—running through pipes and filters. Water getting clean again, running back through more filters and pipes. Running out of hoses. Filling glasses, bathtubs, and ice cube trays. Drip, drip, dripping from leaky faucets and seeping into our dreams at night.

“Look! Look!” Oogie shouts, pointing toward a flock of herring gulls soaring overhead. They move over the harbor and the playground, past the bandshell toward Lake Huron.

“Pretty,” my wife says.

And it is.

All of it is.

The shimmering waves. The squeaky swings as kids sway back and forth, laughing and shrieking. The big ugly mountain of salt kept near the river for the winter that’s months out but getting closer every day. The crumbling armory that’s been turned into a place for laser tag. And my wife and daughter searching every milkweed along the river for caterpillars on the edge of the city mowing line.

They find four tonight.

“We need fresh stuff to eat,” my wife says. Not to me, but to the two fat colorful creatures she has on a leaf in her hand.

“Yes!” Oogie cheers. “These guys are hungry!” She is beaming, carrying two caterpillars in her small hands.

A monarch butterfly rises from a lilac bush when we are about three blocks from home. We are silent but happy as it follows us as if watching to make sure that we’ll do good. When it is satisfied that we mean well, it flies off toward our neighbor’s garden.

When we get home, I mix a drink. It’s time to unwind. I will sit on the front porch and listen to this small town settle its way to sleep. But first, I look into the world my wife and daughter have worked so hard to create. Their butterfly house. The place where caterpillars eat and poop and eat and poop and grow and grow until they know it’s time to climb to the top, form a J, then tremble and shake themselves into a smooth, shiny chrysalis.

Last year, it gave birth to nineteen monarchs. My wife and daughter named them all. We only lost one. I’m not sure of the name. Something like Stan or Earl. Definitely a male. He rose up to fly away, made a wide loop out over the yard then came right back and landed on the porch in front of our dog. Our cute, harmless Buggle that apparently thought it was some sort of treat. She chomped little Stan or Earl up into bits, spit him out, then cowered between my legs. I moved quickly to pick up the pieces, sure that my daughter would be devasted.

“Aw,” she said. “It’s okay, Dad. He probably wouldn’t have made it far anyway.”

“Survival of the fittest,” my wife added.

So far this year, there are fifteen waiting to make the change. Nine chrysalises and six caterpillars. They haven’t given them official names yet, but they have a list. Like parents choosing possible names for their unborn baby. Waiting as patiently as possible for that new and incredible life to have its one chance to wake this world to color again.

~ K.J.
nice or not

April 10th, 2019
nice or not Download

It’s so early, but so late.

I wouldn’t have this perspective if I’d had more to eat or less to drink. Nothing would make sense, and these words would not fall into place like this had I not gone through all that I have in my life.

And I haven’t gone through much.

At least that’s what they tell me.

I am after all, white.

And male.

And semi-privileged. Which means my parents worked their asses off to make sure I had what I needed to succeed—food, shelter, and an insurmountable amount of love.

But I don’t want to get into the haves and have nots. I did that once before—writing about riots and the poor decisions people make when they are oppressed and frustrated—and a woman said that she felt sorry for me. I didn’t understand, she said. I couldn’t understand, she said. I was ignorant, she said. All because I mentioned that the issues we have can be boiled down to something simple—you’re either nice or you’re not.

My kids get it. Other kids get it too. They don’t see color or history or gender or whatever other labels we do. They just see good. Unless their parents have poisoned them. Making them see what they want them to.

You know who you are. Devils.

We do everything we can to complicate this life. Create issues that don’t exist. Blame people for their ignorance and try to push them into some category that says—indirectly, of course—that they are less than others.

But that’s not true.

The overweight fella collecting carts at Walmart is not all the different from the man loading his cart with organic veggies, cage free eggs, protein shakes, and booze.

The elderly man offering savings in the form of a coupon-filled flier at the entrance of Meijer is not so different than the lawyer and his family buying candles, chocolate, and video games.

We are all in this together.

Human beings on a big ball of dirt and water whirling through space.

But we don’t want to break down to the basics.

We want to be special. To be heard.

We are so selfish that we believe it’s early, but late.

We believe that our perspective has the power to shape. That if we have less to eat or more to drink everything will make sense. Words will fall into place and finally we will express all we’ve gone through in this life.

We are ignorant, they say. All because we believe the issues we face can be boiled down simplicity—either you’re nice or you’re not.
- KJ
magic stuff

December 3rd, 2018

December 3, 2018

We’ve got the cold wrapping up all around us. It’s time for long johns, parkas, and insulated boots. Trekking through snow and slush. Penguin-stepping over ice. Or dodging puddles. It is Michigan, after all. Twenty-seven degrees right now at 7:32 pm but it could be 45 by tomorrow morning. Even with all the gadgetry, computer models, and confident weathermen and women, we never know what we’re gonna get. We can predict and assume, extrapolate and forecast all we want, but the truth is we just don’t know. Try as we might to make sense of this world, there are factors—magic stuff, I like to think—beyond our reach, our science, and our beliefs. But that’s just me. Forty-five years old and realizing more and more each day how little I understand and know.

~ K.J.