Tag: Dad

understand

October 2nd, 2018

I have many faults.

I’m impatient. Lack discipline.

I’m too lazy to understand

our differences.

And so,

I get stuck

in deep ruts.

My wheels spin.

I create paranoia.

Make problems that don’t exist.

Because I’m bored.

Like a coyote in a cage.

Running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Again.

I don’t stretch beyond what I know, so I do what I’ve been doing all along.

Dying without ideas.

Even if it’s wrong.

Because it is easier to reject the unknown than it is to understand.

~ K.J.
Kids, look up.

August 18th, 2018

8/18/18—For my kids.

You gotta look up. Look forward. At the sky. If you stare too much at the ground beneath your feet, you miss out. On smiling strangers. Monarchs bouncing through the air. Clouds that look like animals. Maybe something from last night’s dream.

It’s easy to miss out on opportunity, to put your tail between your legs and mosey along meekly if you are not observing, listening, open for more. Don’t be afraid of getting hurt, losing your way, or failing. Mistakes are for learning. Those that don’t understand that, those focused on perfection, are the most flawed of all. But don’t hold them in poor regard or avoid them. Embrace them. Empathize.

Saturday morning bells from the church down the street. It’s nine a.m. and counting. Seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to weeks and months to…

Is there any time at all? What’s this insatiable desire we have with putting numbers to everything? Clocks and codes. Sizes and calorie count. Weight and height. Cell phone numbers, serial numbers, social security numbers, and those most wanted numbers of all—those that land on our paychecks. How did we get so brainwashed? So controlled.

Ever think about how hard it is to think for yourself? Probably not. Isn’t that part of our problem? We have this magnificent existence with heart and brain and gut and spirit, yet we give it up without much care if it means we will meet someone’s approval. Kind words. A compliment. Our name on a plaque, respected in meetings, or put down in black-and-white print. Shouldn’t the one thing we simply need be our own approval? A recognition earned when we finally find the way to live within the many fibers of this daily existence without losing our happiness.

Some people don’t understand that, and never will. But give them the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible to be a devoted husband and dad but speak honestly about the trials, oddities, and outright foolishness of marriage and family. It’s possible to be best friends if you accept each other’s ugliness. A person can be an excellent employee for a gas station, a non-profit, or a billion-dollar company day-in-and-day-out while questioning capitalism, the thirst for oil, and voting whatever way they damn well please. And a person can do these things while being an artist, an engineer, an entomologist, a doctor, a dreamer, or a drummer in a band. Don’t get caught up in the game the world plays at pitting one side against the other, and don’t look down on others. We are meant to be multidimensional. We are meant to question and learn and share and think and feel. We aren’t here for anybody else, but us. And the trick is that everybody else and everything we do helps make us…well, US.

You can be one thing to one person and another thing to another. And you can do both of them well. Don’t get pigeonholed. Don’t ever become someone’s bitch, even if you have to play the role for a while. That’s what this life is about. Playing roles. Doing what it takes through the art of compromise a little here and a little there without totally compromising the fiber of your being. Remember, it’s quite all right to bend—just never, ever break.

You gotta look up, kids. Look forward. At the sky. If you stare too much at the ground beneath your feet, you’ll miss out. On smiling strangers. Monarchs bouncing through the air. Clouds that look like animals. Maybe something from last night’s dream.

~ K.J
and tonight, there is this

May 22nd, 2017

He’s lost it a little. That something that pushed and pushed and pushed him. It was light. But there was deep darkness too. Days did not end or begin. They only moved seamlessly one into another. And now that he is full and filling out—heavier, slower, more patient with the world—he has so much of what he needs that wanting—feeling the urge to fight, fuck, and be free—seems selfish. Silly. Desire, he believes, is something for youth. And his youth is fading. Things are not as tight. Steady. As dependable and strong. He does not get and cannot take what he wants because his job is to be giving. To do whatever it takes for his family to be happy, healthy, safe. And though he finds great satisfaction in giving them a better life than he had as a kid—a better life than he, himself, now deserves—he wonders sometimes if he’ll ever get it back. If he’s lost it at all.

Maybe it’s in the river.

He thought this tonight as he and his wife spent the one hour they had without kids walking around the old town that he has loved and hated for so long.

“You want to stop in at The Lau for a drink,” she asked.

“No,” he said, and looked up at the sky that was moving quickly from light to dark. “We only have half an hour left, and you say you never get to walk the North Side.”

“Are you sure?”

He wasn’t. Never is. What is there to be sure about in this life, except for love?

For you wife.

Your kids.

Your family.

A few friends.

“I’m sure,” he said.

And so, instead of drinking, they walked. And walked. Past the Lau, St. Mary’s Parish, and up Miller Street. Past shitty old houses. The dead bakery. And around the skate park, where kids—just fucking kids—sat, stood, skated, rode bikes, and smoked cigarettes. He wanted to walk over and slap each and every one of them. Knock sense in and smoke out. But there was no slapping, no fighting, no anything. They crossed the Ninth Avenue Bridge, and for a moment he thought of Aden and Jake. His two friends from the only decent story he had ever written. People he made so much like and so much unlike himself that he considered them his first kids.

Until he had kids.

And as he and his wife crossed over the dark water and he thought of what it was like to lose Jake—just a character that he conceived in a book that nobody reads—he could not bear the thought of ever losing his real kids. His wife. The reason he gets up every day, puts one foot in front of the other, and does what’s necessary to keep a good, solid roof over their heads. And as he peered down into the swirling depths, he began to feel better.

It has only been a bad day, he thought. One bad one in a string of good ones. It is true that I don’t have the time I used to have. That I am not the man I had believed I would be, but even my bad days are good. And time, as evident as it appears in the passing from day to night, is seamless. There is hope. A possibility.

He may have lost a little, but he has gained a lot. He is full and patient. And he is still learning how important it is to not worry about what he wants, but to be thankful for what he can give.

And tonight, there is this.

~ K.J.
a little lift

October 27th, 2016

I remember being six and standing in the cheese line at the fairgrounds with my Mom and brothers. It was a beautiful, bright day. There was so much light around. I remember the light so well.

All of us were wearing hand-me-downs or Salvation Army specials. There was more than cheese, of course—“provisions” is what they called it, and I remember powdered milk, cereal, and other necessities and my belly grumbling with hunger and excitement as we received the plainly labeled packages that would be rationed for weeks—but it was the cheese line, no doubt, because that’s what kids called it at school. Their Moms and Dads apparently hadn’t ever hit a bad patch for long enough to make them swallow their pride and stand in line to feed their kids. Nearly every day, I heard all about the lazy, good-for-nuthins that stood in line for food they did not earn or deserve. Kids learn a lot from their parents, I guess, so I got to hear firsthand from my classmates how lazy, stupid, and selfish we were—especially my old man. It ate me up to hear how awful we were for taking handouts and no matter what I said nobody gave a good shit that my Dad worked his ass off. When he got laid off, he did everything he could to provide. He worked odd jobs for those in our rural town that could afford to hire a helper. He fixed things for family and friends. He picked bottles and cans to cash in on the deposit money. And when things got tight in the fall and winter, he shot deer so we had meat on the table and waiting in the freezer. Dad applied for jobs, spent lots of time at the unemployment office, and was always busy never giving up. Eventually, he got hired back at the factory and made a very good living. One that gave us everything we would ever need. We weren’t rich by any means, but he worked for decades not because he liked ruining his lungs with shop air, and not because he wanted to lose his hearing to shop machines, but because he wanted to give his wife and kids a good life. And because he got a little lift in the form of a social welfare program. Hell, that little boost coupled with his tenacity and devotion carries on into today.

For the most part, I don’t fuck around. My wife and kids come first. And I do everything I can to make sure that ends meet and overlap so that there’s at least a little left over to give. But still, on a night like this—kids just put to bed in their cozy rooms, my wife sipping wine watching high def TV, and me at these keys sipping vodka and Sprite as nine bells call out from the church down the street—I know I’m not doing enough. None of us are.

Less than a mile away, there’s a third grade boy dreading going to school tomorrow because he’ll be teased for wearing hand-me-downs.

Down 2^nd Avenue, just north of the bridge, there’s a little girl that just wants a warm bath.

Somewhere in this sleepy lakeshore town coined as a “warm and friendly port,” there’s a man that’s made some bad decisions, but doesn’t deserve to be sleeping on a concrete slab.

Everywhere at every moment there’s a spirit that needs a lift and yet we choose to walk away. We judge quickly and embrace cynicism because it’s easy. We don’t want to think. We don’t want to feel. We just want to live our own little lives and don’t want to be bothered. And when we do this, we die a little. Oh, it’s imperceptible. It can be ignored. Shrugged off. After all, it’s our money and our own life we’re looking out for. We do a fine job of distracting ourselves from what’s really important quite easily. We buy shit we don’t need. We’re afraid to believe. And we follow like sheep. Donating to political campaigns and scrolling through Facebook all along the way. Little do we know, those little deaths all add up and eventually the light is pulled away.

~ K.J.
actions speak louder than words

January 17th, 2015

When I was a kid, just seven or eight, and it was bitter cold like this—the wind killing our cheeks, icing our eyes, and easing through even the most solid surfaces of our double wide—I woke every morning to the sound of Dad crumpling and rolling newspapers to light a fire two hours before the rest of us were up so that when we finally got out of our warm beds we wouldn’t be shocked by the cold.

After he lit the fire, he’d pack his lunch. I’d hear the delicate clink of a knife against the butter dish. The cap of the horseradish jar coming off, a spoon rattling around the glass, then the cap screwed back on. The clunk of the lunch meat drawer in the fridge. The rattle of a paper sack. Then the long pour of coffee into his tall gray thermos.

After he scribbled notes for all of us—mine was typically a list of chores: KJ, empty the ash drawer, feed and water the dogs, bring in kindling, bring in firewood, straighten your bed, and shovel the porch—he cranked the old Chevy Nova to life, scraped the windows, then roared away to Besser Company. The place he’ll go to tonight. Forty-three years later. To work a midnight shift.

It’s hard to find loyalty like that today.

And hard hands.

And a strong back.

And shoulders like iron from caring for a wife, three sons, and carrying loads and loads of silence—the heaviest thing a man will ever handle. Because good advice is given quietly and without judgment even when you see your sons making the same mistakes you made over and over and over again.

They don’t make men like Dad anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try. So tonight, I showed my boy the art of crumpling and rolling newspapers to start a fire. The importance of proper spacing between kindling and logs, and that sometimes to keep a fire going it just takes time. And as my son ate his apple sauce and watched my every move, I remembered to say nothing because actions speak louder than words.

(Here’s to May 2015, Dad…retirement is soon.)

Tag: Dad

understand

Kids, look up.

and tonight, there is this

a little lift

actions speak louder than words