The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for February 2011

Grandpa

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Old Jewish Cemetery, Vienna

Dear Grandpa,

You died about 4.5 years ago and much has happened since then. I don’t think that I have told you about all of it. In fact I am sure that I never told you that they fired me the day of your funeral. Didn’t tell you about the text messages and emails that they sent me during the funeral asking me to call in. My phone was off so I didn’t get them during the service. It was only when I got back to mom and dads that I discovered them. They called me again and told me that they they were sorry that you had died and that I shouldn’t come in the next day.

I haven’t aired this sort of dirty laundry here, at least not this story. I haven’t shared it for a variety of reasons but for some reason today feels like an appropriate time to share some of it. I took the call in the car and said what I had to say. Then I walked into the house and looked at my father. He has your blue eyes you know. I didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t that important. He had lost his father. Just a short time earlier we had stood graveside and he had told us about how you were his hero and how much he would miss you.

How could I tell him. I know my father and I knew that he would try to comfort me. I knew that he would say fuck ’em and tell me that I was better off.  All true and all accurate. I had been trying to get out of there so they made it easier. But the moment wasn’t about me. It was about my father. Grandma was long since gone and so was Uncle Jimmy. Once you died that meant that dad was an orphan, albeit a 60 something year old orphan, but an orphan nonetheless. I didn’t know how he would feel. I mean I knew that he would miss you terribly but I didn’t know if it would be made worse by not having Uncle Jimmy around. There are things that siblings understand about parents that no one else can get, not even a spouse.

So I walked inside, picked up my daughter and hugged her tight. Her brother came over and grabbed my hand and tugged on it. It seemed surreal, you were gone, the construction on the house wasn’t close to being completed and I had two small children. I did my best to hold a poker face, but you know that it is not something that I am very good at it. You and dad were/are card players. Maybe it is more accurate to say that dad recognized my tell and asked me to tell him what happened. Really, I shouldn’t be surprised that he knew that there was something more. How many times did the three of us sit together communicating in silence.

Anyway, I told him what happened and got the expected response from him. I made a point of shifting the conversation quickly. I didn’t want to focus on me. I was furious about it. Even though it was demonstrative of the character of the people I had been working for, it wasn’t right. But there is a time and place for those things and that was neither.

I remember walking to the bathroom next to my old bedroom. Our picture was hanging on the wall. It is the one of you, dad, your father and myself. I am about 18 months or so in it. I remember staring at it and thinking about how young you looked in it because you were. I was 37 when you died and you were about 92. So in that picture you weren’t even 60. Can’t tell you if you had gone gray yet because the picture is in Black and White. 😉

Your great granddaughter talks about you relatively often. She likes to pretend that she is you. She hikes up her pants and and acts silly. It is bittersweet to me because she doesn’t remember you. Sure, she knows who you were and she recognizes your face in pictures but she doesn’t know the grandfather that I remember. When I coach her soccer team and see my folks on the sidelines it reminds me of you and it makes me smile because she is building the same sort of relationship that we had. But I am selfish and I want more time with my grandfather.

I am selfish because I got a small taste of getting to know you as a man and not a boy. I miss your stories. We can’t tell them as well as you could. I miss sharing secrets with you. Sure, whenever I come to visit you I make a point of telling you one or two, but it is not the same as having you sit across from me. You never knew about this blog but you would have enjoyed it. You always enjoyed my writing and most of the time I enjoyed sharing it with you. I qualified that because when I was younger it was harder doing that.

Blame it on youth. You always said that you couldn’t screw an old head on young shoulders and you were right. Life changes us, or should I say life experiences change us. I have written a bunch of posts about you. There are keywords in them that trigger memories for me. And I share those memories with your great grandchildren. They are all getting so big. I look at my nieces and nephews and my kids and I am amazed. You would be proud of them all.

I am not who I was when you died. Too much has happened but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Changes come and we do our best to roll with them. Just know that you are missed and loved. And when I punch out a boy or two for trying to date your great granddaughter I’ll tell them that you helped teach me how to throw a punch. Something tells me that would make you smile. I love you grandpa, got to run now and play dad for a while.

This was part of  The Red Dress Club Memoir Prompt.

Telling It Like It Is

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I laugh when people tell me that they “tell it like it is.” Oh really? You have cornered the market on truth and reality and only you the great Kreskin can “tell it like it is.” Perhaps you can follow it up with something equally insightful like the “point is mute.” I’d love to compete with you in this contest of who can be the most honest but I am stuck waiting for Godot.  That clown owes me twenty bucks and if he doesn’t pay up I am going to see if I can find my pal Major Major to lay a mighty beating down upon him.

Don’t know why but I like the term, “mighty beating.” Something about that grabs me and makes me smile. Not because I want to hurt someone, but because if you are going to beat someone you might as well do a good job of it. Otherwise what is the point of it. Ok, I lied a moment ago because there is someone that I want to hurt. The guy in the Mercedes who cut me off on Ventura Boulevard not once, but twice and then gave me the finger because I honked at him. Why did I honk? Because the light was green and he was too busy picking his nose while talking on the cellphone.

Although I will give him credit for having the good sense to make more efficient use of his hands free device. Who knew that it also turned off courtesy and common sense. To be clear I wouldn’t give him a “mighty beating.” No, him I would slap. If you are not male you might not be aware of the significance of slapping another man. That my friends is considered to be a serious insult. It is a dig at your manhood. Men don’t slap other men. So if you ever see me do it you know that I consider the person that was slapped to be despicable and someone I have contempt for.

Speaking of contempt I am pleased to say that I have never been found in contempt of court. That would be bad. I don’t have the extra cash to pay the fine nor the desire to be locked up. Incarceration and I don’t get along well. Though I have been called an animal I am not the sort that would do well in a cage. Just like Bodhi in Point Break, I am not going down, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Every time I see Keanu in a movie it reminds me that I could be a movie star too. Sometimes luck is more important than talent.

So I sent out the tweet below and got back lots of responses, fortunately none from Jessie because I’d hate to slap him too. Of course he would probably want to bestow a mighty beating upon me so I might have to instill the fear for the Flying Spaghetti Monster upon him. You know that us Pastafarians may be a group of a meatballs but we do have our saucy side too.

Well, it is time to get back to working on important issues like curing cancer, helping the homeless and doing real work because these children of mine want to eat.

Wounded By Words

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Johnny looked down at his feet, up at the ceiling and then back at towards the ground. The one place that he didn’t look was at the computer screen. Not that it mattered, he had already read the email and seen the words on the page.  They were words of hope and words of hate. Pain and joy intermixed and intermingled ran through his mind. Fear, uncertainty and anger welled up behind the walls that he had established. Whispers of insecurity laid siege upon his defenses and left him staggering.

The attack was swift and without warning. It was unseen, unexpected and unfair. Had it been physical it would have been considered the equivalent of a sucker punch. He would have welcomed that not because he enjoyed pain but because the response to that was far simpler. It was a matter of fight or flight. If you didn’t get knocked out you cleared your head, assessed the situation and then made a split second decision to run or kick, bite and scratch. If you knew Johnny you knew what his first choice would be…fight.

His friends didn’t tease him about having paws or meatclaws for hands for nothing. He was of average height but with broad shoulders and greenish-hazel eyes. A low center of gravity and natural strength coupled with fierce intensity and moments of ferocity had always made it inadvisable to anger him.  If you poke some people they bark immediately but never quite make it to bite. That wasn’t Johnny. He rarely said much about being irritated, at least not verbally. It wasn’t like he didn’t give off any signs or indications of anger.

To those who knew him well his feelings were always obvious, he wasn’t gifted with a poker face.  His brow would furrow, a vein in his forehead would begin to bulge and his fists would clench and unclench. If you knew him well enough to recognize those signs you also knew that when the fists and vein began their movements you only had moments. Johnny didn’t risk getting hurt easily. If you asked him he’d tell you that he understood the risks and that if he was going to take one than he would earn it. It was his way of saying that if fists were flying his goal was to disable his opponent quickly while causing maximum pain.

Physical pain was simple to him. He didn’t like it, want or desire it but he knew what to do about it. Mental and emotional were more complicated or should he qualify it by saying heartbreak. Heartbreak was complicated.

Johnny was guarded and reserved with his feelings. He didn’t give his heart easily, although he sometimes gave off the appearance otherwise.  More than a few women had complained about his reticence  to show them his true feelings. He was very good at making them think that they had gotten somewhere. It wasn’t because he intended to be duplicitous or a jerk.  Some of it could be attributed to his ability to communicate more effectively than most men or at least in a way that resonated with women. It complemented his ability to draw them in and make them feel secure.

Blame it on having grown up with a ton of sisters and their friends. He was protective of women and they noticed it. He had presence. Presence…what a silly, self congratulatory kind of thing to say. But there was truth to it. He didn’t have trouble meeting women or finding a date. His problem was with heartbreak or maybe it was that for a long time he didn’t know that he had a problem with it. A woman had come into his life and turned it upside down. He recovered from it or so he thought and then came June.

June came long after the ones who had taught him about heartbreak. Unseen and unsought she had maneuvered her way into his head and his heart. It was a fairy tale romance that had surprised them both.

She didn’t look very much like the women who preceded her. From time to time she would question him about it and he would laugh. He would tell her not to ask questions that she didn’t want to hear the answer to because he would tell her if the jeans made her look fat or if he thought someone was pretty. After a time she relaxed and understood that he didn’t spend time comparing her to others. Besides, he didn’t look like the men she usually went for either- the stupid blond guy. He laughed thinking about how it used to irritate her when he said that, but she had her own description of the women he had been with.

The little barbs that sometimes were slung both directions really weren’t meant to hurt the other. They came from a place of frustration. They knew that they had something special and were sorry that they hadn’t met when they were younger.

In the darkness of the room the flickering of the light of the monitor distracted him from his thoughts and he found himself staring at the screen again. Several emails were open. Words told him that they had been to hell and back and that she would love him forever. They begged him to never go away and to promise to ignore any protests to the contrary. Other words more recent than before said that they were done and that they were friends. The other letters shared other thoughts that conflicted with the two that he had just read.

He shook his head and stood up. It was time to get some air. Outside in the cold he found himself staring at a harvest moon and wondering what he was supposed to do. She had never completely shut the door on him but she hadn’t gone out of her way to encourage him to follow either. He sighed and thought about the sucker punch again and wished that this were as simple. She was too important to just give up on and so he hadn’t. He had fought her decision and told her that he wouldn’t accept it. That only went so far, because he couldn’t force her to give in nor did he want someone who would just say yes any time he asked.

The decision didn’t make any sense to him. It wasn’t logical or rational, no matter how much she protested otherwise.  But he had made a point of giving her space…grudgingly. Contact had ceased and as time passed it became easier- at least most of the time it was. Little moments like these emails made it clear that his feelings hadn’t changed, but he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps hers had. Was absence making the heart grow fonder or was it making it ache less. He really wasn’t sure. The waters were too muddy to see clearly.

He looked up at the moon and wondered if June had stood outside thinking about him or if she missed him anymore. Was he just some guy who she had once loved or did she love him still and secretly hope for a way back. For the time it didn’t matter so he walked back into the house and towards the computer.  For a moment he stared again at the letters on the screen. There were words that wound and words that healed. Time would tell which side she would fall upon.

Blogging Ahead

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The rules of the blog are simple and they dictate brutal honesty. This is the third time that I have written this paragraph and unless something changes there will be a fourth and fifth time. This is unusual because I rarely edit my posts. I like to compose at the keyboard and just let fly with whatever seems to be on my mind. Rewriting is what I do when I allow others to serve as editor. Rewriting is what I do when there is a paycheck attached to the words I write. Here I share what I think and what I say without regard for whether it will play well or not.

After seven years in the blogging business I know a lot about this. I am well versed with many of the tricks of the trade and there is much that I could do to make this joint a hipper and more happening place. But that is not me. I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t sync with a feeling I have. It is kind of funny to me because I am one of the writers for a blog that helps to teach dad bloggers about blogging. I suppose that you could say that it is not much different from the father that says “do as I say not as I do” but than again maybe it is not. Maybe it is a logical contradiction.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I prefer blogs that are authentic. I prefer blogs that are written by people who aren’t afraid to tear at the scar tissue and see what lies beneath. I think that this honesty provides a great foundation for building a community of like minded individuals. That is part of the joy of blogging, the chance to reach out and click someone. Critics call it narcissism but I call it introspection. Sometimes the posts make me feel foolish. Don’t think that it was easy to write Real Men Don’t Cry. A thousand years ago when I had complete anonymity that kind of post wasn’t a big deal.  Actually it is easy to write, the words flow write from the fingertips onto the page.

There is a plan and a goal, Writers Write. It is what we do.

I like that quote by Emerson because it is a call to action. There is a time to and think and a time for action. Now is the time for action and that is something that I take seriously. I am writing for as many publications as I can. The discipline of writing on deadline is healthy and useful. There is merit to the constant practice of pitching ideas and providing substance to support them. There are rewards that come to those who take risks and though I sometimes burn myself in the fire I find that I succeed more often than I fail.

Grandma

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Dear Grandma,

I haven’t spoken with you in quite some time and I am not really sure why. I suppose that one could say that it is because you died last year. You died on the day of my 14th anniversary- that is a hell of an anniversary gift. I remember wondering what one does for the 14th. You know how they have that list of things you do, one year is paper, another is diamond, gold etc.

Well, I am not quite sure where death fits on that list. Granted I don’t really pay attention to these things nor do I limit myself to conventional items. You know me, I march to the beat of my own drummer except that dude has no rhythm. And so it goes.

I went to see grandpa today. I try to see him as often as possible. You do know that no one ever thought that he would outlive you. We all expected you to be here longer than you were. Granted you were 96 so no one can call you a slacker or suggest that you didn’t uphold your end of the bargain, but still… Until the last few years you were a powerhouse of energy.

No one believed that you were really in your nineties. Mom says that you had more energy than anyone she knew and I believe her. I remember you walking the stairs to do laundry. You were in your eighties and you refused to let me carry the basket. You do know that you got me into trouble with that one. I got yelled at for not being a gentleman, but I didn’t bother arguing about it.

I don’t say this to upset you, but grandpa is prone to crying now. He misses you terribly and I understand, albeit differently. Seventy-six years of marriage is something that I can’t begin to understand on anything other than the most basic level. You never read this blog but I have written about you here many times. I have written about all of my grandparents.

My thoughts and memories are collected here in this blog. Think of it as a journal that we keep on the computer. Anyway, grandpa cries. He tries to hide the tears but there is no hiding the pain in his voice. I don’t think you would be surprised to hear that he loved you deeply, intensely. Somewhere in this blog is a post where I wrote about his fear of not being able to take care of you.

He told me about how you when you were 16 you would jump on his back and he would run. He told me that he couldn’t believe that he wasn’t strong enough to carry you anymore. He told me that he didn’t see an old lady, but the girl he fell in love with. I get it. I can see those things. When I go visit I often go alone because he doesn’t want his great grandchildren to see him struggle to keep it together.

So I make a point to visit sometimes without the kids and then when he cries I don’t say anything about it. It is a polite fiction that we both live with, but it is not always easy. He doesn’t cry all the time. We have entire conversations where he is composed, but the conversation always comes back to you and that is when things get rough. I’d ask for your advice, but….

There is a lot going on in my life too. So much to tell you, so many stories. Grandma, I am going to be 42 in May. Forty-two, how did that happen. Yesterday you and I walked down Fairfax to buy ice cream. Ok, so maybe that memory is pushing thirty something years, but it feels recent to me.

And did I tell you how big my children are. We booked a Bar Mitzvah date. Granted it is 2.5 years from now, but time moves so quickly. I am frustrated Grandma. There are things going on that just aren’t working for me, but I am actively working on making changes. I am pushing and pulling and doing my best to just go with things. Did I ever tell you that I always admired how easily you adapted to whatever happened.

You made it seem effortless. I know that there were times when it wasn’t. I know lots of things and lots of stories, but still. You were always one of the happiest people I know. To be clear, I wouldn’t say that I am unhappy, but I am not joyful either. That is why I am working on making the changes.

Anyway, it is after 2 AM and I need to get some sleep. But before I go I want to ask that if somehow these words reach you, can you go visit grandpa. Can you somehow let him know that you are not really gone. It would mean more to him than you know.

Love,

Your oldest grandson