Pages

Follow our story from the start! - click "newer posts" at the end of each page

8.31.2011

First day of school disaster

While tucking Kit into bed the night before his first day of 5th grade in a new school, he asked me if I was ever nervous going to a new school.

"Was I?" It was time to tell the disaster of '68. He was old enough to hear what a wussbag his grampy was. "When I was 10 and starting 6th grade, we had just moved 100 miles from Toronto into an old farmhouse that didn't even have plumbing or electricity. After a summer of battling flies for my supper, using an outhouse and hand water pump to bathe and drink from, Labor Day rolled up and along with it the first school bus I'd taken since nursery school when it took 3 adults to get me on. I slunk into the seat behind the driver and sat like a stone. The bus didn't move. The few kids already aboard were silent like they were waiting for the axe murderer to strike. I looked up into the big mirror and the 250 year old grizzly face of Ross the bus driver stared back at me. 'You can't sit there. That's the girls side,' he belched out like car backfiring. I stared at the floor and crossed the aisle to the first available seat - behind another terrified kid who had already scored the front seat.

"After a 40 minute spine jolting ride down one endless dirt road after another, the half day of school was a blur except for bus time when 8 identical yellow busses were lined up outside the school and I had no idea which one was mine. I looked them up and down and in the windows for my sister but couldn't cut a break. As they started to fire up, I panicked and finally with tears streaming down my face asked a group of bus drivers, ancient corpses all in blue jackets and cap, which one was mine.

"'That's Dick Lunn's boy,' one barked out. 'You're on my bus down at the end.' I fled, climbed the steps and took the same seat I had that morning - which, incidentally, I stayed in through my entire 5 years riding that bus. When we finally arrived at the hell hole that was now our home, I ran inside and puked. After all I'd lived in the city my whole life with running water, a walk to school, and other houses closer together than the 1/4 mile they were here."

"Why'd you puke?" Kit asked, seizing on the central point.

"Because I was a terrified shy kid and frightened so bad by the whole experience that my stomach stopped working. I didn't go back to school for another 3 weeks and spent 10 days in the hospital because I couldn't keep any food in. I'd either puke it up or it would run through so fast it didn't do me any good (and we still only had the 3 seater outhouse). They had to put me on a I.V. at the hospital just to feed me.

"So there you have my first day of a new school. That should make you feel better because anything that happens to you will never be that bad. I was nothing like you."

"Why were you so shy."

"That's for another day."

As I hoped, my childhood tragedy made him laugh and realize he was okay. The next day when I picked him up from school, he said he'd already been written up. "What for?" I asked. "For being me," he said.

That made me dread all the way home but after we got there he showed me a sheet he'd written up himself about what a great guy he was. He even put his new teacher's signature. At supper he said he felt sick all day and wanted to puke. "I think I need to go to the hospital." Perfect. He spent time prepping his jokes, even if they were at my expense, to show he was okay.

Kit's gonna do alright.

8.30.2011

Summer's over - Let the games begin

Summer ended with a bang when Irene whipped up the New England coast with a vengence. As luck would have it the worst passed us by just to the west and all we got was heavy rain and some gusts. As luck would also have it the whirlwind that is our lives survived the summer as well with only a few scrapes, problems and bruised egos. I'm going to start blogging daily again today and rather than a long tiradish (is that even a word) recant about what went on (I already wrote a draft and bored myself to tears with), I'll mete out odds and sods in my regular posts. For today, I'll share this...
Doc turned 6 a couple of weeks ago and is wondering what it feels like to be 7. He's starting 1st grade and already worries about the burden called homework. The only 'homework' I had them do all summer was a 1/2 of reading every day and they moaned and itched and cut corners on that like I'd made them eat a plate of liver and spinach with breakfast. Kit and Doc seem to have become enemies, Kit bossing and Doc taunting. Gotta love brothers. Kit and Tio both had dental checkups and cleaning. Kit will need orthodontia, Tio won't. On the way home, Tio asked what's for lunch. Kit said, "future plaque". Tio is still working hard to make bad decisions but maybe someday he'll stumble on a good one and he'll get the idea. The other grandparents have moved from the next town to over 3 hours away on Cape Cod which seriously changes the extended family dynamic for the boys. So far the only repercussion is losing every other weekend off so now I don't get a break except on Wednesdays.

I told Buddy (yet another time) to start getting involved in the care and feeding of his children and he acted like it was all news to him. Tish is going to manage him because I'm starting to show my impatience with his willful ignorance and that'll only get worse.

Tish and I are still married, against all odds and statistics, and plan to remain happily so - despite the turmoil. We both have a few hours to oursleves today and when she gets back from shopping, we'll enjoy the beautiful blue sky and quiet until the school bus rolls up and we start the dance all over again.

See you tomorrow.

8.12.2011

I Can't Do It

In many ways, blogging every day is much easier than being irregular. I got into the daily rhythm of observing and thinking about the events of the day so I could write. I calculated the time and when I'd squirrel away an hour to write and post. I enjoyed the results of having a daily journal about life here with the boys. When I stopped, thinking I'd use the same time to plug away on my novel, I didn't realize just how different that was.

My latest novel is complex and sprawling and trying to accomplish many things through character, setting, plot and theme. Switching it on and off is not easy. I have to be swept away into a strange alternate future that is hard to imagine because it is so different from how we live and see the Earth now, and an unknowable universe on a sub quantum scale that I am pioneering by considering several cutting edge particle theories to create my own theory of gravity and the beginning of the time. On top of that, I'm integrating religious and political themes throughout. It's ambitious to say the least, perhaps even too much of a reach for my abilities as a writer. No wonder blogging is often more fun.

Add into the mix all the upkeep of raising the boys and a rebirth of my career as a silversmith and it's too much. No wonder I go to bed at 3 am and feel groggy all the next day until 6. What should I sacrifice to make it work better? My marriage? The kid's well being? The flutes that pay the bills? The writing career i spent so many years reaching for? I made a promise, a commitment, to make sure the boys got through these tough years successfully. I'm finally discovering myself as a true artist in silver and have some paying jobs to explore them in my own creative way and I have a publisher and agent that look forward to what I write next. But I simply can't do it all and it frustrates the hell out of me. I don't want to climb Everest or run the 10 minute mile. I don't mind that outside of my household I have no social life. But my creative world is exploding with ideas all around me and I can't catch them all. They are backing up in piles on my desk and in my mind and all I can think of is taking a nap to clear my head so I can concentrate on just one of them.

Today, after writing this, is already mapped out with kids and cleaning right up until 10 tonight when I have to choose which venture I will spend my precious few quiet hours on. No wonder I can't sleep.

So the novel suffers. I spent so many years writing unpublished books and scripts to finally make it and get books in print. Now seven years have passed since then. What became of the start of that career(I mean, besides the dirty little secret that every writer knows: there's little or no money in it for 90% of writers). It seems to have sifted like sand through my fingers one grain at a time. I still have some left in my hands. Can I hold onto it, turn it into something, make it grow? At this point I have no flippin' idea. That's how far removed from it I've become.

This isn't a self pity tirade, it's a wake up call. "Bum-pahDah-Dummm! I can't do it all!" There, I said it. "Hello, my name is John and I am a do-it-all-aholic. I'm not Superman, I'm not young, I'm not crazy (well, a little bit, but still...), and if I don't make some serious choices, I will drive myself mad, become addicted to chocolate and have to check myself into a Toblerone clinic."

In reality the choices are made. My day is full of the things that get done, whether they are what I wanted to accomplish or not. Now it's time to live with that.

I wonder if Hershey's does home delivery?

8.03.2011

Of tatts and costumes and puerile dreams.

So here I am in another week of 'how the hell did the summer end up this busy'. Doc and I are at McHappy's having a slurp and a fry after a doctor appointment that went just fine. Now I know how to get this gabby little boy to shut up: just put a strange adult in the room. He clams up tighter than Scrooge McDuck's wallet. Now, of course, he's babbling with all the other kids in the place and waving his toy around.

We were at the beach on Sunday and something caught me by surprise. Once you strip folks down to their bathing skivvies you see just how popular tattoos have become. Absolutely everyone is inked up. Some from head to toe and if this was a nude beach the percentage of visible color would climb dramatically. When I was a kid, I remember tattoos being reserved for bikers and sailors. Tish and I considered tatts a couple years back but we weren't going to mark ourselves permanently unless it was totally original. I have yet to create the perfect design.

Last night, Tio was asking a hypothetical about what everyone might do if they only had a week or 2 to live. When it came around to him he said he wanted to go to Trenton, New Jersey. Huh? Seriously? Trenton? No offense to the lovely residents of NJ, but of all the world, why would a 12 year old choose that for his last Earthly view? After some pressing he said that a friend told him about a study that said women with the biggest boobs lived in New Jersey. While I can see why that might be important to a terminal 12 year old with only 10 days left on the clock to see this for himself, the whole idea of a "boob study" is hilarious. It's just the kind of stories young boys make up about what they'd seen and heard and done. The funny part is that no matter how big their own lies are, they believe what each other says verbatim. I recall late nights on the grass with my best friend looking up at the deep night sky and all we could think about was what girls looked like under their shirts. It's what teenage boys do. In the movie Gregory's Girl, one hormone addled teen heard that there were 3 women to every man in Caracass so he stood on the freeway outside Glasgow hitchhiking with a sign saying "Caracass" completely baffled why no one stopped. Boys really do think this way and do the most absurd things as a result. I assured Tio that with every second person in the world being female, there would be plenty to look at without traveling to Trenton.
For my money, though, I loved the idea of the headline when that survey hits the press: "Biggest boobs in the world live in Trenton!"

Kit in Camo
Meanwhile, Kit has a new BFF: Grammo. They are starting projects together and hanging out quietly on the sofa in the evening. Its a joy to watch. He is also thriving since he came out. He feels much more open and free to express himself without self doubt. Some of the clothing he uses for that expression are pretty outrageous but we take it in stride set limits when it goes too far.

We're at the halfway point of the summer. I wonder if I'll ever get to my novel...