blue blue blue

I called yesterday, out of the blue blue blue, and he said, "You know your mother's not home?"

"Yup."

"Sure, come over." The happiness in an old man's voice elicits a pity that goes against everything we know to be right. It scares me, that I might grow soft even to the point of rolling my eyes, forget about it all, maybe even do some bad things myself today and ask for forgiveness on Tuesday, practice my geriatrics.

I left so many strings untied last year, gave myself a great big unwrapped box full of loose ends, deceived myself with a tangled weblog, re-woven. Tried to take up some new habits and old hobbies. My habits are nail-biting, my hobbies are not collecting stamps and coins. It is a small, manageable collection.

I went to pick up a small boat. He had given it away to a neighbor. He pretended that he had forgotten this, said he had beer in the fridge, and we walked around the property, feeding the ducks and goats and geese. He told me about a call he responded to earlier in the day, a 31 year old woman, extremely overweight, had collapsed. He drove the ambulance to the house and started CPR, had the other volunteers take their positions while he hooked up the defibrillator. Analyzed once. No shock advised. Analyzed twice. She's been dead for too long to waste any battery now.

"When I got outside, her son looked at me and said, 'Can you try one more time? She's a good mom.' I didn't know what to say."

Visiting estranged parents is like this. My mom, in Kansas City, called while I was there. I don't want them to be lonely, or to need me, not just yet, not before I'm ready. To make decisions for their twilight. I do everything I can to make my time here short. Don't go to the doctor. Smoke and drink. Fall in love. And still I go to bed early. Wake up and take pictures of the birds.

"What are those?"

"Grosbeaks."

"Do they mate for life?"

"I dunno. Most I ever seen em mate for was three to five minutes."

My hands are so bloodied and scarred in the summer. Between crab pots and fish hooks and crawdad traps and broken bottles and oyster shells and bluebird houses and swimmer's itch and getting drunk and pulling the blackberries up by hand, a spot behind the fence where I sneak away to smoke a cigarette, it's like before, just waiting to get on to the next day. Oh my god, what a big deal I make of all this. And oh my god, what a big deal it really is.

"Did you try again?"

He hands me another beer, and I don't remember his answer, but I know. Of course not. The woman was dead, but a little kid asks you, and you fake it, if you have any human in you at all.

It's just that he never had any human in him all these years, and now, all of a sudden? I don't like it. I don't like it because there's nothing you can do but accept it and offer forgiveness, regardless of the accounting. There ain't no fine I can levy for all that happened before. I accept it now and take the high road, or say 'no' and stumble down the low. Just living's the road to redemption? Throw yourself on your goddamned sword if you're gonna be all noble now, I think. This is a chickenshit way out. Don't tug at my heartstrings 'cause you can no longer throw me through the wall. God. I can't believe I love my dad. I should be smarter than that.

Weeks now, every day I take my kids to the lake and we walk in up to our knees, I feel like it's the closest I got them to religion, and am barely tempted to dunk their little heads beneath and praise the lord, but I didn't bring the beach towels again. I don't want to fill their little minds with inconsistent beliefs. I made them in my image. I don't want them to ever feel perfect.

"What did you say to him, then?"

He hands me another beer. "Did Tristan have a good time today?"

"He did. He loves the water. I had to lie to him just to get him to get out."

"What did you say to him?"

God, what do I tell him?