"don't you be using every minute
on making a living
because we got our love...
don't you be out all night long
leaving me all alone
because i, i need your love..."
duffy, "syrup and honey"
stumbled across the song while wandering aimlessly through the tubes the other day...every once in a while i get obsessed with a song and i just got obsessed with this one...difficult to figure why certain combinations of notes, melodies, and harmonies rock our own particular worlds so hard, a mystery, i guess, but a little mystery works wonders sometimes and as long as we can still feel that something, as long as a song can still move us to tears or at least to a place where we sit still and think about our lives, we don't ever need to worry about answering the question of why it happens.
2006...her dad died in march and in july our third child tried to join us a few too many weeks before his time, and they managed to keep him still for a long, tense, breath-held month, but at the end of august he just wouldn't be stopped, still a month and a few days early, he came out in a hurry and got the cord wrapped around his neck, things got a little hairy there for a minute, a minute and a half, and he wound up in the nicu, and the nurses joked with us, once it became apparent that he'd made it through just fine, that at eight pounds and change he probably set a size record for a nicu baby.
i took a few days off but went back to work soon thereafter, too soon i thought even then, long before i could have ever dreamed of the misfortune that would befall us...i work in the political world and we had full plates back in the autumn of '06, what with a congressional majority there for the taking, yeah, we'd finally stop that evil bastard in his tracks once we had subpoena power and all that, right?
can't say i spent every minute making a living but i spent far too many of our precious remaining minutes at the office...trudging home at nine, ten, eleven o'clock at night...with my wife and three children asleep by the time i came through the door...it bothered me then, nowhere near as much as it does now that she's dead, but i felt guilty about it, damn, lauren suffered a rough year between her dad and all the worries that went with the premature labor and the baby born too soon and under duress...but we had work to do at the office and at home we needed my job, we actually had a decent rainy day fund and could have lived alright for quite awhile with neither of us working but then with five of us there, we needed the free health insurance, we always knew we stood one health crisis away from financial ruin without the insurance...so i left my wife home alone for far too many nights, to carry alone the grief over the loss of her father and the work of chasing three young children around the house until bedtime.
&&&&
another gray day today, this winter has given us virtually no sunlight to speak of here in upstate ny...but by late afternoon the rain had stopped, and the temperatures had risen to early spring levels, so me and my dad loaded the two little ones, ages three and seventeen months, into the stroller for a late afternoon walk, as we do under all but the most miserable weather conditions; my mother stays home with them most of the day while i work, but she's sixty some years old, and chasing little kids around all day is a younger person's game, so we figure she needs a chance to catch her breath before the dinnertime rush.
gray and brown, that's all we see as we walk...the dead gray sky, the dead gray leafless trees, stark in their state of wintry undress, the dead brown grass, the dead wet gray of the sidewalks...we walk and i think of how i used to like gray skies, gray days, i think of how i never much liked the color brown until i met lauren; she looked good in brown for some reason, it seemed to set off the shade of blue in her eyes.
evie, the three year old, has rabbit ears for trains, and she announces that she hears one coming. i loved trains myself as a child, but then, i suppose i still do. i grew up in this dirty old gray-brown dying town, and as a child, during the 1970's and even as late into the early 1980's, the freight yards still hummed with action, the yards went on for two miles deep and thirty tracks across, but there's almost nothing left now...but still, every late afternoon at least one train comes rumbling through town.
we walk down a road where once those freight yards ruled the days of this town, and sure enough, evie had it right, there's a train a-comin'...we turn back and head toward the gates over by viall ave, "daddy we gotta get over to the gates, i wanna see the gates down, i wanna see the train..." and riley waves his hands in the air excitedly and yells out, "choo-choo, dada, choo-choo..."
but it's a short one and we don't make it to the gates. evie takes it ok, she's already talking about seeing the next train. we walk past the fire house, a polling place, i remember primary day has arrived, the so-called super tuesday. i see an older couple getting out of their car and walking toward the fire house, i recognize them, can't remember their names, but i remember seeing them around the town here and there, in church and in the market, from way back, i see them and feel the all too familiar pangs of regret, that sad half-written song within, just one short verse that cries out, me and my love, we'll never get to grow old together.
&&&&
the sights of that fire house and that old couple brings back more than regrets, those sights bring back memories of a long-gone election day, the general election, 1992. i volunteered for poll-watching that day, and i had to rise at five thirty in the morning to make it to my assigned polling place, the community center down at the john s. moore homes, the little housing project where i grew up...i saw plenty of six in the morning in those days but never did i see that hour as the start of a day, that hour always signified the end of a night.
still, i rose that morning filled with excitement and hope. i just knew that the long nightmare of reagan-bush would end that day, i just knew that america stood at the doorstep of a new era, i just knew that things would change for the better, i knew that new powers-that-be would address things like the health care crisis: i knew that by the end of the night the nation would have voted to depose bush, that we would have voted this new guy, bill clinton, a roosevelt liberal in hiding my dad called him, as our new president.
at some point during that day a friend of mine stopped into my polling place to ask for help. he had come to town with some other "intruders" to work the polls on behalf of a candidate for the open seat in the new york state assembly, a lefty-green guy who, for some unknowable reason, we thought had a real chance of riding clinton's coattails to an upset victory. they decided to work the polling place at the fire house i walked by tonight, and the town police chief had decided to give them shit about it. you know this guy? my friend asked. we're not doing anything, we're following the rules, maybe you could talk to him.
i put on my tan overcoat and hightailed it over there, down third street, same street i walked down this afternoon under a sky a slate-dead gray just like today's sky. i arrived and asked the chief what was going on. you know these people? he asked. yeah, yeah, they're fine, they just wanna hand out palm cards and stuff, it's their right, ya don't have to like 'em. well, i been gettin' reports they're botherin' people, comin' closer than a hundred feet. ahh, i doubt it. listen, i'll talk to 'em, make sure they keep their distance, alright? he looked at me somewhat disdainfully but mumbled an ok and then i walked off through the gray back to my polling place. he let them be.
&&&&
well, we never did get around to solving that health care crisis, did we? now we got even more uninsured, and the yahoos talk about how we're number one when it comes to medical care but then we got even more millions uninsured and our infant mortality rate is shameful and truth be told, our health care system didn't do my poor wife any favors. let's put it in brutally honest terms, a "socialist" system couldn't have done her any worse, she did lose her life, after all, the worst outcome of all.
&&&&
on that election day long ago, filled with hope, i stood on the cusp, my whole life in front of me, just weeks away from embarking on a wild love ride with the woman i'd one day marry, with the woman who'd give me the best years of my life. and it hurts to know that my best years have passed me by, that the feeling of naked anticipation i felt back on election day 1992 will never pass my way again.
&&&&
my dad wheels the stroller for another hour. mind if i go vote? he asks. no, no, go ahead, i'll wheel it for a minute while you go in.
he votes at the community center of the john s. moore homes. he walks in and i look through the doors, somehow trying to catch a glimpse of the past, a glimpse of my young self, of the self who never could have imagined any of what i'd wind up living through, the glory and the agony.
he comes out laughs and yells, to no one in particular, obama all the way, baby, and we walk toward my home and then evie hears another train. it's near dinner time and we should head home but she wants to see the train. we walk quickly toward the crossing over at short street, so named because of its shortness.
we make it in time.
four engines: should get a lot of cars on this one, i think.
the whistle blows and the children let out cries of unbridled joy. i look at them, to see their smiles: those smiles bring some small measure of comfort in this, yet another hour of my need, in this, yet another hour of bottomless grief. thirty something years ago my father wheeled me around this town in a stroller and i know he held out hopes and dreams for me, he hoped i'd have a better life than he did, but here we are, he's pushing a stroller with my children in it and standing by helplessly watching his eldest son stumble around with a shattered heart.
the train rolls by us, i feel the ground beneath us rattle. night has fallen, the gray skies replaced by an inky darkness, my babies laugh and yell, choo-choo, da train daddy, da train, and i stare at the cars, they move by so fast, and i hear a voice in my head, a beautiful voice singing a beautiful song, and i think, somehow, i can still hear the music, somehow, even in these, the saddest, darkest days i have ever known, i can still feel hope,
for myself,
for these children,
for all of us...