"Thanks and praises
Thanks to Jesus
I bet on the Bottle of Smoke
I went to Hell
And to the races
To bet on the Bottle of Smoke..."
"Bottle of Smoke", The Pogues
Our son turned two years old today.
Seems like more than two years, what with all that has happened since.
Everything that happened since last November, when his mother died, seems like more than two years ago, or, rather, it seems like no years ago: it all seems like it happened somewhere else, to someone else, in some other world.
It seems unfathomable that once upon a time, in my very own life, a beautiful woman fell in love with me and married me; it seems unfathomable that once upon a time we brought three children into this world.
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That beautiful life ended on November 20th, 2007, and though that life still flashes almost non-stop before my eyes, via memories and the smiles of those children we created, that life did in fact end nine months and eight days ago.
Tonight I went back and read a few words I wrote here a few days after he was born, A Child Is Born, and though I thought at the time the words carried a bit of world-weariness, mild cynicism, and fear with them, I had no idea when I wrote them that I had not even the slightest clue of what world-weariness and loss of innocence really mean.
For I have lost my innocence since Lauren died; as much as I tried back then to sell myself to the world as a hard-bitten realist, the innermost part of my self bought into the Happyily Ever After Fairytale hook, line, and sinker.
I met the woman of my dreams: we fell in love, got married, had kids, and we'd live another twenty or thirty happy years together, and on some distant day that wife and those children would gather 'round my death bed and we'd say our goodbyes and express our love and our appreciation for the wonderful life we'd had together, and I would pass on in peace.
Yes, I frequently nodded my respects to the forces of chance, to the vagaries of life on earth; but though I would not have admitted it, or even realized it at the time, I foolishly thought my appreciation of the fragility would somehow protect us from it.
Sometimes, now, what I most regret about all of this is that our children will never get to believe in fairytales the way I did. No, my belief in magic did not protect us, and we suffered a cruel and unusual loss, but I got to live with that child-like belief until my forty first year, and that belief enhanced the joy of our wonderful life: we escaped even a sip from the bitter cup of true sorrow and we seemed to live under perpetually sunny skies.
Riley turned two today, and though he does not even know it yet, losing his mother at such a young age will profoundly affect the course of his life and the way he views the world; my own mother lost her father not long after her third birthday, and though she lives as well as she can at the age of sixty five, those of us who know her best can see how that loss ripples through her still. I do my best and I will do my best but my best cannot change the fact that Riley will never get to live completely free from the darkest shadows of this world, the way his mother and father did for a precious few years.
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I had a little party for him tonight. Just some family, a few of his cousins and aunts and uncles and his grandma and Nana and Papa. He smiled so brightly as we sang Happy Birthday and as he ate his cake and opened his presents. He has his mother's cornflower blue eyes and just like her, when he laughs, his face lights up and his eyes curl into upside-down crescents.
It felt good to see him smile but I couldn't deny the pain, either. I thought back to the day he arrived, five and a half weeks prematurely, I thought back to the troubled beginning, when the cord got wrapped around his neck right at the end of delivery, and mostly I thought back to the sight of his mother, to the courage and bravery she showed during his birth, and the births of our other two children, and how watching her then simply took my breath away.
Like I said, I can't believe it happened to me, in this life I seem to be living now.
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After I got the kids to bed my mother left and she hugged me.
"I know this was hard for you, but you did good today. You did a good job. Who would have thought last November you would have come this far, this soon," she said.
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Today was hard, indeed.
Every day without Lauren is hard, but the birthdays and milestones and anniversaries are harder.
But nine months and eight days on, they are not as hard as they were.
Not long after Lauren died, I got a card from one of my high school chaplains. He, too, had lost his true love at an unbearably young age. In that card he wrote, "...let yourself feel crazy and accept it - what you are going through is a grief so intense that it feels like insanity."
That stayed with me for a long time. In the months immediately following Lauren's death, I thought that only one word even came close to describing the turmoil within: "insanity."
I wondered if I would ever make it through that insanity.
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A little over three weeks ago, we ran into another milestone, the family reunion (on my mother's side).
I swore the thing off, didn't feel up to putting on a brave face and answering all the "how ya doin'?" questions with the usual "doin' the best we can, hangin' in there" propaganda I always give to the general public when they ask about the state I'm in.
But my parents decided to take the kids up to the reunion for a bit, and a little after one o'clock I went up to get them; I had seats in the clubhouse for the Saratoga races and I wanted us to go. A few months ago I thought I'd never want to go up to the races ever again: Lauren loved going to the races in August and we went there together every weekend before we had the kids, and as often as we could after that. The place seemed like too much of a reminder of what had once been, and of what now will never be.
But there we were, my widowed self and our three children. I got all three of them all prettied up, dressed to the nines, fingernails cut close and clean, their hair washed and brushed neatly: they looked as cute as buttons, if I don't say so myself.
I wanted to bet one race that day, the seventh. A race for horses who'd won only one race thus far their careers, horses who'd "just broken their maiden." While Bailey went out with our old friend Al and his grandson to eat popcorn and watch the swing band playing outside the clubhouse escalator, I took Evie and Riley downstairs to the betting windows and put in my bet.
As the horses loaded into the starting gate Bailey came back with Al and his grandson. Bailey sat two seats down from me, Riley sat on the seat next to me, and Evie sat on my lap. I had a $20 exacta bet, the favorite had to win and a 48-1 longshot had to run second for me to collect on the race. The gates opened and they horses started their run. We all sat and watched as the horses ran around the grass oval, our kids enthralled with the riot of color and sound. The sing-song voice of the track announcer rose in a crescendo; Evie heard the announcer and began to imitate him, and that sing-song voice reminded me of an auctioneer, of a voice trying to sell us into believing again in magic and fantasy and fairy tales, if only for a few seconds.
At the top of the stretch the 48-1 shot I needed to run second emerged with the lead, with the favorite still a few lengths back. Much to my surprise, I got sucked into the vortex of it, and for a few seconds I forgot about everything else. The assembled throng of thousands rose from their seats at once and unleashed their unbridled cries of greed, and the horses ran on towards the wire, and voice of the announcer and the colors of the jockey's silks melted into the bright green of the turf course and into the barns off behind the backstretch and into the every shade of sky-gray imaginable illuminated by a stubborn early August sun that refused to hang dimly in defeat behind the curtain of clouds draped low over the proceedings, and it all came together in a sort of split-second riot of the five senses, and it seemed that on either side of her my little long-shot suffered attacks from well over half the field, and it seemed impossible that she would hold on.
The favorite charged up on the outside, and all of a sudden the sounds of "Bottle of Smoke" came to mind, the favorite "came up on the left like a streak of light" and I could hear Shane MacGowan belting it out in my head, and the favorite ran on by them all in about ten strides, and the rest of those horsies ran on in her wake, they reached a hundred yards out from the finish, my little long-shot fighting them off grimly, and I thought, there's no way, there's no way she hangs on here, and my left arm held Evie tightly and safely in my lap and to my total surprise I yelled out, with the noise and the color filling all of the space around us, with the noise and the color filling everything, and Bailey yelled for his horse, the nine, and Riley looked out and yelled nonsense, and to my surprise I yelled out, too, I yelled out, hold on, hold on, hold on, and sure enough my long-shot held on for second, by the skin of her teeth and not much more, I had the exacta, ten times a hundred nineteen dollars and twenty cents, a very nice chunk of change.
A few months ago I never could have dreamed that I would ever again care about something as dumb and stupid and meaningless as a horse race, but no kidding, I got caught up in that moment there, and I let myself believe in still more magic, I left myself believe that somewhere out there, beyond these chains of space and time, Lauren felt happy and relieved that I'd got caught up in it. We went downstairs and collected the dough and then we went over to my uncle's chicken stand and gorged ourselves on curly fries, and then we left the premises shortly thereafter and returned to the reunion.
I told my dad about my winnings, and I walked around and talked to people and gave them the old "we're doing as well as we can" song and dance as I carried Evie up on my left shoulder. And then her Papa approached us and he asked her, did daddy get excited today, and she threw her head back and started laughing, yeah, daddy yelled, and Papa asked her, what did daddy yell, and she kept laughing as she answered, daddy yelled hold on, daddy yelled hold on hold on hold on, and she laughed and laughed, and as she laughed I realized that I have in fact held on, against seemingly insurmountable odds, I realized that I have held on held on held on and made it through the other side of insanity.