Birth Day #1: Champaign 1991

It wasn't all that long after moving from Montana that Fru became pregnant. She had just started a controller's job at her old bank and I was doing landscape work. I remember how shocked I was, how I asked her to take the little store-bought test twice. I mean, we'd planned to start a family. She had gone off the pill. But we were under the impression that it would take a while.

Nope.

It took me a while to adjust to her pregnancy. Og course, it took Fru the whole nine months to keep readjusting to it. But she loved being pregnant and I loved that she was happy--and I was happy--and we waited and watched for our first baby.

(In many ways it all seemed unreal. I was never the marriage/baby kind of a guy, not until I met Fru, so the idea that we would have a child was strange to me. Babies were for TV and movies, for relatives and strangers. But, I was also fascinated. I was anticipating fatherhood, though I had no complete concept what it meant. [Though this is not entirely true in the sense that, obviously, Fru and I had discussed having children, had agreed on it and tried--it just came a tad sooner than I thought it would, besides the fact that having a child is something you have to experience to understand the enormity and deep pleasure of it.])

Then came the day. Our first daughter was early, actually. I know Fru woke up very early, then woke me later to tell me she was having contractions. Okay. She wasn'T nervous and I wasn't nervous. We called her sister and father to tell them. (I'm trying to remember if this was when I was writing a screenplay and had to fax it to L.A. that same exact day and had to go do that before we went to the hospital, or if that was when Second Daughter was born.) We had been to see the doctor at his clinic, we had been to Lamaze classes and watched videos, read books, talked to people, so we thought we were ready. We were ready.

Eventually we got in the car and drove. Fru's contractions were picking up, so she felt more comfortable riding in the seat backwards. Champaign is a small town--the hospital, Covenant, was in Urbana--so I didn't worry about driving slow with her not in a seat belt and sitting on her knees backwards in the passenger seat. Okay. But there was another problem: it turned out we didn't know where the hospital was.

In my mind, I knew where the place was. But it turned out that that was Carl Hospital, which was near Covenant. Now, this was Fru's town (her hometown is Chicago, but she grew up in Champaign by age 13 or so), so I assumed she knew where the dang hospital was. But she couldn't tell me. (Oh yeah, she was wearing this big, billowy t-shirt that had a big elephant imprinted on it--I don't know where she got it, but that's what she wore.) So, I was driving down these small roads looking for the hospital while Fru sat backwards having contractions wearing her big elephant t-shirt.

Eventually we pulled over and asked some very surprised people walking on the sidewalk where the heck Covenant Hospital was. Luckily, they knew.

So, off we went.

Wheeling Fru into the elevator the person coming out was her pediatrician. He was surprised to see us, as she was not due for a few more days or a week. "Not you?" he said--he'd just delivered an early baby. "Yes," Fru said, smiling. "Okay, I'll see you soon then." And up we went and they gave us a nice room and nurses came and eventually the doctor came and then we went to another room and then it was push push push, good good good, here comes the head, it's a girl, cry cry cry. ohmygods etcetc and I was holding my daughter.

Amazing.

And Fru got to hold her too.

Then there was a move to another room, our new first baby being taken to the room with other babies. The staying, the people visiting, our baby being brought into the room for feeding and care. I mean, it's so strange and wonderful: You have a baby! What do I do with this baby? You love the baby.

So, Fru and I loved the baby.

After a slight delay--she wouldn't eat much and wouldn't pee in her diaper--we took her home.

We had a crib set up--I said we were ready--and other things we were told we needed and then we got our brand new baby to sleep and we went to sleep and then "WHAAAAA" the baby wakes up and we feed her. Sleep and "WHAAAAAA" wake and so on.

But, the baby is ours. She is sweet and smells sweet and is a joy to hold and she is ours, Fru's and mine.

And we love the baby.

The Garden: Champaign 1995

Since I was a kid, I liked growing things. I liked trees and bushes and flowers, I liked fruits and vegetables. I liked gardens. My father was a plant person, a back yard gardener. Nothing huge or overtly anal, just your regular vegetable garden, maybe some vine fruit, and lots of trees and flowering bushes. I'm about the same (or was): nothing fancy or overdone, just a nice patch of vegetables and plants for the yard.

It was in Champaign--the second time around, when my kids were little--that I had my greatest garden. My only garden, really.

Champaign has world-class soil. I mean dark, rich earthwormypoop soil. It's fine and black, no rocks, and you can grow about anything in it without much effort. We were on Miller Street then. First Daughter was a three or four years old, Second Daughter was only one or two and I had worked at Agriseed in Savoy, a genetic crop lab, where they had given me all sorts of seeds because, each year, the employees there planted a big garden out in the land they owned. So, that's what got me going with my garden.

That first year I had broccoli and onions and garlic, kale and spinach and corn, bell peppers, jalapenos, red chili peppers, eggplant, leeks, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes. I mean, I did care for those plants and they grew huge and abundant. We ate a lot of fresh veggies and I still recall having the girls pick them with me. And over the subsequent time--by 1995--I had it down pat, growing two seasons of spinach and kale along with lots of peppers, broccoli, carrots, leeks and such. I also grew giant sunflowers: huge Russian sunflowers that would get to be seven feet tall or more, with wide Frisbee-sized disks for flowers that i would let turn to seed and which the birds and squirrels came to eat up in the fall. I also let groups of wildflowers grow in the back yard, so that there was a mowed path between patches of black-eyed Susans or daisies or whatnot. The girls would go out and play among them. And there was a big blackberry vine that I let grow in the corner, so we had fresh blackberries at times . . . That was good. I miss that garden. I don't miss too much about Champaign, but the garden definitely is one thing.

I don't have a garden anymore. Oh, I've got tons of plants, trees, vines, year round flowers, I've had citrus trees and an avocado, coconuts and pineapple plants. Banana plants. But I haven't had a good old fashioned vegetable garden. I tried for a bit, but south Florida is not the same as Iowa or Illinois. It's kind of an old fashioned seasonal thing as well.

But, we'll see. maybe I'll try again. Or, maybe, I'll again live in a place where a summer garden will grow.

Picking Raspberries: Vancouver 1966

I think it was Mike Gust who found the raspberry patch. I'm not sure how, because the raspberries grew on a hillside quite a ways from our neighborhood. We rode our bikes to go get them.

It was Oldest Brother, Second Oldest Brother, mike Gust and I that went, with me being the little kid. And it did seem--to my mind then and even to my recollection now--like a very long trip to go gather the berries. We had taken pails and jumped on our bikes and rode and rode, along roadsides with cars and past intersections with cars and to the hillside where we dropped our bikes into the dirt along the roadside and made our way into the tangle of sticker-vine raspberry bushes. And there were tons of them, big and ripe, and we quickly filled our buckets. We also got scratches. Then we rode all the way back to our house on Enid Avenue.

We compared our gatherings, rinsed them all with water from our hose, sat out on the picnic table and removed any extra stems or leaves or thorns, then someone went inside and got bowls and the carton of milk and we ate raspberries with milk in the sun in our back yard.

Delightful.

But the thing is, I doubt that we ever even asked permission to go do this. In those days, we just went out of the house on weekends or summer days and did whatever crossed our minds, whatever we were capable of with our limited resources and unlimited imagination. So, we had that freedom. And, I wonder, how many towns are there any more that would just let raspberries grow wild along a hillside? How many kids have a childhood where they could just take off and find such a treasure without being driven there, without supervision, without having to pay some entry fee and sign some disclosure form to pick raspberries?

Ah. I sound like an old man. But with each generation, with each crowding of our world and development of our world, much is lost. I'm sure my parents saw it--simpler times, more free times--when comparing their childhoods to ours, just as I see it comparing mine to my children's. But things are gained as well: health and safety, other adventures not available. Still, there must be or have been a point where something becomes irretrievably lost, where the new urban/urbane childhood cannot match the one where nature was still prominent, where the need for safety has undermined the innocence and freedom of yore . . .

(Oh, just using a word like "yore" makes me feel old, makes me feel like a complaining codger.)

But, this has always been such. My complaints/thoughts are much much older than I am, older than this country I live in. Better to just remember that day in Vancouver, Washington, when we picked wild raspberries and ate them with milk.

First Xmas Return: Champaign 1996

We had moved to Fort Lauderdale in the spring of 1996. In May, I think. By the mid-summer we had found a house to rent in Victoria Park and were moved in. By the end of August we'd made friends, First Daughter had started kindergarten at VSY and I was in classes at FIU's graduate writing program. We felt good, Fru and I, our little family settled into our slice of South Florida.

But, Fru wanted to go "home" for Xmas.

Well. Okay. I mean, I wasn't too keen on it. I would have been happy with just a small nuclear Xmas in our rented house, but, she had come all the way down to Florida for me and she was working full time and how could I say "No"? I couldn't. Besides, I liked Fru's family. I liked Xmas in Champaign on the whole. So, we drove up there when the time came.

And it was nice enough. We stayed at Fru's father's place. I saw people I'd known and went out and around with them a bit. But something was nagging at me the whole while. And I knew what it was one evening as I ran around with Fru's sister's husband (her brother-in-law and therefore, I guess my brother-in-law--Dan--who I always got along with the best and who gave me work now and then). Dan and I were out one night, I think we went to the Tumble Inn, and were coming back with Dan always taking the side streets to get around and it was dark and cold-frozen, the streets were empty of people and there was snow blowing. Little wisps of snow looking like fog being blown by a frigid wind across the steppes of Champaign. And I felt a great dread. I felt like I had not gone away and was still living in that town and that--even if it was true that we had moved and had settled in Fort Lauderdale--I would be coming back to live there again soon.

Ahhhhh.

Okay. Champaign is a nice town. It's no different than many of the Iowa towns I like. But, as I've said, I had mixed feelings about that place and spent six years there, most of those six years spent trying to get out. And I had gotten out. But then I was back. Back in town during the desperate winter months and I felt like I was desperate, too.

But, it wasn't so. Because Xmas came and went and we packed up our Volvo and I pulled out of her father's driveway and we--Fru, First Daughter, Second Daughter and I--hit Interstate 57 with snow on the ground and drove south: Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia.

Florida.

We drove home.

Sleep: Champaign 1991

In the summer of 1991 I got invited to go canoeing and camping with Matt back in Iowa. At that time, First Daughter was only about, oh, maybe 3 months old. So, Fru and I were still in the shock of having a baby, the worries, the 24-7-365 attention, the lack of sleep. But, I was off to spend some time in northern Iowa, canoeing the Upper Iowa River and with Matt.

I was going to sleep!

In some ways, I was looking forward to sleeping as much as seeing Matt, as being in a tent again and canoeing, looking forward to being away and free for a few days. So, off I went. And it was a nice time--(overall, I'll have to write about it some other time, Matt, the river, seeing Roger also who was married and living in Decorah, Iowa at the time)--and we canoed and had a camp spot at a campground right on the river.

Night fell and I was ready to sleep.

Ah. Sweet sleep. Anyone who is or has been a young parent knows what I'm talking about (and I'm talking about five or more years of pure zombiedom!).

But as I lied there in the tent, I couldn't sleep. This was an open campground and there were still people up, particularly a group of young gents who were drinking and playing cards. Still, things like this never bothered me before. I could always sleep. And here I was, tired, desperately craving a long sleep, so why should some semi-noisy neighbors keep me from it?

I was upset. I blamed the campers playing cards. I told Matt I couldn't sleep and I grabbed my pillow and went out of the tent. I indignantly shot a glance over to the noisy campers as I marched with my pillow to my truck. It was my red Custom Deluxe from Montana (still had Montana plates, I think) and I crawled inside and thought I could sleep there, in the cab. I'd slept in many vehicles, many smaller than my truck.

Still, no sleep.

Sure, I dozed, eventually slept, but it was fitful, lousy, a sleep that made me even sleepier.

I blamed it on the kids playing cards, on the cramped truck, on my unfluffy pillow.

The next night we stayed at Roger's house where I slept on the couch. Still a bad sleep.

The day after that, I said I was leaving early to return home. I told them I missed my baby--my daughter--and that was true. I did miss her. I wanted to get away from her, from Fru, from that world for just a bit, yet that was about all I truly thought about also. I wanted to get back to it.

And--as the years passed and a new baby was added--I realized that that was why I couldn't sleep. Not that I missed her so--my baby--but that I was now used to listening each night for her. It was ingrained in me to listen, to sleep lightly, to be aware. It was not the other camper's fault, or the truck's or the pillow's, it was my new life. The life of having babies.

I'm sure there are exceptions to this. I'm sure there are men who--knowing their wives, the mother of their children are right there--sleep as soundly as ever after having kids. But, for most, that kind of deep sleep is lost forever. You're always listening, listening, even when years pass and experience tells you that all is okay now, they are no longer babies and will sleep and will wake up the next day. Still, you don't sleep that well.

Ah.

Even a few years later, when I'd go off to camp by myself, when I'd spend one night at a motel with the sole purpose of just sleeping, I couldn't do it. I couldn't conk out and disappear like I wanted to. Eventually, I gave up that hope.

No. I'm not sleep deprived anymore. But I don't sleep that well, either. I can't say I've ever had one of those deep, unconcerned sleeps again ever in my life. Not just because I had kids--that's what brought it on--but also because I'm getting older and am told you don't sleep that well the more you age.

Oh well. It was only sleep. It is only sleep.

Being awake is more fun anyway.

James: Missoula 1990

I didn't know a lot of people who were Indians in Montana, at least not intimately. I did know James. He was half-white and a painter. He was also pretty much an alcoholic. But he was interesting and we got along with each other, we were friends. I think perhaps he was Blackfoot. Maybe he was Salish. Anyway, that's not how I saw him, not as Indian or half Indian or an alcoholic. He was just James. He was a painter.

I met him in the bars. At Charlie B's to be precise. He knew Dennis and by 1990 I was good friends with Dennis, who collected and published books for a living. I know I met James before 1990, but that doesn't matter. What I'm thinking of is a short conversation we had at Charlie B's one night in 1990.

You have to understand that James had bad teeth and big glasses. He had long black hair and was very skinny. He had a crooked grin. He was drunk a lot. His paintings didn't sell much, but he was a real painter. He was poor. So, one night we were with each other at the bar--both drunk--and he started arguing with me, calling me White Man. I was actually interested that he called me White Man--don't know why, exactly, maybe just because I am--and he said his people don't always like my people. Of course, I didn't see it like that but also did see it like that (the fault being in my camp) and I said it wasn't true about me. He asked, "What do you think of me, then? What do you say when you see me?"

And I said I see a painter. I said, "You're an intelligent guy." And right away he smiled. He ducked his head and looked away and gave that crooked grin. He was flattered. And he wasn't flattered because I was a "White Man" or because he was a poor painter or because we were in Montana where people don't often compliment each other--only because I had surprised him by saying he was intelligent.

But James was intelligent. He was a good painter. He was a half-breed and I was a white man. I was glad to have surprised him. I was glad to have said something nice. It pleased me to make him smile his crooked smile . . . I should do that more often.

To Whom It May Concern #7

Well, I'm still at it. Still writing this blog.

If you wanted to say that this is only an exercise in narcissism, that it's a self-indulgent diary, a re-write of personal mundane history, an attempt at self myth-making, well, you'd be right. It is. It's also a blog, a journal, a memoir, an autobiography of sorts, a record of my very existence, one that moves slowly slowly, a glacier of small memories, that will, eventually, only add up to what it is.

Whatever that may be.

My hope is that as it grows--and it's years away, I can see now, from being even half done (and in some ways will never be done till I die)--it will take on a larger narrative, will be imbued with more meaning. It is, I think, that larger narrative that keeps me writing. Then again, I could be wrong about that. . . I do plan to write more about other people, about some subjects I've avoided or glossed over, maybe get into the minutia of my own thinking and self-analysis (won't that be fun to read?), and then I may not.

What I've been doing is, every nine months, I switch to a new decade. This is just a structure that befell me, one I came to after the first year. I've mentioned this before, but I'm working my way the best I can through the decades--the 80's, 60's, 90's so far--and will hit upon the others I've been alive in, every nine months, until I'm up to speed with this new and current one. Once I write about a decade, I can continue to write about it, so that, now, I write about three decades whenever I want. So, when I get to the Tens, I'll see what I can do to improve the quality and depth of these little things.

Why?

I don't know, exactly. To make my myth, I guess.