Everything happens for a reason ... sort of

My dad: He got cooler later in life, but not much.

My dad's been dead for half my life, and it really, really sucks.

It goes without saying. Or, at least, it should. But it never seems to, does it? "Time heals." "You're stronger for it." "Everything happens for a reason."

No, no, no. Especially the last one. Everything happens for a reason? Please. My father did not leave this life, extremely prematurely, for any reason. Or at best, as the result of stupid, pointless events. Still, nearly everyone, since the day he died, seems to want to tell me it happened "for a reason." The wost offenders usually include some variation of "Don't worry; everything sorts itself out" along with the platitude.

Before you think I'm a horrible, horrible person who secretly hates all your comforting words, let me explain. I do take comfort in the fact that so many people care, still, after all this time, and that's the main thing. So thank you, truly. However, I think it's more comforting to not assume reason and direction. I prefer to find it, or better, to make it.

If my dad hadn't died, I probably wouldn't have taken the precise career path I had, I wouldn't be married to my husband, and owing to the circuitous interconnectedness of things, my son probably wouldn't exist. Really, everything does affect everything that comes after it in one's life, to some degree or another. But you can go crazy assigning meaning like that. He didn't die so that these things could happen. He lived, and with my mom raised me, so that they could happen.

I honestly don't usually remember the anniversary of when my father died. I always remember his birthday. He lived for a reason, and it had nothing to do with predestination or guiding spirits. He lived for the reasons that he created every day. He was a father, son, husband, brother, teacher, coach, fantasy baseball commissioner, unabashed Beach Boys and Jim Croce lover, sarcastic joke teller, conservative, and pain in the ass. He did what he did, and to hell with anyone else and their idea of cool. (See that photo at the top? I never again want to hear you say "Oh, yeah, my family is full of dorks too," unless it reaches that level of dorkitude. I mean, seriously.) He was a whole ton of other things. And none of it just happened. He was, determinedly and perpetually, the reason.

He was never big-time into nature, but I am. Yesterday, I was chasing birds. It was early enough that the date hadn't really registered. After an hour or two of attempted birding, miles and miles off course, I pulled to a stop beside his baseball field. Yesterday would have been his 53rd birthday.

The birds didn't guide me there. There wasn't a mystical force pulling me. I probably already remembered in the back of my mind what day it was. But it has meaning anyway. It happened for a reason, and by "it" I mean my recognition of the moment. I assigned meaning to the moment. I couldn't stop smiling, all the way home. The radio seemed to play the most pleasingly cheesy songs I'd heard in ages, and I thought of him as I bellowed along with the lyrics.

I returned to the field last night with my son. We brought crayons; paper; cameras; a really old, really dorky photograph; and an old clarinet.

David plays the clarinet now, and that certainly happened for a reason. One other thing that my dad was was a clarinet player, and a good one (his failed attempts at circular breathing notwithstanding). My son now plays his old clarinet. I couldn't possibly be prouder. David played the clarinet at Brian Hosey Field, we did some rubbings of the plaque, and he ran and ran around the field until he could barely breathe and the light had faded entirely.

My father, whatever and wherever else he may or may not be, most definitely lives on through us. He's behind my humor, love, aggravation, creativity, strengths, and weaknesses. It really has been a while now. We have, of course moved on, if not gotten "over" anything. I'm honestly startled sometimes to realize it's been days and days since I've really thought about him. And then I stop. And breathe. And think. And maybe write; or sing, loudly and badly; or read a stupid comic book; or vociferously argue a point about which no one cares. No one tells me to. No one makes me do it. Possibly, no one's watching over me. I choose to do what I do. But he did teach me.

He didn't die for a reason, but he's gone, and we deal. It's made a little easier by the fact that he lived for so many reasons, and we nurture those every day.

Dear Arizona

Happy belated birthday, Arizona. By this time next year, many of us will have recently celebrated your centennial. How exciting is THAT? Yes, it's true, a good contingent of your residents will probably figure it's not worth it, what with the end of the world upon us and all. (That is, if we're even still around after May 21 this year.) Those people will probably miss your 100th birthday, barricaded as they'll be behind armaments and emergency provisions and stacks of credit bills they amassed when they figured the world was done for. But not most of us. Most of us are still trying. Most of us are still sane.

We've gone a bit crazy, haven't we, Arizona? We're sorry. Don't worry, you're still a great state. You're hot and dry and extreme, and your people are even more so. Your landscape is rocky, and your people even more so. Your critters and plants are rough and prickly and deep rooted and real pains in the asses, and your people? Yeah. You know where I'm going.

This has led to some bad stuff, for sure.

That's what's come to define you to the rest of the country lately, but that's not what defines you for Arizonans. I wanted you to know we remember that.

You, Arizona, are two-hundred-year-old saguaros, home to countless birds, with big waxy flowers that open at night. The first saguaro bloom I remember first blossomed the evening of my seventh birthday and attracted bats. I'd never seen a bat. I thought I was magical or something. I thought this place must be.

You're the dirt-caked undersides of upturned silicate rocks, scorpions clinging fast and flat. You are arroyos cut through the dry landscape by decades and centuries of flash floods ("washes" for those of us who grew up sustaining countless lacerations playing in them). You're turquoise waterfalls and deep blue pools; you're rushing rivers that churn up sediment until they resemble chocolate milk. You're lazy rivers and the lazier tubers who get sunburned on your rivers, trailing tubes of beer behind. You're a sandwich my mom packed for a fifteen-mile hike, and the perfect boulder that exists somewhere in the Superstition Mountains, which cradled me while I ate the sandwich. (You're not, however, Ramen Noodles and instant oatmeal, which comprised my entire diet while I camped in the Grand Canyon, and which I cannot stomach to this day. I don't blame you for that.)

You're foxtail seeds in our socks and desert breeze in our hair. You're speckled cactus wrens with their raspy calls, fourth-generation cotton farmers, modern-day pioneers, and the guy I know who sells cactus jelly and has a million unbelievable (in both senses) tales. You're cholla cactus forests so big the ends reach the horizon. You're the Grand Canyon, ancient cliff dwellings and the OK Corrall. You attract everyone from learned geologists and historians to fanny-packed, trucker-hat-wearing tourists, and somehow you manage to make them all feel welcome.

You're the event invites in my inbox, to (staged) cowboy shootouts, horse and burro auctions, skydiving, cave treks, spider feedings, salsa tastings, and chili festivals. You (along with my son an an abnormal, innate curiosity) are the reason I will never be bored.

You're spring training, wineries, the olive mill, and trail rides. You're artist enclaves and private household arsenals. You're the most progressive environmentalists I'll ever know, and also hunters and rodeo cowboys. You're what made me acquire, and later shed, my cynicism and stereotypes. Honestly, you're really damn hard to live in sometimes, and while I'm never ashamed of my state, I have been ashamed of individual Arizonans. But you've forced me to deal with the world and people as they truly are; nuances, compromises, bullshit, and all; and I am stronger for it.

You're conservative, sure, on balance, but most of your people are just ... people. We rightfully pay extra attention to borders here -- the state's boundaries and our own ideological outliers. But this isn't about that. This goes out to the heart of Arizona -- and as someone living (geographically) south of center and (politically) left of center, I'm still not so far from the middle that I can't see that it's where most people live, ideologically.

You're the Grand Canyon State, but you're also the Copper State, Apache State, Aztec State, Sunset State, Baby State, State I Used to Think I Hated, State I Now (Usually) Love, State to Which I Don't Deserve to Lay A Claim Despite People Thinking I'm An Expert for Some Reason, State of Which I've Seen Far Too Little, and the State the Rest of the Country Seems to Think is Backward and/or Exotic.

It seems most appropriate that one of the most maligned and misunderstood states should celebrate its birthday on such a maligned and stereotyped holiday. I guess, given your own propensity for being behind the curve in most things, Arizona, it's appropriate that this goes out late. I know you'll understand.

There is more to Valentine's Day than misanthropes would like to admit, and there is much more to you, Arizona. We just don't always do a great job of reflecting your better side. Completely our bad.

Happy belated birthday. Happy belated Valentine's. Here's to hoping we make it to 100.

Looking back

Since I've started blogging at least semi-regularly, I've begun to get requests. I'm one of only a few bloggers among my offline acquaintances, and so it was kind of slow going at first. Blogging. Um, sure. But in the months I've been active, blogging's picked up in popularity among even the uninitiated, and I like to think I've also hit a stride of sorts. So it's my thing now, and I get requests. They take three forms, with some overlap -- the topical ("You have to write on such-and-such issue!"); the experiential ("Come on! When are you gonna write about when you: forgot your pants/hiked the Grand Canyon/got mugged for your trash?"); or the writerly ("I loved reading your essay. You should so post it!").

I find the last one particularly flattering, being a writer and all. But I always feel kind of like it's, I don't know, cheating. I'm supposed to write new stuff, right?

I'm cheating today anyway. But this one's different.

David's seventh birthday is tomorrow. I can't freaking believe it. Seven. And between the preparations for his birthday and assorted drama in my own life, I haven't written much about it yet. I will. But I'm feeling too darn nostalgic right now. So here, a repeat for some of you and with less polish than I'd like but pretty much the way I wrote it years ago, is his birth.

*************

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the blood.
This is not how motherhood is supposed to begin.

Blood soaked the sheets, forming a pool, the slick surface undulating. Mine. It never happened like this in the movies. It happened in those “emergency childbirth” shows - blurry, strobe flashes and a melodramatic drumbeat, the narrator grave.

My most coherent thought was that the shows underplayed the drama.

It had begun routinely. The doctors asked the requisite questions and calculated the number of humiliating positions I could assume. After posing me on hands and folded legs, like a terrified jackrabbit, the anesthesiologist prepared the epidural and reassured me. I produced a crackly squeak, which I hoped he would interpret as a polite laugh.

As I steeled myself for the jab, the electronic beeps monitoring my son’s - David’s - heart rate slowed conspicuously, like a neglected wind-up toy. The doctors’ eyes narrowed.

I was flipped on my right side. “…definitely a placenta abruptia.”

On my back. “…gonna need a C-section.”

On my left side. “… don’t want her to bleed out.”

As I wondered if they would employ a mother-to-be rotisserie, the bone-white sheet turned reddish-black.

“Whoa, that’s too much blood. We gotta deliver now.”

I signed to have the operation. I would have signed for a C-section, lobotomy or castration. My hands shook. My arms, legs, torso followed, as if a maniacal puppeteer were throwing a tantrum with my limbs. And why was it so cold?

My sister stood aside as my mom frantically tugged on one-size-sort-of-fits-all sky-blue scrubs.

“She’s in shock, isn’t she?” she hissed to my mom in a stage whisper. She fingered circlets of hair, pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt up and down - she would not be in the operating room. And there was no father. Only my mom came with me.

Fluorescent lights raced overhead as I sped feet-first down the hall. I gazed at the floor. The beige and taupe tiles became tracer bullets in my path. My limbs crashed against the cot, with a thump-clang-rattle-thump as they hit sheets, frame, sheets again.

It’s all wrong. I’m not ready. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

A Caesarean section, I’m told, takes about forty-five minutes. Mine took nine. I managed to turn my head and watch David’s birth. He was blue. Not bluish. Blueberry Popsicle blue. Ice blue. I held my breath with him. The doctors - there were a dozen now - rubbed him, rolled him, and fed him air. Finally: a small, uncertain, “Wah.” His cyanotic tint faded into a coralline red-pink.

Six years later, I’m still not ready. But you’ll know who I am.

A plastic tarantula, empty juice pouches and the books Slinky, Scaly Snakes and Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! litter my car. A Vivaldi CD I played impulsively on the way to the lake one evening has remained in the player for three months, by decree of my son. The only acceptable replacement, I’ve been told, might be the Shrek soundtrack.

My philosophy discussions, once rooted in Kierkegaard and Hume, now begin with “If it’s time to make baby birds, why do the girl birds run away from the boy ones?”

My bedroom-playroom-home office is a hodgepodge of academia and an advertisement for Toys “R” Us. A plastic Superman bust looks over cosmology texts. A scientific paper titled “Candidates of red shift 5.5-7 galaxies” bookmarks Diego Saves the Whale.

I spend days playing, reading, running, teaching, kissing and making it better. I spend nights, and a few afternoons, working. I seldom sleep. I smell like chicken sticks, bubble mix and Play-Doh.

My prayers have turned from generic petitions to the weirdly specific: “God, please let my son pee in the toilet this time. I’m out of dry underwear and paper towels.” Or, “God, please let me say the right thing when the dog dies. I can’t stand to break his heart.”

Every issue is weighty - eating (you can’t have Pop Tarts nine times a day), religion (sure, God might sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas), animal care (cats and dogs cannot “play robots”). He wants to be an animal rescuer, and volunteer at the zoo. It’s an hour’s drive. I can’t wait to take him.

Asked to name my favorite actor, I couldn’t decide between Squidward Tentacles and Scooby-Doo. My physics and calculus are rusty, but I can recite every Dr. Seuss book and know how many times SpongeBob has taken his driving test (thirty-nine).

David’s wide, tooth-packed smile is an explosion that takes over his face. His laugh trickles like the lyrical, playful flow of a mountain stream. To feel his rose-petal lips on my cheek, or his silky, gold-brown hair in my fingers, is to experience love.

It came to me, at the arboretum, as it often does: just watching him. He danced and swirled near a bush, disturbing a flurry of black and iridescent-blue butterflies, which spun briefly about him before alighting elsewhere. This is exactly how motherhood is supposed to be.

For many a young to middle-aged woman, a pivotal moment of anxious resignation is when she finds herself filing coupons alphabetically, scolding drink-from-the-carton culprits or uttering the phrase “You’ll poke your eye out,” and realizes she has become her mother.

Not me. I have become my son.

I giggled the other day when the cashier farted while ringing up our purchase. I have developed an unusually high affinity for Pop Tarts and string cheese. I was always horrible at delivering punch lines, but I don’t even know the jokes anymore. My son’s favorite joke goes:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me! Ah ha ha! Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me!”

(Repeat for ten minutes.)

Other than that, I don’t really know any jokes. But my days are still filled with humor. I do know, for example, that the nature-show narrative “The boobies come in great numbers, as far as the eye can see,” is good for an afternoon of laughter. I know the simple joy that comes from pulling up to the stop sign beside the neighborhood horse stables at the exact moment two mares engage in synchronized defecation, or the snickers borne from lifting one snail from the dirt only to discover a second one attached to it, the hermaphroditic parts “lined up.” I’ve relearned the joke that “your epidermis is showing.” I know that spelling out the word “up” on the talking computer at the science center makes it say “You pee.” I know that I don’t get invited to any parties. I choose to believe everyone in attendance wishes to avoid being overshadowed by my newly acquired comedic repertoire.

I was warned motherhood would mow me down like a trimmer over wild, unruly grass. Make me into a tame, monotonous turf. Get ready for boredom, I was warned. Be prepared for repetition.

Instead, we have tended the wild weeds in each other. There is repetition, sure, and I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand how the same cartoon episode remains enthralling upon viewing forty five times. But rarely is there monotony. We seem to have an unspoken pact, a refusal to abandon wonder. If this is an anomaly of nature, either his as a child or mine in my simple-minded refusal to be bored, I welcome it.

*************

And lastly, if you're wondering where he got the baby-jowls, I give you me, circa 1980:

Happy (belated) birthday, Dad

I tried and tried yesterday to think of a fitting post to do for what would have been my dad's 51st birthday. I did one last year, and was thinking of him all day. But nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. Fits and starts. I wrote a bit here and there about how he lives on through me in unexpected ways, how he chose "favorite" baseball players whose cards my brother and sister and I would "collect" (starting in infancy; my "favorite" was Keith Hernandez). I scribbled down a list of random quotes I remembered from him:

On religion: "I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything the Pope or the priest does. It's like being an American. If you agree with everything the President does and don't even question it, you're a pretty lousy American."

On buying ten cartons of ice cream: "Well, it WAS on sale."

On an argument with my mom: "Well, sometimes we do argue. We love each other, and we'll be fine by tonight ... but I am right."

On my mom deliberately ruining his eggs (because he deserved it): "That's fine. I LIKE them this way."

On my mom and I arguing: "Well, I think you're both being a little ridiculous!"

On our response: "..." [Retreat.]

On my mom revealing, after months, that she'd switched the brand name for a generic: "Well, yeah. I figured that out right away. I just didn't say anything."

On political affiliations: "Well, you're Republican. We're Republican. Obviously."

After a huge fight once: "You should know something. You and you mom. You're my heroes. You've changed me more than you'll ever know."

But I couldn't wrap it up, tie it to anything. Because I am my dad for better or worse, including my short attention span, propensity to procrastinate and my devotion to my kid. So I tried in two- and three-minute spurts, and nothing. How do you commemorate someone you're already constantly commemorating in your life and thoughts? I talked to my mom twice yesterday and it occurred to me I had forgotten to say anything. But what do I say? Happy Dad's birthday? Probably, I guess. But that seemed inadequate, somehow, which was the same problem that I had with everything I tried to write. So sorry, Mom. Definitely, Happy Dad's birthday.

My son and I went through old pictures last night, and we found some old pictures of my dad and me. (I'll scan them in and add them to this post later today.) My son, without really looking at them at first, saw the kid and the postures and immediately assumed it was me and him.

And then we went for a walk, and saw this amazing pink and red sky.

David knew what day it was. The world knew.

I guess I'll end with a conversation David and I had last night. It was prompted by a book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), which seems more than fitting.

"Harry must be sad his mom is dead."

"Yeah. I'm sure he's very sad."

"Like, when he wonders what to do, and wants to ask her, and she's not there."

"That would be really hard. He just has to do his best. And he has the memory of her."

"But why does the memory make him happy? Doesn't it make him sad that she's gone?"

"Well, of course he's sad. But I guess Harry's happy because the memory is kind of like him, I mean her, still being there. And when Harry needs advice or love, Harry can still think about what he would have said."

"I'm not talking about his dad. We already talked about that."

"I mean she. What she would have said."

"You miss your dad, huh?"

"Yeah. I do, sweetie."