Climbing the Hill

I'm just going to skip a lot of cliche things I'm inclined to write about autumn and just say that i absolutely love it.  I want to smooch it on its old, withering, brown and orange face, to dive into a pile of leaves and pumpkins and campfires, roll around in it, take the warmth and richness into my heart; Halloweens, football season, gatherings of family-and let it simmer there forever.  Have i escaped saying something cliche?  Have I?  It matters not, the Fall and its charms are an endless source of joy to me, and i shiver with delight when i feel the leaves crackle under my boots as we walk through the forest on a perfectly cool afternoon.

Is it October already?  Seriously?! But I can see it; the northwest has a particular way of winding down before the cold rains come to blot out sweet sunlight for months at a time, bringing out the Kurt Cobain in everyone.  The crispy, yellowing leaves complement the downy-soft mosses and ferns that carpet the forests and cover the trees.  Its like walking on your grandfather's old flannel jacket for miles as we wind up and around the hills, babies strapped to our chests with cloth harnesses, toward the summit of the butte to watch the setting sun.  The babies are cooing, elated to be out under the open sky.  We pass by young college couples and active seniors who admire our children and share stories with us about their grandchildren.  Isaiah is by turns our leader and our detractor, in one moment deciding that he is Wolverine, strafing ahead of us with determination and occasional karate-like chops and kicks, occasionally to our rumps.  Minutes later he trudges behind, complaining of legs pains, fatigue, hunger, like a little old man boy.  We make frequent stops to drink water, feed the kids raisins, let Isaiah go pee, etc.

Its a long walk up the hill and having twenty-five pounds of baby strapped to your chest doesn't make it any easier, but as tends to happen with reasonably long hikes we eventually settle into a happy rhythm with each other and the hill.  The babies grow quiet, eyes wide and sparkly as they take in the birds, squirrels and sprawling tree canopy.  A sense of purpose and adventure overtakes Isaiah as he goes barreling forward with dog as his guide.  We start to get glimpses of broader vistas through the trees-we can see all of Eugene and Springfield from here! By George, I didn't know there was a lake over there!  We climb higher, the terrain growing more precarious.  Soon we, babies attached, are crawling like golems over the stones of the hill as we paw for higher ground.  Stones roll out from underfoot as we chase the beams of a sun we cannot yet see, for it is sinking.  Ascending the summit we collectively feel that distinct summit feeling; a sense of clarity and accomplishment.  Even as a crowd is gathered up there; a couple of high school guys in tank tops, one girl hula-hooping atop a small peak, an assortment of late 30s, middle-agers, silverhairs; it still feels empty, incredibly quiet and subtle.  Everyone is talking, but the voices are slight and there is no echo, just the smallness of words in the endlessness of the sky-what could we be saying?  Ants on a sandhill.

Back in the car on the way home it is very noisy.  Satya is doing this thing where she sort of just intones this loud, monotone sound over and over.  Its not crying, or discomfort exactly, its sounds more like some kind of deep-stress-release therapy that she's developed and practices herself.
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.    aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.   aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaah."
Isaiah joins in.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!  aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
"Isaiah!"
"What?"
"Could you please..."
He holds his hands aloft and shrugs his shoulders, giving that what on earth might you be talking about? face.
"Oh look Isaiah, a family of deer!"  Three-to-four of them in assorted sizes plod out onto the sidewalk, ears pricked.
"Look look quick out your window!"
They turn, skitter and go bounding like ballerinas back into the forested neighborhood from whence they came.  Even the girls are straining to see.

We live in a curious part of Oregon, (Eugene,) located in the Willamette Valley amidst miles of rolling, luscious green hills, lakes and rivers.  Drive in any direction (excluding the city of Springfield) and you will find bounteous nature; mountains, streams, salmon, the great Pacific Ocean.  Drive downtown, however, and quite another story emerges.  Conan O'Brien once said, "If you want to know the long-term effects of marijuana use, visit Eugene, Oregon."  Indeed, a town infamous for once being home to Ken Kesey, godfather of the LSD-fueled hippie-clowns, the Merry Pranksters, as well as the anarchist capital of the U.S., Eugene somnambulates through its days.  The townspeople are incredibly friendly, to the point where the average, suspicion-filled American mind starts to wonder where all of these peoples' issues have gone.  How are they able to be so completely upbeat and sociable all the time?  And I'm not just talking about the unkempt, hemp-wearing hippie-youth.  Indeed, every cashier I have ever had, every gas station attendant, I would easily say that even every stranger I've ever spoken with talks to me like I'm some regular, like they want to hear what I have to say and they even have time for it.  Amazing!  Where do you hide your grumps, Eugene?  I fear that soon the grump police will come for me too.

Aside from overall friendliness one cannot underestimate the toll that the legacy of impulsive, spontaneous behavior supported by copious drug abuse has taken on the cities of Eugene and Springfield over the years.  As of five years ago Springfield was a seething hornets nest of crystal meth use and production, whose influence naturally affected much of Eugene as well.  While efforts on the parts of both cities to clean up their acts have made strides toward betterment, the sickly pallor of those ruined lives is still tangible as you drive through the cities.  The people who looked hollowed out, dried in the sun like gourds, their jaws set in constant motion by the buzzing, static fray of their ruined nerves; they are asking me for change, a cigarette, offering to buy my pants off of me; they are ghosts, living dead, zombies in our midst and there is a horrific tragedy to it.  Addicts, like prostitutes, rape, and other desperate subjects are too much  for us to collectively reckon with so we make a joke of them like the awkward laugh of a child who doesn't know what to do with an uncomfortable, shared sense of pain.  I laugh too sometimes, at the crackhead joke.  It's not good of me.  I shouldn't.

And so rather than reckon with the ups and downs of hanging out in town we opt instead for the ups and downs of the Oregon countryside, where the air is clear.

Pieces of the Whole

Its hard to describe your position in life to anyone outside of your small sphere of peer-validated existence.  As a child I would wonder about adults; watch them in their strange ways laughing at things that had no inherent humor or creating great distress out of simple issues.  Strange creatures - overburdened with their rules, dogmas, lists, running around talking about stress, work, responsibility...what is this stress?  Why do you talk about it so much?  What about responsibility, why does it have to be like this?  Surely we can just live!  We can thrive and be playful and remember that life is about every day, not to get sucked forward by the vacuum of hopes or backward by the towline of regrets.  And there you are, so small and with so few words, heart as open as the sky while all of the strangeness of the adult world just pours into you.  It washes into you, sloshes around strangely, settles, ferments, comes back years later in the most unexpected of ways.

And there I am like Vonnegut's  Tralfamadorian human, strapped to a cart on a track that moves only forward, eyes fixed ahead.  And again, grown up and looking down and my son who is looking back at me with that unease that accompanies trying to process sillly grown-up behaviors.  What was I going on at him about?  He is holding a half-eaten popsicle, his light-brown khaki shorts stained in three places with cherry-red juice.  I had raised my voice to make a point, a point about not spilling popsicle juice on his pants, a point i had certainly made no less than twice prior since the beginning of this popsicle.  Then somewhere inside the static of my head i hear the voice reminding me that I have become that large and confounding grown-up, for whom the sanctity of ones clean pants has taken such precedent that he will get flustered, will lecture his four year-old, will assume a pedantic posture, his four-year-old meanwhile staring up at him with such innocence, such lustre in his eyes - he is loving that popsicle!  And here we are at our stations in life, I twenty-seven inches from him, yet worlds away.

"Daddy?"  he makes a psychic strafe away from all the smoke and bluster of my lecturing.
"Yes, Isaiah?"
"Um, in Beauty and the Beast, Belle's dad-"
"Wait just a second, did you hear what I was saying?"
"Dada?"
"Isaiah - did you hear what I was saying to you?"
"What?"

By now he's done it.  By his mentalist-ninja trickery he has lead me into a forest of confusion in which he is quite comfortable but I merely run like a blind fool.

"About your popsicle.  Are you going to be careful like we talked about?"
"Wait, when we talked when?"
"Isaiah don't do this."

He holds his hands, palms up, high out and forward into the air while shrugging his shoulders and giving me that look that says, "Look, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here guy!"

I grab the popsicle and start gnawing on the edge in the rapid-fire way of people with sensitive teeth.

"Hey!"  He lunges for it, I swing around.  He grabs onto my arms and, while pulling at one of my hands, reaches with the other for last nub of his popsicle.  "Are you going to be careful?" I intone.
"Dada!  Yes!"

Ah.  Finally.

We find ways to connect.  We take family walks and the sky is beginning to slide into its grey tones.  The fall is seeping in, leaves are crisping.  Then we walk by the old woman, she must be in her seventies or later.  She has her huge purple winter coat on, sitting at the bus stop eating something out of that white wrapping paper, all by herself.  What could I say to her?  What could we talk about? No one deserves this fate, this woman - perhaps this grandmother, taking her meal alone at the bus stop.  I want her to go back to her family, to be surrounded by friends, grandchildren, a fireplace, people who love her and still hug her frail old body.  Its a childish hope, but I am learning that it is a path to a home i am on my way back to.

When I write this blog I try to think of tiny pieces of the whole that will inform something greater for you, dear reader.  But inevitably I arrive at this feeling of how could I possibly tell you?  How could I explain fatherhood, love, weakness, despair, bliss,(the unspeakable bliss!), loneliness, the wanting to give up but going deeper and finding uncharted beauty in the staying with it!  The dreams of youth lost outshone by the glory of life gained, the simple wonder of loving another and being loved by them, and allowing yourself to be filled with love so that when it is pancake breakfast sunday and everyone is throwing mushy little bits of cake at each other, and in the morning light streaming in through the windows you can see that dog hair is sticking to the kids' faces from the syrup, and they are shrieking in amazement, you remember to do it.  do it.  just do it.

smile.

what time is it?

What time is it?  Its night.  There is no light in the windows.  I am still somewhere down deep in the cave of sleep, but its irritating.  Something is annoying me.  Its grating-crying.  Shrillness.  Baby cry.  Its Khaliya crying, a slow drone at steady intervals, over and over and over.  I keep my eyes closed and wishfully hope against probability that she will roll over and go back to sleep.  The drone grows into a forceful growl in blasts that become more erratic.  No.  She's going to wake Satya up if I don't do something.  Where's Gaibi?  She's not here, she must have gone into Isaiah's room.  He must have had a bad dream, something about monsters or the bad guys from Kung Fu Panda or a Disney movie, his terrified cry piercing the dark, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaa-maaaaaaaaaa!!!!!"  Get up, you have to get up and do something.  So much better to satiate one baby than try to wrangle two at once.  I sit up in bed and can just make out the outline of Khaliya, now standing up at the side of the bed, her little muppet face now blowing anguish at close range.  I run my fingers over her tiny, warm, melon-shaped head.  I can feel it vibrating with her cries. Shhhhh, quiet baby.  Shush now.  She lays her head down on the side of the bed and slows to a slightly softer wail.  Just as I decide to get up and warm a bottle, Gaibi bursts through the door.  There is exasperation on her face.
"Kaimani pooped all over Isaiah's room."
"What?"
"It smells terrible."
"Again?"
"Yes."
"On the floor or-"
"On the rugs."
"Shit."
"I know."
She is holding a bottle of bleach spray.  What time is it?  There is still not a trace of light in the windows.  I shut the bedroom door, leaving Khaliya with Gaibi and walk past the bedroom where she has picked up much of the poo but the smell is still overpowering.  Downstairs I pour two bottles of formula and put them in a pan on the stove to heat them up.  I lean on the counter with my hand and let my mind sink into the sounds of the night; the loud hum of the fridge, the insects outside.  Check the formula with my finger-still cold.  I fill a glass with water from the sink and drink the whole thing.  Check the formula, oh no its almost too hot!  I quickly pour it out from the pan into two bottles, spilling what looks like half but fills both bottles most of the way.  When I come upstairs, blowing into the bottles to cool them to optimum temperature, Gaibi is sitting on the floor nursing two babies simultaneously.  As is the norm for this time of the morning, I ask obvious questions.
"Did Satya wake up, too?"
"Yes."
"I knew that would happen so I made two bottles."
"Awesome."
I hand Gaibi one bottle and get down on all fours, arranging Satya so that I can plug the end of the bottle into her mouth while resting somewhat on my side.  After jolting back to consciousness for the third time, Gaibi graciously asks why don't I just go to bed and she can do both bottles.
"Are you sure?"
She says its fine, honey, go to bed.  I do.  What the hell time is it?  I lay my head on the cold pillow, on the bed which is also cold because we've both been out of it for so long, and drift downward into a sleep which I never fully left.

But there it is again, the screaming!  This time its Satya, a back-arching, larynx-shredding, baby-lion roar, then followed by the mother lion growl as Gaibi throws back the bed sheets in a dramatic flourish.  In my half-dream state I imagine it like one of those Caravaggio paintings, a scorned queen throwing over a table or tearing down the curtains.  I sit up with eyes half-closed, watching as Gaibi, blustering, positions herself between the two girls on the floor mattresses.  I ask if she needs anything.  What could she possibly need?  There are two babies, she is equipped to feed both of them at the same time if need be, what could I get for her at this hour when there is but a bit of light in the darkened windows? No, she says sweetly, and i lay back down and sleep.

"Ga ga ga ga ga ga ga ga!!!"
What's that knocking sound?  Oh its morning now, the sun is just coming into our bedroom window.
"Ga ga ga ga ga ga ga ga!!!"
Oh, its Khaliya, and she's slamming something on the ground.  What is it?  It doesn't sound like a wood block, it sounds like plastic.  I push back the sheets and look over the edge of the bed.  She is planted with feet in front of her, smashing my phone into the wood floor repeatedly while loudly chanting, "Ga ga ga ga ga ga ga ga!!!"
Khaliya Khaliya don't do that.  No baby, don't do that, here, give me, give me that.  Yes, no.  yes, its mine!  No, its mine!  I know you really really want it but-I know you want it!  Here, here have this bottle of baby cream.  Yeah, there you go.  That's cool, huh? Ok.  Crisis averted, for now.

I look back five minutes later to discover that she has somehow opened the cream, has covered her legs in it, and is eating it.  The sun is up.

homecoming

I look at them, the young adults, the forerunners of our world, impossibly stylish, drunken, arms around each other, eyes turned upward at the stars.  They are laughing and the cold of the night or the seriousness of life does not affect them, does not even exist for they are robust and invincible.  I remember what it felt like, to sparkle and feel your shine lighting up the world.They are the coddled college cocoon slice of the american pie, polished and fabulous, and I am on my way to buy diapers, baby food, and coffee.  Leaving youth behind, I will trawl the baby food aisle in search of the best food-for the best deal.  When it comes down to the broccoli-spinach-pear versus the apple-squash-carrot, when one is priced at four for five dollars but the other is six ounces larger...Wait, the apple-squash one is organic, okay that's settled.   I like the squishy-squeezepack-impact sound it makes when i throw a bunch of them in the cart.  After paying I'll go over to the  Redbox, hoping they'll have something better than the standard industry knockoffs that overwhelm this age of throwaway filmmaking.   If they don't, I will rent the best looking of these which will star the a hunk and a babe, or several babes and occasionally two hunks, it will reference obliquely some historical or mythical event or perhaps create a future one, there will be battles, a war, an unsatisfying love scene, it will have an ending you have seen i-don't-know-how-many times but the actors will play it with such conviction.  Is it weird that i put the Redbox movie in my pants pocket after I get it?  I often feel like a quasi-criminal, even though its obvious I have paid for the thing.  Nobody has a Redbox movie without paying for it, everybody knows that.  I will walk away every time feeling a slight sense of guilt about supporting a big corporate monster like Redbox, then reminding myself not to go too far down that road of cynicism about everything lest I end up the rotten old curmudgeon, living alone, yard overgrown, he was too down on life to enjoy it-I raise my head high and walk out of Safeway.   I will get back in the car and drive back through downtown, through the youngsters and their tricks, the girls stumbling out in front of the car in their heels, "Oh my god you just stepped out in front of a car!"  All her friends laugh and pull her by the arm, "Sorry!  Get back on the sidewalk!"  While I'm three-quarters of the way home I remember that I was supposed to buy avocados.  The girls can easily chow through two of them in a day, relishing their soft, fatty meat.  With all the Omega 3s and 6s, i can practically see their brains growing as they inhale their unseasoned guacamole, wiping it across their faces and brows like novice food warriors.  What to do?  There are no more grocery stores between here and home...Would 7-11 have avocados?  No.  I start thinking about the cost of my carbon emissions vs. the need to have avocados for the girls the next morning.  I make a U-turn.

In not long I will be home, which is at this point the four upstairs bedrooms of a house in the south Eugene hills, a beautiful, rolling, wooded portion of Eugene where the city starts to let up and the houses start to make friendly with the forest.  On my drive home I watch all the faces of Eugene go by my window; the train-hoppers with their tattered old factory clothes and welding goggles, usually surrounded by dogs of unknown heritage, begging for change, a ride, work, anything helps; the U of O students with their nice haircuts, out in their jammie pants and no shoes on the sidewalk, watching Glee on their iPhones and texting about it with their aunts while chewing gum and heading over to the Thai restaurant, 4 sum k1ck @$$ pad tha1, #yummers;  Then the sweet seniors, the churchgoing elders of the town who are all smiles and good news ambling down the sidewalk, smiling at me as i drive by.  Lets not forget the circle of 90s throwbacks in their baggy corduroys, playing hacky sack in front of the bus stop with such enthusiasm you'd think they'd just discovered the game, emitting a shock wave of patchouli-odor through my car window even as i cruise by at 45 mph.

Then slowly it all goes away, the people and the shops and I am driving quietly over hills and dales, through glades and glens under the soft glow of streetlights till finally I head up that last hill, take that left, put the car in neutral as it slowly glides down the curve and rests in front of the house where the most beautiful bunch of people in the world are waiting for me, and some of them are hungry.  I must hurry.