I Still Miss Someone

This morning, I dropped The Ash off at the airport so she could catch a plane to the grand metropolis of Midland, Texas. I myself have personally never been to Midland, so it remains little more than an idea to me, the idea of Midland, the Texas that is that is the antithesis of Austin. It's as if Texas is Two-Face, with Austin on the one side and Midland on the other...and I'll leave it unspoken as to which side is which.

But she is off and away, and so she shall remain until this Friday night. It's some kind of conference thing for her job where she's supposed to get training and schmooze and hand out business cards and such. In my imagination, it involves lots of power suits and stiletto heels and big deals made over steaks and cigars and briefcases full of cash. Like, right now in my imaginary conference, Ash is buying some dude a stripper while shoving a contract in front of his face. I know it's nothing like that, but my imagination gets away from me sometimes, and who am I to argue with it? Nobody, that's who.

So yes, I'm single dad for the next couple of days...but not really. The boys still stay with their grandparents during the day while I head off to Tosche Station to peddle my power converters. Thus, this bout of single dadhood is limited to the evenings. Still, it's always remarkably rewarding to get both kids conked out in their beds all by myself, and then hear nothing but a nice quiet house. I miss my wife, and I know the boys do too, especially Henry, who made it pretty clear that he would prefer to have Mama putting him to sleep instead of me.

Ah well. We only gotta make it to Friday.

And then from the quiet

So Slapdash went pretty well:

Yep, that there's pretty much what it looks like. Speaks for itself, I'd say. And yes, that came from the scene I wrote. Ya never know what you're going to find in a theater's prop storage, eh?

So I think this is the longest I've gone without posting in quite some time. Even though it's only been a week and some change, it feels a bit odd to be back at it. After Slapdash was over, I felt sort of depleted, and not just in a creative sense, but just all around. I felt hungry for input, with no pressing desire to output. Or better yet, I felt less like giving and more like receiving. Like some kind of involuntary greed that I didn't like the feel of and couldn't manage to shake off. I wasn't the most patient person on the planet last week, but I managed to do some things for myself that seem to have helped me snap out of it. For one, Ash and I spent the week mostly avoiding the television, choosing instead to spend our free evenings with our noses stuck in books. We'd become much too comfortable plopping ourselves down in front of the TV after we got the GooGoo to sleep, and I was kind of starting to hate it. Not to mention the fact that my usual reading habit had gone totally to shit following the close of last semester. You'd think with no more assigned school reading to do, I'd have jumped back onto the pleasure-reading boat, but it just didn't happen that way. But thanks to our friends Jeff and Tara, we've now started down the Harry Potter path, which I've found is a nice place to be. I also started reading Lonesome Dove, a book that I've been meaning to get going on for some time even though I've never read a western that I can remember. See, it was apparently my father's favorite book, and I guess having a second child of my own on the way (another boy, no less), my curiosity about this person who was my father is once again rekindled, and I'm back to looking for clues about him.

I'm gonna go read now.

I got all emotional and shit today

See how I did that? See how I mixed a cuss word in there with that confession in my title? As if to let you know, "Yeah, I might be vulnerable sometimes, but I can use profanity so I'm obviously still tough." Wasn't that sneaky of me? See how now I'm pointing out what I did, as if to let you know that I'm perfectly aware of the subtle ways in which I manipulate you, and that I've got tons of these cheap little writer tricks I can just whip out at any time? See how I'm stopping now before it becomes unbearable?

Man, I am good.

See, after dragging my ass outta bed, through a shower, into some clothes, out to the car, and onto the road to work, I heard that Everclear song "Father of Mine" on the radio. I've never been a fan of these Everclear guys. Their music's just never done much for me, and plus when they came out, the riffage just wasn't enough to satisfy the guitar snob that I was back then...and I guess still sorta am today. But this song always stuck with me since I could so easily relate to it. I know this song is an honest piece of work because I am that kid, and every bit of it rings true. The only difference between me and this guy is that I don't remember the time when my dad was around because he was gone by the time I started forging what is now my conscious memory. I didn't have a kid of my own when I first heard this song, but I could always understand the part at the end where he sings about swearing that he'll never abandon his child. From as far back as I can remember, from the first time I ever considered what it would be like to have kids, I've always known that being a good dad was going to be a high priority for me.

So this song is playing on the radio, and I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've heard it since Henry was born, and I start thinking about how many guys out there have walked away from being parents, and the idea of even thinking about doing something like that, of leaving Henry and his mom, it just made me feel ill. I have my theories about why my dad left, and I've long since forgiven him, but still, I can't even imaging doing that. I can't imagine living with it, what that does to you, to your soul. I thought about how sometimes Henry cries when I walk out the door, and how he always lights up when I get home. I thought about how many kids have lost their dads in Iraq. I just thought about all this sad shit and it made me feel like goddamn bawling. Plus I was going to work, so that was sad.

I made it into work and did my time and now I'm home again and the little dude is asleep. This family thing...sometimes it makes me crazy, but I don't want to be without it.