J. and I were looking for a new place to live. A place to rent. We needed an apartment, we needed to move out of a pretty messed up apartment, and into something bigger with our growing family. We had been married four or so years, and I had just started to work for SF, and I would pass this farm house on the side of the road every day on the way into work. To the left on the way in. To the right on the way home. Day after day. And everyday I would take it in. Something about it struck me as special. Like the kind of place that I would want to live in. Old, built before I was born, with history and a life all of its own. Strange angles, and little rooms, attics that have windows and space for a bed. The kind of places wayward children in kids novels grow up in, with uncles versed in alchemy to teach them. Character.
Then one day I passed it and there was a sign in the yard. For Rent.
I wrote the number down and went home.
I told J. about the place and she seemed mostly interested, so we decided to call the number and find out more. We called found the price which was almost in our range, and then set up a time to go see it.
We drove out there with out the kids one evening, it was about 6pm and it was July or August, because it was very hot. We parked in the dirt parking lot, and walked up to the F350 with a guy in a cowboy hat in it. He got out and gave a firm farmer handshake to the two of us and led us into the house from the back. The door opened and I felt the heat coming out of the house. And I saw J.s face sour, but I ignored it and walked in.
The light in the place was amazing, just pure light coming in from the huge windows in the front of the living room. The kind that is shafting with little dust motes floating about in it. And for this moment I had a dream. Her and I were living in this house. We had our kids and she was cooking, and I was helping and the kids were playing, we all sit and eat dinner, then the kids go to bed and we are on the front porch on chairs drinking something cold in a sweating glass full of ice. And in the morning I would get up and help the kids get ready and we would all get ready, and I would leave for work. And I would kiss those kids goodbye, work a day for a day's pay and come home, to that wife and those kids, and a simple life. And then J. just looks at me and says,"It is so hot in here, we need to just move into an apartment with air conditioning."
My heart sank. She couldn't see what I saw, and from experience I knew that to tell her would be futile. I just gave up on it.
But now that time of my life is gone. And I had these moments after the divorce where I lived like that, just with out the wife. And then that fell apart too. Now instead I come home to this apartment in the city. And it is hot here, but I can see all the beauty and hope and potential for something amazing here, and there isn't anyone to just tell me, "Its to hot." I can sit and sweat and listen to the blues and feel, literally feel the music. But right now they are missing.
They aren't here for me to come home to after work. to giggle and play in the park or to watch Astro Boy, or to get silly with some cartoons, to ask about homework and school days and all of that. Some day maybe, but until then I have some weekends with them.
This Saturday I was with them, and amidst all of the fun, a. begins to have a bit of a melt down. And I have to discipline him, and it isn't something that I want to do, because he is sad and he cries, and my heart is breaking because I just want these little people to have a chance to have fun while I'm with them.
a. settles down and we all settle into bed. s. is asleep and b. wants to fall asleep, but she stays up with her brother to listen to a story in the book that V. brought with her. And V. lays with the boy, while the girl sits behind me, and I tell a story, and there is comfort and closeness, and for a moment a family. The kids sleep and V. leaves, and I don't sleep.
When I wake up in the morning I lean over each of them. 5.30a and the sun is just tugging at the edges of the curtains. Each in turn I lean over, and kiss them on the cheek.
"I love you, Daddy has to go to work I'll be home soon. I'll miss you."
Today it hit that I still haven't been home yet. I was on break and went outside to eat lunch. I opened the door and felt the heat, I remembered the farm house, and I remembered that little kiss. Right on each little cheek. Today I need big arms and little arms around me. A cloud passed over the sun for a second while I looked at the buildings across the alley, and realized that the house wouldn't have been hot all the time. That sometimes it would have been just what I needed, home. At least for a time.
I turn off the fans in my apartment, let the temperature rise, turn on John Lee Hooker, and sit at the keyboard.
There is no place like home.
There is no place like home.
File under Virtue.
2 comments:
My fiancé and I separated three months ago. We had a lot of shared dreams. Only, they weren't enough, as our reality became horribly mundane and distant.
Now, I think about my future and I still have these same dreams, and he's more often than not a part of them. The problem is, I see him as my future, but I can't always work him into the present.
Imagine no shared dreams, and distant and habit, and just giving up.
I see a future too, and there is someone in it. It isn't J. and it never will be again, because I took that path as far as I could. Did everything that I was told I should, and could do. But that was truly a dead end. If you still see him in your future (or a future) maybe you didn't go far enough down the path, or you are just way smarter than I am and got out when you could.
Only you know, but probably the latter.
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