She A Baller

Over Sunday lunch she opened the conversation with a surprising declaration.

“The German Bundesliga is my favorite league name to say.”

This was not the most likely thing one might expect to hear from the mouth of a 14-year old girl, but in her case not totally inexplicable. She likes football, what America calls soccer, and even typically calls it football in conversation. Yet, the extents to which she delved into knowledge of the game were not realized until she voiced that comment about the Bundesliga.

I raised my eyebrows. “Bundesliga? Really?”

She told me it was because she really likes the sound of it, especially as compared to the names of other major national football leagues. Spain’s “La Liga” comes in second. Premier League (England) is just meh. Major League Soccer? Fuggedaboutit. And Ligue 1 from France is a non-starter (boooring.) I didn’t get a chance to ask her about Futebol Brasileiro, so her thoughts on Brazil’s top league will have to wait.

Her take on football in general did not have to wait. She enjoys playing it and watching it. With the Women’s World Cup taking place in the coming summer, interest is particularly high. She has her favorite players. She wears the kit. What is most fascinating to me about her curiosity, interest, and delight in the beautiful game (she has heard me say “jogo bonito” more than once) is that it is almost entirely self-generated. As much as I love the game I have never felt compelled to push football on her. She started playing at an early age and has maintained connection ever since, an occurrence I find gratifying and grounding.

Case in point was our last summer vacation. We had a week down by the ocean, in the midst of the 2018 World Cup. Sun, sand, and ocean? You bet. But she made a point of wanting to watch the two-a-day matches leading up to the knockout rounds. Me, well, I couldn’t argue with that. Quality time with my daughter, cheering or groaning depending on the run of play, and pouncing on the opportunity to bellow “GOOOOOOAL!” Beautiful game? You bet. But most importantly, a beautiful slice of life.

Magpie Tales 150: Townhouse

image by Daniel Murtagh, via Magpie Tales

"Colleen, I...I...when can I...?"

Question unanswered, she shuts the door,

While he clutches his Donegal tweed

hair beaded with misty rain,

Going cold there on the doorstep

hands losing sense-memory of her,

Door latches, a metal snick

cutting the strings of his heart

Divided by Zero (Pt. 2)

A man always falls back 
on what he knows best in a crisis
What happens when the crisis is all he knows?
A fresh Hell doubled, black and molten
washed away my feeble claims to knowledge

This time there was warning of sorts
raven morning shattered by phone calls
to wake the mummies we had become
suffocating sleepwalk into our clothes
through a wormhole into actinic pain

A swallows' breath of time we believed
this golden sun might attain perfect fusion
So wrong, its core burned out, air frozen,
I awoke staggering on a trail of tears
falling back into a box containing the sun

~In memoriam of him, half of my first light
August 8, 2012

---
The line in bold is from Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It makes one wonder what do we really know best?

Divided by Zero (Pt. 1)

The world will little note, nor long remember
what we said, did and cried there
But our hearts will never forget this life,
delicate china, tiny-pink, but not a doll
to be set aside and out of mind

Even the sun seemed reticent to shine
on broken hearts and bleeding souls
Shine it did, now and then, on faltering steps,
shaking hands and the small black hole
metastasizing at the center of our universe

Gravity drew me in, shaking hands grasping
a collapsar in casket form, miniature Taj Mahal
as reluctant gift to the gaping earth
Gravity fragmenting my porcelain heart
caught ever in the orbit of her new sun

~In memoriam of her, half of my first light
July 22, 2012

---
The line in bold is from Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address.' A different memorial of course, but the sentiment struck hard on my heart.

Little Mirrors, Big Reflections

September 13, 2011, 8:20 p.m.  Home.  Drinking tea and thinking.

Living alone, as I do now, has not been easy.  It is easier than it was when I first was thrown into it, yes, but some days it grates.  No, not grates.  That isn't quite the word I sought.  Let me rephrase it:  Some days, it exhausts.  It wears down.  Today was like that.  The weariness started, as it often does, at work.  One too many repetitive questions over things I had considered settled, another iteration of not being allowed to do my job without undue interference.  Sparing the details, it is difficult to manage when the second guessing and redirection starts.

Anyway.  That is not exactly the topic at hand.

I left work feeling quite drained, a physical state that induces in me a tendency to ponder.  True to form, the wheels in my head were turning almost as fast as the wheels on the car taking me home.  I considered what I do, and my reactions to things, and how I ended up where I am in life.  And I wondered how much was fated and how much would be different had I just paid more attention and stood up for myself more often.

I thought about this, because I wondered about the incredible creature who is my daughter, and what she will be like when she gets older and has to make increasingly difficult choices in her life.  Choices that will have material effects on the person she will become and the life she will lead.  This led me to saying out loud to myself "I hope she doesn't turn out like me".

The hardness of the truth in that whopper was matched only by its utter absurdity.  I then laughed at myself, because why on earth would I say such a thing?  More importantly, why would I believe such a thing?

The truth of it is, I do hope that my daughter doesn't turn out like me.  I don't want her held in thrall to a sometimes crippling lack of self-confidence, or gripped by the sudden bouts of social awkwardness that occasionally sink their claws in to me.  I hope she doesn't fail at standing up for herself, as much as I have on some occasions in the past.

I don't want her to be steamrolled by doubt.

I know by objective measures my life and the way I live it isn't so bad.  My sense of self is in much better shape than it has been in a long time.  I hope I am being successful at showing my daughter how to be strong, how to be balanced in life.  I can't say I'm perfect, but I do hope I'm good.

That way, maybe my daughter will grow up to be better than me.  I have all confidence in her...but it's me that still has things to learn, too.

The Tearing Of The Bagels

Friday morning is bagel time with my daughter.  The ritual began soon after she was big enough to toddle.  She was once enthusiastic, even demanding, when it was still fresh and new to her.  Lately, she likes to go, but she often seems noncommittal.

Me, I don't want to give it up yet.  The capstone to my week, and my girl she is growing swiftly.

One aspect that took root early on was that the plain bagel she always requested had to be rendered into smaller bits, to fit her wee mouth.  It was done out of necessity when she was much smaller.  At first I had to cut the bagel into pieces, she insisted, and they had to be wedge shaped.  She would use them as tiny shovels to scoop cream cheese out of the container and into her mouth.  Later, I convinced her that tearing the bagel into bite-sized pieces was better (have you ever tried to saw apart a chewy bagel with a bendy plastic knife? Tedious and tiresome), and much to my delight she agreed.  So for the longest time I would tear the bagel into bites, and she would eat.

As with many of these things we do for our children because they can't do for themselves, there comes a time when we grow tired of performing these tasks.  That time usually occurs about the time the kids can manage these things for themselves.  Seat belt fastening and bagel tearing, yeah, I've hit limit.

So it was last Friday at the bagel shop.  Bagels arrived at the table and as usual before I could sink teeth into my hot, crispy, fresh bagel, Her Royal Cuteness asked me to tear up the bagel.  I was annoyed, more so than the situation warranted.  But I complied as I always do.  I did wonder when she was going to start doing this for herself.

I watched her as she ate.  She seemed content, scooping cream cheese like a boss, and pushing the fragments of the now sundered bagel around the napkin on the table.  She didn't eat that much.  I polished off my bagel and wondered at this progeny of mine, and why it has to be my hands that tear the bagel.

It became clear to me, when she looked up at me with those stained glass eyes of hers and a small grin on her face.  This thing we have, the trip we take every Friday morning for the ritual "Tearing Of The Bagel"...maybe it matters to her.  Maybe it isn't so much that she doesn't want to do it herself.  Maybe she thinks this time we share together is incomplete if Daddy doesn't make the big things small.  Because that's what daddies do.  They help make the big things small for their precious ones, and that is as it should be.  I look on that angel face and believe it to be true.

I wish I could tell her, explain so that she may understand, that I may make the big things small for her...but by her presence sharing this ritual, I am a bigger man.

Fearless Leader

Last Saturday, the Wee Lass and I were enjoying a stroll through a favorite park, down by the Patapsco River.  We had reversed course, as Her Royal Cuteness had declared, loudly, that she needed to void the royal bladder.  Well, what she said was "I gotta go potty, Daddy!", but you get the idea.

As we hoofed down the path on the way to the loo,  she announced that she was the leader, and that she should be in front.  So she increased her pace.  She looked over her shoulder to see how close I was getting.  When she saw me gaining on her, she knitted her brow, looked at me and quipped:

"I should be the leader, 'cause I'm a girl!"

She then turned her head forward and took off down the path, leaving me with jaw agape.

I had no ready reply or refutation.  Her logic was inescapable, and my only response was to grin and try to keep up with Fearless Leader.

Union

Bright flowers, white lace,
Syncopation of heart strings
while we cried and smiled

In honor of my N. and S., beginning life together.

Cherry Blossom Dream

Memory chamber
Shadows of cherry blossoms
Petals in her hair

The Ponytail Files, Volume 3: The Sap is Doomed

This will probably cement my reputation as a sap.  What happened was significant enough that, as a writerly chap, I knew I'd probably pen something about it even before it was over.

As usual, it involved a member of the fairer sex*.  It involves a question I had to ask myself:  Do women, in general, know the true power they seem to have over dopes like myself?

The afternoon was gorgeous, great weather, and I was in pursuit of sandwich at a local cafe-bakery.  Sitting down to tuck in, I was facing the door where I had a good angle for people watching.  People watching is one of my favorite things to do while noshing.

So, I was sitting at the table when she came in.  She was a blond, 'the kind of blond that would make a bishop want to kick a hole in a stained glass window'**. She was walking towards the direction of my table, so I had a great line of sight. She was quite attractive, but it wasn't that in specific that grabbed my attention.  It was The Gesture.

She reached up with a well-turned hand, and tucked her hair behind her right ear...and I almost fell out of my chair.  How did she do that?  In that moment, I felt like a goofy teenager again, thoroughly entranced by such a simple but amazingly feminine gesture, one that almost never has failed to gobsmack me.  I found it hard to take my eyes off of her for almost the entire time I was eating.

These gestures have been and continue to be an Achilles' heel of mine.  And I cannot explain it.  All I know is that women in general seem to have these somewhat unique ways of moving, of existing in space-time, that are my kryptonite.  These ways are to my mind innately feminine in the deepest, most mysterious sense.  They are motions or looks that I think of as 'sacred feminine' in some way, and in most cases they reduce me to the level of a awestruck puppy.  This has the unfortunate side effect of making me too foggy-headed to have the presence of mind to actually try talking to some of the ladies who have had that power over me.  I'm afraid I'd open my mouth and I'd sound like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons.  Or just stand there, slack-jawed and saying "You pretty."

Longtime readers know I have written of this phenomena before (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).  So you can see the history.

I think I'm doomed.

So, if you see me staring?  Please know its because I'm stunned, and at least you'll know why: it's because I'm a sap.

---

*The use of that phrase, in and of itself, is enough to brand me a sap.

**I heard that line on a radio comedy bit years ago.  Loved it ever since.

The Man

Twice this week I experienced defining moments, for what it means to be a man.  Quiet moments, but powerful.

The first moment I'll not dissect in detail, but it was related to the Me that plays the part of a career man.  In the one-act play that transpired,  I was disappointed to realize that I may not be the Man that so many others seem to want me to be.  This realization also made me sad and nervous.

The second moment was related to the Me that is blessed to be the father of his amazing Wee Lass.  The erstwhile sarariman that I am is blessed to have the honor of her company this weekend, and with just a few hours in her presence did wonders for my sagging self image.

She beat me badly at Wii bowling tonight, scoring five strikes (including three in a row), and when I expressed mock frustration at my terrible form, Her Royal Cuteness said offhandedly, "Don't worry, just go with the flow."  She was looking at me with those rose window eyes when she said it, and we both started laughing.

These words cannot adequately convey how good the sound of her laughing made me feel.  Right then, right there, I needed no more than to exist in that moment...and for the Now, I felt like I knew the Man I was supposed to be.

Call to Arms

Oy.  I came home and realize that I must write, yet again.

This blogging thing.  It has its own reality, yes?

I had an epiphany, dear readers, tonight while chatting with the ladies behind the bar.

I have written of many things here on this, my blog.  Tell me, dear readers, what have I not  written of?  What can I write about, that I have not yet addressed?

And yes, this is a request of you.  Send me a topic or idea you would like me to write about.

Talisman

Radiating power, softly, unaware,
she sat across from my eyes
at the table in the center of the universe

Her laughter stretched out a blanket
around my shoulders, indestructible, fireproof,
rendering my heart a living diamond

Living the Dino Lif

A damp, gray day and warm for the season to boot.  It put a twist in my drawers and a pall on my demeanor, which spilled into the workday.  Today was a headphones-on-more-than-off kind of day.  The only thing that could have put the cap on it would have been to walk around with a lemon wedge in my mouth.

Her Majesty's evening swim class was cut short because one of the toddlers had a "bathroom incident" in the pool, so everyone had to exit and the pool was shut down for cleaning.  Poop in pool = total buzzkill + hilarity for the Lass.  To her credit, she did acknowledge that it was "gross".

"Soulshine" by Government Mule was playing on the radio when I arrived back at the Casa del Gumbo, and it put me further into the funk than I already was.  Pensive and soul-searching wasn't what I was in the mood to hear.  I was gearing up to write it all out, get the cynical and jaded pollution from my head to clear it.  I was thinking how I fall into that trap too often, seduced by the dark side, and how I was tired of being a grown-up.

Good thing I saw the picture.  Heh.

It has been sitting on my kitchen counter for about a week or so.  Wee Lass drew it for me as a gift, of her own accord.  It is of a happy little dinosaur, cheerily munching on what looks like carrot-shaped tree with a single large leaf at the top.  Overhead, a pale yellow sun shines down as a butterfly the size of a condor flies above the dinosaur.  At the top left hand corner is a title, scrawled in that unmistakable penmanship of one who is just learning to write.  It says "The Dino lif", and Wee Lass assures me that it does mean "The Dino Life", missing 'e' notwithstanding.

It makes me smile.  I forget, even for only a little while, about the crappy day and malaise and the cynical, corrosive air we often breathe as adults.

I sat down on the couch, with a glass of tea, and resolved to more often "live the Dino lif".  And I won't even worry about that missing 'e'.

American Diwali: Requiem

Blood of our veins
was not turmeric and vermilion,
ours the waters of a different ocean
all flowing into singularity

They light the lamps
dress the courtyards
while I light candles
in the closets of my mind

Buttery glow as they chant
I whisper prayers to you
mineral tang of salt and sea
the currents that carried you away

This Festival of Lights, good over evil,
I wonder, will you return? Somewhere
along the Gulf Stream in my heart,
or melding with the Ganges of my mind?

They light their lamps
I light mine (and yours), to see
your ashes a rangoli on the current
Lit brilliant by the diya of my heart

-----

The Gulf Stream and the Ganges River are thousands of miles apart, but it pleases me to think they intersect in the form of souls.

----

In memory of Big Bro, out fishing the cosmic sea.

Aleutian Heart

Linguists argue about Inuits
and Yupiks and Aleuts,
their sophistication on snow
become legend
to non-aboriginal minds

They claim 30, 40, even 70
or more words for snow.
Scientists say they must
because knowing snow
is a survival imperative

You will die easily in the white
when eyes can't tell between
soft and deep, packed and solid,
step in and plunge to the waist
eyes rimed in frost, crystal tears

Its a wonder that arguments occur
about snow and ice, the subtle shifts
between 'aput' and 'pukak'
'mauja' and 'massak'
'mangokpok' and 'massalerauvok'

Because snow, in short, is snow
Like grief, in short, is grief.
Minds see the trees
while hearts see the forest
Truths obscured by language


Numbers of words only matter
to connoisseurs, and professionals;
the broken heart will ever understand
thirty words or none: in the end,
cold pain melts in the heat of love

My Daddy, My Template

Let me state up front that never in my life have I wanted to be a template,  nor did I realize that I could be a template.  That is, until now.

I have read in more than one place, and have heard from more than one source, that I as the father will be the template by which my darling Wee Lass will form her opinions thereby and make judgments thereupon, on the all the male figures in her life that are destined to come after me.

Whee.  Lucky me.

I don't say that because I wish to shirk my duties or responsibilities as a father who loves his daughter more than can be described in words. Far from it.  What it does do is make me very nervous.  I flashed on it tonight, after an episode of whining from Her Majesty that left me gritting my teeth and in less than good temper.  It left me feeling bad, too.

My time with her is precious, because, well, life is precious and when it is constrained by arbitrary boundaries such as the ones that leave us at seeing each other far less rather than  far more, it becomes all the more crucial to enjoy every minute.  It is imperative to not waste the resource.

So that is where I found myself, irritated and impatient at running smack dab into the semi-structured illogical, non-cause and effect universe of the six-year old girl-child mind.  Kids know how to push buttons, and mine were being hammered.  For every decibel my voice began to creep up, I felt my self-respect starting to go down.  I'm an adult, I should be able to handle this with no problem.

I can only hope that Wee Lass does know I love her, even when I'm being a cantankerous ijit.  I hope I can set a high and good bar, so that she knows enough in the future to only give her heart to a man who knows just how lucky he is to receive it.  A man who will treat her with respect and with love to the ends of the earth.

A man that knows, no matter how she can wind him up...he is fortunate that it is he whom she is winding up.

Broken String

Clash played on the stereo,
teenage wreck party long ago.
He sat, girl in lap, laughing
as I mouthed the words.

Coolness was his light,
Basking in it, my lot.
Heard him saying
"That's my brother"

Affection just made it
through the buzz blanket
wrapped around my head:
In that moment, I belonged.

Clash on the stereo tonight
all guitars and sneers
and me mouthing the words
to his picture in my head

No beer tonight, too pathetic,
Besides I want the clear memory
of him unvarnished, unaltered,
of that guitar in his hands

Mouthing the words again,
theater of the mind lit
by his crooked grin and
woodpecker laugh.

I know the songs,
"Know Your Rights" with guitar!
and by all rights, my brother,
you should be here

Touched by madness,
Loved by gods and mortals,
a vibrant broken string
uncoils in my heart.

In memory of my Big Bro.

(She is my) Firefly

Evening light falls through the windows in gauzy shades of salmon and peach. It shines infrequently and never fails to get my attention.  My imagination fancies it to be the color of her mind and heart, when she thinks of me.

I stood transfixed before the accidental rose windows of my dining room.  It was a soft mackerel sky so beautiful I wished it would last forever.  I do not recall how long I stood there.  Eventually the crick in my neck persuaded me to move.  I walked into the kitchen.

The kitchen, like the dining room, is on the northerly side of the house.  The quality of light is almost always good.  Perfect light for an artist,  or a chef,  or maybe even a photographer.  This is what I tell myself when I cook and eat and read,  standing at the stove or hunched over my laptop keyboard while sitting at the dining table.  Tonight, my humble kitchen finally looked like it really belonged to me.  Just a feeling I had basking there in the light.

I digress.  This wasn't to be about my navel-gazing ways.  It was to be about my daughter,  and something she said earlier in the day.  My reminder was a jar I had resting on the windowsill.  The jar is about quart-sized.  It once was packed full of banana pepper rings soaking in vinegar brine.  I have a weakness for peppers matured in a liquid acetylhalide* matrix, so the jars are no stranger to my household.  I had kept this one thinking I could do something else with it.  Turns out I was right.

My daughter and I had spent a fine day together.  We visited a nature center, watched some television and played card games.  Before I took her back home,  we were discussing what we had seen: geese, ducks, a fine display on wolves.  She was sitting on the couch awash in the north light.  Suddenly she looks at me and says:

"Daddy, this weekend night can we catch some fireflies?"
"Of course we can, sweetie, I already have a jar" I replied.
"Yay! I want to see the glow!"  She seemed quite pleased.

So I am standing in the kitchen, running my hands over the cool glass.  Visions of me and her running around in the backyard, giggles and delight unbound.  I was daydreaming about love and fireflies, and the fragile vessels in which we contain them.  The fireflies were swirling languidly about in the jar.  Their warm glow suffused the room with golden radiance.  

My heart was in my hands, filling up with love spilling over from her.  In that moment of grace was everything I had been chasing for months.  I smiled.  I set the jar down carefully on the sill, reminding myself to do the same with my heart.  The holes it carries, like those in the lid on the jar, will let love breathe along with the fireflies.

We will catch them, and know love. 

*I totally made up the word "acetylhalide".  I'm such a dork.

Kudzu

No matter all the effort

They regrow, sometimes overnight

After all the chopping and swearing

Bastard green leaves, thick ropes

Exhausted, too exhausted to think

Figure it out, find the center

Eternal vigilance: a necessity

and a curse, and a vampire

It's learning when to cut

When to let them go

Having the strength to prevent

succumbing to the vines

In the sunlight gleams my machete:

Her eyes, her heart, her love.