Frogs Don't Wear Tights

Swish...

2019-09-09T16:30:00.000-04:00

Swish…

I pass through the double doors and enter the lobby. The rec center and café portions of the building are open for business, but a sign to my right informs me that the library doesn’t open until 10:00. I sit down on a nearby bench and settle in to spend the next twenty minutes people watching.

A rec center Zumba class for the aging lets out, and this provides me with more than enough to smile about. Gray hair, bright spandex, and breathless chatter fill the space around me.

“I found this class to be a very challenging experience,” one woman comments to her three friends.

“Oh, you poor dear! I loved it; I thought the instructor added an element of fun!” a younger looking friend replies, a hint of playful condescension in her tone. In my entire life, I have only seen a few minutes of The Golden Girls, but that’s enough for me to imagine her as the Blanche of the squad.

Swish…

“Have you seen that John Wick movie yet?” an older man asks his buddy as they follow the ladies out of the building, fresh cups of coffee in their hands and bright white sneakers on their feet.

Swish…

A pack of wild little children enters the lobby followed by their guardian, a woman that looks far too tired for the hour. She frowns at the posted library hours.

“Okay guys, it looks like we have a few minutes before the library opens. Can we try and stand and wait quietly?

They can’t, and I look forward to observing every moment of their laughing, teasing, pushing, and nose picking.

Swish…

Another frown, this one on the face of a woman holding a plastic shopping bag filled with what appears to be library books.

“Do you know where I can return these?” she asks me.

“Isn’t there a bin outside?” I suggest in reply.

“Yes, but it wouldn’t let me…” her voice trails off.

Swish…

“I can return them for you, if you don’t think that’s weird,” I offer.

“Oh, would you? I would be so grateful…” she is almost crying.

She holds up the bag with both hands. I take hold of it, but she doesn’t let go. I look up and smile kindly as our eyes meet.

“I’m happy to help,” I assure her.

“We checked these out for our trip to Vegas, but we didn’t even have time…” her voice trails off again.

I am oddly comfortable holding onto a bag of books with this stranger as I wait for her to continue her explanation.

“I mean, when we got down there, we got a call…” she lets go of the bag, her arms dropping to her sides as if in defeat.

Swish…

“My brother…” she says.

I sense a familiar, desperate distraction in her voice.

“My brother died,” she finally manages to say.

The words don’t make sense to her, and my heart breaks to know that they never will.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry, it’s a hard thing, losing someone.”

“Thank you for this,” she says.

“It’s the smallest thing I can do,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says once more before turning to leave.

Swish...

Tethered

2019-06-03T22:01:00.000-04:00

“I feel guilty for having called you,” I confess to the stranger at the other end of the line.

“Why is that?” Hotline asks in reply.

“We both know at this point, an hour into this call, that I was never going to kill myself.”

“And that makes you feel guilty?”

“I’ve wasted your time and stolen it from someone who probably needed it much more than I did.”

“You called, so you must have been feeling something fairly strong that made you think you were going to harm yourself.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t like I was actually going to do it.”

“You don’t know how far those feelings may have pushed you; you did the right thing by calling.”

“You say that, but I’m sure you talk every day to people far more desperate than I am to leave this world. I feel like I’m taking up time you could better spend by helping someone that really needs it.”

“I don’t think desperation works that way; you can’t pull out a measuring tape and compare one person’s desperation to another’s.”

“Maybe so, but I still feel selfish.”

“Feel selfish if you need to, but you’re alive, and you seem to want to stay that way. I’ll call that a win.”

“Tonight was the closest I have ever come to ending who I am, but as bad as it was, as desperate and lonely and terrible as I felt, it was nothing compared to what my brother went through, or how hopeless he must have felt at the end.”

“Is that what you want? To know what he went through? To feel how he felt?”

A heavy silence fills my ends of the line.

“To what end? I never knew your brother, but I can’t believe he would want you to go through everything he did.”

“No, he wouldn’t, in spite of the fact that I treated him like shit for years.” My voice is wet with tears, and I hate the sound of it.

“Sounds like he was a pretty loving guy, your brother.”

“He was.”

“Sounds like he’d forgive you if he were here.”

“Oh, he already has, I know he has.”

“Sounds like he isn’t the one who needs to forgive you.”

I stand in the empty high school parking lot, watching my breath appear and fade into the cold dark night. I have heard Hotline’s heavy implication many times before, from people that love me, in language much less subtle.

“This goes against protocol, but what’s your brother’s name?” Hotline asks.

I close my eyes and remember my brother’s face, bright and smiling while my kids jump and bounce around him, wild-eyed, happy, and vying for their precious uncle’s attention as they gleefully shout his name.

“Jared.”

It has been almost ten years since Jared died. I’ve tried to move forward with my life, blessed with a wife and kids and friends that love and support me, and I have experienced moments of great change, joy, and success. But the harsh memories of how I mis-treated my brother have remained tethered to me like a black balloon, watching over my happiest moments with sadness, guilt, and regret.

It is a hard thing, to forgive yourself.

I have sometimes jerked down on the black balloon’s tether, inviting its shadow to descend just a bit, for just a while, so that it may more fully cover me in darkness. It is inside the resulting shadow of these descensions that I have found myself in our bedroom closet biting the back of my wrist until it bruises, out walking the streets of the city in the dark of night, or numbing away the hours in the scalding waters of a tub, accompanied by long poured glasses of rum and dark, murderous, subtitled television.

It is a hard thing, to live your life as a cliché.

There have also been times that I have pulled the black balloon much too close. Pressing it against my chest, I can feel the static crackle of its dark energy, and I welcome the emotional rush as the warm, familiar companionship of Grief embraces me. In moments when no one else can or will, Grief dotes on me, holding my hand and keeping me company as I tremble and cry and wish for the impossible. But eventually Grief tires of my company. It is then that she turns on me, reminding me again and again of the terrible things I said, the terrible things I did, the terrible person I was. Satisfied that I am at my lowest, Grief quietly slips away, leaving me in the capable hands of Guilt, her formidable protege. Guilt is a real sonofabitch; he pours it on thick, coating me in a dark, viscous shell of self-loathing until I am unable to stomach my own existence as a selfish, unlovable, unforgiveable wretch. It is within the constricting cocoon of Guilt’s fellowship that I begin to believe that my life would be better without me in it.

It is a hard thing, to go on living in spite of hating yourself.

“How would you feel about being loving like Jared, and forgiving yourself?” Hotline suggests, his gentle tone interrupting my harmful reverie.

“It’s definitely what he would want,” I admit.

“Of course it is, but is it what you want?”

My mind trods back through all the time I’ve lost in the company of Guilt.

“Yes, I want to forgive myself,” I finally declare, after a long and thoughtful come-to-Jesus silence.

“Okay, good. Now do it.”

“What, like, right now?”

“No time like the present!”

“I’ve spent years building this guilt, I can’t just forgive myself in an instant and be happy to go on living!”

“It’s true that most people can’t.”

“Well then what the hell am I going to do, call you every night?”

“No, you’re going to wake up and actively forgive yourself every day,” Hotline answers, a gentle “duh” in his tone.

“Every day for the rest of my life?”

“Every day for weeks, months, years, for however long it takes it to stick…“

“It took a while to build it, it’s going to take a while to tear it down.”

“Oh, that’s good, do yourself a favor and remember that whenever you don’t feel like forgiving yourself.”

“I should probably write it on my bathroom mirror.”

“Whatever it takes,” Hotline says.

“Paint it on the ceiling above my bed…”

“You could set it as the wallpaper on your phone…” Hotline suggests.

“On every wall in my house…”

“Don’t forget the front of the fridge…” Hotline adds.

“And every other surface that I look at several times a day,” I conclude.

“Whatever it takes,” Hotline says.

A few moments later, after expressing my sincere gratitude to a total stranger whose name I will never know but whose words I will never forget, I end the call. As I walk across the empty parking lot, back to my home and my family sleeping within its walls, I imagine Guilt, alone and defeated, sulking off into the night.

The black balloon’s tether slips just a bit.

For anyone reading this that may now or ever find themselves feeling things that leave them doubting their worth in the slightest, Hotline’s direct number is free to anyone who needs it, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year: 1-800-273-8255

Deservedly So

2018-08-28T20:38:00.000-04:00

"A nine-year-old boy has killed himself after enduring four days of homphobic bullying at a school in Denver, Colorado."

This headline broke me in two this afternoon, and I cried like I haven't in a long while.

Look at the light in that little boy’s eyes; the world will be a darker place without Jamel living in it.

My greatest regret is the way I treated both of my brothers when they came out. Since Jared’s suicide I have been doing my best to move forward by living, loving, and laughing, but I cannot escape the guilt, shame, pain, and regret that rests so heavily on my shoulders.

Deservedly so.

I’ve spent countless moments staring into the hazy distance, wishing I could re-live, and subsequently rewrite “West of Independence.”

Were I able to do just that, I would ensure that it went something like this:

“Matthew, I’m gay,” Jared said, the heavy weight of worry in his tone.

“I’m cool with that,” I replied.

“Really?” Jared asked, his eyes wide with wonderment.

“Sure, what does it matter? It doesn’t change who you’ve been to me in the past, doesn’t change who you are to me now, and won’t change who you will be to me in the future," I said, meaning every word.

The brothers hugged, then jumped in the car and drove to the Grand Canyon. Along the way they had a thousand adventures, each one of them impossible to forget.

The End

But I can’t re-live and rewrite WOI, just like the bullies at Jamel's school can't rewrite those four days. That fact bows my back more than anyone who doesn’t carry the same weight of regretfully wishing for something so out of reach can understand.

I’ve heard it expressed many times that the loudest opponents to a specific behavior or lifestyle are often guilty of the very thing they claim to passionately loathe and vehemently oppose.

There's nothing I hate more than a bully.

Deservedly so.

Cautionary Tale

2018-06-01T18:47:00.001-04:00

My long overdue apology to family, friends, and others that left the LDS (Mormon) Church before I did.

I am sorry:

That I never once asked you why you left.

That I assumed you left because you had been offended by someone.

That I judged you as weak, void of The Spirit, turned by temptation, and incapable of enduring to the end.

That I managed to make your leaving all about me.

That I chose to believe the judgmental, condescending, ignorant, and sometimes mocking stories and explanations about you and why you left, told by other church members and leaders.

That I invented, shared, and even reveled in the telling of the judgmental, condescending, ignorant, and sometimes mocking stories and explanations about you and why you left.

That I cleared my conscience by promising myself that after we died, I would descend from my highest-level-of-glory mansion to visit you in the lesser-glory studio apartment you chose when you left.

That I believed you had ruined our (or your) family’s hopes for becoming an eternal family.

That I was grateful I wasn’t you.

That I watched the door hit your ass on the way out and sighed in relieved good riddance, never once considering that you might have been floundering in confusion, wrestling with grief, suffering in silence, and hating yourself (just like I was).

That I (ab)used you in talks and lessons and testimonies by using your story of apostasy as a cautionary tale.

That I assumed a lot about you, imagining that your life after leaving was nothing more than a crackling husk filled with sin, regret, suffering, and spiritual rot.

That I hid from you in grocery stores, in shopping malls, and in line at the bank, because if you’d seen me, you might have tried to convince me to leave too.

That I abandoned you, went on with my life, and forgot about you.

That I hated you for escaping what I could not.

That I believed your apostasy was a decision you made easily, without a fight, and for the sole purpose of living a sinful life.

That I had anything, no matter how small, to do with your leaving.

That I chose to listen to, sustain, and obey every word, command, and opinion said about you by a small gathering of old white men dressed in dark suits, complete strangers that had never met you, rather than listen to my own heart.

That in the end, you left rather than live another day drowning in conditional love.

That I didn’t leave with you.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

2017-11-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

“What’s up with all the sirens?”

Hannah sits up and looks out the open door of our motel room in Barstow, California.

We’ve heard sirens every few minutes since we checked into the neon-signed, park-right-outside-your-room, the-key-is-an-actual-key motel on old Route 66. The door is open because the air conditioner blew a cloud that smelled like parmesan cheese up my daughter’s nose. She made me turn it off and open the door to get some air flowing through the stuffy, simple room.

We are on Hannah’s Big Adventure. A long time ago, I promised my kids that when they each turned sixteen I would take them on the road trip of their choice, just the two of us. Hannah is eighteen and a little overdue, but I eventually make good on most of my promises, and making good on this one has been well worth the wait.

In the past few days, Hannah and I have made our way through the Mojave Desert, down into Joshua Tree, out to the Salton Sea, and over the Rim of the World Byway in San Bernardino Forest. We’ve waved at train engineers, browsed outdoor desert art galleries, hiked over rocks and trails, and held our breath as the sun set the ground on fire every evening. We’ve played bongos under a Joshua tree (okay, that was just me), communed with Chinese lions in the desert, and wondered who might have lived and died in the abandoned places we’ve explored. We've braved high winds dusted with egg farts to climb a painted mountain, driven slowly through a dead, drugged out, and desolate seaside town, slept in sketchy motels, and sung along to a road trip medley worthy of movie montage magic.

For me, the highlight of our adventure thus far has been visiting the dinosaurs at Cabazon. Hannah and I share a love for PeeWee Herman, and the dinos were featured in his own Big Adventure back when I was a teenager. I have wanted to see them ever since, and could not have wished for a better companion when I finally did. As we approached the massive T-Rex, my heart skipped rope inside my chest. A few moments later, I felt the onset of warm tears clearing the desert sand from my eyes when Hannah asked me to take a photo of her hugging its leg.

Hannah isn’t often willing to stand on that side of the lens, which is ironic because she carries with her more cameras than a Japanese tour bus. Most of them are film cameras she has acquired from flea markets, garage sales, and online classifieds. And then there’s the Polaroid. It weighs more than a newborn wrapped in a wet towel and it looks like a Soviet satellite that fell to Earth, but Hannah loves it. She only pulls it out to capture the most breathtaking vistas, the oddest of places, and people whose memory will matter to her. It means a lot to be framed within the thin white border of a Hannah Polaroid. This trip has boasted quite a few of those framings, and that brings more than a small amount of happiness to my heart.

More sirens sound out in Barstow. Hannah begins to Google.

“Dad, where the hell have you brought us? Do you know how high the murder rate is in this town?” She asks, knowing full well that I don’t.

“Is it high?” I ask, distracted by road trip television.

“Only four percent of American cities are more dangerous than Barstow, California!” Hannah reads aloud.

More sirens outside.

“We are going to die.” Hannah declares.

I chuckle in reply.

“Shut and lock the damn door, now!” My daughter orders.

I climb off my bed and walk over to the door, and then watch as a late model Audi pulls up to the room next to ours. Four of the whitest people I have ever seen (and I live in Utah) clamber out, laughing and chatting away, unaware that they will all surely be dead by morning.

I close the door and turn back to find Hannah pointing at the bathroom door.

“Did you lock the bathroom window?”

I cross to the bathroom and slide the tiny window shut. The “lock” is a piece of pvc pipe cut to fit the window trough and keep the window from sliding open. I show it to Hannah, who is not amused.

“Why are we even in this dump of a motel in downtown Murder City, California?” she wonders aloud.

“Relax, this is all part of the road trip experience. Caleb and I stayed in some pretty sketchy places on his trip. It’s part of the thrill, part of the adventure. You’ll have something to tell people,” I assure her.

“How can I tell anyone when I’m dead?” she counters, but there is the hint of a smile in her voice.

“Just go to sleep, then you won’t see it coming,” I joke.

We sit in bed eating snacks and watching terrible television. Hannah drifts off to sleep some time later, and only then do I settle into my pillow to follow suit. I leave the TV on; it fills the room with dancing blues and whites, and provides background noise to mask the occasional siren.

A tiny meowing wakes me the next morning. I lay in bed for a while, wondering if I imagined the sound. Soon I am checking email and thinking about the adventures in Vegas we have planned for the day.

Hannah stirs.

“You’re alive!” I exclaim with glee.

Another tiny meow sounds outside our door. Hannah bolts from her bed. The murderous dangers of Barstow are forgotten as she rips the door open and blinks in the bright morning light.

Three hours, a little milk, and a can of cat food purchased at the local grocery store later, and we still haven’t managed to catch the scrawny little source of the meowing. Not for lack of trying, of course; Hannah has managed to coax it out from under car after car, and we’ve chased it through the rusting tools and car parts scattered about the motel property, almost getting a caring hand on the kitten more than once. She’s a slippery little baby and very shy, however, and she escapes us with a taunting meow every time. We are dirty, sweaty, and late, but we are determined.

Hannah’s love for the poor creature is infectious, and I am unwilling to admit defeat and demand that we get on our way and leave the kitten to work out its own survival. My daughter, a feisty little girl with an iron will and deep dimples, has grown up into a feisty woman with an iron will and a deep love for anything with life pulsing through its frame, no matter how small. Just a couple of days ago, as we drove through the Mojave Desert, she noticed a fly buzzing around inside the car. Rather than let me shoo it away through an open window, Hannah placed a tiny piece of mango on the keyboard of her Macbook and watched over that little fly like a proud mother as it fed for over an hour.

Loving animals isn’t just the flavor of the month for this girl.

When I was a teenager, I fell in love with wolves, and decided that I would save them. I bought a “Save the Wolf” tee shirt from the Sierra Club, and wore it more often than anyone should wear anything other than their own skin. I read everything written on the beautiful, mysterious, and misunderstood animals that were threatened with extinction, and wondered what I could do to help. I meant well, but I was a useless ally; all I managed to accomplish was to paste their images across my bedroom walls and buy a James Taylor album with a picture of a howling wolf on the cover. I did, however, consider the movie “Never Cry Wolf” to be a training video for my life as a northern explorer and wolf advocate, and I hoped that one day I too would run naked through the wilderness with a wolf pack of my own.

When the Exxon Valdez ran aground and dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the ocean off the coast of Prince William Sound, Alaska, I declared with righteous indignation that Exxon would never again get their hands on one red cent of my hard-earned money. (Not that I had ever spent a red cent on their gas anyway, because Exxon was always the most expensive gas around and I didn’t have that much hard-earned money.) Notwithstanding my financial situation, I took to waving a middle finger out the window of my ’72 Chevy Nova whenever I drove past an Exxon station, a very rebellious act for a dorky teenager that never swore.

One day I happened to be riding with my girlfriend’s family on our way to the beach. As her father pulled the van into the local Exxon to gas up, I threw the side door open and leaped from the moving van, desperate to demonstrate my burning white hatred for wolf-killing corporate greed. I stood on the curb, watching from afar with great gobs of disgust as my girlfriend’s father pumped profits into the coffers of my nemesis.

That was as far as I ever took my love for the wolves; “reason” eventually outpaced my desire to live up north and run naked with my beloved wolves. Someone else managed to save them, however, for which I am grateful.

Hannah has already proven herself faster than me when it comes to racing against reason.

Back in Murder City, USA, while Hannah devises another strategy to catch the kitten, I make my way to the motel office to turn in our room key.

“Allan is very upset with you and your daughter,” the tiny woman at the front desk tells me.

“Allan?”

“Our handyman,” she says, turning and pointing out the window at an old man leaning against an old Ford.

Allan’s arms are folded across his chest, and a frown masks his face.

“Why is he upset?” I ask the woman.

“He has been leaving food out for that little kitten. He wants her to be his cat,” she explains.

I thank her, leave the office, and approach Allan.

“I hear you’ve been feeding that kitten,” I say without introduction.

Allan shrugs his reply.

“My daughter Hannah loves animals, and she can’t bear the thought of that poor thing being left to fend for itself. We can't leave this town until she know it will be loved and cared for. If we buy some food and leave it with you, will you see that the kitten is cared for?” I ask, a heavy dose of friendly in my tone.

Allan looks up at me and shrugs again. “Sure, I guess,” he says, perking up a bit.

Thirty minutes later, after an impromptu shopping spree, we return to hand Allan a month’s supply of food, two silver feeding bowls, a box of fish flavored treats, and a soft little cat bed. Allan beams as much as I imagine he probably ever has.

“I’ve got some worming medicine in my room that I bought at the pet store. I want to give it to her as soon as she is big enough and I can get her to trust me enough to hold her,” he offers, a mix of pride and concern in his voice.

“That’s nice, I’m glad she has someone to love her,” I say, meaning it.

Hannah and I are all smiles as we watch Allan place the bed outside the door of his room. He fills one of the bowls with fresh water and the other with a hefty portion of cat treats.

“Did you manage to get close enough to see if she was a girl?” Allan turns and asks Hannah.

“I got close, but I couldn’t tell,” Hannah answers.

“I’ll have to get her spayed if she is,” he replies.

I shake Allan’s hand and thank him for his kindness. He nods and turns away, bashful and embarrassed. I get the feeling that Allan is unaccustomed to praise and attention, and maybe even love. I watch as he turns and picks up a rake. He disappears behind a fence, and a moment later I can hear the rake scratching at the dirt.

Hannah and I climb into the car and pull away from the little motel. My road trip plans for the day are a wash, and I haven't eaten a thing all day, but I don’t care. As we leave Murder City and head north into the desert, my stomach rumbles and my heart skips rope.

Run Hannah, run.

Scout's Honor

2017-07-25T20:11:00.001-04:00

“I just need to see one of you get a boner, and I’ll buy you a Playboy.”

Frank leaned over and dropped a piece of kindling on the growing fire, as if his proposition had been expected, like a casual request for a sip of someone’s soda or a bite from their candy bar.

The awkward silence that followed seemed to cling to the campfire’s wafting smoke, weighing it down so it billowed around our little band of brothers like a thick and tangible fog.

At fifteen, I wasn’t quite the oldest, but neither was I the youngest of Frank’s junior assistant scoutmasters. Not that age or rank mattered; a furtive glance around the fire told me that our Scoutmaster’s request had had an immediate effect on all of us.

“Unless none of you is man enough,” Frank sneered.

Showing my boner to another guy doesn’t sound like a very manly thing to do…

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch anyone’s prick, I’m not a faggot,” Frank chuckled.

Frank wasn’t my Scoutmaster year-round, so I didn’t know him well enough to read his true intentions. We attended different Mormon congregations, which meant that I only saw him every few months or so, whenever he chaperoned youth dances or served as Scoutmaster for church-wide scouting activities such as the week-long summer encampment we were on at that very uneasy moment. Despite my limited acquaintance with him, I didn’t think Frank wasn’t gay, because every time I saw him, he’d tell me how much he hated queers.

But if he’s not gay, why does he want to see one of us get a boner? Is this a trick? Is he testing us?

“I just need to make sure I don’t have any sissies that can’t get it up serving in my ranks,” Frank explained.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to give us a Playboy and then see who can’t get it up?

A tough guy with a military background that included service in Vietnam, Frank was all about being a badass. He loved the flag, and every morning of camp he’d lead us in a military style flag raising. Under his direction we’d march everywhere we went, his barked orders echoing through the woods for other scout troops to hear and fear. He encouraged the hazing of younger scouts that didn’t fit in, sparked rivalries with other scout troops, and made fun of Scoutmasters that were too soft on their boys. At night around the fire, he’d tell us stories about killing gooks and shooting spooks, and how life in the trenches was only for the toughest of men. The Armed Forces didn’t allow homos within its ranks, so why should the Boy Scouts?

He’s just trying to weed out the weak, to make us stronger...

“You guys are all planning on serving missions, right?” Frank’s words were more of a command than they were a question.

Emphatic nods and grunts of acknowledgment made their way around the fire.

“Tell me, what are you going to do if one of your missionary companions tries to kiss you, peeks at you in the shower, or climbs into bed with you?”

“Has that ever happened?” someone managed to ask, the shock we all felt conveyed in his tone.

“You bet your ass it has! When I was a ward mission leader, I caught two faggot missionaries in bed together.”

“No way!” came the immediate reaction from more than one of us.

“Way,” Frank confirmed.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

“What do you think I did? I beat the shit out of them both!” Frank barked.

His eyes gleamed in the firelight as he told the story.

“They were crying and begging and cowering like pussies, but I kicked their asses anyway. Trashed their apartment and broke some furniture while doing it. I made them pack their bags, then shoved them into my car and drove them to the airport.” Frank said.

“You sent them home?” My question was almost a whisper, as if I didn’t dare speak the shameful words aloud. To be sent home early (and therefore dishonorably) was without question the worst thing that could happen to a missionary. It was far worse than dying; if you died during your mission you were remembered as a valiant servant who gave all he had to the Lord, but if you were sent home early you were forever labeled by gossip and rumors.

“You’re damn right I sent them home! I sent them home to their mommies, who were probably the ones that turned them into faggots to begin with by dressing them up in pink panties and giving them dollies to play with. Their queer little mouths were bleeding and their eyes wet with big sissy tears when they boarded the plane.” Frank said, the audible spittle of disgust in his voice.

An awed silence followed Frank’s graphic depiction of the moral justice he’d so rightly dispensed to deviants who hadn’t deserved to be missionaries in the first place. I muttered a silent prayer, asking God that my eventual mission be void of such loathsome creatures.

Frank tossed another log onto the fire and looked around with a grin. “So, what’s it gonna be? You guys want that Playboy or not?”

A few minutes later we sat inside our large platform tent, trying to work out which one of us would take on Frank’s challenge for the good of the team. Despite wanting that Playboy, none of us seemed willing to get a hard on for Frank, so we took to goading each other into it using insults that we normally threw at each other in jest on any other given day.

“Weren’t you going to get a boner tonight anyway?”

“He’s not going to touch it, and besides, he couldn’t touch it even if he wanted to; yours is too small…”

“You can do it, you’re always hard; you get a boner when the wind blows…”

(We’ll call him) Mark sat beside me on my canvas cot, an uneasy silence filling the space between us. Mark and I had been best friends for a few years, since the day he’d invited me over to his house after a troop meeting. During the summer, I often spent more time in Mark’s home than I did in my own. We spent our days riding three-wheelers, watching ninja movies, reenacting ninja movies, and swimming in his pool. We went camping as often as we could, and out in the woods we’d shoot our guns, throw our tomahawks, and blow stuff up with pipe bombs made from toilet-paper tubes and black powder. At night, we’d talk about girls we liked, dreams we had, and the secrets we kept from everyone else. Mark was everything anyone could ever wish for in a best friend, and despite my belief that I had little or nothing to give him in return, he remained my loyal and trusting companion.

“This is weird,” Mark said, breaking his silence.

“It is,” I nodded, not knowing what else to say.

The subject of sex was not open for discussion in our home, and so everything I knew about it I’d learned from church, friends, or my own fantasies and imagination. My Sunday School teachers had set my curiosity alight by teaching that sex was special and sacred, something to be shared at the right moment with a loving wife. If I weren’t careful to avoid it in any other form, I would earn myself a one-way ticket to eternal suffering. My friends fanned the flames by talking a good game, but they knew as little about sex as I did. All the while, my unfettered fantasies and deep-watered imagination were dumping copious amounts of hormones and gasoline on the fire, and it had long been burning out of control. I was eternally doomed and I knew it; the few minutes of each day that I wasn’t focused on sex were filled with the knowledge that God would one day turn me into a pile of ash for having such a perverted mind.

Still, I wanted that Playboy. I was a scrawny, ugly, and unpopular fifteen-year-old Mormon Eagle Scout, so the chances of an actual girl taking off her clothes and showing me her birds and bees in person were about the same as me being voted Prom King.

My head spinning with confusion, guilt, and desire, I asked aloud, in a voice just shy of shouting, “Is anyone willing to do this?”

After a long silence, (we’ll call him) Jonas spoke.

“I’ll do it,” he said with a sigh.

As if on cue, Frank poked his head between the canvas flaps of our tent.

“You guys ready?” he grinned.

In the thirty years since living through them, I haven’t been able to forget the several uncomfortable minutes that followed.

Jonas laid back on the cot, pulled down his shorts and boxers, and covered himself with a thin white sheet. Frank sat beside him, so close that their legs were almost touching.

“That’s right, lay back and get comfortable. Close your eyes, and imagine I’m a hot young teenage girl with nice perky tits.” Frank’s voice was soft and low, almost a whisper.

With that, every flashlight but Frank’s went dark. Mark stood and walked further back into the tent without saying a word. I turned and stared into the shadows lurking at the back of the tent, listening as Mark’s weight settled into another cot.

“I’m taking off my top…” Frank said, coaching Jonas further into the fantasy.

I looked back at Jonas, and was surprised to see him smiling, as if the fantasy had already pushed away the reality of what was taking place.

“I want you to touch them,” Frank teased, his tone now a high-pitched, poor imitation of a girl’s soft and tender voice.

Jonas nodded and his hands twitched. “I am, they’re so soft…” he whispered.

“I want you to suck on them…” Frank encouraged, licking his lips.

Jonas squirmed and grimaced away his smile, the fantasy retreating at the sound of Frank’s lip-smacking.

Frank sat back for a moment, as if to give Jonas the chance to reclaim the fantasy for himself. I glanced around the dimly-lit tent at my friends. They sat staring at their feet, up at the canvas ceiling, or at the darkness at the back of the tent into which Mark had retreated. I found a measure of guilt-ridden comfort in the fact that they looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

“I’m rubbing my hands on your thighs now, moving closer and closer to your cock,” Frank continued.

Jonas smiled again and moved his hands down to his thighs, mimicking the motions that Frank fed to him. I stood and walked to the back of the tent when Jonas slipped his hands beneath the sheet and touched himself.

“There it is! I knew you could do it!” Frank exclaimed a few minutes later, a marked measure of pride and joy in his voice.

A wave of relief and shame rolled over me as Jonas sat up and pulled on his shorts.

An hour later, after a quiet drive through the woods, we sat at inside a strip-mall pizza parlor, staring at half-eaten slices of pizza, watching cheese congeal and grease soak into paper plates. A fluorescent bulb flickered and popped overhead as we waited for Frank to return from the convenience store next door with our reward.

The Playboy was passed around the tent that night, but no one seemed all that interested in looking at it for very long. Unsure what to do with it, and not wanting any of the other adult leaders or the younger scouts to find it, I stuffed it into my backpack, hiding it down at the bottom, beneath my dirty jeans. At the end of the week the magazine made its way home with me, where I buried it under a rock in the woods behind our house. I promised myself that I would never return to look at Miss September 1986.

A few days later I broke that promise and returned to look at her. I did so several times over the course of the next few weeks, until a night of heavy rain made peeling the pages apart all but impossible. Miss September had disintegrated into indiscernible mush, leaving me with nothing more than my memories of her naked body, which were admittedly quite detailed. To this day I can still recall more than I should about her form.

I never spoke to Frank again. Guilt, embarrassment, and fear of punishment kept me from telling anyone about what had happened that night. I told myself that it was just a random event, that Frank wasn’t dangerous because he hadn’t even touched Jonas. I decided that I was to blame for it all, because I hadn’t stood up to Frank in the moment he made his proposition. I couldn’t bear the thought of my parents knowing that I had not only allowed that to happen to Jonas, but that I had watched it happen to him. How could they ever love me again, especially once they learned the reason why? And what about Pete, who served as my Scoutmaster year-round? He was my hero; the thought of losing his love and mentorship frightened me to tears. As guilty and sick and ashamed as I felt, it was better to keep quiet, move on, and try to forget about it.

But I didn’t forget about. Consequences and self-loathing wouldn’t let me.

My relationship with Mark was never the same again, and before long we stopped hanging out altogether. This came as a painful relief for me, because the time we’d spent together since the night in that tent had been strained by guilt and embarrassment. I could barely muster the strength to look Mark in the eyes anymore, let alone be his best friend. I missed him terribly for a long time after our friendship ended, and I hated myself for being weak and breaking us apart.

Not long after my friendship with Mark died, I began to hang out with Jonas a lot. I liked him well enough, and we had some fun times together, but our friendship was nothing like what Mark and I had shared. A part of me wanted to run away from Jonas and never look back, because I knew that I had stood by and let Frank tear away a piece of him that he could never put back. Although we never spoke of what had happened that night, for me it was always present. Our friendship lasted until we left for our missions, when much to my relief, we lost touch.

It would take decades of experience, love, loss, and a lot of deprogramming for me to understand the striking distinctions and absolute lack of similarities between gays and child predators. Frank wasn’t gay, he was a child predator, a monster in a good man’s clothing. He carefully stalked his unsuspecting prey and conditioned them for his gentle strike.

He conditioned me.

I recently learned that Frank has been dead and buried for more than ten years. While I take no pleasure in that fact, I do find a measure of comfort. In the years that have passed since that dreadful night, my thoughts and memories about the experience have often cut me to the quick, imagining the terrible ordeals other young boys are likely to have endured because I wasn’t man enough to speak up.

Okay, maybe I do take a little pleasure in knowing he’s dead.

Resigned

2017-04-09T01:30:00.000-04:00

At the age of twelve, tired of being bullied, suffering from low self-esteem, and needing an all-powerful bodyguard, I felt a desperate need to know that God loved and believed in me as much as I loved and believed in him.

Growing up in a Mormon home, I had been taught by my parents and Sunday School teachers that God was a loving father who would not, even could not, deny me the righteous desires of my heart, so long as I asked for them in faith. Our religion had in fact been founded upon that very principle, as told in the story of Joseph Smith’s claim to having received an answer to earnest prayer in the form of a boyhood vision of God the Father and his son Jesus Christ. I was no boy prophet, but I was fairly certain that I had enough faith, and it seemed to me that a desire to know just how much God loved me had to rank somewhere on the top ten list of righteous requests I could have made, most likely sandwiched between world peace and becoming a close personal friend to John Denver.

I had to know, and if I asked him, God had to tell me; those were the rules.

And so, believing in those rules, I drafted a contract with God, in the name of his son, Jesus Christ. I wrote it in pencil, on a piece of paper pulled from a personalized notepad given to me that past Christmas by my aunt (who was actually my second cousin, because, Utah).

My simple request for heavenly affirmation read something like this:

I, Matthew Tod Deane, promise to try harder to be perfect.

Signed,

_____________________

(Matthew Tod Deane

I the Lord, know and love Matthew Tod Deane, and I hereby forgive him of his sins in the name of my Father.

Signed,

_____________________

(The Lord Jesus Christ)

I signed my half of the contract and placed it on my nightstand along with a pencil, because I didn't know if Jesus carried writing utensils with him. I was nervous, excited, and hopeful as I drifted off to sleep that night. Jesus was going to visit my room as I slept, and come the morning I would have the loving affirmation that I so desperately needed.

But Jesus didn’t visit my room that night.

He’s testing me... I thought to myself as I sat on the edge of my bed, the tears of rejection dripping down onto the empty space where I had expected Jesus to sign his name. I need to prove my faith before he’ll sign!

I wiped my cheeks, said a little prayer to my Heavenly Father, and hid the contract under a pile of underwear inside my closet before setting out to prove my faith.

I tried hard to overcome my imperfections that day. That evening I put the contract back on my night stand and said an earnest prayer, respectfully reminding God that I had done as much of my part as I could do, so it was time for him to do his.

I woke to disappointment for the better part of a month until one morning, my head at last too heavy to hold high and my heart too broken to hope, I tore the contract into tiny pieces. I dropped them into the irrigation ditch behind our house, crying quietly to myself as I watched them swirl away in the dirty current. They took with them my dream of ever being good enough, faithful enough, and lovable enough for God to believe in me. It wasn’t his fault he hadn’t signed it, it was mine.

I just wasn’t enough.

Seven years later, feeling inadequate and nervous, but at the same time excited and hopeful, I signed another contract with Jesus Christ. The conditions of the contract were these: I agreed to spend two years as a full-time missionary, telling the people of Paraguay that God loved them. In return, God would bless me beyond measure (if not in this life, then certainly in the next) for my righteous, tireless, rule-abiding efforts. I signed the contract in pen, sealed it into an envelope, and mailed it back to Salt Lake City without having ever placed it on my nightstand.

Not even for one night.

Do You Know Dave Gurney?

2016-08-18T20:13:00.000-04:00

“Do you know Dave Gurney?”

I was barely 19 when I first met Dave at the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo. Utah. I was to spend 8 weeks under Dave’s tutelage, preparing myself for the following 96 in Paraguay.

Dave was tall, handsome, and clean, an instantly likeable guy with bright eyes, a crisp wide smile, and a kind voice. After just a few minutes in his presence, I quietly assigned to him the role of mentor.

The Spanish portion of Dave’s lessons weren’t an issue for me; I had studied the language since Junior High, and not only could I conjugate verbs with my eyes closed, I also knew the difference between the familiar and formal. Spanish Rs rolled off my tongue like those spoken by Speedy Gonzales every Saturday morning of my childhood.

The language of a Mormon missionary, however, did not roll so easily off my tongue as the everyday words and phrases having to do with the purchase of ice cream, the location of the bathroom, and the color of apples. Although I had been born and raised in the church and had to that point never questioned its teachings, my faith had recently and for the first time been seriously tested by the news that my older brother was a homosexual. This shook my foundation, and I carried the weight and confusion of it and with me into the MTC, right into Dave’s classroom.

Dave was unique in that he commanded our respect by earning it, while at the same time lowering the barrier between student and teacher just enough for us to consider him a good friend where we to meet again someday. In time, Dave became more to me than a teacher and a mentor; he became someone in whom I could confide.

Every Saturday morning Dave would drag two of the classroom’s desks out into the hallway and spend a few minutes with each of us in one-on-one conversation. This may have been part of his assigned duties, but I have no doubt that Dave took the time seriously. We were young and untested, full of trembling confidence and far from home, headed to a foreign land that by all accounts was 50 years behind our own experiences when it came to just about everything. Dave did his best to settle our tremors, inform our fears, and answer our questions about an immediate future that held little in the way of certainties other than diarrhea, worn-out shoes, and lots of prayer.

During one of these Saturday conversations with Dave, after whining about missing my girlfriend, confessing to a palpable fear of tapeworms, and expressing my dislike for the communal showers in the MTC dorms, I felt impressed to share with Dave my concern that my family would not be together forever due to my brother’s lifestyle. Dave sat across from me, his knees pressed into the underside of a tiny desk, as I cried big tears and spilt my dark fears into his life. I had not spoken to anyone in such detail about my overwhelming confusion, my wavering faith, and the many broken emotions stemming from my brother’s rapid, and as I understood it at the time, voluntary fall from grace.

Dave listened to the very end of my worrying without a word of interruption or a care to the fact that we had by far exceeded the normal amount of time allotted to each of us during those one-on-one Saturday morning conversations. Floundering in a spiritual quicksand of panic and grief, I looked up at him with tears in my eyes, and realized that I had grabbed hold of my mentor’s ankle in a desperate attempt to save myself, without a moment’s thought to his own stability. The sharp pain of regret for my selfish behavior pricked at my heart.

To his great credit, Dave didn’t flinch, but instead smiled warmly, a reaction that will always stay with me. He didn’t judge my brother, counseling me to love the sinner but hate the sin, or make hollow promises about what would happen in the way of a miracle were I to serve my two year mission faithfully.

No, Dave simply listened to my fears, then looked me in the eyes with unwavering confidence and told me that all would be well; I was doing great, and had a good head on my shoulders.

As I flip through my mission journals more than two decades later, I laugh at the pages and pages written with such earnest yet desperate conviction. I wanted so badly to be spiritual, to have meaningful, life-changing experiences, and I wrote in my journal as if every day were a fulfillment of those righteous desires. I don’t remember so many of these supposed moments of feeling surrounded by God and heaven and all his angels without reading them, but I can relive with great emotional detail the personal interactions and experiences that I didn’t write much about, at least not in the flowery language meant for a prideful Sunday pulpit.

So what did I write about that long conversation with Dave?

“He is so good and I want to be like him when I get back. I love him.”

No emotional dredging equipment is needed when it comes to my experience with Dave.

The crowning moment in my apprenticeship with Dave came in the form of a prophetic visit to our classroom by his wife Katie and their first-born Taylor. I held baby Taylor in my arms and marveled at the thought of one day being a good and happy father to such a beautiful, bouncing child. I looked up at Dave and Katie, smiling and loving and tender with each other as they were, and in that moment the hope that someday I would have a family just like theirs took root within me.

On our final day with Dave, my classmates and I lifted him high above our heads for a metaphoric photo. It is a moment I will never forget. That photo is a happy reminder of a debt I simply cannot repay.

Not three years later, my mission in Paraguay finished and the tapeworms flushed from my system, I was driving to the beach in North Hampton, New Hampshire, seated behind the wheel of my little white pickup truck. A fiancé far more gorgeous, blonde, and happy than I had ever dared dream of loving me rode shotgun beside me. We would be married at the end of the year.

“Do you know Dave Gurney?” Elizabeth asked.

Her casual and very unexpected dropping of Dave’s name pushed me into a free-fall through fond memories.

“Yes, I know David Gurney! He was my favorite teacher at the MTC!” I answered, eager to know the how and why and when behind her question.

“He’s married to my sister Katie.”

My mind flashed back to meeting Dave’s happy family, holding Taylor in my arms, and my silent hope that I would someday have a family just like his.

Wow.

In the years since the day Elizabeth asked if I knew Dave Gurney, I have come to learn that God doesn’t answer my prayers, no matter how humble, specific, earnest, and sincere I might be when uttering them. He does, however, from time to time, pay heed to my under-breath mutterings, coin-toss wishes, and silent hopes. While I retain scant faith in God’s fascination with the details of my daily life, I do know that he was paying close attention when Dave’s tiny family ignited a candle of hope within my heart 27 years ago.

Beyond marrying sisters and having three kids each, Dave and I are, in fact, almost nothing alike. Dave is successful, driven and goal-oriented, while I am at best ambivalent and wandering. I don’t work hard; I would rather sit on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder than climb it, and I haven’t earned much in the way of respect in this world. Over the years Dave has stacked achievements like cordwood, building up a large supply of success and security for his family, while I continue to stare up into the trees of life, mouth agape with awe and a wide, idle wonderment in my eyes.

But we remain friends and brothers, and Dave remains a mentor.

Several years ago, Dave and I met up during a reunion at the family cabin in the mountains of Utah. We picked right up where we left off, which meant that Dave asked a lot of selfless questions about how I was doing, what I was doing, and where I was headed. I have always loved that Dave still cares about me enough to show such interest, but in my heart I have always felt as though I have let my mentor down, because there’s never much to tell.

That year, Dave had managed to scrounge up a couple of bikes, and he asked if I’d be willing to take an early morning ride with him into the mountains behind the cabin. I wanted to sleep, but I got up and went with him, in spite of being certain that I would die along the trail from either exhaustion or a cougar’s bite.

After a few minutes of pedaling, I gave serious thought to turning back in order to retrieve my lungs from under the blankets where I must have left them. Not wanting to let Dave down, however, I dug deeper, sucked at the thin air, and prayed that the sidewalls of my heart wouldn’t blow out from exertion.

This past winter I spent some time alone up at the cabin. I wrote a lot, slept a lot, and thought a lot. News of Dave’s diagnosis and upcoming treatment weighed extra heavy upon my mind and heart one afternoon, so after packing a few snacks, a water bottle, and my pistol into a backpack, I headed up the same trail Dave and I had ridden together years before. This time, however, I took to the trail on a snowmobile. An overnight storm had dusted the trail with fresh white powder; it swirled about behind me as I sped recklessly up the mountain, dodging low hanging branches and sliding around curves at high speed.

The trail flattened out for a spell, and instead of pushing the snow machine even harder, I slowed to a crawl, standing as I rode to get a view of my surroundings. I stopped altogether when to my right I spied a grove of aspens, their leaves gone for the winter and their ankles buried in snow. The sun was low in the western sky, and her light partnered with those trees and a winter wind to cast long, quaking shadows on the white ground. I looked up at those towering trees and thought about Elizabeth, about our kids, and about silent, inspired hope.

Yes, I know Dave Gurney.

(Dave passed away on August 11, 2016 at the age of 49. I was honored to share the above at his celebration of life service.)

Suffer the Children

2016-07-12T14:41:00.001-04:00

Without warning it sneaks silent and deadly across the library floor on all fours, a foul smog curling and rippling across its demonic back, corrupting the air on its way to my chosen table. It rears up and hits me with a blast of rotten, fetid heat, charring my nose hairs and blurring my eyes.

I am marked like a territory; one of my three fellow library patrons sitting nearby has farted, floating an air biscuit that could war for its country.

My tee shirt gas mask pulled up over my nose, I set about profiling my quiet companions in search of the guilty.

Suspect #1

A tired-looking woman, sloppily dressed and frazzle-haired, she sighs as she reads the newspaper with a squint because she has forgotten her glasses, which are in fact perched on the crown of her head. I’ve seen her in here before, and every time I’ve imagined that she’s snuck away from a house crowded with feral children or visiting relatives, or that taken an extra long lunch in order to avoid an annoying officemate that incessantly clears their throat and listens to country music on their desktop speakers. Her soda cup indicates that today’s pursuit of quiet and personal time included a trip across the street; perhaps she consumed a few sulfur-cloud-inducing Egg McMuffins before her ritual hiding away inside the library?

Physical proximity: 8 feet

Probability of guilt: 9 out of 10

Suspect #2

A greasy young man wearing a swimsuit, tank top, and flipflops, his right leg bounces as if he were trying to set a personal best record on his step-counting sports watch while he struggles to focus on reading his book. Maybe he’s serving a summer school sentence in the library? Could his stomach be punishing him (and subsequently his fellow library patrons) for the over-inflated metabolic confidence of youth? I envision several slices of pizza, a bottle of Mountain Dew, and an ice cream sundae chaser making their way into his troubled stomach before his mother chases him off to the library to atone for his bad grades.

Physical proximity: 10 feet

Probability of guilt: 9 out of 10

Suspect #3:

An older man, his balding dome partially hidden beneath a clean and sensible baseball cap, his feet adorned with clean white socks and sensible shoes. Unlike the sighing newsreader, he has remembered his glasses, and is having no trouble seeing well enough to scribble into a notebook as he reads from multiple reference books open on the table before him. Unlike the greasy young man, his legs are calm, but he does squirm at the waist in apparent discomfort every few moments. Is carrying a payload he’d rather be rid of? Maybe he’s clenching the bomb bay doors closed, hoping to hold off his bombing run until he’s back in the privacy and comfort of his own bathroom.

Physical proximity: 12 feet

Probability of guilt: 9 out of 10

I am at a loss; while I want to lay blame on one of the three, there is no conclusive evidence, and I cannot pass judgment based on speculation. I return to my writing, half hoping that in the next few minutes a more vocal piece of evidence will present itself, thumbing its nose at but also pleasing the social court of decorum.

A few sentences later I am distracted by the muted sound of one hand clapping. I scan the surrounding area in an attempt to pinpoint its source as the sound settles into a steady, rhythmic, and somehow familiar thumping. It seems to be coming from behind the chest-high bookshelf to my left, and my curiosity begins to get the better of me. I stand and wade through the stale remnants of that dense, rotten, and invisible fog, making my way around the shelf, acting as though I am looking for a book.

I come around the shelves and see a woman sitting in a comfortable chair, a smile on her face and a blanketed bundle held against her chest. I try not to stare as she pounds her baby’s back like she’s the rhythm chief in a drum circle. My teeth clench at the sound, but I can’t help smile at the memory of burping my own children.

A wet burp erupts from the tiny bundle, followed by a break in the thumping that allows me to hear the tiny sigh of relief. A moment passes, and the thumping continues.

This woman knows her baby; there must be more air in there.

I turn to walk back to my table, and the baby farts. I can’t help it; my smile bursts into a laugh.

Case dismissed.

The Lavender Scented Armpits of Phillip's Mother in Fiji

2016-06-10T19:58:00.002-04:00

The cool waters off the coast of Fiji lap at my knees as I survey the wreck. The sun is at its peak, threatening me with heat of its mid-day fury, but my skin remains cool to the touch. A slight breeze tickles my nose with tropical scents carried from the island, and I imagine a beautiful tan island maiden fresh from a waterfall shower meeting me on the beach, coconut drink in one hand, a fresh pineapple in the other.

I am shipwrecked and alone, but a firm confidence in my ability to stay clean, fresh, and alive settles over me. I smell so good…

“Waddya think, Phillip, is this the one your mother was asking for?”

The sudden appearance to my left of a lady wearing a plain purple pocket tee-shirt tucked into whitewashed hip-hugging jeans hitched up to her sagging bosoms jolts me back to the deodorant aisle of the local Walmart.

“What flavor does it say on the label?” Her shopping companion, apparently named Phillip, asks.

Flavor? She doesn’t eat deodorant, this mother of yours, does she?

I look to my right; Phillip is wearing a timeworn fly-fishing excursion tee-shirt, jeans that are far too short for his canoe-bowed legs, and a striped train conductor’s hat that has seen a lot of rail.

“Lavender.” Comes the reply.

“That’s the one she likes; it reminds her of springtime,” Phillip states by way of duty and explanation, without a hint of nostalgia.

I put the stick of Fiji scented deodorant on the shelf and take a step back so I can keep an interested eye on Phillip and his shopping companion while at the same time trying to choose a new deodorant.

Deodorant has always been a part of my life. The spicy odor of a colonial clipper ship on a hard tack likely entered my nose on the wind of my very first breath, as my father leaned in under the heat lamps and welcomed me into this world. That old and spicy wooden scent led me through childhood as I followed my father around, trying my best to mimic his manliness.

No wonder then, that when I began to offend my family with the pungent odor of my budding puberty and was asked to take measures, I chose the same reliable spicy scent for my own armpits. While my friends guarded theirs with the right choice for young and active teenagers, I did my best to smell like a weathered sailor fresh from a whaling trip.

Why is Phillip looking at disposable razors and shave cream? His beard is full and bushy…maybe his lavender-loving mother shaves her upper lip…

As a teenager I used deodorant in excess, hoping to smell fresh, clean, and romantically appealing to any member of the fairer sex that happened to cross my path within breathing distance. It didn’t work; my eager deodorant application seemed to have the opposite effect, chasing girls away like mosquitos from a pool of DDT.

I owned a single pair of Levi’s jeans in high school, and that was a problem, because I felt that no other pair of pants could better hide my scrawny white legs. Wearing them five days a week was admittedly gross, but wear them five days a week I did. In today’s world dingy denim seems to demonstrate a willful indifference to etiquette that wins hearts, but thirty years ago it demonstrated a careless aversion to popularity that won solitude and insecurity. I had on more than one occasion tried to sneak them into a secret wash cycle on their own, but my mother guarded her laundry machines with unmatched vigilance and getting caught with my hand in her detergent had proven to be punishable by angry and humiliating lectures. I took to showering in my jeans whenever they got really bad, but they never dried fast enough in the humid Connecticut climate to wear the next day without chaffing. I spent many days trying to walk casually from my locker to my next class as though my inner thighs weren’t greenhorn-in-the-saddle raw and painfully swollen.

On one particular morning, facing a day in dark brown corduroys, I employed deodorant to my cause, applying it liberally to the fabric of my dirty jeans. I was hoping the powerful anti-bacterial ingredients and sea-going smell would mask the odors that my hormonal and junk-food consuming teenage body emitted into my pants on a daily basis. I didn’t think about my body’s metabolic warmth, and the fact that it would soon melt the deodorant into a greasy film, darkening the denim and making it appear as though I had emptied a full bladder into my beloved Levi’s. It didn’t smell like I’d pissed my pants, but I did walk the halls of peer pressure with an extra measure of self-loathing that day, followed around by an eye-tearing potpourri cloud formed by the blending odors of strong chemical clean and slowly developing puberty.

Why are there so many choices, and why are they so poorly named? Legend? What the hell does legend smell like? Urban? Commanding man? Dark Temptation? Who named these? Will they make me take a manhood test at the register before they’ll let me buy any of these? Will I have to demonstrate hand-to-hand combat skills or build a fence without using tools? Will I have to break-dance, grab my crotch, and spit on the floor?

As young children we rode many summers in the back of whichever van Dad happened to be driving at the time, making our way across the country to visit relatives we hardly knew for a few unforgettable days of genetically obligated awkward interaction. The summer sun stared down at us through any window our mother hadn’t coated with aluminum foil, doing his damned best to burn and broil us where we lay reading, napping, or playing. On one such trip I watched my older sister, who was physically mature enough to use deodorant, coat the backs of her knees with it, presumably to stop them from sweating. A few days later, under the assumption that the practice was something only women did for some feminine reason or another, I snuck into the bathroom and applied some of that same stick to the backs of my own knees. The initial cooling sensation gave way to an oily patina, which was soon followed by a dry chemical film that smelled like my sister and took a few frantic moments spent with soap and warm water to remove. I firmly believed that had my father discovered me there in the bathroom, the backs of my knees coated in feminine product, he would have spanked me silly and committed me to hard, manual, masculine labor in order to chase any interest in behaving like a girl from within me.

What the hell is oud wood? Is that a misprint, did they mean old wood? Who wants to smell like old wood dipped in dark vanilla?

I dry-shaved my armpits one year at summer camp, probably on a dare, but definitely under circumstances better left forgotten. The following morning I rubbed deodorant into that smooth, freshly scraped skin, and my screams woke the entire camp and anyone else within a four-mile radius. It was that same year that I retired the old standby deodorant with the clipper ship label and called up a new and modern scent made for a younger generation of upcoming men. At the time I wasn’t aware that there were stark differences between deodorant and antiperspirant, and so I didn’t know that I had begun clogging my pores each morning, stuffing metal and other chemicals into them with reckless and ignorant abandon.

Why are women allowed to smell like actual things? Coconut, Citrus, Flowers, these are things I can get my head and nose around. Wait, Macaroon scented? Isn’t that a kind of cookie? Hey, I want to smell like a cookie, why can’t they have chocolate chip deodorant for men? Or brownies, yeah brownies would be good.

Several years ago I decided that when I was in my sixties, I wanted to be able to remember not only my name and address, but my wife’s as well. I didn’t want my kids to feel they had to sew “If Found Call…” labels into my clothes, or tattoo my personal details onto my forearms. In the hope of preventing that from happening, I started using a more natural, less harsh, metal-free, and non pore-clogging version of underarm protection. As my armpit pores began to perform their normal sweating function once again after years of disuse, I hoped that no one would notice and then mention that I smelled different, and prayed that no one would notice and then say that I smelled worse. Self conscious, I walked around sniffing myself every few minutes, pulling at my layers of clothes and wondering if anyone would go home and thank their spouse for not smelling like the odiferous man they had been mis-fortuned enough to stand next to on the street that day.

Oh, deodorant, you are so much like prayer to me: on mornings that I remember to, I spin your dial, lift my arms, and coat my pits with your protective glaze, all the while wondering if your power over my bad odor will last the day.

And so passed several years of my life, with my insecurities reminding me to keep my arms pinned to my sides as much as possible and my brain reminding me that I was sacrificing olfactory confidence for its future sake. It didn’t help that I lived in New Hampshire, where the humidity in summer turns the best smelling armpits into cesspools filled with sweaty bacterial sludge.

The move to a drier climate in Utah helped, at least it did until a few weeks ago, when I must have hit some sort of man-o-pausal milestone. I suddenly couldn’t go ten minutes without wanting a shower and a clean shirt. I began sweating like I surely will on judgment day, and wondered if perhaps God had suddenly felt the need for a running start to his opening arguments against me.

I am tired of smelling like a sweaty patch of lemon grass that has been watered with the drippings squeezed from a Guatemalan factory worker’s tee shirt.

Phillip and his companion wander off down the aisle and out of sight. I am alone to face the many choices before me. I begin to wonder if there are deodorant sommeliers, experts on which brands and scents best fit with certain personalities or clothes. I picture a man dressed to the nines standing in the deodorant section of Walmart, his hair greased and parted tightly over his scalp, a pencil moustache under his long and upturned nose. Would anyone dare ask such a man for underarm advice?

A mother pushes her cart into the aisle. She crosses in front of me with a polite smile, delaying my decision for a moment longer. Her cart is loaded to the rim with food, and a happy baby drools in the seat. Three or four, or is it five kids follow behind her in a long line of chatty happiness. I watch as the woman reaches up and without breaking stride grabs a stick of deodorant, presumably for her husband, who has apparently summited Everest. She keeps on walking, her genetic train following close behind, and I am alone again.

Screw it; I’m going to Fiji.

Anger Management

2016-06-03T20:20:00.000-04:00

Dear Jared,

It’s been seven years since you killed yourself. This past year has been emotionally tougher for me than the past few, and I have struggled with keeping my own life, so deciding how to mark this seventh anniversary has proven more than a bit difficult. I have spent hours staring at blank paper with tears in my eyes and heavy blood in my heart, sitting in the library, at the cabin, in bed, and in parking lots, wondering what I could possibly write that would make sense of everything I feel, persuade others to get help before they abandon all hope, and relieve some small measure of the mighty grief and pressing guilt that plague me to this day.

I considered writing a piece on the things I have learned over the past seven years about suicide and its impact on survivors, but everything I wrote sounded selfish and insensitive. For a few days I considered recounting my own emotional struggles over the past several months, but again, selfish and insensitive, with a touch of melodrama. I thought I’d write a short story about searching the shallow waters of the Lamprey river for your James Dean watch, the one that fell off your wrist during one of our canoeing adventures, but I found myself lost and alone in a canoe made for two, riding a tidal river of memories and paddling without success against a thick and salty current of regret.

I was told in therapy a long time ago that I would one day be angry with you, and that only then would I be finished mourning your loss and be able to move on with my life. A week or so ago I fell apart and wondered if that time had come. I spent some time alone in the woods, recklessly chopping down tall trees, shooting invisible targets with Grandpa Bond’s shotgun, and driving higher and higher into the thinning air on roads and trails that were not meant for careless drivers.

But I’m not angry with you, not yet. Maybe it would close some doors if I were, but for now they remain open, and I suppose that I am glad, because inside those rooms I can sit and visit the rawest of my emotions, the ones that remind me I am alive. In recent weeks I have caught myself seeking sensory overloads. Standing naked and sweating in the hot sun, banging my head against my fist, and staying awake until my head hurts have provided stark reminders of what it is to be alive, and a strange, cooling relief from everything burning inside of me.

Don’t fret and worry yourself over my situation, however; these frantic moments are few and far between. I have Elizabeth and the kids, and with them in my life I remain a fair distance away from that dark line, the one that you stepped over, the one that you crossed and kept walking away from until you were lost into a place from which you couldn’t make your way back. If only you had found someone like Elizabeth, someone to cling to, someone who you couldn’t bear to leave behind…

So, the kids are good…

Caleb is determined to write professionally, and that makes me smile. It helps that he is blessed with talent, more than I ever possessed at his age. He will improve with time, experience, and practice, and the world will know his name for it. He talks about you a lot, telling me what he remembers about you, and stories about my life after you died, but from his perspective. Caleb inherited so many of your mannerisms and ways of thought that I sometimes have to gulp at the air around me when I see you in him. I don’t think he minds when I call him by your name, a mistake I have made often, because he loves you, and because he know that his resemblance to you is that strong.

Hannah is a can of gas thrown on a gas-fueled fire, with gas raining down on it from a gas cloud above; she can’t stop, she won’t stop, and the world better stay out of her way. She won’t be completely happy until she is eating fruit and doing yoga in Bali, and I hope to someday visit her there and try my hand at both. A couple of weeks ago I shaved her head (at her request), and she looks beautiful. Being an independent teenager, she doesn’t allow much physical contact, and the time spent with my hands on her head and my fingers tangled in her long hair was like water to a withered sprig. She is so much like me that I feel a heavy guilt to think that I may have cursed her future, but I know that she will do better than I ever will at life.

Solomon is my sea anchor, stabilizing my worn and swaying vessel in white-capped stormy seas. The kid makes me laugh and pulls my lips into a wide smile on even the darkest days. He has a quick wit to accompany his scampy charm, and is loved by anyone who gets to know him, except for his school principal, for whom the boy has little if any respect. Solomon has smooth criminal moves fueled by a confidence that I would kill for, and yet he lacks any hint of pride or malice in his heart. He draws, he writes, he dances, he loves, and he jokes, all of them well, and I can’t wait for the world stage to throw wide its curtains for his one man show. Fortunately for me, he has made a conscious decision to stay young for the time being.

Elizabeth misses you. She is soft and quiet about you, holding her Jared moments close to her chest. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I embraced you without conditions from the moment I met you, the way she did. I admit to being guilty of stealing the limelight when it comes to grief over your loss, but she has never once accused me of being selfish in my emotional hijackings. She is patient with me, believes in me, and has permanently hitched her wagon to my sad, stubborn, aimless and weather-beaten mule, expecting a sudden strengthening of muscle followed by a frightening burst of speed towards the starting line of success. Her confidence in me fuels my greatest fear, which is that I will let her down.

As for the world, it marches on in your absence. Technology is outpacing thought, greed has all but broken the spine of necessity, and discussion is losing ground to contention. I love so much about this world and all it offers, but a greater and greater part of me wishes I had long ago followed my teenage dream of heading into the Alaskan wilderness to homestead. I hope that I have succeeded in teaching the kids (and in the process remind myself) that in the end, no amount of wealth, gadgets, knowledge, faith, or possessions will be counted when it comes time to determine whether you were a good person or bad.

I wish you were here to see the happier moments and share in the bouts of laughter when they come, because on most days they outnumber the sad. But you aren’t, so I will do my best to live well until we meet again. Fortunately, I am blessed to have a small but able crew that is willing to push me forward through the storms and the darkness. I will be forever sorry that I could not, that I did not, that I would not, do the same for you. It is my great regret, and I cannot truly make amends for it. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to find some measure of anger towards you in this life, so that our next time around can be as sweet, fun, loving, and thrilling as the first one should have been.

Tonight I will spend some time up in the mountains, hoping to see the bear that has taken to visiting the cabin in search of something sweet to eat. I spent a few nights up there alone this week, and I watched him the other evening as he lumbered through the green. I felt no fear as he came closer to me, only a reverent thrill at seeing him in his wild habitat. Free from any other care but that of achieving the happiness that would come from filling his belly, his innocence reminded me of your simple and sensitive desire to be nothing more than happy, filled with love from others.

This letter has been a bit heavy, and I don’t know how to end it, other than to say that I wish things were different. I wish I was writing you about our upcoming road trip through the southwest, and how we are going to chase tumbleweeds, climb colored mountains, and meet weirdos in strange and beautiful places.

But things are not different, and they never will be.

You know what? That kinda makes me angry…

Changes

2016-01-12T01:24:00.001-05:00

September 3, 1987. I was almost 17, which would have made Jared almost 15. Jared had presented and won an excellent case for missing school that day, something that never happened in our home. My foot never left the pedal and the pedal never left the floor after we hit the interstate, and so the 100-mile drive from our home in Madison, Connecticut up to Foxborough, Massachusetts took just over an hour in the big blue family Ford Club Wagon Chateau van. Jared sat in the passenger seat, grinning like a cat with all the milk and fidgeting like a man that had just landed in a bed of poison ivy.

“Is this really happening?” My little brother laughed.

“It is,” I replied over the whine of the redlined engine.

I parked the van in the parking lot with a million other vehicles, and together we walked towards the thickening crowd.

“This sucks,” Jared worried at the sight of the long people-snake that coiled around the stadium.

“Don’t worry, it’s general admission; we’ll get close.” I promised.

Jared followed me as I wandered around the stadium, looking for the right spot and the right moment.

“Let’s do it,” I shouted, grabbing his hand and running for the head of the snake.

Moments later we were well positioned near the front of the line, sure to be on the field within seconds of the gate’s opening.

“Have you done that before?” Jared asked.

“Nope; that was just for you,” I assured him.

Less than an hour later we were standing in front and center of the stage, just far enough back to see rear of the stage, but close enough to it to see the color in the roadie’s eyes as they rushed about, prepping every needful thing.

It was hot and humid, and after a few hours of standing in the center of an anxious, sweating, and much older crowd, I was feeling nauseous and tired. Jared on the other hand, wouldn’t have noticed if someone had started to peel his fingernails off with needle nose pliers. He stared at that stage, waiting.

The sun set at last, affording us some relief. Something about the dark makes people lose their inhibitions, which for me makes them fun to watch, and so I spent the next hour pointing out the more bizarre members of the crowd to Jared. He would turn and look for a moment, nod in agreement with a laugh, and then return his attention to the stage. He was not going to miss that moment.

He didn’t. And what a moment it was.

The man didn’t even come out on stage for the first song, not that we could see anyway. He was somewhere out there in the darkness, singing as dancers in strange costumes beating drums dropped from the rafters, sliding down ropes amid flashes of colorful light.

A sudden silence and darkness fell, followed by a burst of light as the massive form of a spider lit up the night sky over our heads.

And then that voice.

“Up until one hundred years ago…”

The story of the Glass Spider continued as a figure, seated on a chair, holding a telephone in one hand and the crowd’s adoration in the other dropped from the belly of the spider.

Bowie.

I looked over at Jared just to make sure he was still standing, his feet still on the ground. He was, with his eyes fixed on that colorful, wonderful, masterful figure on stage.

I don’t remember much after that other than absolute amazement. Ziggy played guitar that night, and I was there to witness the magic.

With Jared.

Jared was the true Bowie fan; I had just offered to drive. Not that I hadn’t appreciated the hours and hours of Bowie records Jared had made us listen to in the attic bedroom we four brothers shared. I didn’t know just how important that trip together would come to mean to me in the years that followed.

This morning, almost thirty years later, I saw the news of Bowie’s passing, and then heard the sound of Ziggy’s guitar (on vinyl) coming from my daughter’s bedroom. A wet smile warmed my cheeks.

I don’t typically mourn for celebrities; they are people that have to eventually die, just like anyone else.

And I don’t mourn Bowie’s passing.

What I do mourn is not being there to see Jared light up in that moment.

That moment when the Starman came and met him, and blew his mind.

The Christmastime Trial of Register 8

2015-12-24T01:50:00.001-05:00

“You don’t know what a Weeble is?” The older cashier at register 9 asks her young colleague at register 8.

“Nope,” the young lady replies.

“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” The lady customer standing in front of me sings.

Registers 9 and 7 laugh in surprised pleasure, while Register 8 just looks bewildered, as if wondering whether or not she should call Security.

Christmas is coming; I am in line at a local retailer, waiting to purchase a few childish presents for my kids.

“What about Duck Tales?” Register 7 asks.

“Duck Tales, A-Woo-Ooo!” The strange lady chimes.

“Nope,” Register 8 replies with a shake of her head.

“Barney?” This from Register 7.

“Oh, I love Barney! Barney was my jam!” The crazy lady pipes with glee.

I shudder with posttraumatic stress. Hello, my name is Matthew, and I am a Barney survivor…

“Wasn’t Barney that touchy-feely purple pedophile dinosaur?” The girl asks, eliciting a contempt-laden stare from Register 7.

After a pause, the trial of Register 8 continues.

“Mrs. Beasley?”

“Stretch Armstrong?”

The young cashier looks about to cry, but her two co-workers won’t quit.

“Care Bears?”

“What about Monchichis?”

Damn you Register 9, now I’m going to be singing “Monchichi, Monchichi, Oh so soft and cuddly!” for the rest of the week…

“She’s never even seen A Christmas Story,” Register 9 declares with condemnation in her voice, a hanging judge passing sentence.

Don’t judges in England put a lace doily on top of their head when they sentence someone to death?

“What?” The lady customer is mortified. “You haven’t seen A Christmas Story?” She stands with her arms out at an angle, waddles a couple of steps forward and cries, “I can’t move my arms!”

Lace doily to register 9, lace doily to register 9 please…

“I didn’t have a lot of toys, and we didn’t watch television. I read a lot of books,” explains the cashier, hoping for exoneration, or at the very least a lighter sentence.

Oh dear…you’ve gone and poured fuel on your own death pyre…

“Oh, so you were one of those kids, too smart to go outside and have fun, too nerdy to have friends? Must’ve been a great childhood,” Register 9 scoffs.

“I read books when I was young, but I also went outside to play and watch TV like normal kids,” the lady customer says, her voice no longer happy with the singsong of childhood memories.

Why don’t they ask her about something from this century? I want to jump onto the counter, let loose with a Thundercats battle cry, and come to the poor girl’s defense.

But I don’t.

Register 7 has become very occupied with customers, and appears too busy and perhaps a bit too embarrassed to offer a defense.

After paying with a swipe and a jab, the lady customer storms off to towards the exit. As I watch her huff her way out of the store, I hope that someone parked too close to her driver’s side door.

The young cashier begins to scan my purchases, her head hanging low to avoid eye contact with me. I imagine her alone and crying in the break room later that evening.

“I read a lot as a kid myself,” I say, injecting a tone of support into my voice.

She looks up, and I am relieved to see her half-smile at me. After a moment she adds, “We didn’t have a lot of money, so my parents took us to the library for free fun.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” I assure her.

“I think I would rather read than do anything else,” she tells me.

“It’s been a while, but there was a time I felt pretty much the same way,” I admit.

“You should try to get that feeling back.”

“Maybe I’ll make that my one and only New Year’s resolution,” I think out loud while swiping my debit card.

“That’s a great idea,” she says.

I pick up my gifts, a bag of Hot Wheels cars and a hula-hoop.

“Merry Christmas!” The young lady say with a confident smile.

I smile back at her. “Merry Christmas to you!”

The smile stays with me all the way out the parking lot, where it turns to a frown as I approach my car. After a moment of thought, the frown turns into a chuckle.

Someone has parked his or her oversize SUV a little too close to my driver’s side door.

Merry Christmas!

The Secret Word

2015-11-06T18:18:00.002-05:00

Back in the late 80s, I played Pee-Wee Herman in a church play (roadshow). The brief and grainy footage below is of my little brother Jared playing the narrator.

Most of the entire video is still very happy for me. I wore a grey suit that was too small, a red bowtie, white Cuban heels, and I did a terrible imitation of Pee-Wee’s voice. In spite of my inability to act, the show was a hit; I believe we won best in show, and I was called up on stage to be interviewed (and to dance) as Pee-Wee. That very same weekend, parents began calling and me offering money if I would perform as Pee-Wee at their children’s birthday parties.

The end of the video is now almost unbearable for me to watch. Jared spoke the last lines in the show, which was about the difficulties of being a teenager and making it through each day. Tears now fill my eyes and shame warms my cheeks as I hear Jared say,

“Mary Jones, typical American teenager, has solved one of the greatest mysteries in life! She has learned to be herself. In Pee-Wee’s playhouse, she has found her ANSWER!”

(ANSWER was the secret word of the play, and anyone who watched Pee-Wee's Playhouse knows that we all scream real loud when we hear the secret word!)

I hate it, knowing now that my little brother was suffering inside and unable to be himself, even as he shouted those thrilling, happy, life saving words with such conviction.

That sad moment wasn’t even the beginning of Jared’s story, and it certainly wasn’t the end.

So please don’t speak to me of time and patience and eternity. Don’t tell me to wait it out, to have faith, and to trust. Don’t post quotes from people you have never met, hollow platitudes and memes meant for a crowd of head nodders that sweep the emotions, questions, and conflict of real experience into the corner, kindly blame whatever tragedy or befuddlement has befallen them on God, and in doing so lose the lesson before the dust has had time to settle.

Why wait? Why don’t we all solve one of the greatest mysteries in life together, and learn to be ourselves now?

After all, didn’t he send us here to find our ANSWERs?

Don't Fence Me In...

2015-10-16T21:16:00.000-04:00

While standing third in line at a “restaurant” that induces as much shame as it does phantom labor pains, I was blessed with a second row seat as an older couple placed their order.

“I want a number three with a diet, and a number 4 with a black coffee. Both small, to stay.” The man spoke the order to the young Asian woman behind the counter in a voice louder than necessary, pronouncing each syllable as if it were its own word, and adding a patronizing emphasis to boot.

Coffee with that meal? Somebody’s constipated!

The young lady punched in the man’s order with competence, and without the need for it to be repeated.

He repeated the order anyway, again employing loud, distinct, and condescending pronunciation.

“That’s a number three with diet, and a number 4 with black coffee, both small, to stay.”

After an exchange of currency, the couple stood to one side and began waiting for their food to arrive, giving me a chance to get a better look at them.

The man was dressed in pressed denim shorts that hung below the knee. The waist of those shorts (and perhaps a belt?) remained forever hidden beneath an apron of belly fat that pressed and stretched against the fibers of his American flag tee shirt like the desperate, regretful face of a how-many-people-can-fit-inside-a-phone-booth prank participant stuck against the glass, no relief in his future and regret on his mind.

That fat wanted out, real bad.

Adorning the man’s feet were brand new, super white, brand-less tennis shoes, accompanied by tan socks that he had pulled up to cover his calves. A camera with a lens that had to have been developed for a Cold War spy satellite hung from a strap around his neck. I say hung, but in reality the camera wasn’t hanging; it rested comfortably on his belly. The strap was in fact, superfluous.

This guy is living the ‘MURICAN dream…

I placed my order without issue, repetition, or volume, then took my receipt, joined the waiting and continued my observations.

The man’s wife stood beside him in a state of permanent befuddlement, as if wondering in each new moment who she was, as well as how, when, and why she had come to be where she was.

“I wonder what all the Mexicans think about these Orientals coming over on slow boats and taking over their low paying jobs that no one else wants except for hard-working Americans that were born here?” The man said aloud.

Is my mouth hanging open right now? Did he just say that out loud?

“They could at least learn to speak Engrish when they come here, am I right?” The man looked around, presumably hoping for a couple of good ‘ole boy nods in agreement.

From what I could see, he didn’t get any.

“Number 73!” the Asian girl said in a loud, clear, happy and accent-free voice, while holding aloft a tray of food.

“I tell you, this country needs more than a fence; we need enforcement.”

Okay, so I want to punch a geriatric, ignorant, loud-mouthed bigot with bad dress sense and a camera for a penis; does that make me a bigger dick than he is a racist?

“Number 73!” The girl repeated. She looked around the growing group of patrons awaiting food. No one stepped forward, so after a moment she set the tray down on the counter before turning to retrieve another.

“Number 74!”

The man that had ordered directly before me (and after Mr. ‘Murica) stepped forward and took his tray with a polite, even sheepish and apologetic thanks. I looked down at my receipt; my number was 75.

Wait; she’s been calling their number, but he’s been too busy ranting about the sad state of border security to hear her loud, clear, American voice.

I looked over at the angry man and his permanently mystified wife.

Well, that’s just precious.

“My goodness, I wonder if she even got our order right; didn’t that young man order after we did?” The man asked his wife.

“I don’t know,” she replied in the practiced, muted voice of a woman who knew her place.

Bet she’s lived a full life…

“Number 73?” The young woman repeated. “Black coffee?” She added.

“This is ridiculous,” The man huffed, heading for the counter.

“Number 73, black coffee?” She asked as his belly hit the counter.

I watched as the old man fumbled to read the receipt he had been given. He stuffed it into his pocket with a huff and a disgusted shake of his head.

“That took long enough,” he barked, taking the tray from her hands without so much as a hint of gratitude, as if he had earned it just for being born.

You know, maybe he’s right; maybe we do need a fence…

I watched the woman follow her husband into the dining area. She sat across from him and watched as he took a sip of his black coffee. She made no attempt to eat, but rather waited for him to dole out her food.

I just don’t think he’d agree with my thoughts on where we should build it…

In John's Company

2015-10-01T18:02:00.000-04:00

“I hear you used to work for The Company…” My voice was quiet but clear, the words I spoke over the man’s shoulder intended for his ears only.

Did I really just say that, and in that voice? I’ve got to cut back on the spy novels…

The man in the white canvas bucket-hat stiffened, and his back flexed into a capable shape, despite his age. As the old man turned to face me, I could see that he was poised for confrontation; his shoulders were squared with his hips, his feet set firm but ready to move, and his head was tilted down at a slight angle, as if he were about to come at me, lashing into me with his right hand, which held a plastic picnic fork in a way that gave me great pause.

I shouldn’t have been intimidated; he was much shorter than I, his skin was spotted and veiny, and the tufts of celestial-white hair that peeked out from beneath his silly beachcomber cap matched the white wooly caterpillar eyebrows below its brim.

I shouldn’t have been intimidated, but I was.

Is he going to drop that plate of potato salad before he comes at me?

“What did you say?”

Sweat ran down my lower back and into my underwear. “I hear you used to work for The Company...” My voice had lost its clarity and gained more quiet.

“I haven’t heard anyone use that term for many years,” the man said.

“I’ve read a lot of spy novels,” I explained. “Probably too many.”

“Well you gave me quite a fright; those aren’t words that someone like me wants to hear whispered over their shoulder,” he chuckled, and I saw him relax, but just a bit.

“Matt,” I said, offering a hand in greeting.

“John, but something tells me you already knew that.” He stabbed the fork (weapon) into the potato salad and took my hand into his for a powerful shake.

“Yes, I knew; I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” I said.

“Oh? Has someone been telling tall tales out of turn?” John looked around my shoulder at my father-in-law, our one mutual acquaintance and host for the afternoon.

“Maybe a little, but only because I am interested,” I said.

The caterpillars twitched, just enough for me to notice. John moved the plate of potato salad to his other hand, as if to give it something to do in place of breaking my windpipe.

“Interested in…?” he asked.

“Working at Langley,” I answered with as much confidence as I could muster.

“Just what did your father-in-law tell you?”

“That you saw a lot of action in World War Two, that you walked away from more than one plane crash, and that you used to worked for the CIA,” I replied.

“Used to; now that’s a funny way of putting it,” John said without humor.

“Oh?”

“Once in, you’re never really out,” he clarified.

I watched as John took a bite of potato salad, holding the fork in the normal every day not-a-weapon way that I always held a fork when eating. After a few moments of chewing, white puddles began to form in the corners of his mouth, and I wondered at the fact that a man who had spied for the Free World during the height of the Cold War was standing beside me on my in-laws back porch, suffering the humidity of New Hampshire’s seacoast and leaking mayonnaise.

“So, you want to work for the Central Intelligence Agency?” John asked, returning his fork to the creamy white pile on his paper plate so he could put his hand on my shoulder.

“I was thinking about it; I’ve always like the idea, but wasn’t sure I was up to it,” I answered, my confidence in the whole idea waning after hearing it said aloud by someone who had already done it.

John looked around before nudging me a few steps further away from my in-laws and their guests, which included my wife and young son. He leaned in close but said nothing, so I stood hunched over and waiting, the scent of potato salad on his breath filling the tiny space between us.

This is it, my moment of recruitment…

I had read about moments such as this, moments on dark and abandoned roads, behind dark and abandoned pubs, or inside dark and abandoned churches. An older, experienced agent draws a young protégée in close, gains his confidence, and extends an indirect invitation to change the world from deep within the shadows.

John broke the silence at last. “What is it that you really want to do with your life?”

Here we go…

“I want to live a life worthy of story-telling,” I admitted after a moment of careful thought.

“And you think The Company would be the best way to achieve that goal?” John asked, somehow managing to avoid patronizing me.

“I know it isn’t all dark alleys, car chases, and dead drops, but yes, I think it would.”

John stepped back and looked off into the trees, affording me some potato-salad-free-air. I waited for him to speak, hoping that I looked more patient than I felt, that I hadn’t offended him with my approach, and that with his next words he would welcome me into the brotherhood of spies. His eyes gave nothing away as he appeared to ponder my future. Nervous at the sound of his silence and afraid that my stare was coming off as too desperate, I searched the immediate area for something else on which to focus without moving my head. Looking down, I noticed the paper plate in John’s hand; it had started to give way under the combined pressures of weight, moisture, and gravity, so much so that the creamy lump of potato salad had become a smear, sliding its way towards the edge of the plate and threatening to drop onto John’s shoes. I watched, wondering how long it would take to reach the dripping point, and if I would warn John before it did.

“You have a beautiful family.”

I looked up from the salad and saw that John was staring across the deck at my wife Elizabeth and young son, Caleb.

“I heard those same words spoken to me not long after my supposed retirement, by a man that I had worked with for a long time,” John continued.

“A friend?”

John turned his head and our eyes met. “No, not at all, and he hadn’t meant it in a friendly way,” John half-explained.

It took me a moment of thought, but I figured out what John meant.

“A threat?” I almost whispered the question.

John reached out with his free hand and took my shoulder in a firm grip. He pulled me in close and locked his eyes on mine.

“I live every day in regret for the time I spent away from my family, and the fear that my career instilled in them. I can’t help but believe that I alone was the catalyst for my son’s long struggle with extreme paranoia. I thought I was doing great things, and perhaps in the eyes of some I did do great things, but my wife and children paid the price, and I am spending what little time I have left trying to make amends. Were I able, I would trade every moment of my Agency life for the chance to be a better husband and father.”

The words seemed to spill over John’s lips, fall from his mouth, and onto the deck, weighed down as they were with the regret of a husband and father who had too late into marriage and fatherhood realized the devastating loss of neglected years that couldn’t be relived. There were no tears in his eyes as he spoke, but something told me that it wasn’t because he thought himself too much of a man to cry.

After a brief but electric pause, John continued. “I do not make it a practice to tell a young man how to live his life, but I am telling you now that to follow this ambition of yours will be your family’s ruin. No matter what you do in this life; no matter the riches, fame, or glory you accumulate, or how many daring moments you survive, your life will amount to meaningless rubbish in the end if your career pushes aside your wife and children, and this career will do just that. Put your family first and your life will be a success, no matter what you do to provide for them.”

There was nothing to say in reply, so I said nothing. I looked at John’s aging, shrinking frame, and wondered at the things he must have experienced while living a life of secrecy, intrigue, and unrecognized patriotism, and that he would, if offered the chance, exchange it all for a do-over. A little more than a year into fatherhood myself, my son’s birth had done much to salvage my young and struggling marriage, but I remained fearful of our future, and ignorant of how I was going to manage holding on to everything that mattered most. John’s regretful advice had come at a watershed moment.

“I hope I didn’t frighten you,” John said, his hand still gripping my shoulder.

“No, you didn’t. I’m sorry to hear that you have so many regrets, but I’m glad that you felt comfortable sharing them with me,” I replied.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I felt comfortable about it, but I am hopeful that you can learn from my bad example and experience,” John confessed.

“I will, I promise.”

An hour later, John and I were still talking. Or rather, John was talking, and I was listening. That hour laid the foundation for our friendship. John had indeed lived a fascinating life, and so he had many stories to tell, stories about life-altering moments on dark forest roads, the guilt that comes from being the sole survivor of a plane crash, and what it is to witness the moment when power corrupts. I took in every word of John’s stories, did my best to read between the redacted lines, and devoured the spy novels he would pull out of his personal library and lend to me with a wink, which I took to mean that he could vouch for their authenticity.

I had always imagined myself living a life worthy of storytelling, but time spent in John’s company made me realize that what I truly wanted was to live a life telling stories.

John and I became close friends, and over the course of the next couple of years we spent a lot of time together. I would sometimes bring Caleb along with me, much to John’s delight. He loved Caleb like a grandson, and the two of them would chatter away about the things I had chosen to forget about the world. I would often end up playing chauffeur, driving the two of them around the seacoast, listening as they discussed butterfly wings, air conditioning, how much they loved trees, and the happy taste of cold milk and cookies in a grandmother’s kitchen.

Throughout our friendship, John continued to express his regrets, and to make amends with those he loved.

One day while out for lunch with his son, John fell down some steps and broke his neck. The sight of him unconscious in that hospital bed, his body broken and his head locked inside a metal cage put a lump in my throat. Elizabeth stood beside me and held my hand as I held John’s and tried not to sound afraid when I told him that I loved him.

Later that week, Elizabeth and my father accompanied me to the hospital to visit John again. Dad had accompanied me on visits to John’s house many times, and the two had become friends. I was too timid to ask him, but I had often wondered if my father saw shadows of my grandfather, dead since my father’s teenage years, in John. Both had seen the worst that men can do to each other in the name of God and country, and both had won medals for acts of valor that must have haunted their dreams, as so often is the case with heroes of war. I had often imagined my grandfather to be a man much like John, and hoped that one day, after meeting my grandfather, I might introduce them to each other.

John’s room was empty, the bed stripped to the mattress. I turned and stepped back into the hall just as a nurse was passing.

“Hi, we’re looking for the man that was in this room; his name is John. They must have moved him, do you know where he is now?” I asked the nurse.

She stopped, and her face took on an anxious look. She pivoted on her feet and glanced down the hall towards the nurse’s station, then turned again to face me.

“Are you family?” She asked, her voice low and secretive.

“Yes, we are,” I lied.

Her face twitched, then filled with warmth and concern. She fidgeted for a moment, and then clasped her hands together as if in prayer before taking a step closer to me.

“He passed just a few minutes ago, I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching out with one hand, as if to soften the blow, or perhaps catch me in case I collapsed.

I made it into the elevator and out to the parking lot before collapsing. Elizabeth scooped me into the car and held my hand while my father drove us drove over to John’s house to be with John’s wife Fae.

A few days later, Fae asked me to speak at John’s funeral. I thought about what I was going to say while mowing my lawn, just hours before the service. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last mowed, so the grass was thick and tall. Sweat and tears ran together as I punished the mower, shoving it without mercy into grass it couldn’t hope to cut very well.

John’s funeral was for me a first, and a very painful experience. I hadn’t yet needed to say goodbye to a friend in that way, and I didn’t want to let John go; we hadn’t shared enough time together, and he had more stories to tell me.

Just last week, while going through an old filing cabinet, I found the words I wrote for John’s funeral after mowing that damnable lawn. Tears wet my cheeks as I read about our first meeting, John’s stern warning, and his promise to me that my success would not be measured by my career status, but rather by the time spent with and attention paid to my family. I had written about the amends John had been making, the joy he felt in loving his wife and children, and the silly, childish, wonderful conversations he had with Caleb. I didn’t want to say goodbye, but I was grateful for the time we’d had, and I couldn’t wait to see him again someday.

I imagine our reunion will go something like this:

Standing alone at a welcome-to-heaven picnic, fork held (not like a weapon) in one hand, and a plate of anything but potato salad (probably cake) in the other, I’ll sense someone approach me from behind. Before I can turn to see who it is, I’ll hear the following words, spoken in a quiet but clear voice over my shoulder, intended for my ears only…

“I hear you used to tell stories…”

Thanks John.

Lessons in Bull Riding

2015-02-14T13:11:00.000-05:00

“Ride that bull, babushka! We’ll teach them Russians how to row-day-oh!” My brother-in-law’s muffled shout was accompanied by the creak of his easy chair and the thump of his feet against the floor above me.

I sat in the living room surrounded by the smell of burnt garlic, my jaw hanging open in happy wonderment at Steve’s sudden outburst. Looking up at the ceiling, I tried to imagine what could have provoked such a reaction in the quiet, solitary, and very strange man that I hardly knew.

Maybe he dozed off watching a rodeo with a copy of Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” in his lap…

Steve was my wife’s oldest sibling and a bit of a mystery to me. All I really knew about him was that after a brief stint in the Navy, he had spent most of his life homeless and wandering across the world as a sometimes-functional alcoholic, in search of something that he just couldn’t seem to find. Every few years or so he would reappear to sober up with the help of his parents, siblings, and burnt garlic, only to disappear again, returning to his search for something that he just couldn’t seem to find.

To hear Steve shout about babushkas riding bulls and Russian rodeos was sudden and funny, but not out of character, and that’s what Steve was, a character. I made a mental note to never forget the moment or the man, and promised myself that both would end up in a short story, script, or book one day.

Not long after trying to incite an international rodeo incident, Steve hit the road headed west for parts unknown, resuming his search. It would be some time before I saw him again. During the years that followed, we heard snippets and rumors about where he was, the trouble he was into, the tragic state of his life, and his disruptive encounters with family that never lasted long. His addictions kept him wandering, distant, sometimes belligerent, and forever unable to take root. He would drive off into the wild, leaving his loved ones behind without a glance in the rear view mirror to see them standing in his dust, wishing they knew how to help him.

And then cancer came calling. During one of his brief appearances, Steve was given eighteen months to live, just as he was about to run off and wander again, the car literally packed and ready to go when the news came. Rather than disappear and die alone, Steve stayed and accepted help and care from those who wanted nothing more than to give it, in spite of the countless hours of pain and prayer he had caused them.

We moved to Utah in 2012, about six years after Steve had been diagnosed. The man was a cockroach; it seemed that nothing could kill him, and I often wondered if he hadn’t built up some sort of immunity with all the alcohol and drugs he had ingested over the years. In spite of having heard all about his chemo treatments and the physical difficulties he had endured over the past several years, I was not prepared for Steve’s appearance. He looked older than his father; he was weak, grey, and thinning by the minute. Still, his attitude was positive and his smile wide in spite of all that he was going through. He hugged his sisters and brothers and spent a lot of time with his parents, who took him to lunch and movies, and made sure that he was comfortable and well fed at the family gatherings. To witness the love and concern demonstrated by his parents and siblings would often scratch at the scabs I still carried from my own poor treatment of my little brother Jared in the years leading up to his suicide. Hindsight stared back at me every time I saw my brother-in-law.

But even cockroaches eventually die, and after more than a year in hospice, his time was clearly coming. Steve was tired, and his body battered by not only the cancer, but by everything medical science had done to his body in order to keep him alive. He couldn’t take anymore; he decided he had fought the good fight, but it was time to fly. In January the family gathered in spirit and prepared for the inevitable.

Life continued, however, and with it came a yearly working vacation to Hawaii with Elizabeth’s sister Amy and her husband Duff, this one to The Big Island. This year we would also be accompanied by Elizabeth and Amy’s parents. We were relieved to hear that they were looking forward to the peaceful rest and calming spirit that the island would provide. They had prepared every needful thing for Steve, and he was in good and caring hands at the hospice center. Their younger sons that lived locally would take over the daily duties of checking in on Steve and making sure that he was as comfortable as he could be made, and if he passed while we were gone, all would be well. Steve knew that his mom and dad loved him, and he wanted them to enjoy themselves in Hawaii. They had earned it.

The Big Island is filled with adventure at every turn, and Elizabeth and I made sure to wring every drop of thrill from our time there. We started the trip with a drive around the north end, where we stood on a desert landscape and watched a mother whale teaching her babies to leap and play just offshore, drove through a jungle to swim (naked) in a cool, clear, freshwater pool off the beaten track, and explored an abandoned church, its bell still hanging in the belfry. We ventured into the dark depths of a lava tube without a flashlight, and then drove over a scarred volcanic wasteland where we joined locals in their celebration at the end of a successful wild boar hunt. We ended that first day by traveling out onto green rolling hills peppered with cattle, and then we were treated to dinner by Elizabeth’s parents.

Throughout the rest of our time on the island, we snorkeled with bright fish and green turtles, drank fresh fruit smoothies, watched the sun set from the beach, and swam in warm water. The ocean spray at the southernmost point of the U.S. kept us cool as we watched more whales at play, and had it not been so windy and the water so rough, I would have leapt from the cliffs into the deep blue below (next year for sure). We hiked out onto a volcano with new friends and witnessed an alien world, and then warmed ourselves in the hot steam escaping from cracks in the hardened lava flow. Later that same night, we marveled at the fiery-red dragon’s eye of the active volcano as it glowed against the dark, and on the way back to the resort we parked on top of a mountain and marveled at more stars than a mind can comprehend.

In between adventures, we read emails from Elizabeth’s brother Paul, who was keeping close watch over his big brother. Steve was in the active stages of passing, and his long fight would be over within a matter of days. Inspired by his brother Mike’s FB posting of a song in tribute to Steve, Paul suggested that family members post their own tribute songs and messages to the family FB page, so that he could collect them and spend some time at Steve’s side playing the songs and reading the messages of love aloud to him. Some great music came rolling in, most of it from the seventies, the lyrics and titles telling me more about Steve and how his brothers and sisters felt about him than I had ever known or understood. In spite of his strange ways and wandering spirit, or was it because of them? Steve was dearly loved, and so he would be dearly missed.

On the last day of our Big Island trip, we spent hours clambering over sharp and crusty volcanic rock in search of a secret cave known to very few. One of the members of our group had already been inside it years earlier, having heard about it from a drunken local that had wanted to impress a mainlander. Inside the cave were the bodies of several paniolos (cowboys) resting on a natural shelf of rock, left there by friends and family more than a century ago. With very few clues and a dusty memory to go on, we remained determined to find the cave, and we soldiered on until the sun began to melt into the sea. In the end we found nothing but caves filled with the bones of wild goats, but we decided that the adventure along the way had been well worth the sweat, fatigue, cuts, and bruises we had suffered during our failed search.

When we regrettably boarded the plane for home, Steve was still alive. Elizabeth and I had discussed the possibility of visiting him for a few minutes on the way home from the airport, but had made no solid plans to do so. A long overnight flight complete with a brief layover in the West Coast was going to spell exhaustion for us upon our arrival in Utah, and so we left the idea to visit him open but undecided.

The sun was shining and the temperature mild on Sunday morning in Salt Lake City. We helped load the piles of gear required for our work while in Hawaii onto the waiting truck, and then loaded our personal luggage and Elizabeth’s parents into our car in the long-term parking lot. Twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of my in-law’s house. After hugs, thanks, and two cans of Diet Coke passed in through the passenger-side window, we headed towards home with Elizabeth driving. I had not slept a moment during our flight, and I would have been dozing and dangerous behind the wheel.

There are sixteen or more ways to get to any one place in Salt Lake City. The streets are laid out on a numbered grid, and locals speak in foreign tongues and numbers when handing out directions. For some reason I can navigate my way through our bedroom in the dark to find the toilet in the middle of the night, but I need a GPS device the moment I enter the Salt Lake Valley. When Elizabeth is driving, I pay little attention to where we are going, and watch the world at work, life, and play. Sunday morning was no different, and so I didn’t even know where we were when she spoke.

“I have to pee, and Steve’s place is right up here, do you mind if we stop to use the bathroom and to see him for a minute?” Elizabeth asked.

“Not at all, we talked about stopping to see him anyway, and it may be too late to come down tomorrow,” I answered grimly.

She pulled into the parking lot and we stepped out to stretch, yawn, and prepare ourselves. The woman at the front desk was very polite, her smile wide and welcoming as we signed in and asked to use the bathroom before seeing Steve.

A few minutes later we walked down the hallway on our way to Steve’s room. A woman sat in a wheelchair parked to one side. I smiled at her as we passed, but her eyes were glassed over and void of recognition. I steeled myself for the worst as we walked further into a building filled with those that were not long for this life. A moan escaped from a nearby room, and I thought I heard weeping coming from another. I felt guilty for being so healthy, in spite of my bad habits.

The door to Steve’s room was open, but the privacy curtain kept his bed hidden from passersby. We rounded the curtain and looked around the room. The floor was covered in what looked to be wrestling mats, and after wondering with a cringe why they were there, I thought of Billy Papaki, the bloody nose I accidently gave him during fifth grade gym class, and the beating I took for it later from David Snack, Billy’s protector.

I dropped the memory and focused on the man lying on the only bed in the room. He looked desperately thin; the sheet seemed to float no more than an inch above the mattress, held up only by his feet at one end and a chest that barely moved with labored breathing at the other.

“Is that Steve?” I couldn’t help asking aloud.

“Yes, that’s him,” my wife whispered, visibly shaken by her brother’s appearance.

I followed her to the side of the bed. Steve’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to be aware that anyone was there until Elizabeth touched his hand.

“Hi Steve, it’s Lizzie. Matt is with me. We just got back from a trip to Hawaii with Nana and Bubba. They are home, Nana and Bubba are home.”

Steve smiled at the sound of his mother and father’s nicknames, and the knowledge that they had returned safely. Elizabeth looked at me with happy surprise in her eyes.

“We had a great time with them in Hawaii,” she continued, and her voice cracked a little as she did.

“We saw whales, and colorful fish, and we swam with a turtle, and hiked on a volcano.”

Steve may have been trying to focus on his baby sister’s face, but he seemed to stare right past her.

I knelt on the wrestling mat at Elizabeth’s feet, a move that put me right beside Steve’s head. Looking at him as close as I was, I realized that in spite of barely knowing him, I was sad to lose him, because losing him was making Elizabeth sad.

“I like his beard, he looks good with a beard,” I said, wondering at the same time why I would say something so stupid, and if it was helping Elizabeth at all.

She reached out and touched Steve’s cheek, then combed his salt and pepper beard gently with her soft fingers. I looked up and watched as tears fell from her eyes and dripped onto the sheet below. “It’s cute, I like it,” she agreed.

I gulped back the lump in my throat, but couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes. I had seen that sad look on my wife’s face once before, and had prayed at the time that I’d never see it again.

But there it was.

“Want me to get you a chair?” I asked, looking to be of some help, and to distract myself crying.

“I’ll just sit here on the bed.” Elizabeth smoothed the sheet and sat beside her brother.

“Make sure you’re not sitting on anything he needs, like a tube or something,” I worried.

“He’s not hooked up to anything, they have been told to not take any life-saving measures,” she reassured me, but then stood and lifted the sheet an inch or two, running a quick check with her hand before sitting back down.

Steve’s breathing had changed in the few minutes that had passed since we arrived. Each breath took longer to arrive, and when they came they were deep gasps, as if his body was fighting to keep his spirit from slipping out his open mouth. In between the gasps, his body would shudder slightly, as if his spirit were struggling to shed its weary mortal coil.

“Steve, we love you,” Elizabeth said. Tears ran down her cheeks in a steady stream, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

I reached up and put a hand on my wife’s knee. She looked down at me, an unspoken question in her eyes.

“He’s close,” I whispered with a nod.

Elizabeth leaned over and kissed her brother on the forehead. “Steve, you can go to sleep now, it’s okay. You’ve fought hard, but it’s okay to go. We love you and we’ll miss you, but it’s okay. You can go to sleep.”

We sat in silence and watched through tears as Steve began to pass away.

“Do you want me to say a prayer?” I asked Elizabeth, not quite knowing what words I could possibly share to ease her sadness and peacefully usher Steve from this world at the same time.

She nodded, and after a minute of panicked thought I began to pray out loud in a quivering voice, watching as she held his hand.

I thanked God for Steve’s life, for his free spirit and his big smile, and for the blessing of having known him as much as we did, in spite of wishing in that moment that we had known him more. After a pause I continued, expressing our concern for Steve’s parents, and asking that they be comforted in the knowledge that upon his passing their son would be free of pain, and that they would one day see him again. I asked the same for Steve’s siblings, and expressed gratitude for the great amount of love and care that the whole family had shown to their son and brother over the past several years.

Another long pause, and through my tears and over the sound of Elizabeth’s quiet sniffles, I acknowledged Steve’s troubled life and his search for happiness, and expressed gratitude for the fact that he had finally found it in his family near the end of his life. I asked that Steve be granted a peaceful and happy escape from his tired and battered body so that he could run, wander, hoot, and holler, until we met again. After that, I concluded with gratitude for the one that made such a blessing and a gift possible, and ended the prayer in his name.

Steve was gone. He had passed during the prayer, with his little sister holding his hand.

“We love you Steve,” Elizabeth said.

“Say hello to Jared for me, would you?” I managed to add.

We sat with Steve for a few minutes before standing to hug.

“He was just waiting to see his baby sister before he could go,” I said.

Elizabeth squeezed me tight.

I looked at my brother-in-law’s empty vessel lying on the bed and imagined him free to hike up the pine-treed mountain behind the family cabin. The strangely cool mystery man had spent most of his life in a troubled search for something that had in fact never been lost. When he finally found it eight years ago, it was right where he had left it every time he set off searching.

In the rear-view mirror.

Wet Nurse

2015-01-29T10:09:00.001-05:00

As a child I liked to hammer my pelvis against the stairs. It was a family activity; my siblings and I would sprint to the top of the staircase, lie on our bellies beside each other, and count down together before pushing off to slide and bump our way feet-first to the bottom. Mom and Dad would watch and laugh. Pajamas were the best clothing to wear, the lack of buttons and belts providing a smooth and slippery surface for sliding. The jovial practice of stair surfing became a nightly ritual, perhaps because Mom and Dad saw it as a way for us to burn the unspent energy of the day before going to bed. The combination of breathless giggling and happy exhaustion that overtook us remains a highlight of my childhood. Buried somewhere deep in the family archives there is an 8mm silent film of us running up and sliding down the stairs over and over again, our smiling faces conveying our absolute joy more than words ever could.

Some joys come at a price, however, and the price I paid was high for a four year old. Pajamas don’t provide a whole lot of support or protection for the more tender parts of a boy’s body; I suffered a hernia and spent several days in the hospital for surgery to repair the damage. I can still recall my time in the hospital with a great degree of clarity, minus the actual surgery of course. The playroom in the children’s ward, for example, is still very real to me. I remember sitting in a small chair at a low- level table playing with a Fisher Price playset by myself, while other sick kids made friends and played together. Another distinct memory is that of my hospital crib, a shiny metal cage with bars that towered above me as I lay there wondering what my siblings were doing at home, and if they missed me.

The sight of my mother from between the silver bars of my hospital crib is the most vivid and powerful memory I have of that hospital stay. I don’t remember her leaving my side for a moment, and I am not sure when or where she slept, or if she even did sleep while we were there. I recall waking up during the night in that sterile, metal, frightening place, and the wave of fear, confusion, and loneliness that threatened to wash over me. That same dark wave would retreat at the bright sight of my mother sitting watch beside my crib in the dark. I would feel the loving touch of her hand on my back, and in an instant I knew it was safe to fall back to sleep under her protective gaze.

I still compare the memory of my mother’s protection to that of a nurse assigned to my care that week. The various nurses I have encountered throughout my life have been for the most part beautiful, compassionate, and capable women. Their crisp uniforms, cool hands, and clean smells have always had a calming effect on my panicked and creative mind in moments of pain. There have been many moments in which I have imagined agony and death in my immediate future, only to be snatched from the jaws of certain doom by the soothing touch of a nurse.

Except for this particular nurse, that is.

I have no memory of tenderness in this woman. Unlike the other nurses, she never once offered a reassuring smile as she took my blood pressure, never bothered to warm the end of her stethoscope before slapping it to my chest, and not once did she run her fingers through my hair and tell me things were going to be alright. All business and no heart, she remains, in my mind and memory, a spinster in every sense of the word, complete with dark purple veins running down the length of hercold and bony hands, greying hair pulled tightly into a bun on the back of her head, and a wart on the end of her crooked nose. This may not have been the case, and she may have in fact been a physically beautiful woman, but her negative attitude, impatient manner, and bossy way of being are made manifest in the ugly rendering of her physical appearance in my mind. She was in no way kind and endearing, and in her presence I was that much more grateful for my mother’s love and protection.

Once the surgery was completed and my recovery had begun, the doctor made it clear that I could not be released from the hospital until I had successfully relieved my bladder of my own accord, into the toilet, witnessed and signed off by a nurse.

It would not be the last time I spent a few compromising minutes in the presence of a medical professional, but it was perhaps the most rewarding, especially in many retellings over the years by my mother.

Groggy from pain medication and weak from the entire ordeal, I stood in front of the toilet on rubbery legs. My mother stood to my right, her hands at the ready to catch me should I fall, to comfort me should I fail. The spinster stepped between the toilet and the wall, directly to my left.

“You should move, he pees to the left,” my mother warned.

“I don’t need your advice on how to do my job,” the nurse huffed.

I wobbled between good and evil, my eyes heavy, my little mind lost in the ether.

“I’ve been watching kids pee for years; I know what I’m doing,” the ugly woman declared.

“Not this kid; I’ve been watching him pee for four years, and I can tell you that your shoes are about to get wet,” my mother countered.

“I’ve never been peed on once in all my time as a nurse,” the spinster boasted.

A moment later, I ended her dry spell as my bladder let go to the left, all over her shoes.

I’d like to say that I peed on that nurse’s shoes out of love for my mother, to thank her for all those comforting hours spent at my side. The more probable truth, however, is that as a heavily drugged four year old that had always peed to the left, I just didn’t have the control necessary to avoid peeing on her.

But I haven’t peed on anyone’s shoes since...

Sex Sellout

2015-01-07T23:06:00.001-05:00

A billionaire dinosaur forced a strapping young man with oiled pectorals to become gay, and as a side effect I have decided to become a best-selling author of adverb-laden erotica.

I love it when the page beckons, but it doesn’t happen often enough to make me a millionaire. My hope is that this has more to do with commitment than talent, and that the more I sit myself down in front of the writing machine, the more material (and therefore money) I will produce. The trouble is, however, that I write about things that strike me, topics that mean something, and moments that should matter as much to the world as they do to me, but don’t.

I must be as out of touch as my children sometimes think I am. Not only do I like corduroys and listen to singer songwriters that can write and sing and play music without auto-tuning, I can't tell you whether a yellow circle emoticon with closed eyes and tears denotes laughing or crying. But worse than all of that, I am also clueless about what matters to the world, and what people living in it want to read. The human condition has in fact, nothing to do with family struggles, personal insecurities, falling in love, winning or losing at life, and toilet paper. No, it’s all about shallow, musky, animalistic rutting...and that’s what sells books.

Hunter Fox learned this while still at UCLA, and has self-published more than fifty novels based on the concept of dinosaurs, unicorns, and just about every character you might find in Tolkien, turning men gay. His titles read like something out of Mad Magazine in the eighties, if Mad Magazine in the eighties had been as dirty as every boy that read it had wanted it to be, and if every boy that read it had wanted to be turned gay by mythical creatures. There’s even a saber-toothed tiger (not mythical) thrown onto the title pile for good measure, while my favorite title includes an alien hound, whatever that might be.

I checked the Amazon rankings for Mr. Fox’s books, and while the Amazon ranking system is not a clear indicator of sales and income, there is no doubt that this guy is making money at this. Sure, the titles are funny and bizarre, and if you belonged to a fraternity (shudder) or were homophobic (shudder) you might give one to a buddy as a “joke” gift, but does anyone read these books all the way through, and without laughing?

No, I can’t go out tonight, guys, I just downloaded “Dark Pegasus Made Me Gay” to my Kindle, and I can’t wait to snuggle up in front of the fire with a cup of cocoa and get started on it!

And lest anyone that is straight think that their attraction to the opposite sex affords them a lofty look down their nose at the smut preferred by some LGBT readers, I’ll mention Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, anything written by Danielle Steel, and the complete Harlequin Romance collection. All of them relative smut when it comes down to it, all of them laden with adverbs and descriptors that can’t be read without imagining heavy breathing and the popping of bodice buttons, all of them selling millions of copies. And those are just a few of the mainstream mentionables; many authors have made small fortunes by churning out series of formulaic filth that no one has heard of, or at least will admit to hearing of.

A bad day of writing at home beats a good day inside the corporate grist mill, and while I would be happy just making a comfortable, anonymous living by writing, I can admit that a part of me would not reject a sellout opportunity to become an international sensation, churning entire forests into pulp and putting endangered owls into owl retirement homes. I sometimes wonder, however, can that happen writing short stories about moments that matter? Should I sex up the telling of my best friend and me boiling our own urine on his mother’s kitchen stove to make gunpowder, just to land on the bestseller list and extricate myself from corporate America for good? Maybe some sexually frustrated neighbor girls stopped by to borrow the very pot we pissed into, and maybe the oven glove that I used to pull the pot of the stove caught fire, and the girls ripped off their shirts in order to smother the flames and save my life, and in doing so they ignited the lusty pressure keg of passion trembling within a sinewy, pale-skinned, virginal teenage boy.

It could have happened that way. No wait, it did happen that way, I swear...

Elizabeth and I joke about me becoming an erotica writer all the time. We imagine book titles, all of them weighted with innuendo and vice, taboo titles that suggest sensual struggles between wealth and poverty, daring and innocence, pleasure and pain. These titles lead to a discussion of racy cover photos, glossy images of men with naked, oiled, capable chests taking tragic women with bulging breasts and desperate eyes into their arms for lessons in lust while holding uncomfortable, even physically impossible poses sure to bring about deep vein thrombosis.

And I know what I'm talking about; I used to spend hours hiding in my aunt's basement thumbing through her romance novel collection, drinking in lusty covers, wondering at racy titles, and reading about heated embraces and throbbing passions. All of it made me feel funny inside, but I didn't completely understand why.

Well I understand now, and I think it's time to cash in on that realization.

Of course, in order to write erotica, I will need to choose an appropriate pseudonym, something like Dick Foxhunter or Richard Stonewood. Being a righteous family man that has never once let a lustful thought linger, and has worked for years to earn an untarnished reputation for knightly valor and virtuous gallantry, I would not want to risk the public knowing that I earn my stacks writing such filthy books.

Especially those members of the public that are my friends and family, more specifically the ones who would secretly not only read my dirty books, but also dog-ear their favorite pages.

White Lemonade

2015-01-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

It’s been a wild month. When I posted Paradise Found and Lost, I had no idea that it would spark a winter wildfire of love, support, and giving. The piece was originally intended as a “for your eyes only” essay to be shared with the writers group to which I belong, and nothing more. After some contemplation, hesitation, and even trepidation, I decided to post it online, much to the dismay of Elizabeth, my wife. She is not a fan of the spotlight.

Oops…

Soon after the essay went live, offers to stand vigil in our yard popped up in the form of messages, comments, and emails. Cookies, cupcakes, and neighbors began appearing on our front porch, and text messages from numbers I didn’t recognize vowing support and love began to drain my phone’s battery. My father-in-law took me to lunch (just the two of us, for the first time ever) and shared with me his own experience with harassment, and offered his absolute support for my family. It felt good to be cared for by so many, and I was confident that my essay would have a lasting impact on the state of our trees, yard, windows, and heart.

We were papered a week later, and it was maddening. I felt like a fool for having believed that our paradise could be so easily restored. The following day passed in anger, and I struggled to believe that everything we had moved to Oakley for hadn’t slipped through our fingers forever. The bitterness began to consume me, and I welcomed it, in spite of knowing from past experience what it would do to me.

And then remembered the example of a man named Joe, whose son Jadin killed himself after being bullied. Joe had every understandable right to lash out, seek revenge, and allow bitterness to corrode his soul. Instead, Joe decided to take the high road (literally), and he began walking across the country to raise awareness of bullying and its effects on others. Along the way he told Jadin’s story to anyone who would listen. Many people did, and Joe changed, even saved lives.

Joe died while walking his way onto my short list of heroes; he was struck and killed on the side of the road in Colorado.

The example of Joe turning something far more bitter than lemons into sweet and inspiring lemonade smacked me in the chest in a way that very few things do, and I felt compelled to decide how I would react to what we had been going through. An idea evolved, and I invited the people of the Kamas Valley to bring toilet paper into our home and get to know us.

1,135 rolls (and counting) later, I’m still working to become more like Joe.

The rolls (and puns) began piling up beneath our Christmas tree, and before long we had enough for Solomon (12) to stack up in doorways, block hallways, and build little forts in the living room. It was fun, it was encouraging, and it was progress. My heart started to soften again, and I found myself looking out our back windows and loving the view again. Every time the doorbell rang, my wife and kids would look at me and say, “that’s for you,” as if they thought it foolhardy of me to invite strangers bearing toilet paper into our home. Before long, however, they too began to anticipate the ringing of the doorbell, the additions to the growing pile, and the strangers that would become friends.

Paper began arriving from around the country. Old friends from past lives and neighborhoods could not help themselves, and they sent their love and support along with rolls and rolls of the white stuff. Much to my surprise, people we didn’t even know drove through stormy weather (some more than once and from far away) to add to our pile of white lemonade.

That sweet, soft, massive pile of white will soon be gone, delivered to the Kamas Food Bank and distributed to those in need, but the sweet, soft, massive pile of support, service, and love will never leave, it will stay with my family forever. To thank those who gave is not enough; I will try to live my thanks in who I am and how I serve others following their example.

In addition to the paper contributions, we were blessed over the course of the 12 days leading up to Christmas with 24 days of gifts from two anonymous Santas. Each day we would wake to find some something special on our front step, and a separate daily scavenger hunt kept us wandering about town in search of the next gift and clue. Both Santas (and their helpers) made sure to include reminders that we were not only loved by, but also needed in the valley. Santas, you know who you are, and we are forever grateful for your kindness and love.

Elizabeth and I decided that we would not exchange gifts for Christmas this year. (She broke the rules and bought me some skis, and so I actually used them, which was for her a delightful gift in return.) At first I thought our decision to forgo giving each other gifts was a sign of us getting older and less interested in the magic of Christmas, but I now believe that it was more a sign that we are starting to figure out how this whole Christmas thing works, and what it is all about.

You have all had a hand in that.

And so I extend again my thanks to the good people of not only the Kamas Valley but the world who gave, supported, reached out, cared, and shared.

Because of you it truly has been a Merry, white, (and punny) Christmas.

For more information about Joe and Jadin, see http://joeswalkforchange.org

Porcelain Islands

2014-12-10T14:56:00.001-05:00

Balance: $18.32

Panic climbed from my stomach up into my throat. I turned and looked over my shoulder at my little sister, sitting behind the wheel of her new used car, her only concern at that moment being the keeping of rhythm as she nodded her head to Toad the Wet Sprocket’s song about good intentions. I could hear the muffled lyrics mocking (or was it comforting?) me.

…When my head’s full of things that I can’t mention…

It was Christmas Eve, and a light snow was falling in quiet downtown Exeter, New Hampshire. Businesses were shuttered for the holiday and the sidewalks were empty, giving the snow a chance to hide the grey under a brilliant layer of white. Bright and happy holiday lights twinkled in windows, on lamp posts, and from the gazebo at the center of town.

…it feels like this has gone on forever…

I looked back at the ATM. White text against a black background predicted my immediate financial future, while at the same time demanding my input. Where is the refill button? A new father and floundering husband, I had less than twenty dollars in the bank and none in my wallet.

…There’s little relief…

And we needed diapers.

…I clench my fists, close my eyes…

We had been living in Seattle for a couple of years and had nothing but a 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser and a new baby boy to show for it. Our marriage was still uncertain, our apartment laden with mildew, and our financial prospects frightening to the point of uncontrollable laughter-the kind that echoed down the hallways of asylums.

I was not only broke, I was broken.

Our parents had wanted to meet their new grandson, and so they had sent us tickets to fly back to New Hampshire for Christmas, just two weeks after his entry into our manic world. We were putting on a good show, smiling our way through the visit in spite of the dreadful cloud of doubt that had followed us east. Caleb was a happy distraction from our woes, and an easy topic of conversation behind which to hide our terror, but dark times loomed ahead.

To this day, I remain thankful for the loving support system of parents that rescued us in spite of our pride, and the lame attempts we made at masking our plight. But not everyone has that same safety net. The raw and frightening reality that I felt in that moment standing at an ATM on Christmas Eve nineteen years ago is a constant, everyday reality for many, and for them there is no end in sight. To feel the weight of failure is heavy enough on a single soul, but when the uncertainty of how to provide for your spouse and children is added, that soul can crack and break under the strain.

Those of you who know me will know of my fascination with the smallest room in the house. It is the great equalizer. Everyone has the same basic needs, and everyone is subject to the natural laws of ingestion, digestion, and evacuation. It is one of the few things you can’t pay someone else to do for you, no matter how wealthy you may be.

Everybody has crap to deal with in this life. While some of it we have to handle on our own, there’s still a lot of it that we can help each other out with.

Who doesn’t know the sinking feeling that comes when reaching for toilet paper but finding only cardboard? A frantic, immediate search ensues, and you look behind you, around you, and even above you, as if by chance someone has hung a roll of the precious white stuff from the ceiling in case of a predicament such as the very one in which you find yourself. It takes only moments to realize that you are a castaway on a porcelain island in the middle of the sea, and all you can do is hope for the sound of footsteps in the hall, the lapping of water against a ship’s hull as it passes, so that you can shout and wave your arms, somehow capturing their attention and beg them come to your rescue.

“TOILET PAPER PLEASE!”

Throughout the month of December, our family is accepting donations of unopened packages of toilet paper to give to the Kamas Valley Food Bank. Every roll counts; please give.

Because no man, woman, or child should ever know what it feels like to be an island.

Email me at matthew.deane@frogsdontweartights.com for drop off location and information.

Paradise Found and Lost

2014-11-21T15:53:00.000-05:00

If Heaven is full of Mormons, I think I’d like to go to Hell.

One of the last things my little brother asked me before he killed himself was why I was still active in the church that he had grown to hate so much. I told him that I believed that no one was perfect, but that the gospel they were trying to live was. Mormons had a lot to learn, but they were generally good people making an effort to be better people. At the time, it seemed to be the most sincere and thoughtful answer I could offer up to someone who had been scarred by judgment and maltreatment at the hands of Mormons, myself included. Having at last learned that to love one another is the greater law, I hoped that my words carried some weight, conveying the message that the self-righteous could change.

That was almost six years ago, and my brother is long dead by his own hand. In the years that followed his suicide, I watched my own faith wash away in the rain of despair, until I felt as though I was standing on a single block of stone, a belief in God the only remnant of a once firm foundation. Family discord, grief, anxiety, and frustration with a Mormon congregation that had seemed to move on without me and my unanswered questions drove me further and further away from happy Sundays at church. I found myself sobbing at the first notes of hopeful hymns, avoiding those who had once been good friends, and seeking escape from my parents and siblings.

So we moved to Utah, a drastic measure that will have demonstrated to anyone who truly knew me just how far down into the depths of despair I had sunk, and just how desperate I was to surface.

We chose a valley town at high altitude, a happy oasis surrounded by mountains, blessed by sunshine, and jam packed with Mormons. In our valley, horses run in open fields, every sunset lights the sky with fire, and a slight breeze from the canyon above stirs up sweet smells year round. Snow falls as ski-perfect powder, thunderstorms spark their way across the valley, and mosquitoes appear to have been outlawed. There are no stop lights in our town, you won’t get into trouble for riding in the back of a pickup, and the occasional traffic backup is due only to the yearly rodeo or loose cattle in the road. It is, when measured by all standards of beauty, a true paradise.

Our first two years here were blissful. For the first time in my life, I felt at home, and believed that I would never again feel the need to move. Our kids, although missing their friends back east, adapted by making new friends, getting involved, and benefiting from parents that were happy once again. Their social calendars were as full as they wished them to be, while Elizabeth and I were content to remain casual in our new friendships. It was enough for us to be happy, spending time together that didn’t revolve around grief and misery.

Not knowing any of our neighbor’s personal histories afforded us the freedom to love them without conditions. We didn’t need to know any more than whatever people were willing to tell us, and since many of them lived on the same street as their parents, siblings, cousins, and childhood friends, they didn’t feel the need to tell us much at all. We were fine with that; it freed us from pre-conceived notions and meant that we could be engaged without the baggage of the past weighing down our relationships.

Church became new and interesting again, and I felt a faith in the good influence that religion can wield in a person’s life begin to once again take foothold in my own. These were good people, with happy children and strong ties to common beliefs and family. They were small town, but they were by no means backwards and ignorant. To me they seemed to be cut from the fringes of Utah Mormon cloth rather than the center, and I didn’t feel pressure to conform to a standard. I knew that we were something of a novelty, being from the East Coast as we were, and I rather enjoyed my life as a New Hampshire Yankee in Brigham Young’s court.

We threw ourselves into valley life. We enjoyed the yearly Independence Day rodeo, made sure we got tickets to the demolition derby, and I even pulled out my grandfather’s shotgun and fired it for the first time. We spent time in the local burger joint, took part in service projects, and for the first time in my life, I cheered for a high school football team. I stopped short of donning Wranglers and a cowboy hat, and none of my radio presets were changed to country music stations, but I did go horseback riding when invited, and even considered learning to hunt. The ultimate small town honor came when I was asked to serve as an emcee along the 4^th of July parade route. It took a few minutes for the street-lining crowd to warm up to my East Coast act, but I must have done something right, because I was asked back the following summer.

Along the way, l wrote a book about Jared losing his life just as I had found mine. Many valley residents took the time to reach out and let me know just how powerful the book had been for them. It had changed their way of thinking, loving, and living, and it had given them hope for their own families. It was important for me to hear that they loved my writing, but much more valuable to me was the sharing of their secret struggles, crushing fears, and troubling doubts. I hadn’t written the book to make money, but to change and perhaps even save lives, even just one. To hear their stories helped me to make something good and beautiful spring out of Jared’s life and death.

Life wasn’t without its speed bumps and disappointments, but it was good.

And then Caleb left for university. The day your first child leaves home to live their own life is bittersweet; you are excited and even envious to know that so many adventures and character-building challenges await them, but at the same time you are sad to know that your life has forever changed, and that you will spend the rest of your days missing them and trying to convince them to visit you. On that night, you shouldn’t be stirred from restless slumber by your youngest child, who has been frightened by shadowy figures lurking in your front yard at two o’clock in the morning.

But I was. I chased the culprits across our freshly toilet-papered yard to their car, managing to get a grip on one of them for just a moment before he slammed the door and they sped away. They came back the next night, and the night after that. It was funny (sort of) the first time; it was summer, and so I figured that mindless teenagers were just out doing what mindless teenagers do when they don’t have to get up in the morning to work for a living, go to school, or report to a probation officer. I thought they would move on to another neighborhood, another house, another town. But they didn’t. They came back the next week, or at least someone did. They doorbell ditched us, papered our trees, and drove past our house, honking their horns and shouting at us. They began calling our daughter’s cell phone over and over again, blocking their numbers and threatening to return and make our world white.

It wasn’t funny anymore.

I called the sheriff and reported the license plate that I had memorized from that first encounter. A deputy was sent to the owner’s house, but the parents told him that their son was away at college and they had been out of town that past week, so there was no way he or their Dodge Durango had been involved. I later confirmed that to be a lie, and while I understood their need to keep their mischievous child from having a permanent record, I wondered about their need to teach their son about accountability.

These unwanted visits went on for weeks, although once school started they took to giving us a break on weeknights. But our weekends were no longer restful; we felt like captives in our own home, dreading nightfall and the mayhem that would ensue along with it. We would sit and watch movies with the windows open, hoping to hear them out in the yard so that we could yell at them before they had a chance to fill the trees with paper or hammer on our windows and doors with their fists. Elizabeth would sometimes even wait for them by the front door, and she managed to more than once throw it open and startle a masked and hooded teenager as he approached our door. On a few occasions they were brazen enough to coat our trees in paper and make their honking drive-byes during the early evening hours before the sun had set. They must have felt invincible, knowing that there was little we could do to stop them.

As parents of a feisty teenage daughter, it did occur to us that Hannah might have offended someone, perhaps a former girlfriend that now held some sort of vendetta against her for a teenage disagreement or betrayal. We wondered what she could have done, however, that would warrant such a sustained barrage of abuse. We questioned her at length, which flooded out home with teenage tension. At fifteen, she already thought we were restrictive and untrusting, and our interrogations only seemed to confirm our lack of faith in her. She remained adamant that she had done nothing to merit such treatment, and we did our best to believe her.

One night I spied yet another shadowy hoard of small-town thugs in our backyard, except this time they were lurking near Hannah’s window. The thought that her blinds were more than likely open and that they had been watching her sent me into an adrenaline rage. I sprinted from the front door, and they made their escape. I gave chase, and nearly caught the fattest of the despicable herd as we rounded a corner north of our house. I followed them through the neighborhood and out to the state road that runs through town. I ran after them until they cut into a field and disappeared.

“I just want to know why,” I tried to shout through the wheezing of my lungs. Their laughter mocked me as they escaped.

After calling the sheriff’s dispatch line and huffing my way through a demand for action, I called Elizabeth, and between gasps for air asked for her to come and pick me up in the car. She was sure that I was having a heart attack, and worried over me until I calmed down enough to rant without gasping for breath.

The deputy that finally showed up that night told me the same thing law enforcement had told me every other time I had called and asked that they assist me in putting an end to out torment. I had to catch the culprits in the act, but I could do nothing to hurt them, or the liability would rest on my head, in spite of the fact that they were trespassing on my property. Just what they meant by “catch them” wasn’t made clear, and I wondered if I would have to actually tackle one of them and sit on his chest until help arrived.

By this point I had a good idea that some of the boys in our church congregation, boys that I had spent the past two years teaching on Sunday mornings, were involved. I made my suspicions known during an ongoing group text sent out to the young men about a youth activity at the church. My accusations were met with anger and denial, followed by an admission of guilt, conflicting stories, and a suggestion that my family needed to “relax.” I was also admonished by church leadership to hold such discussions in private, away from group texts pertaining to church youth activities. One of the accused (guilty) boys did at last call me personally, and although his story changed a few times throughout our conversation, he did say that he would stop, and that he would tell others to stay away from our home as well. I showed good faith and took him at his word, having little other recourse short of getting myself into trouble with the law for thumping him as soundly as I wanted to.

We decided to ignore any future property invasions, in the hopes that they would get bored with us and stop for good. In an attempt at humor, I bought a pile of dollar store toilet paper, set it up on a folding table out front, and posted a sign that read, “YOU WIN!” The paper disappeared that night, but it wasn’t used on our house. We hoped this was a sign that things would be calm moving forward.

In the meantime, Hannah declared her independence from both school and church. The family conversations that followed are private, but it is enough to say I wished for enough superhuman strength to lift the proverbial car off of her troubled body and save her life. We enrolled her in an online school, something that I had never before seen as an option for my kids, or as something my socially active daughter would ever consider.

It was soon after Hannah started her online classes that Caleb revealed to me that while at a Mormon missionary’s farewell party, he had heard a young man refer to his little sister as a slut. Caleb, a calm and well composed young man, trembled with rage as he told me the story. He expressed deep regret at his inaction at that moment. He had wanted to leap on the young man like an angry spider monkey, tearing the flesh from his face, but hadn’t, and it gnawed on his conscience.

Since that moment, I have found myself asking the same question Jared asked of me.

Why do I stay?

The next time the hooded figures came calling, I was ready. As they made to escape in two cars parked up the street, I gave chase in my wife’s car, following the last one to leave our street. We played cat and mouse for an hour; they would stop and try to wait me out, or fake right but turn left, thinking that they could trick me and get away. I laughed as they made every attempt to lose me. They didn’t know that I was well into the third season of “The Rockford Files” on Netflix, and after watching James Garner drive that copper-mist Firebird like Steve McQueen’s protégé, there was no way they were going to lose me. I didn’t have my phone with me, and as I followed our tormenters I could only imagine what Elizabeth must have been thinking back home.

Kids are generally stupid, and this bunch was no different. They eventually returned to our neighborhood and pulled into a dead end. I parked with my high beams aimed at their windshield, and when they tried to pass me I blocked their every attempt to flee past me. After several minutes, a young man summoned his courage and exited their car, walking over to my window. He trembled as he asked what I wanted.

“What do I want? I want you to stop harassing my family! I want you to stay off my property! I want you to tell me why!” I raged.

I then read him the riot act at high volume for twenty minutes, extracted from him a list of the kids involved, and threatened any legal action possible under the law. Another boy had found his stones and joined the one-sided conversation halfway through it. He too trembled as he learned that an angry father is a force to be reckoned with. They both confessed to following the lead of other kids, specifically two girls who allegedly hated Hannah, and to being dumb teenagers who had nothing else to do and no sense. (Their words, not mine.) I asked them if they thought they were good Mormon kids, and if they even listened to a damn thing on Sunday mornings about loving one another.

That seemed to cut them pretty deep.

I let them go and went home, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Worried that I had chased the kids off the road and was feasting on their mangled corpses, Elizabeth had called the sheriffs, and they had sent a patrol car to find me before I took drastic measures. The deputy sheriff turned up at our house a few minutes after I returned, and he informed us that he had pulled over a car with expired tags leaving our neighborhood, and found it to be filled with terrified teenagers. He had taken their names, and to that list he added the names that I had collected. I was given a case number and told to call should I wish to pursue matters any further.

Elizabeth knows far more people in the valley than I do, and some of the names I had collected shocked her. Knowing their parents as she did, she couldn’t believe that they would be involved in something so malicious. Some of them had been in our home, invited over by Hannah for movie nights and birthday parties. It cast a dark light on our view of this happy valley, to find out that so many kids from so many good Mormon families were the cause of our miserable and sleepless weekends. We decided against calling their parents, believing that word of my threats and the warnings of the deputy sheriff would spread throughout the school, bringing an end to the madness. We just wanted it to end.

I had mentioned the situation to a limited number of locals, and the looks and responses I got were anything but empathetic. A distinct sense that they believed me to be over-reacting forced me to shut down any further discussion on the matter. I took my frustration to bed with me each night, and passed many nights in restless sleep. Unhappiness is tiring to the extreme, especially when your dreams of happiness become a waking nightmare. I was exhausted, and so was my family.

Fathers embarrass their teenage children; this is a fact of life that you can’t understand and accept until you grow up and become a father of teenagers. By this time Hannah had passed from embarrassed to mortified, to hear of my running and chasing and threatening, but I felt that there was nothing else I could do. I hoped that she could somehow understand that as her father I would do whatever I could to protect our family, not only from physical threats, but emotional and spiritual menaces as well. Since our family was often exhausted from lack of sleep over the weekends, our Mondays and Tuesdays were tense, and we found ourselves at odds with each other, bickering and slamming doors, pushing each other well past our limits of tolerance.

If the harassment continued, something would had to be done, but I was frustrated and felt mired in failure; if I couldn’t provide a happy life for my family, just how successful could I count myself as a husband and father? Feeling powerless, I began looking at job boards in Arizona, New Mexico, and even California. I had been bullied as a child, and I didn’t want a bunch of teenagers to chase me away from my home as an adult, but to hell with them, I would do what it took to find happiness. Once we left, they could say whatever they damn well pleased, and I wouldn’t care about them one jot or tittle, nor would I give them a further thought.

There were of course, examples, people, and reasons to stay. We had made some dear friends in the valley, and although I thought that they might support us in our efforts to put an end to the late night raids, I didn’t want to drag them into it, nor did I want to risk finding out that they too felt I was overreacting. Elizabeth’s family was another reason to remain, due to the positive experience it had been to live near a warm and loving family. Time spent with cousins, nieces, nephews, siblings, and newborn babies had resulted in good relationships and lasting memories. I even enjoyed our limited time spent with my in-laws, which was a milestone very much worthy of being on the list of reasons to stay.

I wanted to fight, but had very little fight left in me.

We had one weekend of peace after the car chase. We did our best to ignore the onslaught, but it was hard to ignore. I began to wonder when they would begin throwing eggs, tagging our house with paint, and leaving lasting damage to our property. They had already trampled some of Elizabeth’s plants and flowers, and the summer rain had pulped the toilet paper into clumps that hung from high branches and littered our lawn. I stopped bothering to clean it up, because any that I picked up was always replaced with more. At the beginning of summer I had loved pulling into the driveway and looking at the beautiful gardening and grooming that Elizabeth had put so much time and effort into. By the end of the season, I had long tired of pulling up to see the scattered white mess and trampled plants.

Every car that passed in the night was full of assailants, and every noise in the wind a warning sign that we were about to get hit. The kids would stand in the dark living room and watch through the windows, while Elizabeth and I would stop and listen at every sound. I took to spending my Friday and Saturday nights in the upstairs den with the windows open and the sound muted as I played video games for hours past midnight, knowing that I couldn’t have slept had I tried, and hoping to deter the roving gangs from approaching through the dark. We got used to hearing the doorbell at two in the morning, waking to a mess in the yard, and hearing the honking of horns and the slow rumble of vehicles passing our house at a crawl. We worried about leaving the kids alone, for fear that the one night that we did would be the night the attackers would decide to escalate their assaults.

I stopped attending church youth activities in spite of being assigned to do just that. I couldn’t bear the sight of boys that I knew had been involved. Our family found began to find reasons for staying away from church on Sundays as well, and spent time together instead. I knew that the kids might grow accustomed to skipping church, but I had no desire to be there either, so what did it matter? Every week we skipped became easier, and I became more adept at pushing the guilt away with thoughts of teenagers running through the dark at night, then smiling their way through their Sunday morning classes and duties while adults who believed me to be overreacting sat nearby, full of The Spirit.

November came; months since Caleb left home and the start of our sleepless nights had passed. Elizabeth and I were sitting on our bed one Saturday night, the back door to our bedroom open to let in the crisp air of a moonlit night. Before dark I had stretched fishing line at chest and waist height between the trees in our yard in the hope that it would send a kid or two sprawling as they ran through our yard. I didn’t want to slice off any heads, but I did want to send a message.

“Did you hear something?” Elizabeth asked.

As part of what had become our routine, I paused what we were watching and stood to look outside. Sure enough, a pack of shadows ran from the backyard, hooting and hollering at me as they did. I ran to the garage in my boxers and tee shirt, jumped in the car and sped off into the night to give chase. After a loop around the neighborhood, I sped out to the state road and headed north. I saw them up ahead, and as I neared them they jumped a fence and ran off into a grove of trees. I continued north and saw what had to be their vehicles parked across from the local cemetery. I called the sheriff’s dispatch number and informed them that I was about to go mental on a herd of youth that were guilty of repeatedly harassing my home and family, and read off their license plates one by one.

They sent a deputy sheriff right away. As the night (and mayhem) progressed, he managed to pull over a car and speak to its single occupant, a teenage girl. She claimed to have been looking for her brother, whom she admitted had been out with the hooded crowd, but she stated that he had called her for a ride home after feeling uncomfortable with the herd’s activities. The deputy sheriff read her the riot act for her expired plates (What is up with expired plates on teenager’s cars in this valley?) and then waited for her brother to return on foot so that together they could have a chat with their parents. He then came and spoke to us, telling us what he had learned about our troubles and the kids involved. He advised us that we should talk to the parents and try to resolve the matter peacefully.

In the morning I looked out into the backyard and saw our trampoline in pieces on the lawn, and didn’t wonder twice about who had dismantled it. I dressed in a flash and sped over to the church, eager to spend a few minutes with the father of those two kids. By the time I entered the building I was calm, but my hands were damp with the sweat of anxiety. I approached the man and put my hand on his shoulder.

“We need to talk,” I said, a polite but serious tone accompanying the quivers that rippled through my body.

“Yes, yes we do,” he answered.

We chose an empty classroom, and after closing the door, we began to discuss the situation. He related what he knew, and then listened as I explained what our family had been going through, and my understanding that his kids had played a part in it. I was calm, but couldn’t help from trembling as I recounted the past few months and the lasting effects of the experience on my family. Not knowing him well but having no reason to doubt his integrity, I hoped for the best possible reaction. I hoped that he was a good man, a man who would hold his kids accountable, loved his neighbors, and went to church because he wanted to improve who he was, not just out of habit. By the end of our encounter, my hope had moved into cautious faith. We scheduled a meeting in his home that afternoon.

Elizabeth and I spent not quite an hour with that man, his wife, and their two older children. We were able to convey to the kids just how damaging the past few months have been for us, and relate to them the consequences of those late night raids. They were humbled, and tears made their way around the room, followed closely by a box of tissues. I sat with my arms folded and my eyes dry, trying to look as calm and in control as I wanted to be. As I watched the kids and listened to their heartfelt, tear-soaked apologies, I realized that I hadn’t shed a tear in months. This struck me as odd, because since my brother’s death, I had been somewhat of a big baby, crying at the very smallest of emotional moments and memories, happy or sad. I realized that in fact, the last time I had cried was on the very day the torment had started; I had cried as my son had left for university.

This knowledge steeled my resolve, and so I made it clear to them that while we were grateful for their apologies and believed that they had limited involvement in the late night raids, we were determined to end it all for good. If they were willing to help us do that we would be most grateful, and would not pursue matters with the sheriff any further. They promised to do everything in their power, and that with their parent’s help they would spread the word not so much that it had to stop, but more importantly, why.

We left feeling better and more hopeful than we had since summer. We had felt a spirit in that family’s home, a spirit of accountability, trust, and love. Elizabeth and I returned home and enjoyed a peaceful afternoon, with much of it spent napping away our exhaustion.

The following night, after the house was dark and quiet and we were all in bed, the doorbell rang. I looked at Elizabeth and felt the dashing of hope on the rocks of reality. I made my way to the dark front entry and flipped on the outside light as I opened the door.

There stood three teenage boys, each of them looking more humble and forlorn than his fellows.

“We are sorry it is so late, but we didn’t want to wait to come and tell you that we heard what has been happening to your family and we want to tell your family that we are sorry to have been a part of it,” the elected spokesman said.

I didn’t know what to say. I stood in the doorway with my arms folded across my chest, and for a moment I imagined smashing their heads together and slamming the door in their faces. I waited for the punch line, for the eggs to come flying at me, for a bucket of water to come around the corner and soak me.

The joke wasn’t on me, however, and so I called out to Elizabeth. She came and joined me in the doorway. Our kids refused to come out of their rooms, and I remarked that I didn’t blame them. I told the boys that they had helped turn our home into a living hell, and that if they had wanted an adrenaline rush, I would have gladly let them into my garage to box with me. We thanked them for their apologies, and asked them to please do their part and spread the word, then bid them goodnight properly, without chasing them out into the street and into the dark.

This story is far from over. As I write this, we have yet to see the weekend. We are hopeful, but cautiously so; the aftermath of these past few months is apparent in our home. We are struggling to rebuild our children’s love for this valley and its Mormon people, while we try to rebuild our own. Elizabeth and I have made a point of being positive, however, knowing that our attitude has been and will continue to be reflected in our children.

So, Jared…why do I stay…or will I?

The “will I” remains to be seen, but in that man and his wife, I have been blessed with two new examples to support the “why” that I offered to Jared, just days before he took his life.

In fact, if there are but a handful of such examples in Heaven, I’m beginning to think I’d like to go there.

So long as there isn’t any toilet paper.

Frog and Toad are Friends

2014-10-31T16:58:00.000-04:00

This is not a eulogy. (Thank God.)

One of my favorite series of books as a child was the “Frog and Toad” series by Arnold Lobel. The tales of the two amphibious friends that couldn’t have been more different from each other hold a special place in my memories of childhood. The one tall and calm and capable, the other short and intense and unsure, the two balanced each other out, making for good times and a lasting friendship.

In one of their adventures, Frog and Toad read a book about knights in shining armor fighting dragons. The pair begins to wonder if they are as brave as the knights in the book. They look in a mirror and decide that they do indeed look brave, but they decide to climb a nearby mountain together as proof. Along the trail to bravery, they escape a deadly avalanche, avoid being eaten by a snake, and are forced to flee from a hungry hawk. In the end they run home and hide, deciding that they are both brave enough just as they are.

I am not skilled with a hammer. When using a screwdriver, my tongue sticks out in concentration, and in my head I hear the chanting rhyme righty-tighty, lefty-loosey repeated over and over until the task is complete. I’ve never cut a straight line through a piece of wood, I can’t unclog a toilet without soaking myself in poo-water, and the only finish work I am good at is not an appropriate topic for open discussion. The closest I can get to being a handy type of man is bending over and showing some butt-crack.

In addition to being little better than useless when it comes to fixing things, I am not at all brave, sure, or tough. Yes, I shoot guns, I can start a fire with one match, and at the age of forty-one I ran a marathon with very little training (okay, no training, because I was lazy), but I lost a lot of fights as a kid, snakes still bring out the little girl in me, and the only car chase I’ve ever been involved in was when some local teenagers wouldn’t stop harassing us with toilet paper and window peeping.

I won’t ever win any type of manly award. My beard refuses to grow past a patchy stubble, I don’t like wearing clothes for more than an eight hour stretch, and I shower three to four times a day. Just walking into a Banana Republic makes me horny, I know all the words (and some sweet dance moves) to “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, and I wear my emotions like a day-glow-yellow turtleneck. I’m not gay, but there is a lot of drama queen in me.

Also worthy of note is the fact that I’ve never been given a cool nickname. My nieces and nephews used to call me “Bruiser,” but that was probably because they saw me trip over a shadow and cry at the resulting black and blue marks. The name didn’t stick long enough to count anyway.

I am not sure if all of the above makes me Frog or Toad, but it does make me in need of a good friend, a friend that will balance my shortcomings and find strength in my weakness.

Enter Captain Rob.

To start, he has a great nickname (no one will ever call me Captain).

Captain Rob can swing a hammer with precision and purpose, he cuts a straight line every time, and his tongue stays hidden inside his mouth whenever he’s doing any of the many great and powerful things that great and powerful men can do. He plays a convincing pirate, can pilot anything on wheels or water, and grows a real beard faster than I can turn a corner running.

Rob is everything that I am not and more. He is also a lot of what I aspire to be but will never become.

When Rob is around, I am at my bravest, coolest, and most capable. In his company I’ve steered a big boat (well, it was big for me), climbed a couple of mountains, and been chased by a hurricane. I’ve been twenty fathoms under the sea, played with seals in the whitecaps around the Isles of Shoals, and squealed with delight through my scuba mask as I’ve witnessed the rippling colors of a squid in the dark and frigid water on a winter night. I’ve driven a convertible down to Key West, sped across a frozen lake on a snowmobile, and been to more than one Guster concert. Together we’ve camped on a lighthouse island, crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks in the middle of the night, and spent the night with the Swedish Ladies Hiking Team atop Mount Chocurua in the White Mountains.

But…While in The Captain’s company, I’ve hammered dimples into a lot of wood, thrown up a gut full of banana milk and chocolate donuts into the sea, unwittingly walked through the middle of a transvestite gathering in a hotel bar, and proven myself useless on more than one manly project. I’ve wounded myself with power tools, grimaced and whined at the burden of hard labor, tripped over extension cords, and handed over the wrong wrench on more than one occasion.

Although I have felt inadequate in the presence of many men, around Rob I don’t feel any sort of need to measure up. Instead, I feel a distinct and pleasant need to be myself. Our relationship grew strong not because we share interests, talents, and experience, but rather because of our differences in what we bring to the table of friendship. Rob makes it comfortable for me to be me, a favor that I try to return. Even when he calls me “Sally,” I hear an amused affection in Rob’s voice.

For all his muscles and grit, Rob is, on the inside, stuffed with cotton candy. I once watched him sit patiently for well over an hour as my young daughter carefully painted each of his nails in bright shades of pink and purple, coated his face with cheeky blush, and filled his hair with clips and ribbons. He has carried each of my sleeping children in his arms, and shouldered them while trick or treating on more than one Halloween night (dressed each time as a pirate, of course). He has played their games, traded jokes and tickles with them, and spoiled them with unexpected presents and sweets. He will forever be their favorite captain.

Rob’s heart is bigger than his chest. At the lowest point of my life, when I felt that I couldn’t go on in the wake of my brother’s death, Rob spent hours at my side. Much of that time was spent installing the wood flooring that Elizabeth and I had ambitiously purchased without much thought to its installation. His craftsmanship was indeed an appreciated service, but the humble hours spent together on our back deck one day after lunch was a godsend for Elizabeth and me. Rob listened quietly as we poured our grief, confusion, and despair at his feet. After taking it all in, he shared his own heartbreaking experience, the sudden loss of his brother Ricky years earlier. With a wounded voice, he shared all that he had felt and learned from a moment in time that will never leave him. Covered in sawdust and tears, Rob bore our burden with us, and mourned with us as we mourned. I loved him even more for that.

Knowing Rob like I do, he would shake off my sincere expression of love, appreciation, and praise as nothing more than the sensitive fabrication of his dear friend “Sally.”

And that is Rob to anyone that knows him. He is a man without guile that carries within him a bare-chested spirit, because he has a habit of giving the shirt off his back to someone in need.

Earlier this week, my good friend Captain Rob posted a photo of the tugboat on which he serves as first mate. The caption read “Outbound from Cape May northbound. Hope this thing makes it!” I have seen Rob post photos from his floating office many times over the past few years, but this one gave me a few moments of pause. I know that Rob is a capable, brave, and experienced seaman, one that doesn’t throw such comments about without cause. The business of my day eventually pushed the foreboding feeling to a dark corner of my mind, and in time it was forgotten.

Two days later, at an ungodly hour, an incoming text vibrated me out of a deep sleep. Pulled from the darkness of dreams into the bright light of technology (and without my glasses), I could barely make out the sender’s name. It had come from Neil, a good friend to both Rob and myself.

Why would Neil text me at this hour? My birthday has come and gone. It isn’t Christmas, and there is nothing special about today.

Rob.

I dropped the phone and rolled back into the warm cocoon of blankets, unwilling to don my glasses and read the message that was sure to be bad news about Captain Rob. I stared into the darkness, listening to Elizabeth breathing softly beside me. My phone rested a million miles away on the nightstand as I tried not to envision a world without my dear friend living in it.

How would I ever be brave again?

Many minutes and a very hot shower later, I summoned the dregs of my courage and picked up my phone to read Neil’s text.

Rob’s tug sank in a storm off the coast of Rhode Island. Rob and the crew had no time to pull on their emergency suits, only life vests.

My knees buckled; I fell back and sat on the edge of the tub, bile rising within my throat.

They were rescued by a fishing boat. (Hey Neil, next time start with the good news.)

My head felt light with relief, and a smile spread its way across my face. Rob’s phone was most likely at the bottom of the ocean, but I called and left him a voicemail anyway, wanting him to eventually share in the joy I was feeling to know that he was alive.

Thanks to a wise and wonderful wife, I was soon on a plane heading east to surprise my friend with an unannounced crashing of his “Man Overboard” party. It was an absolute adrenaline rush, to throw my arms around my dear friend and tell him that I love him. To see him standing before me, dressed in the lifejacket that had kept him afloat, laughing, smiling, and living, struck me as a blessing from heaven, one that filled me with happiness to bursting.

Rob told me the harrowing tale of the sinking, and how within a span of just a few minutes he and the crew went from marveling at the pounding waves to swimming for their lives in them, wondering if rescue would arrive.

Later, during a quiet moment together, I asked the bravest man I know, “Were you scared?”

“You know Matt, I’ve never been more scared in my life,” Rob answered in a serious, my-life-course-has-been-forever-altered tone.

And in that moment, I decided that Rob and I are brave enough just as we are.

Love you Toad. (Or am I Toad?)

Luck Had Nothing To Do With It

2014-09-05T16:10:00.000-04:00

Author's note:

Last winter I sat in a booth at the local drug store and listened over burgers and fries as two friends told me the following true story of what they found on an elk hunt, and how it led to closure for a family whose father had been missing for seven years. With their permission, I recorded the conversation, and that recording inspired this short story, which may or may not be published in a collection of hunting stories in the near future.

Chapter 1: The Tag

“Todd, why is two-hundred and seventy-five dollars missing from our checking account?” The blinking amber lights in Annie’s tone hinted at the potential for danger ahead, depending upon my answer.

“What?” Panic had my mind rummaging through recent purchases. “I don’t know, did you call the bank?”

“Yes, and the only thing they could tell me was that the direct debit charge came from something called DNR,” my wife explained.

“Two- seventy -five?” I asked, stalling for time as I dug deeper into my memory.

“Yes.”

“DNR?” I wondered aloud, as my mental shovel hit bedrock.

“Two hundred and seventy-five dollars, paid to something called DNR,” Annie confirmed, trading the blinking ambers for rapidly-flashing reds.

“I’ll figure it out and make it right,” I promised.

“Please do,” my petite but dangerous wife encouraged.

“I will.”

“And please pick up some milk on the way home,” she added sweetly.

“Will do,” I agreed.

“Love you,” she said, turning the sweetness up a notch.

“Love you too,” I replied before signing off.

I sat at my desk and stared through the heavy silence that followed our brief but stressful exchange. Such a large debit to something I had never heard of made no sense. I had long ago made it a habit to consult with Annie before buying anything more expensive than a candy bar, so there was just no way that I had spent close to three hundred dollars without her approval.

And then it hit me: Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, also known as the DNR.

I picked up the phone and called my brother-in-law.

“Hello?”

“Peter, how much was that limited-entry elk tag we each put in for?” The words rushed out of my mouth in a tangled string.

“Well, it was ten dollars to put in for the draw…”

“Yeah, I know, but how much was it if your name was chosen?” I interrupted.

“I think it’s just about three-hundred bucks, maybe a little less,” my brother-in-law answered.

“Would they pull it from your bank account without notification, and would the charge show as coming from the DNR?”

“You sucker, are you telling me you drew a Boulder Mountain limited-entry elk tag on your first try?”

Chapter 2: The Pressure

My father-in-law never does anything halfway; when he sets his mind to something, Howard follows through in style. Camping and hunting are no exception, and after dozens of elk hunts at his favorite hunting spot on Boulder Mountain in southern Utah, Howard’s trips have become legendary, and an invitation to participate is considered a prize among his peers. The food, which includes the best Thai curry this side of Bangkok, is enough to incite jealousy in the good hearts of those not invited, and the wall tent heated by wood stove offers top notch accommodations worthy of raving online reviews. As his son-in-law, I understood that my bunk in Howard’s tent that year was afforded to me by both my marriage to his daughter and my luck in the tag drawing; a return trip the following year was still mine to earn.

I spent the last few weekends before the hunt at the range with my .270, trying to fine tune my scope and minimize my spread. One night after venting my shooting frustrations to my father, he suggested that I try out his .306, which would give me a little more power, and that would be a good thing when hunting for a trophy elk. In spite of the thirty year old scope, I discovered that I was much more comfortable and my aim more precise with the .306, and so it became my gun for the hunt.

The day came, and Peter and I climbed into his truck to make the drive south. Howard and his other son Rob had already set up camp earlier in the week. We would meet them there, and our hope was that they would have dinner warm and waiting when we arrived.

“Gonna go get us some of that Boulder Mountain tag soup!” Peter said in a sing-song voice. He turned and grinned at me.

“You just keep on thinking that way if it gets you through the day,” I replied.

Much like his father, Peter sees things through to the end, and his dedication to needling me wasn’t unexpected. In the weeks since drawing that tag, I couldn’t recall an email, text, or conversation that had failed to end with Peter’s advice on seasoning the “tag soup” that I was sure to be cooking come the end of the hunt. I chalked it up to jealousy and tried to laugh it off, but in truth, the joy of a first-time-lucky trophy tag was overshadowed by the pressure that came along with it. I had to walk off Boulder Mountain with a trophy elk, not only to earn Peter’s respect and a bunk in that wall tent the following year, but because in Annie’s eyes, a freezer full of meat was the only way to justify the cost of the non-refundable tag.

Dinner was indeed waiting for us, and it hit the spot after a long drive with Peter and his quips behind the wheel. I dropped into my bunk that night with a head heavy from the weight of what lay ahead and a silent prayer that I be granted what it would take to measure up to my own expectations.

Chapter 3: The Hunt

After a comfortable night of curry-fueled dreams, we rose well before first light to a frosty mountain morning. A quick breakfast and a thorough gear check later, we climbed onto the four-wheelers and followed a cattle trail deep into the wilderness. After five or six miles of steady riding the trail ended, and we parked the vehicles. At that point we decided that Peter and I would head southeast down the slope, while Howard and Rob hiked west along the high ridgeline. From their vantage point they would set up a scope and spot for us, using the radio to guide us towards any elk they might find.

Once the hunt started, the teasing stopped. Peter was all business as we made our way into the valley below. After a mile or more, we stopped to eat some granola bars and check in with Howard and Rob, hoping to hear that they had spotted some elk on their way to bedding down as the sun began to burn on the horizon. They hadn’t, and so we watched and waited.

“Hey,” I whispered thirty minutes later, “I’m freezing my giblets off, how ‘bout you?”

“Yeah, I’m cold,” Peter replied, his own voice barely audible. “Why don’t we head further east and try to warm up a bit as we go?”

I didn’t need additional prompting. Peter followed as I turned and headed due east. Not a minute later, Howard hailed us on the radio.

“We’ve spotted a small group of bulls about a mile to the south of us, heading towards the desert,” Howard said.

“We’re probably a mile and a half east of them,” Peter replied.

“Have you seen anything over that way?” Howard asked.

“Nothing.”

“We’ve spotted a couple of spikes, but there are at least a few raghorns in this group, a couple of which I think might have an extra point or two,” Howard said.

“Well that settles it; we’ll make a run to the west, and once below you, we’ll slow down and resume the hunt nice and slow,” Peter decided aloud.

We took off running, the crystalized snow crunching beneath our boots in spite of our best efforts to float silently above it. As I followed Peter over fallen trees, around clumps of oak brush, and across open spaces, I imagined myself to be Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans, running after evil British redcoats.

After a mile of running we slowed to a walk. Peter pulled out his radio.

“Dad, do you see us?” He asked between gasping breaths.

“Yes, I’ve got you. You’re about a quarter mile north of that group of bulls, and they’re still looking to bed down,” Howard answered.

“Okay, good. We’re gonna try glassing for them and see if we can get a good look, or maybe even a shot.” Peter stuffed the radio back into his pocket and put his binoculars to his face.

I followed suit with my rifle, but the old scope wasn’t much for spotting, especially when my chest was still heaving from our run. I lowered the gun and began to scan the hillside below with my naked eyes, but couldn’t see the elk. I looked further south, but still found nothing, until I noticed some movement across the valley, up the hill on the other side.

“That is the fattest elk I’ve ever seen!” I whispered.

“What? Where are you looking?” Peter asked.

I pointed to the hill directly across from where we stood. A fat elk on hairy legs nosed its way up the slope. Peter raised his binoculars.

“That’s a cinnamon brown bear,” he said, a smile in his voice.

I took his binoculars and got a better look. “Okay, so it’s a bear. But with that blonde back and those dark legs it looks like a fat elk,” I explained.

“Tag and bear soup…” I heard Peter whisper with a chuckle.

I punched him in the arm and handed back his binoculars. “Hey, don’t forget that I’m the one carrying the gun,” I warned my brother-in-law.

“Let’s move a bit and try to get a clear line of sight to these bulls,” Peter suggested, ignoring my hollow threat and patting the pistol holstered on his belt.

We made our way to the southeast, hoping to get an angle on the elk, now bedded down for the day. After a long and quiet trek down the hillside, we realized it just wasn’t going to happen; too much brush and too many smaller ridges lay before us, blocking the view.

“Hey Peter, do you think we’d be able to spot them from across the ravine and up that hill where the bear was?” I wondered aloud, indicating with a nod of my head. The bear was long gone.

“That’s not a bad idea, let’s backtrack north and then west before we drop down into the ravine and cross over. Those elk are bedded down, but we don’t want to spook them, and this brush is too thick to cross through quietly.”

“Or at all,” I added.

Peter radioed Howard and let him know our plan, and we headed back up the slope. We then turned and hiked west until we felt we could move across the ravine without disturbing the elk, and made our way down the hill once again. The incline on the southern side of the ravine was steep, so much so that we spent some time climbing on hand and foot to reach a point that we could hike standing up again. We moved in silence, taking cautious steps and keeping the noise we made to a minimum. Soon we were just about where the bear had been, more than a mile south of Howard and Rob, with the elk bedded down three hundred yards north of us.

Peter and I settled back into the hillside and got comfortable. We could see the elk from our position, and we took the next hour or so to glass each one, looking for a rack worthy of the tag, and the shot that would make it happen. This being my first elk hunt, I would have gladly taken anyone of them and been thrilled with the result.

Chapter 4: The Shot

“Well, whaddya think, Todd?” Peter asked.

“I think any one of them will fill my freezer,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Yeah, but which one will fill your wall?”

“That one to the left looks like an eight by nine to me; he’s definitely a taker,” I replied.

“He is a nice one,” Peter agreed.

“But the shot might be just a little too far for me,” I confessed.

Peter scanned the hillside below us and thought a moment before speaking. “We could try moving down the hill a bit, but that ridge near the bottom looks like it might get in the way,” Peter thought out loud.

I looked down the hill and saw that he was right; we might scamper all the way down the hill only to lose the shot in exchange for shorter distance.

“We could also come back this evening and hope they feed their way closer to us. Don’t forget that this is the first day of the hunt; you don’t have to take one today,” Peter advised.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to regret not taking the shot when I have it either,” I noted.

“Tag soup,” Peter nodded in agreement.

We sat in silence, pondering and weighing our options. The sun was high in the sky, and with a rumble in my stomach I realized that in all the excitement and exercise of the hunt I had lost track of time.

“Let’s set up a shot on that big boy, and see what you think,” Peter suggested.

“Sounds good,” I said.

I pulled out the bipod, and Peter built a stable platform for it out of rocks. I took my time getting into a comfortable position with my back settled into the hillside. At three hundred yards I figured on a four inch spread and two inches of drop, especially with my inexperience. I would have to spend some time looking through that old scope, lining up my shot and dry firing the gun a few times to make sure it felt right.

The sight of that big elk filling my scope was exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. He was bedded down and turned slightly away from us, and a little clump of scrub oak blurred my view of his chest cavity. I struggled to slow my breathing and lower my heart rate as I contemplated taking an angled shot at three hundred yards.

“Well?” Peter asked.

“It’s definitely not a straight on, broad side shot, but I think if I can hit him just behind that front shoulder blade he’ll stay down,” I answered.

“Let me take a look through the scope,” Peter said.

I handed him the rifle. He raised it to his shoulder and looked through the glass. I watched as he tried to find the elk through the thirty year old optics.

“Where is he?” I heard him mutter under his breath, and a moment later he whispered, “Okay, got him.”

“And?”

“And this scope is seriously old, you are going to have to make the first shot count,” Peter replied.

“But you think it’s doable?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s doable, but let me put it this way: if you make it I’ll have to hear about your miracle trick shot on your first ever elk hunt for the rest of my life,” Peter joked, handing me the rifle.

Once back in my comfortable shooting position, I practiced relaxing my body and exhaling slowly to keep those crosshairs fixed in place just a few inches below his back and trained in on his vitals as I dry-fired several times, envisioning the moment when the resulting noise would be more than a click.

“I think I can do this, I think it feels right,” I finally declared.

Peter radioed Howard and told him to keep an eye on that elk, should he jump up and run when I hit him.

A few minutes later, I took the shot. The bull jumped to his feet and turned to face us in an instant, and as he did I worked my bolt, chambered another round, and took a second shot.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down Todd,” Peter admonished.

“Well that one missed; I might as well have taken a hip shot,” I muttered, angered by my own impatience.

At that moment, the bull turned, giving me a broadside view of his body. The other elk were on their feet and beginning to move. I chambered a third round and took another shot, this one calm and careful, centered on his chest cavity.

Without taking another step, the bull dropped.

Chapter 5: The Bones

There would be no tag soup. I would leave Boulder Mountain with my head held high and a freezer load of meat. Annie would be pleased and Howard would be impressed. Peter would still rib me, but his jokes would now be delivered with a hint of respect, and maybe even a dose of jealousy on the side. I heaved a sigh of absolute relief, and followed it up with a joy-filled chuckle. I looked up at Peter, whose face was lit up with a smile.

“Nothing like it, is there?” he said, nodding at his own memories.

“Oh, man that was something!” I almost shouted. I jumped to my feet and improvised a victory dance.

“Thank goodness you shoot better than you dance,” Peter remarked.

And there it was; a little hint of respect wrapped inside a ribbing. It felt good.

We stood and packed up our gear, then hiked down the hill in a straight line, hoping we could navigate our way through the brush and come up the other side to where the bull lay. The terrain was rough and rocky, and we took our time, making sure to watch our steps in order to keep from spraining an ankle. Peter led the way, and as we reached the bottom of the ravine I followed him around a great big boulder that had long been wrestling with a juniper’s roots. Had I not been paying attention I would have run right into Peter when he stopped without warning.

“Todd, is that a human skull?”

I heard the words, but my brain took a moment to process their meaning. After it had, I stepped up next to Peter and followed his gaze towards the ground. The unmistakable shape of a human skull stuck up out of the dry leaves. I scanned the surrounding area and took in more bones, each of them bleached white from time in the sun.

Peter had the radio out and was talking to Howard.

“Dad, we just found bones,” Peter told him.

“And...?”

"No, I mean we found human bones; I almost stepped on the skull, and there are ribs, femurs, and a whole bunch of other bones half buried in leaves and mixed in with some shredded clothing and a pair of boots.” Peter shook his head as he said the words, as if he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Well, it might snow tonight; you’d better mark the spot somehow, so that when we get the sheriff in here we can lead him back to it,” Howard instructed without missing a beat.

The bones weren’t scattered much at all, although it was obvious that they had been there for a couple of seasons, maybe more. We spent the next several minutes examining the scene in subdued silence. The thrill of the hunt had faded at the sight of the skull, a shadowy reverence taking its place. Someone had died right there were we stood, and their body left alone on the hillside. It was a humbling, beautiful place to be. Upon closer inspection we found the remnants of a leather motorcycle jacket, dark jeans, and a pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots. Peter reached down and carefully picked up the skull. Most of the teeth were missing, and it was obvious that mice had been gnawing on those that remained.

“Todd, look at this,” Peter said, his voice soft and reverent. He turned the skull around and held it towards me so that I could get a good look.

There was a hole in the center of the left temple, just behind the eye socket.

Chapter 6: The Cleaning

We didn’t have any tape with which to tag the spot, so Peter placed the skull on top of the big boulder as a marker. We took some mental notes and snapped a few photos with our phones for good measure, so that we could lead law enforcement back to the spot when the time came. Once we felt confident that we knew the area well enough, we continued up the slope to find my elk.

As we approached the animal, the thrill of the hunt returned. I had seen elk before, as they migrated each year through the mountains where we lived, but I had never seen one so close, so still, and so massive. The excitement almost overshadowed the anticipation of what came next.

When I was sixteen I had tried cleaning a deer with my dad looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do, but within minutes I felt sick and ready to puke, at which point he had told me to go and fetch the horses. I had never fully cleaned an animal before, let alone something as massive as a bull elk. This time, I looked to my brother-in-law for guidance as I began the process, determined to complete it. I didn’t do too bad a job, and only made a minor mess of the guts. By the time my hands were bloody, Howard and Rob had joined us, and while I finished up, Peter took them down the hill to see the bones.

Since we didn’t have our frame packs with us to carry the meat back to the four-wheelers, we decided it best to cape the elk and haul the head out that afternoon, leaving the rest for the following day. We planned on driving into town that night to notify the local sheriff that we had found human remains, and if he needed to he could send someone in with us to investigate when we returned for the meat in the morning.

The first hill drained my strength. I was sweating and breathless, and every muscle in my legs was quaking as I reached the top. That head weighed at least seventy-five pounds, and in the three mile hike back to the trail head we would have to climb at least fifteen hundred vertical feet. Peter spelled me for the next stretch and then he too was spent. At that point we lashed the head to a fallen tree branch and carried it on our shoulders together. It was awkward, but it allowed the weight to be shared between the two of us. When we finally reached the four-wheelers it had been dark for some time.

Howard and Rob were waiting with dinner and the news that they had lucked out with a cell signal, and had used it to call the sheriff’s department. Two deputies would meet us in the morning, and we would show them the bones. Exhausted after a long, tough, rewarding, and emotional day, I brushed my teeth and dropped into my bunk without so much as a thought to sitting around the fire to brag about my elk and wonder aloud about the taste of tag soup.

Chapter 7: The Deputies

I hadn’t seen a lot of The Andy Griffith Show in my time, but I knew an Andy and Barney duo when I saw one, and the two deputies that met us the next morning were heavy contenders for best tribute act. The first, (we’ll call him Andy) was tall, quiet, and commanding. Andy exuded confidence, experience, and direction. He also carried all their gear. The second, (yes, we’ll call him Barney) was excitable and chatty, eager to keep pace with Andy but physically unable, due to the only characteristics setting TV’s Deputy Fife apart from ours: about twelve inches in height and fifty pounds in weight.

We rode the four-wheelers to the end of the cattle trail, and then started the hike back to the bones. Barney was dressed in heavy coveralls, and in spite of the November cold he was soon sweating like a U.S Senator strapped to a lie detector. We did our best to keep the pace slow and manageable, but still found ourselves stopping to watch Barney catch up or catch his breath, or both. It didn’t help, the fact that in between gasps for air, Barney felt the need to tell stories about his dangerous life as a deputy.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but…” Barney would begin, and with every outlandish story I caught a slight shake of Andy’s head. He must have long ago grown accustomed to the constant chatter and over share of his annoying yet amiable companion, because he never once interrupted or rebuked him.

I half-expected Barney to reach into his pocket and ask Andy, “Can I put my bullet in?”

At long last we arrived at the elk.

“Peter, why don’t Todd and I stay to cut and pack up the meat, while you and Rob take the deputies down to see the bones,” Howard suggested.

“Sounds like a plan; we may be down there some time,” Andy agreed.

Peter and Rob led the deputies down the hill, and I began to cut up the elk, with Howard guiding the process.

They spent a good hour and a half down at the site, and when they came back up the hill they carried several bags filled with the bones and personal effects they had found.

“I already asked these two fellas, but I’ve got to ask you two as well; did any of you find a gun, a knife, or any other item that might be used as a weapon?” Andy asked with authority.

“No sir, we didn’t. We looked around a bit, but we didn’t want to disturb any evidence, unlikely as there was to be any after such a long time,” I answered.

“He’s right,” Howard confirmed.

Andy stood quiet and looked us over for a long moment, as if trying to discern our propensity for dishonesty. Eventually he nodded his thanks, signaling the end of the matter.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you find?” Howard asked the deputies.

Barney was quick to step up to an imagined podium topped with microphones and provide a statement in reply. His hands rested on his hips and his voice deepened as he answered Howard’s question. “We found a wallet, a truck key, an undersized wrench, and a small screwdriver,” he said.

You’d have thought he had just revealed the identity of the fabled shooter on the grassy knoll.

“Was there any identification in the wallet? Do you know who he is?” I asked.

“We have a pretty good idea about who the deceased may be, but we can’t comment on that,” Andy said, before Barney could open his mouth and say something that he shouldn’t have.

The hike back to the cattle trail was once again a long and steep one, made more difficult by not only the heavy packs filled with meat, but by Barney’s company as well.

“Guys, we’re in no hurry, we’ve got all day,” he reminded us over and over again, as we did our best to make the trip a quick one.

Andy was having difficulty carrying the heavy bag of bones along with their gear, which included a rake. There wasn’t room in his pack for the bag, and so he had to carry it (and the rake) in his hands, making a tough hike that much harder.

Barney carried his gun on his hip, and presumably, a single bullet in his pocket.

After a half hour of watching Andy struggle, Peter stopped and suggested that they put the bones and evidence in his pack.

“You sure? That pack’s got to be pretty heavy with all that meat in there,” Barney asked. He was sweating buckets again, and had unzipped his coveralls and rolled them down to his waist.

“Thanks, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Andy said thankfully.

It may have been a lot of trouble, but Peter didn’t complain once. We hiked our way out to the trail and rode the four-wheelers back to camp, where we parted ways with Andy and Barney after accepting their handshakes and thanks.

I slept well that night.

Chapter 8: The Closure

Ten years to the week before I shot that elk, an older gentleman from Colorado had driven west into Utah, making it as far as Boulder Mountain before parking his car and disappearing into the wilderness. The initial search to find him had lasted for weeks, during which time they hadn’t found a single clue as to what had happened to him. After six months his missing report was filed away as an unsolved disappearance.

Two weeks before I shot that elk, the missing man’s daughter had made her first call to the sheriff’s department in several years. She had been thinking of her father, and hoped there might be some news. The sheriff was very sorry, but no, there wasn’t anything new to report on her father’s case.

Two months after I shot that elk, I called the sheriff and asked him if they had identified the remains, and if the mystery of the man’s death had been solved. They had, and it had been. The man was indeed the man Andy and Barney thought he might be, the missing man from Colorado. The hole in his left temple was nothing more than the wear of time on a part of the skull that is naturally thinner than the rest, and while they couldn’t say for sure how the man had died, it did not appear that he had taken his own life. He had most likely gotten lost and wandered several miles away from his car, and unable to find his way out, had died of exposure.

That following Spring, a few members of the man’s family came to Boulder Mountain so that Andy could guide them to the site where their loved one had died. They spent a couple of hours under that juniper, reflecting on the man they had missed for so many years, and taking comfort in the fact that he had been found at last.

I still marvel at everything that led us to finding that man’s remains. The long hike in, the old scope on my father’s rifle, the cinnamon brown bear foraging for grubs on the hillside, the elk bedding down in that specific spot; they all played a part in leading Peter and me to make our way down into that ravine and around that boulder. And my first time tag drawing wasn’t even the beginning; the string of events had started long ago when my father-in-law went hunting as a boy on Boulder Mountain with his father, and that tradition of hunting on Boulder Mountain long held by his family had brought bittersweet closure to another.

You might say that luck had nothing to do with it.

The End

Son of Man

2014-08-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

Dear Caleb,

Time has sprinted ahead of me, and I have lost the race. When you were born, I vowed to one day send you into the world as an all-knowing and experienced young man. Last week, however, after your 1:00 AM text regarding your clogged shower drain, I realized that there are a good many things that I’ve failed to teach you before you leave for university and the independent life of an adult.

As a poor substitute for effort and experience, I have written a list of things that I feel you need to know but failed to impress upon you in the eighteen years I have had to do so. Please understand that had I been given more time (maybe another thirty years or so) I would have taught you all of these important life lessons and more.

But don’t take that to mean I am inviting you to stay…

On with the wisdom, and remember to read between the lines with your tongue in your cheek.

People:

Some people dip their food in puddles of ranch dressing and then eat the results. Trust me; there is nothing you can do about it. Just hold your nose while they eat, and try not to look at the creamy corners of their mouth or smell their breath. I suspect that some of these same people also wipe their boogers on the bathroom wall, fart while in line at the bank, and eat homemade yogurt in the library. In your travels through life, you’ll also meet people that kiss their pets on the mouth, people that would rather ride 50 miles on a bike than eat ice cream, and people who believe that reality TV shows are unscripted. I don’t know what to tell you, other than to say that everybody poops, so everyone has their own crap to deal with, and they deal with it in their own way. Try your best to love them all, and let God sort them out later.

Etiquette/Common Courtesy:

Don’t eat tuna fish on a date, during an interview, or at the movies. Eat it like I trained you; only on Sundays after church, when everyone else is napping.

Infection:

Germs are everywhere! Don’t just wash your hand every five minutes; wear a protective biohazard suit every day. Well, maybe not every day, because you don’t want to risk losing your immune system altogether. Avoid door knobs, TV remotes, and wearing other people’s gym clothes. A controlled encounter with germs can be good for you, however, so if you feel that you haven’t been exposed in a while, kiss a girl; they are covered in cooties. Delicious cooties.

The Most Dangerous of Creatures:

Speaking of cootie carriers, girls are roaming all over out there, so be aware and prepare yourself for exposure. You will notice that most of them are cute, lots of them are pretty, and some of them are gorgeous, but don’t be fooled; all of them are dangerous. Shower often, wear clean clothes, comb your hair, and make sure you always have mints to freshen your breath, because all of this confuses them and seems to render them uninterested and harmless. The nicer you are and the more you go to class, the less likely you are to be approached (and eventually devoured) by a girl. Be on your guard at all times; they are unpredictable, and will strike for the heart when you are least expecting it. Your mother caught me off guard, and look at me now, all infected with happiness and love. Mush, mush, kiss, kiss, ugh, ugh.

Knowledge is Power, Found in the Most Peculiar Places:

There is a lot of wisdom to be found in public bathrooms, and not all of it is written on the walls. Some of the more memorable lessons I’ve learned in the most necessary of rooms are as follows: a) Life sometimes stinks b) Still waters often run deep c) God sometimes opens a window (or at least provides paper towels) so that you don’t have to touch a doorknob. Keep an eye out in there, without actually looking around. Which reminds me of one more lesson from the John: Don’t judge. (That one I learned standing at urinals.)

Religion/Architecture:

Buildings can be scary and confusing. Having lived in a small mountain town for the past two years, you may have forgotten that some irresponsible architects design buildings that reach high into the sky, as high as four (or even five) stories! Doesn’t anyone read the Bible anymore? God did not intend for us to walk around in the sky like he does, people! Be wise; don’t enter a skyscraper without a map, a purpose, and the foil hat that I slipped into your suitcase before you left.

Expectations vs. Reality vs. Patience:

From time to time you will need to preserve food in the form of leftovers, because breeding fungi and spores in your fridge is an American privilege. When prepping this mold-destined food for containment, plastic wrap is not the way to go. The cutting edge on the plastic wrap box will never be on the side that you need it to be, and so you will have to let go of the plastic that you have pulled off the roll, in order to spin the box around and make a cut. This action causes the plastic wrap to cling to itself. This is dangerous, because a vein in your head might burst while you are trying to unstick the plastic wrap from itself. Seriously, stay away from that clear and shiny killer! The atmosphere is probably layered in cling wrap that has been thrown into the sky with frustrated damnation; maybe NASA should send up a probe and look into that as a cause for climate change. Anyway, when storing leftovers use containers with lids, they are easier on your health, and the lids make good throwing stars should those pesky kitchen ninjas attack.

Nutrition and Modern Tradition:

Fresh and non-moldy food is important, you need it to live. Remember that the more you eat, the fatter you may get, unless you eat outside wearing a muscle shirt and running in circles to create a whirlpool of sweat. Some people also say that fruit and vegetables have some nutritional value, but I’m waiting for more evidence before taking that risk on a grand scale. For now, just to be safe, do what I do and only eat nature’s flavorless trash raw and unwashed, under the light of a full moon. I can tell you that water is important, and that you can drink it anywhere and anytime without the risk of weight gain, in spite of what some girls will tell you about “water weight.”

Ego and a Healthy Interest in Others:

You will soon discover that people say many things that aren’t worth the oxygen expelled in the process. As I listen to the world around me yammer on, there are loads of more interesting thoughts piling up inside my head. Important, beneficial-to-the-universe type thoughts. I would like to just talk over everyone, but your mother tells me that would be rude (whatever!). I have mastered the art of the feigned look of interest, and you should too. As a master of facial feigning, you will never have to waste time actually listening while someone is sharing every detail of their “fascinating” dream from the night before, or vomiting up useless information about their “fabulous” week in the Poconos. No, as a master, you can look interested on the outside, while inside you are wondering how long of a drive it would take for an entire bale of hay to blow off the back of a farmer’s pickup truck, piece by piece.

Cuts, Bruises, and Broken Things:

Candy fixes everything. Carry an emergency revival-by-candy kit with you at all times, and don’t be afraid to work miracles with it. God gave us candy not only to mend wounds, cure disease, and stop bleeding, but to heal the world. If politicians, religious leaders, and dysfunctional families would sit down together around big round tables piled high with candy, war and strife would fade into distant memory, leaving peace and prosperity to coat the earth like chocolate and caramel over nougat. Dip your life in candy and be blessed among men.

In addition to all of the above, remember the following, in no particular order:

-the world is a crazy, beautiful, emotional place

-books

-not all people suck

-don’t settle

-Jared

-write

-when you don’t know where you’re going, you just go!

-aliens from the Pleiades cluster are watching over you

-if it’s raining and you aren't outside jumping in puddles, you’d better be inside watching a movie

-all politicians lie, without exception

-don’t eat the toilet mint

-Tarzan

-you've got to be you, because no one else can

-Hannah and Solomon (you know, your siblings?)

-never underestimate the power of a fake British accent in desperate situations

-don’t forget to road trip

-some of your strongest moments will be those when you are driven to your knees

-suitcase full of pistols and money!

-girls

-don’t be liberal, don’t be conservative, don’t even sit in the middle; labels kill independent thought

-music

-you're never alone

-Mom and I love you

-you've got this

~~Boy~~ Man, am I going to miss you.

Love, Dad

A Mother’s Post Script:

When you were four years old, your mother discovered that a song from Tarzan represented everything she felt about her little boy. The lyrics and upbeat music combined to encapsulate all the hopes, dreams, faith, and love that she held in her heart for you. As you well know, she still loves to watch this movie with you, and I imagine that it will be her go-to movie when she is missing you and needs a boost.

Caleb, there will be some rough moments ahead, moments that will send you sprawling. You‘ll land on your face, bruise your knees, and burn some skin as you skid across the ground. You may feel as though you can’t get up, and you may consider staying put, broken down and defeated in the dirt of life. In those moments, remember this song, and remember the little boy that you once were, riding in the back seat of his mother’s car as she sang it with you over and over again. In those moments, remember that you are now the man she knew you’d become.

And when you do, pick yourself up, look to the sky, and walk tall with pride.