The Joel Train

Clearly that didn't work.

My goal was to spend 30 minutes to an hour writing something each day, Monday through Friday.  Just a daily exercise to put some thoughts together and get in the habit of writing.  I'd been trying to write at the beginning of my work day.  And that was mostly successful.  But I'd get excited about a thought or memory and then spend too much time trying to figure out how to communicate it.  It wasn't really sustainable.  I was going to get fired.  So I set it aside for a while.

Also, writing isn't easy.  I noticed that I am pretty limited.  I use the same words over and over, often just a sentence or two apart.  limited as I am by the time, (see, I used limited again!  It's like a word gets warmed up once I use it and then it's just more available than the rest.), limited as I am by the time allotted, I can't seem develop anything more complicated than a quick flit of a memory.  I fear that it's not an issue of time, but an inability to organize and articulate my thoughts.

I joke that I "came online" at age 13.  There was a moment when I began to take real notice of the things around me.  I can't say it was 13 exactly, but I wasn't a thoughtful child, and so when people say they have vivid memories of their childhood, I can't relate.  I just looked up one day and said "oh, I should start paying attention."  So maybe that's why it's important to me to capture these fliting, fleeting memories.

We moved to Atlanta from Raleigh when I was three.  There was a tension in our house between my Mother's family back in North Carolina and our little unit.  Mom was very close to her family and to my grandmother especially.  But my dad wasn't connected to his parents in the same way and disliked that the influence her family had seemed to trump his own.  To him, visits to the Coopers were beyond an inconvenience.  The Coopers thought they were better.  They put on airs.  We were somehow beholden because Mom couldn't declare her independence.  That was the sentiment that hung in the air when the time came twice a year to pack up the car and drive North.  We were all infected by it.  I'd complain and drag my feet, and invent reasons why this was torture. We'd roll up to their house, a tudor style home with the trim and everything, and I'd take a deep breath and slowly creep from the back of the car.  And every time, I'd be so charmed by the end that I hated to leave. In Raleigh I was welcomed and loved.  My grandparents told stories and held court and danced together in their kitchen with the swinging door that lead into the great room.  My Aunts and Uncles, visiting from other places would laugh and play with us, and yell when we were obnoxious.  Which we were.  We would race around the house and out in to the yard, which sloped down from the back door into what felt like acres of woods. I once fell off a rope swing into a shallow creek back there somewhere.  The neighbors had a german shepard named Shiloh and he'd tromp through the piles of leaves with us.  It was always the fall or winter when we'd visit and we'd make huge piles of crinkly brown leaves to dive into and you could submerge completely and escape the chill of the wind until the leaf crumbles got into the back of your shirt and your socks and you started thinking about the bugs that might be crawling into your ears.  You'd pop up from the pile tingling and gasping for fresh air.

My grandfather could draw anything you asked him to.  Ask him to draw a half man, half scorpion, half bear and he'd knock it out while you were still describing the furry stinger.  We wanted dinosaurs and menataurs and bat creatures with human faces.  And he'd crank them out, one after another.  And then the stories.  About his days teaching karate, or dance, or fencing.  I may have dreamed this, but he told a story about man he knew who had cut the first knuckles off one of his hands to make a better fist for punching.  He has a deep and resonant voice and he carefully enunciates around his southern accent.  He made a point to clearly pronounce each of Atlanta's two T's so that folks who don't know might be suspicious of his Florida roots.  Atlanta has, in fact, become a special word to me.  A passcode to a secret club.  I take note whenever I hear it said and am careful to always pronounce both T's especially around my son.  And so these things go on and on.

And then it was goodbye and back to the car.  Somewhere on Interstate 85 the glow of our visit would wear away and the cloud would envelope us again.

My grandfather, we call him Papoo, turned 84 yesterday.  We had dinner with him on Saturday to celebrate and Micah sang "happy birthday Papoo" instead of Happy Birthday to you.  We remembered Nana and my Mom and how they would have loved to see us all together.

I suppose I wish we lived our lives in reverse.  The end is so hard.  It makes all the fighting and hurt feelings and misunderstandings seem so petty and foolish.  We disappear.  We disappear.  Don't waste it.