Atomictumor

I’ve had a good morning. We all had the morning off, and it was one of our firster times as a family, fixing oatmeal, drinking coffee, relaxing while the kids played videogames. Relaxing.

Thats good stuff.

Yesterday, poor Ashley Paine, a 13 year old on the way home from school, was run over by a bus at a major intersection here in town when she fell off her bike into the path of the big ass bus wheels. I heard about it when I went to wait for Pigpen to get him yesterday at Eave’s house, when it was just rumor mode, but she had been stuck in the traffic and saw something on the news about it afterward. When the kids got home from school, October and Spotz were talking about it, as they heard rumors from school. When I went to Realtorchicks house to pick up MastaG, she was talking about it.

Apparently Netmom knows little Ashley, she’s a friend of the family.

She’s listed right now, according to the latest reports, as being in unstable and critical condition.

I’m thinking of her parents, who had a normal Friday evening turn into a hellishly surreal nightmare, as their little girl was flown by helicopter to a hospital with an unknown and dire future.

I’m thinking of the bus driver, making the last run of the week, a driver who apparently had been driving for years, and who is evidently blameless in the accident, waking up Saturday morning with this in her head.

I’m thinking of the 28 kids on the bus, middle schoolers, just like Ashley, and what they saw, or heard, during the wild minutes that the bus was stopped, who were feet away from calamity.

I’m thinking of poor Netmom and her youngest daughter (I never can get those damn greek numbered names right, I’m thinking its Delta or whatever).

I’m thinking of last year, when my life was a hellishly surreal nightmare, when I was thinking of pressure inside a loved ones head, and the weird way that the brain just barely has enough room to fit in that hard ass skull, and how amazingly fucked up it can get when theres trauma up there.

I’ve held my kids and my fiancee tight today as I prayed to myself, both for peace, grace, and strength for these people who are living things that nobody should live, and for thanks, that I’m surrounded by the love and beauty, without pain, without fear, without doubt.

Ashley Paine.

She and I saw you a few times, about 10 years ago.

She was a big fan of yours, and I always sorta saw a bit of her in you, what with the long curly hair (kids and age straightened it out some, but the impression was always there).  I have to admit, me, being a punk rocker at the time, wasn’t as into your music, but I was very into her, and I sucked up my oi oi oi attitude and went to a couple of your shows in Knoxville, back in 96.

She could play some of your music on the piano, and sang in your key pretty well.  She loved your music, but we stopped listening to you for reasons I don’t really know, in the year or two after Boys for Pele came out.  We had a kid, and you took a break, and we just never really met up.  We got caught up on a big classic rock thing for a while, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and Bowie and whatnot, and passed you by when you started recording again.

Still, she’d listen, every once in a while, to Little Earthquakes or Under the Pink, and sing along.  When it’d come up on the CD shuffle and she wasn’t there, it always brought her to my mind.

After she got sick and left my life, almost a year ago today, I’d hear your music and cry.  I’d see that dark, curly hair in my fingers, or at my chest (she was pretty short), and it’d bring her back to me in ways that pictures, or memories, just can’t do.  She’s still all mixed up with you, Tori, and thats a crazy thing.

I can hear her sing along, if Yes Anastasia comes on the radio or shuffle.  It was unbearable at first, and I’d skip it.  Afterwards, I’d struggle through the song, thinking that if I could finish listening to it, I’d be cleansed, or healed, or reconciled.  Maybe I was, and maybe I wasn’t, I don’t really know.  These days, and for the last few months, I listen to it, and she’s there, but like with all other aspects of my life, she’s fuzzy.  She’s a memory thats more and more distant, the same part of me that, say, my 24th year, or 1996.

Its a beautiful thing, and a thing that made me what I am today, but something that doesn’t pertain to who I am or what I am anymore.

That was a hard realization to make, let me tell you.  By admitting that, in a certain point of view, it could be construed as insensitive, or callous.  It could mean that I’m turning my back on it, that I’m denying all the sweet things I ever said to her, and all the love that I professed for her.  It could mean that I’m giving her the finger, way up in heaven.

I know thats not the case, and you know thats not the case, tho.  I think you knew it all along, and it just took me a lot of time to get there, sorta like getting into a cold swimming pool.

It could be said that I’m releasing her.  That’d be nice too, and that might be closer to the case, but I’m not sure if thats the whole thing.  I still get comfort in her.  I still relish those memories, and if I were releasing her, I’d think I’d be letting that stuff go.  Those were the best years of my life so far, and I want to keep them for all my days.

If I’m releasing anything, its the pain.  The sadness, the guilt (yep, theres guilt.  I couldn’t explain it to you, its as irrational as the day is long, but its there), the trauma.  I’m letting go of the way of life I’ve had over the past year.

I got the idea of writing this letter to you, Tori, when I was driving my girlfriends truck back and forth between my house and hers, hauling lumber and heavy stuff.  I’ve been kinda saying “bye” to that old place, and thats a nice thing.  We put together the kids bunk bed at the lady’s house, and they slept there last night.  They loved it!

I’m digressing, sorry.

Point is, I had the kids and the girlfriend back at her house, and came back to mine for one more load of stuff, when one of your new songs came on.  I hadn’t heard this one, or at least I didn’t think I had, and it was nice.

It was like the little curly headed girl who I gave those years to, saying hello.  Telling me that she’s fine, she’s having fun and doing her thing, and that she’s tickled to see me doing mine. That she can’t wait to watch my new life unfold, wrapped around another lady just like it was wrapped around hers.  That she’s thrilled that her little family is thriving, and that somebody else is good enough to take her place.

That was neat, Tori.  I don’t know if you intended it that way, but it was a thrill.  So that night, as my new old family sat at the time-out, and I watched the woman who’s stepping so gracefully and beautifully into the curly headed girls role chat with my son (the one who was born when you took that break, near 10 years ago), I thought of you.

Thanks.  I hope everythings working out well for you!

I was in the shower when the first plane hit; October, 3, and Spotz, 10 months, were watching a videotape of Blue’s Clues. My early thoughts that morning were of what I needed to get at the grocery store. And then Bos called from work, and said, “Turn on the TV. Two planes have hit the World Trade Center in New York.”

The world never felt so small. I felt like I could look out my window and see smoke and ash, like I could stick my arm out and feel places thousands of miles away. And I was scared. I watched those clear blue skies and wondered if one of those missing planes was headed for ORNL. Every old junker that backfired going up the road made me jump, made my heart pound. That was the first time I have truly ever worried about my safety.

How removed we are from those who worry about their survival on a daily basis.

I saturated myself with TV and online news coverage.  I couldn’t look away.  As the hours went by, and the footage of grief-stricken people searching the ashy streets of NY for their loved ones, and the stories of people clasping hands and jumping dozens of stories to their deaths, and of all of the folks who died trying to save the lives of strangers.  I grieved then, and I grieve today as I recall all those words and images that struck me 6 years ago.

I imagine there are people out there who poo-poo the media frenzy brought by the 9/11 anniversary.  And sure, some (okay, a lot) of it is overkill.  But I also think it is so important to remember and reflect.  I need to remember, because that’s what feels right to me.

***

A few years ago, October brought home a book from the library, Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey. It’s a wonderful story about a restored fireboat that came out of retirement to help in the days following 9/11.  It tells the story of September 11th from a perspective that is good for kids and parents alike.  Check it out if you get a chance; I know that it will be part of our 9/11 remembrance for years to come.

I’m sitting in the back yard, with the laptop on my lap, as the sun goes down and the crickets chirp up their always crescendoing music of late summertime business. I’ve spent the last five minutes actually on Myspace, of all places, leaving as cryptic as I can come up with messages on peoples things, and wondering exactly why it is that I’ve been doing that, while surrounded by nature’s cacophony, with the vague feeling that ants are crawling down my pants.

To say that my day was wonderful would be a sublime understatement, I had the nicest day, following the nicest weekend. I had planned for an extra day to be added to my Labor Day (which, I still maintain, is a communistic holiday, so fly your flags all day long but remember ol’ AT telling you to thank Karl Marx for it), to coincide with the day off that the ladyfriend (which, I haven’t maintained yet, but might just start, isn’t the best name for her on this thing, but she’s not very forthcoming in coming up with a new one) had, and we had some sort of vague idea of going up to her family lakehouse.

Which we did, and had a lovely time.

I’ve been seeing The Beauty all around me quite often lately, as it seems that most everything is slipping nicely into place. The only real iron in the fire is the vague feeling that my parenting is lousy, but from what I’ve always heard from the good parents, if you think you’re a lousy parent, you’re actually doing a good job. I think its the same kind of thinking applied to if you think you can breath underwater, you actually can, except that drowning is not supposed to be involved.

I digress.

No, work is going very nicely. The ladyfriend and I are getting along very well and overcoming many of those interesting, varied, and unnamed obstacles involved in being a widower dating (and dating a widower, which I wouldn’t really wish on a tick). The kids like her, the friends like her, the family (thats met her) like her, and most importantly, I like her, quite a bit.

Peachy keen.

So, point is, we had a damn good day. As I sit out here, vaguely wishing I had a beer, or a coffee, or something nice in my hand, I’m waiting on her to show back up over here, where we have some sort of plan of watching Kill Bill or something like that.

Yep. A peaceful easy feeling, except I hate (as The Dude before me did) the f—ing Eagles.

—

Today was Pigpen’s first soccer practice, and he ran around like a champ. Its so amazingly fun to watch the joy of a 5 year old in action.

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Oh yeah, I completely forgot, one of the reasons I’m in such a great mood is that I found out, while tooling on myspace, that Christabel and the Jons are going to be at Oodles again on Friday night. Sounds good to me. And yes, they’re one of my Myspace friends. See, I’m kinda connected.

Bask in the glory.  55 mighty gallons of water, all protected by Iron Man and bubbles coming out of the eyes of skulls.

Oh hell yes, its AT’s new fishtank, and the culmination of my fishtank aspirations.  Simply because anything bigger would be, well, damn expensive.

The cost of this bad boy was offset a bit by that Franklin that MastaG conned Papaw out of, so he paid for a good chunk of it.  Setting it up, well, it was a busy day.

First, I had to work, as is my usual wage slavey wont.  After work, off to Realtorchick’s house to pick up MastaG, where he gets off the bus, on account of if he rides the bus here its like a 50 minute ride, and I wouldn’t want to wish 50 minutes on a 100 degree middle school bus on a dog.  I swung by there, he was working on homework with RC’s kid (can’t remember his super awesome internet name).  I fell asleep to a Pearl Jam concert on the TV (what normally happens to me when I hear Pearl Jam), woke up, went to pick up Pigpen from Eave’s house (I have kids scattered all over this town, lemme tell ya), swung back, got G, and then busted ass out to the east of Knoxville to acquire MastaG’s mighty trombone.

Lemme tell ya, that was an ordeal.  I can’t say I was unprepared for the rush hour traffic, both on the road, and in the unairconditioned music store, but it still had me grinding my teeth.  Still, moods were light (as has been my light-mooded wont lately), and we got the thing.

MastaG’s comment: “What the heck have they been DOING to this thing?  Couldn’t you have gotten me a NEW one?”

My reply: “whack”

So, busted back home, where I had to be on account of my ladyfriend, who happens to be the manager down at the pet store that sold me the fishtank (woot, got a connected ladyfriend), was expecting a tasty filled dinner in exchange for setting the tank up.  And lemme tell ya, she did a damn fine job.  That tank is wicked awesome.

In my defense, dinner was nice too.  There was one weird moment where Pigpen and MastaG decided that they would be Daddy and Pigpen, respectively, looked at me, asked who I was (I decided to be Pootytater, our catfish), and then turned their glance at Ladyfriend.

Pigpen started saying “And you can be M…”, but she jumped in and said “Mailman!  I can be the mailman!”

Whew.  That was almost awkward…

Crisis averted.

—

What?  Why are you all looking at me that way?  Is it the fishtank?