breathe.

what i said to the youth the other day. and i meant every word.

i yelled at my kids last night. two little girls, the most wonderful treasures in my world, were driving me nuts and not getting to bed fast enough at the end of such a day that would only end when their eyes closed to dream. i was too tired to get into hurtful words. i was too tired to be patient. so i sat, and i yelled.

when my knee was hurting for so many weeks and none of the therapists in the city could fix it, i finally got in touch with the best healer i know, and she told me one true thing: find where it hurts, and turn into the pain. you see, the tension arises because something is pulling on something else, maybe twenty other somethings, and somewhere along the way the pulling is too much so it hurts. turn toward the hurt. relieve the tension. the hurt will go away.

standing in front of you every day and trying to be worth your while is a nearly impossible task. i struggle, usually in silence, while trying to help you along to a better version of yourself. i hope all of you moving together will somehow rub off on me a bit and that maybe i'll be a bit better by the end of it too. the most important part of this whole deal is that i hope. my brother once told me that he did not hope, not at all, because he thought 'hope' was the same as 'wish' and wish was the opposite of work and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to get the things he wanted without earning them through work. it hurt me to hear him eradicate hope. so i worked to clarify the difference between the two words. hope is what makes us live and alive. wish is a frivolous want that falls far short of having a reason to breathe.

you and all that you will be, are part of my reason to breathe.

(no pressure)

a girl asked me yesterday if i had heard about madeline. i had not.  i still know next to nothing about her save the heart-wrenching vagueness of her obituary, or my own opinion that no one should have to have an obituary when they're only fifteen.

each day the routine remains much the same. we meet deadlines and adhere to schedules and make appointments just in time. we yell at our friends and our parents and our families and anyone else we love. we read and write and do math that makes no sense. we practice and then practice more. and all of this is a wondrous miracle. that we can have minds inside bodies with beating hearts that can love others'; that we can be aware of time and waste it or make it; that our time can be cut short, whether on our clocks or those of the ones we love; this is all a miracle, and none of it makes any goddam sense. because balance never has.

i may not propose a solution here, friends. i know no answers, hold no clues. i'm lucky to be here, i'm lucky to look at you and know just a scratch of you, and i have no idea how this miracle works. but if there's something out of balance, if you're wondering what's next and if there is anything next and whether anyone gives a shit about you, know that i do, and a ton of other better-informed, better-resourced, and better-looking people give a shit about you too. we're not trying to reach perfection here, friends. we're just trying to stay up. turn into the hurt. release it.

promise.

we called aaron that night, figuring that he would say yes. 

'hey man.'

'hey.'

'we're going to the bridge in town to jump off it. can you meet us there?'

'i don't know.'

'come ON.'

'let me ask my mom. hang on.'

i can picture that bridge, in that light, with zack and me sitting cross-legged smack dab in the middle of the warm and crumbling concrete, stretched slack over the lazy river twelve feet below. it was nine-thirty. 

these days mean that every day starts before the sun and ends well after bedtime, no longer tangled in sheets, but in debts and expectations and dreams of everything going right. despite it all, i'm convinced it will work out. my leg will return as will my pace and the ability to hurt without injury. the credit card bill will return to zero after warm months' promises are paid for and enjoyed. i've mortgaged my present for excellence later and cupcakes in the meanwhile. it must be worth it. 

on the wall between the dining room and the mudroom, next to photographs by my father and paintings by myself and drawings by the girls done in crayon and markers that used to smell, there is a framed poem. it talks all about the stuff that could have been done to make a house presentable. it talks about cleaning and polishing and keeping things tidy. it talks about foregoing all of that crap so that children could be raised well. that's about where we're at. take care of what's important; forego the trips to mexico and the down payments on overpriced real estate. give people what you've got. promise what you mean.