Christmas in August

Six years ago today I had what was probably the finest day of my life. I look back on it fondly, the way a man does on his favorite holiday memory. Some have feelings about grand days like wedding days, or the day of their first kiss, or the day they got the keys to their first car. But M, that day of days in my life, right up there with the birth days of my children, is the day that you gave me your heart, under that spreading Oregon Maple tree, there in Loyalty Park, back when we had the world by the strings and our hearts were not sullied by the heavier things that would, in the end, bring us down.

That day was like Christmas, presents and all. even if those presents, a light kiss on the neck, an Ikea catalog, an unfolding of the quilt on the grass, the slow ticking of moment, were all that we had to give.

That, and our hearts, yes indeed.

With love,

Your WHMB

Sweltering hot, dreams and visions of you

Ah! It's late, it's hot, come on in... It could have been the pesto pizza that I ate a bit too late last night. It might have been the mention of an eighty five degree temp that I saw on the bank sign on the way home, that particular bit of heat only exascerbated by the flat roofed, top floor apartment that I live in. I know I shouldn't drink anything with a buzz attached to it late at night as it always promotes a heavy sweat and a lot of tossing and turning this time of year. Whatever it was, it came late on late and took on the wee bit of time I had set aside for sleeping.

"This time of year". Ha! I have only really begun to live here "this time of year". I was just a visitor to the Treasure Valley in my recent past, a blur in my children's lives here in Boise for all too many years, always on the run from the heat of the sun and of the estranged one, choosing to come to visit during the cooler spring and fall months when I could linger and not sweat to death. This time around I cannot run back to the temperate climes of the Puget Sound, this time around I am part hostage, part willing slave to the weather and there is no angst attached to it, no fretting, no worries. On the bus with the doors open and the aircon blowing it's tolerable. At home at night with the fan roaring and the one room cooling swamp cooler doing it's thing, with the blinds drawn, it's okay. I know I'll be alive in the morning to tell the tale.

This place, this familar heat, reminds me a lot of where I grew up. The Southland. Summers in L.A. before the advent of unleaded gas, air thick with smog, hot bus exaust, bbq briquet vapors. Hot, sweltering afternoons, sweat pouring down our backs, public pools teaming with kids of all colors, always on the prowl for shade trees, moving water and ice cold drinks. Once again I am back into that same zone, that familiar level of heat, back into that hard beating sun, once again looking for and finding fun and cool things to do with the kids. I am loving it and at the same time, not caring too much about the heat, the occasional humidity, the wind kicking thunderstorms, the hard core lack of funding to do anything grand like fly to Disneyland or vacation in the islands. This year we are flying low, my love, we are doing those cool sort of Mexican family things: two dollar seats at the second run theater, afternoons after three at the pool, long walks along the river, indoor playtime with the fan and cooler blowing, riding bikes around the neighborhood, hanging out with a slice and cold drink at a table on the patio on one of the niftiest downtown streets I've ever grooved on after hours.

Baby, it's all good.

What is sometimes not so nice are the long nights when that shotgun shack of a place of mine stays hot much too long after dark. I don't have a thermometer but man, let me tell you, it stays toasty. Rivers of sweat soak my sheets, the cat, ever mewling, longs for the return of fall and cooler weather. And lately, during those long hot nights, the kind that promote endless tossing and turning, sour twisted linens, fleeting and fractured dreams, you have been there, an all-star player. You have come avisiting unbidden two nights running, one where you trotted out two new dogs and a cat, the other one, sporting unsolicited advice, in more of a cameo role.

I spent the rest of the day following that first visitation looking as I do for more signs that tell me, well, yep, you existed someplace along the line in my life. Then today, as I was working through the meaning of your nighttime prowling, I was reading some article about Tiger Woods and the break up he had with his caddy, how they mentioned that the traditional "get over the heartbreak" period of break up is twice as long as the actual running time of the relationship.

That should have put paid to everything years ago. BUT, and there's that Grand But again, this thing, this unfinished business in my heart, is anything but traditional.

Truly it's more along the lines of one of those dowdy old 50's film epics, the kind littered with a cast of thousands, packed with matinee stars that had their go and are now blanks in the collective minds of most Walmart movie shoppers. Maybe it's more like the story line in one of those tired long forgotten old Gothic romances that line the shelves of fern bars or oaky restaurants, the kind bought by decorators by the yard. Or maybe this is one of those long forgotten kinds of romances, the helpless hapless kind, the kind that tired scriptwriters favored for films that only seemed to shown on the late, late show, watched by tired old men who long for their misgotten pasts, by women who, overwhelmed by bon bons and a fruitless life, choose cinema deeds and loves over real ones.

Or maybe it's the kind of radioactive love that only shows up in the late of night, in the minds of the tired, the overheated, or in this case in the brain of a man who has washed up on the shore of a very cool, very hot and all too familiar kind of land. I think we can all use a good hard, sweaty kind of dream every once in a while. Ah, yes, the kinds that has us call out, when the all too familiar key player arrives, it's hot, come on it and grab a cool one. I'll be awake in a moment, once again, to the waking dream of a life well lived, in a lovely place, with my kids close at hand, working a job that, for all intents and purposes, is keeping me afloat, happy, content for the moment.

Yeah, I'm happy, M and yet.... still missing you.

Peace,

W