"Calcopo is dead, long live Calcopo!"

I had the youngest over last night and will have him over again this evening, a good thing, indeed. Usually when Thomas is over his sister comes to spend the night, too. Something about those two together in the apartment brings me comfort, helps me feel like their childhood hasn’t been lost to me. A different experience altogether than when Will is there, shambling about in his college duds, ideas and philosophies and a sense of expectation and wonder dripping off of him like water cascading from the trees outside the building after a thunderstorm. And then a completely different kind of time than when Nathan deigns to give me time. When he is around I feel the wrestling going on, a sort of technical/parental smackdown to see which gets more time that time around. Whenever we can get through a movie or a meal without texting coming into play I feel like a pretty lucky kind of guy. A stage, I tell myself.

So, there it is, my redemption: sleepovers. I look at life and what it’s doling out right now and I feel pretty lucky that, for the moment, I can see clearly what is before me but more, know that the decisions I make right now…socially, economically, professionally….will all have weight on the outcome of the last  years of my parenthood and consequentially, their childhood. I had applications flying around as recently as last month, the latest batch up and down the West coast. Day before yesterday I found an envelope in the mailbox from Mendicino County. I thought, okay, another rejection letter. Instead it was an invitation to participate in the interview process for a branch manager position in Fort Bragg, right on the coast, three hours outside of San Francisco, right smack dab in the middle of the Mendicino appellation.

Something about my time with Thomas yesterday gave me pause. Maybe it was watching him play soccer on the Heroes Park field at sunset that gave me a slight bit of insight into your words “be brave like me”. Maybe, too, it was getting multiple hugs from Sophia the other night when I brought by snacks for her and the rest of the crew for their trip to Utah this weekend. Maybe, too, it was sitting on the couch in the living the other morning, cup of coffee in hand, watching that lug of a college student of mine sleep the last of the morning away, knowing that if he knew I had sat there watching him he would have thought “yeah, that’s my strange Papa”.

Six years ago today we came off the road from a mighty fine day out and about. We trucked the light fantastic that afternoon, all about Tacoma and the region, all in the name of love and duty for the California/Colorado/Port Orchard Forest-to-the-Sea Book Club, membership two, our all too exclusive and wonderous kind of club, always on the cutting edge of good read, excellent meals out and inclusive “members only” benefits within. Today I will not be sending off a message to you as I have in the past because the talks that began for you that evening upon your return home are not something I will celebrate anymore. Maybe I never really celebrated them but somehow I knew that they were important to you and yours. Somehow that particular day, that moment when you entered your house, carrying that bag of Traders Joes products before you like a shield, was the last time that Calcopo was ever going to fly, least ways, the way it did that day. Once your talks began the jig was up. Life changed that day, not necessarily for the better, it just did.

Maybe that’s where I am wrong. Maybe it was for the better, amiga. Somehow that day with all its repercussions saved you. It may have changed your reading habits but it put you back into the orbit of your life, your family, friends, children and that of the Detective. Somehow if we had done anything differently I would missed those moments this last year that I feel have gone the mile to saving me, to helping me be a better man. I would have missed that hug from Thomas in the kitchen this morning, I would have missed those smiles at the door the other night and I would have never been able to do a two day round trip to the Port Orchard house with the Estranged One and had a good time with it as well had we made our way into the world. If we had put Calcopo and that exclusive membership before all else nothing that is happening right now…dance lessons, summers in the Nanatorium, walks in the foothills, holidays at the park…none of that would have happened. I suppose, then, I can be thankful for your bravery, for all that you did, for your sacrifice, your heartfelt unassing of our sacred duo. You just didn’t give up love you changed our destinies. 

What a wild and existential bit of insight that was. And baby, God had nothing to do with it.

It was bravery all the way.

“Be brave like me”. I have been and I shall be.

Calcopo is dead, long live Calcopo!

Love, your WHMB