Holiday Road.

Yesterday at work I thought maybe I was having a heart attack. My chest got all tight and there was pain. I kept going though, John Henry mofo that I am...I kept mortaring tiles up on the scuzzy bathroom wall. All the while I waited for the legendary tingling of the arm or the blurred vision. Didn't happen. I did stop once for a sec to do a Fred Sanford chest pound with my fist. Insult to injury, that was. Anyhow, my not-so-near death morning got me to thinking about Violet and how much it would suck to croak now, before we've had any Christmases together.

Back in December, when Monica would just puke in a plastic bag in the car as breezily as if she were enjoying a snack cake, I tried to buy unborn Violet a Santa Claus outfit. But my wife put her swollen foot down on that one. Up til then I'd been allowed to indulge myself whenever we had a couple bucks. I picked up some cool duds at Old Navy, last year's fashions I guess. Whatever. And then one Sunday afternoon we were at Crazy Wal-Mart, where children are free to open shit up and ride it like lightning down the aisles, when I spotted a bumble-bee outfit. Oh no they dih-int!, I said to myself.

I had to have it. It cost 9 dollars. And the way I look at the world is through hourly-paid eyes so it didn't take me long to configure that almost one whole hour of dusty hard labor in my life was now about to add up to a BeeGirl suit for a kid I don't even know yet. Still, I didn't flinch. And I was prepared to argue or even get physical for my wonderful find (yes yes, it's fine to throat-punch your wife here, sir!...that's why we call it CRAZY Wal-Mart, yo.) No need though, as Monica smiled/sighed and I was a proud poppa-to-bee. It is thirty-six sizes to big, of course, but I am feeding her extra baby formula on the sly to fatten her up. Shhh.

Where's this going? I'll tell ya. In between having little heart attacks and and giant panic attacks I have been slowly planning Violet's first Christmas. I have always loved that time of year, chaos and financial hardships aside. There is nostalgia in these nicotined bones; a nearly constant longing for a wintery night and a glowing window with me behind it; for that special "seasonal" red wine buzz and a coffee table heaving with sliced pepperoni and supermarket cheddar on a snowflake dish. And Emmett Otter or Elf on the tube. A tree so high it curls at the ceiling. And presents wrapped up in festive paper. A beer buzz. Ice cream. Antlers on the dogs. I love it, all of it. Need it to live. Need it to sparkle ever so faintly from months and months away like a jolly old eye winking at me from the North Pole. Keep-on-keepin'-on there, Serge. Suck it up and fling off them chest pains, son! There's another Christmas coming 267 days from now!

And now, thanks to Violet I am absolutely insane with Christmas fever. I cannot wait to share with her the Santa story and the baby Jesus story and the Grinch story and how to use a candycane as a pepperminty straw in soda. And, of course, I already got her her first gift. BeeSuit. And yeah, I know, as Monica has so reminded me: this year Violet will be 11 months at the holidays, still slobbering down her pretty little face. Probably won't know how to speak at all. But, whatever. She will love the thing that I love....that unmistakably enchanted time of year
when grown men and women who still believe in little wonders are able to put their stupid petty concerns aside for the sake of the children! And the man-children!

So, here's us practicing our tunes. Its never too early, people. Never ever.

Summer Nights.

Out back my Uncle Carl's house, the long summer day would draw cool air into its engines, then kill the power to glide like a phantom from out of the sky, over across the cattail reeds and wooden docks and down along avenues of curving lagoon. Around flag-less poles, once popping with afternoon flags now safely lowered and put away by retirees who folded them ever so gently in the old style, the evening would rise up from the baked pebbles of the unfenced yard and spread out into all the places day had been an hour or so ago. Under the seagulls, I would stare across the bay at the twinkling lights of Atlantic City getting turned on.

It was 1981, and the Philadelphia mafia was everywhere over there, killing and gambling. But I didn't know, or care. My fingers smelled like sand shark and flounder from all the fish we'd been catching. My hair was matted with salt and wind. I was away from home, alone without my Mom, for the first time. A week of fishing in my ex-State Trooper uncle's small boat. Of fried fish and lemon. And a week of falling asleep to the gentle voice of summer. Harry Kalas.

After I'd helped with dishes and kissed my Aunt Betty goodnight through her breath of a couple Manhattans, I'd skip steps up to my room, close the door behind me and turn on the radio for the Phils. Baseball was my life, was everything in the universe that could possibly mean anything at all. Well, baseball and baseball cards. There in the dark, I would lay on the cool clean sheets and listen to that distant galaxy I loved.

Harry Kalas and Richie "Whitey" Ashburn were the Phillies announcers. And they were my captains into the boundless night. Their sly war-buddy rapport made me somehow feel more grown-up, kind of like my Uncle Carl made me feel at his house that week; I probably could have mixed myself a Manhattan in front of him and he'd of let me down it. The way they'd poke each other just a bit during long stretches of time when little was happening on the field, I just loved it.

That week, as the Phillies played the Expos or whoever, I listened to every single second of broadcast. At times Whitey would chuckle for no real reason, and you could almost tell that he and Harry were conducting an inside joke. Whitey would laugh at someting unknown to me. Then, some really long moments of the sparse Expo crowd: a lone holler, an airhorn in the upper deck, the peanut vendor's pitch. And finally, Harry would come back in like a jazz genius, a smile on his voice, and say something simple like its Fireworks Night at the Vet in Philly in two weeks...and the whole fuckin' thing played out like the most wonderous American opera ever written. I had a week of that. Of flounder fishing and that. Was one of the greatest of my life.

Later, me and my brother Dave had a friend pull some strings for our band. Next thing you know we were in the bowels of the ballpark where the Phils lived and Harry Kalas was recording some stuff for us for our first record. Just some things we'd written just for him to say. He was really gracious and nice. Me and Dave were in awe of him. All of our lives, his voice had been there. Now here we were together. He told us to go down on the field before the afternoon's game. He made sure it was ok. Then, he invited us into the announcing booth. It was just him and Whitey and us. We stayed a whole half inning. Harry introduced us to people as "the band guys". It felt like a dream.

Anyways, lots of guys like me have baseball memories. We were the last of a kind in a lotta ways, I guess. Still, my guy died today. Harry Kalas. And with him goes something I will never know again. A deep gentle timbre to guide me through the black of space to some brightly lit concrete spaceship landed on the edge of a dirty city. A once-in-a-lifetime voice that brought baseball to my room for many many years. I hope my little daughter experiences something so cool in her lifetime. Maybe not with baseball, but with whatever it is that captures her young heart and mind.

Night, Harry. Thank you.

If It Rains On You, I Will Shoot The Cloud.

Part of me really wants to wake up early one Saturday morning and walk up into the mountains to kill all the bears and the mountain lions. And the snakes. This, I would do so they never can bite Violet if she decides to go hiking or something. Then, on Sunday morning, I will head over to the airport and disassemble all the planes so they can't crash with Violet in them, or under them. Rivers and lakes: drained dry. Highways: jackhammer'd. If I let it, the list goes on and on.

Can't let it, though. I have to look across the room here, past my sock feet parked by my coffee cup, and over to the left of the bookshelf, to the automatic swing where she now sleeps... to the recorded sounds of the only babbling brook in the world that I know could never hurt her. I have to look over there and see her sleep slobber trickling down her little chin and I have to just be cool with the fact that there will come a day when she will lay her head down to rest in some other place than where I am. Dragons might surround her in some moonlit faraway room, but I won't be around.

But that's the way it comes down. The more you love a kid, the crazier you will get. I am starting to see that now in the newish ways I'm living my life. Slide across the floor with her in my arms. Dog toys are land mines. Stare up at the waiter in the diner, make sure he notices how cute she is. Make sure he clocks that I expect him to say so or I might butterknife his jugular with the Ninja quickness. Just weird insane impulses and cravings that all lead to bettering the world for my baby in some twisted vision I conjure up. And almost all the behavior will be excusable later on: in some Shakespearean way. Tragedy, comedy, all that. But please lord, guide me away from fist fighting with other crazy dads at T-ball games. All that amateur violence out under the sun. Kids crying. Hand prints on red faces. Heart attacks. I just can't.

So, I move forward with trepidation and absolutely no idea how to do what needs to be done. To someday offer myself up to some sinister earthquake crack in exchange for letting Violet skip away safely. But I'm a dad now and so I gotta keep brainstorming. I know the way shit stacks up. But what else can I do.

I'm A Junkie For You, Kid.

Temper and patience. There was a line for them in heaven, right? Or Pre-Heaven. Wherever that hot spot where they hand out the chiseled cheekbones to the left, triple ripple necks to the right.

Brains over here, darling...

Asswipe-in-the-passing-lane level smarts?, ....over there son.

You heard of the place. Anyhow, when they were handing out the even tempers and the patience and the chilled beach bum aura....I was over in the man tits line, all excited, thinking I'd beaten everyone to the front. Christ. Now, I am tested like never before. And I knew all along that it was coming. Every single thing you read about being a new dad, they all say the same stuff: If she's crying, make sure she isn't hungry. Check that diaper....babies don't wanna baste in their own piss, cowboy! Is she on fire?....babies HATE being aflame. Make's 'em weep every time.

What the fuck? What kind of racket is this whole new parent market? What wisdom exactly are they really selling me, besides the basic shit that you could learn from a crusty pamphlet in the pediatrician's waiting room. I have like 16 books. Last night, while thumbing through one of them (this one's supposed to let you in on all the minutiae of each week of your baby's entire first year)
I was in the middle of week 12, about where Violet is hanging out. And honest to God, I came across this sentence.

"To keep her from swallowing too much air make sure she doesn't cry for too long."

I read it again. I looked at the back of the book where the price was. $16.99. I read it again. Make sure she doesn't cry for too long? Did I miss that bit on voodoo? Did I just skip over the section on making tiny miracles happen?

What a douche, I thought. Whoever wrote this book simply copied all the other shit from the trillion other books; not that different from getting paid to write a Chinese take-out menu.

Who is going to teach me then? I was pissed. How am I going to pick up tips on controlling my mind when Violet is deep into that second hour of death-rattle bawling? Where is the secret wisdom, for fuck's sake???!!! When that "fussytime" hits in the evening and time slows and then rushes and then slows like when I used to have too much blow in my face and everything was frentic and uncool and my temples squirting open like busted jalepeno poppers was not at all far fetched....when all that wackness hits so hard what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?

Sigh. It ain't in the books, huh? I wasted my cash. Last night, I just held on for dear life, kept touching her tender face skin with my nose, kept whispering through the tempest. It didn't really do much. She freaked for a long long couple of hours. Finally she drifted off. I was proud and shaking. My mind was goose fat but I'd hung in there.

I bit into a taco. Crying came from the crib. Dear Jesus. I picked her up and we walked to the changing table. I undid the Winnie the Pooh diaper and there was a poop the size of a Yugo. Oh sweetheart, I said. Oh dollgirl, no wonder you were so sad. Some got on my finger.

I thought about eating it in some primative ritual of love triumphs over all daddy's defects. But I had cold tacos out in front of the tv just sitting there, you know?

I Miss You When You're In The Other Room.

It's pouring here this morning. I can hear the rain swish off the tires of the cars out on the street. In the morning, I drink my coffee with the tv sound down now. And I listen for the morning peeps. Violet will wake up maybe half the time when I am getting ready for work. When she does, there is no screaming or crying. Just short quiet peeps, like smoke alarms with dying batteries.

It sucks when there are none. When she lies there by her momma in peaceful sleep and doesn't need anything or anyone. Or me. I get eager to go in there with the stealth of a prowler and just pluck her up from the little Wal-Mart sleeper thingy she is dreaming on. But to do that would be to invite myself to crash nature's ball. Dudes like me should not be crashing nature's ball.

So, on she sleeps. I poke around some fly fishing sights on the web; look at fish porn. These gray shitty days bring on the good Blue Wing Olive hatches. I wish I could get out to the river today. Thoughts of a quiet stretch to myself, of afternoon hatches. Thoughts of the summer days to come and the big caddis flies that cause brown trout to explode from the water with reckless greed.

Awww shit who am I kidding?

Thoughts of MAKE A GODDAMN PEEP ALREADY !!! Maybe you don't need me just this sec, butterbean. But I need you. Again.