Somewhere in Middle America

I steal another Counting Crows lyric because I find myself in a city I never thought I’d visit. I’m in Omaha. As in Nebraska. One of the supposed fly over states. Go ahead, go look it up

Okay, if you actually had to do that, I weep for our educational system.

Work-work brings me to the center of the country. Boys Town specifically.

Make no mistake, I’m a bad Catholic. I’m just bad with organized religion in general. From both up close and from a distance, I’ve seen plenty of men and women responsible for the moral upbringing of towns, cities and nation’s continually take something wonderful [faith, belief in greater mysteries in the universe, and the examination of both the preceding in terms of how it relates to one's self and one's behavior] and do their best to turn it into something to smack people over the head with but creating dogma from it. Because of that, I tend to lean towards what George Carlin has written about organized religions: that the music is the best thing to come out of it.

Today I was reminded of something that resorts part of my faith. That people focusing on offering better options to people DON’T have to ask for money in order to get things done. And the the true focus should be helping people make better choices, not getting them to follow your whims because you are righteous.

The people behind Boys Town are certainly dedicated to the core of faith and religion that is the foundation of the organization. It was started by a Catholic priest after all. Yet they realize that helping troubled kids is about way more than being good people of faith. It is about offering good structure, teaching good judgment and oh my fucking god I sound like a brochure.

PR speak aside, until this morning I’d almost never encountered a teenager who would come directly up to me, offer their hand and introduce themselves with confidence and purpose. Try having 80 middle school kids doing that as you’re in their school to watch their day begin. Kids from all across America – all of them sent to there because of trouble at home, trouble at school and just trouble for them – kids of every shade and size came up to me offering their hand, looking me square in the eye and offering their best firm handshake. Besides two or three of the boys who were clearly on growth hormones and towered over me (and at 6′ 1″, having to look up at an 8th grader made me think “Offensive Line, OSU…”), I had to lean over to hear the names of the rest of the kids as they rapid fire went down the line. When a girl who couldn’t be older than 9 is doing her best to squeeze my hand like she’s on a job interview and she wants to make a good impression,  you know that these people are making a difference.

The day was full of work and meetings and talks of sharing files and working together and my co-workers and I rocked it.

And here at the end of the day, I don’t care about that.

I care about the kids at that school, in that specialized town and part of those programs that seek to make them the best people they can be before it is too late.

I hope that when I grow up, I can shake hands like a 9 year old girl.

Brother in Arms

Fortunate Son and I have been close since we met. The fact that I didn’t kill him for making an extremely rude joke at my expense is proof that he, like me, lives a unique and charmed life – full of people who want to laugh at your side and be there for you for no reason other than who you are. People who confess to not having a solid reason to like you at first, but after a short while in, have a laundry list that makes you blush.

Now, while I have my list of admirers, I’ve also got my share of people who think I’m an asshole. Thankfully, the former is longer than the latter. I can think of perhaps two people who have spent more than 5 minutes with Fortunate Son who don’t like him. And both of them are ex-girlfriends. He’s that guy. All your best stories from college involve him in some way. He laughs are the most real and the most infectious, not to mention he always gets yours. He’s the guy with that sense of humor that’s bawdy enough to get along with Joe Six-Pack, smart enough to be clever for the Wine crowd and he’s got more than enough geek cred to pull off movie quotes and not be cheesy.

Add to that, he’s the luckiest SOB I know on the planet. If you and all your friends sign up for a beta-test, he’s the one picked. Random drawing at a store, he gets it. You and a handful of guys go to a casino on a whim, he’s up $1000 while you’re happy with breaking even.

On top of it all, we’ve always had this strange bond. We’re both adopted and our families are from NY, even though mine moved when I was young. Adoptive parents are both an Irish-Italian marriage (although the genders are reserved). Both allergic to the same meds. Same blood type. If you see pictures of us as kids, we look almost identical. For the first year and half of college, I swear that he was somehow transmitting his hangovers to me. He’d drink far beyond what his 5′7″, 165 pound body could handle but wake up shiny. Having been the responsible one and carried people home the night before or simply stayed in with my girlfriend, I’d awake to find every inch of my body screaming in protest.

As we’ve gotten older and seemingly wiser, our friendship has become a brotherly connection. When he calls me Brother, I know he means it. His wife, IT Goddess, has teased about getting us tested to see if we do share a father (since I know my biological mother and he’s got no clue about his family), but I think we’re okay just knowing that in a moment’s notice, we’d rush to the other’s side.

I may be doing just that very soon, now that the most fucked up similarity between us has moved to the top of a hill most of us have to cross in our lives. His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer about 3 years ago, two years after The Death and just after they found the cancer in my Ma. Hardship bringing people closer together is a truism that you becoming wed to the more you go through with people. Anyone who knows me knows I have a history of being the excitable one. Historically, not the best in a crisis. Probably because most of the ones I dealt with I was vastly unprepared for mixing in with my overactive imagination. Since dealing with the mortality of my own parents, I know I’ve been more adult (it would be amazing to be less) when it comes to dealing with Bad Things.

I remember an bizarre calm coming over me while talking to F.S. about her being ill. A blend of focus and terror, muted by it not being directed at me, but still aching as my brother began to know suffering I understood.

Just as I’ve seen him become a man I’m honored to know in the decade plus I’ve know him, I watched as hope and reality do battle in him since that time. Hope that she’d get better. Reality that they needed to move up their wedding date when the cancer moved from her breast to her brain.

When I said that he and IT Goddess telling me that they were pregnant was one of the best things I’ve heard in the last year, I absolutely meant it. It meant they’d begun on the family they both wanted so much. Her new job meant that they’d be moving back to NY, a place that had always been more home to them than anywhere else. That he was finally free to get out of his current industry and go down his true path, as a teacher.

Cake’s “The Distance” sounded on my cell phone just after 5 p.m. on Friday evening, and I smiled ruefully. My attempts to reach him were about to bare bitter fruit, and I knew it before I picked up the phone. He went through the good news like a patient himself – telling me as much reminding himself of that his unborn baby was just fine and his wife’s new job was good – and I confirmed all that was good as he drew breath on the other end. Even as he did, I felt the switch flip in my head – I know have to be that person for my brother. That person on the other end who listens to all the bad things he has to talk about.

We went through all the things recited to him from the Doctor’s Bad News Playbook: The treatment didn’t work as we had hoped; There’s nothing else we can do for her at the hospital anymore; The best thing we can do is make her comfortable and see what happens.

I listened and responded where I could when he cracked jokes or took a moment to pause. It wasn’t a long conversation – he kept getting calls on the other line from friends and family, but he held off as long as he could. When his Mom’s doctor showed up on the caller id, I hustled him off the phone, telling him to call when he has a moment or when he needs to talk.

He knows I’m here, just as so many others that love him dearly are waiting and able to respond. I don’t know if he’ll call before the next bad news he’ll have to deliver, but that won’t stop me from wishing I was there. Not that I can offer some great wisdom. Watching someone you love die doesn’t impart great wisdom, so as I’ve found. There’s no breakthrough. The loss is its own meaning. The life no longer there. But death is something you can deal with because it is that realization of what it feels like, even if you can’t verbalize it, you feel it.

Waiting. Watching. Alternately forcing yourself not to think about what it will be like and then having to think about nothing but what it will do to you is agony.

I can’t spare him that agony, even as I understand each part of it.

The best I can do is remind my brother that he isn’t alone.

In the worst times, the simple truths are a comfort.

Weeded

No, not what you think. Even if I wanted to partake of the green herb, it’d kill me. The joys of having asthma since I was a small child – you never worry about smoking being a temptation.

I mean weeded in the sense of struggling to get caught up.

Since moving into the new apartment, I feel more like the shadow following the man than the man casting the shadow. There’s people I need and want to talk to… I can’t get a hold of them or get time with them, but others who I haven’t spoke to in a bit (Sainted Bitch, Sir Wolfgang to name a few) catch up with me, so time is given to them.

I’m dying a little not working on BP #2. I can’t blame work-work. There’s plenty of that, but not so much that it buries me. Everytime I turn around, ready to write, its time to sleep or something jumps up that needs immediate attention.

Sure, it’s only been two weeks since I moved in, but it feels like two months.

I wanted to lock myself away in the new place this weekend. Communicate only through the phone and email Step outside only to throw out boxes as I unpack them and sit on my balcony and write.

Wouldn’t you know it, Llira is driving south, heading for a reunion with Millil (long story why they’re apart – nothing bad, just a big transition phase. I can sympathize) and needs a place to crash. So I gladly offer it. And it seems The Heroine is aware and may stop by to say hello.

I was hoping to get out of the weeds this weekend.

I may have to put the blade aside and switch to napalm to get out at this point.