How About Love?

In the opening piece of the award winning musical Rent, the characters wonder how a year should be measured. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes? Cups of coffee?

"In truths that she learned

Or in times that he cried

In bridges he burned

Or the way that she died"

How about love?

A year ago today a piece of our hearts died. Avery's all too brief time here with us ended and we were left with a hole where she had been. But the love remained. It sharpened the pain we felt at her loss. The level of our heartache was in direct correlation to the strength of our love for her. We wailed and raged. We sobbed until our breathe left us. We buried our daughter and mourned the life that had been taken. We cursed God and Fate and THAT WOMAN who left her alone. We asked "Why us?" and "What now?" and "How will we go on?"

How about love?

Our friends and family were there; strangers were there. You all lent us strength and gave us your love to shore us up before we could fall. You cooked us meals and gave us money or a shoulder or time or the space we needed. You let us know that you were there for whatever or whenever we might need you. Never in my life have I felt that much love and caring. It was and is amazing. Your love for us was a lifeline that we clung to at times and kept those waves of grief from overcoming us. Despite all of that though we still felt alone.  Except we had each other. 

Measure in love.

This week my friend reminded me that true strength is revealed by adversity. This ordeal tested our strength, not just as individuals, but as a couple. What we found was a strength of love and caring for each other that we had hitherto only theorized about. "How much do you love me?" "Bucketfuls." An arbitrary answer for a question previously unanswerable. "How much do you love me?" I love you so much that in the darkest moments of my life, when everything feels pointless, it's you I'll cling to and cry on and eventually dry my eyes so that you can cry on me. When I wear my polite but sad mask for the world, you'll know how underneath I can't stop crying, because I've shown you and shared with you everything already. And when I can't seem to open my heart to you any further, we'll come together in the dark and love just a little more.

Seasons of love. 

The poet in me can't help but notice that Avery was born in the Spring, lived through the Summer, and passed as the rest of the world around us was dying too. Our house was cold and grey this Winter for more than the season. Now, though, we have Wesley. This new Prince of Summer, Son of Sun, was born in June and has reminded us how to be happy in love. What a blessing he is. What a blessing she was. Today we'll take him out to see his sister's grave for the first time. His parents will be emotional wrecks, but as we sit there in the heat so reminiscent of the Summer of her life, we'll try to remember that it's been a long year full of love. 

Seasons of love. 

Etymology Lesson For Bigots

In ancient Etruscan society, and later in Rome, the Fasces, a bundle of wooden rods with an axe blade passed through, was used as a symbol of power. It continued to be used in heraldry even after the physical item became outdated. In fact, the term fascism, government deriving power from a strong, central leader, militarism, and conquest, is based on this symbol. Interestingly, the United States also uses the Fasces in a wide variety of places such as the symbol of the National Guard, and decorative motifs in the Oval Office, chambers of Congress, and the Lincoln Memorial. This is particularly appropriate because it's believed that the Fasces used a fascis, or bundle of rods, as opposed to a single shaft, to demonstrate strength in unity. Works pretty well for a country which had the original motto of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one), don't you think?

Later, in the 16th century, it wasn't uncommon for an elderly woman with no husband, family, or other means of support to resort to collecting sticks in order to sell the bundles and thus make a living. In Rome those bundles would have been called fascis (or whatever the latin plural is), but because English is a bastard language and so many of our words are mispronunciations of the originals, those bundles of sticks instead were called faggots. The faggot gatherer, being generally scorned and considered relatively useless, became a symbol of the dregs of feminine society. A woman might be called a faggot gatherer as an offensive means of expressing the said woman's social worth. As time moved on, the "gatherer" half was dropped and the woman would just be called a faggot. With the tendency of English speaking societies to consider homosexual men as more feminine, it should come as no surprise then that a derogatory term meant for women would also be adopted for use towards gays. Eventually, any ties of the word to women were forgotten and it became a slur exclusively for gay men. However, this appears to be the case mostly just in the US. Use of the term in media has broadened its influence to other countries, but only just recently. For example, in the UK the term "fag" still refers to a cigarette and is thus much closer to the original definition of a bundle of sticks. 

So, now that you have a little background, the next time you call someone a fag you'll at least know why. Jackass!

It's a Boy Oh Boy!

   This post is an admission of guilt. I am guilty of being sometimes cruel, most times stupid, and always a boy. I have no other defense or explanation for the things you're about to read. 

   When I was very young, my mom had a simple day care that she ran out of her home. I have very few memories regarding that day care other than those where I tortured a baby. There was only one, but for some demented reason I liked hearing it cry. So, when my mom would leave the room, I'd reach over the side of its play pen, and stretching my little arm as far as it could go, I'd swat that baby's nose. It really was a reach for me and often as not it was no more than a grazing of fingertips across nose tip, but it was always enough to set the baby off. My mom would rush back into the room to soothe it, and I would sit back and listen to a job well done. Yes, I was a monster. To that unknown child and its parents, my heartfelt apologies. That was around the same time that I showed some older kids during an open house that it was perfectly ok to pee in the corner of my bedroom. I proceeded to show them how. 

   In kindergarten, as my friends and I walked unsupervised to school (it was a COMPLETELY different time) we threw glass bottles over a fence around the school's track just to watch them shatter when they hit the other side. That same year, I threw a stick like a spear at my best friend, cutting his head and forcing him to get stitches. I ate a clump of dirt from our compost pile that was rich and black and I mistook for the Oreo I had in my other hand. I broke my collar bone when I fell backwards off a slide. Not the top of the slide, and not because I'd gone down the slide backwards. I'd been sitting calmly at the bottom of the slide when I lost my balance and fell over the side. Snap! I went through a whole roll of my parents' film taking "modeling" photos of two of the girls from church that I had a crush on.  That wouldn't be the last time I used that move. In first grade I nearly lost an eye when I had a pine branch I was attempting to break off of a tree suddenly let go and snap back into my face. I sat and cried for a while and never told my parents. A good friend hit me in the back of the head with an aluminum baseball bat. Somehow I retained consciousness and we went back to playing. I was given my first pocket knife and promptly had it taken away after threatening a neighborhood girl I didn't like with it. In second grade I had a student teacher, Miss Fox, that I was constantly trying to see down her shirt or get a peek of bra. In fourth grade, when turning in a school library book, I accidentally included an illustrated booklet of sex positions tucked in the pages of the library book. Somehow I convinced the librarian to give it back to me AND not tell my parents. Between first and fifth grade, a number of events occurred that I can't say when exactly they happened so I'll just lump them all together here. I broke into several "abandoned" houses, one of which had all kinds of treasures like kitchen knives that we (including my pre-k sister) took and threw at things. The neighborhood kids had an apple fight one afternoon, throwing apples at one another until one of my throws hit my friend's 6 year old brother right in the face. He ran straight to my mom and that game was done. Because apparently we really liked throwing things, we took my dad's hatchet and axe out into a nearby woods and practiced throwing them at trees. Another afternoon we spent time taking turns jumping one kid's bike off the road into a drainage ditch as far as we could without smashing into the low hanging tree limbs in our way. We did that until the bike broke and then everyone left and let that kid walk his broken symbol of freedom home. I fractured my collar bone again. This time while playing tag. I cussed a neighborhood kid out until he cried only to turn and find my dad standing behind me. Between sixth grade and my sophomore year of high school: I ate live ants on a dare; found them to be sweet. Shot my sister with a bb gun after she made me angry. She in turn pulled a knife on me. My best friend and I hunted each other with bb guns. A year later we'd have a fist fight in the church over boy scout poinsettia sales. Fought another boy in the church yard; tripped him flat and as he got up, I kicked him in the ribs. In front of his girlfriend. Then my dad came out. The same kid and his friends thought it would be funny to antagonize me on the bus. I wrapped my fingers around his trachea and we got in-school suspension together. Cut the back of a kid's neck with a dull planer blade that I thought was a ruler. Then cut my own thumb to see if the blade was sharp. Had the cops called on me when I tried getting into the locked church through a window. Was banned from Mammoth Caves State Park for harassing a female cave guide. Never did get her number. Made my mom cry when I told her I planned on having sex with the first girl I could. Found a loose circular saw blade while exploring new construction sites with a couple of friends. We used it like a frisbee and threw it through the walls of a new house. Along those same lines, I made a set of sheet metal ninja stars and threw them at my bedroom wall. Junior and Senior year: I explored my sexuality with my girlfriend in her car, a bean field, a cemetery, two schools, and a church basement. Got a three day suspension for carrying a knife at school. Spent hours exploring inside the ceilings of the school. Crawled through gaps in the concrete block and out along trusses or conduit. Even went so far as to cut a shortcut in a wall. These kinds of things certainly didn't stop after I graduated, but I think this sufficiently illustrates how I was. SO, when I'm asked whether I'm worried about having a son, the answer is fuck yes I am. However, I'm also ridiculously, stupefyingly excited and happy. I can't wait to meet our Wesley Charles and get to work at protecting him from himself. Wish me luck!

A Gift For the Grieving

The wounds are still there. They may not be as fresh as they once were, but they still hurt and may tear open unexpectedly. It's a rare thing that an hour passes when I'm awake that I don't think of Avery at some point. Only yesterday I dissolved into tears thinking of how beautiful she was. I sat there in our living room, talking to Erin on the phone, surrounded by pictures of our daughter when it struck me. I admit that I'm biased. Every parent believes their babies to be the prettiest or most handsome. At that moment though I was again overwhelmed by the thought that I'd never get to see exactly how lovely Avery would grow to be. That is heart-wrenchingly painful. 

   I could fill pages on how painful this has been; chapters of tearful moments. That's not what this entry is about though. Three months ago, in my last blog post, I wrote that Erin and I had not given up on a family. I told of how we still wanted children and around a week later we learned that Erin was once again pregnant. To be clear, this was not planned or expected. I had written of rhetorical futures and hopeful dreams. In truth, without going into the details, we believed it wasn't even possible at the time. As we clutched at each other, desperately trying to find comfort from the only other person who could hurt as deeply, there was only one baby on our minds. Here we are though, seventeen and a half weeks into a new life. We are hopeful and terrified by turns. We're also happy to be expecting, but saddened at how the joy we should be feeling has been tempered by our loss. In the end though it is our hope at a brighter future that is pulling us from the sea of grief we've been adrift in. For that, and other reasons left unwritten, this baby is truly a gift to be thankful for.