Thursday, January 27, 2011

There Aren't Enough Words In The Dictionary...

It's nice down here.

It's as quiet as quiet gets.

The steady hum of the hot water heater. The rattling of the pipes. The creaking of wooden floors beneath tiny, invisible footsteps.

I like that sound.

Nothingness.

I like it because it keeps the moment alive.

Barely alive.

Fizzling away like the last pixel of digital snow on an old black and white television, sucked into one minuscule dot.

Gone.

It's hard to write about my family these days.

I want to. Trust me I do.

I want you to know everything and nothing at the same time.

The conversations with my daughters hang in the air, waiting to be captured and bottled like fireflies. The words fall into place like Tetris pieces. They are the blogs that write themselves but never get written.

I don't want to fuck up the perfection, like a game of telephone. I don't want, "I love french toast" to become "I hate Donny Most".

Tonight when I was putting my 8 year old daughter to sleep, we laid in bed together talking about our favorite Aimee Mann songs.

She likes Aimee Mann.

She doesn't like her because of me. I just played her the CD. She figured the rest out on her own.

"Hey bud. Wait here for a sec. I want to play something for you."

"Dad. Where are you going?"

"Hang on. I'll be right back."

I ran downstairs to my old CD rack.

1000 CD's. Each of them covered in a thin film of dust.

Got it!

I dashed upstairs, popped in the CD and climbed back under the covers with her.

Nose to little, button nose.

"What did you put on Daddy?"

"Wait. Just listen..."

I know exactly how I felt when I heard this album for the first time, back in 1987.

It made my heart race. It gave me chills. It made me want to run as fast and as far as I could run.

But I couldn't move.

The music froze me. That's exactly what it did to me.

Now I'm laying next to my baby girl. Nose to little, button nose and it was her turn.

I wondered, "what will the music do to her?".

There aren't enough words in the dictionary for me to write about that...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

You ______ To Do, What You ______ To Do...

Saturday afternoon...

Out-Numbered - What do you guys want to do today?

8 Year Old - Let's go to the library!

Out-Numbered - That's a good idea.

4 Year Old - No. Let's go and get our nails done.

Out-Numbered - We did that last week.

4 Year Old - Please Daddy.

Out-Numbered - We can't do both. You guys have to decide which one you want to do.

8 Year Old - I don't care.

4 Year Old - I don't care either.

Out-Numbered - OK. So which one is it gonna be?

8 Year Old - Daddy, you pick!

4 Year Old - Yeah! Daddy picks!

Out-Numbered - Hmmm. That's a tough one. They're both pretty good suggestions.

8 Year Old - He's going to pick the library because he's a boy.

FREEZE!

Now this is a pretty important moment. You would never know it because it's subtle. So subtle that it can't be seen or heard or even felt.

It just is.

Let me try to explain.

Have you ever heard the expression, "you have to do, what you have to do"?

We've all said it a thousand times.

My point is this: The expression, "you have to do, what you have to do" is made for situations like, picking someone else's dog shit off your front lawn, telling your girlfriend that her jeans don't make her ass look fat or farting in line at the DMV.

It's not made for this.

Not today it's not.

When "you have to do, what you have to do" becomes, "you want to do what you want to do", it means you're probably right where you're supposed to be.

That's me these days.

Right where I'm supposed to be...