My dad in my grandparents' backyard, May 1974

My grandfather, my dad's dad, always made sure to get individual portraits of everyone in the family on a regular basis.  He'd make the rounds during holiday gatherings or at our annual summer camping trips and get everyone to give him a few seconds.  There are a lot of us, so it was a bigger job than it sounds.  He'd send packages to my brother and me in September or so with pictures from the summer and a note inside from him and my grandmother.

I've never much liked posing for photos, but thanks to him I've got pictures of just me from when I was nine, fifteen, nineteen, thirty.  You couldn't ever tell him no.  Sometimes I was a little cranky about it, but of course now I'm glad to have them.  Even more glad to have copies of so many of the shots he got of my dad - from the time he was a baby up until my grandfather passed away several years ago. 

When my dad died, I was in Houston with my stepmom.  We were sleeping and the hospital called after 1 in the morning, telling us to get there quickly.  He maybe died while we were driving there, I'm not sure.  He was asleep when it happened, I know, because the next day the funeral director, who'd grown up with my dad, pulled me aside and told me that his feet were relaxed.  That his toes were pointed down.  People who are awake when they die, she said, have their toes flexed back toward their head.  Resisting.  That was the nicest thing anyone said to me during that time.  Or it made me feel better somehow more than anything.

After the funeral as we were all saying good bye at my grandmother's before going back home, my uncle told me that I'd find myself thinking about my dad all the time, probably much more than I ever did while he was alive.  That's been so true.  Usually the thoughts are more comforting than painful, but I wouldn't say that I'm coping well with his death.  Not at all. 

You know how there are events in your life that mark a shift in your thinking?  In the way you prioritize things and react to things?  This is one of mine:  Going to visit my dad in the hospital in early April and seeing him unable to lift his hand up.  All my life he was so strong.  My brother and I used to arm wrestle him and sit on his feet, holding onto his legs while he walked around the house.  He was the guy you'd hand unopenable jars to.  He had a great handshake.  Seeing him unable to lift his hand up broke something in me, and I felt it right when it happened.  I don't know how to say it, but it's something along the lines of The world isn't really how I think it is.  Nothing lasts.  Nothing is even real.  If I think about it too much, it quickly turns to What's the point?  That's when I get out the old answering machine that has some messages from him.  Hello, he says, this is your Daddy - or Granddaddy, depending on who's listening.  And I remember him saying to me, I sure do love you, kiddo, and rubbing his knuckles on the top of my head. 

It's hard for me to call my stepmom and my grandmother, even though I so much want to talk to them.  I feel like a traitor if I talk to my brother on the phone and we don't talk about our dad.  But talking about him sometimes is too hard.  I'd like to be able to hurt less, and I know he wouldn't want me to spend as much time grieving for him as I do.  But the thought of letting go seems wrong.  I love him so much I should always be this devastated, right?

Today is my mom's mother's birthday.  Tooty.  I miss her like hell, too.  We used to talk a lot, and she'd have me tell her what I was cooking, then she'd tell me about a new thing she tried, usually something one of her church ladies brought to her.  That's goooood eatin' she'd say.  And, my all-time favorite way to describe someone entirely selfish came from her, too.  Well, he's just sweet on hisself, that's all. 

I miss you both.  Save me a seat.  xo   

Hey.  So.  I started this post and was going to write a little about Scuba and maybe spill the beans that we're looking at houses together and have been for the past 8 months or so, when the babysitter knocks on my bedroom door where I'm working and says, Hey, Jen.  Uh.  You're really not going to like this.

So I walked into the kitchen to this:
 


And the first thing I thought was how pretty it looked, all that hanging-on broken glass.  Like ice.  I didn't see any blood, so I figured everyone was okay.  

Excuse me if I don't tell this story well.  I have had a lot of wine.

A couple of years ago, Nate became enamored with airsoft guns.  His friends all had them and he loved them and whenever he had money from his birthday or Christmas, he'd save up and buy one.  They were banned from my house, so he had to keep them at his dad's.  Until last month, when he bought a crazy-expensive one and was taking it to his friend's house down the street where they'd go out in all their gear and shoot things in the easement behind his friend's house where the power lines run through.  For some reason, I reversed my ban, and it was suddenly okay for him to have these things here.  When he took the guns to his friend's house, he'd carry them there in a guitar case, just like El Mariachi.   

Whenever they got together to shoot things (and each other), they all wore face masks and gear and I figured it was better than him sitting inside watching TV.  I mean, it's not unreasonable for a 13 year old boy to want to shoot shit up, right?

So.  This year for Christmas Nate got a ridiculous amount of cash.  He gave some to me to put in the bank, but he also marched over to the grocery store around the corner, bought himself an Amazon gift card, and ordered some guns. 

Today as we were sweeping up glass from all over the inside of the kitchen and the backyard, I started asking him how an airsoft gun could BREAK the glass on the sliding door.  He was pretty quiet, basically just telling me that it was his fault, and neither of the two friends he had over had done it.

As we were cleaning, little pieces of glass kept falling out of the door so I took a broom handle and knocked all the loose pieces out, which was - of course- really fun.  Nate wanted to do it, but I told him that since I had to pay for the new sliding door, then I would get to finish destroying this one.

The evening went on and I made a run to the hardware store for tarps and duct tape to cover the door until I can get it replaced.  It was funny, I called the landlord to let him know and he was all: So is everybody okay?  Oh, that's good.  You know you're going to have to pay for that. . .

By the time supper was over I had the entire story.  When Nate ordered his latest gun, a pistol, he assumed it was a regular airsoft gun like his other ones.  When he opened it and looked at the manual, he saw that it took METAL BBs.  (here's the part where I think he should have returned it, but instead he went out and bought METAL BBs)  He was in the backyard today and had taken a lemon from the ground under our tree and put it on top of the skateboard ramp so he could shoot it.  When he shot it, he missed the lemon, and hit a metal bar on the ramp.  The BB ricocheted off the bar, went clean through a cardboard box he was keeping his gun stuff in, hit and broke a drinking glass on the backyard picnic table, and then made a 90 degree turn into the sliding door, blowing a hole in the middle of the glass.

So the new gun is history and all the other guns must be kept in the garage and never EVER fired here again.  Nate wants to pay for the glass out of his money (in addition to working it off by doing some hard labor around here) but I'm going to get an estimate before we work that part out.  I don't think he should have to spend his Christmas and birthday money on it.  If he'd earned the money, it would be different, but I feel like it was given to him as a gift to spend on himself, and it would be weird to take it all.  He may be reimbursing me for the tarps and duct tape I had to get today, though. 

He was pretty hard on himself about the whole thing, but later we were kind of making totally inappropriate jokes about it.  I guess that I relate to my kids too much sometimes and when they mess up like this, it's hard for me to get mad at them, even when it's so costly.  He knows he has to come straight home from school tomorrow (and for however long I say) and do whatever I ask.  And, yes, I'm upset about what happened, but I'm not mad.  It could have been so much worse.  I kind of freaked out when he told me about the gun shooting METAL BBs - there's no way I'd have let him own the stupid thing, much less fire it off in the back yard, but he's learning as he goes just like the rest of us and Lord knows I've made worse mistakes. Thankfully no one was hurt by broken glass or bullets, and we didn't have a nasty fight to make him feel worse than he already does. 

And, thankfully, there was a cheap bottle of pinot waiting for me in the pantry.

  

We ended up not surfing, renting bikes, or going to Big Sur on Sunday, but instead sat in the warm sun at Lover's Point for awhile and then walked up the trail alongside the shore.  When there were stairs we'd climb down to the rocky beaches and look at the hundreds of hermit crabs in the perfectly-still tide pools and I wondered if they like it better in the tide pools where they're not getting crashed around by waves.  Scuba and I decided that they sit in there and meditate. 

At Lover's there are public restrooms and I saw a woman in there with a starfish on a paper towel.  She was holding the starfish under the faucet to get it wet so she and her kids could take it home.  Strangely enough, she thought she'd be able to keep it alive.  You know, so long as it was on a wet paper towel.  I suggested, but in the nicest way I could, that the starfish wasn't likely to survive the trip home, but to tell the truth I didn't push it because she could have kicked my ass ten ways to Sunday.  Hell, her little kids could have probably taken me and one was still in diapers.  It bothered me, though, being such a coward when what I really wanted to do was tell her what a dumbass she was being and how she was killing this poor little creature. 

Later we saw the kids putting it back in the water.  It made me really happy.  I'm going to assume it was still alive.  And also that they weren't just throwing a rock into the surf. 

Hang in there, little starfish dude.   

I brought my Poppa's Land Camera along again on this trip. I'm wasting a little less film these days, but still have so much to learn. Since our room was in the attic, the windows started right at the floor and in the morning the wood floor under the bed was glowing and lighting up the white bed skirt.  I love that they have the original windows with their warpedy glass.