'This is so fun!'

Enter the shadows...

2021 November. Walking back to the car having attended the Festival of Lights in Lake Jackson, our third time in eight possibilities. The parade came, dozens of cars and vans and trucks all decorated with lights and giving an idea of Christmas. At the end Santa Claus came riding through in the final car. Waving. In the cool night air his appearance was a secular but warming reminder that for all of winter we are not to be denied Christmas. Not to be abandoned. Through a full year of sadly unfulfilled resolutions, of failings. The heavy burden of time and of sin. The metaphysical flotsam as abundant evidence of failures, hanging upon us like unwanted chains, jewelry of the damned.

_______

2021 November. We saw the girls - the last two at home, the boy being shot to outer space and gone to the wind - on their gymnastics float. Flowing by in the provincial parade. The small town world that we once thought we escaped, had returned with a very funny smile. Fire trucks. Mayors. Decorated Jeeps with flickering lights.

It is a world that has been now marked for us as the last moment of raising young children. That period punctuated by endless travel back and forth to sporting practice and competitions. At the time nearly intolerable.

“Cannot wait until this phase is over.”

And then it’s over. Done. Silence.

The breath drops out of it, as it is the last part of it all. One of the steadily - undeniably linear - vanishing buffers between you and death. Another one down. Succeeding first words and first walk: as an aunt once said, “his first step is his first step away from you.” And so it goes. And he is in fact gone. And you cannot breathe when you think of it.

_______

Today: So all of a sudden now it is gone. I turned to her today, one year later, as we passed over on the 288 where they were setting up this year’s Festival parade. (Hopefully.) “Oh wow they are setting up the festival of lights. Should we go this year?”

She replied, “Nah, the girls aren’t in it. Really there is no point. It’s over. No interest.”

_______

Don’t tell anyone else, but two years before this (due to pause for virus lies) I talked her into filling a Zojirushi thermal mug with some dark brewed coffee with cream and sugar and brandy. It was a cold night. 2019. We had a good position to see the girls on their float. The Zojirushi is the best thermal so we slowly sipped the warming magical mix and waved and cheered as they floated by. Coffee and brandy. So hot on cold.

_______

2021 November: I walked ahead of them in the parking lot back toward the car and there was a little girl of perhaps four years old. She had the ecstatic joyful voice of her age, who literally could not wait for Christmas, who could not wait for Santa Claus, who was absolutely filled to the brim with excitement over this time of year, when everything was magic.

Her hand was firmly in the hand of the hero of her world. "Oh daddy! This is so fun!"

She said it again and again. "This is so fun!"

It was the opening day of the Christmas season and she was filled with the excitement. I saw her daddy walking toward his truck, and I was not sure what he said in response. If I could have spoken to him I would have explained what had just happened. That he was the greatest hero of all but that it would not last.

It was only four short years before when our youngest was still slightly believing in Santa Claus. Wanted to believe in Santa Claus. Wanted to believe there was magic and pure happiness that rained upon us without reason and without hesitation. "How does he get down this chimney?" "Magic," she told her. Her mother was great about it. No hesitation.

Even the first few years here we would leave out a plate for Santa. Even had a special Santa plate. I would take a bite out of the cookie very late to keep the miracle alive. These days there are no miracles.

_______

2021 November: Before the 2021 Festival of Lights I was alone with the girls during the daytime celebration and carnival rides of a sad variety. My thoughts at the time:

—- Traditions remind us how times have changed. Our third participation in the "Festival of Lights" in Lake Jackson, and this time it's just me and the girls. The boy is off and mother is not able to walk so she took a pass on the whole thing. Just me and the girls.

So today I walk around among Lake Jacksonians and have a strange look on my face. I do not recognize anything. I am Rip Van Winkle come out of my little hovel where I write and study, where I plan the next day's program, where I edit today's articles.

I look around to a world I do not know, to people I do not know. I blink my eyes, looking at neighbors I do not recognize, at a place I cannot put my finger on. I still cannot drive around here after seven and a half years because I get lost. What the hell is “This Way”? I look at these people and I have no idea about them. I am so lost.

________

Part of me only ever wanted to fit in. To be normal. When we moved to Eagle Rock, Springfield VA, in 2012, where a playground was literally out our back door, I had the idea that I might finally be normal. At a certain hour the other dads congregated in the green commons, in a field near the playground - conveniently right outside our front door - where the older kids (like my son) would play football and the youngers (like my two girls) would be sliding down the slides and imagining all manner of wonderful imaginary worlds.

The dads got home from work.

I thought I might finally be a normal dad.

"Hey, hi." I would try to enter the conversation. But I was not like them and they saw that immediately. There was no being normal on Eagle Rock or here in Lake Jackson. Nine years of yearning. With emptiness as a response.

Today, 2021, I was alone with the girls. Our party keeps shrinking. The boy is gone. In his absence many things have fallen apart, as middle girl observed at the time.

"Hey anything you want I am happy," I said. "Eat whatever and anything."

They agreed on deep fried oreos and a shaved ice. I sat with them and looked around and felt as if I were on a different planet. But my youngest grasped my hand and held it. Even in these much later times. There was nothing in the history of the world - of my world - that held anything like her hand in mine. For the last time.

They are wonderful and beautiful young ladies. Maybe they or somebody can save me, can help me to be normal...