Portraits

Funny thing about children... they'll help you rediscover memories that you'd thought were long gone.

Saturday morning. 7:30 a.m. Bright sunlight streams through the windows and illuminates the toys strewn on our floor, and gives a golden hue to our battered, comfortable, mostly second-hand furniture. I am up because, despite a relatively sleepless night, my body simply will not remain asleep beyond 6:00 a.m. anymore. (I used to think Dad was crazy for getting up early on the weekends... I'm starting to realize he did not have a say in the matter.) I make cafe au lait for myself, and a much weaker version in a sippy cup for my son. My wife remains asleep, nested firmly in the spot that I recently vacated. 

We sit in silence and sip our respective beverages. His sober little morning face is an incredible reflection of his mother's. 

"Something is missing," I tell him. 

He continues drinking from his sippy, his huge brown eyes studying my face. 

"Something important." 

His silence continues. Like myself as a child, Jack's consumption of coffee is an all-or-nothing ritual, where he does not rest until the cup is drained to the last drop. 

"Donuts, Jack. We need to get some donuts for Mommy. And flowers. Why flowers? Not because it is a special occasion... it's just that when you live with a woman, periodically giving her flowers buys breathing room for those times when you royally screw up. Free tip, kid."

"Donuts!" 

"Indeed." 

I stand up to get him out of his pajamas, and then I stop. It hits me like a freight train. 

It is probably 1987. New Orleans. The weather is that same muggy warmth, with the same sunlight that seems to turn everything to gold. My father and I are on the road. We're in his immaculate Nissan Maxima, with its square lines and uniformly gray everything. We're on our way to Morning Call, which is the other restaurant in town that sells beignets, French donuts with powdered sugar on top. Dad and I are both wearing our pajamas and flip-flops.

This is very strange, because my father is a very proper man. Always with immaculately combed hair, clean shaven, pressed shirts and pants. Always appropriate. Composed. Controlled. Even in his own home, I could never say that the man relaxed. I only got to see little cracks of my father's humanity on rare occasions. 

This was one of them. Riding in that old car, sitting in his ragged pajamas, my father wasn't quite my father. Or, at least, not as I knew him. His hair was unruly and his chin was covered with dark stubble. Chuck Berry warbled "You Never Can Tell" on the radio, and we bellowed along. (I tried, at least. My knowledge of Berry's songs was limited at that time.) Dad dropped the hammer and we tore down the road, likely considerably faster than the speed limit.  Both of us laughed in delight. 

It was one of the few times I ever remember him doing so. This is one of my favorite memories of my father, because I got a little glimpse of who he was as a kid, before the world went to work on him. Rakish, impulsive, and a bit irresponsible, there was a certain delight in him that day. I'm not sure exactly why the walls came down, but I'm glad they did. 

I smile at my son and leave his pajamas on. I neither shower nor shave. My hair looks like I've mixed it up with an electric socket and a battered "Tron" tee-shirt adorns my chest. 

"C'mon, kiddo. We're keeping up a tradition."

"Donuts?"

"Yes. Still the donuts. And flowers for Mommy. And whatever the hell else we feel like." 

I load him in the car. Through the magic of smart phones and little cables, Chuck favors us with another rendition of his classic. I roll down the windows and tear down the causeway, with the ocean wind roaring in my face. We sing along to the radio and shamelessly procure our treasure from the store. For a bit, the rest of my life with all its cares and worries fades into non-existence. I am 100% present, and I am delighted. Jack smiles his mother's beautiful smile. 

When we get back home, he surprises Mommy with our treasures. 

Hopefully, one day, something will remind him of this, and he'll smile at this glimpse of me, just as I did of my own father. 

Pullus Phasma Phasmatis

Prologue

I woke with a gasp. My wife slept next to me. I lay in my own bed. Dawn light had just started creeping into our humble little bedroom. The clock ticked. The garish, bright comforter lay haphazardly draped over my wife and I. The only thing out of place was the chicken sitting on my nightstand. 

The chicken cocked its head and looked at me with one beady, black eye.

"You again! Stay away, you sonofabitch!" 

I sat bolt upright in bed. I fumbled at my nightstand and grabbed my knife. The razor-sharp blade flew out with a satisfying "plok". I brandished it at the chicken. 

"Haven't you brought enough suffering on our home? Avaunt!" 

The chicken seemed unaffected by my raised voice and proffered blade. Beside me, my wife began to gently snore, oblivious as to the life and death conflict between myself and this otherworldly gallus gallus domesticus. I continued through clenched teeth. 

"What is it, chicken? What does this mean? Two years that you've been gone, and now this? Are we pregnant again?"

The chicken shook its head.

"The next time you show your face here, chicken, you have my solemn vow that I will end you, braise you, and eat you. Rest assured."

***

In many cultures, totem animals represent all kinds of people, places, and ideas. My wife is the only woman I know whose uterus has a totem. That totem is the spirit chicken. This is its story. 

I seriously debated whether this topic merited its own blog entry, but when I got right down to it, this whole phenomenon is just too fucking weird not to document somewhere. If nothing else, it will be delightful if, twenty years from now, my son reads this and discovers to his horror that his mother's uterus has an otherworldly chicken sentinel. In the bizarre little movie that plays in my head, his reading of this tale will somehow how infect his mind with the spirit chicken. Then perhaps it will follow him around and leave me be. Poe had his raven. Us Songys have the chicken. 

My first encounter with the chicken occurred on the day of my son's birth, October 31, 2009. 

Allow me to paint the picture. It was Halloween and a full moon to boot. The maternity ward at Bayfront was packed to the rafters. The ward had more ready-to-pop prengant women than it could handle. You could almost feel the chaos radiating off the place. In the hallways, frantic near-fathers paced back and forth with nothing better to do. Pregnant women hooked to monitors walked laps around the ward, wearing dark expressions. You could almost hear them thinking, "Please, God, let one of these steps knock this little parasite loose." I swear to God one of them did shikko, the high-legged, fierce stomp that sumo wrestlers sometimes make before beginning their match. The nurses had dispensed with any dressing-up of their coffee. They drank the coffee black, tossed it back like women condemned to die. The coffee was gulped without adornments like cream or sugar. Such luxuries did not exist for the brave tamers of these pregnant beasts. 

My wife, her mother, and I were on our first night in the ward. The doctors gave Monica a drug to induce her labor. The little beeping monitors advised us that she was having contractions, but she did not feel them yet. At this point, her water had yet to break. 

When we first arrived at the hospital, I felt the adrenaline pounding through my veins. After months and months of preparation, it was finally going to happen. Jack the Destroyer was set to come into the world on the coolest birthday imaginable. 

Somehow, the only think I could think to pray was, "Please, God, don't let me see my wife poop on the table." Not sure why that particular prayer came to mind, but that's what I was thinking. We had made it eight years with a strict "closed door while on the toilet policy", and this was about to blow that streak to hell. 

What can I say? You think of weird shit under stress. 

Anyway, one can only be excited for so long. Excited in this case gave way to anxious. Anxious gave way to bored. Finally bored gave way to Maury Povitch (there's an irony to paternity shows in the labor ward). Povich gave way to sleep. I finally closed my eyes to get a few moments of sleep on the little pull-out father couch in our suite. 

When I dream, it is usually a vast and encompassing thing. Bizarre, intricate plots expand over huge, faraway places. My dreams are the subconscious equivalent of Wagner's compositions (minus all the pro-Nazi stuff, of course). I found it more than passing strange when this particular dream began in the precise room where I had just fallen asleep. That is entirely too pedestrian for my strange, sadistic psyche. 

Monica was sitting there in the dream. Sadly, she was still watching Maury. Ray-Ray's father still hadn't been determined. My mother-in-law still occupied her chair across the room and quietly worked on her laptop. The picture seemed entirely normal... but for the chicken sitting on the bed. It was a rooster, though somewhat young. Cockerel might be a better term. Its bright red comb wobbled as it surveyed the room with its oil spot eyes. It had a deep sense of intelligence, and though I feel positively ridiculous saying so, had an air of menace about it. 

The spirit chicken gave me a meaningful look, somehow raised an eyebrow (despite the fact that chickens do not have eyebrows), and walked over to my wife's extremely pregnant abdomen. The rooster gave it an abrupt peck. 

And then, as my clients so often tell me in the comfort of my office, "shit got crazy." 

After the peck, there was a moment of ominous silence. And then, FWOOSH. A torrent of water exploded out of the bottom of my wife's largely undignified hospital gown. And when I say "torrent," I want you to think of that bloody elevator scene from The Shining. This explosion washed away the chicken in its violence. The room filled quickly, a veritable amniotic white-water rapids. 

In that precise moment, I snapped awake. Monica looked at me, shifted her weight, and then paused meaningfully. 

"Oh shit," she said, "my water just broke." 

That's right. You read the above narrative correctly. The spirit chicken, totem of my wife's uterus, had somehow reached into the waking world and predicted, if not actually caused, the breaking of her water. You have to understand that I am not a superstitious person in any way, shape, or form. I do not spend time pondering the unseen or wondering what lay beyond this world. I freely walk under ladders and more than once have intentionally crossed my own path with a black cat. I care not for these silly things. I am a man of science, like my father before me. 

But despite that, this freaking dream chicken broke my wife's water. I swear it with my hand to fucking God. 

From that point, things got relatively crazy. Her heart rate went all over the place. The baby's heart-rate went all over the place. Hours of labor passed. Pain was intense. Evidently once your water breaks, contractions are royal high bastards. Monica got an epidural and promptly wore out the little "more drugs" button. After a brief, but terrifying bout where we were concerned we might lose the baby, I decided to go with a cesarean section. (And yes, I said that I decided this. Not because I know better, or because I am smart or even that great under pressure. It is just that by that point, my wife had hit the "more" button so many times that she was high as a freaking kite.) 

I won't gore or bore you with the details of that process, suffice to say that I never want to see my wife's innards again. 

Luckily, everyone came out happy and healthy. Jack is a beautiful two year-old at this point, and he is the joy of our lives. Thanks to the extremely rough pregnancy that produced Jack and the wickedly powerful post-partem depression that hit my wife, we opted to shut the baby factory down after that first attempt. 

For two and a half years, the chicken remained blessedly, or perhaps ominously, silent. And then the other day, he made the dramatic re-appearance that I mentioned above. If he can be believed, his appearance doesn't mean anything, but hell, how do you go about deciding whether or not a uterus totem animal is trustworthy? I have no freaking idea. 

Regardless, there is no deeper moral to this story. I have no insight about the human condition to share with you today. I just wrote this because I'm one of the few dudes who has had a spirit chicken break his wife's water, and if you can't share that type of thing on the internet, then what is the point? 

Epilogue

Totally didn't see her poop. 

Feats of Amazement

This morning was one of those perfect Florida mornings. Bright blue skies with just enough clouds to give enough contrast. Seventy-five degrees, though the cool breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico made it seem quite a bit cooler than that. The air had that slight, clean tang of salt-water. I was outside taking a walk with my little boy, Jack.

As we walked around the apartment complex, we came across the vending machine that sits on a raised deck, overlooking the pool. For whatever reason, Jack had never been up on this porch. More to the point, he'd never seen a vending machine before. The bright red Coca-Cola symbol glowed faintly in the bright sun. The machine gave off that low, re-assuring hum and the gentle warmth that the old machines give off.

Jack took to the machine delightedly. He punched all the buttons with abandon, ignoring the little beeps of protest when the machine gently reminded him that it had not been paid. He didn't care. Jack's little fingers explored all the buttons, the coin slot, the change return, and the battered metal bay that actually distributed the drinks. Earlier in the walk, he got a letter from our mailbox. He solemnly put it in the vending machine's metal bay. I laughed. He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled.

I fished around in my pocket and dug out some change. He looked at me questioningly. My old stage training came back to me. I could almost hear my first employer, a stage magician, talking to me as I walked the coins across my knuckles.

"Patrick, the trick doesn't mean that much. It is all about the presentation. Grab their attention, draw them in... make even the most mundane things part of an interesting story. If you can do that, the trick is almost an afterthought."

I did a french-drop (a slight of hand) on each and every quarter before I fed it in the machine. Jack laughed every time, because he is a great audience. He didn't even hold it against me that I fumbled the third one a little bit and got my angles wrong. (My hands haven't been trained and suited for stage magic in well over a decade at this point.)

Finally, once all the change was in the machine, I looked down at him and waggled my eyebrows. With a grand gesture, I punched the button to get a bottle of Cherry Coke. The machine rattled and bumped. His delighted face looked dismayed for a moment. And then the brightly colored bottle flew out the bottom of the machine and into the bay. Jack picked it up and marveled at it, an expression of wonder on his face.

I thought of my own father just then. When I was younger, he would pick me up from school on Friday afternoons. On the way home, we used to always stop at the same deli and get a Cherry Coke. I was sat up on the counter, and allowed to drink straight out of the can, just like he did. I remember that when I was that age, that was the best feeling in the world. I got to drink a drink just like my father.

I hadn't thought about that in twenty years, but something about the experience with Jack knocked the memory loose. I smiled.

I plopped him on my lap and we took turns sipping the soda and watching the wind move through the trees. It was a breezy day, and the movement of the branches was almost hypnotic.

Finally, Jack started to squirm, signalling that our little moment together was over and it was time to move on to more important things, like lunch. I thought about all the ingredients I'd bought especially for the lunch, to make a spectacularly good grilled cheese sandwich. When you don't have a lot of money, the indulgences you get for your child almost have to be culinary, and simple to boot.

Miraculously, he kept from raising hell long enough for me to throw together a pretty respectable lunch. As we divided up the crusty, cheesy bread, he popped it in his mouth with amazement. I realized after the fact that he'd never eaten anything with garlic-butter before.

It's the funniest thing to see the world through the eyes of your child.

Coke, Florida mornings, grilled cheese... these things are about as mundane as I could imagine. Hell, if I'm to be totally honest, I am pretty mundane myself. But to my child, I'm the gatekeeper for all the world's arcane secrets... always just a Saturday away from exposing him to something that is totally delightful and utterly magical in its novelty. I don't doubt that my own father felt the same way in those weekly stops when I was a boy.

It has been years since I performed magic on a stage. I remember what it was like back then, an oddly well-spoken child performing with one of the best people-readers I've ever met. At the time, I remember feeling applause from the audience after a trick and thinking that it was absolutely the best feeling in the world. I lived for the look of astonishment on peoples' faces, the squeals of delight.

Little did I know that I would have to wait another twenty years to meet the best audience of my life.