The Mythology of Mothershead

Just started re-reading one of the greatest books ever written, To Kill a Mockingbird (like Stephen Colbert says, when you write one this good, you don't need to write another) this summer and realized something I had forgotten. Let me take you back.



I "borrowed" the first edition printing of the book from my parents somewhere in the late eighties. I know it was theirs cause Dad put a sticker in it telling us so and, apparently, according to the sticker, they also wanted to allow epileptics in public schools back in 1960. I mean, who doesn't?



Flash forward to the nineties when I got my first apartment with my girlfriend freshly graduated from college--her not me. Well, at any rate, I was there and worked full time and loved my job and read that book. That book made me sad when I was done. It made me sad to think I'd never get to spend anymore time with Scout (most of all) or any of them as Harper Lee hadn't written anything else.



However, it planted in me a seed that didn't really start to germinate until we had moved out of the apartment, got married, moved out of our tiny yellow rental house, slid down the road and bought our first little white house. Then it hit me: I want a daughter. I want my own Scout.



Well, I think it hit us both, but Lisa couldn't help herself because she's a chick. I wanted a daughter and we tried real hard for a few years. But, there was trouble. And Lisa went to doctors and had surgery while I just kept doing my thing. In fact, one time I had to do my thing in a cup and take it to a doctor to make sure my thing wasn't wasting every one's time, but I would've done anything for the cause at that point--even boxers.



So. It all goes back to college when I boasted to my girlfriend (Lisa) as we lay around on some mattresses tossed on the floor, that since I was adopted, then I was sure to adopt a child when I got married and never fool with "baby weight" and post-partum depression etc etc. And that was the answer now. When the doctor boasted, "You'll never get pregnant without my help," and , "Treatments are 20,000 dollars a month," it dawned on her as well, that adoption might be the way to go.



Well, TKAM rears its head again. I read that China is throwing little girls at Americans and all we need is money and all we hafta do is get to the YMCA and sign up after a discussion about it with Carolina Adoption Agency. I tell Lisa, "Let's go, it won't hurt to see." And we went, sat through the whole thing and heard, "You must be at least 31 years of age to participate."



I think I was 30 and Lisa was 29 (for real at this point). On the way out, I look at a table of pictures of children from other countries other than China, and see one set of pictures that looks vaguely familiar. The children are gorgeous, and some of them, believe it of not, look just like my baby pictures. "Well how old do you hafta be for Guatemala here?"



Lisa did more paperwork and running to the courthouse than I ever had fighting my countless traffic tickets and getting building permits. She got it done in about a year, maybe less. I won't tell you the trials and tribulations of all that, just to say that we were told we'd get what we'd get (just like knocking someone up) and I prayed for a Scout.



We got, the BOY! or rather his picture days after he was born. We paraded this picture they had sent with carefully placed post-it notes over his genitals to anyone who would look. They don't care a hoot about American Sensibilities down there when babies are concerned I reckon, but strangely, most everyone we showed the picture would peek under the post-it note! He was the child that was meant for us.



In four months I was a Dad! In four months Lisa was a Mom. In four months, Jaime was miserable and in a foreign world surrounded by strangers...anyway, he got better. And from an apartment, as we'd sold the house, to a rental on the lake we moved with the baby...and then I got the call, "I'm pregnant," about five months after we'd just gone south for our little organ donor.



Well, it was shocking, and I was shocked. I had just kept doing my thing, and somewhere deep down inside, Lisa had done hers; a year after we were told it'd never happen without help. Well, one belly sonar later, and "it" was going to become a Girl, my Scout. I don't remember when or how I asked if we could name her Scout, I just remember now, looking back, that it wasn't going to be.



Cruel fate it was. However, everything was fine...I had my Scout. I was gonna call her that ever if her name was Emily Rebecca Mothershead! But, she was tiny, and smelly, and...bald. She wasn't a Scout, she was a baby, then a crawler, then a toddler who apparently couldn't walk through a room without getting juice on the ceiling. And she was constantly sticky.



And I've mentioned before that Jaime, who was quick to label things in the house, had labeled her Loo-Doo so, it wasn't a stretch that she'd end up Sticky-Loo, and has been called thus for ten or so years. Yeah, she's no scout, but she's better, because she's real, and she's here and I can see her anytime I want. But best of all, she too is chock full of organs that Lisa or I can use as needed with less risk of rejection.



I have become a full blown dad now, and have learned many things about little people. I learned more from Atticus I think than I ever thought and have repeated his advice many times to people without even knowing I was parroting him. "Don't talk down to children, if he asks something, answer him," I like to say, and do. I don't do euphemisms.



Worse, however, is the realization that if I actually had a child like Jean-Louise, or Jem, or a house guest like Dill, I might have to kill them all to save my own sanity. I also see that the book, though loved indeed, is in fact, a work of fiction. Sure, some contents are perhaps loosely based on some of Harper Lee's experiences and childhood friends, but it is a vision of how it was, and not a historical document. And Scout, though lovable, could never be a Mothershead now, now that we have a Jaime and an Emily.

Maybe a dog then.

One of my favorite passages from The Koran

From the Surah, Abraham 14:22:

And when Our judgement has been passed, Satan will say to them: 'True was the promise God made to you. I too made you a promise, but did not keep it. Yet, I had no power over you. I called you, and you answered me. Do not now blame me, but blame yourselves. I cannot help you, nor can you help me. I never thought, as you did, that I was God's equal.'

Isn't that cool? It's like Satan as a real dude, not a snake in the grass. And, he admits he's really up to no good. But the best part is, even if Satan is just the personification of one following one's desires without moral direction, the verse points out that one's problems are generally one's own fault.

I Don't know why, but that little blurb jumped off the page for me and I wanted to share it. The Koran is full of phrases turned just right even in my translation, and I would say it is translated at least as well as the christian tome. Both pretty much have the same supporting characters.

Well, that's it.

Mozart

The difference between you and me,
What holds us apart?
I can't yet,
And will Not go,

I hear the strains from 200 years ago,
You can too,

What more do you need?
A Book,
A Koran,
A Torah?

I give you immortality,
I give you DNA,
I give you paradise,I give you heaven,
I give you Mozart, our god,
Our muse.

The Fourth of July

You shouldn't need me to tell you
Where the holy part of you is.

It's the part that cries at commercials,
And old TV theme songs,
And pictures of dead children in africa
In honduras
In haiti
In NC where you live.

Not,where you rush to ball games
With 5 dollars bills
Stepping around the homeless
With yellow eyes and hungry, starving livers
Twitching for dimes
For beer
For death.

Not packing the clubs in the SUV
To see fireworks and flash your yellow magnets,
And your MVP card for cheap steaks,
While you protest a war
You'll never feel,
Until your strappin young lad
Sees sunny North Korea in 2015.

Not facebook or twitter.
Not AIM,
Not I-phones or nextel.
You don't need me.
Just feel what it means to know
You're alone.
You can't save yourself
You can't save your kids
You can't love your wife
You can't stop the rust on your car's aortic valves
Or your own...

You don't need me to tell you;
Love it here!
Feel the heat,
Feel the cold
You're alive that's what it means
Suffer well,
And you feel,
Hide from life,
And you die.

I see the dead everyday.
I mock them and protest,
But jealous none the less.
Easier still to be dumb,
Than to flick misguided worms to the grass after rain.

Wrap it up,
You don't need me...
You know why hurt kids'll make you cry
Why old people want to die,
And why oh why don't I?

Family Lexicon

The words and phrases we use everyday in our house vary, of course, but a few were taught to us by infant and toddler children. I was reminded of where these words came from today in the shower.

To this day, no matter what it is, whether it's soup or a shower, if it's surprisingly hot, one says, "WHOO! HOT!" in a loud, toddleresque Jaime voice.

If one sees poop, left behind from any species of animal, lying in the yard, one is to shout, "DOO-DOO!" with his arms out stretched behind him like a penguin, again, in one's best young Jaime voice.

Forever, "Shawggy gon' get my cereal." means hurry up and eat before your cereal gets soggy.

My beautiful daughter was tagged, "Loo-Doo" by a not-much-older brother. So she still is called this with variations depending on mood and condition. These other names include Poopy-Loo, Stinky-Loo (Though she outgrew this phase when she started using the litter-box), Sticky-Loo (still applicable sometimes, even to this day), Grumpy Loo, but mostly plain jane Loo-Loo.

A toothbrush is a Blih-bluh at least once a quarter around here. We have Emily on tape saying that.

These are the main ones...the ones that get used many times and remind me personally of my kids when their dad was a giant and all-knowing and indestructible. My stock's gone down some, but I'm reminded every time, everyday, when I scald myself in the shower, or gulp hot coffee or pizza.

Self express

Lemme see if this posts to the wall,
No empty page here,
but no eyes at all.

If I could have both and time to write,
Mistress and mommy,
both in our sight.

Wasted Words

I can't remember what it was like to hit the TAB key and have it move the roller-thing forward five spaces for a real paragraph. Seems like such a long time ago. Is it something I'm doing wrong? Surely it is.

As the end of the world escapses us not,
And the sun creeps closer;
Keeping us hot.
Baking the water into the sky,
Drying out throats,
Cracking our eyes.
Swollen tongues,
Cackle and crackle silent cries.
Bury the fetus in a dusty cloud,
A wind gust away from thirsty hound.
Laugh at the crags underfoot,
A trip down a crispy lane of grass,
Then given a spark, a cleansing blast,
This world shakes us off
Like a shitty rash...

Time

The times for thinking of yourself have been over for a long time. You have nothing to offer them but more, more, and even more…you never stop offering. You never stop. Even when not asked, things are taken from you.

Those times you sit and think you’ll be remembered, hope to be remembered, then aren’t, will be the times you’ll ache to forget. You’ll forget. All it takes is a gentle comb of little fingers in your hair, a hand on your shoulder, an unexpected hug, then and only then is all forgotten.

Times sat together on a floor, on a bed, looking at the same things, laughing, and smelling and spilling, all together. Can be too much; can you be driven to madness? Until the snapping shut of lips and open arms, then doors.

The times in bed surrounded by piles on the floor of silent, sleeping parasites of love will be gone, are going and will be missed with the relief that naked sleepy blunders go unnoticed.

Times left to go now less than the times well spent, misspent wasting them at the mirror or waxing a car or cleaning your clubs. All the given and all the taken and all the gifts and stolen treats leaving you with little time for thinking of yourself.