It's still cold at night. Though I'm generally content with my solitary life, there is a time in the middle of the night, around 3 a.m., that I always wake up and wish I had a girlfriend next to me. Somehow in the past year I seem to have lost some body heat. It wasn't that long ago, just two winters back, that I used to warm up the left side of this bed, so when my partner came to bed, I could move over to the right and her side would be warm. I think I had an excess of heat back then.
This long, dreary winter has been cold, and at times, wet. Storms come and go, and some days there is enough heat that the blossoms are out on the fruit trees, and herbs are flowering in our garden. But then the sun goes down and the near-freeze revisits this city. The actual temperature may be 40 but given the lack of insulation or proper heat in these old buildings, it feels colder than that.
Or, maybe after 36+ years here, my blood has thinned. In any event, sleeping alone six of every seven nights, I cannot ever seem to get warm. Put on another blanket, you say! Wear a robe! Well, I do these things, but the inner chill remains.
Maybe it's part of the aging process? At the moment of death, we still are warm, but very rapidly the world sucks the last bits of heat out of our bodies until we lie there, stone-cold. I watched my parents die and felt the heat leaving their bodies. And I think I know why people often have the sense that a loved one's essence suddenly flies through the room as they die.
My grandmother, for example, on the night my grandfather died, was in a separate room in their house. My Uncle George was there, with other family members. As I remember the story, Grandma woke up and suddenly said, "Alex is here! Alex?" This happened just as he passed away.
My explanation, admittedly unreligious and therefore unsatisfying to most, is that the heat leaving the body of one who dies rises much like a mirage in the desert. The air becomes momentarily shaken as if it's plasma. Our beings evaporate before our witnesses' eyes.
Thus we leave this world.
So, perhaps, not being able to stay as warm as we once could is our body's signal to us that we, too, are not immune to death's steady advance. He who just yesterday was his girlfriend's furnace will tomorrow be still as an ice block.
***
Not to get too heavy here, or depressing, today was actually a very nice day for my small children and me. We had all of the usual distractions last night and today -- play dates, movies, pizzas, sports games, art projects, photographs, walks to the coffee shop, Progressive Grounds, music, dancing, Runescape, and the disruptions of a quasi-teenager in the house.
My 12-year-old disclosed his dilemma last night.” Dad, three girls all seem to like me and they all want me to go to the dance with them."
"What do you want?"
"I just want to be their friend, that's it, but two of them hate each other, so I'm caught in the middle of it."
Sure enough, this afternoon, all three girls, whose identities I will not reveal, called him, one after the other. The two that "hate" each other managed to take offense that he had spoken with both of them.
I heard him say "I don't know" in all three instances. Afterwards, he explained he said he was answering them about whom he was going to take to the dance.
"We're not even supposed to be taking people to the dances yet," he said, exasperated.
So, this is what it is like to be a 12-year-old boy in our over-sexualized, over stimulated society, circa 2007. I feel powerless. What I want to scream to these girls, and their parents, is "Leave my son alone!" He's way too young to have to navigate his way around female hysteria.
I hope this does not sound sexist to anyone, because I don't mean it to be. I just wish I could undo the damage TV, movies, advertising, and insecure parents have done to girls in our culture.
They all deserve to be children a lot longer! Twelve! Give me a break. At that age no one harassed me, and I was free to roam the cornfields with my dog and my shotgun, spinning my own fantasies, none of which yet involved females.
Everything's speeded up. It's not good and it's not fair. There will be many years of heat, before the cold sets in. Each child will be a better partner if they first figure out how to be alone.
-30-
2 comments:
In the past, I've always taken your discussions of death and/or depression to be, well, depressing. And it made me worry that you were depressed. However, I finally realized tonight that your references are just direct and sometimes even a tiny bit poking fun at the very fates we all face -- I see this best in "He who just yesterday was his girlfriend's furnace will tomorrow be as still as an ice block." I don't know if you meant it as such, but when I got there, I just broke out in laughter over your almost saucy attitude. It was great. And blending in your son's encounter with the female force is equally wonderful -- just don't forget, David, that young girls develop emotionally light years before boys. And given that their main source of possible boyfriends is drawn from school, the girls are often limited to those not-yet-ready boys in their own grade/class/age group, which makes for one tough situation. No screaming at the girls or their parents!
I figure I met death face to face on Feb. 10, 1971, so that is 36 years and counting that I should not really be here. Meanwhile, I have brought six kids into the world, plus three books, 250 articles, and thousands of conversations with hundreds of friends. I've had some incredible nights with some lovely women, and rapped out some impressive hits for my dear softball team. Do I fear death? Fuck, no. Do I enjoy being alive? Fuck yes.
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