It's a balmy thing outside. Thirty-something, and we're all wearing hoodies in this city drinking gin and juice around the Mississippi just like our celebrated forefathers did. Except then it wasn't packaged in the
same bottle. I wanted to bring in the new year by trying new things, and taking myself out of my comfort zone, and that has so far involved accepting blue as a suitable name for a flavor of a beverage.
I would have felt more comfortable with Rockin' Razzzzberry, but that's what this journey into the unknown is all about. Thanks Ms. Jackson. You may be just a scrappy liquor store clerk to most of the daytime-shufflers and nighttime-ragers, but you're a special thing to me.
I just wish I didn't have to buy a can of Steel Reserve, though discounted, every time I wanted to see you.
This will be a madly dynamic year, a pressing into
NEW FRONTIERs in every way a man like myself can, with his nation, with his state, and also alone. More alone than I've been in years. On one level, I've put a lot of my hope into a wiry black man who says CHANGE a lot, but then again at this point all the choices aren't bad. The other level includes me and my family, in spite of a crafty STIMULUS PACKAGE being propelled towards a less than sustainable budget situation. I've got a gift for worrying, and it is being used well here to bridge the gap between national domestic worries and the troubled furrowing of my own dad's brow that has been happening more and more lately.
I wish I had inherited bootstraps from my grandfather, because he seemed adept (with so many people from his generation) at pulling himself up by them. I inherited so many other practical tools and genetic advantages, however, and I hope these can help me on a less than figurative level.
(This, following, is something too poignant and personal to put on the internet, but is.)
The last thing I received from him in his lifetime directly from him, was actually reflected off of my father, as I witnessed this scene from the other room in his home.
He was dying at the age of 91 in the summer of 2005. All parts of our extended Nee family would come and visit him and take care of him in his home (also the home of my aunt). Me, my brother, and my Dad were there for a week watching after him, solemnly walking circles around the house and neighborhood looking at artifacts that we hazily recalled from spending so many days of our childhood (and in my Dad's case, his latter teenage years and young adult life) there. The ancient, but always on radio in the garage. The mildewy stacks of Mad Magazines. The manure-scented garden, now in disrepair. The meticulously assembled albums chronicling each important moment, thank you note, letter, and crayon masterpiece from each one of his Grandchildren. Most importantly, though, were the stacks and stacks of books that lined the walls, surrounding his recliner. He spent most of his twilight years there, a towering Prospero from Wisconsin, defeating crossed words and absorbing tome after tome into his ancient and powerful brain.
The week was quiet and somber. Tedious in the way you would be ashamed to admit.
The last morning, we woke up early. Me and my brother packed up, and took a few books with us as we were told we could. For me, this included a novel adaptation of the computer game The Dig, while my brother procured the rest of Frank Herbert's Dune series. Sitting in the primeval breakfast nook, we listened to the scene around the corner.
It was a father saying his last goodbye to his son. The finality wasn't certain at this point, but they seemed to know it. My Dad thanked him for being a great father, for providing, for being there. Grandpa thanked him for being a good son, and, most poignantly for me, for never taking anything.
Then we left. He died a week later.
At the start of the next year, I was attending a too-expensive college near where my Grandfather grew up. Beloit wasn't exactly Wisconsin. I left there a year and a half later, citing a sub-par communications program and insane expense. Now I live in Minneapolis, attending the University. It's a good place, to be sure. I don't graduate until, hopefully, winter of 2009. Until then, and even beyond, I am drawing money from my family. This has exercised my sense of guilt to the point where it is among the most powerful things living in my mind, a Catholic serpent sleeping curled between id and ego. It feeds on pretentious phrases like that.
In me there is a powerful need to not be a burden that is seldom acted on. I intend to construct a solution.
As the handsome canidate often bellows, "CHAAAAAAANGE"
