i look at you, both of you, in my mind’s eye, all you have, the two of us, mz and i, mikey and ioanna, are these the gifts i was never given? father, sibling, sister, brother?
and yet, and yet, listening to rage against the machine, “anger is a gift”
i wouldnt have any of you without this, without the anger of living, of being, of being distraught and confused and in constant pain.
how do i square this? how do i give you the lessons i learned without the pain that i am afflicted with?

my darling daughter, my first born, my frightened little one. since your birth, you’ve surprised me: mommy was convinced you were coming and i laughed at her. we were walking around yiayia and papou’s neighborhood looking at houses and mommy felt you were ready, felt you kicking, making room, looking for an escape hatch. i teased her and told her, “no way, you heard what the doctor said, not for another couple of days. it’s your imagination!” we went home and still you wiggled around and around in her belly, shoving things around and mommy grabbed a clock and pen and paper, writing down the time between each of your knockings until she called her doctor and her doctor said we had to go, we had to hurry.

at the hospital of course there was waiting and waiting and you were squirming, wiggling in her belly and then apparently you got tired, so you rested there, nestled inside her safe and warm. At some point, suddenly, you weren’t going to take it anymore and mommy said you were ready and the doctors said, “oh yeah, she’s ready alright” and the next thing you know, you were there, you were right in front of me, so small, so pretty and screaming and alive and so perfect. you were just a dream I had months ago and now there you were, real, right in front of me, holding you, so light, everything i dreamt of right in the palm of my hand.

of course, the years have passed and here you are, everyday, alive, a piece of me, a piece of mommy, but all you. stubborn and funny and thoughtful and kind and determined and smart. you are everything i imagined you to be and so much more. you are every joy i could not have believed for myself. all my life i wanted to feel proud of something true and real, a deep sense of pride, and here you are suddenly, everyday, making me feel so much of it.

-always, me

the truth is I can do this all the time, I can write this all the time, I can tap this, I can tap that ass, I can type away the voices there, here, my own. on and on it goes, he goes, they go, they go far away but always come back again. a loop. a ferris wheel. up and away but crashing back down again. without the violence of course, without the need for speed. but speed is of utmost necessity, else you miss the jumping off point, or rather the jumping on. I think of you and the urge to fumble about like this.

and it’s all madness and pain and loneliness and fear of the night. i want to strangle it. i want to strangle him. i want to strangle every ounce of hope out of me so there would be no fear, no heart, no memory. i would be gone, i would be dust. i would be the stain that evaporates in the sun, leaving nothing.

in my early, early teens, right when puberty began to wreak havoc on my chubby body, I wept. alone in the dark, in the single bedroom I shared with my mother, I wept that I would never find love, that life was painful and lonely. I had never really known company, never really shared a friendship that kept me whole. the type of bond that perhaps a father and son would share, or a brother, or even a sister. that singular bond that made you not singular, that common knowledge that you came from the same womb, both of you, all three of you, even four, came from a commonality. whatever your differences in opinion, in gender, in eventual lifestyle, you began from a common point, shared a common history that you could touch simultaneously.
but I never had that. I had friends. friends with common backgrounds even (Greek, absent fathers, etc). friends who I think even looked up to me, admired me, but I always felt forever singular, forever odd, forever apart. and there in the night, in the dark, I wept because no one would weep for me when I died. no one would truly know me.

in the course of conversation yesterday, the sudden realization:
“we are, at best, impersonating ourselves”

annoyed with it. in the same vein. to continue some trope of agony and malaise. you did start this after all. but to abandon, to squander. to bounce back and convex. or is that to concave? to somehow demonstrate a new resolve, a new beginning. atrocious. impossible. boring.
instead instead what? this? this is nonsense. a means to an end. to get to the end of it. to say, we did this at least today. we wrote something. this isn’t writing. nothing is happening here. move on. same again, beginning again, only to end up in the same place. well worn map.
in the same vein, little to remark. birthdays and conundrums. complaints and feasts. well rested and yet new pains appear. not quite there yet. no new destination. only tracing the edges of what was once thought a treasure map. no longer seeking gold or lush riverbeds. just escape to some other territory.

to battle the night, to make it through the night. where there is bliss, where there is no worry. impossible dream. impossible to dream at times. I’m forgetting them more often. I forget to dream. what is there left to dream. how selfish. there’s them, the two of them. everything we were and could be but will never be again. said that the other day. it was poignant and true and beautiful.
but to think of them their lives entails watching them grow older and that in turn means your death. my death. me growing old, me finally showing my age. I boast how young we are, how young we look. but it will not be forever. at some point I will turn. at some point I will be fragile and incontinent. then that awful thought of the great sudden death that wipes me out without knowing. even worse. even worse the one where we all go in our sleep and my parents devastated and alone. grieving.
and so here. and so now. fighting through the night. fighting against the natural ebb and flow of proper sleep. of laying beside her in the dark to rest. only when exhausted. only when I am sure that sleep will overtake me. to make it into oblivion before the thoughts run wild.

she plays next to me, hesitant and proud, cautious but prideful: she’s gotten somewhere with this piece, she knows some secret about it, she knows how to get there.
and she plays next to me as i write, a shy confidence building with each repetition: i can hear her little breaths, a slight cold but fingers dancing, stumbling but finding themselves again, righting themselves, moving forward, beginning again. a spiral, she’s spiraling outward and possibly away. departure.
and my boy yesterday, my boy today. it was as if nothing happened. slighty sore but walking about. rotating specialists came in checking and double checking: why are we here today, who are we here for, how do you spell your last name. and each time a little further, from one room to the next, from one stage to the next, spiraling closer, honing in. arrival.
after the pediatric surgeon explained the problem, the procedure, the afterwards of what should happen, he asked: any questions for me and i turned to him and said, where do you live. of course: silliness, useless sense of over-protectiveness that would be impotent and frail in the face of any real sort of tragedy.
i didnt get to hold his hand when he went under. i gave that to mari, let her have that. so hard to give that up.
by the time they led us back to him after, he was already awake, cranky but focused. he didnt want us to talk to him. not in pain exactly but uncomfortable with the pins and needleness of being numb where they cut him. he didnt want any overt affection or concern for him. he didnt want us looking at him, embarassing him. he wanted all that worry to be put somewhere else, anywhere else.
as the final wisps of tha anesthesia wore off, he was anxious to be home again. the nurse told him to eat just a little more of his icey. he nodded sweetly but the minute she turned, he frowned and dug the pastic spoon in the blue icey with a ferociousness. i’m down with this place, i’m outta here.
when we got home, he went about his usual routine: rubbing the dog’s nose, circling around the living room asking for a snack, heading downstairs to play the Wii. no whining, no complaints. he was worse in the morning, constant whine and moan about his hunger, his thirst, his hunger. after the surgery and now, the next day, just a slower pace in his going about, but the same going about, the same climbing of stairs that he shouldnt be doing, the same willfullness just a notch below the standard stubborness.
as if nothing happened at all. as if he was just getting over the flu.

ever closer to forty, the fury of forty, the resignation, the sputtering out, the desire to revisit, revamp, re-do, undo. impossible, all of it.
and this, voice, this disembodied embodiment of disappointment, of judgement: once youthful and wise, now smoke laden, tired and sore. done with itself even while speaking. out of the dark, something returns to nothing.
and yet, yet: doomsday scenarios that would tear the heart asunder; daydream vistas of compassion and love and the beauty of immortal children; fearful transgression into the very depth of a death only a smattering of decades away.
how do you do it?