Met with the mid-wife today, an appointment I'd almost forgot. Yes, we have a mid-wife. (Don't ask me to explain it. And, no, the benefits are not what you think, you dirty dog, you.) She is an enthusiastic sort, excited at the prospect of a new life. Happy. Warm. Welcoming. She greeted the two of us, and then the unborn baby, like we were old friends and our 37-week-old, hiding in the belly fetus was the cutest thing! Our mid-wife is the kind of person who enters the room and lights it up with her smile, throws back the blinds on our dark world and cranks up the color saturation. It's a baby! It's a new life! It's what all of everything is all about! She was there when Keaton was born.

So we relaxed. Listened to the heartbeat. Happy midwife turned the volume up on the device to ear-splitting, near distortion levels and it sounded like a fireman's boot in an industrial washing machine broadcast on an old CB radio: sshhhwuh-boomkk, sshhhwuh-boomkk, sshhhwuh-boomkk, and her eyebrows went up and she smiled some more. "Healthy little guy! Or girl!" So I guess that's what it's supposed to sound like.

So we relaxed some more. Ever since the first Little Ditchman came out looking perfect, and then the doctor came in the next day, put on the stethoscope and thoughtfully looked askew, listened, and then frowned at her squeaky little heart, I've been on edge about our fragile newborns. In and out of the Children's Hospital is no fun thing, but we came out healthy in the long run. And today with the new one, more healthy. Thank God Almighty. For now.

Though I am not exactly prepared for the big marathon of baby-rearing, bearing down on us in a few weeks. I know that with the first child, the Mom tells you how it's gonna go down, so a man can defer, and get back to work. With the second one, you come home tired from work to a woman who is tired from work, and you switch off duties like taking over for the boss during the night shift. (It's easy enough. The phone doesn't ring that much.)But with Baby #3, as I have heard from those in the know, THERE IS NO ESCAPE. You suddenly preside over the better half of a small country, not quite yours, and the livelihood of unknown cultures look to you for leadership, while Emperor Mommy is away governing the new world. But she has not disappeared below the horizon, and reserves her long arm of wrath for when you deserve it good and hard, and she doesn't care how hard you worked today. So, meh. I've got all that to look forward to. A good man can take it. I'll give it my best shot. I don't think I've forgotten how to father an infant. I don't think.

I know a guy who has four kids, and has completely lost it. He appears to have suffered the fate of some 2nd-world, middle class powerless figurehead. One who wafts in and out of the home on a reliable 40-hour work week schedule, passing his children in the hallway and wondering if puberty set in that fast when he was a kid, and, hey, how come no one hears a word I say around here? He works all week and has no idea where the money goes, but is grateful that he gets out of the house for the week. Me, I'm one of six, and I watched my dad deal with the whole transition in an I-WILL-NOT-BE-IGNORED-NOR-WILL-I-TOLERATE-DISSENT manner, which, I guess, worked for him. I don't think he came back down to pre-1965 levels until after we left the house and the grandchildren started being born, at which point I finally began to understand him.

Beating hearts. At my dad's funeral service my mom got up behind the podium -which I'd never seen her do before- to say one thing: that she remembered the happiest days of her husband's life very well. They were at the births of his six children, and then she named us by name. And then I lost it.

So, you lose it. You lose it as a father, you lose it with family. You lose it all, everything, including power and control. You are steering an aircraft carrier into the wind, and one wrong move and it takes forever to get the thing back on course. Sure, I'm nervous.

On her way out, the mid-wife noticed my shirt, which read "Honolulu Marathon" on it, and she asked me if I'd run it. "Yeah, a few years back." And then she cheerily told us about when she had ran it, a decade ago, and the running she's been doing since. The triathlons. (With kids!) She mentioned she's running the local half marathon in a few weeks and Mrs. Ditchman pointed out that I'd be running the full, that is, if we weren't all chillin' and birthin' in the maternity ward.

A full marathon. In a few weeks. I'd almost forgotten.

~

Mrs. Ditchman came upstairs last night and found me sitting in the dark, staring at the screen, but it didn't phase her. Rather, she just said plainly, "It looks like we're moving."

Which I thought was a rather optimistic turn for 2012! It was just the kind of keen, late-night/early-January metaphor of insight that only my hard-working, ever-disciplined, eight-months-pregnant spouse could make. She's right, I thought, as we have been in a mire, of sorts, these past 12 or 24 months -but we are moving now. And even a little bit of forward motion, a clap and release of potential energy becoming kinetic, is a welcome feeling.

But I wasn't sure. So I said, "Huh?" To which she said again, "It looks like we're moving." She gestured downstairs. "The boxes." And then I knew she was referring to the packed away holidays, and the twelve or so crates that parade out of the living room this time of year, calling it a wrap. Or should. I hadn't got to it.

It really must be twelve boxes. Like the song! And we could write a song, too: In the first box of Christmas we brought out for the tree... etc., etc. And then we could sing the song, and unpack the holidays all though the advent season, a day at a time, and all the while sipping wassail and merrily donning gay apparel! But there is no spirit in packing the holidays all away. It drains you. You're glad December's over, guiltily, and you find the strength to box it up. But hauling the boxes up to the attic was the final act of closure, and I hadn't brought myself to do it.

Spent a dry New Year's Eve dryly staring at the dry Christmas tree in the living room, waiting for it to ignite. I mean I was rather dry myself, completely sober for the day, and similarly waiting to ignite. We were weathering a stomach bug, as a family, and it brought us together for the final holiday to wipe each other's hindquarters and tolerate together the accompanying fetor. (Nothing quite says "Happy New Year!" like the sound of damp flatulence coming from your 3-year-old, followed by an exhaustive description of recent toilet contents from your loquacious kindergartner.) So I guess, in some ways, New Year's Eve wasn't entirely dry, and in other ways, it was outright explosive.

And then got up New Year's Day to watch the traditional rose parade, only to find that it was put off a day, with their never-on-Sunday tradition. Well, that was it then: CHRISTMAS COMES DOWN! And by the end of the day it was just glitter and pine needles and the Twelve Crates of Christmas and the tree on the curb.

So it looks like we're moving, but it just looks that way. They say a true test of friendship is who shows up to help you on moving day, but no one ever shows up to help you strike the Christmas set, and then move the boxes to the attic -such are the friendships of legend. No matter. I'll get to it. And by February, this time. I promise.

Truth is, I was thinking of moving the X-mess boxes to the garage, but there's no room in the garage, which has bothered me of late, so I was thinking of making room. It would be easier if everything was in the garage, and nothing was in the attic, and then it wouldn't concern the fire inspectors when they come by on false alarms (which has been known to happen at my house.) And, you see, I was thinking of installing a skylight in the master bathroom. But that involved re-routing some large ventilation ducting, and that meant clearing out the attic. But I can't move stuff into the garage until I move the large, expensive sheet of oak-veneer plywood out of there, which I need for that living room shelving I never built -and I can't get to that project until I go through the rest of my deceased parents' belongings, which are boxed up in front of that. So you see, there is an Order to things. It may be a long year. And then Christmas rolls around again.

Now I know why some old folks just leave their lights on the house and their trees up all year-round. Throw a sheet over it for the summer, and then whip it off like a magician come November 1st -start Christmas early and brag about it!

Then again, maybe we should move, after all. I know twelve boxes that are already packed.

~

Ah, the old blank page and blinking cursor. The little patient saints are always there, friendly enough, uncritical, yet responsive, and perennially withholding comment...

Word count was up to about a thousand yesterday, which means I'm about a thousandth finished with the new blog. Already thinking about the title of the next one, of course. Plenty of time, though. Such is The Act. Creative ideas are a dime a dozen, and I could think about them all day. And I do, actually. But it's the execution that matters, and the double-meaning of that word isn't lost on me. 

Because, with writing, one is always simultaneously "implementing a plan" and "carrying out a death sentence." It's impossible to understand, I think, if you've never written something. The implementation part is simple enough, as a concept, but the death sentence (sentence!) extends to anything that would otherwise demand your attention; other easier tasks, chores, work calls, the news cycle, your children. You can't get any writing done unless they all go off and expire somewhere, which they don't. It's you who has to kill yourself from everything, most especially the words in your head that tell you you've done it wrong. Again. And then, just the concept that one has at least a quarter of a million words to choose from, in the English language. Choose a thousand of them to live, and 249,000 of them to die down in the creative abyss, alone, unimagined.

Achh. I could list them all dutifully, and still be only a quarter of the way though to the goal I've set for myself. Even the Holy Bible is not quite a million words, at about three quarters of a million, depending on the translation. And the complete works of Shakespeare: 884,647. Not that this blog will become a holy work, or some lasting contribution to world literature. Hardly. No, it's just a goal. To say I did, and with some minor benefits. Like last year's 1,000 miles. 

I ran 1,000 miles last year. Maybe a few more, given RunKeeper's proclivity to underestimate my performance, and my not counting the 1/4 mile walk-offs I do at the end of every run. What did I get out of all those miles? Good health, sanity, the ability to finish a few marathons at a speedy clip without killing myself. Not bad for this 41-year-old. You have to run about 3 miles a day, every day, to make that goal. That sounds a lot harder to me than running the 178 out of 365 I did. Most days were about 3 miles, but many were twice that, and more. The rest days were essential.

So I expect this blog will be similar. Long-winded on some days, empty on others. And, as with the running, some days you have a good run, and others not so much. But it all matters, in the end. I believe we have a finite amount of bad writing in each of us. Best to pile forward and get it written, so we can then move on to more important matters.

I suppose we have a large amount of bad anything in us, that we must inexorably exorcise in order to succeed. All successful people have one thing in common with quitters, and that is that they all failed at one point, somewhere, and on multiple occasions. Unfortunately for life, not all failures have success in common. But all failures inevitably come to that point of decision: when to quit. The solution is simple.

Don't.

~

It's not that I didn't have anything to say -why I stopped blogging two years back, that is. No, it was a million other things. And I suppose I should get all that out of the way, before I really get back into it, so that may take a month or two.

Or I could re-start by answering the question, "Why re-start?" Or I could go into what one can expect to read on this blog. Who I am, and how I've changed, and what I see and how I see it.

But all that sounds so B O R I N G, but which, now that I think of it, was a lot of what I meant by 'The Most Significant Thing'. That all the ordinary-ness of life, all the mundane dark matter that makes up the bulk of our existence, really is significant. That the meaning is found in there, in each getting-out-of-bed and getting-to-work experience. Each person you meet, each place you go. Every small, daily act of faith that encounters every doubter's utterance calling it into question. Work. Family. Country. God... You know... The Most Significant Things.

But that's The Old And Busted. Welcome to this, The New Hotness. "The Million Word Blog," in all its depraved construct, right here on the old Blogspot.

It looks different, the Blogspot, since I last visited. And I am hoping that it's all not just a mere button re-arrangement and font-and-pixel change, but rather a sincere re-imagining of the site. Something internet-y that is dedicated to more than a 140-character profun-ditty. Because, Lord knows, if this world needs anything right now, it's more characters. Anyway, I'm going to try not to get my hopes up. And if you're reading this, I beg you to extend the same courtesy to these million words.

So, why a million words?

Because I couldn't think of anything else. Because it sounds like a nice round number. Because it sounds a bit crazy, and maybe impossible. Because a million words "of crap" is what Raymond Chandler said you had to get out of your system before you learned to write anything publishable. Not that I'm trying to get published. But I would like to get good at something. Something significant. Like, perhaps, simple literacy.

And if you've got an online journal with no clear subject matter except your own amusing/petulant observations, how do you end the thing when you get bored of it all? I figure, after a million words. I hope to do it in under 5 years. Seems plausible. Err, possible. Plausibly potentially possible, to add a few more words. I claim not that the words make sense or ever will.

WORD COUNT is the only ground rule. And "no quotes" -even though I just quoted Raymond Chandler a few sentences ago. But that was in the construct of what I'm talking about, and not just some thoughtful, daily platitude that you may be compelled to agree with only because someone famous said it once. No. These have to be my words, in order for the thing to be legitimate. And, since I'm the one making the rules, I am going to grant myself a free three-fer every day, by including the date. Hey, writing is hard. If you do it every day, you deserve a threefer.

I remember in a creative writing class in college my teacher saying that, "Well of course you must write every day! If you want to be a writer, you will write every day! Every day and all the time! You don't have a choice!" And I remember my immediate thought, which was: Shit. If that's true, I will never be a writer. Because I knew I was an undisciplined free spirit, and lamely proud of it.

That was twenty years ago. She was right. I still remember her attitude and her enthusiasm and her encouragement. And her name: Dyza Sauers. It's a good name. I don't know what happened to her, but by the end of the course I had thought, maybe I can do this...

And no cussing. Not to be confused with cursing. Cursing, it seems, is a necessary part of experiencing the indifference of life. Cussing, on the other hand, is little more than evidence of a poor vocabulary, and runs contrary to the million word objective. So I will not be using the Seven Forbidden Words on this blog.

Even though I said "shit" a few sentences ago.

But that was in reference to the old me. The new me is happily married in the suburbs with two kids, two cats, and another one on the way. (Kid, not cat. We have enough cats.) I have a picket fence and an SUV. I have chores, hobbies, a job, a mortgage, and high-speed Internet. I don't want to be a cusser anymore. And certainly not in front of the kids.

Who, by the way, have no idea of the cussing, undisciplined failure I once was. It is one of the grand blessings of life that when your children are born, you have a golden opportunity to re-invent yourself. I know nothing of my parents and who they were before I was born, and that my older siblings know a little more of my mom and dad than I do seems to detach them from me, somehow. But here we are. If I start writing now, and if I do it every day, my kids will say, "My Dad? Oh, he's a writer." And, because I am a proud and tortured and insecure soul, that is a preferable thing to: "My Dad? Oh, he builds aluminum patio covers." At which point, they embarrassedly change the subject.

So, a million words. It'll be a good start. You don't have to read them all. They might not even make sense all the time. But I do have the few minor ground rules. And the word count. In any case, I expect a million words will change a man, whether he writes them, reads them, or is brainwashed by them, so choosing significant words would be preferable, if not altogether wise.

But a million significant words? Let’s be serious.

~

Home Brewing.

We remodeled the Master Bedroom, whatever that means. Just the term “master bedroom” implies that there is one bedroom to rule them all, imposing its constant authority on any lesser rooms, and so doing with high intellect. And then the concept of “remodeling,” as if the prototype of the original living space never lived up to expectations, and the version we lived with all this time was ever only a concept, and thus will be replaced with another concept, another idea. A new model. Where’s the living? Where’s the mastery? Change. 

So I have a beer and forget about it all. Beer. That inimitable of devices, the thing that washes over all prefab constructs and breaks them down, makes all of life more habitable. And through beer, I get a remodel on demand. 

I’ve been making my own beer, of late. It’s an old college passion of mine, revived in my mid-age. What other great thing dumbs down the intellect, bears out its reputation and yet lasts through the ages, and with so few ingredients? The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer, goes an old Egyptian proverb. And what old education cannot be recounted without being gilded by some beer-related anecdote? Live. Learn. Live some more. 

I’ve purchased a few new tools, all for the purpose of making beer, and Mrs. Ditchman accepts it with a tolerant disposition, knowing full well that this is (at least in part) my mid-life crisis. And this, sized up against a wind-in-her-hair twentysomething coed fresh off the boat from summer camp, hopping into the passenger seat of an over-priced set of shiny new axles -a few home-brewed beers is an acceptable trade. I‘m cheerful about it all, too. And everyone needs a cheerful Dad.

So I turned 41, and began my 42nd year. The birthday plan unraveled simply around a simple, beer-ish theme: finish work early on Friday and head over to tour the local microbrewery with the best friends, and then taste a bit in the beer gardens. And the next day invite over the good neighbors and actually make a batch -a hefeweizen, if you must know- and then have it transferred to the fermentation vessel and blessed by the local yokels, after which we would retire to the patio for a few more beers, straight from the beverage cart. 

And what locals! Strangers, picked by the fates to move to this suburban cul-de-sac and bear my children’s street friends. This cul-de-sac where we would gather our offspring in each other’s yards for some seriously scheduled frolicking, and then more beer drinking, while the weather is good. 

Moms connect and discuss the remodel. They offer old kids’ clothes, and wry, maternal insight. Meanwhile, the children look for tadpoles in the unkept pond, pre-spring, in the twilight. And the Dads? Well, they make fun of each other over that home brew, and there is no greater compliment. It’s the suburbs. Happy birthday. 

Later, there was cake. Everyone sang ‘happy birthday’ and I sat there and tried to take it like a man, which was awkward. You’re 41. You’re a man. But they’re singing the birthday song, the song they sing to the kids, in these same yards all through the year. Can you take it? Because if you can’t, the beer may not help. The sports car/coed-escape may be your only chance. Go for it. 

But ‘Happy Birthday’ will never sound the same again.

~

Christmas, 2010. On the way home from Vegas, Serena asked what the next holiday was. Mrs. Ditchman answered, “Life. The biggest holiday of all.” Because Lord knows we could all use a holiday from the holidays.

Hard Currency.

It was a bad Christmas. Actually, I’m just kidding. Because the thought of a bad Christmas is one of those things that’s rarely considered, if ever allowed. The whole family was there, including the cousins and their babies, but who knew this time last year that there would be two fewer people in the year next? And how can you help but wonder how many fewer -or how many more- will be there next year?

Who knew that the Torch of the Matriarch would be passed? It belongs to my aunt now, a cheerful woman with nary an ill-word about anyone. I spent some time with her. She has a passion (obsession, really) for genealogy, and has spent years tracking down distant relatives, going through tattered archives, and traipsing across cemeteries to find the old buried spots of unknown ancestors. She is like a sage, with her knowledge, and I appreciated having someone like that in the family. And, to her credit, she is only slightly less interested in the family of her in-laws as she is to the family of her blood.

I’ve never understood people who are not interested in their genealogy. Perhaps they are embarrassed by their family, or bored with the thought of their luckless, dead relatives, forgotten and dismissed to the past. After all, the Holy Bible is filled with genealogical lists, right there astride a prominent commandment from God himself to honor our parents. If it’s important to God, it’s important to me.

My aunt recently lost her husband, my uncle, and it saddens me to consider it. But there we were at my sister’s place, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, having a beer and talking about Ephraim Garrison, an officer in the American Revolution. His grave, incidentally, has yet to be located. And then there was John Garrison, a banker on the frontier, where there were no banks. She showed me a high-res jpeg of a 150 year-old three-dollar bank note, signed by him, the bank president.

It reminded me of a phone conversation that I had with my aunt years ago, when she was first telling me about her “hobby” of genealogy, and I heard my uncle chime in from the background, “It’s an obsession!” and she just laughed. But he had his own obsessions. Among them was coin-collecting, which was no doubt inspired by his father, my grandpa, who had me obsessed with it for a while too, when I was a kid.

So my uncle went on the internet and tracked down some old bank notes, signed by his great-great-great grandfather, and bought them flat out. It delighted my aunt, and it delights me now because I see in it this final coalescence of great interests. Two people who came together, loved each other for a lifetime, and found it in themselves to still meet somewhere recognizable, after all those years.

And now he’s gone. All those coins he collected after all those years are in boxes in his garage, and my cousin told of having to go through it all, trying to ascertain which of it was valuable and which of it was sentimental, though it all was. I commiserated in that I had the similar problem of my mother’s things, now in my garage, and I am going to have to go through them, painstakingly, in the coming year.

I’ll have to determine what will define her to our descendants. What small thing can be handed down over the next few hundred years, when all sentimental value has been lost to the ages, to make her real to our family of the future.

And I thought I better keep writing, while I’m at it.

~

I was the favorite.

It's an in-joke with my brothers and sisters. I'm not sure I get the joke. It's possible I was favored somewhat because I was the quiet one. When you have six kids, the quiet one is the favorite.

It was nice to be back at the old church, though it's changed somewhat -as we all have. But when I was young, the place was like a second home to me. I remember my mom trying to get me to go to church when I was a kid. It was a battle, but she finally found the one thing that would get me to go. She paid me. It's true. In the fifth grade, I got, like, 50 cents every Sunday. By Junior High, I had upped it to a dollar. We both won.

Though her parents were of dedicated, Bible-Belt, Christian stock, she never spoke to me of Jesus. She never quoted the Bible, prayed with me, or pondered aloud -at least to me- the Big questions of Life and The Universe. She was busy with six kids. I guess she figured, at a dollar a week, it was a bargain to pay me and have someone else do it.

If you knew her like I did, you know she was a saint. She was not like my father, who was more the "hardened adventurer." She was like Mother Teresa, and he was like Humphrey Bogart. They were an unlikely couple. As a matter of fact, a good portion of my youth was like being a deckhand on The African Queen. I remember, distinctly, one time being on our boat, the whole family. I was probably about ten. We were motoring upriver, and my Dad spied a large cave, port side. He wheeled the boat around, excited for some spontaneous exploring. It looked dangerous. When my mom saw what he was doing, she stood up in protest. She groaned and said something like, "Oh, Gary. No." My Dad just smirked and said –and I'll never forget it- he said, "Oh, Lois. The world is probably going to end in the next five minutes. What are you going to do about it?"

He was a tough guy. But she sat down and took it, prepared for anything. She made sure our life jackets were properly buckled. And I remember thinking, The world's going to end in the next five minutes? And we're just sitting here? In a boat? In a cave?

My mom could take anything. And she didn't play to win, she played to outlast. She knew a certain wisdom of life: that it's better to use your strength absorbing the blows in defense of others, than it is in delivering the punches. She was like Muhammad Ali.

But she didn't see herself as Muhammad Ali, or Mother Teresa. I think she saw herself as more Audrey Hepburn or Cyd Charisse. Or, on her bad days, that character in the 1948 classic film, The Red Shoes, about the ballerina who dances to her end by way of a pair of enchanted slippers. It was one of her favorite movies. But when I think of her, I think of the Gene Kelly classic, An American in Paris. She loved Paris, though she never went there. It’s good to have a dream like that, in life. And that Paris that she loved was not the real Paris, but the Paris of a Hollywood soundstage. And I think that even she believed that sometimes it’s better to just leave some things as dreams, where they are sure to be beautiful forever, and where hope can spring eternal.

The cancer was her toughest fight, and she fought it for a long time. But in the fight she never gave any thought to any preconceived, inevitable end. Her doctor would never say how long she had, probably because he couldn’t tell himself. “Your mom's a fighter,” he would say. And, as far as I know, she never asked how long she had, either. She asked when she could go back to work.

And that's who she was. A fighter, a dancer, a hard worker, and if you thought you were the favorite... well, you had five brothers and sisters, and there were hundreds of other children she was off to take care of there at the church, at the hospital, and elsewhere. And then, eight grandchildren. But she made you feel like you were the favorite.

She had her ditsy moments, as we all do. But she took them all in stride, with her ever-present, self-deprecating laugh and smile. I hesitate to tell the story, but my family will never forget the Christmas a few years back when one of us had gone to open a gift from her. It was wonderfully wrapped, but upon opening we'd found that the box was, well, empty. She'd neglected to put the gift inside! It was actually pretty funny, and my mom laughed about it, too. And, to be honest, I don't remember any gift she's ever gotten me. But I remember The Empty Box. We all still laugh about it. Just last week, after my mom died -it was so hard- and we all got together at my sister's and we ordered a bunch of pizzas. When they were delivered, it so happened that one of my nephews opened one of the pizza boxes and it was empty. There was no pizza in it. My sister said, "That's mom's!"

Maybe my siblings claimed I was my mom's favorite because we both liked the movies so much. But even though I was the one who went to film school, she liked movies more than me. At film school they taught you to analyze and critique them, pore over static images and look for symbolism. But my mom just loved them. She loved all of them. I don't know a frame of celluloid that she didn't enjoy. So often it seemed she was incapable of criticizing a film, and it drove me crazy, for some reason. But what a lesson: Let it go. Just enjoy it, while you have the chance. It’s a movie, after all. What was the point, otherwise? My mom. Always a positive outlook. Never critical. Ever-loving.

She was a Christian like no other. She didn't preach the gospel, she bore it out in her life, and in her manner. She was humble and unassuming, but mighty. And she was good.

This is what I learned from my mother: That you should work hard, but enjoy the movies. That you should surround yourself with children. That the world, in many ways, really is going to end in the next 5 minutes, and that you can turn the other cheek and take the blow with more strength than was used to deliver it. And that, like her unforgettable Christmas gift, the Tomb is empty. That there’s always hope.

And that we are all God’s favorites.

~