were right. Even before we have a clue as to what the fuck we're saying, we're imitating. Even before we have a clue as to what the fuck is being said, we are imitating. We babble, and it sounds pretty; we learn cadence, and it sounds pretty; we learn a word or two, and the love connection is made; we learn how to answer, and we follow.
We spend countless hours, on our backs, just wriggling and thinking the thoughtless thoughts that only babies know and can understand. Then we formulate a plan of action, roll over, get up on all fours, crawl over to the crib bars, climb up and fall over the rail to the floor. Then, some of us get up and begin to look for answers, while others just lay there and wait for someone to come over and pick 'em up, while just outside that sweet and pastel room of baby blues and pinks, a whole world of sounds and scents and sights and love...
-
-when no years are light years-
By the time she arrived, I'd had more experience with babies than most my age: my parents had four more kids after I was born, all girls, so I grew up holding babies, changing diapers, sterilizing glass bottles in hot water, warming milk on the stove, testing the warmth of milk on my wrist. At an early age, it became clear to me that I knew how to care for babies: I could make them laugh, hold their interest, burp them, feed them baby food, clean their little faces afterwards, and show them love; all this I knew how to do before the age of nine.
.
The day after the night I'd gotten drunk and decided to open a MySpace account and send her a message on her MySpace page was the first day after the last day, long ago, that I had spoken to her.
Why it came about that I had sent her a message at all was because she had posted a question on her MySpace page, and that question, which had everything to do with creativity, hit me well and truly, and, for the first time in years, almost two decades, reading drunk, I thight she was talking to me. So I replied to her.
But before I could reply to her, I had to create a MySpace account, which wasn't easy, being that I'm computer illiterate and being that I was so drunk that I was having a hard time staying upright upon the old wooden trestle table bench I was using for a stand in lieu of a computer chair.
But I somehow created an account, all the while looking at the astonishing picture of her, now grown, which looked back at me from her MySpace page.
The message I sent her had something to do with the fact that I had been in the habit of stopping by her MySpace page from time to time, just to check up on her, from a distance.
My daughter...
So, having dashed off a reply and satisfied in my drunken stupid way that my effort was somehow good enough, I turned off the computer and went to bed.
But in the morning, trying to remember what I had done the night before, and suffering with a raging hangover, I remembered creating a MySpace account and sending my daughter a message, the first one in twenty years, and the first time, in her young life, that she actuall "heard" [if you count reading as "hearing"] her father speak to her.
I sat down on the wooden bench, turned on the computer, and went to check for a reply from her.
That's when I found out that I didn't know my own MySpace password. I tried all sorts of configurations: everything that I thought could remotely be my password. Nothing worked.
So, as usually happens in a story like this, the drunk calls his sister and explains to her what he's done, and that he has sent his daughter a message on MySpace, but that, in order to do so, he had to create an account... and somehow managed to do so...and, blind drunk, sent the message...and blah, blah, blah.
I asked my sister Frankie if her son could hack into my brand-new MySpace account and reclaim it for me.
The story, to my mind, was pathetic, and even as my sad and pained voice related the tale, I heard great joy on the other end of the line. My sister was ecstatic.
Why?
Because it had been nineteen years since anyone on my side of her family had last seen my daughter.
My sister, with all sorts of hope and great expectations, said she'd pass the info on to her son, who would see what he could do. Then I hung up, put on my t-shirt, jeans and dark sunglasses and went outside to rake. I was in the middle of raking the neighbor's little park.
.
Well, first of all, I'm not gonna lie and say that I was the greatest daddy anyone could ever have.
I wasn't.
I still ain't.
I haven't thought of myself as a 'daddy' in years, since she was a baby, in fact.
I have even told her so. This is not self-pity; this is fact. Yes, there is a difference, you know.
A father. Yes. I once fathered a daughter.
Of the fault, the reasons why I wasn't there, I will claim half as mine; more than half, even, if it makes you feel any better.
I don't mind claiming responsibility for what I've done, which includes a handful of drunken and regretted arguments with her mother.
But, once upon a time, she was a baby, a beautiful little red-haired baby, with the beautiful soft skin and eyes of her mother.
Love, intelligence, curiosity, wonder, all this and more I found in her beautiful baby's eyes on those few occasions when I had her with me during that first year.
I can still remember that singular year. I was a natural. I'd lean gently over her crib and look at her with love in my own eyes, knowing that my love had been given to me by her, as if by magic.
One day, I went over to her mother's house to visit and pay child support. The house was empty.
I decided not to pursue the matter.
The years went by.
Then came a day, shortly after I'd finally gotten with the world and had gotten a computer, when I decided to look her up. Sure enough, there she was. From then on, I'd check in on her, from the safe and non-intrusive distance that is the Internet.
Then the moment came when I saw her MySpace question.
.
So there I was, out in the neighbor's yard, in their little park, hungover, with my dark sunglasses on, raking up the accumulated leaves of autumns past, cleaning up the place. I thought about her, I thought about me; I thought about a lot that day. I was at my lowest point at that time, and spent most of my time trying to come up with reasons to live. It was a bad, bad time for me.
From inside my window, I heard the phone ringing.
I set down the rake, went inside, and picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi."
"Frankie?"
"Yeah."
"Oh. Hi."
"Hey, have you been on MySpace lately?"
"No I haven't. You know that I don't have my password."
"Well, you might want to go look at it."
"Why?"
"Because there is a message on there from your daughter."
Oh...the joy, the great joy; the expectation; the love and happiness.
I typed in the password, and there it was; a message from my daughter:
"Steve Kenny. How ya been? You really should put a pic of yourself up."
Hey, it might not sound like much to you, but to me...it was the sound of joyous angels and trumpets.
It took me a minute to compose myself [drunks are like that; they are always expecting the worst the next day, and when it is good news, it throws 'em off balance].
I steadied myself and began to form thoughts; thoughts so filled with love that, unless you've gone through it, you just can't comprehend it.
I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but I do remember the gist. It went something like this:
Rachel,
I have checked in on you, from time to time, over the years, but I have always kept my distance. I have always felt that when you became old enough, you would maybe come see me. Recently, I have gotten a computer and have found you on MySpace, and have checked in on you from time to time, just to see how you are doing. Although checking on you on MySpace is good, it kinda feels like I'm looking at you from across space; like you are in another galax
y. It also feels like the message I sent to you, I sent when you were a baby, and the reply you have sent me has just arrived, like a message sent from another galaxy light years away, having taken twenty years for me to hear.
When I went to bed that night, I cried. I think I cried half the night.
We met at a park alongside the Kankakee River a few months later, for the first time in twenty years. I almost couldn't stand to stand before her, so moved was I with emotion. As we approached each other, hesitantly, I could see strength and innocence, frailty and knowledge.
And in her eyes, her beautiful eyes, I saw my daughter.
-
-Open Salon: An Amateur's Attempt At A Definition-
It has become evident to me that Open Salon means different things to different people. This is my idea of what Open Salon is and is not.
Is Open Salon a bureaucracy? [government run by officials].
I don't think so.
Is Open Salon, as far as I can tell, a functioning wing, arm or foot of the United States' government?
I don't think so.
Is Open Salon 'open', as in:
'open air'?
'open water, well out from the shore'?
'the public knowledge'?
'to come out from hiding or cover'?
[all definitions found under the word 'open' in the 1991 Edition of The Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language.]
I think so.
Is Open Salon now, or has Open Salon ever been considered 'closed', as in:
'closed-fisted'? [mean. miserly]
Sometimes, but that shouldn't be the ideal.
Is Open Salon now, or has Open Salon ever been considered 'closed', as in:'closed-mouthed'? [not communicative, esp. not inclined to give information away]
No; not as long as I've been here