“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t, we are afraid.”

“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t, we will fall.”

“Come to the edge.”

And they came.
And He pushed them.

And they flew.

~G. Apollinaire

Graduation ’09 is done and dusted but the torrential rain of emotions put Pamela and I through the proverbial ringer.
As we both sat outside the other night mesmerized by the roaring firepit she quietly said,
“Things are changing again.”
When things change, a subtle discomfort settles in.
For as happy and proud as we were for Sarah, we also share her sense of trepidation, a subject not many people talk about.
But it’s there in every single family attending a graduation.
After the ceremony we had an old fashioned BBQ back at the house with burgers, hot dogs and salads galore.
There was laughter and music, beer and cigars, goodbyes and tears when roommates and friends had to leave.
Later that day, Pamela, myself and the girls went to move the remainder of Sarah’s belongings from her room and let her say goodbye to her college high atop Mt. Saint James.
As I waited by my truck for Sarah to come out of her dorm for the last time,
I looked around at the ivy-covered buildings that had occasionally surrounded me over the past 4 years.
My own sadness at saying goodbye leaving the comfort of this place surprised me.
Thank God for sunglasses.
It was quiet in the car on the way home with everyone lost in their own thoughts.
I thought about a large Monarch butterfly I’d seen in the air that morning as I listened to the list of graduates being read.
It flew gracefully down towards the moving sea of black mortarboards below disappearing amidst the caps and gowns; almost like it was going home.
For Sarah, another class has already started as of tonight.
She must want stronger wings . . .

I will be absent from the blog until sometime next week due to our graduating college student.
It was only 4 short years ago that I posted THIS.
Where did the time go?
That said, Pamela and I are so damn proud of her we can’t tell you.
I wrote a very personal note to her that won’t make it here, sorry to say.
I wanted to post it but decided it was best left in the hands of the person I originally wrote it for.
I shall return soon but wanted to, at the very least,
explain my sudden disappearance.
Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day filled with hot dogs, cheeseburgers and much beer.
(and Cigars!)
Please remember to say a prayer for all those that gave of their lives so we could enjoy our freedom.
See all of you soon.
Congratulations, Sarah!

There are things that happen in our lives that simply defy explanation;
situational outcomes, a much needed phone call out of the blue, an errant email you ‘forgot’ to open that drastically changes some facet of your life.
Lately, my father’s journey has been something of an emotional rollercoaster ride.
In the span of one visit, he’ll laugh one minute to beat the band while the next he’s crying like a baby.
While it’s easy (and enjoyable) to watch and listen to him laugh, his tears and all too complete sorrow are a completely different animal.
Wax on, wax off.
He was never an emotional man to begin with so that takes some getting used to.
My sister and I have been truly baffled by the whole thing.
The last time my sister visited our mother’s grave, she had a brief ‘conversation’ with Ginny.
We both do the same thing when we visit her.
She told her about Dad’s current penchant for a psychological taste of a Six Flags amusement park.
She also told her that her ‘Wally’ is sad and misses her dearly.
One week later while Maureen was visiting our father she noticed a woman standing in the doorway of his room as she fed him lunch.
Her heart skipped a beat.
This woman looked like our mother.
Her eyes, her hair, her glasses, her sunny disposition were all subtle suggestions of ‘Ginny’.

“Hi, Wally!” she said, as she walked in and touched our father’s hand.

Maureen was a bit gobsmacked by the situation but she said our father seemed to enjoy this woman’s company.
He was smiling and laughing.
Her name is Margaret but they call her Peg.
And Peg seems to have a thing for Wally.
We were told that Peg and Walter can sometimes be found sitting together in the rec room that looks out over the city of Worcester.
It’s a wonderful view even on a grey and rainy day.
Peg even holds our father’s hand.
It’s uncanny that after my sister’s visit with our mother this woman should almost materialize out of thin air.
I’m thinking that as poor as my father’s eyesight is, every time he sees Peg, he’s also seeing our Mom.
Rollercoaster ride, explained.
Possibly.
In looking at the situation I’m so tempted to believe this woman was sent by my mother, a surreal gift of a love from someplace truly wonderful.
I know, it sounds way too Disney and formulaic but the situation defies explanation.
Maybe Peg was sent to help my father finally get home.
Perhaps she’ll remind him of the most important things missing in his life, make him close his eyes and dream good things.
Maybe she’ll give him the much needed solace he so richly deserves.
But for now, he shall remain a constant rider on these misshapen, parallel bars of cold steel.
He’s still holding on for dear life, lost on a perpetual track of fragmented emotions.
Destination?
Only God knows when and where the rollercoaster will ultimately arrive.
For the love of my father, I hope it arrives soon . . .

We have our bad times, those days filled with
gray and bruised thunderheads ready to burst with raindrops of frustration.
It’s in getting through the inevitable storms; riding the dark waves of our lives
to the safety of some waiting harbour that we realize the sun can still shine, just for us.
It takes a real strength to weather it all.
And we are that strong.
The stuff we’re made of is ultimately all that’s really needed to see us through to the other side.
And we will get there.
Although we can’t control the winds, we can carefully move the sails that will someday guide us home.
We have to hold on, just the 2 of us, if only for the three tender and beautiful hearts
we’ve been so blessed to receive in this life.
Everything will be alright.
So for now, just hold my hand
and don’t be afraid
to feel that at the end of the longest day, that the moon and stars are shining, just for us.

I’ve been thinking lately about how disconnected I feel regarding my father.
He’s been in limbo for so long now that I almost forget how to love the man.
I write this knowing full well I run the risk of sounding cold and emotionally apathetic, which I am definitely not.
But how do you find a way to love someone that for all intents and purposes is no longer there?
I care for him, God, I do and will forever remain his most vocal of advocates to ensure he’s treated with the utmost respect and compassion.
I owe him that and so much more.
Three years ago, I would have had a very hard time letting him go.
Today, I’m not so sure.
I want this thing to be over with for him, maybe for my sister and me too.
I want him to ‘get there’.
I want him to feel peace, not chaos; sunlight, not rain; happiness not despair; warmth and not apathy.
Anymore.
It makes me sad to write these words but I mean them in the best and most tender way possible.
These thoughts are always hanging off the edge of some deep and internal precipice of mine, wanting to fall off into some godforsaken abyss and be gone.
But somehow, they remain.
Until now, perhaps.
Maybe I’m writing these words in the hopes that they remove the chains that keep me from getting as close to him as I feel I need to be, loving him deep within my heart and not just on the pages of Smoke and Mirrors.
I waited on an older gentleman the other day that reminded me of my father some ten years ago.
He wanted to buy some cigars for his son who was celebrating his 30th birthday.
I wanted to tell him how lucky he was, how fortunate his son was that his father was still in good health, how life can change in the blink of an eye.
Giving advice on life to a man that could have been my father just didn’t make any logical sense to me.
It’s almost tragic how many things there are in my life that I no longer take for granted these days.
Like someone I love remembering my birthday.
Yeah, in a perfect world . . .
This isn’t a ‘poor me’ scenario because I honestly don’t feel that way at all.
I just wanted to let someone know just how precious certain moments really are.
I didn’t do that.
And the days go by . . . .

Pamela and I were outside raking the endless falling leaves the other day,
actually it was on our anniversary.
I know, romantic, huh?
It’s a mundane chore such as this that allows the grey matter to play around a bit,
reminisce about autumns past, maybe even give the constantly buzzing hemispheres in my cranium a bit of a vacation from the vagaries of the daily rat race.
I began thinking about my life as being partitioned into ‘seasons’,
and that from where I stand I am currently in the midst of my own personal autumn.
It’s a time of great change, a biological necessity and ever so slight rewinding of the clockwork that makes me tick.
I accept the fact that my life has experienced changes from as far back as my days of ‘spring’.
I do find it sad though that my endless summer has come and gone taking with it certain elements of youth, the embers of the burning innocence that once defined my life reshaping my thoughts on a daily basis.
This is my autumn, I think,
when my eyes focus on an enormous pile of leaves that need to be raked onto the tarp and dragged behind the shed (where all the bad leaves go).
I stare at the pile of vibrant colours,
the burnt yellows and searing reds, like a fire in front of me.
Things change and life continues to change me.
Caught inside the moment, in my mind I see three little girls going down the slide headfirst into a pile of leaves that I’ve left just for them, Pamela running into the house for the camera, never one to miss an opportunity for a silly photo.
I see myself raking, smiling, listening to those echoes of laughter and the beautiful sounds of a fall
that was so damn very long ago.
It’s no surprise that I miss it, almost as much as I miss the old me that was raking those very leaves.
I shake myself out of this melancholy daydream and notice
that the sky above me is a putty grey replacing the daydream skies of an innocent blue from a thousand moments ago.
As I drag another tarp full leaves to the opposite end of the yard,
I smile, because off in the distance I can hear the sound of a rusty swing
going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . .
And as the leaves continue to fall, I continue to rake

25 years.
I keep saying it to myself like it was an impossibility.
Reality tells me I am definitely wrong.
25 years ago, I put on a cream-coloured tuxedo on a Sunday afternoon
(like I’d done on an almost weekly basis back then while playing a gazillion weddings)
To me there seemed to be little that was special about this silly monkey suit of mine.
I remember I had a nasty head cold and the November 6th sky was grey and almost foreboding.
I was currently living alone in the rented apartment that Pamela and I would live in for the year to come.
Although, my tuxedo felt pedestrian, the day was bubbling with anticipation and excitement.
I was getting married at 3pm.
My best man, Donnie, picked me up around two.
Parts of the day seem crystal clear to me: my mother and father walking down the aisle to be seated, my soon to be mother-in-law looking more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her look.
Our parents were so damn proud they should have been holding signs.
The years have brought us many things, some good, some bad.
That’s life I guess.
The most important thing is that after 25 years I am still
totally in love with this woman you’ve all come to know as ‘my’ Pamela.
This is the woman that three beautiful, intelligent and free-spirited daughters call, ‘Mom’.
She loves me for many things: my cooking, my strange sense of humor, my writing and the thing that ultimately brought us together, my music.
After 25 years, I wanted to find a nice tune that I thought she would like.
This tune, much like her, is funky, infectious and filled with a smattering of sultry musical innuendo.
Use headphones because the sound is really incredible.
The name of the band is Toto, a favorite of mine.
I think you’ll be able to guess the title of the tune by the time the first chorus comes around.
If my bride can guess the name of the drummer (another favorite of mine, sadly he died several years ago) she’ll make my day.
{*she will be allowed to ask me for a hint, though she may not need it} 

So, a Happy 25th to the beautiful other half of my very soul.
Here’s to our future and a love that will simply never die.
Ever.
Love you, Pamela . . .