The Tie That Binds.

[KB.]

“We are one big family of people, trying to make our way through the unfolding puzzle of life.”

~Sara Paddison



I have no clue who Sara Paddison is, but I don’t suppose it matters. She’s right. Biology doesn’t always make for family. The biology is the easiest part actually. All of the things that come after that moment are what makes for family. I have a big family, and a lot of them bear no biological relation to me what so ever. They are as much my family as anyone.

I never was a picture taker. I hated getting my picture taken. That is not a good thing when your father is a photographer. Smiles don’t come to me easily. Somewhere a few years back I figure I forgot how to smile. No big deal; I don’t like the way my teeth look anyway. I look goofy when I smile. I am goofy.

When I walk through my living room to head upstairs the fact that there are stuffed animals and Fisher Price toys laying in the middle of the floor makes me smile. If I find a bottle of four day old baby formula behind the couch I don’t think twice. When I go to the grocery store to prepare for what ever I am going to cook on Tuesday I pick up graham crackers and vanilla wafers, I open them up and let them get soft.

One word said in the universal language of baby can make me smile like I never forgot how. Comments like, “That’s a new development” make me proud. I’m not doing anything different than what any other man should be doing in the same situation. The sad truth is that the world doesn’t always act like it should.

The last time someone called me daddy I was 23 and so was she. It was a totally different situation. Hah. I’m sure I smiled then too. Good times.

I wonder what makes a father.



“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

~Theodore Hesburgh



I am blessed. There has never been a doubt in my mind that my Father loves my Mother. I knew early on when I found those old trunks full of letters from him to her and from her back to him that they loved each other. Those trunks full of hand written letters are probably the reason I am writing this. I wrote my first letter to the little girl across the street shortly after finding and reading those letters. I was far too young to understand them, but I knew they were important. I was lost in the magnitude of the words. The sheer weight of all of those words. Who knew love could be measured in physical numbers, pounds upon pounds of love written down on paper and stuffed into envelopes.

I need to see if I can get my hands on them again now that I can understand the words and not just the weight of those words.

I’m no ones Father. On the third Sunday of next June I won’t get any cards or ugly ties. I’m fine with that. As long as the Tuesday before and the Tuesday after I have someone to cook for and pictures are taken. As long as I have a little girl who still lets me pick her up and twirl her around. As long as her Mom still feels like she has a nice safe place to hang out; some where comfortable. As long as both of them still smile at me from time to time and remind me how to smile as well.

Who needs one day in June when I can have one day a week?

I look at those pictures and I see a too skinny man that looks happier than he has ever looked. The smiles make me wince when I see them sometimes. The wrinkles, they for damn sure ain’t dimples, look prominent on my face. It isn’t age so much as the fact that a third of me is missing somewhere. It looks like the flesh is falling off of my face sometimes.

Dylan had a line about that. I see the same wrinkles in his face.

“I'll eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm dry

And live my life on the square

And even if the flesh falls off of my face

I know someone will be there to care.”



~Standing in the Doorway – Bob Dylan



Never in my life have I felt the time ticking like I do these days. Have you ever heard that old Janis Joplin song, Me and Bobby McGee? There is a great line in that song, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose” I will not be dishonest and say that the freedom she sings about is a bad feeling. Sometimes it is the best feeling in the world. I lived it for a long damn time. You couldn’t tell me sh!t. I was just fine with picking up and moving when ever I felt the urge.

180 degrees.

You will have to drag my skinny ass from here screaming and scratching. I dare you to try. You’ll never forget how much it stung and how sore you were the next day. I told a certain photographer friend of mine a while back that if someone were to call me tomorrow and say, “I need you here”, that I would be gone in the blink of an eye.

Things change. If that phone call were to ever come I won’t be the one relocating. I’d apologize and offer up my home, my time, and my heart, but I’m not leaving.

Some people wonder why things stay the same, why they never change, and why they can’t catch a break. Open your eyes. You can’t catch it if you don’t see it. The next time something beautiful runs by you so fast that it trails dust and leaves behind it like some invisible summer breeze – reach out. Grab at it and hold on as tight as you can. Cook and buy toys. Smile and take pictures. Hold a baby for the first time in your life and feel how warm and soft she is. Be amazed when they smile and when they reach for you. Feel your heart grow big enough to burst when they off handedly call you something you figured you would never hear. It doesn’t really matter if one day they don’t call you that anymore or if they never call you that again. Let them slobber all over you and take the kisses from a baby when they are offered.

I sent my mom the last story I wrote in an email and her reply was perfect, “Home is where the heart is and that is the Center of the Universe.” My mom is such a smart woman.

Take a man who wrote 90 some odd stories about women in Houston, New Orleans, and St. Louis. He wrote stories about fights and road trips. He wrote stories about love and lust. He’s been to as many different places as he has stories. He has lived in a few of them for extended periods of time. He writes stories about a woman he calls Muse and a place he calls the Center of the Universe. Stories about hurricanes, drunks, addicts, and strippers. He wrote stories that come as close to an admission of planned revenge as he is willing to write.

Who would ever think he would write stories about one sweet little girl who smiles at him and from time to time reaches out to him. He writes stories about baby slobber and messy kisses from an 11 month old. He writes stories about her mom and the woman that takes the pictures he loves so much. Everyone has a story you know?

He’s written about Winnie the Pooh before, fiction, but I don’t believe in pure fiction.

The tie that binds.

I hope that 10 or 15 years down the road a beautiful young girl who looks so much like her Mother it is amazing reads those stories and smiles. I hope twenty or twenty five years down the road a beautiful young woman with amazing blue eyes and an easy smile reads those stories and understands just how much she changed at least three people’s lives.

One little girl who I could carry around for years and years and never grow tired. One amazing young Mother who could teach the world a few things about forgiveness, strength, and patience. One amazing friend who takes pictures of me smiling that make me smile. A lot of sentence fragments.

I put those Tuesday Night pictures up at a place where I share my stories. The first comment I got was, “They’re worth all the effort of bringing them up. You look like you’re enjoying things there.”

I am. You should look at them too. Like Mandy said, “be jealous.”

The tie that binds.



KB

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”

~George Washington Carver