Surviving the Blackout

The wind and the rain are conspiring again. Normally these attempts are feeble, the elements racking their blunt force against the impenetrable walls and towers of civilization and technology. The howls of the wind and the pelting of the rain swirl around outside while we watch our flatscreens and surf our laptops thinking nothing of the forces that battle around us. We are insulated by human ingenuity that almost always seems to hold up unscathed.

But it is nice to have the underdog win every once in a while. The power wimpers. It falters. It sputters. Then. . . Blackout. Nature has reminded us that we aren't always in control. Nature has reminded us that night, for example, is meant to be dark.

The kids aren't sure how to react. Their young emotions bounce back and forth from excited to scared to elated then back to frightened. I light a few Christmas candles that cut into the darkness. We find their flashlights, the focused beams of white light dance around the floors, walls and ceilings of our home. We tame the power outage as best we can.

But Indigo breaks out crying during our dinner of chips and salsa (our soup remains cold in the microwave, caught off guard by the power loss). Samuel is nervous, worried about bed time without power. Kiara joins in and asks if they can all sleep in one bed (which of course happens to be mine.)

As a father it is my job to keep the moral up. So I change the topic and tell them a story around the dinner table. It is a candle story. It is a story from my childhood. It is the story of gathering together as a family around the table each evening in December. We would turn off all the lights and eat our meals by the flickering light of the advent candle that would shrink by one "day" each time we ate, counting down the days until Christmas. Some days we would miss the ritual which meant the candle would be left burning extra long the next night to make up for it. Eating our dinner in this blackout reminds me of that story.

The kids aren't satisfied, so I pick a flashlight story. It is a story from my youth. It is the story of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. We had made our final ascent to Uhuru peak in the middle of the dark night. The path ahead of us was marked by a loose string of flashlights snaking its way up the steep incline. My small flashlight went dim from the cold after just an hour. Our only source of natural light were the starry specks of white and yellow in the black cold ceiling of heaven. That ceiling seemed to be getting closer and closer with each step. Our guide had a flashlight that he pointed at his feet; so we could see where he was stepping; so we could follow. This I focused on all the way to the top.

A few minutes later the Christmas tree lights spring back to life along with the hall light and kitchen light. The refrigerator begins to hum again. The blackout has ended. Technology has reclaimed its throne. The fear is gone. . . but so is the excitement.

"Finally it's over," Indigo comments in relief.
"Aawwaaawwwwwww," moans Kiara in disappointment.
"Let's turn on the TV and watch a movie," says Samuel matter-of-factly.

Thanksgiving Music

The golden green grass along the blurred edges of interstate 75 suggest autumn. The misty fog laces the distant tree tops with a false frost of snow, hInting of winter. Fitting for a Thanksgiving morning - sandwiched right in between the two seasons. In Florida these changes are subtle. The signs of the season are slight. They include things like heavier traffic on the roads, and less sweat on your forehead. It helps to drive north to central Florida on a day like today and feel the 10 degree drop in temperature. The cooler air is accompanied by a fog and a damp mist that hits our windshield at 80 MPH.

We are shuffling through Sharon's iPhone listening to random songs forcing them to fit into the genre of Thanksgiving Music.

Some fit easily: Johnny Cash "Thanks Alot" - no brainer.

Others are a stretch:

Radiohead "Everything in it's Right Place" - "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" = lemons = lemon pie = Thanksgiving.

Aerosmith "Dream On" = dreams = napping = tryptophan = turkey = Thanksgiving.

Again Radiohead, this time "Paranoid Android" - "Kicking, squeeling, Gucci little piggy" = pig = ham = Thanksgiving. 

And then Alanis Morissette "Uninvited". . . This game was just getting too easy.

The Gate

I step slowly into the still water, descending the tile stairs. Opposite me is Kiara - beaming. The water is warm and creates a unique sensation as it soaks through my socks and pant legs. The white fabric becomes heavy and clings comfortably. I meet Kiara at the small landing and reach for her hand. Her hand has lost some of its childlike suppleness. That hand is getting older. Her fingers suddenly longer. Today is her eighth birthday.

Her frazzled hair has been pulled back successfully behind her ears. Over the years freckles have danced their way across her cheeks and nose. Her excited smile reveals the slight gap in her front teeth. She is tall, her wild energy momentarily subdued. She is in a new white baptismal jumpsuit - the pant legs rolled up one or two times. Her feet and her legs are lost in the ripples, distorted by the now stirred water.

Together we step down into the font. The waterline is up to my waist and up to her chest. Hovering above us is a crowded room of faces looking down on us. All of the faces are familiar - the faces of family and friends. They are all smiling too. They are there to witness something special; something significant; something spiritual.

Kiara and I position ourselves in the small six by six square font. I raise my hand and pronounce the words prescribed by revelation: "Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

All is quiet. Just the sound of displaced water echoing on the tiled walls of the font as she is immersed. Falling backwards with my hands supporting her. She is under the water for a moment and then she is coming back up. Water runs over her face, slides off her damp and darkened hair, down her neck and shoulders and back into the rippling pool. There are audible sounds of approval from the crowd of faces above us. Kiara doesn't say anything but I see a joyful look on her face. I hug her approvingly before we turn towards the dry towels that await us.

Nephi describes baptism as a gate. A gate that opens up to the straight and narrow path leading to heaven. In my minds eye I try to picture that gate. Is it ornamental and elaborate or simple in size and style? Is it grand like the Arc de Triumph or plain like the gate of a white picket fence? It is metaphor I know, so I suppose that gate could look like anything you wanted it to. So I ask Kiara what her gate looked like. She ponders the question for a few seconds then replies: "Silver. . . But no bars. Its like crystal clear. Like glass. And kind of like a rectangle or square. Like a squarish rectangle. With a long carpet leading up to it."

Sounds beautiful.

Sandy

I pull out the rolled up mat from the top shelf and a shower of sand spills down its woven synthetic fibers. It sound like a rain stick - the sand trickling down the hollow tube - then it empties out the bottom to form a pile on the tile floor of our entry way.

Indigo is sitting on the couch getting ready for the day. She decides to wear boots and is preparing to put them on. She pulls out a crumpled sock lodged in the top of her right boot and sand suddenly seeps out, spreading all across the black leather, pooling along the seem of the cushion.

The tile floor has a certain grit to it. Need to find some carpet fast.

The beach has invaded our home. The salty, sticky eroded and broken down stone, coral & shell particles have made their way up the stairs, across the pool deck, through the lobby, up the elevator, down the hall and finally through our locked and bolted front door. Sand has hitch-hiked in on the tires of our stroller. It has stowed away in the folded cuffs of my pants. It has been kicked up and then picked up by our feet and ankles. Filled our swim trunks. Clung to towels and chairs and toys. In the cool AC it looses its stickiness and drops to the floor and is spread throughout the house by five pairs of feet.

The broom stays busy taming it and eliminating it. But you can't really get upset about it. It is the basest and purest and most elemental symbol of summer.

And it is nice to keep a little (or in our case a lot) of that around all year long.

Big Pink

Big Pink on the corner of Collins & 2nd is humming with hungry patrons. The waitresses glide around the small space, maneuvering through the small aisles between packed tables, carting back and forth the oversized menus, oversized platters, and oversized bills. We've filled a semi-circular booth - Sharon and I are bookends keeping the kids from spilling out. We are an anomaly. The only other kids in the place are two curly-haired blonde boys - they are waiting for the same casting that we are - it will begin across the street in 45 minutes.

Big Pink is crammed with row after row of stainless steel, orange-topped tables lined with youthful, non-committed singles filling their mouths with hamburgers, sandwiches, salads and fries. Tattoos on bulging muscles peeking out from t-shirt short sleeves. Bikinis hidden by sun dresses. A multi-ethnic mesh of the super chic.

Nine years ago, Sharon and I were twenty-somethings living in Forte Towers (which has since gone through two different name changes and extensive remodeling to the point that it looks younger now than when we lived there). We were care-free then, though we didn't fully realize it at the time, in that narrow sliver of time before becoming parents. We loved living in South Beach then without any kids and love that ironically now it is our kids that most often bring us back here. South Beach is the kind of place where wandering the streets is all you need to enjoy yourself. Every street and every corner and every alley is alive and unique and filled with character.

There are so many restaurants in South Beach that you could eat at a different place indefinitely. I had only eaten Big Pink one other time when I was 24 years old. It was delivered to our studio apartment in Forte Towers. At 2:00 am we were craving hamburgers. Where else can you crave a good hamburger at 2:00 am and have it delivered? This time however I'm feeling in a "deli" kind of mood and order a turkey reuben on rye. Sharon orders the barbeque burger even though she knows she will never be able to finish it or the bucket of hand-cut french fries it comes with.

New buildings have sprouted up all over in last eight years - particularly around South Pointe and the Marina. There aren't as many pink buildings either, their property owners opting for white paint to cover their brightly colored past. The roller-blading population seems to have dwindled. This place is ever changing, yet somehow it all feels the same. South Beach has grown a lot in the eight years since we moved - but it hasn't aged at all. Everyone here is still in their mid-twenties (even those who aren't.) South Beach is an ever flowing spigot of twenty-somethings. The Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon never found, only because the McArthur causeway hadn't been built yet. They flow in. . . and they flow out. No one is from here. No one stays here. The vibe makes me feel exactly nine years younger.

Natural Typography

Nature has placed the characters in a seemingly random array across the page of earth near my shuffling feet along the path. Words of vines and stems and leafs branch out into phrases. Asterisms call attention to certain passages. Phrases group into sentences and paragraphs. And as I walk the length of the path an entire story has been told. Asterisks denote thousands of footnotes . . . where no further explanation is offered. The meaning of the tangled green text left open to interpretation.

Hot Hot Hot

The heat is driving us delirious. Our air handler had frozen solid - a big dripping block of ice - which all sounds very nice and cold. . . but it's not. After years of persistent salt water-laced ocean breeze, torrential rains, high winds, hot sun, (maybe even an occasional solar flare?) the A/C unit on the roof had rusted and corroded to a point of no return. The freon had leaked out leaving the system inoperable. Getting a quote on a new unit, getting the quote approved, getting the permit application, sending the application to the landlord, having him sign and notarize the application, overnighting us the application, ordering the unit, scheduling the installation - this all takes days. Hot muggy miserable days.

Target does not sell fans in September.

The heat has made us short-tempered and cranky. We don't want to cook. We don't want to clean. The only thing that helps us battle the heat just a little is laziness. We drink copious amounts of ice water and pink lemonade. Condensation forms instantly on the cups and leaves watery rings where ever we set them down.

Costco does not sell fans in September.

Samuel woke up the other night an hour after he fell asleep. His hair wet and matted. His pajamas dark with sweat. He needed a drink. He wandered around the kitchen and living room picking up random near-empty glasses of water and finishing them off. A little water thief. I laid him back down trying to convince him he didn't need his blankets. He persisted. He wanted them on. All five of them.

Home Depot, let it be known, does sell fans even in the "cool" of September.

We pick up two of the 20" inch box fans. White & bland. Not very stylish. But they do the trick and offer some necessary respite.

SLC

We are flying over Kennecott. One of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world. Its reddish-orange concentric circles always remind me just a little bit of Dante's Circles of Hell from the Inferno. Across the aisle beyond the three random travelers who share my row I see the exact opposite. The Paradiso. Zion. The city of my youth. Perfect squares of suburbs are jutting right up against the brown and gray mountains that encircle the city like a great protective wall. Downtown appears with its hand-full of simple skyscrapers. Quaint. Small. Going back to Salt Lake after living in Miami for 9 years is like going back to your elementary school as an adult. You can't help but be amazed at how a place that looked so big when you were young suddenly has small halls and ankle high urinals.

I love Salt Lake and always will. Around each corner is a myriad of memories. It is full of places that define me - that made me who I am today.

I'm driving now from the airport - out on to I-80 east-bound toward downtown - the familiar skyline of buildings and mountains in front of me. West Temple and Broadway: I pass a familiar parking lot and crane my neck to the see the building on Main and Broadway where I interned at CitySearch back in the early internet days (when CitySearch meant something). Third floor - great city view. I remember taking the short walk to Sierra West Jewelers in the ZCMI mall one day before work to buy Sharon's wedding ring. I pass the Salt Palace and Symphony Hall. I love those fountains. Though I'm not sure why. Perhaps there is a memory there that I can't quite recall.

Across the street, the Inn at Temple Square has been torn down making way for a new residential high-rise condo. The landmark of our Honeymoon is gone. And then I arrive at the campus of the LDS Church Headquarters. Temple Square to the right - museums to the left - the Conference Center ahead - beyond to the east is the Church Office building (the tallest skyscraper in Salt Lake) - and the Joseph Smith Memorial building. The entire area is so rich in personal history. So rich in shared history with my wife Sharon. It is palpable. It is like opening a thick volume of my life. Conferences, Christmases, Endowments, Solemn Assemblies, Dinners, Lunches, Concerts, Carriage Rides, Pictures, our Wedding Day. . .

I drive east towards another campus steeped in personal history: the University of Utah. A pivotal highlight of my academic and intellectual life. Literature and Writing and Philosophy and Religion and History and Yoga. . . My favorite thing to do was to sit outside near the bustling pedestrian walkways in early spring feeling the sun breaking through the chill air and feeling that my thought was being expanded in ways I never before considered.

Then it is on to my old neighborhood, filled with the familiar streets and homes and businesses and schools. The pitch and angle of Morningside Drive is so familiar as I walk it and drive it. The view of Mt. Olympus is solidified in my permanent memory. At any point in time I can close my eyes and see that view perfectly. Each house means something different to me. They emote myriads of feelings and memories. A tree has been cut down since last I was here. The unfamiliar gap messes with me. Something isn't right. I consider this for a while. It just isn't the same. Though, it all has changed really. The old people are older . . . or gone. The young people have moved on. The babies now have facial hair and are barely recognizable.

I'm also different - I'm older and I've moved on and I'm in a completely different stage of life, though I long for the familiar to help make the nostalgic more permanent; to help seal and preserve an ever eroding personal history that without effort fades like so many unrecorded memories.

You can save the historic buildings that are filled with meaning for the masses but you can't always count on your Junior High locker still being around for years in the future to enshrine and hold your adolescent memories. . . Mine, for example, burned down a few years back.

Isa

It only seems right. After all she's gone now. What's left? A body that soon will be ashes? Memories that eventually fade? It only seems right. I should write something down. It is all that is left of her here. Words and phrases. Sketches and scenes of her life, recorded in black and white. Letters, characters, some punctuation throughout.

She is waking up in another world and I wonder if it is what she expected. Did it solve her problems? Are there people there she can turn to? I wonder if the regret was immediate. I wonder if the feeling is overwhelming.

It's been years since I've seen or spoken with her. The break was clean and complete. Before that we worked together day in and day out for about five years. It is a little sad that we spend more waking hours with co-workers than we do with family & friends. I suppose work is more lucrative than love. But it means, at least on a professional level, that you can get very close to those you work with.

I was always surprised that I never bumped into her at least. We lived in the same neighborhood. I thought our paths would have crossed more than just the single time I saw her at an antique jewelry show and she wouldn't talk to me. Of course I didn't approach her either. I didn't know what to say. I was forced to take a side when she left and I think she assumed I would take hers, that I would stick up for her, that I would prefer to leave rather than work there without her. Somehow I was stuck in the middle of the whole mess. I wanted to just stay safe on the sidelines. But there I was. And that was the end of that.

In the years since, I would hear snippets of her comings and goings in and around the small world of the Miami jewelry industry. Most of them, unfortunately, were negative little snippets. (Remember, I was on the opposite team). She was always very talented yet she obviously came up short. Can't say exactly what it was. She liked being in control. This much is evident in the way she chose to go. When you like to be in control though, you have to know how to yield to those things outside of your control.

It's all sad. She was always very nice to our young family. She lavished Kiara with gifts, like a massive pink stuffed dog from FAO Schwartz. That dog wasn't the only way she left her mark on our house. At one point she lived in the same building as us and when she moved we bought and were given a number of objects that served as a constant reminder of her: a table, a television, a couch, a glass shelf, a set of dishes. All of those are now gone. Slowly, one by one, they too dropped out of our life.

The most lasting reminder will probably always be a photo of her and our family taken at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. She had just treated us to breakfast at the Paris Casino. Somehow the downloading of this photo to our computer coincided with the advent of iPhoto. Meaning this picture had the honor of being the very first photo in our library. Since then, every time we have ever imported pictures, and scrolled through them, we knew we had reached the end when the library would loop back to this first picture. Which means that we have viewed this picture (though inadvertently) more frequently than any other picture in our entire library. She hated having her picture taken. This is one of only two pictures I have ever seen of her.

What the picture can't tell us is what transpired in the years since. How did she get from point A in that photo at the Bellagio to point B. . . She was only 31 years old when she lit the charcoal grill, sealed the room, took the sleeping pills and let the carbon monoxide do the rest. There are a million details that I'm leaving out. Leaving out because I do not know them. Leaving them out because I will never know them. Leaving them out because even if I knew them I can't say that I would ever truly understand them. Trying to understand other human beings is a complicated and risky thing.

She is waking up in another world now. She left behind a little mess. A little mess that I suppose she felt incapable of cleaning up. I wonder if she is finding any peace now?

Liquid Light Show

Red, green and white stains of light drip in long streaks across the wet black canvas of the road. The psychedelic riffs of Pink Floyd pour from the speakers, accompanied by the pitter-patter of rain on the sunroof and the windshield. The street lights stream through the speckled glass creating a liquid light show on our dashboard. The colored light soars above us and slides below us. It dances to the music.

The performers are hidden, but the stage surrounds us.