coming up to the week in which my son turned 21, i was overtaken with a number of feelings.....one, it was a long but good 21 years, he's definitely walking through the door, and that's something to notice. two, any kid that has friends, those friends will make him get drunk with no regard, i know, one of those birthdays i ended up asleep in a parking lot, though there was no vomit anywhere in site, and it was a small town, not like anyone was gonna roll me or anything. the friends were gone though, and there were lots of stars out.

so anyway i got this idea to facebook bomb him, and i wrote as many of his friends as i could, and got on his facebook as often as i could, a dozen times over a period of a day and a half. that alone was a celebration of the fact that, of his own free will, he had made me his "friend" just weeks ago. so there i was, dropping messages and pop-art on his facebook and traveling around various fb's seeing what was going on. i learned a lot- like that he has over 500 friends...that over a million people protested the "new FB" (which i didn't know from the old one)- like that you could chat down at the bottom and some of my 100 friends would be down there most of the time, including son & daughter; that you can actually make a movie & put it right on your fb, which i did, that some people spend lots of time there and are quite good at providing "feeds" or "status updates" which i see all the time, or at least saw while i was there. kind of like a real small town, where you go into the diner and everyone's wearing feed caps but you get lots of status updates just about the minute they open their mouths. most of all, it's a social place, and i was stepping all over his social life, and that of others, what they're doing, & thinking, & sharing, etc. lots of photos too.

it's warm out, leaves drying up, getting ready to fall, trees and brush drying up and making a crackly curtain by the road as i pedal around; fall is coming, and it's now getting a bit cooler, a nice time to lean on a tree, take in a breath of air, if i were to get a minute.

so i didn't really have the time to go there so much, chat, make pop art & drop it & all, and so was up late, trying to refocus on grammar homework, & chatting occasionally w/people. one former student said, the new f-b is s-ck, using a mantra of millions, along with f-b vulgarity and international st. grammar; but, it seemed to me, if i could chat with all these friends, & make a movie on the spot, maybe it had s/th to offer. still an open question. but i was confronted with the fact that, the main reason i was there, was, i was still worried about him. and it was just boiling over, in the form of me dropping pictures every couple of hours. here's your family, here's your brothers. his younger brother used to say, infiddion, to mean infinity, as in, do you know how much i love you? infiddion. it's a stock answer around this house, picked up & adopted by the younger ones too, the last thing they hear before they go to bed, some nights. so i'm putting the younger ones to bed and getting ready to do some more fb bombing, and i hear about his friend, a guy he went to school with all the way up, from age 7, through graduations, through history fairs, school holiday sings, etc., and this guy apparently died at the little grand canyon over the weekend, just around the corner from his own 21st. took the wind out of my sails. i couldn't imagine. had to feel, for a minute, the feeling of those parents, their infinite grief, the deep canyon, the scary woods. a moment, at least, i had to stop.

life goes on, it's true, but it's been a long day, even much later, and i'm still thinking about the whole thing. he'd already known about it, it's true, i was the last to find out, i'm sure, but the timing of it was kind of right in my face, so to speak, and as i chatted about it a little, i dragged, my voice, my feet, my spirit. could hardly wheel the bike in, or get to my classes, or keep up the show. it was a tight community, a place that had maybe only one or two classes in a single grade, so they were in each other's classes, not once but many times, over and over. it's like, you sometimes don't really know people, even if you see them that often, how can you know? or do anything? back to fb, people are still flying around, dropping news feeds, status updates, comments, etc. it was pointed out that i was mumbling on my movie (experimental). true. i was wishing him a happy birthday, yes, a day late by now, but, also reflecting on signing over the use of the videocam to f-b or anyone who invented an application that used it...as a world, to step into, to walk through that door, to see adulthood for what it is, & what it offers, i hand it to ya, you did it, you're there. with >500 friends, a family back here, a whole crowd spread all over, you'll be ok. infiddion, is the answer. i'm lucky, & that's the simple truth, as i stand here, look down the road both ways, one way toward graduations, school carnivals, the other, to whatever the future holds. for i have been given more than i ever could have imagined possible, and i still have all that and more. with the click of the publish button, i send thee this prayer...for those that didn't make it, for whatever reason. i will let go of the tree, and the leaves will fall, from now until about mid-november. and spring will, i hope, bring them back, but all in due time.