happy birthday!









april rocks!

tradition

a kind of frantic morning leaves me totally exhausted, hobbling up the stairs with another cup of coffee. it's the day before my birthday and things are kind of heating up even though the weather is cold, clear, crisp and the grass is growing like crazy.

two problems were taking feather to get a haircut and taking a 17-year-old to school - he cuts most of the time but there was supposed to be a meeting today which we got wrong (it's tomorrow) so we pressured him and he texted, ready to be picked up out at this projects-like place out on the edge of town. i don't like driving all the way out there just to take him to school but we really really want him to finish school so we'll do just about anything if he's willing to go there. the place has geese and a little creek so it's a nice setting but someone just got their car window broken and tire slashed right where i park so that's a little unsettling.

decided to take feather first, but the vet has three doors, and the first two were very uneventful, very confusing. little feather was shivering hard and it was already cold. he will come out with nice short hair just in time for the warm weather and for our birthday, tomorrow. i miss him already though.

got back to find the younger girl in a huge fight with my wife over a bathing suit which she was unable to find. all this is for swimming later in the day. actually i kind of liked her hauling out and yelling, fighting back, because she's a strong woman who is well-loved and capable of fighting for her rights even if she's totally misguided and wrong. no problem. poor girls had their twin in a car accident yesterday so there's stress all around. the older one, usually far more combative, was somewhat quiet maybe feeling the responsibility of being the oldest of the three and worrying about the younger twin who, after all, is not here but at some other foster home recovering from a traumatic experience.

got them to school with the usual "make like usain and bolt!" as they were whispering conspiratorially in the back seat, in such a way that i couldn't hear whatever their complaints were against my wife. they kind of know that i'll either take my wife's side, or say nothing, anyway, so there's not much point in getting me involved. they don't seem to carry over whatever grudge they have against her, onto me, i'm only the driver.

this doesn't even cover two others we are responsible for, who are no doubt still asleep, as it's only 9 30. but it's enough and the cold ground seems to send its chill right up through my worn out sandals, i wear socks and sandals in a kind of quaker uniform but mostly because my big shoes, which probably have the only decent support, are just such a hassle when it's muddy. which is most of the time.

i'm sitting here stressed out, in my chair, with the afternoon sun streaming in facing me. i somehow find this easier than being in it, with it right on back, heating me up, so i move away from it, and face it, and now it only bugs my eyes. it will be this way all summer, with it streaming in, afternoons, from the west over broad street. the little dust bunnies that i need to clean up kind of glow in it.

puppy is stressed out because now he's gone maybe seven months without a haircut, and his fur is too long. time for a cut. he has this condition where this iron-colored something comes down and marks up his face; it's natural, but when his hair is too long it's worse. poor puppy.

sometimes i think it's just because i have too many kids, and i worry about them all. the two right smack in our lives, nine- and ten-year-old foster girls, had a huge fight at after-school, and the guy came right up to me when i picked them up. i guess you could say in his own way he was pleading to me to discipline them. i'm too tired. if they screamed at him from the minute they got there, which i believe, it was likely, then most likely they had a reason, and of course when we get home it's always all his fault. because he's a jerk. well yes but i'm a teacher, so kind of secretly, i'm on his side. i took away their screens but that was just a reward, for me, to be outside, watch them play in the mud and sticks in the breezy spring afternoon. a puppy was out there too. i had nothing special for them to do; i'm not thinking that far ahead - but i thought i'd better do something. when their mom got home maybe she gave them screens back. i think mom thinks maybe this guy is just a jerk.

then another son quit a job in california and is moving to chicago. i should be excited. instead i'm full of trepidation. the (truck driving) job in chicago pays better, and will allow him to support his new famiy. but he's had trouble with chicago before. and chicago has a winter, unlike l.a....having him drive on those frozen roads, well, trepidation city. but that one is not for five or six months. by that time maybe he'll have time to get used to backing, and will be able to talk to people about how to handle it. of all the truckers up here in illinois, the survivors have all learned how to duck out during the worst of it, and not let the icy roads throw their trucks into a ditch.

one turned twenty-one and is still dependent. i had to throw his friend out this morning, take him to school. his mom was threatening to call the police. i don't want the police going out to that son, and asking why he's harboring a fugitive minor. he somehow feels he's just a victim. the guy walked in while he was asleep. he didn't kick him out, no, but he can't do that i guess. it's a friend, an old friend. i'm not sure the kid actually went to the school after i dropped him off, but i at least took him there. if he wants to go out to my son's trailer, he'll have to walk three more miles. maybe he'll get tired of walking.

that's actually enough to be stressed out about, but there's more. sometimes i take the time between rides and just hide out in my room working on family hiatory. it's really interesting to me how they got through the world war, the. roaring twenties, the crash, the depression, another world war, well that's where it ends pretty much. smack in the forties, and i'll be done, because i'm already writing about people i know, and that actually makes it harder, not easier. makes it more stressful.

i'm invariably interrupted and asked to drive somewhere, like to pick up the girls at after-school, or to take the dependent kid something to eat or drink. more later...

time to celebrate a birthday, a few of them actually. april rocks, i like to say, and the season has already begun. the first was a-d, a foster child who turned nine on the second. she had lots of cake and a big splash especially at school, but it was already pretty much over by tonight with but a few scraps of cake left sitting around.

the second however was CBN, who turned twenty-one, and this i felt was due a huge celebration if only internally, in my mind, where i've been waiting years for him to just become an adult and gain some independence. we rented him a car to go down to quincy to pick up his friends, but he appeared to be having so much fun with friends here in town that he might not even make it down there. no problem, or at least, not a problem with us. there were a bunch of kids here, all older teens, and we got them a pizza and an ice cream cake, but they ate the pizza only and left the cake. the remarkable thing was that they all got along. it was calm and there was no anger about unmet expectations or some kid being treated differently from some other. mind you, there is some anger about that issue in general, but it being his birthday, everyone was being pretty nice.

and the heck of it is, we never found out whether he was still going to quincy. if he left immediately after he left here, he'd get back around midnight which is already too late for me and which bothers me like any car full of black kids might bother a bored policeman on a tuesday night in rural illinois. but i'm sure he knows this and will drive carefully if he does anything at all. and he'll have friends with him who will surely keep him awake.

here's my surprise: i'm writing a book about it. how we treated a special kid, how we reacted to his dmdd, how it broke apart our family but still somehow we managed. i'm not sure if i can actually show this book to everyone, or whether one should make such things public, but it sure feels good writing it. it's like i've been waiting all along to tell my story. and also, it's my way of celebrating. i'm not going off to drink a bottle, or smoke a joint, but i'm coming up here enjoying my victory spilling it out like i'm doing here. let the world know how proud i am that he's twenty-one, and neither of us is dead or in jail.

last thing i did, is to take that little piece of cake and eat it. the ice cream cake - that stays untouched, waiting for him to come back, tonight or tomorrow. the girls' cake, i can have that, because that's what dads do.

it was a cold, grim day, windy, about freezing, reminded me of the day we went up to get him, in chicago, when he was born twenty-one years ago. april can be right cold in illinois and it was then as it was today. another son and i saw a baseball game that april and that was cold too. when the family went to pick him up it was later, like two weeks later, but it was cold, windy, gray, seemed actually kind of hostile. we bundled the baby up and kept him warm on the long trip. carbondale unlike galesburg is about six from chicago (galesburg being only three) so we may have taken two days. he was tiny.

today, he's somewhat adrift, trying to come to terms with disability. i think he could still do something with his life, and probably will, but even at twenty-one isn't ready. at least he's staying out of trouble. and has friends. and is still alive, and not in jail.

The Halberd

The Halberd A retelling of Beauty and the Beast

On Kindle $2.99
In paperback $6.99 + shipping

The Halberd is the third in a series of retellings of Beauty and the Beast; along with Be Our Guest and White Elephant, it is part of Beasts of Ayutthaya: Three retellings of Beauty and the Beast. Phang is in love with an elephant, Naresuan, in 18th century Thailand. She is a mahout, an elephant trainer, while he is a white or albino elephant, the most royal of the royal. It is a turbulent time in Thailand, with King Taksin the Great reuniting the Siamese yet losing his mental stability. Enemies conspire to keep them apart. In modern Ayutthaya, a young boy finds a halberd, an ancient weapon used by people who fought on elephants. Relics of the ancient capital stir up everyone's imagination.

kind of a wild night tonight - a tornado warning, a kid's birthday, a few flash floods due to driving rain. the tornado appeared to pass over us - no actual tornado hit near here that i know of - though there might have been one in Brimfield nearby - but the rain was falling hard, and there were places i wasn't crazy about driving through. one was the low tracks on chambers street. water was a couple feet almost, on those tracks.

the sky had a kind of artists' pallette as the sunset hit all those clouds. i was driving though and watching out for the telltale funnel. saw a rainbow and some nasty clouds - never saw a funnel.

finished and published my book, The Halberd. it's the third part of a three-part book called Beasts of Ayutthaya. it's been incredibly hard finishing it. but i'm proud of myself, it's only my second true novel. and i could only write in three pieces, one at a time. took me forever. i have lots of projects backed up.

the publishing is actually a many-part process, and i had to take a day off for april fools, you can't publish a book on april fools. you publish the kindle, you publish the paperback, you grab the isbn from the paperback and put it back on the kindle, you finish proofreading (which i do better on the kindle for some reason), then you get the word out, put it on all the sites - my own facebook, my blogs, twitter, instagram, etc. it will be a lively pr season here pretty soon.

april in general is a lively month. i have a birthday. things happen. lots of birthdays in the family, starting with one today. spring pops. things turn green. tornados rake the county.

we have a charger issue. kids are always borrowing my charger for their tablets. i end up, up here, phone low, computer low, but it's ok i'll get my charger back. i am dad, after all. they'll fork it over if they have to.

that big huge puddle on the chambers street railroad crossing still hovers in my mind's image storage. i held my breath and drove my tiny honda right through it. could have been a fatal mistake i suppose. or maybe there could be animals in water like that - alligators and such. but i made it, i'm still alive.

and one kid's nine today, never to go backward, never back to eight. she fortunately is just nine. her sister is ten going on fifteen.