parenting

Some expected pain

Matthew Jakubowski

8D11CB3F-672F-444B-8A59-A4695F87BAF9

They saw us holding hands and made one sort of face or another. This man and a boy. A child without its mother. A father and a son walking around at midday downtown on a Wednesday. A man who wasn’t working regular business hours. Maybe tourists.

The heat as we walked across the sidewalk clamped into the air, fixing the humidity with a vaporous rigidity, giving each breath in and out a clammy form that seemed to widen the nostrils on its way into the body.

His palm was sweaty in mine and usually at the first touch of sweat he’d let go but he didn’t. Continue reading →

Seasons at the lake

Matthew Jakubowski

 

0d486f1c-5946-4635-b08b-d6639d6313ad.jpeg

In photo albums at the lake in Michigan, your parents in the 1970’s haven’t hit 30 yet. They look like happy teenagers in swimsuits and long hair without a thread of gray. You are one of the pudgy faces among a dozen pudgy siblings and cousins, on people’s laps, propped up on a hip, in the shallow water learning what a toy sand shovel is. Your grandparents smile at the scene from the lawn holding drinks. The air smells like fresh cut grass, boat engine oil, pipe tobacco, coconut oil, dead perch, the burnt metal of lit sparklers. Continue reading →

Fearing love and its absence

Matthew Jakubowski
IMG_6379

Credit: M. Jakubowski

When did the boy get so fast? Warnings can’t slow him down and if they did I think I’d regret it a little. His speed is remarkable to see. He’s four. His little blue shoes land so confidently now on the gray dust of the rocky trail as he sprints through the woods. Continue reading →

Sparrows, when you were six

Matthew Jakubowski
IMG_E6339

Credit: M. Jakubowski

I saw them up ahead of us beside the road, eight or nine moving in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, sure they would flee as soon as I stopped at the light at the corner, but they had city-bird courage, a sturdy flock; browns, grays, ivories, tans made over in the morning light diffused by the fog. Stubby beaks neat and trim, black eyes round as obsidian pearl, heads clicking at angles at every sound and potential danger, as I watched them with love so near the car in the grass alive with green lividity from the week-long rain. They nibbled at the flowering blades, snipping the seeds so neatly, as I waited for the light to change, my human form hidden behind the curved metal and glass shapes they were used to seeing flash by like fleeing buildings.

Sparrows out for their morning hunt. For seeds and soggy moths. Battered beetles and breadcrumbs. I turned the car to take my son the last few blocks to school, and did not point out the birds. We’d been there for a few seconds and he was listening to the song on the radio looking out his own window at the fog in silence, a six-year-old person with a father who stares at sparrows. The cost of an education changes families. Mothers and father disappear into duty. Who will they vote for? Is another mistake unavoidable? Who will care for their parents and their parents before them? What is it to tell someone about the beauty that lies in the grass between the road and the sidewalk, someone trying to prove between stoplights, weekends, birthdays, and funerals that the world is made vast by small brave beings alive in the grass here with us, alive in eternal feathery abundance. The song on the radio went on for years. The boy left the car and there was no school. You turn and see your father. He’s doing something you don’t understand and when you see this you understand a few words of something he said before that made no sense at the time. You swallow some kind of hatred you’re afraid of.

The Night Air

Matthew Jakubowski

IMG_6278

I was middle-aged and didn’t know what was happening to my mind. I wasn’t ill. I was tired, but everyone is tired at that age. I had my aches and pains. More sleep would have always been welcome, any day of the week, even if I’d already slept two days straight. More sleep, yes please, my body would say, and slurp up the hours like a dog by an open hydrant on a hot day, if anyone with the power to offer me gushes of time to sleep had done so.

My friend’s child smiles when she sees me and reaches out her arms. My friend says she likes me. But when her mother extends her arms to hand the little girl to me the girl cries and clings to her. Her mother and I smile as the girl puts her head on her Mom’s shoulder and looks at me. Her Mom tries to laugh at this but anyone can see that the effort to extend the child, who is now over twenty pounds, and suddenly return the child to her chest has caused her some pain she’s trying to ignore. She was hoping for a few minutes of having the child away from her, to not feel her weight, and to imagine days ahead where she can stand on her own, go run and play.

I had been each of these parents and children. Life with and without sleep had taken me closer and further away. The age of time within me was settling, with the denser material settling mostly, but occasionally launched upwards and sent clanging around by the power of deep jets of memory bursting forth. It’s a little hard to explain, of course. If all was well I could see it quite clearly and tell the story with the snap of my fingers, the click of my tongue, a sharp clap of my hands and you’d know instantly what I mean. But exhaustion contorts the path. Maybe no one wants to hear about tiredness. But the story of individual tiredness is interesting. People act crazy while tired. Worlds turn on the decisions of tired people. Wars have been fought, loves have been lost. To sleep like the dead and have the chance to awake again feels like a miraculous thing. Tiredness is so boring, everyone says, everyone’s tired. But tell them you had a sexy dream or a dream you’ll never forget and they’ll listen for a few seconds at least. Dreams feed the living imagination with fruits from the furrows of tiredness. Collective exhaustion is fertile ground.

When my child was still little, only able to walk a few steps at a time, friends would say at times when I looked tired that it wouldn’t be long before he could do more for himself. I would nod and smile and they would try to keep a stiff upper lip as I openly doubted their effort to be sympathetic. To say “it won’t be long” was to try and compress the next year or two between my resolve and my hope that the child would crave independence. The magic spell involves several ingredients to transform time. Every minute will still have to be lived, though, slowly, often in pain, and tired, of course, with fresh despair carefully washed of any pesticides, until it’s ready to be grated over the bowl, and mixed into the next couple of years of parenting thoroughly. Once prepared, the spell takes several months to gain full effectiveness. By that time the friend who gave you the recipe may have moved on to another town or spouse. They wanted to escape seeing you so tired but it has found them or someone they love and now they laugh together with the same song of tiredness. They’ve given in and can’t remember ever resisting. It’s the same with politics and revolutionaries, of course.

Instead of sleep or sex I take walks in the dark in the woods behind our house. Except when I step out the back door I see again that I don’t live anywhere near the woods. I have to make do instead. I stand still and let the night air shape me.