During the time of disappearance there was movement. The powerful engine of the bike would travel many, many miles. With the movement came intense isolation. And so came fear, never thought of before thoughts, deep desire to understand the things that were happening, self-doubt, anger, no maps or time, little sleep, and in the end bitter cold.

Before it started there had been the unbelievable realization that the life I had built, in all the past years, with the foundation and beliefs under it, the things in the deepest part of my mind that had given me the ability to judge the world and all things in it, was no longer there.

It had slowly melted away as the days turned into weeks and then into the last eight months before. The last and only anchor was my six-year-old daughter, for there was nothing else. Emptiness and confusion consumed me.

The bike stopped where US-395 meets I-40. It was mid-November. To the west was a road back home, to a life I did not know any longer. To the east was into the unknown. I began to cry. Who would ever understand my actions when I didn’t understand them, myself? Would anyone forgive me? I did not know.

With tears slowly streaming down my face I turned into the unknown.

For it seemed that Matt was a small stone thrown high into the air above a clear smooth lake. A majestic splash jettisons into the air and the ripples follow and flow in wonderful movement and dance and then disappear into the shore.

5/25 10:09 am

Late July of 85 things had calmed down.

The nights and weekend house, the first house, had been finished eight months before. That first morning after, lying in bed not wanting to open my eyes, for the fear it was only a dream. It had been a marathon and now finally the hours were paid back to Frankie for helping me.

Still working at Skywalker; now on the punch list of the main house. None of the other carpenters’ had wanted the manuscript.

Matt had grown into the band on his pulmonary artery. His breathing had slowed and was gaining weight.

It was a Saturday night, Matt was sleeping, we had just started watching a movie, when the phone rang. The doctor on the other end asked if we wanted a baby girl less than 24 hours old. One of the letters had just kicked in.

So we loaded the four door civic and headed to southern California, on the 101, in the darkness of the night. Matt sleeping in the back. Somewhere my eyes would not stay open. We slept on the side of the road until the sun appeared. Stopping at a gas station we washed our faces and changed our clothes. With the facade of confidence we walked into the hospital just north of Santa Barbara.

The baby’s mother had kept it a secret, even from the parents she was living with. How, I still do not know to this day. No one knew until the time had come. They went to a hospital that didn’t give birth anymore. Scrabbling they hurriedly went into the closets that had been closed and pulled out the discarded things that were now needed.

Another couple had been called first, but it was not to be. And so we walked into the room and met her mother, the one who had given her life, the one that from the beginning knew she would give up her daughter she so deeply loved, to a couple she did not know, that could give her baby the care she could not. And so I went silent again.

It was years later I could again tell her of the praise I felt for her.

The three of us were tired and now there were four. Placing Kim on the motel bed my wife and I watched, as our daughter breathing was barely noticeable. There was not the slightest hint of blueness around her nose. She drank from the bottle in the easiest sort of way.

My wife and I put away our differences, looked at each other smiling and agreed we could take care of five or six like Kim.

5/24 10:29 pm

Just past the Y on the miracle mile west of San Rafael, was a small burger shop. A mom and pop with a few booths and a couple of new arcade machines. My wife and I would sometimes take our son there. They had great burgers and fries. Matt and I would play the space invaders. He would have one control and I the other. It is rather difficult, but great fun.

One of the times we were there and on the invaders waiting for burgers, turning around to look at Gina, I saw Lucas and Ronstadt. He and I had seen each other before. He was building his complex just north of San Rafael and I was working with other carpenters trimming out the main house. Linda wore no make-up and very few knew his face. There were no entourages, no chauffeurs or fancy clothes.

Their eyes watched as my son and I played together. It had been the same with my youngest brother. The pinball machines in Broad Ripple lite up his eyes as he played one button and I the other.

They stared as Matt and I played. He seemed to be a man of few words. Their privacy was respected, there were no words spoken. It seemed they wanted to be a part of the world that had lead them on their journey, but somehow the world wanted to change them. He was just a man and she was just a woman. Maybe they wanted to play space invaders with each other.

He told his stories through movies and she told hers’ through songs. The things they had thought of in the middle of the wee hours of the night, I do not know. But it seemed to me, at that moment and point in time and place, in that little restaurant they just wanted to be like us, again.

5/23 9:05 pm

Ron, Dave and myself were standing on the roof of Briscoe. An eleven-story dorm on the far north end of Indiana University. Our self-made waist harnesses strapped on. Ron threw the rope throw over as he usually did. We had attached it to a cast iron vent pipe and made sure it touched the ground. With carabiner in hand we prepare to clip on.

Ron first introduced rappelling to us on a long wooded train trestle with two lookouts in southern Indiana. It was high above a valley, at least 120 feet. Dave and I watched in amazement as Ron tied the rope off on one of the lookouts, threw it over and locked on. He climbed over the railing, planting his feet firmly on the edge and stretching his backside way out, he looked at us, smiled and said, “bye, bye”. He simultaneous kicked off and released the rope. Instantly he dropped from sight. Quickly we looked over and saw he was having the time of his life.

Dave climbed over the railing and away he when. Locked on I slowly climbed under the railing. And very gingerly slid off. Free of the bridge, dangling and swaying side to side, gently lowering the rope, slowly I descended. Gaining confidence, I dropped faster and faster. There was nothing but exhilaration touching the earth.

Preparing for the second descent we all stopped dead at the same moment, the sound of a distant train. Ron ordered us to tie ourselves to the railing as the sound amplified by the second. Quickly we move away from the tracks and did what he told us. The entire trestle started vibrating the moment the train hit the crossing and continue escalating. Five feet from the tracks we sat gripping the rope as displaced air and momentum hit us before the train crossed at 80mph. Gear blew off to the valley below as the rope held us in place. Breathing was hard as steel and tornado wind roared by. Holding on the sound was deafening. Vibration continued until the train was on dirt again. We sat in silence catching our breath.

So we would practice from time to time on trestles and southern cliffs of Indiana. Ron would always go first, but now standing on the roof, I asked to flip for it.

We had spent the 72 -73-school year on the same 4th floor in Briscoe. Ron left after the first semester, it seemed Vietnam was calling him, but it wasn’t to be. He entered into the local union electrician apprenticeship in Evansville. Dave and I dropped out at the end of the year. That fall we traveled into New England with great plans of riding our bikes from Miami to Key West. But in Boston our car was stolen and our plans changed.

Dave was back in school.

When the union carpenter apprenticeship entered my world, in early 74, it was intoxicating. From the world of words to the world of hands on material that produced the things we need to live, to survive. For if there is no roof over our heads, to keep out the rain, how far have we come as a civilization.

And so Ron, as he had showed me things I had never seen before or thought of, said “yes”. The coin fell in my favor. Locking on, standing on the ledge, jabbing my heals onto the edge, my backside eleven stories high, I looked at Ron smiling and said, bye, bye. Kicking off and dropping from sight I heard, “ass hole”.

There were no better words; I could have ever hope for.

5/23 11:20 am

The voice on the other end of the line was silent. The young woman had given birth to a boy three days before. A few hours later he started turning blue. He was transported to the medical facility at UC Davis. It was there, they discovered the wall separating the ventricles of his heart was missing.

My wife and I went to see him there. It had been many years since walking into such a place. Entering into the room lying in a tall crib was the boy. His head was covered with, what seemed like, a clear plastic cake dome. There was a large U-shape mouse hole cut out, which slipped around his neck. Oxygen was pumped inside.

Once they removed it and sat him up, there was no going back. The bond was instant and the feeling to protect and care for this child was overwhelming.

We had given the young woman financial assistance the last months of her pregnancy. I spoke first and her silence began to fade.

It seems that a woman who has the presents of understanding, they are unable to care for the child they love so dearly and makes the choice for the child and not themselves is something I have great admiration and honor for. It makes me go silent with deep appreciation. If I was in their place, would I be able to make the same choice. I do not know.

We met her at Davis with a few of her relatives. Watching her look at her baby, you could see how she loved her child, her baby boy. She asked what we would name him. My wife had picked out Matthew and told her so. The woman smile, so too was the name she would have given him.

And so the child became our son.

May 20th 6:26 pm

Removing the mass was a relatively minor operation. The next week was preparing for the next phase much different from the first. Spreading, it would enter into the lymph glands and nodes that were on the front side of the spine.

A twelve-hour operation with two teams and an incision starting just below the heart traveling down, five inches past the navel.

Waking up there was white light, desert mouth and intense pain. There was no liquid they would give. Morphine slowly cascaded from shoulders to arms. ed Unable to raise my head, a hand investigated the incision, there seemed to be a harden cast covering the entire abdomen.

There was a stomach pump, it seems the intestines do not like to be touched by human hands and so they cease to function. It was expected, nothing to worry about. Until the days had passed longer than they wished.

Patience worn off. They pulled the tube and started feeding me. My parents had stayed in the two-bed room. Other patients would come and go on the other side of the drawn curtain. At night dad slept in a chair by the bed and mom down the hall in a waiting room. It was a time they could go home and get some sleep.

There was pain I told the nurses, only gas they said. Eat and you will feel better. When it was vomited up, they came in with a narcotic cocktail that I have no words to describe. The cascade came as it usually did, but with much more intensity. It had been maybe three weeks and I looked like death warmed over, with the cocktail there was total peace and calm.

My mother had told me, when she was bleeding profusely during one of her miscarriages and had lost so much blood she was unable to move. “If the building was to burn there was nothing I could do”, she said. Completely helpless. And so it was.

In the days to come, there was muffled talk in the hallway. They may have to go back in.

But yet it was not to be.

Just short of a month I was driven home. Before my weight was 140, leaving it was 115, arms blue and black from blood draws and the steel IV needles they don’t use today.

The cancer was not to show it’s face again, but as the years began to blend into one another it became self evident that I would never have a child of my own.

The last few days I have been struggling. It seems that in order to continue I must face a deep fear of mine. Last night a story that I have always kept hidden and seem to never tell, except to lovers, I begin writing. It is the story of a time when I was 17. It altered the many years not yet come. It was a physical change that came over me, through surgery. And it has taken me to places and given me relationships that I never would have had. Through the physical came the thoughts that never would have come. Looking back I can see why it all needed to happen. But as I was experiencing them, there were times of great happiness and then there were times of eminence sadness. In the times of sadness there would sometimes come confusion within a void of understanding. And in some ways maybe it was always the Plan.

Now in the last few weeks, with sitting again in the sounds, the smells, the sights, but most importantly, the deep interior of my being, the fear has seem to fade. So I will tell the story of how my life was alter and how it’s direction was changed for the first time.


9:14 pm 5/18/10

My father was sitting next to me. There were two maybe three days left of my junior year of high school. The last days of the preceding January my grandmother who had been living with us passed away. Looking back all these years from now, I see that her death was the beginning of a chain of events that would be invisible to the eye, but yet the years would reveal.

My father was silent and so was I. We were just north of 16th street at a “urology” office. A word I had not heard of until a few days before.

Just after my grandmother died I noticed one of my testicles was beginning to grow larger than the other. No one I told, there was no pain. It was months later when its’ size could not be denied, I told my father.

The doctor called me in, it didn’t take long, a flashlight in a darken room. He sent me out and called in my father. I heard them talking in muffled sound. My father came out slowly. He was looking at the floor when he told me, that the following Monday I would be expected and they would be waiting to admit me to begin the process of removing the cancer.

May 15th 9:07pm

Between the late 1950’s through the mid 60’s periodically my parents on a Friday night would load us into the Ford wagon and make the four-hour drive to Evansville. My mother was born there, as were all but one of us. We lived there until I was three.

As a small boy at night I would sometimes lie on my parents’ bed and follow the lights as they moved across the walls and ceiling, from the cars that drove by on Riverside drive. There was a fireplace in their second floor bedroom and a closet you could walk through to another bedroom in which I slept with some of my brothers and sisters.

In the middle of the night I would walk through this opening and climb in bed with my parents. This would happen on most nights until it was time for my younger sister to have her turn.

My father had found work in central Indiana and would leave on Sunday night and returned late the following Friday night. My mother told me many years later I would run in circles when he would leave. I do remember the chocolates with caramel wrapped in silver he would bring back.

It was in the late 50’s we moved to his work. And so we would return from time to time to visit our only Grandmother and my mothers’ two brothers Joe and Louis and their families.

There were times I would study the pair of pocket doors that were between the living and dining rooms. The doors had a full wall on each side. I would wonder what kind of magical things were hidden as I tried to peek inside the walls. I was intrigued by the button when pushed would slide out a handle on the edge of the doors. How the curved astragals from each door would come together inside each other so you couldn’t see light in between when closed.

There were steam radiators under the low windows on the south side of the dining room. When we would sit at the table it always seemed like one of us would fall back in our chair and hit our head against them. Crying would be involved.

But it was the dining room table that seemed to draw us all together. It had come from my Great Great Grandfathers’ furniture shop. He had been a 49er. It took him six years to find enough gold to start the shop and business in Evansville.

The table is round when closed. Then pulls apart. When adding the five leaves it creates a place of gathering and sharing. On some Saturday nights we would all be together, my uncles, aunts and cousins.

Lilly was my grandmothers’ helper and had been with her for decades. Someone told me she was the first black lady in Evansville to own her own home. She would bring us wonderful meals she had prepared from scratch. She didn’t talk much as I remember, but you would never cross her. We were taught to obey our elders, which Lilly was certainly one.

As we enjoyed our food we would listen to our parents’ and grandmother’s conversations.

When the meal was over we would play and explore throughout the large house. But there were times I would slip way from my cousins, brothers and sisters, as we traversed the stairwells of the basement, second floor and sometimes the attic of 1119 Riverside Drive.

I would sneak into a darkened kitchen and peak through it’s door into the lighted dining room and watch my grandmother, my parents, aunts, uncles and maybe my oldest sister and brothers sitting around the table speaking. Sometimes they would laugh; sometimes they would speak of their parents, sometimes of the things that were happening in the world. Most things they talked about I did not understand, but I did know that a day would come when I would sit at the table, of the 49er with my uncles Louis and Joe, my parents and their parents and the ones I have never met.

May 14th, 2010 10:47 am

Late summer of 1960 I entered the first grade.

The road was gravel that took us to our three-bedroom one bath home on about three acres. Woods were to the west with an old horse barn at its end. A basketball hoop was raised on its outside. We learned to play on dirt and grass surrounded by corn and soybean fields.

As the seasons went by and the corn grew tall, we wouldn’t be able to see the very few farms across the fields, until the harvest came. Sometimes the farmers would lift me up onto their large tractors and combines and I would ride with them for a while. It made my mother nervous, but it was a wonderful world. To watch from plowing to harvest was intoxicating.

The full basement was a Godsend. There were ten of us kids then; the eleventh would arrive spring of ‘66. Privacy was hard to find.

My older brothers and dad had built a tree house adjacent to the barn. The eighteen-foot rope ladder was hard to climb, but it led to a magical world. A place of innocence and thoughts of the things the future might bring. I would sit up there for hours by myself and cast out over the fields and trees in the distance. Rising above them all was the wooden water tower in the small town three miles away.

You would hear a train in the distance from time to time. I imagined walking down its wooden tracks and iron rails with a girl my age, someone I did not know, but someone who lived inside of me. Walking hand in hand without saying a word, for there were no words to say. It was an innocent relationship for the world did not have a part in it. So we would just walk with no destination in mind, for just being together and holding hands was more than enough.

The tree house is gone now. I drove by many years ago and saw it was slowing falling, slowly returning to the soil from where it had come. But it does not matter for I still climb the rope ladder. Still sit on the wooden boards high above the ground and gaze into the distance and hear a train from time to time.

May 14th, 4:49am

During the spring of 87 Matt was in school and my daughter was not yet two. I was in the process of building the big house. It was the second, but this time it wasn’t nights and weekends. My brother Joel had come and help me pour the foundation on Christmas Eve. In California you build for earthquakes so it’s 1/2” steel and concrete. It was a long day, but we finished by the time the sun was down. Then my wife came and got me. The kids were sleeping and it was time to wrap presents.

The floor joist had been rolled and blocked. Sub-floor glued and nailed down. My wife helped me stand up the walls with jacks. Frankie came back and helped me with the roof framing. 1/2” plywood had been nail on and now it was the time for the squares and squares of roof shingles. One shingle at a time. It seems to take the longest, but it is one of the most important, when you are building a house.

We were living in a 28’ trailer next to the house in process. A steel container held our household belongings. I had built a small shed for the icebox and washer and dryer.

There was a small closet inside the trailer, turned into a caged bed for Kim, but she seemed to escape from time to time.

So I was trying to fight the boredom of shingles on the top of this roof and concentrate on the importance of this part of construction when I heard a voice. It was a small voice, but one that I knew well.

Looking over the roof hip to the ladder laid against the gutter, there was my daughter on the top run looking at me. Her bottle in one hand as she held on with the other.

As my heart raced, I slowly stood and begin talking to her gently. She was 12 feet high as I was 40 feet from her. So we talked a little as what seemed like eternity as I casually moved toward her. She put the bottle to her mouth and held it by her teeth.

Finally reaching her, I picked her up and held her in my arms. She did not know the relief I felt, but it was not important. After a few moments I took her to the ridge, to the top of the roof and we sat down. We looked out over trees and land. We talked about being in a place where few people sit. Tomales bay was to the south and the Inverness hills climbed on the other side.

The time was quiet. It was peaceful. A time to show my daughter things she had not seen before. Later we talked about be careful, that maybe next time just call and I will come get her. But with wonder, and wanting to be with each other you end up looking on things you did not see before.

May 9th, 2010

Looking through the large glass window at the far end of the ICU (intensive care unit) there was a door. It had no locks, no handles. It opened when someone pushed a metal square button located on the wall. After someone passed through the opening, it would stay opened for a while and I would be able to see into a room. It did not have access from hallways and main corridors. Only from the ICU and the nurse’s station could you enter.

It made me think about how things change when I enter an ICU. It’s second nature now. My mind goes on high alert and my eyes scan the walls and windows that see through to the beds and people that rest upon them. I can feel my mind feel things that are happening around me, without my eyes seeing them. How the feeling and understanding becomes dormant when I leave after the event is over. Only to reemerge when I enter again.

The open door letting me see into the unseen room closes and waits until the button is pushed. Maybe it is like a part of my mind that lives inside the ICU, for it is during these times the world stops, time alters and most things are turned to thought.

And as with the door closing, as with me exiting, the feeling waits until it is needed again.

But this time I do not wish to let the door close. I want to disconnect the power supply so it cannot close. Maybe it is time to let the feelings and understanding and new ideas and thoughts to live with me outside the ICU.

So maybe this is a new beginning to a life that has seen many things, experienced birth and death and many things in between. I have been afraid to write about many of them, but now the fear has seemed to fade away. Maybe by writing I might understand them more clearly, for there is much confusion in my mind.

To write about the things that have made me laugh and made me cry could lead me to places I do not know, but maybe we will find them together.

Brian

May 12th, 5:57 am

Heading south on the Point Reyes – Petaluma road just past the reservoir there is a three way stop. Straight leads to Olema or San Rafael depending which way you turn at the T. To the right is a curvy, winding, two lane road that has little traffic. It follows a small stream that rages after a winters’ storm. It flows into Tomales Bay and then into the Pacific. The road ends on California highway 1, just north of Point Reyes Station.

It was the late summer of 1990. I was sitting in a brand new 3/4 ton pick-up. Under its’ hood was an engine almost as powerful as god. The sun was shining, no fog today. It was late afternoon. I turned to the right.

Looking at my eight-year-old son, I told him to put on his seat belt. He paused for a second wondering what was to come. His belt clicked in, as did mine.

Sliding in Billy Joel, I turned up the volume until it was blasting. We looked at each other and then straight-ahead. Grabbing the wheel tightly, I floored it!!!!. The acceleration jammed us back into our seats. Our adenine and hearts raced. The turns I had come to know quickly jerked us from side to side. Holding onto the wheel the truck held the curves at speeds I had not taken before. Half way through I caught a glimpse of my son. His eyes wide open staring straight to the road with a smile and wonderment that I can still see to this day.

It was over, what seemed like, before it had begun. I turned down the volume. We both took deep breaths and begin to relax. Looking at each other, “maybe we shouldn’t tell your mom about this”.

He nodded.

I believe I took his hand as we drove slowly the last half-mile home.