The memories aren’t always clear. They never are. It’s like a first person shot on a cheap video camera uploaded to You Tube… grainy, digitized yet still sharp with little jerky movements interspersed with slow pans.

In high school I had a friend… Jay. He was unique, confident… Jay was thin as in British rocker thin with dirty blond wavy hair in a conservative 80’s style. Cloths are a blur (insert your own jeans, tshirt or button down [untucked, please], nothing 80’s cliche, though), but not the shoes. He would switch between his canvashigh-tops or combat boots. And his car… makes and models generally leave my mind as quickly as they enter… a yellowed/tan station wagon. Older with some rust and possibly faux wood panels. Later, it changed… I vaguely recall something newer dark maroon, but that’s the car my memory always inserts. Jay could… would cruise down the streets weaving between the various clicks. He could talk to anyone and get along with most. Jay was the artist in school… drawings and I’m not sure what else. And when our lives intersected at the heaviest, he worked evenings/nights in a car wash making sure the machines all ran and the coin changer was full.

(more…)

Shiny eyes stared into his as he kneeled, bringing his face level.  “I’ll miss you, daddy” as the whispered voice caught. 

“I love you very much and I’ll be back in just a couple of weeks.  I will call when I can and we can talk” he promised, his heart breaking.

The little arms, the “good arm” hooking him tightly around the neck, squeezed.

Lauren rushes up in a chaotic shuffle, wrapping her arm tightly around my neck at the last minute to keep from falling. That sparkle flashes behind her pink frames as she fights back a belly laugh.

“Broccoli!” she snorts!

“Broccoli…?”

“Broccoli, Floyd and Mona!” she bursts!

I pause… holding her out in front of me, I take the bait. “Broccoli, Floyd and Mona…?”

“YEAH! When I grow up!  Those will be the names of my kids! Two boys and a girl!” She breaks down on the floor clutching her side in hysterics, so tight breaths are forgotten.

“Those kids won’t ever be picked on…”

Seriousness freezes her laughter as she stares at me. “Of course not. Never.”

A heartbeat later… she snorts as she crashes to the floor in giggles… “Broccoli, Floyd and Mona!”

Maggie looked up and away so she could see me clearly in her peripheral vision. She tapped her lips with a short, thin finger. “When I grow up, I’m going to have 4 kids… ” She added decidedly “two girls and two boys”.Used to her level of planning, I inquired with raised brow “and their names?”

“Rosalina and Assabella… the boys Zach and Josh. “

“Assabella… hmm… those are good names.” Curving the corners of my mouth down as I slowly nodded my head, hiding my smile.

“And their friends will be the children of my friends.”

“And their cousins will be the children of your brothers and sister… ” I added.

“Oh, Thomas isn’t going to have children. He says he will never get married and I believe him.”

She’s so confident and I hope she’s wrong. I want all my children to grow up looking back fondly at their childhood, wanting to be parents…  making me a grandfather.