Modern Love.

Me and my wife will be married forever, and probably, the way things are going, in the goddamn After-Life too. I know this despite recent events because I smell love coming from our room. It is early in the morning here and I woke up at Violet's first chirps of the day. Mainly that happened because when I heard her and rolled over and looked at my phone it said it was 4:30am and that's when TMZ comes on the tv. So: I lifted her gently out of the crib and we moved on in the darkness, toward the gossipy light. A few steps on, I felt my daughter's tiny bottom let out a tiny fart and it wafted up kind of milky and not unsweet and so I just knew then and there that anybody who could team up with me to create such a tiny bit of pure tiny awesomeness, well, that woman was gonna have staying power. Long long love. Like it or not.

Then, I got Violet to sleep in the swing for a bit and was feeling sorta romantic for Monica...well, during the commercials. She's a really complicated treasure with a tender motherly heart. And she loves me with the gangsta fierceness that sometimes means she has to bitch-slap me in the face, but that once we settle down, maybe gorge on some burritos, we all good. Often, we end up even better than before. Now lately, she's been acting kind of sexy like, showing me her pre-baby jeans on her ass and stuff. This is never bad.

The thing is though, I never even really noticed any weight gain on her. I mean, yeah she did get pregnant with a baby and all but I guess maybe that didn't register with me as a physical weight thing. It almost seemed more like spiritual. Or like she was just wearing an easily un-zipable fat suit. Maybe it's because there wasn't exactly a lot of doin' it on the kitchen counter while she was busy throwing up every twenty minutes...so my sexual radar wasn't powered to full. Whatever it was, I always felt she looked glowing (sweaty?) and natural (pissed?).

Now though, we are back landed on Earth. Back to real life with baby. And if my lady says she wants to get back to her pre-pregnancy weight, well then who the hell am I to say anything? Look at Tori Spelling, right hon? That girl had her second baby and then was back to HER OWN BIRTH WEIGHT of 8 lbs 4 oz within a day. Nice. Plus, the way I see it, I weigh way less now than I did in high school when I'd smoke three bowls after my mom went to bed and then eat mozzarella sticks or Twinkies dipped in pudding cup.

It's hard being the hot one, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. That's all I'm saying.

Holiday Road.

Yesterday at work I thought maybe I was having a heart attack. My chest got all tight and there was pain. I kept going though, John Henry mofo that I am...I kept mortaring tiles up on the scuzzy bathroom wall. All the while I waited for the legendary tingling of the arm or the blurred vision. Didn't happen. I did stop once for a sec to do a Fred Sanford chest pound with my fist. Insult to injury, that was. Anyhow, my not-so-near death morning got me to thinking about Violet and how much it would suck to croak now, before we've had any Christmases together.

Back in December, when Monica would just puke in a plastic bag in the car as breezily as if she were enjoying a snack cake, I tried to buy unborn Violet a Santa Claus outfit. But my wife put her swollen foot down on that one. Up til then I'd been allowed to indulge myself whenever we had a couple bucks. I picked up some cool duds at Old Navy, last year's fashions I guess. Whatever. And then one Sunday afternoon we were at Crazy Wal-Mart, where children are free to open shit up and ride it like lightning down the aisles, when I spotted a bumble-bee outfit. Oh no they dih-int!, I said to myself.

I had to have it. It cost 9 dollars. And the way I look at the world is through hourly-paid eyes so it didn't take me long to configure that almost one whole hour of dusty hard labor in my life was now about to add up to a BeeGirl suit for a kid I don't even know yet. Still, I didn't flinch. And I was prepared to argue or even get physical for my wonderful find (yes yes, it's fine to throat-punch your wife here, sir!...that's why we call it CRAZY Wal-Mart, yo.) No need though, as Monica smiled/sighed and I was a proud poppa-to-bee. It is thirty-six sizes to big, of course, but I am feeding her extra baby formula on the sly to fatten her up. Shhh.

Where's this going? I'll tell ya. In between having little heart attacks and and giant panic attacks I have been slowly planning Violet's first Christmas. I have always loved that time of year, chaos and financial hardships aside. There is nostalgia in these nicotined bones; a nearly constant longing for a wintery night and a glowing window with me behind it; for that special "seasonal" red wine buzz and a coffee table heaving with sliced pepperoni and supermarket cheddar on a snowflake dish. And Emmett Otter or Elf on the tube. A tree so high it curls at the ceiling. And presents wrapped up in festive paper. A beer buzz. Ice cream. Antlers on the dogs. I love it, all of it. Need it to live. Need it to sparkle ever so faintly from months and months away like a jolly old eye winking at me from the North Pole. Keep-on-keepin'-on there, Serge. Suck it up and fling off them chest pains, son! There's another Christmas coming 267 days from now!

And now, thanks to Violet I am absolutely insane with Christmas fever. I cannot wait to share with her the Santa story and the baby Jesus story and the Grinch story and how to use a candycane as a pepperminty straw in soda. And, of course, I already got her her first gift. BeeSuit. And yeah, I know, as Monica has so reminded me: this year Violet will be 11 months at the holidays, still slobbering down her pretty little face. Probably won't know how to speak at all. But, whatever. She will love the thing that I love....that unmistakably enchanted time of year
when grown men and women who still believe in little wonders are able to put their stupid petty concerns aside for the sake of the children! And the man-children!

So, here's us practicing our tunes. Its never too early, people. Never ever.

Summer Nights.

Out back my Uncle Carl's house, the long summer day would draw cool air into its engines, then kill the power to glide like a phantom from out of the sky, over across the cattail reeds and wooden docks and down along avenues of curving lagoon. Around flag-less poles, once popping with afternoon flags now safely lowered and put away by retirees who folded them ever so gently in the old style, the evening would rise up from the baked pebbles of the unfenced yard and spread out into all the places day had been an hour or so ago. Under the seagulls, I would stare across the bay at the twinkling lights of Atlantic City getting turned on.

It was 1981, and the Philadelphia mafia was everywhere over there, killing and gambling. But I didn't know, or care. My fingers smelled like sand shark and flounder from all the fish we'd been catching. My hair was matted with salt and wind. I was away from home, alone without my Mom, for the first time. A week of fishing in my ex-State Trooper uncle's small boat. Of fried fish and lemon. And a week of falling asleep to the gentle voice of summer. Harry Kalas.

After I'd helped with dishes and kissed my Aunt Betty goodnight through her breath of a couple Manhattans, I'd skip steps up to my room, close the door behind me and turn on the radio for the Phils. Baseball was my life, was everything in the universe that could possibly mean anything at all. Well, baseball and baseball cards. There in the dark, I would lay on the cool clean sheets and listen to that distant galaxy I loved.

Harry Kalas and Richie "Whitey" Ashburn were the Phillies announcers. And they were my captains into the boundless night. Their sly war-buddy rapport made me somehow feel more grown-up, kind of like my Uncle Carl made me feel at his house that week; I probably could have mixed myself a Manhattan in front of him and he'd of let me down it. The way they'd poke each other just a bit during long stretches of time when little was happening on the field, I just loved it.

That week, as the Phillies played the Expos or whoever, I listened to every single second of broadcast. At times Whitey would chuckle for no real reason, and you could almost tell that he and Harry were conducting an inside joke. Whitey would laugh at someting unknown to me. Then, some really long moments of the sparse Expo crowd: a lone holler, an airhorn in the upper deck, the peanut vendor's pitch. And finally, Harry would come back in like a jazz genius, a smile on his voice, and say something simple like its Fireworks Night at the Vet in Philly in two weeks...and the whole fuckin' thing played out like the most wonderous American opera ever written. I had a week of that. Of flounder fishing and that. Was one of the greatest of my life.

Later, me and my brother Dave had a friend pull some strings for our band. Next thing you know we were in the bowels of the ballpark where the Phils lived and Harry Kalas was recording some stuff for us for our first record. Just some things we'd written just for him to say. He was really gracious and nice. Me and Dave were in awe of him. All of our lives, his voice had been there. Now here we were together. He told us to go down on the field before the afternoon's game. He made sure it was ok. Then, he invited us into the announcing booth. It was just him and Whitey and us. We stayed a whole half inning. Harry introduced us to people as "the band guys". It felt like a dream.

Anyways, lots of guys like me have baseball memories. We were the last of a kind in a lotta ways, I guess. Still, my guy died today. Harry Kalas. And with him goes something I will never know again. A deep gentle timbre to guide me through the black of space to some brightly lit concrete spaceship landed on the edge of a dirty city. A once-in-a-lifetime voice that brought baseball to my room for many many years. I hope my little daughter experiences something so cool in her lifetime. Maybe not with baseball, but with whatever it is that captures her young heart and mind.

Night, Harry. Thank you.