Days of Thunder.

Most of my days are samey lately. Five hours of mowing lawns in the morning, drive home/pull in the driveway, say hello to my wife as she passes me in the door on her way to work. I plow through some Rold Golds and a Diet Coke with Violet in my lap. I gobble on her ear: she smiles and tries to ignore me. We watch some CNN. We speak of Iran, of lands far away. We watch the guy on CNN read things from Twitter. We turn off CNN.

Later I apply greasy baby sunscreen to my daughter's nose and cheeks as she lays on the changing table. She opens her mouth wide and smiley as if she wants to eat the lotion. I tell her that when she gets older she can eat all the lotion she wants. But not this afternoon; not yet. We put on long sleeves in case the sun wants to bite. And little pink or white socks. I rub her tiny feet, buzz one in my mouth. She smiles big and laughs without sound. Her out loud laughs are still only here and there. They are coming though and I am crazy for their arrival.

I slip on a three inch sneaker. Pink Bobos. Violet coos and gasps and pops her lips as I tie up the dirty white lace. Then I do the other one.

The dogs run around the house clicking their hard nails on the wood. They get excited when I dress Violet. They know we're all going.

In the Honda we drive past strip malls and Pizza Hut. We put jazz on the radio and we turn it up loud. We pass Mormon churches and Subway.I watch Violet's face in the little mirror wrapped around the headrest she faces in her seat. I make puffy cheek faces in case she can see me in her mirror like I see her in mine. We pass a monument to a sugar mill that never even got built. We pass the Red Lobster where my wife and I had dinner the night we got married. I mention this. I tell her to look at the giant mountains in front of us. I never shut up.

On our walk we watch the dogs run and jump and swim. We stand by a bend in the creek and watch cutthroat trout suck mayflies off the glassy water. I get so excited when another fish splashes at a bug that Violet gets a sly grin. We like the same things.

Butterflies swoop down to say hello. Silkworms drop from the treetops, land on my daughter's sun hat. Other dogs pass us by with a nod and a wink. Quail march across our path and wave at their good friend Violet. Hawks circle above us and scribble her name on the thermal twists. Airplanes blink their lights at her. The sun hands her a root beer barrel, every afternoon....without fail.

Back in the Honda the smell is marinated dog. The heat of the locked up car slips out the open windows as our movement creates new cool. Sweat from the climb from the canyon to the car just cakes on my arms like wet sugar. Violet and Max and Milo and me, we listen to a Horace Silver song. The music is pie filling in our Honda pie. We are hunks of fruit just smearing ourselves with lotion and watching fishes and waving at the clouds and the grasshoppers and the baby birds in the trees by the side of the road that we whiz by in a Tasmanian Devil blur of Doppler Effect trumpets and incessant crazy barking.

Happy Father's Day.

The Young Wolves.

I still see us filing down the hill toward the lot where we played baseball with a raquetball summer after summer. I hear an aluminum Louisville Slugger clanking steadily on the blistered blacktop as someone used it as a walking stick. I feel the flutter in my ribcage when I first spot the wall of the church. Hit it in the air, its a homer. We'd hit hundreds. Thousands through the years. Each towering shot just as glorious to watch soar and fall as the last. I swear to you on all my shoes: I have a couple of those blasts etched perfectly on the back of my eyeballs. You'd be sort of freaked to know how many times a week I check 'em out.

There was usually six or seven of us to play. An odd number meant a steady pitcher. But no one wanted to do that really since dingers were flying out of the park fast and furious. We had fun. We sweated and laughed. We all played real Little League, but none of us shined too bright. We celebrated our dirt lot wins like they mattered, like anyone in the world gave a shit. Losses stung bad. Even though we were starting a brand new game after we ran to the candy store for cooler-cold Tahitian Treats.

But we were local terrorists as well. We'd terrorize each other in horrific ways. Cruel cruel words. Fat ass. Buck Tooth faggot. Fat Lard. We fought. Violence was fairly common, expected at some point in the week. Uncommitted slaps to the face. Arm punches. Mostly one upset kid chasing down another faster kid who usually escaped by running off the field, into back streets, and as far as he needed to go until shit cooled off.

Oh the pounding of your heart when it all went down. I was there. I chased and got chased; I still can feel those first electric flits of big fury ricocheting around my chest. And those early tastes of hard cold fear like metal around my tongue. Rarely have I been as frightened ever since. There is pure darkness in running as fast as your chunky twelve year old legs can possibly go. In knowing that your pursuer truely wants to hurt you. And mostly in knowing that you deserve to be hit; the things you said were nasty and mean and hurt as much as punches hurt. You are a brat and a punk and a wise-ass, born fast in the last five minutes, like some weird annoying bug. Your life span should end in a swat.

Familiarity breeds contempt, right? You better believe it does. Try crossing Texas in a hot van with five musicos you've been with for weeks. Or try playing ball every single day of the summer with the same half-dozen kids who live in the first half-dozen houses next to yours. The love is still there. Though you'd never admit it, or even recognize it. But it has turned teensy. And your long hot days are redwood high. Stuff becomes invisble.

When you're a kid all your steaming overworked valves need releasing. Old air needs hissing. All the mad wicked fabulous things you will become are just confused baby wolf pups rolling around nipping at your guts. Your majestic rise to grace is long. Your road less traveled is super fucking out of the way.

Summer fades, the bat's pinging echo fades. The sweaty twilight walk back up the hill to your house, to our homes fades.

And then poof.

It's gone.