A bit of administrivia: I am going to make a new page for Legends, but I am going to continue to use the Tijervyn RSS (which I will actually be upgraded to RSS 2.0 from the older version it is on). That is part of the reason for the delay as well: I haven’t had time to do the web-monkey work for that yet.

BUT, here is something special for you instead. A new short story! The Moment It All Changed. This is a short I wrote based pretty well 100% on a dream I had. More of a magical realism/strange fiction feel to it in a coming of age sort of way. I hope you enjoy it.

I wrote this over the last six hours, between making dinner, watching Hook with my kids, and tucking them in. The idea came to me this afternoon. It probably isn’t the best example of writing I’ve ever done. The genesis of this story is two-fold. One comes from a random thought I had about people who chase eternal summer. You know, they are constantly moving around so they stay in a warm climate, swapping from northern to southern hemisphere and the such. The thought came to me, what would happen if there were people who did that, but for the day itself.

The second part came from my elder son (and contains some spoilers for the story, just saying).

Over the past few nights, my eldest (who is all of four-almost-five) has been pulling my heartstrings as hard as he can at night. After we have had baths and brushed our teeth and read our story, he tried to put off the final tucking in, asking me about all these different things he is worried about. I try to assure him as much as I can, but he has, these past nights and without fail, pulled his trump. He says: “Daddy, I need you.”

How am I to answer such a thing. On the basest level, my paternal instinct swells at this. My son needs me. When I was a child, I was a horrid brat who protested to my mother that I did not need her, and I know I broke her heart on those nights that I said that, and it would break my heart to hear my son tell me that as well.

Yet, it breaks my heart to hear him plead for me to stay like this. I want my children to be independent and strong. I want them to love me, yes, and to want to spend time with me. But to need me? That is a line that I don’t know about. I do want them to need me. There is a strong part of me that identifies as “father.” And if that part was professed to not be needed, then it would lose the meaning of itself. And yet, that same father wants to not be needed. It is a conundrum that I explore in this story, and I don’t think I have really answered it. I want to think I have, but it still hurts. But, this was a piece of emotional writing. What can I say? Even if it doesn’t help me in my own internal conflicts (which I am sure will not be solved until I do learn to stop chasing the sun), then perhaps it can help you with some inner turmoil of your own.

Now, I’ll say, I typically believe Karma to be a real thing.  Not that I think there is a mystical force out there, keeping a check to see the universe weighs the same as a duck, but I do full well believe that the way you act dictates what opportunities come your way.  Buy someone a beer, good chance they will buy you one back.  Let someone shelter under your umbrella, and they’ll offer you a coffee.  Etc, and so forth.  But what about all the random, nasty stuff?

Well, I think that is really just unbalanced.  Example.  Let’s say you made a mistake in associating with someone for a time.  They cause you all sorts of pain as you associate with them, and even after you break the association and do everything you can to not let them affect your life, this person still manages to cause drama and heartache.  Not that I’m talking from personal, recent experience.  Nope, not me.  Nuh-uh.

See, it always seems that we get far more crap for bad than we get gold for good.  And, oh crap, I’m going to start talking about writing.  Yeah, it needs to be like that in stories too.  I have read far too many stories (or fragments of stories cause I couldn’t make myself finish), where the author tried to change the balance of Karma.  That is to say, tried to make the universe less of a cold, unfeeling, uncaring, prick.  Either by giving less crap for bad or more gold for good.  And yeah, that is one fantasy that belongs in your head while you shower or sluff off at work and not on a page.  And I’ll just end it there, cause right now Karma has thrown me a boulder to deal with, and boy does my back hurt holding it.  I guess I’ll just go watch some more Lost or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Every so often in life, I think of my late Uncle Steve.  I feel bad that I can’t remember exactly when he died without looking it up, even to the point of not remembering if I was in high school still or in college, and also somewhat worse that he touched me far more profoundly in death than in life.  Let me tell you why.

See, I didn’t really know Steve all that well.  Yeah, he was my kind of loopy uncle that was a cop and a TV repairman.  His son, who is three years younger than me, was cool to play with, even in those years of childhood where even a single year difference seems an eternity, but that hardly helped me know Steve.  And then, one day, my dad sits me down and tells me that Steve died of a massive heart attack early in the morning.  He was only 43.

At the wake and funeral, I learned quite a bit more about Steve.  He was the kind of guy that went out of his way to be as helpful as he could.  If he fixed your TV or fridge, and you couldn’t afford what it should have cost, he let you pay what you could and called it even.  And even for that business model, which really does not promote expansion in the impoverished and dying coal camps of southern Illinois, he wanted to continue to expand what he did.  Even when his friends would say, “Steve, if you buy a watermelon for a dollar and sell it for a dollar, it doesn’t do you any good to buy a bigger truck to haul watermelons,” he would just shrug it off and barrel on.

On the night he died, he had faced the grim fact that the bank was foreclosing on his business the next morning.  His dream—his life—was shattering.  As was often his wont when he was stressed and could not sleep, he went out riding with the night shift patrol.  They stopped at the gas station, and he stayed in the car while the officers went in for a coffee.  When they came back, he was dead.  Yeah, the autopsy said heart attack.  We said broken heart.

So why do I think of Steve?  Well, because I kind of admire him.  He had his rough edges, yes.  He smoked and drank, and definitely lacked business sense, but by all that anyone could call holy, he was a good man.  I only wish his story did not have to be so tragic, but such is this world that it chews up the good and spits it back out.

So yeah, Steven, here’s to you on no day in way particularly special, and here’s to living a dream no matter what.  Let us all just take the lesson to heart that even the greatest dreams with the most well meaning heart behind them can break.  May you live your dream, and my I live mine.