WAKE UP BABIES!!!

it's go time

Wake up babies, it’s go time!

No, I don’t know what that means, but i think you do…
don’t you?

We know
so much more
than we know,
ya know?

a story

“You guys know how to drive this thing, right?”

“YEA” my kids scream, pudgy hands gripping tightly the two count em two steering wheels of the…shopping cart? car cart? car. This is a car and YEA they know how to drive, so with a guttural bub bub bubububububbbbbbbbvvvvvvvvvvv, the car is on and we are off, into the orange fog of lamps and lumber.

The Home Depot,
where a man can be a dad.

“Who is driving this thing” i say with panic as we SCREEECH swerve hard left, heading right into the giant slab of marble that i am fairly sure is a shower TURN LEFT screams Emma June the two year old who is usually the careful one but not today, today she is bedlam and flame and giggles galore as I turn us SWOOSH back into center, asking again, “seriously guys are you sure you can drive this thing???” to which Wilder the five year old screams YEA DUDE even though clearly he cannot as we SKRRRT swerve into the gifts for dad $20 center popups TURN RIGHT screams EJ and we do, barely avoid destruction, again and again and again and again and again, here in the aisles of home and hearth, where a man can be a dad and a dad can be a car and that car can be STOP!! Wilder screams, and we do.

Pringles. Can he have them?

No. Why? Because.

“I promise these are the last chips I’ll ever eat ever.”

No.
Still.
But what a pitch!

Reminds me of the “life bets” my friends and I used to make in our twenties. These were normal bets except the stakes were life long, like the time I lost a life bet and had to - still have to - pronounce the word “bread” as “briad.”

I don’t want that for him, a whole life without Pringles, the chip that also lost a life bet with the FDA and now legally cannot call itself a chip. It is a crisp, made as it is from dehydrated potato flakes and starches rather than sliced whole potatoes.

“Can we go to the garden area??” Wilder asks and to this, I say, with a SKRRRRRR stop of the vehicle, “Yes.”

Through the sliding doors, we’re outside. The land of lawn and patio, where a man who can be a dad, can be a car, can have a pit stop and say, like Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle would often say, when things were good, “if this isn’t nice, what is?”

“Can we run??” Wilder asks as I extract him and his sister from the car cart.

Yes, I say, though they’re already gone, but not for long.

She speedtrots behind him, like a stampeding hippo horse, losing and finding her brother, again and again and again, cackling each time with glee, as the light hits the two of them ever just so, because all is well, here in the depot where, somehow, for now, nothing bad really happens.

Which feels weird, because you’d think that something bad would happen, right? Like you know when something’s about to fall or break and your face winces? That’s how my whole body feels, all the time. Pre-winced, bracing for the impact that must soon come. Because it will, right?

Except it doesn’t. Not right now. Right now they’re running and I send Lauren a video of them running. And now it’s time to go and they’re sad but not too sad because nothing bad is really happening.

And now, heading back through the aisles, toward the checkout.

“WHOA look at that light” Wilder screams, pointing at the neon, here in the same aisle where two weeks ago I stood with my dad, waiting for Carl, an employee described by the entrance greeter as “the nicest guy we’ve got.”

We were there for replacement halogen bulbs, my dad and I, for the new house, where a basement can be an office and an office can be a place I spend most of early morning hours. I’d found the right light, according to my research, by which I mean Claude, but my dad wanted help, which makes sense:

This was Home Depot,

where a man could be a dad,

and a dad could be a help.

So we waited for Carl, glasses, open-mouthed, scared and curious all at once, except Carl was helping someone else, a shady guy with long hair and a loud British voice, by the wires against the very back wall.

When Carl finally got to us he picked up our bulb and scanned it with his scanner and started reading off the scanner exactly the same words we saw on the package. Yes, we know that, my dad said, but do you think it’s the right one? Honestly, Carl said, this isn’t my department. And they just kept talking, back and forth, saying things meaning nothing, and I stood genuinely befuddled. What was this? No one meant anything. Two people communicating with nothing ever being said.

Finally Carl said, you know what, I’ll be honest with you, the guy who can help you is the guy I was just helping.

“The customer?”

“Oh yea he knew his stuff.”

And my dad was off, not running but close, searching through the aisles for the customer who could maybe help him with a lamp I already knew was the right one.

He did not find that customer.

We paid for our lamp knowing less about it and the world than ever before, at the self-checkout, the one closest to the exit, right next to the sodas and Pringles, where two weeks later I stand with my two kids, explaining again to my son that he cannot buy the Pringles so that he can enjoy them for the rest of his days.

My dad’s not here now at the Home Depot, except he is, always, the way dads are. I wonder how he’d handle Wilder, hemming and hawing while his sister dances and dawdles. I’m outside with the two of them now, putting the car cart away, when Wilder asks to run again and I say no but he’s already gone, through the grills and sit-down lawnmowers, heading toward the other entrance, running parallel with the road

WILDER STOP i scream but he doesn’t stop WILDER STOP I SAID but he doesn’t stop EMMA JUNE COME HERE PLEASE WILDER STOP but he doesn’t stop and he’s all the way to the other entrance now and I’m speeding toward him fast with EJ in tow and he’s sprinting back toward me just like before with the freedom and the hair except i don’t see any of that. I see red and danger and when we meet, amidst the mowers, I kneel down and say

“That was NOT ok you cannot do that wilder if i say no, look at me, Wilder you cannot do that bud look at me please” but he can’t, not for long, and says “sorry I didn’t hear” but i know he did and now I’m even more mad and now he’s running again past me and he’s saying ok and i say stop saying ok, just actually listen, and he says ok and i say stop saying okay and he says okay and I say STOP and he does and I tell him to hold my hand and Emma June to hold my other hand but she doesn’t want to hold my hand, she wants to hold his hand, but he doesn’t want that but I say “Wilder please hold her hand” and I think he does.

and nothing bad happens. but it could have. it always can, even though it almost never does.

We’re driving home and i explain to him that i need to protect him, that its my job, and that if i say stop he needs to stop because i’m not just saying it for giggles. he says he understands but then tries to defend it, just like i probably did, and so I look back and give his knee a squeeze and say i love you and he says i love you too and now i feel bad. i feel really bad, like an inverted version of the way i feel after i get mad at my dad for just wanting to help, for wanting to talk to Carl even though Carl doesn’t know jack shit about lights. and i’m frustrated because i’m a man too and i know what i’m doing, why can’t he listen to me, why doesn’t he trust me, even though he does.

These are the terms of our life bet. The son rebels. The father protects. The son doesn’t understand. The father protects anyways. The son will be mad, and strap in folks, we’re just getting started, here in this world of idiots talking to each other about nothing, screaming even though nothing bad really happens, making no sense, running around looking for help, looking for something, looking for certainty, looking for proof, looking for safety.

These are the terms of our life bet. We did not agree to it but must adhere to its rules nonetheless. At least for now,
at least for then,
because now is now, and now we’re driving and dancing. Bleachers. I find one song and we bop and wiggle and I’m feeling it and so is Wilder, doing his night at the roxbury lip bite head bob, arms up and hands out like two geese, frozen, sort of, and there’s EJ through the rearview, bopping but real subtle, like its all happening inside her, deep, she feels the groove, and i can’t help but laugh and she laughs a little and he laughs a lot and I know if my dad was here he’d laugh too.

And we’re home now and we are dancing. Watch out for the couch corners Wilder, you slammed your head there during the last dance party and you said we’d never dance again, but we’re dancing now. And Emma June, be careful of the stones as you twirl, because now she’s twirling like a free love girlie in her dressie, arms out at her sides. I’m always struck at how deeply she seems to feel the music, like it’s really doing something in there, and Wilder is running catty corner back and forth through the room doing jumps and ‘moves’ and I say WOW and he says your turn so I do the move and he gives me a note and we repeat and the banana briad is cooking and it smells good and we are dancing and it’s a little dry now, the banana briad, but that’s nothing and so nothing bad has happened, at least for now.

We all stop, at the same moment, for a breath.

“Emma June do you know everything in the world?” Wilder asks.
Wise beyond time and space, she does not answer.
He asks her again.
Ever the sage, she again speaks not.

“Do you think I know everything in the world?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“...no. Not everything. “
“You know what I know?” I ask him.
“what?”
“I know how much I don’t know.”
He smiles because he knows.

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