My Two Children

A Story by Tincupdaisy

The unfolding of life

My Two Children

Hello, I’m Chad

You may or may not know me. May be on my buddy list and read my writings. May have worked nights with me cleaning up after students at a University. May have gone to school with me at B.S.U. where I hung out with my History Professor as he poured what he had into me as an enthusiastic mentor, or at the 7001 club where we gathered on the hillside behind Fort Boise for a laugh and a toke. Maybe you've never met me – "No loss" some would say about themselves because of false modesty.

But let me lay it on the line. Let me lay modesty aside if you'll not think less of me. I'm an ordinary dude in some ways – extraordinary in others. I had an English professor who said, "Hell, I'd type Chad's f****n' papers for him just so he could write." Kris Kristofferson once stood on stage in front of an audience and quoted Blake to me and called me "One hell of a writer." Oh sure, I haven't produced the great American novel yet (whatever that is), but it's in me. I let little glimpses of it out in my current writings. I haven't quite worked up the courage to let it rip, but it's coming.

As a Dad, I'm learning. Every moment with my son is a learning. I learn about his eyelashes, his love for killing or collecting bugs, his kindness and sweetness, how he can sock me harder and harder – each time asking if it hurts. Struggling for that final punch when he knows he's strong enough to deliver a wallop that makes me wince. He's "the Real Spiderman" after all, like Popeye has muscles, and will one-day leap from building to building saving "pity ladies."

He's the heart walking outside of me – a cliché, but purely true. He's my reason for going on, my glimpse of myself and why my mother loved me so much. He's my glimpse of the future, my hope. He ties me to my ancestors in a chain of gold. To my great grandfathers who settled Montana and Idaho – left me nothing materially but these genes and the blood in my veins. But they gave me the wide-open sky and didn't tie me to the Eastern Seaboard, the crawfish eaters, and the lowlanders. They gave me the West from where I hear my heart, breathe sweat air, take the pulse of a mountain, dip my feet in a creek and shout if I want to. They gave me the feeling in my bones that makes me a man – a man that wants to shoe horses, build a wagon, erect a windmill, grow crops, fix a harness, carry my babies to the front porch and show them the light on the waving wheat. They gave me the desire to stand, look, and be proud – not to beg or push the man's digital machine to destruction.

The rivers I've visited – shook hands with, run through me – keep me flowing toward a better me. The God that sustains me gave me this opportunity and the will to stay free. I'll argue politics, rightness and wrongness of the fascists, totalitarians, Democrats, and so-called Republicans till you're sick of me. I'll quote history like I wrote it. I'll nail you with dates, places, events, motives, mechanizations, quarrels, treaties, wars, boundaries, theorems, disputes, agreements, pacts, philosophies, religions, bloodlines, feuds, campaigns, quorums, ispso-facto, status quo, deliriums, realizations, estimations, continuums, broken trails, trails of tears, timelines that go back to the dinosaurs. I'll dazzle you, convince you, stomp on you, illuminate you, guide you, remind you, educate you, confound and confuse you, make you think you never learned a fact in Social Studies class. I'll ramrod my opinion home, and then softly apologize for coming on too strong and admit you're college educated. I can write like Jimmy Hendrix could play the guitar. My mind has a linear timeline – why God gave it to me, I don't know. But I'm figuring it out. Somewhere down the line it'll come in useful. Maybe to teach a pack of little rascals in Council, Idaho. But God doesn't give gifts for no reason. And while I'm faulty enough to know I'm faulty. I know he has a plan -- a destiny.

I'll get it together. I'll have my shop, my leather-working, my tools on the wall, my lady in my bed – her guitar lingering on the fringes of my sub-conscious while I sleep, her toes curled around mine on a winter night. Somehow, if I keep plugging – with God's help -- which I don't deserve but he graciously gives me each day – I'll get it together. I'm a man. I cry. I doubt myself; I defend myself with lame excuses. I look forward and dream. I keep trying. I fight the little fights that wear a body down. I enjoy things I shouldn't enjoy. I'd put your face in a meat grinder if you hurt one of my own. But I'd help you build your barn without giving it a thought.

I believe in the old ways – the ways of my great grandfathers. I believe in simpler times when kerosene or a candle softened the night. When crickets, laughter, and a harmonica were sound enough. When lightning was the most thrilling thing. When electronic games and buzz didn't buzz. When holding hands across a table meant something. When holding onto your land meant everything. When a man could.

I stumble in this life. It confuses me. Why was I given these desires I can't fulfill? Why wasn't even a little bit of it held onto for me? I feel cheated, raped, and denied. Yet when I look in my boy's eyes and see his trust in me, I know I can do anything. God help me do anything. Help me do something for Christ's sake! Help me get into that rut of the wheel I built and not in the rut of the twenty-first century's demands. One more light bill, one more storage bill, and one more child support payment. I'm glad to pay them, but want to do it on my own terms. I'm here God; do you hear me? Do you feel my torment; do my cries penetrate the heavens? I'm lost without you. I know that. I haven't got a chance if you won't come through for me. . .

My boy just whispered in my ear. I can't tell you what he said; it's too personal. It's too sweet. It's just for me. He loves me with a swing-me-up-on-your-shoulders kinda faith. He loves me enough to believe I can do anything. Is that what you're trying to tell me God? That you love me that much and more? That you believe in me? Okay God, I get it. I'll keep trying. Thank you Lord. "Lord help me Jesus – I've wasted it so," as Kris said. Yeah, he said it all. Well almost all. I have some words of my own to write.

Yeah, maybe you know me. Maybe I'm one of your compadres. Maybe I'm that one buddy you know you can trust in a hard time.

But sadly, I never existed. My Benjamin and his sons will never grow up at the foot of pine trees, beside a river. My saddles will never get made, my books never written. My mother had a plan at age twenty-three. She was single, didn't have a clue, and planned to abort me because the man she loved went east to sell drugs.

Hello. You don't know me. My name's Chelsea. I'm the beautiful, young, coffee-skinned girl who can sing like a flute and play the guitar to melt your heart. I'm the one she played God with -- and aborted.