Daddy's Hands

"You have your daddy's hands." My mother would tell me.

I never saw it.  My hands were the result of moving pieces of iron to and fro several days a week.  Paint in my cuticles and under my fingernails.  They were nothing like my father's hands.

But then I got old, and I lost the weight that ballooned around me in my forties and lost the muscle I'd spent my youth building, and I never moisturized like I should, and yeah, I have my father's hands.

When I was little, daddy would let me curl beside him while he sat on the couch and fell asleep watching football.  It's only now that I realize how many of my memories of him were sleeping.  His life was so mobile and so fast and so constant; quiet moments, wherever they were, usually meant he was sleeping, an attempt from his body to catch up on the life he was missing.

His hands were veiny and knotted like mine are now.  His skin was covered with thousands of faint hair follicles on top and none on the bottom.  Nuckles lined and creased like an accordion.  My little fingers traced the line of his veins, barely using any pressure lest my curiosity disturbs his slumber.

I look at my hands a lot.  When I'm typing.  When I'm drawing.  When I'm painting.  I do these things a lot more now than I used to.  Seeing my father's hands in my hands reminds me of how much I miss him and how long I've been missing him.  In a few months, it will be thirty years.  A few months after that, I will have missed him for half my life.  When you think of someone as indomitable and indelible and inevitable, it leaves a very noticeable and unexplainable hole in your life.  

"Turn the TV down, Buddy.  I can't hear your momma."

"I wasn't paying attention.  Who's winning, Daddy?"

"We are, Buddy.  We are."

Ordering Art Supplies

 I'm ordering art supplies again.  Good shit.  Mechanical drawing pencils.  Winsor-Newton paints.  One hundred fifty pound, high rag content pads of paper.  Art bin boxes to keep it all organized, clear for watercolor, tinted if I decide to get into gouache, which I probably will since I'm already thinking about it.  I'm leaving the lascivious creaminess of oil behind, at least for now.  If I"m going to start anew, I'm going to start with something new.  For a man who was dead for twenty years, my confidence is alarmingly high.  I monitor myself for signs of mania or bi-polar disorder.  So far, I'm solid.

As a child, I patterned my life after my brother, the artist.  His life was color and shape and adventure and life, a vivid contrast to my father's life of routine and determination.  I wouldn't say my father was meticulous; let's say he was very organized.  Everything was compartmentalized and organized and where it was supposed to be, and everything, I mean everything, was planned ten or fifteen years in advance, including my own life, the one he was rarely ever around for.

There was a pretty stark contrast between the Jim and the Jimmy in my life, a very clear fork in the road.  One fork led to fame and importance and placards on the wall and titles and your name in the back of the symphony program at the City Auditorium, under "patron," the other to color and adventure and life among the dragons.  I knew which destination I wanted to choose.  

My mother, for her part, supported my decision.  A crafty person herself, constantly sewing or creating things, she understood the urge.  She made it very clear, though, this was to be a side venture in my life.  I had to otherwise be a serious boy, like my father.  As long as I made this promise, she would ferry me to painting lessons with Alice Riley, pottery and sculpture lessons, and dramatic speech lessons after I'd done so well with my speech therapy.  She took me to places my father would never go, like the Arts Festival and New Stage, where she would read her paperback while I watched the play.

It's said that only God and Clay Lee ever knew that my father went to church because he went to the early service and he sat in the choir loft where no one else could see him.  That's not quite true, though.  That everybody knew this story meant that everybody knew he went to church.  They saw him go in, and they saw him go out, but only God and Clay Lee ever saw him sitting in the choir loft, where he mostly practiced sleeping while sitting up straight.  

My dad liked Rev. Lee very much and wrote a stack of letters recommending him when our pastor decided to become a bishop.  He slept in church because it was one of the few times during the week when he sat still and quiet for an hour, and he didn't sleep enough in his regular life, and he figured he knew all he really needed to know about Jesus anyway.  What was important to him, what was vitally, crucially important, was that people saw him, every week, early in the morning, supporting the church and supporting its works and supporting its pastor, in hopes that they would do the same.  That he slept through the instructional purpose of the service was immaterial.  The church was a social construct and one he believed in, one that was important to his city, and his state, and his country and one he supported with his body, if not his attention.

I was different.  I preferred the eleven o'clock service because I generally stayed up Saturday nights watching monster movies and appreciated the extra sleep at eight-thirty in the morning.  Rev. Lee's sermons were interesting, even if I didn't always understand them.  "What the hell is a Sadducee?"  I penciled the word down in the margins of my church bulletin so I could look it up when I got home.  "sad-you-see," and went on with the sermon.  

One of the problems with following my brother's path in life was that, as I entered adolescence, his own life ventured off the path and crashed into the ditch with a massive retort.  His life had become more about drugs than art.  One of his friends was so determined to find more mushrooms to trip that he ate the wrong ones and nearly died.  Drugs and hating everything my father stood for became his life.  There's growing evidence that, for some people, a sufficient amount of drugs, even just cannabis if done in sufficient quantity, during puberty can lead to schizophrenia.  I have my own opinions about how true this is, but what's unquestionably true is that my brother's journey began with drugs and ended with him hearing voices and being unable to function in life.

Worst of all, his art went from brilliant to shit.  Absolute shit.  He was trying to emulate the psychedelic posters he bought at BeeBop, but it became a muddy mess.  He even painted over older, really good paintings with psychedelic bullshit, destroying his own work, which had become unrecognizable to him in his confused state.  Eventually, he started just using his expensive oil paints to decorate everyday objects, sticks, bowls, and glasses with blotches of color that never dried properly since that wasn't the surface they were designed for in designs that kind of looked like paisley and left colored streaks on anything they touched.  My Idol, the person I was trying to be, abandoned life among the dragons and exchanged it for a life of chasing the green fairy, and became someone I didn't know.

I was lost and frightened.  My mother was right.  Art could only be a side venture.  It's dangerous if you go in too deep.  By seventeen, I was furious with the brother, who nearly led me into a life of disaster, and a bit confused about how to go forward.  My own art had become a kind of a party trick.  "Draw Yoda for me?"  "You're pretty.  I'll draw anything you ask.  Here's Yoda."  I exchanged Lord of The Rings and Dune with In Search of Excellence and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  I couldn't become my father, but I knew him well enough to mimic him.  I agreed with nearly all of his motives and priorities in life, even if I couldn't do them as well as he did, but my other life, I now knew, led to evil and pain, so this had to be my new path.  

When my father died, cracks in my plan to become him were becoming quite evident.  When my father died, the dragons of my youth whispered to me to come and live among them again.  Deeply afraid, I decided return to a well I knew and spend time with Lance Goss and Lucy Millsaps at my old school.  For a time it was brilliant.  I could feel the blood in my veins again.  But then the harpies returned.  Doubt and distraction plagued me.  "You cannot do this, you fat fuck.  You're too confused and too weak in the mind, and you're JUST NOT TALENTED."  I hate the harpies.  I was willing to fight them, though.  Then Lance had a heart attack at Piccadilly Cafeteria and gave up teaching months later, and gave up life months after that.  George Harmon died, and the school where I played as a child began to lose its way, and the dragons who called to me floated over paths I couldn't see.

Unable to follow my father's path or my brother's path, I couldn't see my own path.  The woods were cold and dark, and I was lost, so I chose to sit.  Sit and wait.  Forever.  

Video games and music would fill my hours now.  The world was not for me.  The dragons made a sound I thought was laughter but was tears.  How long is forever?  I'll find out.  Come and find me harpies.  I do not care.

Forever, it turns out, is about twenty years.  I woke up one day and realized I'd been sitting so long I couldn't stand.  Before, I thought when this day came, I could accept it and wait to die.  This day though, I decided to live and called for help.  

My gigantic body was completely devoid of any strength.  First step, make my gigantic body considerably less gigantic.  Second step, make those muscles work again.  Even if they protest.  

A funny thing happened then.  My dragon returned.  

"You write every day.  Would it hurt to let anyone see?"  He said.  My dragon was clever.  Having an audience makes the energy go both ways.  That's why theater works.

"Amazon has sketchbooks, you know, and those woodless pencils you loved so much. A little one won't hurt. Nine by six.  Nobody will know."  He said a few weeks later.

Dragons know that creating from your fingertips is better than chocolate cake.  Better than pretty girls.  Better than sunshine.  Better than the drugs that took my idol.  

So, I'm ordering art supplies again.  The dragons tricked me.  Dick Blick this time, not Amazon.  It's that serious.  At fifty-nine years old, the dragons used the breath from their nostrils to blow the leaves and dust from a third path, my path, hidden so long ago.  They eat the harpies whole and smile.  

"Where were you all this time?"  I asked.

"Dragons don't move.  You do."  He said.  "I'm glad you can see me again.  I missed you.  What shall we create today?"

Mississippi Camellias

They're named Japanese Camellias, but I call them Mississippi Camellias because every self-respecting gardener here has at least one.  Varieties of camellias also produce tea, which Mississippians drink by the gallon with cane sugar, ice, lemons, and sometimes a bit of mint, which you always grow in a container lest it takes over your yard like Kudzu.  We're also deserving of the name because hurricane Camille did her best to destroy us in '69 but couldn't. 

My mother grew pink variegated Camellias on the Meadowbrook-facing side.  They tolerate the shade of the many trees my father loved and refused to ever cut.  My Grandmother had a vibrant solid pink variety on the side of her St Anne home and my aunt Evelyn had the same at her home in Columbia.  It's possible they were bought together at some time in the dim past before I first drew breath.

At Millsaps, there was an impressive hedge of Snow on the Mountain Camellias that flanked the south side of the Christian center.  As an undergraduate, I would sometimes pick them as an offering on my way to Bacot in hopes of making someone I knew a little less sad, a battle I fought for many years and eventually lost.  As a graduate, after my father died, I would sit there and smoke and think when I wanted to get away from the other theater types for a while and watch New South dorm erected out of the ground, or worried-faced writers drift in and out of the John Stone House.

Camellias are blessed because they stay green all year.  They bloom when all the other colors are out of the garden, and most other plants drop their leaves.  Compared to, say, Gardenias or Roses, they have a very faint scent, but it's there.  The sometimes prolific number of blooms makes it more noticeable in the cooling breezes of fall and winter.  It smells like, my grandmother, like memory, like time.

Obligations

Over the years, I've written and destroyed this a thousand times.  I may tear this down and try another day.  "A gentleman doesn't complain about these things."  I thought.  "YOUR story isn't what matters here.  Think of how much pain they were in."  I still think.  I cannot tell their story fairly because it's their story, not mine.  Since I cannot tell their story, I cannot fairly tell my part in it.  A few people know what happened to me; not many.  

I encountered people in pain, and I was durable, and that's all that matters.  That's the only story to tell.  My only regret is the times when I complained or asked mercy from people who weren't in a position to give it.  I bear some guilt for even thinking about this.  There have been enough blessings in my life to more than compensate for any dark spots.

In relationships, I always believed it was my obligation to keep track of and constantly evaluate my own devotion, commitment, motivation, and, most importantly, progress on getting done whatever it was that needed doing, but never applied the same evaluation to my partner because that would be quid pro quo, and a gentleman doesn't ever ask that.  Everyone comes with things that need getting done.  Some are more of a challenge than others.

As a result, I often found myself in way over my head before I realized the water was rising and ended up with a lot more people who could say, "I'm so glad you could help me beyond this problem," and hardly any who would say, "I'm so much happier when you're near."  My purpose in their lives was temporary and not meant for my benefit.

It's tricky because a gentleman should never expect quid pro quo, but then you end up in a situation where you do things not expecting anything in return, but then you don't get anything in return, and then you're out on a limb, and you can't go back, so your only choices are to hold on and pretend like what you get in return doesn't matter, or close your eyes and let go and hope for a soft landing or at least one you can survive.  Ultimately, I was asked to help, not to grow attached, although getting attached was often inevitable, considering the time and effort required to help.

"Hello, you're interesting and attractive.  Tell me about yourself."  It's the "tell me" part that forms the trap.  Once you know someone's in trouble, what is there to do?  Saying, "I'm so sorry." Seems like a cop-out.  I always assumed that fate put these people in my path and gave me the tools to make some sort of repair on their wounds for a reason.  It was the path I was designed to take, not one intended to improve me.

I've been lucky; there have only been very few times when anyone intentionally used this dilemma against me.  Most of the time, women in my life have been gentle and recognized the dichotomy of this situation, and kept me out of trouble themselves.  There have been times, though--a few, when I ran across somebody who was in such a crisis that they didn't notice I was in over my head until it was too late because they very much needed whatever it was I was doing.  

Those are the worst.  Usually, I'll try to find a way to hold on until their crisis is passed and then find a way to drift away unnoticed.  That usually works pretty well, but it leaves deep marks that nobody ever really knows about.  When it's over, we both walk quietly away, hiding both shame and regret.  Shame for getting so attached when I knew from the beginning this wasn't a story meant for my benefit.

In the end, it might be easier to just pass a note that says, "I like you.  Do you like me?  Check Yes or No."  This "at your service" business can be the ruin of a man, but I can't even feel bad about that because a the end of the day, it's still easier to be a man than to be a woman, and it's probably our fault that these dichotomies exist in the first place and whatever unpleasant event I faced was still kinder than what they went through.  

The rules are confusing and not really fair to anyone.  It's much easier just to say, "don't come to the aid of anyone," but we live in a world filled with people in crisis, and turning away when you can help seems cruel and something you wouldn't want done to you in return.  I did what I was asked to do, and I knew there was no reward for me in the end.  It was a yes or no question, and I always assumed "yes" was the kinder choice, every other aspect or outcome I leave to the gods and the ravens.