emchy | Entries tagged with family

tonight was beautiful. so many things coming full circle. i laid what i needed to rest. the first person i hugged hello to was in many ways such a parallel to the last person i hugged goodbye to. it's a circle and it's family and it's all separate and together and it was just what it needed to be. i found an evergreen in the park to give my candle to. i laid a cigarette below the candle and burned pine needles and watched the smoke rise away. i wrote their names on a wall, the years they over lapped running from 1904 - 2008.

i sent messages away for them on the air and on paper written with an honesty that isolated my voice and kept the words away. i was quiet. i was moved. and it was all so beautiful.

muy_macha and

postmaudlin held me when i needed and walked with me in it, letting me have my tears, my solitude and my family there with me.

fightingwords threw hugs and the squeeze of love and connection.

doppmonster with the smile of my neighbor who knows me too well. there were more people there that i knew but i didn't see them. and in some ways i couldn't. i walked with my head up and tears on my face and i was in my own world. of heightened light. of ghosts pushing on the air around me. of grief, joy and hope. it was a miracle i heard anyone outside of the din of my own thoughts.

it was loud and celebrating of the blood and memories of ancestors as we left. thick beat beat heavy soul in your blood music. a lonely trombone mournful through and with the voices that originally we'd been marching with. the circle circles again. ending the night with coffee and bloody feet. coffee is my drink of the dead. another ritual to honor. another circle.

i kept and held onto the most precious sacrament. i lost the michigan pinecone to the altar of the street. she is right. at a certain point all of the ground beneath our feet becomes holy.

you meant everything. we dreamt these dreams together. i'll keep working to make them real.

today i am planning on going to my first day of the dead memorial activity in about 11 years. i have a lot to mourn this year. people to remember and to honor. there was something in losing my grandmother just after new years. that sorrow infused and informed the year. sorrow coupled with a lot of family impact. seeing my cousins and parents for the first time in four or five years. doing a lot of family history research and figuring finding some things out. in some ways the year has had my ancestors over my shoulder in ways that haven't been for many many years.

i have always held onto the grief around my grandfather passing when i was young. he has always felt close to me. the heart pain of that never went far away. i was very close to both of these grandparents in a seeing them almost everyday sort of way. when my grandmother passed i felt like a circle was completed. in that mourning was a sort of completion. a resolution. an ability now as an adult to honor and remember them in a way that i couldn't do for my grandfather when i was six years old and the ideas of death and spirituality were too abstract. the tattoo i got in february to honor them. and today - after years of rituals to honor my grandfather that never felt like they connected. today i go to the ceremony / march / community coming together where we can all honor our dead and those passed and i can let go.

it's hard to explain but this feels like my new year. this is the rebirth and the allowing my soul the room to rest and come alive again. the room to let go of somethings i have held onto for too long. the room to grieve what i need to and still hold onto something beautiful.

so tonight i go to the mission. i can take this old and new grief from my shoulders and let the ghosts rest. let things be.

holy. holy. holy.

it was totally one of those days. i talked to my mom. we only talk like once every few months it seems like. maybe its every few weeks. anyway. thunderstorms there are so bad they're out of power and none is coming back until tomorrow night around 11pm if they're lucky. crazy. she asked what was up and i rattled off so many things until she understood why i hadn't called. then she asked - so you're playing accordion in these bands? and she was so proud. it felt so good.

last nights wedding experience was so good. it felt like the high school reunion that everyone always wants to have. people i haven't seen in 10+ years. some not recognizing me because i am thinnner and better hair cut and just more in my own skin. so much laughter and working out the water under the bridges and who got married and who has kids and it was crazy wow. haven't ever seen any of those old punks that dressed up. so respectable and so not as well. i got tapped to maybe do some backing vocals for the ranters. punk and i tlaked up rhubarb whiskey to anyone who would listen. i got my family back there. that's part of the love of punk. whenever i see him i feel like i get a little more family back. feel more in my skin and my history. i really just adore him. and this whole band thing. omg. i just love making music. good or bad. i just love it.

i wish there was more time in june. i need some solo time to recharge my batteries. meanwhile i got shows and rehearsals and want to record more and want to hey occasionally have a date with my wife and and and and... for now its just trying to balance. it's something something most nights before we leave for atlanta. we go to the airport the night of our 9 year anniversary. to me... it feels so right. so celebratory. when we got together i was a poet hiding. now i am a performer. and i wouldn't be there without the shoving me in the ass and support that she did. so somehow us getting on a plane to go vacation / perform in atlanta feels just right.

now its late and all i want is to go listen to more music drink some chamomile and read for a while.
i feel checked out of my life a little being so busy. but in the moment of the busy - my god i am just loving it. i just hope i can grab some of those moments while they're happening. i don't want to lose how this feels. i don't want to lose how it runs through my mind.

and... jesus h christ. i would like to see the rest of you too. its june. lets work this shit out.

xoxoxoxox

I miss summer. Here's an old school of a wee emchy with my grandparents and brother on keewenaw bay up in michigan's upper penninsula.(i'm the wee one with the popsicle)

She was tough, feisty, crafty and pretty bad ass - though she would pinch my arm for swearing like that.
She grew up in the Upper Penninsula and raised her kids in North Detroit.
She laughed hard, liked her toast burned and her coffee black.
and if you beat her at cards - enjoy it because it didn't happen very often.

She quilted every one of her grandkids a gorgeous heirloom handmade quilt.
She taught me to crochet , cross stitch and took me to see The Color Purple.

She was my Gram and though we lost her to alzheimers years ago it's still hard to let go.
My heart right now is stitched together with memories of her and the kindness of the people who love me.

She will be laid next to the love of her life - Melburn Wheeler Wedge.

He's been waiting 25+ years for her to join him for that next cribbage game.

antlers. guns n roses. muscle cars. lakes. heat.
i think i am missing the home in michigan. all of the stuff that came up for me around the home show. having to dig into stuff and not having the time. having my home here thrown into something much less homey while the wife lives across town. i want to go back up to lake berryessa - which is kinda right - but not exactly - and smell the water more. the swimming hole we usually hit where the water smells just like the lakes of my youth was dried up since we have had so little rain this year. the main lake - it smells good - but much less alive. the water levels were so low that when wading it was all rocks and no muck. which seems like a good thing - but it makes the water smell drier. i got an email from my mom today. short. how you doing email. i didnt call for fathers day / dads birthday / their anniversary (all happen in this one week). i guess that makes me bad. what is really makes me is avoiding. i have been avoiding my family a lot for over a year. i miss them but am not choosing to save $$ well to go back there. i might be able to get back in august. but i also want vacations that aren't about family and are still about travelling. but lately. i seem to be making my life here hold more and more of my familiar touchpoints from there. even the ones i wasn't so crazy about when i lived there. antlers. metal. muscle cars. i even find myself missing my brother and his mullet. there are ways for me to hold these things now that aren't about irony and are all about holding roots that are mine. honoring and not dismissing the joy and smiles that i find when i am drawn into these things. ski boats on lakes and corn burned in bonfires and dust kicking up behind cars. i cleaned the hell out of my car this weekend. and the trunk yesterday. took steel wool to the hubcaps and really just went to town. this is my father. this is how he showed love. this is me unconsciously showing myself some love and care in the ways that he showed me by taking care of the car. in rainbow on monday - i discovered that they brought my favorite lilac brand back in. i bought the soap (heaven) and the sachet for the car. my car smells like late may in michigan. sweet and full of promise. when i drive out to the ocean i smell the sharp salt of my home here. as i get to pacifica i smell the sweet grass hot in the sunshine and that's the sweet full promise of summer here. i love my life here. i love my life there as a glimmering relflection of water on a hot blacktop highway. i am going to keep indulging the pull towards these touchstones of my past. i just wish they weren't pulling from quite so far away.

yayz- omg - to celebrate eight years of happy happy monkey time - so far - i'm getting some bfast made for me - woot! and rooster said last night - instead of going out for dinner i have an idea. folks - we're going to lake berryessa and we're goddamn camping overnight. i am so excited. i has bucket. squee. woot. yay. LAKE MOTHERFUCKING LAKE. ok - yayz. there are boat rentals there too- but i bet the dog can't go on them. someday maybe i will have a pontoon boat on a lake and all yall can come and relax and we'll putter around the lake @ 5 miles per hour with tasty drinks in hand and the dog happy waggy and it will be teh awesome. for today though - i get to SWIM and it's the happy. i like anniversaries.

hafta call dad on the way there and wish him happy fathers day.
i miss his calm reserved practical happy. my best memories of him are sitting with him on the boat with the beach boys on and we're just enjoying the sun and the water. not talking. not anything except just being there. funny to say boats. boats here are so different than in the midwest. in california they sound wealthy and usually mean yachts or sailboats that cost a gazillion dollars. in michigan - it's anything from a rickety rowboat to a nice ski boat but even then - it's accessible to middle class folks. people who have desk jobs and factory jobs and work for the fire department. it was crazy common to have had at least one friend with some sort of water or lake access or boat type thing.

lakes. dads. family. love.
it's all about today.

from childhood i have only a few distinct memories of my dad. he worked so much and such long hours, plus did an entire host of community things, like bowling, the elks club (he was even exalted ruler once) that he wasn't home a lot. some of my friends thought my parents were divorced he was away so much and i never talked about him. but there are some good memories there.

one of the most interesting things for me is that I get my creativity, my poetry, my lust for life and art from his side of the family. I did not know that until I was in my twenties, but it was there waiting for me to know it. My grandmother on his side was a published poet, though no one has been able to find what books the few poems she published were in. She was the sort of lady that when she was in her 60's living in Florida, she wore fushia hot pants and roller skated down the street. I wish I had known her.

But hearing stories about her from my mom, I started to see (and be directly told) how much like my dad's mom I am. and how that drove us away from each other.

It is incredibly important to him to be accepted socially. To be a part of a community and even set an example therein. From a fraternity to theElks to setting up scholarships for poorer kids to go to college from our town, he always wanted to lead by example. I found out from my mom some of the core reasons for this. When dad was a kid, they lived in a super small farm town near the Michigan / Ohio border. Everyone knew everyone and even now when they have high school reunions, everyone is invited, from all the graduating classes. That sort of place. So my uncle, a few years older than dad, fell in love when he was 13. He fell in love with an 11 year old. She got pregnant and they got married and found an apartment in the town. Scandal of immense proportions ensued, and while some may have handled it differently, my dad reacted by proving that he wasn't like 'that'. He has spent the rest of his life proving that he isn't that, he is an upstanding guy. He is good people by the most conservative and family focused definitions.

It probably didn't help that he had a liberal poet mom, an artsy aunt who liked to gather large parties and do sing a longs on the piano to bawdy songs, or that his own twin sister was a lesbian. Also didn't help that when his father died, his mom married his fathers best friend within months (with her husbands blessing).

Recently when I was home I asked him about my grandfather. All he said was that "well he was a lot like me I guess. worked a lot." My dad tends to talk in as few syllables as possible. Most of what I know about him I know from my mom. A couple of years ago I got back in touch with his sister, my lesbian Aunt Judy. She told me how she loved to visit with my dad. How they just laughed and laughed. My father side of the family holds all the passion (my mothers holds the temper) but with us, his kids and his wife, my dad's humor never came out. he was always tense and terse and like he didn't have a lot of time. I remember running into his elks friends when sometimes dad would take me around town for a ride in his corvette (he always loved fixing up old corvettes, even when he was the most poor and in the army with a new wife and baby) and he would talk to these old local guys, and I would be so proud. my dad would have them laughing and smiling and charmed. When he would get back in the car, he seemed happy, but quiet again.

To see that part of him, I would sometimes be intentionally late for school. So late that my school teacher mom couldn't drop me off, so he would have to. This always meant a sit down big breakfast meal at mcdonalds with him. somehow we would run into he work friends there. I got to see dad in action, charming and social, and so proud to introduce me.

When I was in college, he didn't trust my desire to major in english, so i had to prepare a presentation for him about "what i could do with an english degree" I made charts and graphs, photocopied articles, and wrote out a thesis on what path i wanted to take. i just remember wishing so hard for that approval.

i am always so tied in to how much like my mother i am, but as i write this, i am seeing something else. how i shut down like him. how this week i have been friendly and charming, making people laugh and have been cold and terse at home.

so much to learn. to much to remember. more memories later. per redshrike. :)
oh - he loves the beach boys.