How fitting that I should carry the namesake of a man that forked himself in to the family tree three generations ago, as if to share a first name was to finalize what I would otherwise inherit and continue on with a surname. A conciliatory legacy, I suppose, of things that will live on after death in a way that mattered in life. It mattered to him, I think, even if it was only a first name.
I was little when I would follow him to the shed that housed his idle 1966 T-Bird Convertible. He’d crank the engine and have it run for a good ten minutes to keep the vehicle in working order even though he never drove it. I’d sit in the driver’s seat and he’d role play this aloof pedestrian that I’d honk at and startle. He got a kick out of that as much I did at that age.
Another time, I was playing on the stairs with some transformer knock-off toy when he approached with wobbly sea legs and a wide rimmed glass in hand. He put the other hand on the banister to sturdy himself, and he stared at me as if before an audience and about to give an address. He told me he loved me, and then he hugged me. I remember the brisk whiskers on his cheek and the smell — God, that smell, and I told him so with the bluntness of a child. The rebuff stirred a long silence, and all he could do was slink away.
I didn’t get the meaning of the moment until some years later when I had that same wide rimmed glass filled with ice cold gin while looking at a bottle of vermouth, and then a splash of vermouth, and so on until ratios seemed right for the moment. Not 1 part this to 4 parts that, but instead .08 and higher so as to thin the blood and help the heart not to work so hard to beat out ‘I love you.’
I got it. I think I got it. And how things have changed that I can be stone sober and say, “I love you, too.”
I am me 