When I returned from Las Vegas, the following day I went back to my regular Tuesday night routine of going to the Muir Hills YMCA. Just before I reached the locker room, at the weight lifting area, I spotted my friend Jarco sitting on a bench, looking both short and very strong, getting ready to start lifting... He and I go really far back; so many years back that I used to carry him in my arms asleep from the couch to his bed when I was dating his mother Claudia probably 35 years ago. Now he has three kids, one just out of college, one almost out of college, and one in high school. Anyhow he said, "Hello Kamaroh! and inquired how my trip to attend my son, Stone's, graduation from UNLV went. I told him what I knew at that moment, that it went just swell. That it had been an uplifting experience for me. He then asked, "What will he do now, look for a job?" "No," I snorted, "he's forty-four years old. He has a job--he's worked for the same contractor in Las Vegas for probably over ten years; he retired from the Air Force Reserve about 5 years ago, his wife works in Clark County law enforcement and one of the last times he talked to me in 2005 he told me she was earning forty thousand a year at that time. They have a swell large house filled with everything you could want; two nice 2004 cars that are paid for; and this degree possibly will be followed someday in the future with a masters and a new job that will set him up for another career and another retirement..."
"Sounds as though he has his trip together," Jarco said there sitting on the bench and at that same moment reaching up for the weight bar, that gesture in itself signaling to me that the conversation with me was over and that he also was getting his priorities straight.
"He does," I replied as I started walking away from Jarco towards the men's locker room to change into my gym stuff; and not saying out loud what I was thinking about Stone's life. My son and I look a like so it is obvious when we are together that I am his father, and I do not feel comfortable with being called dad by him, because I do not feel we qualify for the familiarity now that he is an adult, but I am eligible to make the judgement in that I have reservations about the quality of his trip--the health part of for sure as for one thing he is constantly subjected to friendly-fire, second-hand cigarette smoke. The other thing is that, as I am also, he is far too over-weight. Having spent my life transcending Polio I am very body aware and because of that perception, I don't see how he he could help but have high blood pressure.
I have been thinking now, since my recent trip to see him graduate, that the pressure I noticed in his eyes when I last was invited to his house in 2004 has relaxed itself some; which leads me to conclude, since he was still in the Air force Reserve at the time, that his traversing the world at high altitude in big planes may have had a lot to do with that. Recently, my Primary Care Physician at the Muirsville Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic informed me that Stone's condition could likely be a symptom of a Thyroid condition which makes sense to me as he could have inherited that from his mother; as I recall when we were young married, she had thyroid problems but the memory has faded
Anyhow, about me for a moment, when I had a chance to covertly check out his eyes I noticed that they have changed color--for they are now sort of green. Or, I reasoned with myself, has it been so long since I have been welcome to see my only child that I have forgotten what color his eyes are. That ain't right: I am not able to articulate how I feel about that, I choke up at this point, and I have striving for several weeks to figure out how to say what I feel about that out loud; the best I am able to say is that it has to be some crime against a global standard of normal, social-moral, codes of father-to-son relationships to be absent from formation--either wittingly or unwittingly--and the judgment for not being in compliance with that rule is a vacant spot in a manly soul. And, myself, I have a couple of voids in my caring soul--one female (my muse, who is supposed to be a real lover) and one male (my son whom I now believe--with his newly earned self-esteem in the form of a fresh Bachelor's degree, and confidence gained from that--is attempting by his own rule to be as good a man as he can be); and, I guess that makes me complete in sort of an unfinished and semi-nurtured heap. Here I go again floundering at articulating really new material to me (I mentioned to my readers early when I started writing this new blog, that I was going to have to stretch new writers' muscles in order to say what it, Hero Lessons, seems to demand of me and here I go and it is painful); but, I am thinking that if my soul was made out of some sort of gelatinous substance that would just fill its voids in with rationalization and compromise; I would probably have an an easier life than owning the soul I do for which at the present time which is merely a transfer void where the woman I continue to love for years just flits like a pixie in the ephemeris, won't come real, and wont leave as a dream, and is not there in reality to hold my hand once in a while nor is my son, whom I bonded with to the total capacity of my heart when he was a toddler, in reality, now matter how I would like it to be, in reality isn't available to say again soon, "Hey, dad can I make you a sandwich for your trip home? Got some laundry in your bag to be done before I get you on a fast bus and then quickly out of Las Vegas?"
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(This is the original ending that compliments my first title for this piece: WHAT MY SON WHO HAS EVERYTHING DOESN'T HAVE THAT I DO!)Anyhow, enough of me attempting to flex new writing muscles, I must get on with completing my story and telling what I own that my son Stone does not have and that is a longtime Membership in the YMCA--a lot of my memories have fled but I can still vividly remember the first "Y" on Larimer Street my mom took me to as a child fresh out of Denver General Hospital after having had Polio (and it was at a YMCA Dance in San Francisco that I met Stone's mother). #
I have been astounded by the reception of this entry, QUICKLY OUT OF LAS VEGAS and have decided that it needs a referrence here to its predecessor entry of Thursday, April 22, 2010: THE CHURCH OF THE GREEN WOLF, ONE.
