the drinking times, when things feel gone.  good even.  when tumblers catch you

as you pour yourself away.

but in the morning you’re farther from yourself than when you started, and there’s no way back

to the mysticism of the night.

it’s a chasing-tail race, a declining spiral, and the going can’t get going fast enough

to chase down those last few feet in front of you.

the emptiness.  the nothing.  the promise of a dream, revealed.

the prescient sorrow of precipitous failure.

it’s the fading of lullabye memories, of fuzzy-faced loved ones locked up

in brain-cells of not forgotten, but not remembered.

all silhouettes and outlines.  shapes.  soft definition and fantasy.  nothing is real behind the

billowing calm of desperately opaque drapes.  just the anticipation of an idea.  the hope of a

dream.  the smoke-whisper of purpose.

but the campfire has gone cold, the moon has retreated,

and the night’s sinister streak is busying itself again turning shadows into false promises.

home free.  home run.  home field advantage.  home turf.  hometown hero.  take the long way home.

you can never go home again.  there’s no place like home.  homesick.  homeward bound.  drive home.  home cooked meals.  home for the holidays.

take me home.  make yourself at home.  home is where you lay your head.  home in.  something to write home about.  home away from home.

home is where your heart is.  my home is your home.  starter home.  work from home.  bring home the bacon.  make a house a home.

the home stretch.  home care.  homestyle accommodations.  the lights are on but nobody’s home.  a home truth.  hit close to home.  phone home.  come home.

an army, connected

shuffling up, reduced of emotion

faces glowing pallid halogen

mesmerized by their devices

flashing eyes of flickering death

floating in my father’s weightless embrace

peeking out over his shoulder

as the world ebbed away with lullaby cadence

sleep, whispering its secrets in my ears

as my limbs unravel and begin their subtle sway

like fields of underwater wheat

caressed by deep, gentle currents

floating. out to sea, out past the horizon

past the fingertips of gravity

to where sea and sky press together, quietly and softly

and promise to hold each other forever

and suspended there, wrapped in cloud-cotton blankets

i reach out my little man’s hand, and

pat-pat-pat my father’s back

to tell him, ‘thank you. thank you.’

Once you get past the smell, it really isn’t too bad.  Just make sure you go to the bathroom before you settle in for the night.  Once the sun drops and the temperature follows, you won’t want to exit the carcass until daybreak. While the exterior of your horse will provide excellent protection from near zero temperatures and biting winds, the interior will be nothing but moist. A freshly converted animal will be wet with the workings of life. And once you get this wetness on you it will make that cold night air feel even colder. Fingers will numb. Faces will burn. Skin can actually freeze. This, my son, is why you must always save your final trip to the bathroom until the last possible moment.

After you do enter your makeshift dwelling, there are a few more things you’ll want to keep in mind. First, sleep with your head inside the ribcage, feet towards the tail. At night, the smell of a fresh kill may attract other animals. It’s rare, as they will most certainly be nesting for the night, but it’s possible you may run into some scavengers looking for a meal. And if they’re out that late they will surely be desperate. And aggressive. And ruthless. The plains are a rough place in winter.

The reason you’ll want to sleep with your head inside the ribs is so that in the event of an attack your head will be protected. These hunters will pounce. They will paw. They will nip, and rip, and tear at the flesh of your host. Skin will give way, but bone will protect you. The strength of those ribs will give you enough time to draw your weapon and deal with your assailants. Your legs, of course, you will sacrifice. Your feet, they will most likely be mauled. But you’ll have your wits, and your face, and your eyes.

Lastly, dear boy, remember that the decision to kill your steed is not one you should take lightly. It is the act of a desperate man, and should be thought of as such. Before you come to this decision, you should have exhausted every other possible recourse. You should never – not ever – leave yourself vulnerable to the fading of a prairie day. The mere thought of my writing this letter has me nervous that you’ll actually need the knowledge it contains one day. Sacrificing your animal so that you may live is an incredibly selfish act, one that becomes stained with disrespect and dishonor if it is preceded by a lack of thought, or poor planning, or flawed decision making. These are the terms of your agreement with your horse, one that you should never forget.

Regretfully, I know the cost, this burden of survival. I have lived a day where my only option, my last and final option, was to lay down my friend so that I could spare myself his fate. I am not proud of this. I am not proud of becoming more beastly than he could ever be. In that moment it was he who treated me with more humanity than I could possibly reciprocate.

We are a selfish breed, my son. Never forget that. Carry it with you as you roam the trails, attempting to wash away our inevitable sin as we lay our transgressions upon the world.

Have fun at Boy Scout camp,

Your Father

Let’s see, what else?  Well, there’s the pilot light on the stove, I’d need to check that every so often.  Oh, and in the winter, I’d have to go around the house and check that none of the baseboard heating vents were blocked.  That can start a fire, if it gets hot enough.  And then, of course, there’s the smoke detectors.  If I couldn’t remember the last time we’d changed the batteries then I’d have to check them.  I’d walk around the house with the step stool, doing this sort of dance routine.  I got it so I could do the whole thing to a 4/4 beat, I’d even sort of sing the steps to myself as I went along: ‘walk, walk, walk, walk.  Open, up, up, up.  Test, ring, ring, ring.  Down, down, down, fold.  Walk, walk, walk…’  The alarms hurt my ears a little, and it would take a bit of time, but I can’t tell you how many times I’d find one that didn’t sound quite loud enough, like it was struggling – just a little bit – and so I’d change the battery.  It would break my rhythm, but it was worth it.

Then there’s the combination carbon monoxide/radon detector.  If I’d checked the smoke detectors then I’d have to check that too.  I didn’t mind though, it’d give me a reason to visit our son Paul’s old room.  It’s funny, this one would actually keep me up at night sometimes too.  I’d wake up, all of a sudden, and would swear I could smell something.  I mean, I’ve looked it up, and carbon monoxide and radon are supposed to be odorless, but still, they must smell like something.  And people die in their sleep all the time.  I mean, they tell me it’s painless, but how does anyone really know?  I don’t like thinking about it.  Anyway, I’d wake up, and I would smell something, so I’d wake my husband up and ask him if he smelled it too.  He’d tell me that everything was fine, and to go back to bed, and that the alarms would’ve gone off if there was a problem.  But still.  I’d have to get up and go to Paul’s room to check for the green light.  After that, I’d quietly go into Matthew’s room and stand there for a few minutes, to make sure he was breathing alright.  For a few months I did that thing with a mirror to watch his breath fog it up.  At some point though, I just started watching him from the doorway.  I’d leave the lights off, and use my peripheral vision to catch his silhouette.  Holding onto the doorframe, I’d watch the small movements of his little body, slowly expanding and contracting under the sheets.  After a few minutes I’d be calm enough again to go back to our bedroom and sleep for a few more hours.

Anyway, the point is that we’d be getting ready to go and all these random things would keep popping into my head and I wouldn’t be able to leave until I went and checked them all.  Once I realized that I was checking the same things all the time I thought, hey, why not make an actual list?  And so I did.  It made the whole business a lot more manageable.  It gave me order.  I didn’t have to try to remember everything each time, and I felt more comfortable knowing I wouldn’t be missing anything.  Plus, having a list made the whole process more efficient.  I was able to develop a routine, I even started finding ways of doing it faster.  It was fun, actually, turning it into a game.

One of the first things I did was employ a waterfall method.  I organized all the items on the list so that everything upstairs was first, then everything downstairs, and then anything I needed to check in the basement.  That way I could start at the top of the house and work my way down, clearing each floor one at a time.  Once I had that down, I challenged myself to do the routine as quickly as possible.  At first I wanted to see if I could finish everything faster than it took a song to play on the radio.  I’d set the stereo to the local classic rock station, wait for the next song to start, and then go!  It was fun, setting everything to music.  The problem was that not every song was the same length and so I wouldn’t always finish in time, which ended up making me feel like a bit of a failure.  So I switched from using music to just using a stopwatch.  I got one of those high school gym coach models, and wore it around my neck as I scurried through the house.  Seeing the time flickering by did keep me motivated, but it also kept me running around like an idiot, trying to go faster and faster.  After my second or third bad fall on the hardwood floors, I decided that timing myself wasn’t a good idea, in general.

That brought me to my current idea, one that’s working out pretty well, actually.  It’s pretty simple, I just count my steps.  I count them as I do the whole routine.  It’s not so much about how fast I do everything, but how efficient I am while doing it.  My goal is to do it in the least number of steps possible.  Right now, three hundred and twenty-seven is my record, but I think I can do better.  No cheating, no taking steps two at a time or anything like that.  Just economy of movement.  It gives the whole process a grander meaning.  It’s not just about safety anymore, it’s about doing my best.  It’s about setting goals and meeting them. It’s about getting better.  The whole thing’s been somewhat therapeutic, actually.

In any event, once I had the checklist, getting out of the house was pretty straight forward.  My husband and I even performed some test departures, to make sure we could get out quickly enough.  After a few tries, we were both satisfied that it wasn’t going to be a problem anymore.  Eventually, the whole thing got so easy that for while my husband would take on part of the list if we were really in a rush.  That worked, but only for a little while.

Last summer, for example, we were getting ready to leave for a mini-vacation, just the two of us, and we were running pretty late.  We’d already dropped Matthew off at my in-laws, and had gone back home to finish our packing.  Once we were done, we realized we only had fifty-five minutes until our flight left, so we quickly split up the list, did all the checks, and hopped in the car.  On the way to the airport, I started rehashing the checklist out loud, the way I normally did.  Whenever it was one of my husband’s items, I’d call it out and wait for him to respond: ‘checked.’  It was going fine, and there was no traffic so we were making up some time, but when I got to the basement windows, my husband said he wasn’t sure if he’d checked them.  He wasn’t sure.  I asked him again and this time he said yes, he remembered now, they were both closed and locked.  I asked him if he was sure he was sure and he said yes.  But the thing is, with these sorts of things, you really have to be sure.  If you’re not absolutely certain – if you can’t actually remember seeing your hand actually touch the closed lock – then you don’t really know.  You can’t be positive.  And then you’re just going to be second guessing yourself the whole time.  So I told my husband we had to go back and check.  He said everything was fine, and that even if the windows weren’t locked no one was going to come into the house.  He said he could get his parents to go over the next day and check for us.  But we had to turn around, we couldn’t just leave the windows wide open, anyone could get in.  My husband said we didn’t have time, that we might miss our flight.  But it didn’t matter, we needed to get back and check, there was no way I’d be able to enjoy the weekend, not knowing about the windows.

We went home, and my husband waited in the car while I went in to check the windows really quickly.  He was really good about the whole thing, he said he was fine just listening to the radio.  After the windows, I actually just did the whole routine again.  I couldn’t really trust what had been checked and what hadn’t, and it’s just better knowing that everything’s been done.  The basement windows ended up being closed and locked, but at least then we knew for sure.  When I got back to the car and told my husband I could tell he thought we’d done the right thing too.  Better safe than sorry.

We ended up missing our flight.  We had to go home again, too, because the next flight wasn’t until the morning and anyway, I couldn’t remember if I’d unplugged the microwave.  You never know with appliances like that, it’s the one time you forget to unplug them that they’ll have some sort of malfunction, a short circuit or something, or the house will get hit by lightning, and then a fuse will blow, and a fire could start, anything.  You just don’t know, and it’s better not to have to worry about it.

But we don’t really have any problems like that anymore, now everything goes pretty smoothly.  After the airport incident, I told my husband that I’d do all the checking from then on, it’d just be simpler that way.  He agreed, and we haven’t had any big problems since.  In fact, now I’ve even come up with an abbreviated version list, for when we’re just going out for a little while.  It’s just the important things, the major things, but it’s good for when we need to quickly run out to the grocery store, or to pick Matthew up from school.  Sometimes, yes, I’ll still check the full list anyway, but not usually.  And even if I do, it just means I’ll have that much less to worry about.