the loving-10

it's an indian summer. heat creeps through the cracks in the windows, underneath the door jams and onto our skin. there is an angry sun causing the sweat to come out to lay against the skin in mass prayer. she is here now. she leans against the metallic shell of the freezer trying to get some relief. she is in her thirties, she is beautiful. i watch her olive skin stretch as it sticks to the metal making a high pitch squeal as she moves across it's face.

i was wrench in hand, phone in hand cursing the luck. i was out of shirt my young man stomach hair lined and wet waiting for the air condition repair to come. while she mixed the ice into the water, as she moved against the freezer humming, as little children were outside with their feet up, or chasing footballs all with friends and neighbors all with smile and laughter.

we never had a dog. i always felt disappointed about that. i always felt sad about that in the winter when a good dog would have lay against us on the couch sighing. i always dreamed of my son rushing through the town or through the woods with his trusty dog side kick what dreams they share what laughs and secrets would never be shared. in reality the dog would have been enjoyed for it's youth then abandoned to me and now in the heat would cry and beg not to go outside and could it just once use the house as it's toilet. it's a heavy exchange, the joy of it's youth to your children and you are left to dig the grave to share the gasps and laze of it's elder days.

enough of that.

we are a young family. we are bursting at the seams of our first home. i am suffocating on the thought we are stuck. the heat like the mortgage like the housing market like the job market like the bills that come. all these consistent things that are to be satisfied and the only way to satisfy them is to work is to stay. as she spins the pitcher to seperate the lemon from the atop the ice layer i wonder the horizon and how wild things must always move. i wonder on my first family how they survive now, my dad, in his permanence in his static how he feels about where he ran out of gas.

we are thirty. we are young and take our health for granted. we take for granted that the repairman will be here soon. we take for granted that this too shall pass. while debra moves from the freeze, while she kisses as she passes to deliver water and glasses to the playing children i stare the window through.

i am a jealous man, jealous of the distance of the horizon, jealous that paris is somewhere where they can get drunk all day, jealous that there is a perfect postcard ocean beaches somewhere not here and jealous that all this working man application has got me the small house of the group. all this effort has gotten me to mid nothing. gotten me nowhere. my family will have to take the public schools, my family will have to accept this tiny home for awhile maybe forever and still they play, still they laugh and still they sing.

it is the fire of my youth. it is the fire of my innocence and i wonder how they are so innocent to such things.

it is sunday. it is hot. there is the honk of the repair van that causes them all to wave. i move to the door. i shake hands, 'got you working on the weekend?' i say.

'it's the busy season, you know,' he says.

we shake hands.

'i understand,' i say.

as i let him in. as i turn to shut the door i smell the clean air and i can feel it pass between us. freedom out there. drunk out there. the great unknown. the things to pioneer out there. i close the door and lead him to the garage to the chorus of laughter from my children and wife as they sit cross legged peaceful underneath the tree breathing it all in.