When A Girl Still Loves A Boy

This song is playing on my headphones and I am thinking about the past and the present. Got a little more weight on the bar than I probably should so I am digging into things that irritate me.

I need the adrenaline surge to help me pump out one more set and I figure anger is better than drugs.

But if I had spent some time thinking my plan through I would have known that stepping on the scale at the gym would be enough to make my eyes bulge.

I can already feel a difference in the way my pants and shirts fit, but that hunk of metal is determined to piss me off for punishing it.

Add a certain amount of frustration with myself and impatience at what happened after an extended absence from the gym and I am feeling feistier than normal.

I tell myself to relax and be patient, but I am responding as well to that as my almost 49 year-old body does to “one more set.”

With curses and threats–all of which have the same negligible impact upon the situation.

Eventually the adrenaline rush from lifting comes and it takes away the frustration.

When A Girl Still Loves A Boy

My daughter and her friends set up “camp” in the loft.

Alongside friends who flew in from California to visit and various snacks, phones and girl paraphernalia they talk and giggle about all sorts of stuff.

It progressively gets louder until there is a dramatic pause–dad has entered the room and he is not supposed to hear this stuff.

He is not supposed to have heard any conversation about when a girl still likes, or loves a boy.

Nor is he supposed to have heard how stupid boys are and how frustrating they are, even when they do dumb stuff.

I resist the temptation to tell them some things never change and that I know men and women in their forties and fifties who voice comments and concerns that sound almost the same.

They are still very young and there is no need for me to complicate matters by telling them about how I watched friends fight with each other this week because they disagreed about how men and women communicate.

Strange days are coming and I see a time in the not so distant future in which my voice might be needed.

It is kind of funny because I used to joke about it and now that I can sense its approach I wonder what reality will be like.

I can wait to find out, there is no rush, but there is no stopping it either. Nature doesn’t give a damn what we think about time or people growing.

Later on I hear the girls talk about how a boy made one of their friends cry and remember girl I knew quite well tell me her mother had taught her to never cry in front of men.

I have vague memories of hearing other women say similar things, but I never paid much attention to it. At the time I disagreed with it, but now I wonder if maybe my view was colored by gender.

Or maybe not.

 

If I Was A Whale

If I was a whale I wouldn’t look in the mirror and think about how I am going to have to take my suit jackets in for alterations.

Well, we’re not at that point yet but I am pushing hard to shrink things.

If things go the right way that tapered V-shape I once had will return and I won’t look like a block.

The good thing about the workout today was seeing the cuts in my arms start to reappear and for a moment feel like the 25 year-old body was one set away from climbing out of the suit he has been trapped in.

The bad thing was realizing that wasn’t happening–hell that kid is gone.

But it doesn’t mean I am not going to fight to try and bring him back

****

Of course if I was a whale none of this would matter because I’d live in the water and be one of the giants of the sea.

I love whales and have been fascinated by them since I did a report on them in elementary school.

Some of my favorite moments in Hawaii have been punctuated by watching Humpbacks come flying out of the water.

It is incredible to see them break through a soft surface and soar into the air.

And it is just as incredible to see them gently swimming at the surface and then suddenly disappear with nary a trace of their giant presence upon the water.

There is grace and power there.

Transformation

The boy who calls me dad and is so very different so very much like me wants to know if I am serious about taking a welding class.

I nod my head and talk about how I’d like to take the cabinetry class they offer at school and a bunch of other courses that involve working my hands.

When he asks why I tell him I like to create and I look for ways to express that and then I talk about how I like to do things myself.

I fix odds and ends around the house all the time and occasionally take on bigger projects than I probably should.

Bigger because I don’t really know what I am doing and they aren’t always the kind of thing you want to learn as you go.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I won millions of dollars and think about whether I would look into becoming a doctor.

But most of the time I think about buying a place with a big garage I could work on cars in and wonder if I could learn how to do some woodwork.

All these different skills would be good for my creativity and for writing and would keep me active.

And then in the midst of day dreaming about these things girl asks me what I am thinking about and then suggests I focus my attention on the present.

For a moment I wonder if whales have to deal with this sort of thing and wonder if maybe this is somehow tied into a difference in how genders communicate.

Do male whales ever overhear conversations about whether girl whales still love a particular boy whale?

Probably not, but then again, maybe they do. Add learning how to speak with whales to my list of things I want to learn.