Tag: parents

monday moment

Chris Kammerud

Hello, readers.

This could have happened on a Monday. Or it might have been Thursday. Might be it doesn’t matter when it happened, so much as that it did.

What happened was that I came out of my room afraid that my parents were fighting again. They fought a lot. And at volume. As a lot of parents do, each in their own way, with shattered glass or damning declaratives or blusterous sighs. During one argument, I remember being so angry and scared that I threw my toy rabbit at the floor. The toy rabbit wore rollerskates. One of the wheels broke. I was crushed.

But they weren’t fighting that day. They were sitting on the couch, looking at pictures and laughing. I asked if everything was okay. They smiled. Actual grins. And said yeah. I don’t remember what pictures they were looking at. Or what they were laughing about. I must’ve been about eleven. Unless I was six. Somewhere in there, I guess, between those ages when it seemed that if my parents raised their voices it almost always meant something wasn’t okay.

But on that day, and on probably more days than I remember or ever knew, my parents were just two people sitting together and sharing something of the joy of being close to someone.

It’s cold and gray out there today, readers. Stay warm.

Happy Monday.

ttfn.

p.s. Stay tuned for how orgcon2014 changed my life.

p.p.s. I realize people say things changed their life all the time and that the phrase has lost some of its meaning. This is okay by me. Everything changes your life, so I pretty much feel like the phrase means everything it always meant which is that I noticed one part of the everything that changes my life.

Halloween

Chris Kammerud1 Comment

Hello, readers.

Here is a picture of me dressed up as Doctor Who.

Doctor Me

Can’t seem to find a picture of me dressed as Captain Jack. If you would like, though, readers, do feel free to imagine me in a kitchen dressed as Captain Jack, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’re missing.

I never did quite manage to dress up as Rose. Perhaps, another day.

Once upon a time, my father told me that only people with no imagination possess no fear of the dark. This seemed wise to me at the time, especially as it was said by him as he rolled back into bed after having been sick as a result of chemo treatments and also cancer.

A lot of people describe horrible events as unimaginable, which is silly. What they mean, I think, is that very often the terrors we imagine have more to do with who we are and where we come from than the world we live in. By which I mean, my terrors tend to involve the dark and faces, which is a perfectly reasonable terror for a lonely boy who overheard his parents arguments and whose ancestors sat around a fire, afraid of loud noises and what might wait on the other side of the darkness, but in so many ways, the dark is a far less terrifying place than rolling back into your bed, sick from chemo, and pretty sure that soon you will be dead. But not a lot of people imagine the mundane moments of horror that intrude on our lives. It’s not that they’re unimaginable. It’s just that they don’t live as brightly in our imaginations as the devils and ghouls that more often haunt the darkness that haunts us, inside and out.

Sometimes, when I wake in the middle of the night, for just a moment, a shape, or a face, will peer in from the dark doorway, and a terror will grip my heart that I’m not alone. I know it isn’t real, but it feels real enough. In those moments, I think of what my dad said and the terror loosens and my heart beats a little easier. Something about how he shared his terror helps in those situations, as I hope, very much, that it helped him. Remembering his words means that he’s there in the dark with me, and I’m not alone. Some ghosts are worth not giving up.

Happy Hallowe’en, readers.

ttfn.