unresolved
unresolved
can't this wait 'til I'm old? can't I live while I'm young?
We stop for gas three hours outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. It's just me and my two daughters this time. I pull the pump - regular unleaded, nothing special - and it fails to start. After a series of resets, it begins to fill the nearly empty tank. It takes its time.
We have also taken our time getting this far. The road signs illuminating the overpasses on our way down through New Jersey this morning displayed the name of native son Bon Jovi's seminal album from 1986.1 We heeded the warning; at least 20 others did not, their cars down an embankment, smashed against one another or located perpendicular to traffic in the shoulder, its nose pressed against the underpass.
Before pulling off the highway, I ask the girls if they wanted a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Of course, echo their replies. I pull the car forward twenty paces into the spot and we order three small Blizzards: Oreo for the youngest, M&M's for the oldest, chocolate chip cookie dough for me.
We make our way back to the car and I decide to put Phish's December 29, 2023 show during their recent New Year's run at Madison Square Garden. While the first set is standard, if not above average, Phish the second set dives into the universe known as Dark Phish. It doesn't come out often. Dick's in Summer 2017 had a dark set as did Atlantic City 2021 and Watkins Glen in '96. I just made all that up, but only a few of you would notice. I figure this selection is appropriate for what awaits at my destination.
We head down Interstate 95. The 60mph signs just south of Richmond turns to 70 after we pass the Marlboro Headquarters. My oldest tells me she knows all about tobacco, but I'm assured it's from her health class. I absolutely believe her. The sun begins to set to our right, changing the sky from a grayish blue to a vibrant red and orange, but this lasts only a moment or two before it gives way to an ambient sunlight against the dappled clouds. As my father used to say, echoing the sailor he was not - at least not fully, he had a Sunfish - red sky at night, sailor's delight, red sky in morning, sailor take warning. And after this morning's rain, we could use some delight.
We progress further south. Twenty minutes later and behind me to the left is the moon. It appears to be a full moon, but it's obstructed by some heavy, seemingly lonely clouds - the ones who have each carved out their own space in the sky, not touching yet, but starting to assert themselves, jostling for space ever so slowly.
My youngest daughter notices the moon and the way it reveals the clouds. "Look at the moon, Dad," she says. As a kid, my dad would also point out what he called "snow clouds" on nights like tonight. The falling temperature and the wisps of clouds providing a prescient glow. But these are not snow clouds for it is still in the 60s, though dropping with the sun bedded down for the night as the first set concludes with Drift While You’re Sleeping, something I, unlike the sun, won’t be doing for a few hours. It’s about to turn a shade darker.
The opening notes to Chalk Dust Torture march forth through my car stereo's front speakers; I turn off those in the backseat so the girls can have minimal interruptions watching movies on their iPads and the occasional thought they have while staring out the window. For the first six minutes, we remain bathed in light-footed Phish. I ruminate about the lyrics asking about waiting till I’m old, and living while I’m young. I am 43, my youth and half my life behind me, but half my life ahead. I ask whether I can live while my parents get old.
Minute seven hits with the first ominous chords and notes; the lyrics cease for the remaining 15 minutes of the song. We float between the known and the new, as Mr. Anastasio and the men from Vermont welcome us into the darkness. I think back to December 29th when I looked over at Brandon, both of us in on the conceit that we're about to get some Dark Phish.
With the moon as our copilot, we make our way down Interstate 795 before the road becomes Route 117 as we approach Mount Olive, home to a university and pickles of the same name. The sour, but welcoming, notes of the final bars of an unresolved - as some Phish songs are prone to be - Chalk Dust are anything but torture to me.
On cue, Oblivion arrives as the moon dips behind the now huddled clouds, completely obscuring the moon and shadows cast against the farms and short hills. The remaining sources of illumination reach out from my headlights, cast upwards against billboards, and disrupt circadian rhythms from Apple products in the backseat. When I sit to write these words, my father will be at the kitchen table, iPhone 15 in hand, completing a Wordle with a pen and paper testing guesses with resolve. But for now, I’m struck by the following lyrics:
Below a kingdom bathed in ink Now opening the onyx gates I sense the reaper as I sink Within, oblivion awaits
Sixteen minutes later and the wordless What's the Use? begins. I've always found this, along with that night's encore closer, Carini, one of the darker songs in the band's canon. I'm not quite sure why: roughly three minutes in, it draws quiet, the faint sound of a guitar, the patter pitter of Fishman's drums, before I start to hear some hopeful notes crescendoing to a peak. The moon complies: it is visible again, the mass of cloud now moving west giving the moon its stage where it will remain the rest of the drive. The song's title and the scene unfolding serve as a reminder, that no matter how despondent one is, how quick and easy it would be to give up, and to question what's the use, that it’s exactly when we wait, when we open ourselves up to possibility, when we simply exist in the face of a storm even when it seems like the sun will never shine again or as if the drought will never yield, just wait, and like the moon tonight, previously a shadow of its former self, you will emerge, fully - or nearly fully formed - to amplify the world with light.
We approach the Michael Jordan Expressway (I-40) and the song My Friend, My Friend cuts2 through the slightly humid air. We're in North Carolina, not far from where he grew up, and where my dad two days later will point out the community where he bought his mom a house. We know by now that Jordan was cut from his basketball team in high school his junior year and didn't even start when he eventually made the team his senior year. But he didn't give up. He just did it. But it's clear from his documentary that he too had some unresolved issues.
Sand slips through the speakers, an upbeat number as we head down the second half of the second set. A quick reprieve before the next song, About to Run, takes me back to 2011. My wife and I decided while she was in her second trimester that we would move west to California. We had grown tired of Brooklyn and wanted to try this whole parenting thing on our own. (While I don’t recommend it, I also don’t recommend against it.) When we called my parents to tell them, my mom hung up the phone. I'm about to run. Forgive me. Lyrics to the song I hear now, reminding me of what I was really doing then. When we moved back nine months later, not able to crack the California lifestyle without a safety net or any real friends, my parents welcomed the news. We visited them frequently as they were just up the New England Thruway in Connecticut. But soon, they too announced their own move south. The wrong was long ago, the wrong was long ago, liar, liar, I'm about to run.
If our trip lasted another 45 minutes, this is where I would continue by talking about Harry Hood, share a memory conjured or some advice obtained or lyrics that meant something, or that it was a darker version than normal (it wasn't but there is that one part that always feels ominous), mention that my kids sang along with the call/response (Harry...Hood) and concluded an incredible second set. I would share how we listened to Lonely Trip, not a dark song at all, rather a mellow song, to open the encore. I would share how I would tell the girls that this is where I left the show in December to catch the train, only to hear the opening notes to Carini: loud and rigid and jarring. I would share how my youngest starts singing along about Lucy and her lumpy head. I would write how I thought of sharing what I texted Brandon, celebrating that I knew it was "Fucking Carini!" but would decide to refrain. This would be the part where I share that while it was my second encore call at Phish, it was not my best, that being Neil Young's Powderfinger during the Powdered Donut night of the Baker's Dozen. But the rest of the show remains unresolved as we pull into my parents’ driveway to the final notes of About to Run.
The next morning I set out for a run, an easy run, around the storm runoff retention ponds they call lakes. I try to spot an alligator but come up clipped short of my quest. I think about the drive down, how even as the thoughts of this essay came to me at the gas station with the slow-filling pump, that I still responded to a text from my mom with a terse update ending with a period - showing annoyance - instead of an exclamation point - showing excitement - in response to her grammar-lacking messages asking for an update. What is it about a math major like me who is a stickler for grammar expressing what one really means and how a lack of proper grammar in a text is an assault on my senses?3
I think back to the Blizzards we ate on the drive last night - yes, I tell myself, that's exactly why I'm moving slower than usual - and how we should have ordered one to split among the three of us, the half-filled cups on our arrival a sign of our wasted purchase. I think back to thinking about this on the drive last night - about how I've let myself go these past few months, eating more ice cream, eating more chips, eating bigger portions, drinking more soda, sugar free, but somehow that makes it even worse - as I looked at my daughter sat in the backseat, and immediately felt like I am 30 years old again, not wanting to grow old and out of shape. No, that's wrong. I don't mind the growing old as much as I mind the growing out. My clothes are tighter; I can see it in my face. I tell myself that it's the weights I've been lifting, and sure that's part of it, but really, with honesty comes clarity. And that clarity reminds me that weight gain and weight loss are functions of math. Some of that math can be fudged by eating healthier; it's harder to overeat with real food than with salted, fried, sugared, processed nonsense.
Thirty-five minutes later, I round the last corner of a run made in the shape of a B and see my dad and my daughters, the girls riding their bikes. I'm back home, or back to their home, as it's never been my home. And never will. Their home sits in a planned community with manufactured land with manufactured houses on streets with manufactured names. Annaby Cove and Foxbow Cove have no water near them; Forest View Circle is without the former and half the latter; Pine Bloom Way contains neither; Mount Pleasant Circle is flat as the pancakes make in my dad's cast iron skillet4; Gladehill Lane contains neither glade nor hill; River Breeze Way is likely only half true.
But back in their home, I notice that I'm part of it. The painting of me and my brother from 1988 hangs above their credenza - a marble, a Richard Scary book and a crayon outline of Snoopy I drew in ‘86 providing personal touches supplied by us at the sitting - our family unable to afford a camcorder growing up, this suffices for memories captured, maybe even more so. The postcards and greeting cards I've sent to my parents over the years stare back from the mantel (to the fake fireplace) and the shelves around living room. There are pineapple - a symbol of home and warmth - coasters I bought for my mom, one sitting next to the guest bed, an Athletic (near) Beer tulip glass bought for my dad as a surprise resting on top. He stopped drinking nearly 20 years ago, cold turkey. We never really talked about his drinking when he did, but he's been a better man since he stopped. I followed suit almost five years ago.
We never really talked about money either, though there were more times that it was tight - like my pants are now - than it was not - like my pants back then. We never really talked about how a daughter is a daughter for life, a son until he takes a wife. We never talked about how my mom had us dance to Sunrise, Sunset at our wedding despite not being Jewish nor having any affinity of the Fiddler on the Roof. We never talked about how my mom's hobbies are me and my brother. We never really talked about how my mom has my dad do more than his share around the house and that she takes credit for things he does. We never really talked about how my dad doesn’t push back or take credit where it’s firmly due. We never really talked about their wills or their wishes. We never really talked about their visit last summer and how the best days were those when my mom was without her phone having left it in North Carolina before the drive up and how when she got her phone back it was like we were no longer there, eating from the trough of her social media’s algorithmic feed.
And we don't talk about it now that I’m back in the house. Because I don't bring it up. Because all of this is a me issue not a them issue. That I leave things unresolved. But unlike an unresolved melody that can leave the listener intrigued for more, or an unresolved storyline in a novel leaving the reader to fill in the gaps with creativity and wanting, this leaves me feeling…
Days after our drive home up north, where the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror remind me of their meaning, I will receive a text message from my dad, complete with colons, correct capitalization and punctuation, parentheticals, and Oxford commas, though this will be one that is is not signed "Love, Dad" as usual. He will let me know that a package has been put into the mail - USPS Priority, of course - with forgotten remnants of our trip: Easter Candy, Egg Coloring Stuff (2 boxes), Sea Shells (he washed them), a pair of blue socks and Mikey Mouse Silverware (2 Spoons; 1 Fork).
Those spoons take me back to the kitchen of my childhood. My feet rest on the linoleum floor, my hands reach into the top drawer under the toaster oven searching for a spoon. Finding my Mickey Mouse spoon - mine was slightly bigger than my brothers' - I creep towards the pantry and slowly open the wooden folding door minimizing creaks. On the top shelf, I see the treasure I seek: a container of Hershey's Hot Cocoa. I open the brown metal tin, removing the brown plastic lid. I take a spoonful and slowly - careful not to spill leaving evidence of my crime - bring it to my open mouth. That mouth now closed, feels like it's filled with dry desiccated dustballs, and I proceed to cough in an explosion of brown, not dissimilar to those dirt-bomb mushrooms we had stepped on the week before. My mother asks if I'm ok. I staccato out a quick "all good". Our pantry now completely covered in Cocoa Powder - not Cocoa Mix as I so blatantly discovered, lacking sugar like those delicious packs of Swiss Miss, which one could use to make cocoa in one's mouth without issue - I attempt to clean up. Paper towels just move the cocoa powder around, spreading the mess. I dampen the towel with improved results. My mother doesn't say another word.
Many days after school, I would raid that same pantry. Instant puddings were an easy win. Just add two cups of milk and 20 minutes refrigeration later and I'd go to town with a spoon - Mickey Mouse of course - and eat to my heart's content. That content would usually leave us with a half a serving. On other days, I would take a packet of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie or brownie mix - just add water, oil, an egg, mix, and bake - and I'd skip the last item and the last step and have at it with a spoon - a full-sized one this time - and eat to my stomach's (dis)content. This would usually leave me with half a medium-sized metal bowl of cookie dough - like the kind found in my Blizzard - or brownie batter. I'd either have to bake it - and have 6 cookies, my mom questioning where the other dozen and half cookies were - or dispose of it, something I couldn’t do within the kitchen garbage, the evidence visible upon my mom's arrival home from work. Fortunately, we lived in a wooded area and I would make my way ten steps back and throw the remains to the likely delight of the squirrels and chipmunks and raccoons. This is something I could never do at my parents house now, the woods consisting of a row of pines between their small lot and the road behind.
We lunch at a restaurant within a finely renovated Holiday Inn Wrightsville Beach where my youngest asks my parents if there are any parks nearby. "No, there's no parsley in that, just jalapeños," comes the reply from my mom, describing the corn bread we were eating, while looking out across the Atlantic Ocean. I laugh at a thought I had during a recent run. Yesterday's carpetbaggers moved south to make money by exploiting the people; today's carpetbaggers move south to save money by exploiting the government. In both cases, they moved south to make or save a buck by not giving a fuck, about others, only themselves. So it's not a surprise when the waitress asks if it will be separate checks: the default is to pay one's own way.
After spending a few days on the West Coast for work while my kids remained in the spoiled glory of their grandparents, I return back to my parents’ house. I take the day off to spend time with my parents. My mom has a doctor's appointment; my dad and I take the girls down to a local beach town for lunch by the water. The wind blows hard across the bay, but not hard enough to keep the birds at bay. They attack dropped food, fries in particular.
We finish our meal and walk to the park nearby. A set of swings, really park benches attached to chains, are spotted by the girls. They jog across with the first sign of a free swing. My dad - their grandfather - would have given them a push were they younger. But they're not. Instead, they rock their legs back and forth creating moments of movement. Unprompted, my oldest takes her right hand and places it above her head in the shape of a backwards "C", my youngest its mirror, connecting the two. A heart, the sky and the sea, framed.
We leave the next morning, early. The girls get ready without incident. We're on the road at 6:18am. I hug my parents, tell them I love them, we say our goodbyes. We depart. And what started unresolved, remains so, despite the thoughts in my head, the words written and opportunities presented. Next time, things will be different. I have a plan. Step one is writing this piece. Step two will be to...
Slippery When Wet, of course.
As some readers will know, he’s got a knife.
Note: I wanted to put an interrobang here, but refrained.
Also the name of a terrific Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit song, that I played on the drive home when thinking about elements of this essay.