Time Warp...1988

I spent the weekend with Elijah at my mom and dad's. What a weekend, especially with the seizure and all. Every doctor and everything I read tells me that febrile seizures are not uncommon and that kids grow out of them but dude... freak... me ... out! Holy Shit... I never got to rest like I planned too. I figured, I'd have him down there... he'd run around... Oma and Opa would be playing with him and I could chill for an hour or two on Sunday morning sleeping in or something...

My parents moved me from a big city with hundreds of thousands of people to this desolate little town of 200 people when I was 14. This ironically was the first night I have spent in there has in roughly 9-10 years. Wow!! Things I forgot. I stayed in my old room on the top floor. This was a cool room because it was the highest room in the house and I had my own bathroom. It was really private but I was probably stuck up there for my Baritone Horn/Tuba playing I was doing back in high school and college. I don't know what I sounded like downstairs but I was stuck up there for a purpose with all the practicing. It must have been loud. I wasn't liked so much in the beginning when we first moved there. Music became my refuge... my outlet... I'd blow those horns to make them sound like nothing else before. There is an feeling of peacefulness when I walk into that room... A box of my old hot wheel cars was outside the attack door that the other grand kids have played with over the years. I browsed through them to see if my two favorites where in there: Porsches... a white and a black one. Both RS's I believe...

To this day, my parents house does not have central heat and air. I was reminded of this this weekend. It was chilly yesterday afternoon so the house was cool. My parents are experts at building fires and accumulating firewood for their stove. They had a nice roaring fire going when I got in from the hospital. It was nice...

But I was reminded of how really out of civilization they are. Their internet speed blazes along at a whopping 31.2 kbps on dial up. Satellite TV is a new concept and they seem like they "just got it". My cellphone had faster internet speeds to see this blog, check email, etc. It is just so backwards to me. I can walk down the street with my iPod and pick up an open WiFi here in Sactown to check my email but out there... nothing. The nearest neighbor is a close 300 yards away. Everything is just far away as far as convenience. I left Elijah at 7pm Saturday night to run 15 miles up the road to Starbucks so I could be on the internet at a decent speed to collect all my work stuff. Posting my blog yesterday was a chore, watching my mom's computer, which has a decent amount of speed, try to upload text to blogger.

But spending the night in my old room was odd, especially with Elijah. The bed was in the wrong spot... It used to be over by the other wall and I was reminded why at 5:45 when the sun came up. The room is also bigger than any single room in this house which also shocked me because I felt it was so small growing up. The smells though, were the same. That house never smelled like my first home, there is always a smell there to me that seems to remind me when I am there that I am only visiting. Same smell I smelled 20 years ago at 14.

Then there was the bathroom. This huge bathroom with a toilet in the middle of the room. You feel really isolated and almost naked doing your business there. The cool thing though about this toilet though is when you are taking a leak, you can see the lake. But I think the shocking thing was the mirrors in the room. For the 8 years I lived there until I finally moved out (the 3rd time...LOL) I entered that bathroom every day. Nothing has changed. The fittings, the mirrors and the sinks. But the mirrors... so many times I had looked at myself in these two huge mirrors to shave or brush my teeth or something. What was weird is that you have this memory of yourself and these mirrors and what you looked like in them in the frames and how much different I look now 20 years later. I didn't seem to age so much those first 8 years but the last 12... sort of took it's toll I guess.

I forgot how many clocks made noise in their house. 11 o'clock.. tick tock... I thought all night long as Elijah gasped through his snotty nose while laying on my chest all night upstairs. I didn't sleep much but it was very peaceful for me to hold Elijah like that for me last night. I love my little boy, far beyond my own imagination...

It was nice to have my mom make pancakes this morning. She just bragged the whole time how she doesn't make pancakes or breakfast for my dad anymore but the cupboards are lined with Bisquick. My poor mom though, she always tries to reconcile and/or revise history for the sake of her own sanity. All the same stories I had heard hundreds of times I had heard again this weekend. I kept having to either finish them for her or cut her off because I felt they were stupid and had no point. I guess I am mean for doing that but my mom I think never wanted to live there. My mom and dad are great. Been together going on 43 years now. Pretty much perfect raising us and stuff. But something about being out there always bugs my mom. It always relates to the vastness of the yard which used to be 10 acres until they sold 5 a few years back. It's the lack of everything out there, like trees at first (my dad took care of that) or the lack of the neighborhood comfort you might get living in a city. My mom was always a suburbanite... I think I put my finger on it finally. She is forever lonely out there without actually being alone. Puzzling if you think about it? To my dad though... living there is Mecca. Give him his trees, his garden and his tractor and he'll never stop moving. No matter driving 40 minutes to work each way. He doesn't care. The weather is great most of the year and he's got his stuff to take care of. We took Elijah out on the tractor. Totally unsure but I bet the next time he sees the tractor he'll want a ride. My dad has only 200 hours in 20 years on that tractor, 100 of which are for driving the grand kids around.

I left at 4 o'clock today. Elijah's rough weekend was made easier though even though I was immensely stressed out. Never got to shut the switch off this weekend and I got a rough start in the morning... I gotta make the time to take care of myself...