Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Prequel

I am going to re-run this story as a prequel to the Carnivale story I am working on (it's to help me as well) - I am not trying to be lazy....

Tommie....

Tommie was the father of my first-born child - my daughter - my beautiful daughter who is now carrying her second child. God bless them and keep them safe.

Oh the memories of Tommie - it's been so long since I have thought of him, but since I am being haunted tonight, (and since his ghost decided to descend upon me on my way home from work this past Thursday), I felt should devote a blurb to him...

It was sort of weird meeting Tommie - he was the not-quite-a blind date that I met through a mutual friend - his step-cousin. Weird - very weird. He was friends with this young man who happened to be living in the apartment down the street from me - Johnny - everyone loved Johnny - you could not help yourself - he was the life of any party - and back then at the tender age of 19 yrs - party I did!
At any rate Johnny had just hurt himself pretty badly in a biking accident - he had a broken collarbone and my sister and I - who were friends with him - were helping to take care of him. That particular day it was my turn....and he told me his step-cousin, Tommie was in town and coming over and that I should hang around to meet him.

Tommie showed up - he was very dark and brooding, very unusal; he just had non-conformist written all over him - he was an artist (I did not know this then) - he was very quiet - he was kind of cute - 1/2 Cherokee Indian - great cheekbones and eyes.

We all decided to go for a ride in the car with Tommie. Johnny sat up front riding shotgun, and I sat in the back seat. I happened to glance down at the floor of this very clean car (as it turned out, it was Tommie's mom's car) and spotted a thick book by Larry Niven (Sci-Fi writer) - I asked whose book it was - don't know why I asked....there was a silence and I looked up to find Tommie staring intently at me in the rear-view mirror - he had a weird little smirk on his face and he said "Why? do you read?" - don't ask me why - but just the little look and the tone in his voice - it wasn't quite sarcasm - it was more like a challenge - kind of intrigued me.

We ended up going down to a park by Lake Erie and Tommie and I got to know each other better. He had had a very rough life and he was currently working in a carnival. He had traveled all over the place. He was very smart and very street-smart - yet he had this vunerability about him and by the time we left the park I decided I liked him enough to say yes when he asked to see me again.

Our relationship began very slowly. He was quiet and he was hard to get to know. But I loved his wit, his humour, his talent with fine-line drawing - his artwork was amazing, his easyness with everyone - his attitude which was pretty much a blend of 'Fuck you and calm down' - he was tight - he was contained - he was deep.

Eventually we ran off together - I spent a summer as a 'Carny' - very interesting stories there - it's for another post or when someone asks me to write about it...
We made our way down the Eastern seaboard, we lived in New Orleans for 6 months and then moved on to Houston, TX.

In Houston - I wound up pregnant - it was not planned - Tommie did not want me to have the baby, however, I insisted - he became sullen and abusive - he did not want to get married so we didn't. I eventually left him when my daughter was only 18 months old - a lot led up to this - including his refusal to get some much needed medical help because he was looking very very sick to a lot of us down in Houston - which included two of his 1st cousins and he ignored us all - it's like he had a death wish. 2 weeks after I left him and was living amongst friends of ours - he collapsed in a restaurant - he was rushed to a hospital and was found to have a very rare kidney disease - he was already in end-stage renal failure by then. It turned out while he was in a carnival in South America, he had drank the water and somehow picked up a parasite that basically destroyed his kidneys....

Tommie pulled up stakes and moved back to Cleveland to be by his mother. I did let my daughter grow up knowing him because I felt it was the right thing to do - he had really been being poisoned by his kidneys, and that was one of the reasons he was acting the way he had been (as a side note - because I now work with living donors and renal transplant patients (kind of ironic eh?) - I have learned so much about this disease and how it can make people crazy and nasty) - so I reasoned he deserved to get to know his daughter and every time I visited family in Cleveland he saw her. He loved her with all his heart. He was put on a waiting list for a cadaveric kidney - he ended up moving in with some girl, I ended up marrying the man who was to become my son's father.

Tommie's life after the discovery of his disease became a waiting game - waiting for a kidney and coping with the devastation of his disease process - by the time he reached the age of 29 he had suffered 7 heart attacks - the last one was so severe that his mom eventually made them stop 'bringing him back' - she felt he had suffered enough and she let him go to God. He did not live to see his 30th birthday. One of the hardest things I have ever had to witness was watching his mother and grandmother at his funeral.

So Tommie this is for you....thanks for helping me make our daughter. Thanks for teaching me it's ok sometimes to be tough, to not care, to not fall into those tender traps all the time that end up not making us true to ourselves and end up short-changing us and those we love the most.

The first time we made love - I remember that this song was playing on the radio and he told me it was 'our' song -well it truly was Tommie's song - and it describes him to a T - no pun intended my dear - you are still missed...to Tommie - who never really surrendered.


"The Pretender"

I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen

I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen

Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there

Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight

I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put out dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again

I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Thought true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender


Artist: Jackson Browne

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