Chapter 12 - Part 1

Chapter 12 – Sam

After we ate, we found our way back to the craft booth with the blankets. That was kind of a miracle in itself. After wandering around, lost, in the craft booths today, I was starting to believe Brittney, that the carnival kept changing every time our backs were turned.

We got wrapped up in our blankets and laid down on a big pile. I was next to Sonya, of course, but I could see Tommy curled up in the corner. I found myself thinking about him.

I remember the day that Tommy was born. Sonya labored most of the day before we finally went to the hospital. She got more and more uncomfortable. I remember that it was hard for me to see her suffer and not be able to do anything about it. Then the moment arrived and they took that little, wiggling, bloody baby and put him in my arms. I tell, you – it sounds gross – but it was the most amazing moment of my life. I was a dad and he was a boy! I had a son. He was a part of me. He belonged to me in a way no one else could. It’s hard to put into words all the feelings I felt at that moment, but oh, how I loved that little ball of goo and his mother, too, and right at that moment I knew our lives were going to be perfect. How could they not when we’d been given such a gift?

What is it about boys and their dads? They’re sure easy to love when they are little. Maybe it’s because we as men feel so much pressure to be a certain way. We want our boys to grow up to be men that other men admire. That’s our son ,after all, and it reflects on us.

But then they get really older and they do start acting like men and even though you’ve been hard on them while they were growing up, trying to get them to be just so, they may not pay the slightest attention to what you tried to teach them. They still act exactly the way they want to. Molding kids is not exactly like molding clay. It’s more like the spongy material they use in those stress-relief balls. You can smash it and change its shape but when you let go it slowly pops back into place, as if you hadn’t been there at all!

So, then they get older and instead of wanting them to be the kind of man that is admired by other men, you want to feel that the man that they’ve become admires the man that you are – not just as a dad, but individually as a man. So, now, if you have trouble feeling adequate in the first place (which I do! I know it!), all that is represented in this boy, the man you care the most about in all the world, and he’s right there in the house with you and you can’t get away from the derision you see sometimes in his eyes – well, what then? I’ll tell you what then. You backtrack. You try to tell yourself that you don’t care about that boy. You tell yourself that he’s defective and his opinions about you don’t matter. You build walls of anger around you and you strike out if they get too close. It’s safer that way. Much safer.

But sometimes, at unguarded moments, you remember the little, tousled-haired boy who would shout, “Daddy!” and run into your arms as you came home from work. Sometimes you remember the feel of his hand wrapped trustingly around one of your fingers as you walked to the store or the feel of his arms wrapped tightly around your neck as his mom tried to pry him off so you can go to work, “Don’t go, Daddy! Don’t go!” he wails. Sometimes you remember those moments and you ache and you wish there were no wall and you wish you could go on carnival rides together again. You wish, with your whole heart, that you could be friends.

But what if he doesn’t want to be friends with me? What if he doesn’t admire or like me anymore? That’s when the wall starts going back up. But today I try to consider it. Can I risk like that? Can I love like that? Can I love him even if he rejects me? Honestly, I don’t know if I am that strong. It is hard to see the little boy when the soon-to-be man is right in front of your face.

How do I build a relationship with the man? The image of the cars stuck on the roller coaster came again into my mind. If I wanted a relationship, I’d have to work on it. It wouldn’t just be handed to me. The message was clear.

I rolled over. I felt a little better. At least I had something to work on. At least I wasn’t faced with the hopelessness I usually felt when I thought about Tom. Maybe there was something I could do. Maybe if we did stuff together I would find things I liked about him – even if they weren’t the things I had tried to teach him to do. After all, he was my boy. Shouldn’t that be enough?

I pushed my doubts and fears away. I had something to work on. For now, that was enough. Maybe I would face my other fears another day. I searched for sleep that wouldn’t come.

**

I finally fell asleep a few hours later. I dreamed of roller coaster rides that dipped and spun and left me wanting more. I dreamt of slow tea cup rides where nobody got sick and everybody had a say. I dreamt of mirrors that showed things only as they really are and of boat rides with my family safely around me inside the boat and not floating separately through the dark water.

I gradually became aware of sunlight shining through my eyelids and I woke up – happy. It had been a long time since dreams had left me that way. I kept my eyes closed to enjoy the feeling a little bit longer. I knew I hadn’t gotten much sleep and that I would normally be grumpy. Today felt good, though, as though, dared I say it, it were sun-kissed.

That was when I smelled scones and honey-butter. My eyes flew open and I struggled up from our nest of blankets. “You got more scones?” I asked Sonya in disbelief.

She was smiling and she nodded. “Well, it’s better than hot dogs for breakfast don’t you think?”

“It definitely is!” I agreed. “But I thought that maybe after yesterday, it might not sound very good to you.” I tried to sound apologetic. I really did feel bad about that. How could I have made her so sick?

“I think I’ll be all right,” she said. “Besides, I know how much you like scones.”

She really did love me. I didn’t deserve her. I leaned over and kissed her. “I love you, Sonya. I’m sorry.”

She smiled at me and said, “I know.”

But did she know? I wasn’t even sure everything I meant to convey in that one I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you sick yesterday. I’m sorry I’m so hard to live with. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you over and over and over again. I looked at her miserably.

She laughed. “Come on, Sam! It’s not so bad. We’ll work it out, won’t we?” Then the smile disappeared from her face and she said pleadingly, “We will work on it, right Sam? We won’t let things go on as they have before? Say we won’t!”

I pulled her close to me. “We won’t,” I promised her and I thought of what I had learned in the house of mirrors and knew that I meant to keep all of my promises from now on. Fear grabbed at me none the less, “I’ll need your help, though, Sonya.”

“I think Ken was trying to tell me yesterday that it’s not right for me to try to rescue people – especially the people I love,” Sonya said thoughtfully. “But I’m going to start standing up for myself, Sam, and for our family, and I think that will help you. You won’t be able to forget, anyway.”

That would be an important first step. I patted my front shirt pocket, “I’ll keep my lists handy.”

Sonya laughed. “Good idea,” she said.
We woke up the kids and ate our scones hot.

Brittney sighed as she finished her last bite and licked her fingers clean. “I love the food here,” she said wistfully, “I sure am going to miss it.”

“Miss it?” I asked. “I thought you were the one who was so sure that we would be stuck here forever!”

“No,” Brittney said. She had an ease of changing her mind that only a ten-year-old could possess. “We’ll go in the haunted house today and then we’ll get out. I know it.”

I looked at Sonya. She smiled and shrugged, “I guess that’s settled then!” she said.

“I guess so,” I replied shaking my head. “Let’s clean up and get going then!”

We folded the blankets and tried to leave things how we had found them. We threw our paper plates and plastic forks away in a trash can not far away and we trooped off to find a bathroom so we could freshen up a little bit.

Then we met outside. “Well,” I asked everyone, “Brittney says this will be the last thing we do here, so is there anything else any of you want to do before we go in the Haunted House?”

“I’d like to do anything beside go in the Haunted House!” Brittney declared.

I smiled at her. Actually, I knew how she felt. I felt a sort of dread whenever I looked at the place, but I felt that she was right, too. I felt like going there was key to getting out of here. Sometimes there were things you didn’t want to do, but you just had to face them and get them done.

At work, I usually brought lunch in a paper bag and just threw everything away when I was done, but one day, I decided to bring a plate of leftovers from home. We had a microwave and a sink at work, so I heated it up and brought it back to my desk to finish my work. When I was done, I knew I should take it to the sink and get it cleaned up, but I was in the middle of a project and I just didn’t want to face the goo right then -- so I ignored it. It was still there the next day, looking worse and harder to wash, so I stuck it in a drawer thinking that it would be good to have it out of the way until I was ready to deal with it. Not so. I found it on accident several weeks later. There were things growing on it and the smell was absolutely horrible. I would have just thrown it away if Sonya hadn’t wanted it back as part of her matched set. Washing it was a bear, too. The food seemed to have turned to concrete. Some things in life are like that. Come to think of it, maybe all things in life are like that. If you don’t face them, they get worse.