Eight Pound Lasagna
Dear Doug,
I had a feeling that I would cry at your memorial, but I didn’t know that I would stand up and speak. Looking back on everything that I said, I guess I did as well as I could at the time. It’s not so easy to get up in front of strangers – especially at your memorial – and speak. I didn’t know most of the people there, but also I didn’t prepare for saying anything. I just remember seeing my sandals push the dust and thinking ‘look – I’m really going to do this’.
I said most of what I could say at the time, and I think it was satisfactory.
However, between you and me, Doug, I’d like to say one thing more.
Every time my son pitches that curve ball from now one, I will possibly swallow a bit and choke down a tear. I will appreciate the strike he may get more because I now know we are using borrowed knowledge. My son will be carrying on your knowledge.
I always felt sadness when an old person died. It used to because I wasn’t good with death. Now it’s because I know that somewhere in that tired head, that tackle box of memories, a secret went unknown, a secret that the owner didn’t want kept. I thought about your tackle box of neurons and ganglia while standing up there in front of those people. I thought about that knowledge.
Tomorrow Thomas will pitch a few innings. I will watch some of your knowledge come to light. It will be different this time. It just won’t be his hands on the mound, working that ball in a well-worn glove – it will be a lifetime of your knowledge being passed on into action. In the weirdest way, his usual junk curve ball will now become my favorite pitch. It will remind me that you are still here.
I will talk to my son in a few weeks, and when I do, I will tell him that he is now the carrier of your message. I will ask him to remember your exact words for when his son is twelve, and he is ready to learn the junk curve. I will make sure that he understands that while women know their babies, men do not. We give birth through flesh and pain and blood. Men? You give birth through knowledge, through rites of passage, and through chance meetings – late afternoons at a broken-down ball field with a kid who you’ve never seen before. You become immortal through passing your knowledge, through the pride of sharing it and seeing it come to be.
I never thought about the difference between men and women until this early evening, when I saw a community gather to say goodbye to a man who died too young and seemingly unfairly. It never occurred to me that Doug Seabourn didn’t have to say goodbye to us because he was never really gone. It didn’t occur to me that he wasn’t absent all these years, because Thomas has been throwing that junk ball the entire time – even at a state tournament. Doug didn’t have to say goodbye to many of us because he left so much of himself here.
I will make an eight pound lasagna for you someday.
It will have spinach in it, though.
I think you’ll understand.
Eek.
This is just a short note that daphneszoo.com will be back on the web shortly. I have had a serious change of life. Gack! I enrolled in school.
In about a month, the old material will be floating in the sea of blog shit that circles the intertron. Also, there will be new shit.
Howleykook, don’t give up on me yet.
Look, a Brand New Doghouse!
So I was buggering off last week and got this email from one of my friends from Poopreport, Howleykook. He’s got a website, http://homegrownmedia.com/ , which I enjoy from time to time. “Great site!” he writes, “if you ever think of changing hosters, let me know.”
And there you have it. New doghouse.
I have quite a bit of copying and pasting to do in the next couple of days, and then hopefully I’ll be online more, writing more crap for all of you to lampoon.
