Jason is talking to me. I can't focus on what he is saying because I am looking at the purple sparkly Dermabond that has sealed his Harry Potter scar. Earlier this evening, I had the idea to have the kids actually help me clean the house, so that they'd be tired before bed. That lasted about 3 minutes before Jason managed to lacerate his forehead on the kitchen counter like Leland Palmer possessed by evil Bob at the end of season 1 of Twin Peaks. My smallbig boy was crying and holding his forehead. When I pulled his hands away to inspect the cut, he started screaming from the blood on his hands, but I was calm. At least I was in the house. Driving through the inky blackness of 99 at night, the humidity and the darkness just feels like uncertainty. Somehow I got to thinking about past medical bills and about the mendacity of the insurance system. Nevertheless, my anguish and trepidation dissipated as I pulled up to the ER entrance.
When I was just a bit more than Jason's age, I cut my chin on the water slide at Sprain Ridge pool. They shot me a local and gave me a stitch that took several weeks to heal. I have a sweet scar; still visible. I was calm in the kitchen because using a butterfly closure to staunch the dripping from the fresh roast beef sandwich on my son's forehead brought back familiar memories. But medical technology has improved a lot in 29 years. Dermabond is essentially a skin glue with scar-preventing properties, and that's all they needed.
Jason looks at me and smiles "This shake is so yummy!" He rubs his belly through his "Woodsie the Owl" t-shirt (give a hoot don't pollute) and laughs because he is tickling himself.
Dakota is coloring in Disney princesses. When we got to the ER, she drilled the intake personnel with the facts (thisisjasonheismybrother. thatsfirstnamejasonlastnamelispelled "L-I" andhehithisheadonthekitchenisland AND I AM REALLY WORRIED!) And truly, she was trembling. Her eyes were wide like saucers; becoming moist as she fought to maintain her composure. The hospital staff seemed genuinely touched by this sincere and sincerely smart big sister. So they gave her some crayons, some pages to color, and they reassured her.
"Daddy, may I be excused to play the jukebox?"
"Knock yourself out, princess. It's free"
After selecting "the big bopper" she comes back and neatly finishes Cinderella's ball gown. The other dining patrons are diggin' the tune, too. All around us are high school kids, these are the clean cut ones who don't drink and who went to the football game. Apparently some of the high school games are also on saturday night. They are also enjoying burgers fries and shakes.
We could only be in America.
When I was young, I would watch "Happy Days" and dream about an America that cynical adults said never was and didn't exist. Here it is, though. An actualization in the present of a past that never was. And I am living it.
Its not a place without its problems. Behind Dakota's touching concern for her brother are the beginnings of the unhealthy anxieties of a divorced kid. This phenomon is now decades old here and I would have recognized even if I wasn't myself a divorced kid, but as I am, it's quite plain. And speaking of unhealthy, if the cholesterol in my food, speeds a fatal heart disease, apparently I will be part of the plurality. All of which inevitability points me to the class tensions and racial tensions lurking in the background; a legacy of ancestral evil that stubbornly refused to be extricated from heritage and thusly endures.
But these problems are also somewhat evidentiary of the conclusion that, ultimately, this really is a good place. Not because America is perfect but because of how it aspires to be all the right kinds of better. Cynics can rightly observe that many of the measures enacted to realize improvements are baby steps or two steps forward mixed with one step back, but I'll take that.
The kids see both their parents almost every day, the menu boasts "no trans-fats!", delicious moderately priced food is egalitarian, and tonight in this simulacrum of a late 1950's diner, there is mosiac of different races and ethnicities co-existing thanks to a veneer of friendliness and hospitality which forces an indifference to whatever tensions still exist today. All of this combines to make this place that never was, much better than any place that actually could have been in 1959.
As I share a meal with my family, and appreciate America, these patriotic lyrics play in my head:
These days are all, happy and free.Dermabond.
These days are all, share them with me.
