Can You Hear Me Calling Your Name?

Parked outside a steakhouse for an unplanned conference call got me thinking about a moment from the summer of 2013.

Think it probably changed my life and though I knew it then I am not sure I understood it the way I do today.

Could pull out the notebook and jot a few words down, grab a sandwich at BJs and then jot a few more upon the pages and see what sort of clarity it provided.

Feels like a different life and then again it feels like yesterday. Probably part of why I put a thousand words upon a particular page because it is part of what I do when I process.

Was staring aimlessly at the steakhouse when I realized the call had turned towards me.

“Can you hear me calling your name?”

I nodded and smiled at the tiny screen on my phone.

“Do you have an answer to the question?”

“Can you hear me calling your name?”

I suppose it might have sounded like I was teasing or even mocking the person who had asked because I repeated what they had said.

But it wasn’t any of those things. I was lost in a moment from almost 8.5 years ago that felt like it was blurring with the present.

Almost said the wrong name and then my brain slipped back into gear and everyone forgot about the prior moment because I was on fire…in a good way.

A Summer School Play

There is a truck with hockey sticks in it and some sort of Dallas Stars stuff and a puck but it doesn’t make me think of hockey.

Something about it sends me back 40 some years to a summer school play in which we performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In particular I remember having to lay my head in the lap of a sixth grader. She seemed quite old to me given that I was 10 or 11 and she had to be at least 12.

Neither of us wanted to do it, but the teacher said we had to and when I hesitated the older girl glared at me and said do it.

Can’t say I remember much beyond that other than I was irritated at being told what to do and almost didn’t but the teacher was right there.

Memory is a funny thing because some moments are so vivid I cannot forget them and others make me wonder if they are as I think or time impacted my reality.

****

I am working on trying to plan a trip home that will coincide with my middle sister’s plans. Haven’t seen her or our younger sisters since 2019.

That was for our father’s unveiling which means we haven’t all been together for something that wasn’t related to his death in quite some time.

Forty-six or so years of living in LA but my most recent memories of time spent there are all tied to his death in one way or another.

I have wanted to change that for quite some time now but Covid has prevented it from happening.

Dad and I talked about how often I would or would not visit him when he was gone. He told me not to worry about it.

“You’ll get here when you can. Not like I am going to hassle you about it. See your mother and your sisters and that is enough for me.”

He meant what he said, there was no subtext or subterfuge to worry about.

I don’t have to go to his grave to remember him but it feels important to go periodically so whenever I get out I am sure I will.

If he could see me I think he’d probably say he can see the last handful of years upon my face. I’d shrug my shoulders because if I had a full head of hair I think I’d look 10 years younger.

But I don’t and I mostly don’t care about it. I earned all I have and I’d tell him he is responsible for some of this.

That would lead to some comment about the amount of worry I caused him and I’d just nod my head. Why argue, some of it is probably true.

Can You Hear Me Calling Your Name?

I hear the echoes of the past and the echoes of the future. Got a request for contact information for people at CBI and fielded several other questions.

On a professional level I am the only Jewish person some people know so I get to play ambassador.

They ask a hundred questions and then a hundred more because the answers I give lead them down more rabbit holes.

That is not intentional or by any sort of design. It is what happens when you want almost six thousand years of history distilled into bite size chunks.

It is like having a rudimentary understanding of basic math and then trying to figure out Algebra and Geometry on the fly.

I can give you a basic outline you can use to understand much of it but I can’t give you the depth you want. Not because I am incapable of explaining it but because you can’t absorb that much in such a short time.

And that lack of background against so much material is like my explaining what childbirth feels like to you. As a man I can tell you what I have learned and been told but it is going to be missing something.

Breathe, now push, breathe…push harder.

Didn’t do much for you now did it.

If you don’t believe me try asking the mothers. It is ok, I won’t be offended. There are some things we can’t fully understand and that is ok.

Big Deal

I read a line in a newsletter I receive and mulled over responding.

Can you guess how many blog posts I have written?

A whopping 7491.

Big deal. I think I wrote eight this week and I don’t put out content like I used to. At last count I was well beyond 10,000 and I haven’t checked that in years.

The bigger question is the quality and whether the posts we publish meet the goals we establish. If I engaged that would be a start of the questions I would want to ask this guy.

But I don’t feel a real need to engage, my mind is elsewhere.

In the car, in the front of the steakhouse.

I heard something today that got things that had been settled stirred up again. Two different sets of bells tied to two very different things.

Put money down that five years from now things will look different than then do today.

Can you hear me calling your name?