2022: another epic summer begins
These summers have become so epic in my mind, and I try to never take them for granted. My daughter Emma is 16 and currently lives with her mom and sister in Kentucky, but for the past decade - basically - Erin and I have gotten her for half the summer. This stemming from a 2010 visitation agreement which felt like a tremendous victory at the time. A sensation which really hasn’t faded any in all the years since.
Things were a little contentious back then, in certain precincts. But we’re all a whole lot chummier now, shall we say, and haven’t had any problems for eons. So as Erin and I arrive at their second story apartment in Richmond, to scoop Emma up, she and Jill (my ex-girlfriend/ baby momma) hang out chatting for a solid hour. In fact it’s all one big female scene, considering Emma’s sister, Maddie, is also around, and we also happened to bring the best friend Emma has made in North Carolina, McKayla, along for the ride. With nothing to offer as this ensemble lounges around a bedroom conversing, I mostly wander around, play with the umpteen cats and one dog they’ve somehow crammed into this space.
Once the four of us finally hit the road, we’re all keyed up to the extent that the expected five hour drive will surely fly by in a blur. Passing the multiple signs for the Kentucky Music Hall Of Fame, which never fails to crack me up - I like to speculate that half the building is Justin Timberlake artifacts, the other half belongs to Cage The Elephant. Which assumes a whole other level of comedy, at least for me, when it turns out I had that wrong and JT doesn’t even hail from the Bluegrass State.
Disaster strikes before we’ve even been on the interstate for an hour, however, directly ahead of us. There’s been some huge accident involving a semi truck which we apparently just missed. It’s not quite within sight of us, but well within walking distance, basically beyond the next hill, and horrific enough that none of us move for almost three hours. It’s the kind of scene where people eventually, inevitably get out of their cars and walk around, begin mingling with whatever random strangers we happen to be stranded beside. Emma and McKayla take to sitting on the concrete median for a spell, snapping pictures of themselves, then stroll up for a look at the crash and report back to us about that as well. Erin and I don’t really get out of the car much if at all, but have our windows rolled down and are absorbing the constant swirl of conversation around us. Two families directly ahead of us, with plates from different states and having just met one another, we can plainly hear, become so friendly that the one kid eventually hops into the other family’s vehicle just for the sake of variety, and chills with that group for a while.
Once we eventually get moving again, and blessedly make it all the way home without incident, the typical breakneck summer follows. I always feel this manic need to cram in as many good times as possible while Emma’s around, and Erin shares this mindset. Though believing I’ve done realistically as good a job as possible under the circumstances, who is ever going to say they don’t wish they had spent more time with their kids? Even when she’s mostly always lived multiple states and 5-6 hours away from me - and on occasion, simply getting certain figures to play along with court mandated stipulations has proven difficult - this still holds sway, and bothers me to some extent. All I ever hope is that the moments we spend together make up for everything.
But Emma has always taken everything extremely well, in stride. It’s maybe impossible to gush about your kid without sounding like a cliche, but I will give it a shot. Emma’s basically the sweetest person ever, a pure soul, though she’s also not afraid to tell you what she really thinks if ever challenged on a topic - although even this is delivered in her trademarked high pitched, somewhat squeaky voice, usually with maximum cheer. As though the comment blurted itself out, and she was powerless to halt it, though softening the blow as much as possible by giggling throughout. In fact she’s pretty much always bubbly. Obviously everyone has their down days and disappointments, and there are limits to how much you can truly know anyone - even your own kids. It’s truly shocking how swiftly their lives spiral beyond your reach, first with a rich interior universe, inside their heads, and then the exterior one, all these things happening in the real world, about which you can only ever know some fraction. But whatever might has gone sideways in life, Emma doesn’t seem to let it affect her, she just keeps soldiering onward with that same unstoppable spirit. I like to think maybe she inherited/learned some of that from me and Erin. As far as what you might say are unmistakeable genetic traits, she’s also a bookworm, a bit of a nerd, short and glasses-wearing. But always a total cutie, in any guise, if I do say so myself.
As far as this summer of ‘22 is concerned, once we have her here, it does unfortunately begin with a solid week of gloomy if not rainy days. You might not mind it so much after a few weeks of nonstop activity, yet to have this at the outset is excruciating. One of the final straws concerning Ohio after all, for me, was that it seemingly rained every day the last couple summers I lived up there. And of course the primary drawback to ever living in Florida is that…it rains every single afternoon of the summer down there, too. I can only hope it’s not turning into the same climate here in NC.
At least we have McKayla staying with us, to keep her entertained. This setup has gotten so common and expected that she actually refers to me as “Summer Dad.” Her parents, Michael and Julia, are good friends of ours, but even so we never could have banked on how well these two have hit it off. They’re a couple years apart in age, and even with the kids of your own best chums, there’s no guarantee your offspring will mesh so well. So this has always felt like a real blessing. In the summer of Covid, 2020, she actually spent just about the entire three month stretch here, because her parents both came down with it, while no one in our house was affected.
We’ve got a bunk bed set up in their room, and those two can commonly be found staying up until all hours of the night in there, listening to music, watching stuff on TV, chatting and occasionally taking mental breaks from one another to do whatever on their phones. But never an actual argument, apart from the playful (if serious) ones, such as the night McKayla insisted that Emma was blinking too loud. And continues to do so, in fact, whenever the topic is reintroduced.
These two sleep in so late that Erin (a teacher, and therefore treasuring her own summers off like the precious gems that they are) is not about to lounge around the house, most days, waiting on them to wake up. Therefore is taking off to go shopping with the ladies or whatever. I work from home and am typically able to wrap things up whenever those late risers emerge. If the weather were better, obviously, we might have more planned, and would pointedly awaken them much earlier, ignoring their agitated groans. But with these gloomy doldrums, there’s no point.
She’s already been here almost a week as of the Friday night I take her and McKayla to Statesville’s humdrum bowling alley, though the three of us have a good time, and this somewhat low budget establishment does offer surprisingly decent food. Shocked afterwards, however, in driving around looking for ice cream, at how early even Baskin Robbins and Dairy Queen close around here, on a weekend night in early July. And therefore what paltry options are available in our sleepy little town, which really isn’t even all that small (I’m even more shocked in some ways to discover, during this ride, that they both know and like the Billy Joel song Vienna, when it comes on my Sirius radio; Emma even starts singing along with it). “It wasn’t really a hit?” they question, surprised by this.
July 2
Emma’s vacation doesn’t really seem to get rolling in the typical manic, rip-roarin’ fashion we have come to expect, until the big free 4th of July fest, in the nearby town of Mocksville where my parents live. And yet even this night concludes with…one gigantic rain storm. Mocksville is tinier than Statesville, but it’s also nicer in many respects, or at least more consistently pleasant. It’s small enough to basically have no bad parts, whereas with Statesville, while I love our town and all, there are certainly seedier pockets, and still others which are not that great. Even when it comes to our own house, I feel like we are right on the edge - I’m fond of telling the uninitiated, if approaching from one direction, you might be saying, oh wow! You guys live in this neighborhood!?…yet if arriving from the other, you’d probably be saying, uh…you guys live in this neighborhood?! But at least it appears to be on the upswing.
As the agreed meet up hour nears, we take our sweet time getting to Mocksville, because it turns out everybody else is running late. The event is being held at this spacious park in the middle of town, with some food trucks and an instrumental outfit noodling on the distant stage. This is an impressive setup here, I have to say, the park already packed full of people with their lawn chair and picnic blanket spreads, here to absorb the free live music and, much later, some fireworks.
There’s this food truck right by where we set up, named Taco Time 2, which only makes total perfect sense to check out. It’s pretty good, but really all I can think about is their lemonade. I actually walk up to get a 2nd one soon after finishing the first.
Mom and Dad and their friend Stump show up soon enough, in the big blue truck, then Daniel and Christina in another car, with Daniel’s son, Holden. Stump wants food and I’m stuck somehow (in line for that 2nd lemonade) for an eternity with the guy, as it’s suddenly gotten a whole lot busier. He’s friendly enough and everything, but there’s something borderline excruciating about being basically shoved into a situation where it’s extremely awkward not to talk, and you’re with someone you don’t know all that well, who talks even less than you do.
The first band is some older act playing a lot of instrumental jam band type grooves. They’re okay, and easy enough to tune out as background music. The second group, though, are playing almost nothing but 1970s disco standards which almost nobody seems to like. Dad actually tries to formulate a serious guess about how many people in attendance actually like this music, and comes up with “3%.” He's complaining about a “Donna Summer” song the band is playing, which is in reality Chic – although it's none too surprising they do launch into a Donna Summer cut right after this. I remark that the band isn't bad at what they do, though.
“I wouldn't walk across the street to watch them,” Stump says, a total Radick comment.
Mom’s excited and snapping a bunch of pictures of her two grandkids, and McKayla. I know she loves her grandbabies. But if I’m being honest, things have never been quite the same between her and Emma following the drunken mayhem from 7-8 years ago - on top of the general teenager’s distance toward her grandparents, finding them a bit embarrassing and cringe-y, I’m sure, which is a phase everyone has been through and Emma will also someday grow out of. Emma’s friendly but cautious and probably somewhat shellshocked. But Dad’s always like, whenever this subject comes up, “you need to explain to her that her grandma was drinking way too much back then, but she just needs to forget and forgive all that, and look past it.” Or something to that effect, paraphrasing of course. And I feel like Emma mostly has. Yet even so, my reaction to him is always basically, eh, that’s cool and all, but no. Mom needs to explain that to her, if she’s really bothered by the current situation. To her credit, though, when things were looking their bleakest, she’s really done a tremendous job putting the brakes on that insanity for at least a good five years now - these days she has a couple glasses of wine, or vodka and Squirt or something, and goes to bed.
Erin is so hot she goes to sit in our car. Christina happened to be walking by there, sees her, joins Erin for half an hour or so. Christina is saying she really can't handle Dad a lot of the time & didn't want to come today. Was telling herself, “Erin doesn't come to everything, so I don't have to, either.” But came anyway. So these two have a cool little bonding moment, rallying around this while chilling in the car.
Dad is admittedly in somewhat of a weird mood tonight. I do feel a little bad at one point, though, when he says, “I need a break sometimes, guys,” to Daniel & me, because she wants to walk somewhere, and he’s leaping up to assist. But the thing is, Mom doesn't want the help. You ask but she just waves you off. But then Dad hops up & scolds us for not doing it anyway.
Well, whatever. Near nightfall, just as the fireworks are supposed to start, it begins raining. I have this tub of Dad's vinyl albums in our trunk, though, so he & I go grab it, carry it in tandem back to his vehicle. He's all paranoid & freaked out for some reason about Mom being left alone, recent news stories that old people are being pushed down & robbed. Like I'm trying to talk to him & he's just saying, “uh uh...uh huh,” totally not paying attention, speed walking, even though she's in the truck & Stump's there. I’m sure these things happen, but kind of doubt a 4th of July hoedown at a public park in Mocksville, North Carolina represents the nexus for such activity. If you’re worried about it here, then you should probably never leave the house at all. We see one fire work, leaving. Crazy rain on the way back.
July 4th
The days fly past with a breakneck insistence. Michael comes and gets McKayla for the actual 4th, which she’s none too happy about. I have this relatively new tradition of always trying to play 4th Of July by X on the holiday - the only other song I know with that title is the Soundgarden one, but this is better. Erin gets up early and heads over to her parents’ house to start making her baked beans and whatever else for the inevitable cookout.
Meanwhile, my buddy John wants to know if I feel like checking out this bookstore in Winston-Salem. And once Emma hears about this, she’s all ears as well. So with John at the wheel in his car, the three of us take off in that direction. He’s been talking about this massive, otherworldly bookstore for years - and in fact, they have 5 of them, between North Carolina and Tennessee - but I’ve never been.
John has a bag of books to trade in with him. And as it turns out, they have a ton more here, at McKay's, than just books. He drops off his books, & gets a number, as it takes awhile for them to go through these. He says they rarely reject anything. It's pretty obvious I will just have to focus on a few areas, because otherwise there's not enough time.
The popular fiction is often steep here, oddly enough, but there are plenty of deals in nonfiction. I find a couple of Klostermans (already read) dirt cheap. Also take a chance on books that just look interesting, like Pulphead by Sullivan. Emma meanwhile is excited to find a signed copy (sticker on cover certifying it, too) of a book by an author she likes, Afterworlds by Scott Westerfield. They have this more expensive CD section in back, & I can't justify getting anything here, but then I stumble onto this much cheaper one in the middle. This is the freaking jackpot, here. I get a boatload of good CDs for prices ranging from 25 cents to 95 cents. Also grab two Reba CDs, which Emma buys for Jaden. Among the many offerings I pick up are an XTC disc (Oranges & Lemons), Dwight Yoakam (Gone), Billy Joel (The Bridge), Madonna (I'm Breathless), Mellencamp (Big Daddy). Among many, many other selections. Then I get to the checkout counter, & the cashier girl is stoked that I'm getting The Disaster Artist (book).
“I've seen The Disaster Artist, but not The Room,” I explain.
“Okay, so, there's four sex scenes in The Room,” she tells me, laughing, “but two of them are literally copied & pasted from the other two. They're the same.”
I'm impressed by how much money John got for his trade-ins, & will have to bring some books myself next time. We talk about books, movies, Netflix etc the whole way back, Emma doesn't say much.
I ask John if he's coming to the cookout, but he jokes about not being sure he's invited. “I'm inviting you,” I tell him, so then he says alright then, he will come over later.
This turns into a really fun pool day. When Mike Dagostino shows up, John calls to him from the water, in a fake Italian voice: “How you doin'? Whassa matta you, eh?”
Then Adrien, who is Erin’s second cousin, about nine or ten years old but really tall for his age, joins us in the pool. He declares, “I wanna play Marco Polo!” and closes his eyes, begins counting before we’ve even had a chance to respond. I wing a pool float at him, though it flies over his head.
“You wanna stand there and say Marco with your eyes closed, while we throw floats at you?” I suggest.
“I like that game,” John agrees. But then Adrien starts crying and I feel bad.
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Thanks and have a great week!