I had a  most peaceful day.  As I said yesterday I needed to spend some more time to get back into balance this weekend and that’s exactly what I did. Max and Diane were at a at Reiki training session with Marcy and Gabe was up at the mountain in a competition.
   I began the day with a science show for the girl scouts in Bristol . It was a smaller crowd, than they expected (about 19 vs. the 80 they imagined_ but I really enjoyed doing the show anyway. It turned out to be a mix of girl scouts and a few boy cub scouts. .  That was OK.. but I had been looking forward to doing an all girl show. I notice that when boys are present the girls feel less free about volunteering and shouting out answers.   Not sure why that is.. Anyway, the show went well. Igot a little misty eyed when I dedicated it to Sam at the beginning. But once I started I was great. It felt really. really good to be doing another show.  Here’s me with the girls
  
   By time I got home from Bristol after unloading my gear at IBM it was about 1PM.. I had lined up a list of things to do around the house today.. Id’ also received a generous invite to  learn TIG welding at my friend Bruce’s… but I realized I needed some down time..   Instead of doing anything, I sat in Sam’s room and thought about him for awhile. While I was in there , I heard our friends form the band Skanky Green practicing. In the barn.I heard them playing their new ‘Captain Sam’ song they wrote about Sam.. It’s such a fun and beautiful song  I was laughing and crying hard to hear it performed live..   I love the chorus to that song

Relax a bit, you might just have some fun
Don’t take it all so serious
You’ll never live it down
Take the plunge, you might have to take a dive
‘Cause that’s what he would have done
if he was still alive

    Hearing that song inspired me to go back in the house and do something that I had been putting off  for many weeks. I transferred the last phone message I got from Sam on the day he died to my laptop. I had been hitting save on my cell phone now 3 times.. each one saves for 20 days. I new it was coming up again. Each time it came up it was very hard.  I had no choice whether to listen or not. No matter where I was or what I was doing. The last time I heard it , I almost drove off the road…I’d really been putting it off. In the spirit of ‘turning into the storm’: I recorded it on my PC. . It was much less painful than I expected it would be. I was hurting pretty much as I recorded it.. but the more I listen to the message in the course of editing, removing noise, balancing the volume,.. the more I loved listening to it. I was going back and forth on whether other folks would want to hear the message. I talked about it with Diane and she said ‘go for it’.. I’m going to post it here.. but you may want to think before following the link. He sounds so ‘there’  in the message.. it may be hard  for you to listen to.. or you may love it.. just think about it first. . It’s really a perfect Sam message. You can hear the fun he’s having in his voice.
   By the time I’d finished editing the message and listening to it 30 times or so.. it was getting pretty late. Martha and Kevin came over (Kevin driving :-%). Kevin drove me up to his house to get his dad and his dad’s snow blower to clear our driveway. They are really good friends to have helped us do that. Joe and the beast made quick work of our driveway. We’d been at it with snow shovels, but we might well have been using a teaspoon for all the snow that was there.  
    As soon as the driveway was done my family all piled in the car and headed out for our big concert night. First we went to Sakura . We ordered an extra miso soup for Sam. It’s starting to be a ritual. We get enough of them we can start our own religion.: The Samarians ? Here’s a funny thing; as soon as the soup came, three of the overhead lights in the restaurant went off.. Sam had come to eat with us.
From there we went downtown to the Flynn to see The Pink Floyd Experience.. a cover band on the 70’s band  It was an excellent show. Our good friend Gina had helped us find the last five tickets to the sold out show.   They played the Pink Floyd stuff note-for-note…. They were so good that I remembered that I felt that Pink Floyd songs come from a cold and cynical place.. they seem to have this ‘look you’re a slave to money’.. or ‘ time is passing you buy’ kind of message… no warm and fuzzy stuff in their music.. That’s ok for the right mood.   I think I’m a warm and fuzzy guy now, though. As much as I loved the show.. I managed to fall asleep during the song ‘Money’.. If you know me.. I have just two speeds.. Zooming or sleepy.. and tonight I was sleepy. I only slept for a few minutes, but I managed to have a dream.. I dreamt that Sam was alive and my family was whole in some different parallel dimension. The thought made me happy.. I sent that family in the other dimension some love as I woke myself up . The concert had some pretty cool visuals including a radio controlled flying pig.. Now that would be cool to build.  Here’s the pig:
  
   We ran into many folks at the concert tonight.. We were happy to see our friends Tim and Ivy . Ivy has been writing me long beautiful letters. In her last she included this very cool picture of her and her dad. Check out the Sam stuff..

Gotta sleep now. Good night my son..

-jc

Not much to report today. I had a too-busy day and it frazzles my brain. Diane found me at 8 this morning still in bed with a cell phone glued to my ear, listening to a work call and typing a note at the same time. She laughed at me.. The rest of the day was just like that, back to back meetings, driving, talking on the phone. I can see that it’s so easy to slip into old bad habits of too much to do, too little sleep, to little time to think, to laugh, to create stuff, to just hang out. These are hard lessons I’ve learned from Sam  about the importance of taking life a little slower.. I’m hoping to work on that a little this weekend.. I don’t know if I’m getting the best start at that though…. I have Jolts and Volts science show for a bunch of girl scouts in Bristol tomorrow at 8AM. That should be fun though.
   Mercifully, tonight was as peaceful as the day was hectic. My friend Katsu from grad school came buy with his wife Naomi and there young kids Marie and Ricki. We hadn’t seen Katsu since 1995. Gabe had just been born and Sam was about 3. We spent a few hours catching up, talking about old times. He first met Max when he was 3 months old. When Max walked in it made us both realize how long we’d been friends. We spent a some time showing them all of Sam’s pictures and his room.. I’m still so proud of Sam… I always will be.
    Around 8 we went up to the Townsend’s to help cheer up Matt who broke his leg a week ago.  Some help I was, I fell asleep on the couch !. I did happen to notice that the Townsend’s had a very beautiful and fully functional mitten rack on which to dry my mittens (had I remembered to wear them) thanks to the Wonderful Wild Welding Women or Richmond (see here for that story)
   Speaking of stories, Max and Jessie just came in and told me a really cool Sam electrical story from last night’s State Radio concert.  If you’ve been following Sam’s story for the last few months you might remember that his energy sometimes comes through in playful energy surges: e.g.  lights blinking, electrical malfunctions, etc. Last night someone tossed a Sam Stone up on stage as the band was playing. Chad, the lead singer, picked up the stone, looked at it, smiled and placed it on his amp. Immediately, his guitar feed dropped out. I was in back of the room, all I saw was that the sound guy rushed to the stage and he and Chad fiddled with the amp,. In doing that they knocked off the stone.. Presto.. Back came the guitar.,, Chad then saw the stone on the ground again.. Picked it up and put it back on the amp.. And guess what ? .. No guitar again. At that point, Max, Avery, Carolyn and a few of Sam’s friends figured out what was up and shouted for him to put the stone in his pocket. . As soon as he picked it up off the amp, they were back in business.   Stranger than fiction.. That’s my boy !
-jc

Ps. Here’s a picture that Max and Gabe (and Sam) made for my birthday the other day

… and here’s the 5 interlocking  hearts that Gabe, Max and I made for Diane for Valentines day. The boys did all the welding ! (it’s not just girls that can  weld)

Today was beautiful.. The Valentine’s day snowstorm lasted until early this morning. .by the time it ended we had between 3 and 4 feet of snow. This is more snow than I remember having in the last 10 years. It’s surreal.  Everything has come to a graceful halt. All the world’s sharp edges are rounded by the snow cover. Sounds are muffled. What little traffic there is slow and quiet. People are off from work, kids are off from school. Appointments are canceled.  I know it may sound funny, but the post storm lull reminds me of the period we had for the several weeks after Sam died.. Everything slowed down.. all the things that kept us so busy before and were so central to our life just pulled away. Looking back, everything seemed kind of muffled and gauzy. On our walk this afternoon Diane and I were talking about another parallel between the snowstorm and our own lives now..    We are realizing that you have turn into and face our grief just like you sometimes have to brave a storm. You just have to go through it…just keep shoveling. You can sometimes find beauty in it as well: today we found that someone had put flowers in the ‘Guitar Sam’ sculpture despite the deep snow..

      We braved the snow tonight to go see an absolutely fantastic State Radio show at Higher Ground. State Radio is a band out of Boston that does both fun and socially conscious music. They were able to make it up from Boston.. but their back up band was not That went a double set from State Radio which suited us all just fine. There were so many of Sam’s friends at the show. I think we took up about a quarter of the packed room. I felt so welcome at the show.. The crowd just parted for me when I went down on the floor. I’d like to think that they knew I was connected to Sam.. but it just might have been because I’m a spooky old guy wearing my son’s (max’s) blinking tweed jacket.

..

At one point Chad, the lead singer dedicated the song ‘Keepsake’ to Sam. That had me dancing and crying at the same time. .. Max and I tossed some Sam buttons up on stage and all three band members put them on.   Hree’s a picture of Chad with his Sam button on.

We also passed them some SamStones to toss around on their tour. After the show, the band was passing out material about the situation in Sudan. I love their spirit. It was a great, great evening.. and I felt you  there with us smiling tonight,  Sam.

-jc

We woke to the most beautiful snowy morning. The kind Sam would have loved. It was a snow day from school so everyone slept in.. including me which meant I missed my first 2 teleconferences .. oops ! 
   Once everyone woke up, we had a really great  valentines day celebration. We gathered in Sam’s room and lit his candle to invite him in. We then opened a few small presents.. Diane gave me some cool books (one called True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh who I love)  Max, Gabe and I had welded a set of five hearts together for Diane to stick in the garden. . Max even baked a cake  Gabe made a cool  still life with one of his hats, my screw drivers,  one of Max’s green Hulk gloves, Sam’s sombrero, one of  Chai’s dog toys.. some of our late bird Gabbi’s bird seed  and a few red bull cans. It was a nice way to put lots of thing he loves in one space.  It all felt very good. 

    After that, Diane and Gabe headed up to the  mountain mid morning and left me to work. Max and his friends were outside playing in the snow like little kids.. it was great to watch. I managed to  have a pretty productive day just sitting on the bed with my laptop.  It was fun watching the snow pile up. It reminded me of the big storms we used to get in the early 80’s.. it also reminded me of Sam.  I realized as it was getting dark around 5:30  that I hadn’t even been outside once during the entire day.. now that I think of it, I only even went downstairs once. I had an instant attack of cabin fever so I rallied Chai and headed out for a snowshoe. Chai made it just about to the garage before she decided the snow, which was over her head,  was too deep for her.  She slunk back to the house with her tail drooping..   That left me alone to battle the elements. I  headed out with the intention of doing our lower loop trail.. which is about 30 minutes when I’m really pumping..    I realized when it took me nearly 5 minutes to get out of our yard that that plan  was too ambitions for this evening. The snow was about mid thigh deep even with snowshoes.. at some places it was waist deep. I decided to lower my sites and head for the rock in the high meadow which overlooks the house. I started shuffling through the deep snow thinking of Sam and how he would have dug this..  The further I went,  the sadder I got. I saw a deep connection between my walk and the pattern of our lives now , slow plodding. hard going, seemingly endless.. but at the same time.. beautiful.  I tell you, this walk was the most strenuous exercise I can ever remember doing. By the time I cleared the ridge in the high meadow my heart was pumping so hard that it was all I could hear… a good sound on Valentines day, It felt so good to be outside. There was absolutely nothing moving  down in the valley, no cars, no people.. just deep snow everywhere you could see.. it was beautiful  I got to the top and looked towards our house.. hoping to get a good view  of our house through the snow.  maybe even a picture. That’s when it all kinda feel apart.
The snow was coming down too hard to see the house clearly

and before I realized it.. I was all tied up in phone calls and emails and cameras and…. Then it hit me like a dope slap.. . the voice in my head said ‘you iiiiiiidiot’ (in a cartoon accent).. ‘why don’t you just enjoy where you are’ .. I laughed ot myself.. put away the gadgets and sunk down in the snow.Here’s me just before my ‘aha moment ‘.

A few mintues later I started the trudge back to the house.. It was much easier in that direction because I’d been kind enough to break trail for myself on the way up.. There’s probably a deep message there to that I’m to dumb to appreciate. Anyway.. the walk back was fun and I came back to a busy household.

The family was all home along with Mason, Abbott and Scot all snowbound in the house.. it felt pretty festive   We’ve just heard that school has already been canceled  for tomorrow so it will be another fun day for the kids..  I just hope that tomorrow night’s State Radio show at Higher Ground is still on.   Their last show here was the last live music we all saw with Sam.  I think they may play a song for him tomorrow night..  State Radio is a GREAT band..socially conscious, amazing, and fun music.  There are still tickets left.. so check it out.
   I  think I’ll close with an excpertp form a State Radio song.. Keepsake.. I know that I posted it once several weeks ago.. but it’s a great song for today

 Expert from Keepsake by State Radio (sung here by Jane and Avery at Sam’s Memorial)

 ….

One gonna heal my body another gonna heal my pain
One gonna settle me down then bring me back up again
I‘m gonna put my family back together again

One gonna hold my woman another gonna hold my job
One gonna help me get up, another gonna help me stop

One gonna help me talk right, one gonna lay me down to sleep

””

See you at the show tomorrow Sam.. Happy valentines day my boy

-jc