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 

I just returned from Dad’s night out. I went to RiRa’s with about 9 guys. It was fun being out.. but weird too I ran into a ton of people I new downtown and at the bar. I find it can be really awkward running into someone I haven’t seen since Sam died. I never take offense when someone doesn’t know what to say. It’s just interesting to see who is comfortable talking to me and who isn’t. It’s sometime takes awhile for people to realize it’s still ‘me’ in here.  RiRa’s was a good choice because they have a quiet back room where we could talk. We mostly talked about our kids.. which was fine with me.   Around 8 the Tuesday night trivia contest started up. I’d forgotten about it. I used to occasionally go there on Tuesday’s with work friends.. The questions were a mix of obscure knowledge,  pop culture, music and sports.. Out team dominated.. but, dear friends, I must admit that we cheated like crazy. The wonderful thing about carrying a device like a blackberry is that you’re never more than a few keystrokes away from Google or Wikipedia J… Turns out that we weren’t the only one cheating.. several others had their trusty cell phones out.. we just typed faster. My years of frantic texting have finally paid off !. We won a shirt (to split 9 ways ) and a round of beer. I even tried to  decline the prizes because of our unorthodox methods.. nut was told that all was fair in love and trivia contests… By the way, do you know:

what South American capital is the furthest south in the southern hemisphere ?  (Montevideo) 

Do you know in what decade Yves St. Laurant was born ? (1930’s),

Do you know how man time zones there are between  Spain and Poland ? (0)

I took advantage of the night downtown to do a little Valentine’s day shopping.  It was pretty hard going store to store looking at all the goofy tokens of love that people associate with the holiday. It’s never been a big deal for us…ut this year it will certainly feel different. I was just thinking of the metaphor of  ‘giving your heart to someone you love’  in the context of Sam’s story. Man.. he gave the ultimate gift of love that day. 
   As if he could read my mind, my brother called around 10:30. He’d just attended an event at Texas Heart Institute celebrating 23 years of successful heart transplant surgery. 23 years ago the anti rejection drugs became good enough to all ow for the long term heart transplant to be possible. Billy told me that there were several 20 year plus surviving recipients at the event. Billy’s friend and mentor Bud Frazier gave a talk at the event. Bud evidently has now officially done more heart transplants than any other  Surgeon  on the planet. about the Doctors and nurses that make this complicated surgery work out. He also mentioned the true heroes of this process are  the donors.. people like Sam..   the thought of that warms my heart.   As a further coincidence, my brother is scheduled to do 2 heart transplants tonight. He told me that he now looks at the procedure differently. He’s always been a sensitive guy.. its just now more personalized when the donor and/or the recipient is a kid. Billy said he now gives more thought to the donor heart coming from someone’s beautiful son or daughter.. just as he sees the recipient lying there hoping to continue their life.. I sure couldn’t do what Billy does.. but I’m sure glad that he and folks like him can.
    Oy .. it’s late again.. I need to go do some Valentines day planning. I think we’re in for a snow day tomorrow. At this point, Sam would be wearing his pajama’s backwards to make sure we got enough snow to cancel school.  I need to go out and finish up a valentines day project in the barn with max.. Hope to get some sleep after that…  When you wake up tomorrow.. give your valentine a squeeze for Sam…  Happy Valentines Day I love you with all my heart my son…  Be mine..
 

-jc

 ps. I’ve had the Regina Spektor song ‘On the Radio’ in my head all night.. There’s a section of it that really fits

you’re young until you’re not
you love until you don’t
you try until you can’t
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath

this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like
and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some–
someone else’s heart
pumping someone else’s blood

 and walking arm in arm
you hope it don’t get harmed
but even if it does
you’ll just do it all again

 …..