Away

I’m on the road this month.

Well, not exactly on the road — it just sounds cool to say it like that. The reality is that I’m away from home. I’m working on a movie in Birmingham, which is a little over three hours up the interstate from Mobile. That’s not very far, I’ll admit, but a month away from home is still a month no matter how far you go, whether it’s 250 miles or 2,500.

For as little as I leave town, Birmingham might as well be on the moon.

I always love the idea of travel, of being away a while and seeing the world. But somehow I always find it hard to just pick up and go, to forsake the burrow I’ve made with all its warmth and seclusion, the shadows that dance in the corners of your eyes, the creaks of the floorboards and the cracks in the attic; my writing desk, my reading chair; the furry little creatures who rely on me for Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and whom I rely on in return... I love my home and my life there.

But right now I’m away again.

Oh, I’ve planned multiple trips in the past, even spent money with the expectation that I’d be making good use of it, only to come up with some excuse as to why I can’t go, or at the very least shouldn’t. It’s not hodophobia. It’s not travel aversion. It’s just plain old fashioned travel anxiety — and that’s hard to admit while living in a society that prizes wanderlust over literally every sense of security.

I often joke that I’m a recluse, but I’m not. I’m just a homebody at the core of things; a severe lover of my personal space; a desperate seeker of alone time. A few months ago I spent some time in Boston, and funny enough, it didn’t kill me. On the contrary I think it livened me up some, gave me the satisfactory of having new experiences I’d been looking forward to for a long time only couldn’t afford, whether monetarily or mentally. It was beautiful. It reminded me that I can go anywhere and do anything I want, and that in itself was liberating.

And right now I’m away again.

I’ve always had this love-hate relationship with being home. Admittedly, it’s more love than hate, but there are times when I feel imprisoned by it. I rely on it to keep me safe and secluded. I need it to provide peace and quiet. It’s where I learn to cook new things, where I dream and pray and research and develop new stories to a painstaking degree of detail. It’s where I write those stories, where I edit movies, where I read books and make all the plans that feed my purpose and eventually lead to fulfillment.

Besides, home is where all the best ghost stories come from.

My home is my sanctuary, my escape from the world, but it’s also my crutch. So when travel beckons I do my damnedest to harken and obey the call. I do my best to seize upon the opportunities made available by this freelance life I’ve chosen—and so far it hasn’t disappointed.

So right now I’m away again, and I will be here until it’s time to return home.

Best,

CBM

Sawdust

I bought my house four years ago.

I was only twenty-four, but I was making good money at the time roasting coffee for one of the biggest wholesale coffee suppliers in the region. Looking back it wasn’t a whole lot, but it was enough to gain the bank’s trust and make an offer on a modest house. I got to stop throwing money down the bottomless pit called rent dues.

The 1950s cottage style gives the place more of a midtown feel though it’s actually much further west of the city, just outside the limits of a wealthy little village called Springhill. There’s a municipal park nearby. An art museum and a local theater. Gardens, both botanical and Japanese.

It’s a strange thing, but I’ve loved this house more than I’ve loved most people. It wasn’t just a structure to me when I found it. It had character. It had style. Mystery. Bones. Good, good bones.

Now it has memories.

I’ve put a lot of work into it, buddy, you better believe it. Maybe that’s part of why I love it so much; if it had come to me all perfectly packaged and ready to go I wouldn’t appreciate it as much—and because of this work, the house saved my relationship with my dad.

See, I used to have a lot of anger issues. I was your average moody teenager, sure, but my temperament developed into adulthood depression which resulted in a lot of unresolved anger toward my father. I write a lot about him these days, and I probably always will. I write a lot about his father, too, my grandfather whom I barely knew. I write a lot about fathers in general, and one day I’ll write about being a father to my own kids. One day.

But see, we didn’t talk much back then because years and years of butting heads made us awkward. We’d learned to be uneasy around each other, and that discomfort brought on either silence or strained conversation. But then we worked on the house together for seven months, with our schedules determined by the free hours orbiting both of our full-time jobs.

We cleaned out a bunch of junk leftover from the previous owner. We peeled wallpaper and hung light fixtures. We pulled old hardware, and preserved the good moulding while replacing the bad. We gutted the kitchen—I mean, took it right down to the studs—and put it back together again like Humpty Dumpty, except with all new parts.

The wooden floors had already been stripped of their carpet covering, leaving an incredible number of exposed nails and tufts of little carpet fluffs stuck to them. So my dad and I, we had to either pull those out or seat them before we refinished the floors. I rented a sander and spent a few days turning the house into a sandbox. He stayed with me the entire time, watching me, making sure I was okay (although I taught him how to use it). I had on a full-fledged sander mask with air ventilation, but he wore only those cheap fabric masks you might wear if you’re sick or trying to keep dust out of your nose.

I reminded him it wasn’t just regular dust, but sawdust. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said. “Keep going.” The man’s crazy. To this day I still find hidden layers of caked sawdust around my house; on the tops of doorframes; on blind slats. It’s really a wonder his lungs haven’t collapsed, but he’s always been a freak of nature.

On particularly bad nights when the smell of the sawdust burned just a bit sharper than usual, I’d insist he step outside a while. But he’s too stubborn. He wouldn’t miss a second of the work to save his life.

All in all it only took a few days to sand down all the floors, and the day after I finished I went back to the house to begin the process of vacuuming up. I didn’t wear my mask, and I was only there for an hour or so before my head started to pound and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Like Dorothy walking through the field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz, I had to fight the desire to lie down and take a nap in the middle of the dusty floor. The lingering sawdust gave me a migraine after only a couple hours, while my dad endured hour after hour of the stuff for multiple nights in a row, yet he remained unfazed.

I don’t know how he did it. Like I said, he’s stubborn. Maybe he liked the smell, or the feel of the sawdust in his lungs. Maybe the experience meant so much to him that he wanted it to be part of him. I don't know, maybe he thinks of it every time he coughs.

He taught me a lot in those seven months; some things we even had to figure out together. But we learned a lot from each other, and about each other. Conversation started flowing a little bit easier. Soon jokes followed, and not long after that we began to enjoy each others’ company a little more, and a little more, until the leaks in the dam of our stilted dialogue broke free into a regular, more natural verbal spring.

It’s amazing what shared efforts can do to bond two people, that the experience can be strong enough to remedy a damaged relationship. Conversation is no longer strained. Silence is comfortable. I’m glad I bought my house if for no other reason than this. It’s already gotten us this far, and four years later I still have projects for us to work on together, things we can do hopefully without stirring up too much dust.

However it happens, I look forward to the memories.

Best,

CBM

Inspections

The man climbed down my attic stairs.

I say “man,” but he was younger than me by at least a couple years. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a man, but you get the idea: twenty-one, twenty-two at the oldest. He came back down, and he was sweating profusely.

It was hot in my house, I’ll give him that. My A/C was off because it’d been making funny crackling noises for a few days, and he was there to figure out why. So he climbed up into my attic to check the HVAC system.

Now, my attic has a certain aesthetic. I wouldn’t say it’s creepy necessarily, but it does have a generally haunted feeling. When he came back down panting, flushed, and dripping with sweat, I didn’t know what to think. The old idiom comes to mind: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He didn’t tell me what happened up there, just asked politely if it would be alright if he could leave for a little while and come back. He needed to go to the store. He needed to get something.

I don’t know if it was a bout of claustrophobia, or some sudden illness that hit him a little too hard too fast. Maybe it was just a hangover, or an upset stomach from a bad lunch. But I put myself in his shoes, put myself in that attic to feel what he felt, and thought, maybe he saw something.

He came back in less than half an hour and finished the job; he repaired my A/C and bolted, all with a smile on his face. But I haven’t thought about that guy in a long time—not until today when I had a my termite bond renewal inspection.

I’ve known Lacey for years—she’s the company rep who has done the annual inspection since I bought my house. One time she even did me a solid and checked out a nest under my house to make sure it wasn’t actively housing rodents: all she found was squirrel droppings and a dead baby snake (how I discovered the nest is a different story entirely). So because of that she always makes it a point to ask me about rodents, even though they’ve never been a problem.

My original appointment was a couple weeks ago, but my sleep schedule has been ridiculous lately and I totally forgot about it. I can only imagine what was going through her head: my truck is in the driveway but I’m not coming to the door and I’m not answering my phone. I can’t help but turn everything into some plot device: maybe I’m dead inside and my termite bond inspector is the one who finds me half eaten by my cats. Pretty cliche, right? Well, real life doesn’t avoid cliches, it nurtures them.

But I felt horrible wasting her time like that. So when I made a new appointment I was sure to be prepared, sleepy or not. Today I get a call at 11AM, waking me up. It’s Lacey. “Are we still doing your termite inspection today?” Yes, I say, I’ll be at the door in a sec.

So I get dressed and welcome her inside. She’s clearly annoyed with me, brushing past and immediately shining her flashlight in the crevices between different pieces of furniture, and I don’t blame her one bit. Routine questions: any bug problems? Routine small-talk: you’ve made good progress with the home projects. I apologize for missing the last appointment and she laughs, says it’s fine.

Then, as I always do when I have company, I put myself in her shoes. What does she see? What does she think? Well, I start to realize what a state my house is in: I’ve been distracted lately by both busyness and laziness, so I haven’t been very good at keeping my house in order. The recycling is backed up, so my kitchen countertops currently boast an overflow of glass alcohol bottles that have accumulated over time, although Lacey could easily assume I knocked them all back by myself, and recently, considering how I almost missed two appointments in as many weeks.

Then I think about how my lawn mower is still broken and I haven’t taken the time to fix it, so the weeds in my yard are overgrown and my bushes are terribly unkempt. If I were her I would’ve been wondering what kind of hard times Christian Mott has fallen on, which is funny because in reality things have been fantastic.

One of the greatest things I have going on, besides my adventurous schedule, is a new relationship (something I’m sure I’ll expound on eventually). Well, to give a little background, Emily left an outfit behind after changing clothes to go from one kind of event to another, so now I have a set of women’s clothes in my house. Just the one set, lying on my kitchen table by itself. There aren’t even shoes to go with it.

Which brings me to my next realization: there’s still blood on the bathroom sink.

Now, I know how this sounds—trust me, I’m the one writing about it. But I’m sitting there trying to scroll Instagram and not act super suspicious and awkward, like I’m not watching her to see if she notices the blood. Because I forgot about it. Completely. Until she went into the bathroom.

Let’s take another step back to one night last week: Emily is over and goes to the bathroom. She opens the door. “Um, Christian? Can you come here?” I get up from the couch and ask her what’s up. “Well, it looks like there are these drops of blood that keep appearing on the countertop around the sink, and I don’t know what it is. Have you noticed this?”

Talk about haunting.

Except I have noticed them, I tell her, and I think it’s easily explained. It’s something Atlas has done since I’ve had him—Atlas is one of my cats, currently about half the age of Sphynx, the other. He’s always done this weird thing where he picks at the sink plug with his claw, trying to pull it out of the drain. He succeeded once upon a time when the plug was loose, so now he thinks he can always accomplish his little goals if he just keeps trying. I don’t know why, but he’ll do it over and over until his paw bleeds. Then he steps around on the countertop, leaving little specks of blood everywhere.

But get this: I haven’t cleaned it yet, and because of water around the sink, a few of the drops have blended together to look like smears, making it appear as if I did a half-assed (and perhaps rushed) job of cleaning it up.

So there I am, thinking WAY too hard about the details of my life: I’ve told her my sleep schedule is crazy right now; my house is in a state of disarray; there’s a pair of women’s clothes in my house, as well as an inexplicable and indiscriminate amount of blood on my bathroom sink. I’ve been re-binge-watching Mindhunter on Netflix in preparation for the new season, so all of this is happening and I’m just thinking to myself, seriously, how creepy do I look right now?

Whether she saw it or not, I’ll never know. The likeliest probability is that she didn’t notice anything, because she was there to do a job. When she wrapped up, I asked her how work was going with the changeover to a new company. She said that although things were frustrating because of all the new corporate policies, there was an open office position she hoped to get. It would be a pay-cut, they told her, but she said her husband also works full-time, so it doesn’t really matter.

Without prompting she began telling me a couple wild experiences she’d had with other customers lately, including the one right before me: a woman who was going through a divorce and broke down crying on her. “Some really crazy things happen on the job.”

I couldn’t do it, I told her. I couldn’t work a job that required me to go into people’s homes. “Oh yeah,” she said, “it can get scary sometimes, honestly. You meet some real characters. Especially ones who get mad at the company and want to take it out on you, because you’re standing there in person. You’re actually in their house, and they get to yell at you.” I told her I was a writer and always overthink it when people come into my home to do work, yet I’m still curious to hear other people’s stories.

“If you sat down with some of us we could tell you stories for days. You could write a whole book about the things that happens.”

Maybe I will, I tell her.

She went off to her next appointment, and I sat down to type this out. Something about it is just really burning in my brain, but I guess that’s what I get for consuming so much horror and true crime as entertainment. I do hope she gets the job, but I’d be sad to lose her as my go-to termite chick—I don’t want just anybody coming into my home.

Some people are crazy.

Best,

CBM

p.s. if you have any ideas of what else might be causing the drops of blood, or think you know how to prevent it, I’m all ears.

Floods

Soft rains came early in the evening.

But no amount of rainwater has ever been able to stop New Orleans. We toured the bars along Frenchmen Street, and at one point paused to listen to a brass band on a corner with a crowd of roughly a hundred. We ordered beers at a cash-only joint where the bartender gave us our drinks on the house.

We talked to strangers and sang along to songs we knew. We danced to the blues and stood under lamps just to pretend we were ducking out of the weather, while agreeing that a little rainfall was nothing to hide from. It was lucky dragonflies and perfectly preserved moths. Jimi Hendrix and cigarette smoke. Bassline heartbeats. Eye-contact.

It was a night in New Orleans made all the better by the knowledge we were flying out in the morning, destination Boston.

I’ve considered myself a terribly lucky man as of late. I’ve rid myself of some bad relationships and managed to hold onto a few of the good ones. I’ve worked hard and made somewhat of a name for myself in a few creative communities. I can finally afford to travel to parts of the world I’ve never visited and see things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The best part is I get to come right back home to write about my thoughts and experiences and those I’ve shared them with.

So I feel like that makes me twice as lucky to have made it out of New Orleans before the harder rains of Tropical Storm Barry came.

For more than one reason I couldn’t get to sleep that night. One was the conversation. We sat on the balcony of the 18th floor overlooking the city that was beginning to sleep, mocking us in a way, yet giving us a moment of peace to ourselves. We sat across from each other with lightning streaking through the black clouds overhead, with similar electricities surging between us in the form of weighty words, leaving me exhausted yet nonetheless wide awake. We paused only for the authority of thunder, allowing it to interrupt whenever it so chose.

We spoke mostly of the past, of regrets, of harrowing memories and narrow escapes. Mistakes made. Lessons learned. Maybe it was the energy of the storm brewing in the sky so close I swore we could touch it. Maybe it was the late hour, or the anticipation of the journey ahead of us the following morning.

Whatever it was, it was real.

The rains came then, dripping steadily in streams from the roof, spraying the balcony like a mist in its gusts.

I lied awake until my alarm went off. The rains had still only begun as the sun rose— before we could even sit down to our complementary breakfast, waters fell from the sky that might’ve floated Noah’s arc.

I drove with blurred vision through layers of reflective gray, blasting Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler to keep awake long enough to park safely in a lot that had no shuttle. We unpacked the raincoats and trudged our way to the correct terminal.

Our flight was delayed by a couple hours due to weather, which was fine by me because then the skies were dry before liftoff. I dozed a little on the plane, but not for long enough. Moments after checking into our AirBnB we saw the news on social media: parts of New Orleans were under water. Some people couldn’t even leave the city, and we’d just barely made it out ourselves.

But lucky for us, our trip wasn’t ruined. We’d made it to Boston, where the humidity was low and it felt a lot like autumn. We were within walking distance of a few local places including the Samuel Adam’s brewery, and after dinner there were a few beers on tap calling our names.

We were some of the lucky few—and escaping a flood is just one of the many reasons.

Best,

CBM

Cobblestones

I leave for Boston in two days.

I’ve wanted to visit this particular city for a long time now—right about eight years or so. It’s always held a certain light in the distance to me, as if it’s the epitome of discovery, the lighthouse of our nation. I’m sure that idea has a lot to do with it being such an old, historic place (and maybe a little unfortunate bit of Augustana lyrics).

For one reason or another, I’ve been drawn to the place. The early colonial settlements. The nearby Salem Witch Trials. The cobblestone—if there actually is cobblestone there. It’s the center of a region that smells of gunpowder smoke. It’s fog rolling in from the docks. It’s lantern light, ale, and people on horseback.

One of the novels I wrote in college features a modern character who has such a strange blood illness that he has to travel to Massachusetts to visit a once-celebrated hematologist. The now-insane blood specialist used to work in Boston, but after the failures of a few of his more unorthodox experiments, he was estranged from the community and forced to move back to his hometown in Salem.

Another story I once developed has to do with a ghost boy who roams the streets of old Boston and spends a lot of time around a historic cemetery now called Copp’s Hill.

They’re both still in the works. The problem with these stories is that I never got a chance to actually visit these places. But now I do.

I went through a really bad breakup when I was twenty-two. It had been a long-standing sort of relationship, the kind you think will be forever because it lasted five or six years, so you do everything you can to keep the body on life support long after the soul is gone, whatever it takes to keep the corpse reanimated; severe co-dependency at it’s finest.

But when that was over, the only thing I wanted to do was go to Boston. I wanted to pack up my things, make the drive, and make it work. No job, no bed, no plan, just go and survive as if it were my own version of a rite of passage into manhood. It wouldn’t exactly be surviving the wilderness, no, but still, cities are nothing but concrete jungles full of animals of the most dangerous nature. I would’ve lived in my truck if I had to—anything to escape where I was and prove myself to myself, to keep alive the idea that I was still good and self-sufficient enough to keep living.

What did I expect to find? At worst, nothing. At best, what, myself?

I’ll never know, because I never went. I almost did a couple times, but life found ways to keep that from happening. I guess I just wasn’t ready, but now I am. Because the stars have finally aligned and everything is working out. I don’t know what I expect from this trip now—certainly none of the things I was hoping for six years ago. I’ve already escaped where I was, even if it was only mentally and emotionally. I am good enough. I am self-sufficient enough. I know now that I do deserve to be alive.

I have nothing to find there but a good time, and nothing to take away from the experience but memories, photos, and maybe a couple souvenirs. Maybe this is a lot of what growing up is all about: confidence in self, contentment in circumstances, etc., etc…

Cobblestones. Each of these, cobblestones.

There’s no need to run because there’s nothing to run to, and nothing to run from. You can’t find yourself out there, because you aren’t out there. You’re right here, and so am I.

No, I reckon I don’t expect much else but to enjoy myself, and honestly I wouldn’t want to travel in any other way.

Best,

CBM

Pyrotechnic

We got to the water just in time.

Before that, the Baldwin Pops had been jamming on the bluffs of Fairhope for a couple hours. We were only fifteen minutes late. We reclined on a grey flat sheet in the grass toward the back of the crowd. I couldn’t see the band from where I was sitting, but that wasn’t so much the point as was hearing them. My stomach growled incessantly and I satiated it with pretzel crisps, pine nut hummus, and a few hard seltzers. Joe and I made ridiculous hand gestures at each other when we thought nobody else was looking, because deep down we’re all children.

I’d had to pee for about an hour before I decided to get in the incredibly long line for the Porta Potties—I had to go so bad my eyes were turning yellow. That’s something my mom used to always say. We’d be in the car or something when I was a kid, and I’d tell her I had to go so bad. She’d look at me through the rearview mirror and say, “I can tell. Your eyes are turning yella!” Eventually that became my gauge for knowing how badly I really needed to pee, if I should make a big deal about or not. I remember trying to be diplomatic with her, and when I had to go bad enough I’d ask her to check my eyes to see if they were yellow. If she said no, I could hold it for a little while longer without complaining. If she said yes, you better believe I had to find a bathroom immediately.

So my eyes were yellow standing in line for the Porta Potties at the Pops show, and it was my fault—I shouldn’t have waited for intermission, but I did everything I could to get us there at a decent time. The day had been hot, but with the sun declining and the breeze wafting up from the Bay, it may as well have been early autumn. The band music was pure, the night was nice, and despite having to wait in a bathroom line everything was perfect.

Before that, I drove like Baby Driver. The band would start at 7pm, but the roads were clear, and it only took me about twenty minutes to get across the Bay. We snacked early on hummus and played Spotify Jukebox, passing the phone back and forth to show each other some of our favorite songs. Just before that, Lenny Kravitz sang about an American Woman, Bruce Springsteen swore he was Born in the USA, and Ray Charles, well… He thought America looked Beautiful. Somehow.

Before that, we were starving. We went to Walmart for snacks and something to sit on. A blanket. I wanted a blanket, any blanket. But the only thing they had were either beach towels—which I specifically didn’t bring from home because I wanted a blanket—and bedsheets. I grabbed a queen-sized grey sheet and we headed to the grocery section. Emily joked they’d probably only have one flavor of hard seltzer left on the shelf, the one nobody wants. Sure enough, she was right—it was the unflavored one that just tasted like alcoholic soda water. So we went with a different brand, grabbed our hummus, and booked it out of there. We only had fifteen minutes until the Pops went on, and the drive would take at least a half hour. I hoped not—I had to pee.

But we were only fifteen minutes late, all said and done. Parking, walking to find a spot to set up the blanket. When there were only a couple songs left we picked up our makeshift camp sight and headed down from the grassy bluffs to the sands of the beach. Pockets of other groups sat on their own blankets all over the shore, but we found a secluded spot to make our own. The Bayway bridge glowed in the distance, leading from Daphne to the miniature skyline of Mobile. The entire shoreline of Mobile County made up the horizon, which had groups of lights shining idly, sending up a glare into the hazy sky and lighting it to a softer hue of blue like an aura over the land. When we situated ourselves again, we got in the water and fought to escape a massive hunk of clingy seaweed that we thought was a fisherman’s net.

We got to the water just in time. Moments after escaping the stringy green slime, the first firework spiraled into the sky, kicking off the remainder of the evening. They were launched from the end of the Fairhope Pier, the furthest distance they could safely get from the shores. I’d never seen this particular firework display before, but it was a spectacle, to say the least. I’m sure it would’ve been fine from other vantage points, but none of them could’ve been as perfect as where we were, standing in the water with the horizon backlighting the sky and touching the water with flecks of whites. Just off to the left, explosions of reds and golds, greens and blues, each and every one reaching out and touching us through a giant reflection extending from the pier all the way to our knees.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that stimulated my eyes in such a way. This lighting is too perfect, I thought. This is cinematography. This isn’t real, this is a movie.

But of course it wasn’t a soundstage, like some Truman Show simulation on the dome out over the waters around Seahaven. Of course it was real. I had no worries or concerns. I found peace in the darkness under the shimmering lights. It’s another one of those situations that put my mind totally at ease, and as I’ve said before, an easy mind isn’t something I can just take for granted. No, just because I couldn’t find something wrong with the experience doesn’t mean it wan’t real. It was Southern natural beauty, mixed with a good bit of human ingenuity. Music. Magic. Motion.

It was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, all wrapped up in a singular experience.

When the show was over we lied on the beach in the dark, listened to more music, and watched the stars. Every few minutes another bonus firework would be launched into the sky, illuminating it once again for anyone still lingering. Those last few were just for us, because we were the only ones left. I didn’t have much to say then, but that was okay. There wasn’t any need for words at that point.

The world spoke for me through the combustion of lights; the rippling waves washing up near our feet; the rhythm of crickets and tree frogs; the whooshing drones and tones of distant traffic. And that’s how I know I’ve found something good, something circadian that exists and persists on its own, like a breeze off the water, summer nights, and walking barefoot back to the truck; like little-to-no effort to find enjoyment, and good company that smiles at you and sings even when you don’t have much else to say.

Something pyrotechnic. Something, dare I say, truly American.

Best,

CBM

Uncles

As of June 8th, 2019 at 11:52 in the morning, I’m an uncle.

This is a big deal in my life, and not just because Luca is the first kid born to any of my siblings. The idea of the Uncle has always hung over my head the same as the idea of the Father—not God the Father, nor God the Uncle for that matter, but all the imperfect men who raise us and teach us bad habits.

I’ve thought about being an uncle and a father one day just as much as I’ve thought about being a nephew and a son. See, I have two older sisters; I’m the youngest of three. They’ll both be aunts to my kids one day, but to theirs I’ll be the only uncle. The blood uncle. And we’re only gonna get one shot at this.

It’s not my job to raise them, but it is my responsibility to not disappoint them.

I only had two uncles growing up, and they were both disappointing. My family might not be alright with me writing about them, but it’s part of my story, part of who I am, and to neglect talking about such things would be to ignore an enormous amount of my own growth as a man, a brother, a son, a nephew.

I didn’t know either of my uncles very well.

Tommy. The youngest sibling, like me.

Johnny. The only brother (after Tommy died), like me.

They were both my mom’s brothers (my dad was an only child). Tommy died when I was very young, and Johnny died just a couple years ago. Tommy was the fast-living, young-dying kind of guy that our society loves to idealize. He was a homosexual, and in defiance of the conservative household he grew up in, Tommy plunged himself into alcoholism, drugs, poetry—anything that made him feel a little less like dying.

He lived at home with my grandmother, his mother, until he was in his forties. He had trouble keeping jobs, but because of little-to-no overhead he still had plenty to spend, and he made a habit of procuring a slough of expensive items: paintings, furniture, glassware, and all manner of decor. I ended up with a few of these relics; they live in my house with me.

There’s a picture in one of my mom’s photo albums of me as a little kid standing next to Tommy, who is crouched down to pose for the picture, smiling with his clean-shaven face and blonde hair so fair it was almost white. I don’t remember what he was like, but my mom said he “adored” me. I wish I could’ve known him better. I wish he hadn’t drank himself to death.

The only memory I have of Tommy is visiting him at the hospital. His liver had failed him, and his esophagus was practically dissolving. He was on his death bed; he just wasn’t gonna make it, and I’m not sure he would’ve wanted to at that point. I remember standing there in the dark room with my family as he lied on the hospital bed unconscious, just looking at him—and yet, in my vague memory of that experience, there were two Tommys in the room with us. One was dying on the bed, and the other was standing right next to me telling me it was gonna be okay.

I knew Johnny better, but only because he lived longer. This is the uncle who estranged himself from his family and lived in other places and worked other jobs, and did everything he could to keep away from everyone who loved him. He was cruel to his sisters on more than on occasion, and yes, that’s the word I’m going to stick with. Cruel. The apex of his cruelty was during the time they all had to come together as siblings and move my grandmother into a nursing home. That’s never easy, and he only made it harder for them, his sisters.

My mom and my aunt. Two sisters. I have two sisters.

He was the uncle then. I’m the uncle now.

He wanted nothing to do with his own kids, or either of his ex wives. He tried to forget he had sisters, or nieces, or nephews, or any kind of familial responsibilities whatsoever. His anger issues kept him isolated, and sometimes unemployed. He was just that kind of guy. Angry. Cruel.

But when I got a little older in my late teens, I developed some anger issues too. I lost sight of who I was for a few years, and it’s that burning fire in the furnace of my existential cellar that’s forged most of the iron of my human experience. I’m not proud of it, and sometimes I still have trouble controlling my emotions, but the absolute rage I felt for years was just a phase. It came and went, like uncles at holiday dinners.

The same can’t be said for Johnny, and that made my mom worry about me. She grew increasingly concerned—the way only a mother can be—that I would grow up to be just like him. I know this because she told me. Often. It got to a point where I was regularly compared to him, which I don’t think was ever fair considering I was a moody teenager going through an emo phase and not a grown man who had made decades of mistakes and estranged himself from his entire family.

No, I’ve never exactly seen the resemblance. But I digress. We’re past it now.

To be fair, he was on her mind a lot in those days because that’s when they were dealing with all the business with the nursing home and selling my grandma’s house—they were talking with regularity, which means he was cruel to her with regularity, which means she was crying with regularity. My dad hated his guts. We all did, in a way.

So it makes sense that I started to dream about Johnny. A lot. In one dream he’d made a fortune and remarried; his new wife was super young and attractive, and she was making moves on me—whatever the hell that means in dream interpretation.

The other dream is the most memorable one I have of him. I find myself homeless, living on the streets of some big city, walking aimlessly, perhaps begging. It’s cold and rainy, and the all the lights from the busy streets and crazy traffic reflect everywhere in bokeh reds, yellows, and greens. I walk with a crowd from dark corner to dark corner until a hand reaches out and stops me. It’s my super rich uncle Johnny, and I realize this is us in an older era. I’m practically in rags, but he’s wearing a top hat and a cloak, and walking with a silver-tipped cane. He finds me amidst the crowd, and I know him to be my benefactor.

He tugs on my shoulder and leans in close to whisper in my ear. As he speaks I can feel his warm breath on the side of my face: “Get out of your head, boy.”

That’s one sentence I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget.

My aunt died of cancer a few years ago. She fought it for a long time, and it was a hard thing to watch. But instead of coming ASAP to spend time with her at the side of her deathbed, Johnny sent flowers. Sure, he showed up eventually… But seriously, who were the flowers supposed to be for?

A year or two later Johnny found out he had tongue cancer. The doctors told him he would have a particularly rough go of things, so he opted out of treatment. He opted out the old fashioned way, with a shotgun. In his small town, in his small house, alone with his brains painted on the wall behind him.

Both of my uncles were disappointing. Both left me with such dark ideas of what it means to be a man in this world, but the older I get the more I realize how broken they were, how wrong they were. They wanted to blame their problems on everyone else in their lives, but at the core of it their choices were their own. They made their beds, and now they’re fast, fast asleep in them.

I’ve thought a lot about them over the years, about the kind of uncle I want to be one day. Well, now I am one. I have a nephew, who is the first baby I’ve ever held. He’s beautiful. He’s perfect. I have a feeling he’s going to teach me so much before I can ever return the favor, but maybe I’ll get to do for him the same things my uncles did for me and help him realize the kind of man he wants to be, whether by showing him who to be or who not to be. Maybe I’ll get to leave him some family heirlooms to remind him that despite his roots, nothing in his past can define who he becomes. Yeah, maybe one day I’ll catch up. Maybe one day I’ll be good enough for him.

In the meantime, I’ll do my best not to disappoint.

Best,

CBM

Sherri

Her name is Sherri. With an ‘I.’

I’d made my way down the side of the road with a 30 gallon trash bag and the pickup tool from the flea market I’d purchased just that morning. I had my earbuds in, listening to Last Podcast on the Left, zoning out under the scorching blaze of a June midday sun. I couldn’t hear much else but rumbling engines, thick tires treading on black asphalt, and random honks as people either waved to say “Thank you” or “Get the hell out of the way.”

A shrill note came over the noise, and I noticed a woman standing in her driveway. She wore a forest green dress that reminded me of a pillowcase, and had a dandelion ball of curly salt-and-pepper hair. Both her arms were raised and swirling around to grab my attention. A smile spread across her face as I pulled out my earbuds.

“Hello!” she said. “Hey, I’m sorry I’m standing here yelling at you. I’ve been trying to get your attention. You know, there’s a certain frequency or pitch that’s supposed to sneak its way in past other sounds. Have you heard about that?”

I told her I had and she waved me forward, so I approached her. I left behind a few pieces of trash in the weeds and made a mental note to snag them after I spoke with her, before moving on.

“I’m Sherri,” she said, sticking out her hand—I shook it, wondering if I should’ve warned her how sweaty I was. “That’s with an ‘I.’ Sherri with an ‘I.’ That’s how I always introduce myself.”

I gave her my name, nice to meet her. Then Sherri With An I proceeded to apologize for the state of her yard. She tried to keep the trash cleaned up, she said, but as I could see—and I definitely could—her yard was in an incredibly dramatic state of disarray.

I know her yard well. It’s the only one on the road I’ve truly taken notice of, and I make it a point to glance at it every time I cross over the train tracks and drive up the hill to my street. Not to be mean, but ever since I moved to the area over three years ago, Sherri With An I’s yard has been what you might call an eyesore. Picture the original Jumanji, and that still wouldn’t do it justice. The yard is totally overgrown with tall grass up to my waist and weeds that reach far over my own head—every square inch of it, save the strip of flattened grass just off the road where a number of walkers and joggers have forced a path.

Only once in my three-plus years on this road have I seen the yard cleared away, and that was at least two years ago. On the afternoon I met Sherri With An I the yard was back in full-force, attempting to conceal her house from the wandering eyes of the world again. I’ve wondered for years what kind of people lived there, hoping they were kind but assuming not.

See, we have it ingrained in our heads from an early age that dirty, unorganized things are bad things, and if those things are bad that means dirty, unorganized people are bad. Of course I know now that isn’t true but I’m still guilty of thinking all rundown houses have monsters locked in their attics, and that sometimes they get out at night.

But that day, standing in the yard I’d nearly idolized in my own fantasy, Sherri With An I told me the city was supposed to take care of it. “I’ve been calling and telling them for months my property needs to be cleared, and they always say they’re gonna come, but they just don’t.”

Her van was parked in the driveway thirty feet from us, and a fallen oak limb was propped up against it. A rope had been looped over the tree and tied around the limb to keep it from perpetually crushing the van. She said she hadn’t been able to drive anywhere for months, so it was lucky she could walk to the Dollar General from her house when she needed something.

A man once stopped by to ask her about the limb, she said. He offered to cut it for her, take care of the problem, so they exchanged contacts. He would come back the next day, he told her, and she believed he was the answer to her prayers. But he didn’t come back the next day. In fact, that had been weeks ago, and she still hadn’t heard from him.

Sherri With An I asked where I lived—up the road, down the street, in the white house with the red brick chimney. She asked what I do for a living—a writer working full time in the film industry.

She has a friend who pursued film in Hollywood years ago, and one time when Sherri With An I was much younger she went to visit her. Her friend had to work a lot, so she spent most of her time there on her own. She ended up getting a ticket to see Johnny Carson where she hit it off with a fellow audience member—unfortunately she didn’t give me his name. But she said she couldn’t believe how much they had in common. They were both tourists, both drove SUVs, both liked the same kind of music—that sort of thing.

When he realized she didn’t have much to do in town, he invited her to tour Universal Studios with him the following day. Oh, she was just so excited to be treated so special by such a nice man in Hollywood. She didn’t say whether or not he was handsome or charming, but I get the feeling he was a little bit of that and more.

She dressed in the best thing she packed—a little yellow sundress and some matching slippers. “The water is so soft out there, my hair was just perfect that day.” She looked so sharp that people were slowing down in traffic to get a good look at her, trying to see if she was somebody famous. “I’d spent my whole time there looking for celebrities, and then suddenly everybody was looking back at me like I was somebody. Really somebody. That’s how good I looked. I felt like a movie star.”

Her movie friend has since left Hollywood for the television stations of Atlanta, but they haven’t spoken in a few years despite how much closer they live now. Nothing happened, she said, they just grew apart. Just life. That’s how it goes.

Then she told me a movie was almost made in her house. Jett Williams grew up there, she said. “You oughta look up Hank Williams’s illegitimate daughter.” So I did. Her actual name is Antha Belle Jett, and I don’t know if she grew up in the house now occupied by Sherri With An I, but I do know she believes it’s true with every fiber of her being. Someone told her a long time ago that they wanted to make a movie about Jett’s life, and that Sherri With An I would make a lot of money if they decided to film in her house—a potential payday she still hopes for.

At that point a car pulled into her driveway, and the woman in the passenger seat gave a house key to Sherri With An I. They talked for probably twenty minutes about things I was trying not to hear—meanwhile, I snagged those few pieces of trash I’d initially left behind and awkwardly stared at my phone like the millennial I am. I considered waving goodbye to Sherri With An I, but decided that would be rude since she was in the middle of telling me a story.

When they finally drove off she told me they were liars and cheats. That’s when I learned a good bit about her family history—mostly things to do with her siblings trying to sell their parents’ old house without her permission and for far less than it was worth. She stepped in and stopped the sale from going through, and the buyer tried to sue her for neglecting to honor the contract. Something like that. But she said she had enough paperwork on her side to win the case.

Allegedly the woman dropping off the key was the buyer who tried to sue her, but I thought it odd considering how pleasant they were to each other. “That woman lied in front of a judge. Her husband is a preacher, and I’m sure he’s a God-fearing man, but he don’t know what kinda woman he’s married to.”

She picked back up where she left off, assuring me that she has Antha Belle Jett’s autobiography in the house. Apparently there’s a picture in that book of Jett as a kid playing in the yard in front of what she swears is the same front porch as hers, with the same metal decor and all. “You never know, one day you might be making a movie inside my house just right here.”

We soon said our goodbyes, nice to meet you, will be seeing you again soon. She went back inside her house, the house where Jett Williams grew up, the house where they want to make a movie one day. I walked on through the yard the city won’t take care of, past a van she can’t drive because of the fallen oak limb. I moved forward with picking up trash down by the railroad tracks and said a simple prayer for her.

I wish the nice man in Hollywood had a name. I wish she and her friend hadn’t grown apart. I want her to live in the house where Hank Williams’ illegitimate daughter grew up, and one day I hope they pay her a lot of money to shoot a movie there. I hope she wears sundresses and has perfect hair and always feels like everybody is looking at her like she’s somebody, really somebody. Because she is somebody, isn’t she? Yes, despite her overgrown yard and fallen limbs, she is so very somebody, and I want so many good things for her it hurts.

Not a week later I drove home after a long day away from it, and I found myself behind a van. It crossed the train tracks and quickly pulled into a driveway. I’d never seen a vehicle make a turn so suddenly after the tracks, and I wondered if Sherri With An I was having another key dropped off, another lawsuit, another dead parent. I rolled by slowly, ogling the situation, hoping this visitor wouldn’t bring her anymore troubles.

The van parked in the driveway and I saw that it was Sherri’s. That’s Sherri with a ‘I.’ The limb was no longer persecuting it, and she could drive again at last. Then I noticed the yard had been cut back a little off the road. It wasn’t completely cleared, but it was a start.

I couldn’t help but laugh. I drove on home with a grin on my face, because it looked like she finally got a couple of her prayers answered, after all.

Best,

CBM

Pluviophile

It’s storming as I write this.

The windows of my wood-paneled study are sprayed with trickling droplets, giving the room the cozy illusion of early winter haze. The water continuously drips from my roof in full, unsatisfied icicles. The distant trees and houses are grayed out beyond the sheets of falling water, separating me from every elsewhere.

(Elsewhere—now, there’s an idea.)

I am alone in this house of rain. Well, alone with the cats.

If you talk to me long enough I’ll eventually tell you rain is my favorite thing on the planet. Sure, there are lots of other things I enjoy too, like coffee, sleep, pretty girls, good music, smooth whiskey; but there’s just something about the falling of drops of water that speaks to me on the deepest level of my being.

Not the sink faucet, or even an awe-inspiring waterfall—none of that business. What I mean is the hose sprinkler in the yard, or the spray from a shower head. Anything, I reckon, that could form a rainbow. Drops falling. Millions of drops of water, all falling at once. I can’t tell you what that is or where it comes from, all I know is it’s a feeling I’ve never been able to accurately describe.

I used to say I would never write about rain. To me it’s the equivalent of trying to write about loss itself, whether it’s through love or death, that hollow emptiness that feels like it could never be filled with anything substantial enough to make a difference. To write about rain would ultimately lead me down a path of disappointment and heartache, because I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. It’s too much. I would fail.

But today I feel a little braver.

The feeling rain gives me is sweet like newfound love, but it’s also a deep yearning, like long lust. Sure, I can sit and watch a crackling fire with the best of them, but I don’t know too many people who would sit and watch the rain like I do. It could never rain for long enough, if you ask me.

When I was a kid that wasn’t the case. I used to have the most wretched fear of storms. I’d hear thunder and see those black clouds forming in the distance, and I’d be sick to my stomach for hours. Couldn’t tell you why. It’s not like I’d ever gone through a bad storm in my whole life, even with growing up on the Gulf Coast, a notable ditch in Hurricane Alley. The closest I’d come to experiencing destructive weather was watching big blockbuster movies like Twister.

The storms we experienced when I was young were so unimpressive my mom used to calm me down by telling me tales of storms past, which usually consisted of about two-and-a-half acres of pine trees twisted up like fifty giant Twizzlers, and Hurricane Frederick relocating her back porch to the front yard.

Nope, I’m completely storm-trauma free, but I was still scared silly at the thought of a bad one. But then, just like that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Out of nowhere. Instead of turning my stomach to knots, my heart would swell and I’d feel deep in my gut that particular longing that came with the surging of winds and sharp cracks of thunder.

I’d found a muse.

Something in me changed, and I grew up, or I grew up and something changed. Either way, I’m glad it happened. Because I’ve managed to find peace amidst chaos and at the same time learn a valuable lesson: storms can be beautiful if you let them be.

I have the distinct pleasure of living in the rainiest city in the country, but that really only applies to the amount of rainfall per year, not the consistency of precipitation—that award goes to Seattle. But either way you want to look at it, I could always stand to see a little more rainfall.

More rain means more growth, more lush vegetation and ripe fruit. More puddles to splash in. More cups of coffee, more stories read or written by the window. Even those big, scary storms that make you feel like you won’t make it out on the other side. Even those, because even the bad ones are okay in the end. They pass just like all the others. I promise.

Oh, love, don’t ever forget that all storms pass. Your trees might be twisted. Your back porch might be in the front yard. But the storm is over now, and the birds are beginning to sing again. The air is still humid, but the sun is back out, and you’re going to be just fine.

We both will be just fine.

Best,

CBM