Nothing to it really, once everything was said and done.

With chaotic detritus from the recent move still littering areas of the new house (and my own psyche), we celebrated my fortieth birthday a bit early on Saturday night by escaping to my favorite restaurant, Tres Lobos.

No one took a picture, but I’m sure I was grinning like an idiot. I love Tres Lobos for their excellent Camarones ala Diabla (a dish so good I am unable to bring myself to order anything else on the menu) as well as the guy who roams between the tables on Fridays and Saturdays, singing the hell (and his heart) out of Mexican karaoke standards. Unfortunately, I forgot my video camera and was unable to record it when the singer (bribed by my father-in-law) came over to sing for my birthday! Alas.

You’ll just have to settle for this shot captured on my iPhone and take my word for it how awesome it all was.

The month of June showed up, wandered through and pointedly reminded me that (a) It wasn’t quite my birthday yet, and (b) I still had a lot of unpacking to do. Ninety-five percent of everything in the new house is squared away, of course. There are those boxes in the attic to organize, sure. And that old roll top desk isn’t going to take itself to the salvation army, no matter how much I beg it to.

But it’s really that little room in the basement where most of the trouble is — and by trouble, I mean books . . . boxes and boxes of them. They’re teetering everywhere, spilling out their contents like roadkill left in the tracks of the moving van. And unless I get them sorted out and put away, that little room in the basement won’t ever become an office where I can actually get some writing done.

I have a wishlist of things I need to get in order to make it a bit more homey, a bit more of a working space (a rug, some better lighting, a comfy chair) . . . but it’s really the boxes and boxes of books that are keeping it from being more than just extra storage in the basement.

I’ll get it there, eventually.

Saturday afternoon (before the evening’s festivities) I went to go see my daughter perform in her end of the year ballet program and ended up enjoying it much more than I expected to. Apart from the typical parade of positions and exercises, the company also performed a number of pieces and — to my surprise — I actually enjoyed them. A few of the older students were really quite good. I’m judging this based on (a) My lack of interest in (or enthusiasm for) ballet in general, and (b) How much I enjoyed watching them perform.

Best of all was a boy, maybe twelve years old, who completely, utterly, and obviously loved what he was doing so much, it just lit up his face and (by extension) the whole stage every time he was on. I tracked him down in the lobby afterwards and said “Listen kid, you don’t know me at all but I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your dancing. You were obviously having a lot of fun and that made it a lot of fun for the rest of us.” A little old lady overheard us and came up to tell him, in essence, the exact same thing.

And he just beamed like the sun, bright as anything.

I never quite understood the parents who absolutely forced their kids to do ballet or sports or theatre or music or whatever. They might say it’s to teach them discipline or expose them to the arts or show them ideas of teamwork and fair play, but more often than no, it seems like most of the kids don’t really want to be there. They’re enduring it, of course, because their parents are forcing them to do it.

That looks like a perfect recipe for aversion therapy to me.

I’m not saying that these things aren’t important. I’m just saying that your precious little offspring aren’t necessarily cut out to be ballerinas or a concert pianists or a champion quarterbacks — so lighten up, Santini . . . and let the kids have some fun every once in a while.

As a parent, I think it’s my role to light as many lamps as possible and then step back to see which ones draw my kids in, which ones kindle that same light within their eyes that I saw on that boy’s face this past weekend.

As a parent, that’s what makes me proud of my kids, seeing that light pouring out of them — whether or not they win the state championship or perform a flawless arabesque.

All of which is a roundabout way of blaming my mom and dad for all those boxes of books. They had things they wanted me to try out (piano lessons, freshman basketball) . . . but mostly, my parents influence is that they left books lying around everywhere. It seemed like everywhere you turned someone, everyone in the house was always reading something. But, of course, my parents never sat me down, forced a book into my hands, and said “Read, goddamnit.”

Books were stacked on the nightstand next to the beds, the shelves in the family room, carried in briefcases to work. I snuck them into church. We packed them up to go on vacation with us. They were everywhere.

That’s pretty much what my house looks like now. I’ve got forty years of books . . . and this birthday, my family happily added a few more to the stacks: Crowley and Steiner from my wife, vintage comics from my son, and an Amazon gift certificate from my parents that will almost certainly get spent on even more books and comics. All I have to do is find a place to put them all.

Also, I need to read them.

One of the things that hit me during this past move was not just how many books there are, but how many I’ve either not read in years or (gasp) never read at all. I’m going to need to remedy that, I think. As much as I love reading, I see no reason to hold books and comics hostage — especially if they’re not ones I plan on ever reading again (if at all).

Also, it’ll free up some space on the shelves. Which would be helpful as I am almost certainly going to need it.

At work on Monday, they sang Happy Birthday and there was a big chocolate cake with Batman on it. Yay.

The company I work for doesn’t allow people to work on their birthdays, so on Tuesday (my actual birthday, for those of you keeping track) I spent the day with my wife and had a wonderful time going out to breakfast and pushing the cart while she loaded it up with plants and flowers from the local nursery. Back home, I caught up on the overwhelming birthday wishes coming in from everyone online, read a bit from the Aleister Crowley biography that Keeley bought me, and then took a very very very long nap.

I woke up to more well wishes from the Internet and the smell of a fresh rhubarb pie baking downstairs. While my most excellent wife got a special birthday dinner started, I went off to collect the kids from various locations. My daughter brought a key lime pie to add to the mix, my son found some vintage comics for me, and my wonderful in-laws arrived. Together, we all demolished the beef stroganoff my wife had prepared.

And that, more or less, was that.

Not a bad way to spend your fortieth birthday, when you stop to think about it.

There’s a brief cameo here and there — fragments stolen from conversations we’ve hadover the years, hard-earned insights of his that I plagiarize from time to time — but not much more than that.

He shows up a lot in my dreams. A comforting presence, one of spiritual authority and support. That’s a welcome trait, dreaming or awake.

They say that your conception of God is formed by your relationship with your father.

I see God as an active, passionate presence in our lives. A wholly loving creator who desires complete and total reunion with His creation, who will settle for nothing less than that. He will do anything to get His arms around you, no matter what it takes.

Separated by time and distance — physical and ideological, I suppose — my father and I still talk without having to “manage” to do do, without having to make an effort.

We always talk, although perhaps not often enough.

We’ve always talked.

If there’s one thing I learned from him, it’s that our words are sometimes the only thing we have to keep us connected, to cut through the knotty problems, to heal the breaks between (and those within) people.

He’s funny, he’s kind, he’s infuriating, he’s honest, he’s well liked, he was a good son and a good father, and he’s a good friend.

I’m his son, to be sure, best I can be.

And today’s his birthday.

He saved me, plain and simple.

I was abandoned in a horribly lonely place, no chance of happiness.

But then he was there.

He protected me, focused me.

He brought me to life. At last.

We spent so much time together — before the divorce, before the ridiculous custody negotiations — I don’t think there was any part of any given day when he wasn’t there, right there, with me.

We went everywhere, did everything, together.

I have a stack of memories, hip deep…

…those first few moments, his dark eyes looking up as I told his mother “It’s Sam.”

…his first day, a thin August rain falling as he slept on my chest.

…so many sleepless nights, up pacing the floor with him, standing in front of the bookshelves and telling him about each of them, just to keep myself awake.

…early illness and missed days, little fevers and skittish daycare ladies, an extra day off from work, both of us together.

…checking on him, every night, sneaking in to make sure he was still breathing.

…sleeping in a playpen at the back of a theatre while I worked on my first commissioned playscript.

…the constant, daily fear that some horror would take him from me.

…bundled in rags, carrying him across a stage during a dress rehearsal of King Lear as I moped my way through my last stage role.

…sitting at the table, feeding his shreds of roasted chicken, wondering if he was going to leave enough for me to eat too.

…the strange girl on the street who called him ‘Leo’ and told me his aura was indigo.

…walking through the parking lot, marveling as he read off the letters that mark each space, already reading well ahead of his second birthday.

…sitting in his car seat, saying “More, more, more…” every time his favorite song was done. Elvis Costello, not Barney.

…the decision, early on, that I would never lie to him.

…sprawled out asleep in the middle of my bed, in a new house and a new city and a new state . . . while I unpacked and tried to sort through the chaos within and without.

…exploring this new place together, making discoveries, and little by little making it our own.

…his first day of school and how I cried.

…the discovery of a new family ritual: Friday Night Cartoons and Pizza.

…holding an alabaster egg in my hands and seeing a story take shape in my mind, a gift for him that he could keep forever.

…explaining to him that, no, Batman wasn’t a real person and what we were watching hadn’t actually happened.

…watching a cartoon together, crying with each other over the sadness of it all.

…a twin set of glass marbles that we carried, to stay connected to each other during difficult times.

…his care and enthusiasm over that sudden, unexpected little invader, his sister.

…his friends, those great boys with their carefree rapport and utter super coolness that I never knew at their age.

…his explosion, his abject sorrow when I told him about the Divorce.

…his trust, his complete faith in me that we would make it through this together.

…late nights watching scary movies, making popcorn and “those lime things”, staying up way too late for either of us.

…the realization two years ago that he was becoming, in his own way, an Artist . . . completely independent of anything or anyone else.

…shooting baskets this past summer, honestly enjoying basketball for the first time myself, all because of him.

…recognizing his generosity, his sensitivity as a small piece of myself but somehow far more holy than anything I could claim as my own.

…realizing as we drove home tonight that the girls in the car next to us were honking at him, for him, because of him.

…watching him grow, watching he become himself . . . knowing that one day soon I will be cheering him from far behind, once he outdistances me completely.

He was born today, my boy.

And he’s been my son and my friend ever since.

“It still seems like a strange way to make a living, sitting alone in a room for long periods of every day… I never go out looking for stories to tell; they grow inside me and become a weird compulsion. So, even though the story might change day to day, I know the characters really well, because I’ve carried them inside my head for years.”
– Paul Auster

Today’s his birthday, so buy yourself a present to celebrate.