Power Out Age

No one noticed the hair change, or the sea change, either in the house or with bodies of water. The moon shifted, that is really all the newspaper article said, the moon moved over just a bit, a million miles hairs breadth over, and the sea shifted. Nothing flooded, no lives were lost, just innocent as can be as if it were ready for a new experience, as if it were time to sell the house and move to the country to save lost animals, the moon moved and the the sea pulled up its waist straps, took a deep breath, stared longingly and affectionately up at the moon and moved a bit over to the side. There were some dry shore lines and solitary waves hung awkwardly, terrifyingly actually over a few coastal cities. But it wasn’t about to do anyone any harm, suppose it just got a little tired of always dealing with tides and at least partly wanted to hang in mid air for a while. Easy to understand, gravity really Is just one of those laws that everyone ones to break one way or another. That and those pesky speed limits.

I remember showing everyone the headline and pointing it out on the news, holding the paper and framing my finger pointing just so, catching the TV glow so as to indicate that my hair also had changed. Why yes, I imagined saying, I did, took several inches off and went with a whole new style, why not, I would say, as if under my breath, it seems everyone is trying out new things these days. But no one really took it in and the whole moon shifting thing didn’t really get the recognition, I thought it deserved. We moved on. Like with most families and households, we moved in cycles. (No, the lunar cycle pun also did not land, like Apollo 11, eh?  Sometimes my dad enjoys the puns and the conspiracy theories, but mostly not). 

It was always like that in my household, oh, everyone noticed everything but it was always difficult to know when personal comments would be made. That was just our tone. Once my brother got a wife out of a magazine, well, that was the joke, pretty sure he really ordered her online, she was from Russia, I think, though, she spoke with an overly affected accent, like Natasha from that spy show. Maybe he just married a graduate actor from NYU, or perhaps just someone who felt one day they wanted to speak with a mediocre Russian accent. Tides and time changes. Moons shift. 

But no one really said anything until the wedding when we all congratulated them both often, all the while completely ignoring cousin Lucy’s extra feet. She had got feet attached to her other feet, so she had what appeared to be two vestigial feet on top of other walking feet. She said it gave her height, but why not then just add more leg and keep just one set of feet.  I thought about that, she would say years later, massaging two toes from two different feet on the same side, But I kind of just liked the way this looks, makes it so I can wear more bell bottoms. Fair enough. There really isn’t always a whole lot of reasoning behind big changes. No one ever asked the moon why it wanted to change the way it did. Maybe someone did, but we never read it in the paper. 

I always thought my dad set the tone on the whole no responding thing. Yeah, that is a very trapped-in-the-partriarchy thing to say, and maybe I am so trapped in it, I don’t really know what it is. But every family always has that person to break the ice, that is kind of the metric by which caring happens. Everyone notices. We all see the moon arcing over Ocean City, preventing it from getting rain, like a cresting umbrella, but it seems obvious, too on the nose to mention it, like duh, how is the weather, well, not raining today.  Nice double feet. 

My dad kind of lost his way for a while there. Right about the time of the moon changing its life, so did my dad. He started avoiding work and spending more time at home. He would constantly buy new things and get new haircuts that sometimes we would mention and other times not, usually only after he would say something first. He never got extra feet which I am very happy about, especially happy when I brought home dates. Dates I really liked, I would say that to my dad when they were around, Very glad you don’t have extra feet, which made my dad laugh and made my date think I was just the right level of crazy for what I could manage. If I didn’t like the dates, i would show photos of my cousin. One of my dates, said his cousin did the same thing. Maybe it s a trend. Da, my brothers wife would say.  

Oh, and important side note, my brother and his wife stayed married forever. They are the happiest couple I know and her accent properly faded over time. She may be the best living actor ever. Sometimes I try to write in votes for the Tony’s hoping she gets an award for her performance. She achieved some next level performance art. Never hear back from the Tony’s, but even if she won an award, not sure I would comment on it. 

I learned this later. For some reason, most of us seem to only learn by doing, things have to happen to us before we learn much of anything. It is really hard to understand how much people change when they get older. Not the greying and the wearying and the pain, you just think and look at everything differently. Why you might even start commenting on extra feet the first time you see them, Hey bro, exactly how did you meet your wife. I think my dad was going through that, he just lost a lot of energy he had and shifted what he did have to other activities. He still did mostly all the same things, but he seemed smaller.  He had been demoted at work, but I actually think that was freeing, it wasn’t that he lost power, it just shifts position when you are older. Spreads out through your body in a different way and also spreads outwardly. It surrounds you. There I go sounding like the moon again, or my brothers wife, she became a psychiatrist. Your power goes out a bit and it hangs in the air around you. Hovers, breaking gravity like over hair spraying a new hairdo so that is shines perfectly in the TV glow. The hairspray that makes the room smell like a thin metal with lavender undertones.  

After dad got sick, I asked him about the power thing, cause by that point, it moved away from the outside of him and shifted throughout the room. Also, you know, I wasn’t going to change our family pattern and talk about the obvious changes in the room. Power, at least our personal power, is funny that way, it is like a teenager shadow, it just lingers near by and stays about, but just doesn’t want to be near us, doesn’t know enough to quite be of a solid substance. My dad was a funny man but in those days, he mainly enjoyed the laughter and was not much for making jokes.  I used to always tell by the moisture in his eyes when he was about to tell a joke. Laying below me, small, his legs bent in an L, and the blanket tucked over him to deny definition to his shape. The faint smell of lavender. He crusted his neck to the side and breathed a weary exhale, his eyes dry, but that dry that wants for moisture. He just smiled. A warm, tired, loving helpless and accepting smile. I held his hand and ran my finger through his hair with the other. My brother’s wife came in and lead us in a meditation session. I tried to get her not to open the door so wide, but she didn’t understand. I saw my dad’s power silently walk out into the hallway and take its first steps of adulthood. 

Everything just went dark after that.