Pele's Promise to Benton.

Ward Robert Phelps Jr.

I didn't really know you.
I don't think I saw you for the last year and a half leading up to your death.
I have some little memories that are insignificant
in comparison to the accumulative great moments of your life.
I'll remember the way you said grace at our dinner table.
Your rich, low voice that seemed like it came from a rock quarry or cemetery.
(kind of Johnny Cash-ish in a way)
The tinge of Utah that still clung to it in accent.
The way you precisely articulated each somber word
as you blessed our meal, our coming together, and each of us individually.
How you always said grandpa-y things to me in salutations.
Like "Well, who's this pretty girl over here!?"
Or "Now aren't you the prettiest girl I ever saw!".
Even after I got my tongue pierced.
Then my nose and lip.
You still said I was a pretty girl,
even though I know you really didn't like that stuff.
I'll remember how a few times you got emotional when you said goodbye to me.
You told me not to "let those boys take advantage" of me.
How in the world you ever knew my dating history was beyond me.
But you did.

So, I have those memories of you.
Not much.
But I am so grateful for you to have raised a son like my dad.
I have one of the best dads in the entire world.
I've always appreciated my dad, I've always known that I was lucky,
but working in the line of work that I do now,
I see the effects of having bad moms and dads.
(obviously mental illness comes from many different factors, but. .)
Having great parents has always kept me grounded.
I have great role models for parenting, marriage, and compassion for people.
I want to grow up and be just like my parents.

Now, whether my dad grew up wanting to be a mirror image of you,
or whether he said that he wanted to do everything different from you,
I don't know.
As far as I can tell, my dad and you had/have very different ideas of parenting.
And either way, I feel that it all is directly influenced by you.
I am not a good reporter of family history,
but from what I gather,
you and my father had a very strained relationship.
My dad was a bad ass and you were a disciplinarian and religious man.
My dad fucked up a lot and you cut your losses early on.
So when my dad knocked some girl up and then married her,
you turned your back when he needed you support.
My dad isn't a man that holds grudges,
but I think it is something that really formed his outlook on who he would be.
My dad has never turned his back on me.
I know that man would drown trying to hold my head above water.
I know that man would burn himself alive trying to save me from the depths of hell.
Everything I've ever asked for,
Everything I have ever needed,
my dad has sacrificed and scrapped up what he could to provide for me.
I know you were a good man,
and that you provided a home for your family.
I know you tried and I know you did what you thought was right.
And I bet it was hard having a son like my dad.
But he turned out good.
You raised a good man.
I love him. =
Thank you Grandpa.
My life is full of love and happiness because of where I come from.

Snow

Right now I'm waiting for the snow to dry from my hair.
It's clumping my hair into tendrils and snakey curls.
I like the thought that my hair now has been styled by the snow,
And that it is wet with something that fell from the sky.
From a cloud.
My head is always in the clouds, now it just feels more official.

The snow is falling in such mass quantities that I can hear it.
It's not the silence that you know of snow as it falls at night.
It's the lightest sound.
As it lands, it sounds like glass breaking at a very quiet quiet volume.

To play in snow,
no matter what age,
brings you back to your childhood.
I have always felt like a young girl again when I have stomped around in it.
Or to toss a handful in the air for the wind to catch.
To catch a snowflake on your tongue.
There is just something about it.
Something fun and carefree.
My friend, who's a grown-up (?), walked outside
and caught the contagious liberation from maturity that snow brings.
He laughed and threw some handfuls into the air, at me,
slipped, skittered to a stop, kicked mounds of fluffy snow,
twirled, giggled, yelled, threw his hands into the air
and had the biggest grin on his face,
for a moment, completely in the moment,
and in a moment of a memory,
of what it is to be a young kid again.

I love things that can do that to me.

Him.

I want you.
I want you to want me.
I want to call you and talk to you.
I want to go to your house and fuck you.
But I want you to ask me to.
I want to know what you're doing.
It'd kill me, but I want to know if you're dating.
I want to know what you think of Bon Iver's new album that just came out.
We never listened to Bon Iver together,
But I'll always think of you when I listen to it alone.
I miss you.
I wished you'd miss me too.

Pele.

My cat stares at me while I go to the bathroom.
Now I stare back.

The Olden Days

So, as I was bouncing around in my truck on the way home,
riding out all the potholes and monster gullies forming on 94;
I wondered, who fixed the roads in the olden days?
I mean, back in the covered-wagon-lead-by-horses days.
Laura Ingalls Wilder era.
Haha. . .my history references amaze me. . *sigh*
But anyway,
I'm wondering who fixed the dirt roads when they would get deep holes
or suffer from erosion and what not.
I mean, come on, you played Oregon Trail!
Broken wagon axel, wagon wheel, broken wagon tongue?
I remember playing the game and thinking that it was a sucky inconvience,
but to go through that in real life?
I wonder if it was common belief that it was shitty to run into a giant hole
and that if and when any of the wagon folk came upon a big nasty hole,
if maybe they all got out and shovled some dirt into the hole
and packed it down to even it out.
Because they know that it's crappy, so they are trying to be thoughtful
and mindful travelers.
Like maybe that was a rule of the road back then,
because if everyone did their part, the roads would be all maintained.
I wonder.