January 4: Belly Meat of a Big Fish, Feeling More Human, Love and Concern

The boy takes care of old Santiago . . . 

When the boy came back the old man was asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old man's shoulders. They were strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and the neck was still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen forward. His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many different shades by the sun. The old man's head was very old though and with his eyes closed there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his knees and the weight of his arm held it there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted.

The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep.

"Wake up old man," the boy said and put his hand on one of the old man's knees.

The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away. Then he smiled.

"What have you got?" he asked.

"Supper," said the boy. "We're going to have supper."

"I'm not very hungry."

"Come on and eat. You can't fish and not eat."

"I have," the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started to fold the blanket.

"Keep the blanket around you," the boy said. "You'll not fish without eating while I'm alive."

"Then live a long time and take care of yourself," the old man said. "What are we eating?"

"Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew."

The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the Terrace. The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.

"Who gave this to you?"

"Martin. The owner."

"I must thank him."

"I thanked him already," the boy said. "You don't need to thank him."

"I'll give him the belly meat of a big fish," the old man said. "Has he done this for us more than once?"

"I think so."

"I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us."

"He sent two beers."

"I like the beer in cans best."

"I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the bottles."

"That's very kind of you," the old man said. "Should we eat?"

"I've been asking you to," the boy told him gently. "I have not wished to open the container until you were ready."

"I'm ready now," the old man said. "I only needed time to wash."

Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road. I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and another blanket.

The boy knows that Santiago is an old man.  A proud man.  Santiago doesn't like to be beholden to anyone.  If a person gives him dinner and a beer, Santiago will repay him with the belly meat of a big fish.  Kindnesses must be acknowledged and returned in some way.  It seems that's the way Santiago has lived his life.

I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to taking care of myself, just like Old Santiago.  Even when I need help, it's difficult for me to ask for it.  More often than not, people simply recognize my struggles and offer a helping hand.  And I believe those acts of kindness could and should be repaid in some way.  My way, because I'm a poet, is often through words.  I acknowledge the love that family and friends show me through poems and essays and blog posts.

I am feeling more human today after five days of couch time.  I slept fairly well last night, with a minimum of coughing.  Woke up this morning with my throat only slightly sore.  I'm still freezing cold, and ibuprofen has been my constant companion since I contracted COVID.  My energy levels are still pretty low, as well.  However, I just took a shower, shaved, and ate a little bit of food.  My appetite is finally returning.

Since COVID struck my household last Thursday, I've been the recipient of so much love and concern.  Each of these quarantine days have started with at least five or six text messages from different friends and family checking to see how I'm feeling.  I'd like to think that it's because I'm such a wonderful, loving person.  In all truth, it's more likely that I simply surround myself with wonderful, loving people who do things like pick up groceries for my family, give us licorice to eat at Christmas, and recommend good movies to watch on Netflix.  (By the way, Love Hard on Netflix--one of the best new holiday movies I've seen this year.)

For everyone who has helped my family and me out these last five or six days, I owe you some homemade cookies or a poem or a dirty joke.  Take your pick.  IM me.  You all mean the world to me, and my life is incalculably richer because you're in it.

Saint Marty thinks that's a pretty good way to start out 2022--with gratitude.

January 3: Yellow Rice and Fish, Unfiltered Me, Officially COVID-Positive

The boy and Santiago share a moment of mutual fantasy . . . 

"What do you have to eat?" the boy asked.

"A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?"

"No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?"

"No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold."

"May I take the cast net?"

"Of course."

There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.

"Eighty-five is a lucky number," the old man said. "How would you like to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?"

"I'll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?"

"Yes. I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball."

The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it out from under the bed.

"Perico gave it to me at the bodega," he explained.

"I'll be back when I have the sardines. I'll keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you can tell me about the baseball."

"The Yankees cannot lose."

"But I fear the Indians of Cleveland."

"Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

"I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland."

"Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago."

"You study it and tell me when I come back."

"Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-five? Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day."

"We can do that," the boy said. "But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?"

"It could not happen twice. Do you think you can find an eighty-five?"

"I can order one."

"One sheet. That's two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?"

"That's easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half."

"I think perhaps I can too. But I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg."

"Keep warm old man," the boy said. "Remember we are in September."

"The month when the great fish come," the old man said. "Anyone can be a fisherman in May."

"I go now for the sardines," the boy said.

The boy knows that Santiago isn't telling him the truth about the cast net or the pot of yellow rice and fish.  It is a fiction shared between them--one that allows the old man to maintain his dignity and the boy to demonstrate his respect for Santiago.  A narrative that defines their relationship.

I think everybody does this every day of their lives.  We tell ourselves lies in order to make it from alarm clock to sleeping pill.  Okay, maybe I'm talking about myself and extrapolating, but isn't that the conceit we all buy into when we read blog posts or like Facebook posts.  We try to convince ourselves and friends and "friends" and family and an army of followers that we are living our best lives.  

If you don't believe me, try an experiment.  First, post of picture of yourself when you first wake up in the morning, before your first cup of coffee.  Don't photoshop the picture, and don't add some hyper-aware caption intended to make people laugh.  Just the picture without explanation.

Then, post a second picture after you have had your coffee, brushed your teeth, taken your shower, done your hair.  Add some saying like "Ready to face the day" or "Time to conquer the world."  

Wait and see which post gets the most response--unfiltered you or filtered you.  My guess is you will get more likes/thumbs ups/hearts/comments for the caffeinated, coifed, and captioned you.  In fact, I'd be willing to lay money on it.  Because we all want to believe that we have perfect lives with perfect jobs and spouses and significant others and children.  And we want everyone else to believe the same things about us.

That's why a lot of people send out Christmas letters that read like a David Letterman Top Ten list of Reasons Why My Life is Better Than Yours.  By the time I'm done reading a letter like that, I feel as if my existence is an episode of The Brady Bunch where Mr. and Mrs. Brady run a meth house and Alice is in charge of a human trafficking ring.  

Longtime readers of Saint Marty know that I rarely sugarcoat my life.  I try to be honest about myself.  Brutally honest, most of the time.  Therefore, I often sound depressed, afraid, frustrated, unsure, isolated, and alone. #UnfilteredMe

On the other hand, I also have kids who love me; a wife who has seen me through some of the worst times of my life; friends who text me when I'm sick to see how I'm doing; a really cute puppy; lots of great books on my bookshelf; and a subscription to Netflix.  #LuckiestPersonOnThePlanet

So, I'm going to conclude this post with a description of my unfiltered day.  I coughed my lungs out all last night.  Watched a Netflix documentary on Joan Didion this morning that was fantastic.  Coughed my lungs out some more.  Got officially tested and declared officially COVID-positive.  Cleaned at church for a couple hours (nobody around, fully masked the entire time).  Watched the movie Tick, Tick . . . Boom with my wife.  I'm tired.  Really tired.  But I probably won't sleep that well tonight (see earlier comments about coughing my lungs out).  I really miss my daughter, who has been staying at her boyfriend's parents' house since COVID struck home.

That's it, folks.  Saint Marty, naked and afraid.  But not really naked, and only slightly afraid.  Mostly just exhausted.

January 2: Too Lonely to See It, My Son, FotBKE

Santiago and the boy walk home . . . 

"Santiago," the boy said.

"Yes," the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.

"Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"

"No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."

"I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way."

"You bought me a beer," the old man said. "You are already a man."

"How old was I when you first took me in a boat?"

"Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?"

"I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me."

"Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?"

"I remember everything from when we first went together."

The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.

"If you were my boy I'd take you out and gamble," he said. "But you are your father's and your mother's and you are in a lucky boat."

"May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too."

"I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box."

"Let me get four fresh ones."

"One," the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.

"Two," the boy said.

"Two," the old man agreed. "You didn't steal them?"

"I would," the boy said. "But I bought these."

"Thank you," the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.

"Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.

"Where are you going?" the boy asked.

"Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light."

"I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said. "Then if you hook something truly big we can come to your aid."

"He does not like to work too far out."

"No," the boy said. "But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."

"Are his eyes that bad?"

"He is almost blind."

"It is strange," the old man said. "He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes."

"But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good."

"I am a strange old man."

"But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?"

"I think so. And there are many tricks."

"Let us take the stuff home," the boy said. "So I can get the cast net and go after the sardines."

They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.

They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough bud-shields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.

The boy loves Santiago, would do anything for him.  In these few paragraphs, you feel the closeness of their relationship.  Santiago watches out for the boy, wants him to succeed.  Never wants to hold the boy back.

This is going to be a post about my 13-year-old son.  The boy to my Santiago.  A few nights ago, I was on the couch in a COVID fog.  It was late.  I had been coughing and sneezing and feverish all day long.  My son came to me, stood six feet away, masked, and said, "I hope you feel better soon.  I love you."

My son has been through a lot these past two years.  COVID.  Depression.  Suicidal thoughts and actions.  Struggles with who he is.  The loss of his grandmother this past October.  Most adults would be raging alcoholics if they had to go through what my son's been experiencing these past 730 days.

Yet, he's come through it all.  Loving and sweet.  Writing poetry.  Caring for his sister more than she will ever know.  I'm not going to candy-coat things.  He still can be a handful at times.  Every once in a while, he'll get in his moods, just like everyone else.  He has those days where I must tread lightly as I enter his teenage boy inner sanctum.  Sometimes, he'll just stare at me until I leave.  Other times, he'll greet me like I've just returned home after serving three years overseas.

As a writer, I used to think that I wanted to be remembered by the books I've written.  The things I've published.  I wanted poems in the Norton Anthology.  Pulitzer Prizes on the wall.  A Nobel Prize on my bookshelf.  I wanted those initials after my name--"FNPW."  Famous Nobel Prize Winner.

Yet, I've come to realize that I was shooting too low.  Legacies of paper can degrade, be torn up or burned.  However, being a good father.  Being remembered as a good father.  That's going to last forever, from my kids to their kids to their kids' kids.

I've come to realize that I will be happy simply being Saint Marty, FotBKE.  Father of the Best Kids Ever.

January 1: Eighty-Four Days, Hell of a Two Years, 2022

The beginning of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . . . 

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money."

The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.

"No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."

"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks."

"I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted."

"It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him."

"I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal."

"He hasn't much faith."

"No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home."

"Why not?" the old man said. "Between fishermen."

They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.

When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.

I truly sympathize with Santiago this first day of 2022.  Eighty-four days of bad luck.  No fish.  First, accompanied by the boy, and then alone on an empty sea.  What I admire is Santiago's attitude.  He keeps fishing, day after day, returning empty-handed night after night.  Yet, he doesn't succumb to self pity or depression.  Ever.

It has been a hell of a two years.  I start 2022 in COVID quarantine.  I'm pretty sure I'm COVID positive.  My wife tested positive on December 30th.  I woke up on December 31st with a runny nose and sore throat.  During the day, I progressively felt worse.  Today, I'm speaking with a Kathleen Turner rasp.  I just went for a short walk with my puppy, and I am absolutely wiped out.  I haven't been able to get tested to confirm my diagnosis.  That will happen in a couple days.

I could feel sorry for myself.  I don't.  Omicron is spreading faster than measles in an anti-vaxxer convention.  For two years, I've avoided getting sick.  Time caught up with me.  Perhaps I let down my guard.  Made a stupid mistake.  Became a little cocky.  I'm fully vaccinated.  I've had my booster.  That is why I'm not in the hospital, waiting for a ventilator.  

Here's the thing.  On January 1, 2020, I said to myself that it was going to be a better year than 2019.  It wasn't.  This year, I have no expectations.  I'm like Santiago, returning after a long day of fishing.  I'm going to tiptoe into this New Year.  Approach 2022 like it's a fawn in my backyard that I don't want to startle.  I'll just sprinkle some feed corn on the ground.  

An offering for 2022 to come in, eat, and maybe bed down for a while against the shelter of Saint Marty's house.