And so it's been ten years since I've started this blog, ten years since my world was shot to shit. I've been wracking my brain and twisting my heart for weeks, trying to figure out what could be momentous enough to write on such a day. Then I said...fuck it. There's nothing I could write on its own that would be important enough, so here are 19 random thoughts about Greg, of varying intensity and sentimentality.
1. Greg used to hide the Christmas cookies. He would keep them in his office, and Sharon or I (never Dillon) would have to come looking if we wanted something sweet. He was the only family member who could be trusted as the keeper of the cookies, while he broke his own circus animals in half, one pink and one white. Unless it was Christmas, then it was one green OR red and one white. For a man who struggled with addiction, he had a willpower I've never been able to muster on my own.
2. Hauling my Xmas boxes up from the garage this year, I found myself thinking, "Why the fuck are these boxes so heavy BOTH ways on the stairs?" They ought to be empty on the way back down, when the decorations are situated in my house for the season. So I decided to purge. And purge. And purge. God, how I love throwing shit away! Got me thinking about Greg and that Marie Kondo had nothing on him for method. I remember him going through all of his stuff in the only space that belonged entirely to him, his office, and how he explicitly said that he didn't want to leave anyone with a pile of crap to sort after he was dead. It's been ten years, and there's still a bunch of stuff I haven't been able to go through. Was he prescient, or just a minimalist? I'm grateful either way.
3. The eyebrow! Greg always had wild brows, but as he got older there was this one stubborn hair (I think it was in his left eyebrow) that would buck convention, and that he refused to trim or tame. A single hair would seriously stick out like 2 inches from his face. That one eyebrow hair could have been an isolated eccentricity, but it does make me wonder about Greg as an old man. He was completely vain about his appearance (luckily he was handsome) and it's hard to imagine how he would have aged - of course, I'll never know. Would he have become gross? Was the eyebrow an indicator that someday he would have started to refuse bathing, settle on a cookie paunch, blow his nose into his hands? Would there have come a time when I would have been embarrassed by his elderly habits? Is that a strange thing to even wonder about your dead dad?
4. Santa Claus. This is a story I know that I've told before, but it's one of my holiday favorites and so bears repeating. One year in the duplex, when I was little, I woke up on Christmas morning. Santa must have been in a hurry, because the cookies were crumbled, white shreds of tissue paper hung from the fireplace grate, and giant muddy boot tracks crisscrossed the carpet (the CARPET!). Sharon was so angry she could have spit, but I was entranced. Someone had made magic that night, and maybe he wasn't fat and beardy... but he probably did have a little too much bug juice (or so Sharon would have said).
5. Anyone who knows me, knows that my hair has been every color in nature (and some not natural at all) except for blue. Coloring my hair is one of my favorite things to do, and I have great memories of standing over a bathroom sink with my friend Nat as we shared a box of burgundy, or not so great memories of the distinct line between gypsy black waves and two full inches of brown roots. But my favorite hair color is, always has been, and always will be pink. The first time I had pink hair was because Greg gifted me with a visit to his own stylist, in Beverly Hills. As a teenager, I could have been dolloping my hair with random splotches of bleach and kool aid, but instead she spent HOURS combing tiny highlights through my ten thousand pounds of hair and covering those with the prettiest, glowiest shade of pink. Greg didn't ask why I wanted pink hair, he just accepted who I was and helped make it so that my adolescent hair was glamorous and not sad. I think of him every time my shade changes.
6. Between full moons tonight, I'm thinking about Greg walking the dogs. When he got sober, Greg would walk Queenie and later Lucy after dark, after the world went to sleep, and he would offer up gratitude. If Lucy is a "pound dog," then Queenie was truly our "reservoir dog" because that's where a friend found her before she came to live with us. We had always had cats before - Sharon wasn't exactly a pet person (just look at her now though!) but Big Max (Greg's mom) had loved animals absolutely and always. We got Queenie on a trial run after I promised to totally take care of her every need unto eternity. That lasted about a month. At the end of her life, it was Greg who lifted an arthritic Queenie up and down the back steps to do her business. It was Greg who struggled most when it was time to say goodbye. Dillon often references Queenie, side by side in heaven with Greg. I like to think of them still taking those night walks together, except now among the stars instead of below them. They move through black space with stars all around them, kind of like the opening scene of "It's a Wonderful Life."
7. Getting to hear my aunt sing in church today was beautiful. I was not baptized or raised with religion, and I never missed it. Then when I was a teenager, something about the romanticism of Mass got to me and I asked my dad to take me to church. We used to go to St Ambrose on Fountain sort of regularly, then on Easter and at Christmas, and then rarely. But when we first started going, the priest there was awesome. His sermons were thought-provoking and inspiring without being preachy. He dwelt in love rather than fear, and he was FUNNY. I always loved pressings hands with those around me at the end of the service and repeating, "Peace be with you." Then that guy got sent to minister in Las Vegas (which was probably fitting) and the next priest was Irish and judgy. That was pretty much the end of my attendance. But I still liked how my own family lived, with integrity if without religion. Singing in church still makes my heart glad, and I'm no longer leery about organized religion- I just chuck the parts that don't apply to me. I'm glad that was an experience I first enjoyed with my dad.
8. Impulsive dance party tonight! Greg considered himself to have excellent rhythm. Opening credits to TV shows were his specialty, but he could also slow dance with me riding his feet.
9. There was this guy who used to wash windows at the gas station at Beverly and Fairfax, and Greg would talk with him forever. I used to run up to that man I barely knew and hug him, because I was a kid and he was familiar and kind, and what did I know? But Greg never thought that was wrong. He recognized people living on the street as real people and he treated them that way, which sounds simple but happens rarely. He looked straight at the person he was engaging with and he always gave everyone money (as long as they didn't have better shoes than he did). I know it's easier to be that way when you're 6'3" and strong, but Greg never seemed threatened by another person's humanity. I'd like to be more like that.
10. Luna loved the smell of Greg's feet. I can't stand men's feet (thank God my first husband wore sneakers and never sandals) and Luna couldn't stand people in general, but she would wind herself around Greg's flip flops and lick his long, elegant toes (his words). When we lived in New York and Greg came to visit, for some reason he would sleep in the kitchen instead of the living room. We lived in a railroad apartment, and the kitchen held the front door. When I would creep out in the morning to go to work, Greg would be sleeping on a mattress dragged under the kitchen table with the fan roaring, and Luna would be perched on her hind legs like a squirrel, nose fluttering like a rabbit's as she crouched over his feet sticking out from under the table, patiently waiting for him to wake up.
11. Driving back from the airport after visiting the Midwest, the Beatles "Inner Light" comes on the stereo and I have an impulsive frantic seat dancing party - I'm home! I can see the ocean! How did Greg know that his wild child firstborn would need to be a California baby? Of course, his California was not my California. His California was measured in comedy clubs on Sunset and first run movies and palm trees in December and Samuel French and running into an Academy nominated actor on the night of the Oscars at the Beverly Connection Ralphs. My California is the one of Big Sur and ocean waves and Lost Coasts, but he knew. He knew.
12. Recently I was talking with some of my mama friends about letting their kids come into bed with them. They were maybe a little horrified that my parents had a strict rule, that I could only get into the parental bed after one of them had vacated it (I guess my parents had a lot to talk about in bed). Sharon would cuddle me up in my own bed at night, but she was the early riser so most often I would creep in with Greg on weekend mornings. The fan was still on, and we would drowsily talk about a someday lake house. He told stories about how the air would smell and how peace would sift the light, and I felt safest and warmest and full of dreams.
13. One of my favorite gifts I ever gave anyone was a poem. It was about shadowboxing, a glass bottle, and a cat. I wrote the lines and Cesar illustrated. We framed it and Greg hung it. He always encouraged my writing, even when it was unformed and sloppy and weird. He made me believe I have a voice.
14. Again in the car, this time driving back to LA and weeping and warbling along with Dolly Parton's "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Would Greg find this maudlin? He was not big on Christmas music to my memory, except for outliers like James Brown singing "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" or Frank Sinatra singing "Jingle Bells." Maybe it's hard to believe with his son belting along with Burl Ives, or his daughter popping like it's hawt to "Christmas in Hollis," but there was an exception. Greg always put his children to sleep with a song, and the song was always "Danny Boy" or "Athlone." Except in December, when the song was "Christmas in Killarney." I think there's a Bing Crosby version that they rarely play on the radio, but I will always hear it in Greg's voice, "The prettiest picture you've ever seen/ Is Christmas in Killarney/ with all of the folks at home." It's only in dreams that all of the folks are home, but what a lovely dream it is.
15. There was this hilarious anecdote when I was little, about Greg and Sharon living in an old house in Iowa, and the time a swarm of mice came out of a cabinet and Greg was swinging at them with a tennis racket, little mouse guts everywhere on white pants. That was until I moved to a 5th floor apartment in New York with a hoarder on the 4th floor. One night I was home alone (Cesar worked nights in a restaurant) and there was a mouse in the kitchen. But instead of scurrying, he swerved, slowly, and the effect was grotesque. Someone must have put down poison, but it wasn't me. I threw Luna into the kitchen and closed the door, whereupon she immediately scratched the door and whined, "This is not my fucking business, who do you think I am?" So I called Greg in a panic. He was by turns kind, sympathetic, and impatient. Finally he said, "Christ Max, I'm 3,000 miles away- what do you want me to DO? Deal with it!" So I grabbed the broom and, with a warrior cry, swept the confused and impaired mouse out the front door to the landing, and over the railing, and down five floors to his splatting death in the lobby. Greg was only a little impressed. When he came to visit a month or so later, he set over twenty traps. I had naively thought the same mouse was visiting over and over. We didn't have a mouse problem after that.
16. Walking past the cafeteria after school and the PEAK kids are rehearsing "Jingle Bell Rock" for their holiday program. When I was in elementary school, Greg videotaped all of my holiday programs and poetry recitals and assemblies. His favorite and oft-quoted line from the Simpsons was Homer whining, "How many grades does this school have?" at Springfield Elementary's own holiday program. Greg showed up for shit. He flew to Iowa when my cousin had pneumonia, and he went to people's plays that he hadn't worked with in years. He was a great writer of letters, to people who were grieving, and to people on their sober birthdays, and to people that he thought could use a word. Greg was PRESENT.
17. High Low Jick Jack Game. Greg's play "Being of Sound Mind" was about an Irish-American family coming together after the matriarch dies at Christmas, and there's a scene where they play Pitch. He was just a couple years older than I am now when it was produced. This is the first play of his that I remember being old enough to see in the theater (The Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks). I loved the story, the actors, and the production itself. When I was older, I loved holding book for actors in "End of the Watch" and counting the house for "Angel Feathers." Once, I got to read the stage directions for a reading at the Lost Studio. If there's a part of Greg's life with which I feel at once connected and disconnected, it's the theater world.
18. Greg Suddeth was a writer, every day of his adult life. He wrote on Christmas. He wrote on his birthday. He wrote on MY birthday. He wrote in a notepad on vacation. If the first decade of grieving was about coming to my own terms, I hope that the next decade will be coming to terms with his work. He wrote so many wonderful plays, and they need to be out there. I need to get them out there. Hopefully by now, I am ready to be an executor in more than name.
19. It's been one decade since Greg died, and that feels significant. If I start counting in decades now, I'll be dead before a tenth (decade) anniversary rolls around. I remember when I turned ten and my dad gave me 10 ten dollar bills, which was a big fucking deal in 1992. I don't know how much I'll keep writing here anymore, but I'm okay with that and I'm proud of what I've done. I still think of my dad multiple times every day, but not every thought warrants a public blast. I hope that my entire life I will continue have those thoughts, and I will always hear his name spoken aloud by others, and I will have big parties on St. Patrick's Day, and I will buy books, and I will love the movies, and I will see plays, and I will live richly and wholeheartedly every day until I die.
Thank you for reading, everyone.
Daddio, I just love you so. All the gratitude. All the everything.
