Great Expectations (Part 3)

There was some upside to our situation.

First off, we had nine months, not nine minutes. There was time to breathe, time to think.

Secondly, we were alone. We were still kids, but not exactly. We didn't live with our parents or even near them. My roommates didn't say anything. They either slept through the home invasion or chalked it up as an argument. This was the space we needed to let the pieces settle before sorting through them.

In the meantime, life continued. We still had class to attend, exams to take. Bills to pay.

We confirmed the pregnancy, did the check-ups and brought home the prenatals. Now it was real. What were our options?

Parenting. I was struggling with my own life. It was going to take years to figure my own shit out. Throw a newborn on top of that and we both go under. Heather wasn't ready, either. She was 21 years old. Our relationship needed time to build, to become stable and healthy. It wasn't ready for a baby.

There was also the issue of the third party. I might not be the father. That was a wrinkle. Steve didn't know about this yet. We would eventually cross that bridge.

Could we raise a child? If we had to, we could feed and clothe him, send him to school, sure. But getting married, staying married, being happy... all of that looked choppy. We could be parents, but not the parents we wanted to be. Not good parents. We needed to figure out our own lives first. After that, get our relationship working. If we get to that point, we have something to share with a child. It was clear we weren't there.

So parenting was out.

And that's what made our next decision. Abortion was out. We supported a woman's right to choose. We were choosing not to. The answer came easy for both of us and, in that regard, we were lucky. We seemed to fall in step with our decisions, both landing on the same squares as we went along. Abortion was out, case closed.

Now what?

We didn't know anything about adoption. We had friends that had been adopted in the late 60s. They didn't know their birth parents and neither did their adoptive parents. All transactions were made through a third party. A birth mother placed her child with an agency and the agency placed the child with an adoptive family. Nobody knew anybody.

We weren't sure we could do that.

One thing had become clear, a factor that was guiding all our decisions. The health and well-being of this child was first and foremost. He was top priority. What was best for him? It was why we couldn't parent, why we couldn't abort. And it was why we couldn't drop him off at an adoption agency and hope for the best. We were out of options.

Until we met with an adoption case worker.

CLICK HERE for Great Expectations (Part 4)

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Great Expectations (Part 2)

We've all had those moments.

The moment you miss that last step. The panic rises. For a second, you're not sure you'll ever hit the ground. You just keep falling because this can't happen to me. It's surreal, overwhelming. All of that packed into the red pill and then down the hatch.

I was 22 years old. I was still going to school, sleeping on the floor, staying up too late and wondering where I might work that summer. I was still a kid. We both were. And we were huddled in the corner of a shit hole house, the quiet night shattered by her sobs.

My roommates didn't say a thing. Not then or in the morning. Midnight arguments were not the norm but they weren't that unusual, either. They probably heard the door crash open, heard the wailing and went right back to sleep. Despite walls as thick as the paneling, they didn't understand much. Unless they caught that one word.

Pregnant.

So now what?

This was unplanned, certainly. Not good timing, definitely. I was at a point where I wasn't 100% sure I could take care of myself. I was heading into depression. I had been for quite some time, just didn't have a label for it yet. I was frightened, confused, and aimless. School was about done and I had no idea what I wanted to do or why. Like many kids, that transition to adulthood can be long and winding. I was thoroughly lost.

So I lay in the blankets holding her, supporting her. Whatever my issues were at the moment, they took a backseat. It forced me to set them aside, stop focusing on myself and be there for her. In a way, it was a relief. I wasn't thinking of me and, as a result, stopped wandering around lost. I had a job to do.

It was grow up.

The storm eventually passed. Her violent sobbing settled. She was able to breathe. And then she told me. She had taken a pregnancy test because she was late and it turned out the price was right. But that wasn't the show stopper, the force that drove her across town in the middle of the night, the reason she was consolable.

I don't know if you're the father.

Bit of a left turn I didn't see coming. We weren't an exclusive couple. She had been with someone that month so there was a fork in the road. I was on one side and a guy named Steve was on the other. In the meantime, we had a big red pill to swallow.

After the words left her, the storm returned with all the guilt and shame and sorrow that one would expect. It was out there, she said it. It was real now. I wasn't angry, not even hurt. Maybe it was the depression that kept me from heading down that path, or that there was this person I loved in genuine, utter distress. Despite my feelings about it, I needed not to go that way and be right there. I could (and would) feel all the hurt and sorrow for myself at a later time, a tidy little mess I would eventually address many years later. But for now, there was this.

So we lay there. In the morning we'd figure out what to do. Two kids, barely in their twenties, with a baby eight months away.

Time to grow up.

CLICK HERE for Great Expectations (Part 3)

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Great Expectations (Part 1)

This story is a true story. It took 26 years to finish. To tell it, I need to start from the beginning.

It begins with a girl named Heather. A fair-skinned redhead that was a year behind me in middle school. We had never said a word to each other but I would see her in church, watch her as she approached communion and returned with her family. Attractive, sweet. A good girl.

We didn't hang out with the same crowds, so our paths rarely crossed. But in high school, we somehow ended up together. I don't remember how that happened, but it didn't last long. About two weeks. It was standard high school dating--hold hands a few times, make out and move on. She broke it off and I was bummed out and back to watching her take communion.

The end of it.

A few years later, we hooked up again. I was 19, she was 18. She had just broke up with her boyfriend and put the word out. She told her sister, who told my buddy, who told me that she was interested. I told him to tell her to tell her sister, I was too.

That's how it all started.

The very first date.

The next three years were bumpy as we navigated a relationship. They were the best of times with a lot of crying. We broke up, got back together, broke up, she moved to Florida, I went to college, she traveled Australia, I wrote letters, she sent pictures. It was reality TV. Without the TV.

My senior year in college is where this particular story begins.

At this point, she returned to the Midwest. She attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, which happened to be where I was. This was no coincidence. We both expected to get back together and then it didn't happen. It was more me than her. I wasn't feeling it, one of the many reasons we were hitting all those bumps.

She was upset that I was cool with not getting back together. It took some time, but eventually she adjusted and got her grove back. She was living in an apartment on the other side of town with roommates, parties, and the college experience. And, for the most part, without me.

It was the fall of 1989. Having declared a major late, I stayed an extra semester to finish undergrad. I ended up living at 511 for a third year--a shithole house ravaged by three years of parties. I was 22 years old and done with the college experience. It was time to grow up, become an adult, get a job, pay some bills and live happily ever after.

So far, it wasn't working out.

Heather and I were talking again but still seeing other people. She was getting on just fine. I was mostly isolating. Most of my longtime roommates had moved out because they graduated on time, so I spent Saturday nights in front of the television eating Ramen noodles. I'd call her on the weekends, sometimes hear the party in the background. Sometimes she'd come over and spend the night.

October, 1989, we took a rode trip to Eastern Illinois University to spend the weekend with her sister and my buddy--the same couple that hooked us up almost four years earlier. We were lying in a pile of blankets that Sunday morning, lazy and content. Things seemed to be good, we were heading in the right direction. It could work this time.

And then it happened.

It was later that week, in the middle of the night. I was sleeping in the back room of the 511 shithole on a makeshift bed of blankets. It was the middle of the week, classes were the next morning when my bedroom door swung open. The doorknob hit the wall. I shot up. It was dark back there. The pale light of an alarm clock illuminated someone. In the span of two seconds--from waking to seeing--the figure lunged.

Heather.

She was crying hysterically--a sweaty, tear-soaked, snotty mess. I couldn't make out a word. All I could do was hold her. It was 3:00 am. She had come all the way across town and crashed through our house. A word-smear of panic gushed from her, one syllable smashed into the next. Nothing made sense. Someone had died or got run over or blown up. And then a word rose out of the puddle and it all made sense.

Pregnant.

However, this wasn't what had her so upset.

CLICK HERE for Great Expectations (Part 2)

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The 5th Wave Giveaway

Giving it Away... The 5th Wave Trilogy by Rick Yancey is up for grabs. I'm talking The 5th Wave, The Infinite Sea and the forthcoming The Last Star to be released on May 24th. A chance to get them free and not just a download. The entire trilogy in hardback. Do you remember the last time you received hardback books in the mail? Me neither. The 5th Wave got my attention a while back on Goodreads. And then the movie came out and got mashed by critics. But don't let that fool you. It's a well-crafted story. Yancey writes a tight narrative that's powerful and quick, and his dialog is snappy and smooth. It's right in my wheelhouse. So why the soul-crushing movie reviews? Aliens attack and we defend... it just didn't translate to movie mode.  I still found it an original take on an old trope. If you haven't read this, you'll dig it. If you have read it, then win the third and final book in the trilogy when it's published on May 24th. Click below to enter the contest. GIVE ME A CHANCE!

Strike 3

I grew up playing sports.

Suppose this had a lot to do with a lack of social media in 70s. There was really nothing else to do. No phone to stare at, no twitter wars to engage or photos to post that would inevitably haunt my professional career.

We hauled wooden bats down to Katie's Corner--a vacant lot where we tossed slow-pitch baseballs at a dirt-patch home plate. The gravel alley was a home run and the neighbor's backyard was out of play. We did that all day, all summer. We kept stats, tracked home runs and batting average. We took breaks to trade baseball cards. I still have a shoe box of them that I swear is worth some money but probably not. Some days our games ended with a score of 110 to 95.

This was baseball.

It's easy to bask in nostalgia, to believe those were better days. They weren't no better than now, I suppose. We didn't start organized baseball until we were 9 years old. Summer leagues ended when we were 17. I lived and breathed the game, oiled the glove at night, roughed up baseballs in the morning. I remember my first aluminum bat, the TING it made. It hit two homeruns that day.

Best day ever.

Organized sports is a good deal. I believe that. Kids learn discipline, practice and hopefully sportsmanship. I think they're more likely to avoid trouble at an age when trouble is more likely to happen. Not a guarantee, I knew plenty of athletes that found it just the same.

We attempted to indoctrinate our kids. Like every van-toting family, it started with YMCA soccer. We stood on crabgrass sidelines and watched a gang of post-toddlers move a ball half their size around a mudhole while parents screamed non-stop. KICK IT. KICK IT. KICK IT. KICK THE BALL. KICK THE BALL. KICK THE BALL. KICK THE BALL.

That lasted one season.

Next, we signed our son up for baseball. This was in my wheelhouse, my bread and butter. I wanted him to have the same memories, throwing dogeared trading cards in a shoe box and pouring over box scores. What I didn't realize was that game had changed. People must've been starting their kids in the sport before they were walking. They had batting cages in their backyards, spent summers with coaches and sports camps. They perfected their swing and they were only 7 years old.

SEVEN.

This was machine pitch. That's where a batting machine serves as the pitcher. This works better than a seven year old booger-picker walking 20 batters in an inning. Most of the kids were like my son, bored out of their skull. Unless you're a sycophant, baseball is mind-numbing. Especially for a 7 year old. The first time one of these trained-since-birth, future MLB baseball All-Stars came to bat, I knew it.

The kid took the first pitch, watched it all the way into the catcher's mitt. This is unusual. Most of these kids swing like they're holding a fly swatter. This kid was timing it. It was the second pitch he drilled. Turned at hips. Followed through. Smashed a line drive into outer space. He rounded the bases and took a nap before one of the clover-picking outfielders got back.

Someone was going to get seriously hurt.

The kids in the third base area, technically they were third basemen sort of, stood with their arms at their sides. One of these days, they were going to catch a line drive from a mini-Albert Pujols with their lips. I never witnessed it, but I guarantee it was destined to happen.

My son finished the season because we made him. If he didn't want to play after that, that was okay. He didn't. And, to be honest, it was sort of awesome. In order to compete, we would have had to mortgage the house to travel the country.

My daughter ended up dancing. Then she played tennis. Then the violin. Saxophone. Lacrosse. She gets good grades, so we don't complain. My son found his passion skateboarding. No scholarship for that and probably a future of hip and knee replacements and lots of practice interacting with the police. Not how we planned it but nothing in parenting goes that way. As parents, we tend to take too much credit for their successes and too much blame for their failures.

And love them no matter what.

A Lot About Little

I peaked in graduate school.

My major adviser told me that. He said on graduation, I wouldn't get any smarter. That was it. After 7 years of college, my intelligence had peaked. I was 25. All the chemistry, all the research and statistics was still fresh. From that day forward, its color would pale in the unforgiving grind of time.

He was right.

I found my research journal from those days. It was 20+ years old, an old style notebook with faded blue lines and endless numbers and words scrawled in blue ink. I recognized the handwriting. It was mine. What I didn't recognize was anything it said. Not the math or the conclusions or one goddamn formula. There was even metrics.

Metrics!

It may as well have been another life, another person. Those days in the lab were some of the most gratifying. There was no social life. I drank my fill in undergraduate, crashed parties and closed just as many bars. I stopped drinking in grad school. Never saw the dank interior of one single club. Spent my mornings in the lab, afternoons in class and nights studying. I had my own desk in a big room with other grad students. Most of them had come from other countries. Stanley was from China. His name wasn't really Stanley, but that's what he used. Thailand was there. Japan and Kuwait. There were a couple guys from Pakistan, too. Those dudes seemed a little tense.

Han San Wook was South Korean. He and I had the same major adviser. A foreigner that spoke easily the best broken English in the room, he had something the others didn't. A damn fine sense of humor. While most the others only wanted the facts, San Wook laughed a lot. The night before an exam, I would find him sleeping on his desk in the morning. He would eat kimchi and laugh with his mouth open.

Super wide open.

I toured the USDA Vegetable Lab in Charleston today. That's where geniuses like my former classmates work for a living. Their published works were on the wall outside their labs. They were written in English but no one understood a word of it. Unlike me, these people didn't peek at graduation. They were still climbing. They likely have no idea how brilliant they are.

A professor that taught me Plant Membrane Transport (yeah, 14 weeks of the plant membrane, wrap your mind around that) was a former surfer. This guy was cool but so brilliant that he had no clue the rest of us were dummies. When the surf was flat, he said he'd read research journals and find errors in methods and materials. Weird shit like that. I'd stop by his office with a question and he'd answer with some kind of Einsteinian-level math like we were both on the same page. I would nod until he got tired and leave dumber than when I entered.

The aforementioned major adviser that informed me of my impending intellectual decline also told me I had arrived a fork. One path would lead me to know a lot about a little. The other would lead to knowing a little about a lot. At that moment, I was thinking Which one is easier? 

But I still geek out over research stuff, listening to the brilliant minds talk about plant breeding and development. Those people know a lot about a lot. This time I left a little smarter. I think.

I don't remember.

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Socket Greeny Has My Voice

Most of my books are available in audiobook, but none in my voice. Until now.

I recently decided to give one of my characters a read. I chose Socket because he was my first story and the character I felt most attached to. So I bought a microphone (Snowball) and set up a disturbing little studio in the back closet.

Click to download.

Despite blankets draped on the wall, my sound studio wasn't anything close to sound-proof. I read at night when the house was mostly quiet, pausing when a truck would pass nearby or my wife went to the bathroom.

Armed with Audible (free sound mixing software) and a few YouTube videos on correcting mistakes and cleaning up background noise in addition to compressing audio, I went about the business of reading a story.

It's harder than you might think.

I would run out of breath or swallow way too much. This in addition to a flood of mistakes. The mic picks up every tiny sound. I would tell my daughter not to flush the toilet or close a cabinet or think too loudly.

The software turned my voice into something more listenable than I thought possible. And since I knew the characters inside-out, I had an advantage of how to tell the story over another narrator--regardless how silky smooth or professional sounding, they can't know them like I know them.

In the end, I wasn't horrible.

For an extended sample, click below.

22 hours of story. 

Get it on Audible.com (HERE) for free with a credit (you get 2 credits for signing up).

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