PART I. DYLAN THE POETRY OF CAR MECHANICS There is a certain poetry in car mechanics. Part art, part meter and math, part discovery. Lifting the hood reveals a world I know-- not like the real world with its mixed messages and verbal land mines. Missing pieces and ones that don''t quite fit-- like me. When I''m inside an engine,fie everything makes sense. The motor sings. I can tune the sour notes-- fix the broken parts.
Less doctor than partner. I wish the world around me-- with its broken parts, with my broken parts-- was more like a car engine. THE PATH Attached to our house, like a sidecar to a chopper, is Pops''s Auto Shop. Behind the shop, through a bramble of underbrush, is a path rambling down to a small bend in a small creek. Under a red maple, there is a low rock where I perch and watch a great blue heron. He looks a bit like me-- too much leg and neck, not enough meat around the middle. He acts like me-- trying to blend so as to not be noticed. He moves through the world like me-- a solitary creature, with no flock, nor friend.
But he is graceful where I am not. I could watch him for hours. Sometimes do. I am patient and still. He is patient and still, too, standing as I sit. Striking only when he is certain his prey is assured. BIRDS First it was a place-- that path in the woods-- to explore or, on bad days, to escape. Along the way, along the years, I found the birds.
No one taught me to tell crow from grackle, identify sparrow and warbler, buteo and accipiter. There are books for that. My field guide is old and bears the marks of the library-- either cast aside for a newer version or lifted by my mother on a day she decided rulesf need not be followed. Either way, it is the best gift I ever received. This language of birds, shared first with friends. but remaining, still, long after the friends have flown. No one told me, perhaps no one knew, birds would bring me peace and fill the missing piece in me. TWITCHING British people call girls birds.
They call birdwatching twitching. Every part of me finds both these facts appropriately poetic. I am awkward-- branching-owlet-attempting-his-first-flight awkward. Even more so around girls. I want, so badly, to talk to them. The wanting makes the twitching worse. The twitching makes the wanting worse. I know girls are not birds, but poetry.
They move in metaphor and simile, leaving me without words. Alone, though, out in the forest behind the shop, I feel most myself, my unawkward self, filled with poetic words, and birds-- twitching. WHAT''S IN A NAME My mother named me Dylan even before I was born. Boy or girl, I was to be named for a poet. "It''s a boy," announced the nurse as he placed me into my mother''s arms. "Dylan," she whispered my name. "Dylan Thomas Jude." I dream of her sometimes.
But when I wake, she still isn''t here. I am like her in the corners of my mind. That same quiet sadness crouches in me. But it''s not large like it was in her. I name it, take its power. Because I have always known what it can become-- have seen it in her-- the welcomed turning from sadness to a gentle lightness, calm and fun and easy . and then and then unwound, untethered, unmoored wildness swirling, twisting into dark-- dragging her away, releasing her only for short visits home until it had completely used her up and she could no longer return. COUNSELOR Pops doesn''t talk about her-- his daughter, my mother.
In school, I see the counselor who does talk about her. I talk to the counselor about Pops. I do not talk to Pops about the counselor. If he knows I asked for help, he does not say. It is probably on his list of unmanly things anyway. But poetry, poetry is the real healer. POPS Pops is like an old car. A classic car.
He does not have the finesse of a newer model. His paint is chipped, bumper dented, exhaust not up to code. He takes the curves slow and the bumps hard. His hood complains loudly when lifted and he never stops talking about the good old days. "They don''t," he''ll tell you, proud of his gruff, rough edges, "make ''em like they used to." LONGING FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS In the good old days, according to Pops, men were men and kids knew their place. History-- like world wars and pride in the American way-- was taught in school. None of that safe space sissy snowflake stuff.
But I am sissy snowflake stuff. Most days I understand Pops is just being Pops. His bluster isn''t directed at me. But many nights I go to bed, wondering if I am included in "none of that." TOUGHEN ME UP Pops tried many ways many days to toughen me up with words loud, sharp, cruel. Some days boys don''t cry plays on repeat inside my head, drowning out even poetry. I try. I really try.
But if I think I''m fooling anyone, I just have to listen to the disappointment in his voice or the disapproval of my classmates to know, he has failed and I am still unmanly, un-toughened me. WHAT UNMANLY MEANS I choose to think unmanly means all the good things my mother saw in me. Curiosity. Gentleness. Poetry. But, to Pops and in school, I am reminded that the unmanly they see is not what I know, or who I know myself to be. KIN Kin means everything and nothing. It means you''re related by blood or love.
Kin can be a safe place or filled with trauma and drama and fear. Or all of those things side by side, all at once. What if I AM just like her? Better, I sometimes think, than like him. Pops. He keeps me safe, makes sure I am fed. But I can''t tell how it is we are kin. Grandfather grandson. There''s blood between us.
Probably love. But is there anything else?.