The Buddy System

I have a sick buddy, Eisen, who peppered these columns with his antics back when we all played touch football on Sundays, a bunch of aging Peter Pans: Billable Bob, Millertime, Gallagher, Murph, Commie, Russ, Ulfie, Gloves, Rhymer and the rest.

I messaged Eisen the other day that every time I see Aaron Rodgers try to outrun a 320-pound blob, and failing, I think of him. Eisen was never very fleet, but he was a good lawyer. And a great buddy. And a Hall-of-Fame dad.

Of all the Halls of Fame, shouldn’t there at least be one for fathers? Moms too. Hey, Hallmark, seems like your kind of thing. Set something up. 

I nominate Eisen.

Best of all, Eisen could throw a football through a tight smile. His accurate passes would come within centimeters of the soft, outstretched hands of greedy suburban cornerbacks. That’s not nothin’. 

In his day, Eisen was the devilish Jesse James of touch football. Like Rodgers, he was always at his best in overtime, as our knees grew muddy and the winter sky turned dark.

I tell Eisen that I think of him every morning when I wake up. And he should think of me in those moments too.

I’m pretty much done with losing buddies, lost far too many in the past 15 years. Sometimes I think I’d rather die myself than lose one more old pal.

These days, my best pal is this strapping young lad, Smartacus — my son, my muse, the swaggering scion to almost nothing. 

At 23, Smartacus grows stronger as I grow slower and gentler. This daily transfer of strength and vigor — father to son — is the stuff of Greek legend and Netflix streamers.

Last week, we were storing his sister’s Christmas bin, a massive chunk of Tupperware the size of a VW bus. Rapunzel and her husband, Truck, have no room for this bin in the off-season, so they ask us to store it in the basement.

As one of the few folks in California with an actual basement, I feel obliged to oblige. To me, it’s as extraordinary as having a speakeasy, or a gun range, in my house. Yet, it’s a simple basement, with a workbench and some shelves for leftover paint. Back east, everybody has one.

Anyway, I can barely slide this Christmas bin across the garage floor, let alone lift it. The bin may as well be loaded with iron slag. Then Smartacus rolls in. He dead-lifts the big bin and carries it like a sack of goose down around the side of the house to the basement.

Smartacus is at that age where he’s prideful about his strength, and perhaps a little surprised. I’m at the age where I huff getting out of an arm chair.  

Between the two of us, we get all the Christmas bins sorted out — my daughter’s and mine.

Then I run him to the Burbank airport for the winter term. 

Back home, a bit of melancholy sets in. Always seemed a bit nonsensical that, in the darkest month, we rip down all the lights.

With Smartacus gone, the winter chill has found the floorboards. I make some tea, grace it with a bit of bourbon. To conserve heat, I snap shut the vents in my son’s bedroom and bath. 

White Fang is mad, for she saw Smartacus leave with me and not return. She thinks I forgot him somewhere — perhaps a hiking trail, maybe in the meat aisle at Target.

The rest of the day she refuses to even make eye contact.

“OK, be that way,” I tell her. 

What do our dogs think in these moments? Does a trail of concerns race through their heads, like compound sentences? Or do they think in flashes…in images…in remembered moments? 

When Smartacus disappears like this, is her thought process a series of animated cartoons, in which he rubs her belly till she smiles. In that case, I’d like to be a dog. Wouldn’t you? 

The house is so quiet now, at least till Suze visits in a day or two. With the house empty, there is no one to caption a Rams game with, no one to argue with over deposed dictators or the merits of the NIL.

Smartacus leaves, and then so does Christmas, in gray Tupperware bins we stack like bricks in the basement. Away goes the frankincense. Goodbye goes the myrrh. I’m already missing the scent of melting wax.

And then it hits me, in a flash, in an animated cartoon:

My son is the last ornament of the season, soaring off at 30,000 feet. 

Yep, soaring.