So I was thinking, GS, since you're my main reader, about Neil Simon.
I read this article about him in the New Yorker. He's the writer I always wanted to be. Funny, simple, great one-liners. He wrote movies that I loved as a kid in the 70's. They always had these messed up families or people who were tragically stuck in some life they hated, but it wasn't really a bad life, it was just LIFE. And it was funny. And melancholy.
I had this melancholy heart, always hoping for the best, but expecting tragic results. Like, funny, but with a pang of sadness. Sadness isn't bad, I don't think. I think it's the syrup of life.
Anyway, I was reading all about Neil Simon and all he had written, and then I thought about my life and why hadn't I gone farther, produced more, published more, written more - and then I remembered the book of pictures I had given to the grammas for mother's day. A zillion pictures of the three kids I'm raising. Gorgeous, generally nice, innocent, sweet, loving, smart, nutritionally balanced, exercised and nurtured kids. I've been pouring my guts out into these guys. I saw the pictures, the only time of year I sit down to print out pictures, and I suddenly see what I've been every day, for the last year. Why I'm exhausted, and lucky. Oh yeah, look at these guys. That's what I've been doing.
It's nice to be Neil Simon. But it's easy to be a man. You never have to stop your life and completely refocus on the tiny people you bring into the world. You can focus on career - in fact, you better, if you want to be Neil Simon.
But these kids, man. They're better than anything I've ever written. They're complete. They give us gravity. Words are paltry. Everyone has access to words. But these three, they're the only ones I'm gonna get. I bathe in them. I'd be stupid not to. They're gold-paving my heart.
Someday I'll get back to the words. Or you know what, who cares about the words. I wish there were more kids.
