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Throat Punch Essays

Thirteen

Serge Bielanko

Jan 21, 2022

You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
- Christopher Robin

In the kitchen last night, as the snow fell outside and the world- our world/ local and condensed- had slipped into that rarified ethereal state of slow winter evening that comes along with storms that strand you. Arle sipped her can of beer and I sipped my little glass of red wine and we both listened attentively to my daughter, Violet, speak of things that move her.

It isn’t every night we get to do that. Violet is her last few days of 12 and her life has gone from being played out so much on tiny stages in front of me (kitchen/ living room/ in the car/ etc) to more distant theaters that have locked me out. Places like her bedroom and her school and over at her mom’s house in the basement where she has her own little private getaway. Up in her head, in the music she listens to… her fat workman headphones staying cradled upon her skull even when she’s talking to me or pretending to listen.

But last night for whatever reason, we ended up lucky. And now here we were, standing in the candlelight of a Sunday evening with no school tomorrow, boys on the Nintendo, and the quaint vibe of the blustery snow outside this house, this home of ours: all Christmas lights and cranked up oil-heat.

She was talking, passionately, about the term pansexual and what it means and why she identifies as such. I talked at times, much in the manner that a 50-year-old white dad might be expected to talk when his daughter is exposing the hypocrisies and big hate that really do define the American experience for a lot more people than anyone seems ready to admit. I asked questions I thought made sense, but she’d look at me with her twisted up frown and sigh a sigh that, make no mistake about it, means Please STFU, Dad, and I would slink back a bit. Dejected. Feeling old and lost. Feeling uncertain about my role in any of this or how to have her make me an ally or whatever new fresh blast of confusion kept hurdling down my alleyway like city wind: relentless and punishing.

Which, of course, led me at times to feeling stupid. Uneducated. Not hip at all. Blown to smithereens by a roadside bomb made out of sharp mangled slivers of Reddit and Twitter, my limbs scattered all over the room/ my brains kicked out across the snow-wet dirty linoleum floor like dog crap tracked in from the yard. The ways in which perfectly respectable older white dudes find themselves seething beneath the surface aren’t that hard to recognize if you just look closely through the lens of practically anyone except a perfectly respectable older white dude. The alienation starts with not understanding. And the not understanding starts with the not admitting the not understanding. And the not admitting the not understanding starts with the strange, deeply embedded belief that the way things have been perceived by you (me) up until now are the way, more or less, that they are. That they have shaken out. That they ought to remain too, because what’s the damn point of moving so radically hard in new directions when it’s going to confuse the hell out of all the perfectly respectable older white dudes and then what?

Civil War, that’s what!

And so, somehow, during the conversation, which mostly consisted of Violet schooling me and- to a much lesser degree Arle (who is hipper)- I managed to step away from myself eventually and just let my daughter speak.

I tried coming up with questions. I tried coming up with examples. I tried, probably/ I guess, fucking mansplaining the meaning of the word pansexual to a young woman trying to introduce it to me in a beautiful sort of light. As quiet-lately daughters sometimes do on certain rare nights when the Wolf Moon is lurking above the storm which is hurling wind and snow at the village in the night.

It was an unsteady voyage at times, the waves beneath us swaying me/ sloshing me/ sloshing me up against the glass walls of my cool little wine glass that the kids all gave me for Christmas. Yet I kept recognizing the tones of awe or the tones of question in Arle’s voice whenever she was asking Violet something. Awe when what V was saying was moving her, making her think or feel or both at once. But tones of question when what Violet was saying might have seemed somewhat misinformed, or at least worthy of a double-back look at the source, at the thread or the conversation or the YouTube video where the original notion had begun to take shape.

At one point, me chiming in again with what I thought was a worthwhile inquiry, made Violet stop in her tracks and in the moment when she was glaring at me, uncertain if I was messing with her or if I was understanding her/ if I was on her side or if I was chomping at the bit to just explode all over the room with my perfectly respectable older white dudeness: angry/ embarrassed/ desperate to control/ clawing at the inside of the coffin/ buried alive by my own stupidity/ the air hissing out of the American flag balloon like it ought to and like it will, in time, you can be sure.

I watched her watching me: the tense moment hanging in the air: me swishing Rioja around in my gob like a challenging outlaw: her searching with her hazel eyes: her focused radar: her full loving heart lifting the dark-ass world up with two strong hands and moving it toward a place out in the sun.

I smiled at her.

Let her know that I’m dumb. That I want to be smarter. That I want to be whatever I can possibly be just to be a soldier in her army. A guardian of her views. A protector of her courage.

But then I thought about all of that too and it hit me in the chest.

Bullshit again.

She needs me in ways but not the ways I need her to need me.

She doesn’t need me to protect her so much, man.

She just needs me to shut my damn mouth for once and LISTEN.

LISTen.

LIsten.

Listen.

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_____

When I first held her in my arms in that Salt Lake City hospital, years ago, I remember looking out at the dreary day, just lame smears of sunlight gauzing through that winter sky of thickening clouds, and I remember all of the life forces I had never even been aware of for even a moment up until then all come rushing into me at once. I trembled with the majesty, as any parent does that first time, but the thing is, I still tremble. I’m still trembling. Not so much in the ways of grandiose language/ the poet shaking his sorry head as he looks around for the ways to bottle that real ship three miles off the beach/ but more in the way of the confused jester bouncing off the castle walls as the sound of the enemy comes round the corner down the hall.

Doomed, he mutters, and yet he tries to hide anyway.

Under the Queens table. Shaking like a frightened child. Clanging armor. Fierce loud voices. Heavy footsteps. HERE! Then fear floods the system and the sword brings the dark.

To serve her, how?

How might I even begin to do this, I remember thinking to myself. This tiny being, this star fallen from the sky, how could it be for me? How can I be the man? How can I stand in her eyes and never falter and never waver and never let her down but rather die for her in the name of anything and everything.

Just say the word, Violet.

My death would be nothing but reward.

But the years have proven that it isn’t that easy. Being a parent, being a dad, I spend eternities looking for a sword to fall on but there’s nothing, man. Just weak ass spoons and twigs and crayons and so far I can’t even find the man to slay me in the name of righteous love let alone the reason I need to die.

Pompous and overblown, I walk the wilderness alone, most days and nights, looking around for definition, for meaning in my being her dad. But all I find are my own worn out tracks on the trail. I’ve been down this way before/ I’m moving in faded circles while she’s always rushing forward and never looking back.

The trick, and I could be wrong, but the trick is, I think: to begin to accept the fact that I’ve been lying to myself. I’ve been telling myself that I need to be there for her when in full fucking reality, dude, I think maybe it’s the opposite.

I think I need her more than she needs me.

I see it in her eyes, electrified and raw. I sense it in her yearning for privacy, in the way she wanders from my presence now without so much as a word. And I can hear it in her pacing footsteps, up in her room/ music in her head/ her hands grabbing at the air in front of her face/ at the bolts of energy that only she can see and grasp, each an idea/ each a masterpiece of artful discovery that she collects and stores in spring houses she hides behind the bluest skies.

The importance of a man, it turns out, isn’t his endless supply of wisdom and gentle knowing smiles, for his growing daughter. That is what they try to sell you, try to make you believe in the movies and in the greeting cards and whatever. The importance of a man, of a dad, for a kid, in this case, for Violet, is to control your bottomless needy ego in the face of everything you’ve witnessed thus far.

Man is not king.

Father doesn’t know best.

And Violet is chasing something she needs to catch all by herself.

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When she was 5, Violet’s preschool teacher sent us an email that said it might be worth getting her observed to see if she happens to fall anywhere on the autistic spectrum. It was a surprise but it wasn’t. With no knowledge whatsoever of autism up until then, still, it wasn’t out of left field that maybe there was something to what the woman was gently suggesting.

So she was observed and the Dr was a good one and she was sweet and educated and had so many credentials that it was kind of wonderful putting your sweet little girl’s world in the hands of someone who seemed trustworthy.

Because, as you might imagine if you’ve never been there, trusting someone in situations where the galaxy you travel from now on is at stake is everything.

And so it was that Violet got her galaxy. An autistic kid/ Asperger’s Syndrome. High-functioning. We took her to lunch at her favorite Chinese buffet place to try to explain to her what we had discovered. She handled it so well. A few questions between egg roll chomps.

A 5-year-old kid trying to wrap her miraculous mind around this regular world, two regular parents trying to catch her eye/ understand what she’s feeling… what she’s thinking… how she might fare in the years to come.

If only I had known back then what I know now.

The coming years would be defined by my struggle way more than my daughter’s. Violet goes to regular school, has insanely strong beliefs in the righteous equality of all people, and loves the living shit out of several kinds of ice cream, mostly this one Blue Bunny one called Peanut Butter Party.

Fuck.

I honestly don’t know where to begin.

Violet isn’t someone who needs me to lift her up. She is already a better/ cooler/ smarter human being than I ever will be and her being autistic may or may not have something to do with that, but I just don’t know.

All I know is that she spun me out in the kitchen the other night. Took my hand and danced me down across the floor through a hail of emotion and feeling and explanation and heart until she spun me off again, out into the cheap seats, while she moved back out onto the floor.

I went to bed pissed off. I felt like I didn’t understand what had just happened. Why didn’t I know anything about this pansexual thing or the kids that are moving it forward into a world where it never before even existed except maybe in the long dark shadows. I lay on my pillow and bitched at Arle about things because I was so scared I might lose my daughter to a world I haven’t caught up to yet. ‘

But this morning, re-energized and feeling alive, I caught my breath and thought it over. What life force I experienced last night, you know? What dad doesn’t dream of standing in the kitchen and listening to his own daughter use her mind and her words to take him on a tremendous journey he never saw coming?

Maybe some don’t, I guess.

Fucking idiots.

Give your daughters back.

Then go find a sword and eat it, hoss.

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Violet Avelaine Bielanko turns 13 this Friday, January 21st, the day you’ll be getting this one in the mail. I have been thinking about writing this one for years now, to be able to begin to try and write about the coolest thing that has ever happened to me in a way that might open certain honesty gates for me as well.

My truth, I will never allow it to outshine one of my kids’ truths or one of my step-kids’ truths or one of my wife’s truths either. It has taken me a long time to understand that the very nature of honoring someone you love’s truth is that you can never fully comprehend it except through the filters and lenses of your own.

Now, that might sound like a lot of fancy snake piss to you, and I get that, but let me try a little harder in the name of everything that matters to me, okay?

There is no ignoring my own truth, my own version of this life I’m living in this particular world. It is the heaviest one I will ever know and I cannot put it down no matter how hard I try. And trust me, across the years now I have tried in vain to lay it down every way I could think of short of jumping off the big cliffs out over Interstate 80/ eastbound lanes/ between the Lock Haven exit and the Loganton one.

But having kids has tempered me, over time, until I am beginning to see the light as I think maybe it is supposed to be seen by parents in due time. Hopefully before the deathbed thing is being played out, but sadly, I think that’s when it often goes down. And the light reveals this to me, I think/ I believe. The love you have for your own child should never ever be smashed or tainted or cursed or shifted because your own truth got in the way.

In order to love a child from birth and until death (yours or theirs), you simply have to lay your truth aside. Your ego aside. Your pain aside. Your godawful neediness aside. Your warped sense of civility aside. Your churchy beliefs aside. Your God aside. Your Devil aside. Your money aside. Your gossip aside. Your tears aside. Your stagnant social views aside. Your own experience aside. Your fear of death aside. Your guilt tripping bullshit aside. Your incessant pandering aside. Your illness aside. Your politics aside. Your love affairs aside. Your own parents aside. Your deep regret aside. Your unconscious hatred aside. Your veiled racism aside. Your spectacular inability to open your mind aside. Your pets aside. Your house aside. Your neighbors aside. Your cancer aside. Your brain tumor aside. Your floundering pancreas and your failing lungs and your slow sad brain and your skipping heart and your dying soul aside.

Aside.

A-mother-fucking-side.

Before it’s too late.

Lay it all aside and just love everything about them.

Fell the old daggers turn to jelly in your ribs.

Let the day end better than it began.

It’s hard, this being a parent.

It’s damn near impossible.

The way you’re doing it, anyway.

The way I’m doing it anyway.

Take the filthy pile of bones you’ve been keeping under the bed now.

And lay them all aside.

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You know, I’ve been listening to Big Star’s song Thirteen the last couple weeks. And truth is, I have waited to listen to it in this context for a long time now, with a daughter turning that age. I ride down the country roads and I play it on my Bluetooth speaker over and over and over again. The album version. No live versions. No damn covers of it. The album version off of #1 Record.

It is an epically powerful work of art, of course. Look, if you happen to not know the song: that is fine. Go listen to it after you read this though, okay? Do me that favor and the favor will be returned to you when you hear it, I swear.

It is, I’d say, the very best song ever written about being a teenage kid in America. It’s raw and wide open and it has a depth of soul that few could ever muster up. The words are few/ but they are more than enough. Alex Chilton wrote it, sings it, it is his forever; even in death, Chilton is a teenage boy now when this one plays; a confused wide-eyed teenage kid, vulnerable as hell, and we who know, well, we love him so much for it. Writing like that doesn’t come along very often. Melodies like that only exist in dreams mostly. So the song, as a singular stand-alone piece of pop culture is something very, very special.

But even beyond all that, beyond its original Earthly purpose as a cut on an album recorded the year that I was born, the song has other lives to live. And as a dad thinking about his daughter’s 13th birthday coming up, I find myself coming at and into the song in a way I will likely never be able to access again after my reality washes away the 5 coming 13’s of my kids lives.

And so, yeah. Suddenly, I am filled with wonder.

What will 13 mean for Violet, the first of mine to reach that age? What will the days to come bring her way? I dare not guess/ it ain’t my job to do that. Or at least that doesn’t feel right to me. Nor should I start crowbarring my wish list for her out into the ether either, I suppose.

I mean, speaking from the heart: I want it all to be her. I want it all to be her dreams/ her whispers at the stars/ her tears when they come. I don’t know. I’m scared for her. And thrilled. And unsure but it’s going to be hard and magic and all of it and I just hope she remembers she can grab my arm any old morning, any old evening.

Grab my arm and just look at me for a second and I will do my best to understand and to not say anything if she doesn’t need me to. I’m learning to save space and that maybe that’s enough.

Won't you tell me what you're thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it's so, well, let me know
If it's no, well, I can go
I won't make you, ooh-ooh

Somebody somewhere out there in the world tonight, they’re gonna be the one that says those kind of lines to Violet someday somewhere when I’m not around. Or maybe it will be her doing the saying.

It chills me/ midnight stars up my spine. There is so much life to come for her, for my daughter. It’s beyond comprehension. It’s radiating at me from a future I may never even know and you know what? I flat-out love that notion.

When it comes to her, the mystery of everything just floors my ass.

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Happy Birthday, Violet.

I didn’t know what to get you, so I got you this. I love you. We love you. Sorry for the cringe factor here. It’s pretty high, huh? Ha. Oh well.

Anyways, here you go.

Walk me out?

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I bugged Violet a lot about what she might want for her 13th birthday but she never really tells me much. I kind of like it too. I annoy her with my bullshit, shooting my prison spotlights/ my tiny questions about, do you want some books or do you want some colored pencils or do you want a gift card for the Mexican food joint that you like or do you want another The Fox and the Hound t-shirt or did I already get you too many of those for Christmas because I couldn’t figure out what the fuck else to get you, kiddo?!!!/ shooting my true loving prison spotlights on this daughter of mine as she comes barreling through the kitchen with a hurried gait on her way to some kind of cool fridge drink/ or on her way out the back door/ through the summer kitchen/ out into the outside where the fresh air shoots down off the old Appalachians at the edge of town/ shoots down off craggy rock ledges up there where the softball-thick rattlesnakes sleep/ where they dream of mice in a world so separate from ours/ the fresh air down through the forest/ off the backs of mosses and chipmunks/ into the flicking ears of whitetail deer/ straight into the black ear holes like portals to a different dimension/ and then swirling around their lovely deer brains/ just to come shooting back out their wet black noses with a high-pitched huff and then off again/ skipping down out of the woods like a phantom or a demon/ out into the same daylight that Violet is headed for as she passes the trampoline in our yard/ the fresh air bouncing down across the barren cornfields on the hill/ through the backyards of the Trumpers and the Biden people/ through the garages of the Little League coaches/ off the tops of the heads of the cheerleaders walking their pit bulls and their tiny schnauzer dogs/ jumping over the town dogs shitting on the dead grass/ sunshine breaking through the clouds/ this blast of fresh air/ you’re cheering for it now/ quietly/ in your head/ in your chest/ GO! GO! GO!/ you can see it now/ where I’m headed/ where we are going here/ Violet hitting play on the song on her phone on Spotify and the music kicking in as I watch her from the back window and the fresh air comes round the corner of the brick church like a runaway muscle car or some punk kid on a bike or a deer lost in town or a ghost just flying fast for fun/ Violet raising her hands to the air/ the music filling her head/ filling her body/ filling her spirit and her soul and her blood and her organs and her smile breaking out like a kid’s face through plastic wrap and the blast of fresh air balls itself up into a gulp just as my daughter raises her fingers to the wind around her face and snaps them in time to the first castanets in the chorus of a world unfolding beneath her feet and just for her/ closes her eyes/ her heartstring eyes/ oh, her fluttering heart/ the song becomes her/ as the gulp of mountain wind puts its head down and flies straight into her mouth and into her throat and down into the gentle puffing of her dark, dark lungs like a tiny plane roaring down into the wide open black of a cave face on the mountain/ as she lifts her cheeks to the afternoon while the tender gaze of the sparkling universe falls upon her like dragons in all the trees.

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