“Damn it,” I threw the string of lights down in frustration. They were hard enough to untangle with two good arms, so when both were bruised to hell and back it was pure torture. With the garage door open, the December wind blew in full force, whipping the strings out of my hands as I worked.
My Dad looked up from the wooden Santa he was staking in the front yard. He finished nailing it down then made his way over to me.
He didn’t say a word about my use of language but handed me the small section of lights I had managed to untangle. “It’s easier with two people,” he said. “I’ll start from this end and you keep your end untangled.”
“Ok, I can probably manage that.”
“Good. I can call Mac to help me string them up in a little bit. All he’s managed to do the last couple of days is drive your mother crazy. I’m sure she’ll be glad to bring him over and help him work off all that energy.”
“What’s he been up to?”
“He wants to move to California, be an actor. We just don’t see a stable career path in that.”
“But you can’t really tell him no because you let us do music.”
“Exactly. But you guys were so driven, we couldn’t have stopped you. And you practiced for hours without us telling you to. Mac thinks that he can just walk into an audition, if he even gets one, read the script at first sight and get a role in a major movie.”
“I see. Well, we have connections. We can set him up with coaches and get him a couple of auditions at least.”
“No, he doesn’t want that. He wants to make his own way.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t get anywhere without knowing the right people. If Lironi had never heard us sing, we would probably still be in a garage.”
I paused. We both looked at our surroundings and burst out laughing.
“So, even after selling 13 million records, you just end up right back in a garage. There is a powerful life lesson in there somewhere. Maybe I’ll talk to Mac.”
“How would that sound coming from you?”
“If acting is truly his dream, his calling, I would never discourage him from that. But he has to have a reality check for the hard work. He was too young to remember anything but us being adored by throngs of screaming girls. He didn’t see all the hard work, all the playing parking lots, how hard we took each rejection letter. He didn’t see that even after we were famous we had to work that much harder just to stay relevant, then all that hard work being relegated to nothing more than a byline and a skit on SNL. He has to realize that for everyone but our few thousand fan club members, we were a one hit wonder, a flash in the pan that lost success as soon as we found it. And acting, even more than music, is based on appearance.”
“Hmm, I think he needs to hear that.”
“If it discourages him, then he doesn’t want it bad enough. And if it doesn’t, then he will have the reality check he needs to keep pushing forward in spite of all the “No”s he is going to hear before he finds success.”
“I’ll call him in a little bit and have him come over. See, I told you two people could do it faster.”
The string of lights had magically untangled themselves while we were talking. My arm was throbbing from holding the string. I shook it out, hoping that would help.
“Do you need to take your pain medicine?”
“No, I’ll wait until bedtime. It will just make me too sleepy to function if I take it now.”
“You can take your medicine. Mac and I can finish this up.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just make it an early bedtime since we will be up late with the party tomorrow.”
“Alright. I just hate for you to be in pain when you don’t have to be.”
I didn’t want to keep up this arguing, so I changed the subject. “What do you say we go inside for a bit to warm up? I’ll see if we have anything decent for lunch. If nothing else, we can order a pizza.”
“Sounds like a good plan. This wind has picked up quite a bit.”
We walked into a mess of Christmas decorations scattered all over the floor. Nikki walking back and forth with Everette. He was crying and nothing she did seemed to console him.
For the 100th time in the last couple days, I reached for him before remembering that I couldn’t have that much weight on my arms.
“The shots gave him a fever. The pediatrician said it might happen. I gave him some children’s Tylenol, but it hasn’t started working yet.”
“Ok, we will work on this. We are done outside besides the lights, and Mac is going to come help Dad. I can’t reach that far yet.”
“Alright,” She bounced our son up and down to try to get him to calm down, but it didn’t help.
I put my arm around her and led her over to our oversized arm chair. “Sit down here. We’ll order something for lunch and start on the inside decorations while we are waiting.”
“I have some potato soup on the stove already. I figured you would be hungry and cold from working outside.”
“You are amazing,” I kissed her on the top of her head. “Alright, let’s get Christmas in gear,” I said heading to the kitchen to refuel for the long afternoon of hard work.