But how many more times can I do something like this because it’s time to just settle down and be my son’s father? How many more fast cars, vibrant nights, lipstick-smeared pillowcases, four-figure hotel bills, cross-country weekends, new adventures can there possibly be… But if it stopped tomorrow — if I went to bed as myself and woke up as every other suburban dad — I’d look back at this weekend as a true and proper high point. Nobody should have this much fun at the age of forty-two.
That’s what I said. When they make the movie about my life, they’ll leave this out, because it would seem fiction-ish, too dramatically-foreshadowing, for the audience to swallow.
Just fifty-four days after I wrote that blog entry, I’d be strapped to a tilted table watching an LCD widescreen showing a tiny robot methodically burning out my spleen, trying not to breathe because every motion of my ribcage was producing a sensation closely akin to being stabbed in the lung with a BMX seatpost. At that point, my life was changing with remarkable and daunting speed.
I spent the months afterwards sleeping ten minutes at a time while my faceless detractors on the Internet high-fived each other over the accident and the resulting injuries to myself and my passenger. I had to leave what I had thought was a dream job under conditions that I’ve legally agreed not to disclose. I spent a month pushing a walker through a snow-covered parking lot, visiting my passenger in the hospital and watching her endure the unendurable. Relationships I’d had with people for years withered and died in the aftermath of the crash. I was released from my editor-in-chief position at TTAC and for a while it looked like I might be let go entirely from the site.
This year I celebrated my birthday 1,959 miles as the crow flies east from the Hotel La Jolla. I started with a nine-and-a-half-hour weekend workday at a job that, although it is at a very decent place full of very decent people, doesn’t offer me the opportunity to do something as big and bold as the old one did. I finished the day with my son, who made the wrapping paper himself and managed to write “Happy Birthday” on the inside of it pretty well. I drove no high-performance cars nor did I party with any Danielle Fishel lookalikes. The sky above was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Yet it would be uncharitable of me to complain. I received some lovely, thoughtful gifts. I spent time with my son and observed him becoming noticeably better at throwing and catching a tennis ball. I set a post-accident personal best for my bench press and curl. I heard from the people who are most important to me, including my grandparents.
It was also a good chance to have some perspective on the past year. Yes, things have been difficult. But I have also been lucky enough to visit new places, make new friends, win a race at NJMP, race for the first time at CMP and Watkins Glen, race a biodiesel car at VIR in a failed attempt to set a Guinness World Record, and even bring my Neon out to qualify at Mid-Ohio. I wrote a couple of big pieces for R&T including the “Misfits” Z/28 test and the 2014 Performance Car Of The Year, which should be arriving at newsstands any day now. I received a kinda-standing ovation performing the Air Force Song to a crowd of airmen in Oklahoma. I drove a World Challenge GT car at High Plains Raceway and took a McLaren 650S to the top of Mount Evans in Colorado. I jumped a Viper TA off the ground in the Hocking Hills and spun the back wheels in fourth gear behind the wheel of a Lingenfelter-tuned Corvette ZR1. I drove a thirty-five-year-old Chevrolet Impala halfway across the country and power-slid an Aston Vantage V12 S halfway around a private racetrack. I crossed the Canadian border in an AMG Black Series SLS so I could drive something even more exciting — a Radical SR3 Supersport — around TMP.
More importantly than that, I’ve seen proof that my son was completely unaffected by the crash, and I’ve watched the woman who was sitting next to me in that crash overcome a series of daunting obstacles to return to work and move her life forward as well. Her road to recovery is not yet complete but I have faith in her and I know she can do what is necessary.
As the man once said, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near. But I’m optimistic, for myself and for the people I love. This year wasn’t anything like the year before, but I’ll take it and be grateful.
As I also grow older(just starting my 58th trip around the sun), I find it easier to take the good with the bad. Having had experience with fantastic highs, and nearly soul crushing lows they become easier at times to balance out. Not that I want the lows, it’s just a fact that they are gonna get ya. So whenever you can score some quality time, be it tossing a ball with your son or pounding a quality ride around a track, never let it pass you by.
Or you could do what my grand daddy said; “When life gives you lemons, go find somebody that life gave vodka, and have a party”.
A friend of mine likes to point out that the Gibson line you quoted (“The sky above was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”) has an entirely different meaning these days. While we’re old enough to associate it with a gray overcast (which Gibson, long a resident of Vancouver, would only see about 150 days a year), a younger generation might think of this as the deep-blue “NO SIGNAL” color that is seen on most modern TVs.
PS: congratulations on getting older.
Brilliant observation.
I say that because I wondered the same thing after I typed it. 🙂
If your kids are well, everything else is gravy.
A very eventful trip around the Sun, Jack, but another B-Day is yours and appreciated… kudos to you on that.
As for the ‘Good times’, most of which won’t mean a thing down the road, the times you spend with your boy, will be your treasures. Take him camping, rock hounding, to Hawaii, or the Bahamas, these are what kids will remember about their childhood and time spent with dad.
Add a full sized pickup and a light camper to your fleet, but a tent and camp stove will do just fine, too, and go often. My son still talks about those times spent in the wilds, surfing, sailing, and snorkeling in Belize, Cali, Florida Hawaii, and the NW, but rarely/never(?) of the car events and experiences we had together or playing video games.
When we get together now, it is out for a hike or playing disc golf on a rough forest course, or burying the rail in a high wind sailboat race, snow shoeing into a winter camp somewhere around Crater Lake or The Three Sisters, or Three Finger Jack, or hiking to a remote shield volcano crater in Northern Cali for photographing the night sky framed by a crater rim, or a day hike across Kilauea, or hovering above a lake of boiling, burping, swirling red hot lava in Kilauea ‘Iki in a Hughes 400, or diving in the Blue Hole in Belize, or swimming under water into a cave with a hot water waterfall on the River Dulce in Guatemala … Real Adventures.
It is the real adventures and shared interests that bring your kid(s) back to you when they are adults. Not time spent at the mall or in front of the TV when they are young. If we give our kids real memories, they will reciprocate when we are older.
Glad to hear your spending time with your young son, but that time is short………..
“My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you, Dad
You know I’m gonna be like you”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin’ home, Dad
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then
You know we’ll have a good time then………….”
YAY JACK ! .
You made it through and your Son is doing well ~ everything else will be a cakewalk , you’ll see .
Your attitude is out standing .
-Nate
NO FAIR using that Cat Stevens song ! .
It’s one of the few that’ll make me weepy , every time .
FWIW , I did take Jr. camping and so on but we have spent many more days working on old cars trucks and Motos plus riding the same , he’s a die hard GearHead like me , just has different likes ~ I’m a Cruiser , he’s a Racer .
We’re close as can be and spent 11 hours to - gether to - day , mostly doing Automotive things , then a couple hours relaxing , talking and so on .
-Nate
I try to avoid listening to Cat Stevens for more or less the same reasons that I don’t have any Wagner CDs. I tend to avoid Harry Chapin for entirely different reasons: I find many of his songs maudlin and because my brother practically wore out his album with the song about the stoned taxi cab driver and his old girlfriend. I do admire how Chapin made himself a success after years of trying in the music biz.
Why do I mention Harry Chapin? Cats In the Cradle is his song, not Yusuf Islam’s.
As far as parent/child songs go, David Bromberg’s Watch Baby Fall is arresting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPzIHE8Rsqw
Since this is at least partially a car site, I’ll mention that Chapin got killed in an accident on the Long Island Expressway in his VW Rabbit. He may have had a heart attack prior to the accident.
I feel the same way about “Hotel California” from Hell Freezes Over as you do about that Harry Chapin album.
I don’t recall Moe ever really helping me that much when I worked on cars, I’m sure he did, though. He’s not particularly into cars, he has other interests, like math, physics, learning Torah and being a good father and husband. Still, this summer he changed the struts and brakes on their car, including going to the pick & pull for some parts, so I guess his car guy card has been punched.
A year of which to be proud.
Glad you’re ALL well. Seriously.
Your son has to be, and is the very best thing that has ever happened to you.
Lewis (dot.com snob)
Happy B-day dude.
Haven’t known you long, but obviously you’ve earned your cake this year.
Here’s to a new year full of joy and free of injury.
I’ve often said, to you and to myself, that you ought to write a novel. But I’ve also come to realize that you need to write a memoir as well. This will sound cliche, but in your case I honestly suspect you’ve done more and, Id wager, grown more in the past year than many people do in a lifetime.