This is one entry of the story I am drafting — and sharing — during NaNoWriMo. It’s my first real go at writing fiction, and it’s fast paced without looking back. Read accordingly. It is not planned, but continues to reveal itself as I write. I hope you are as thrilled reading it as I am writing it.

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Robert Lester Jacobs was born in an urban Catholic hospital in upstate New York. His mother, Elizabeth, was a month shy of her eighteenth birthday. She felt all the normal fears and excitement of having a first child, and then the extras that resulted from her individual circumstance, just as every person has. Her mother was there by her side, had been throughout the pregnancy. Elizabeth appreciated her mother’s support, but also had grown tired of her mother’s droning on and on about her eight children, and how each one birthed, and how her digestive system was a mess throughout her third, fourth, and seventh pregnancies. And how she had never had her husband at any of the births either.

“He was either at sea, or he was at home sleeping.” Her mother said.

Hmm, that’s funny, so is mine, thought Elizabeth, sleeping at home while I’m on this bed. But he has his reason, so he thinks. Her thought then returned to the room with another contraction.

Though Elizabeth loved her father in a blended way, through obligatory familial tie and the concept of a father that so many cling to even when the father in question in no way plays the part, and through a pitiful sympathy for his being a victim of his tumbler, always with Scotch and ice in it, and the Scotch was seldom watered down.

For seventeen, Elizabeth was already a powerful, heroic woman, and she little knew just how much heroism her life was going to demand of her. Many a late night, in his older years, Robert would reflect upon her courage and love, he’d thank her in the silence of the night, from the depths of his being. Sometimes, when attuned to his feelings, a tear or two would latch onto the gratitude as it eased out of himself, into the universe he’d imagine, to where her soul, her spirit, or any remnant of her energy remained to connect with it. In these moments he’d wish she would meet up with him in his dreams. His deceased friend did. Why didn’t she, he’d ask the air, and then he’d lament the lost time, the lost words, the lost laughs.

Between contractions, Elizabeth imagined a better life, the one she’d work to give, for her child, for her, for them. Whatever came of her baby’s father, she knew beyond doubt she would be wholly committed to raising and loving this baby. The stream of thought terrified her. How could she possibly provide this child a life? How could she possibly teach and a raise a child? She was lost, and she knew it. No job, no diploma, and married to a guy because of this child, a guy that couldn’t even get out of bed to be there for her, with her. And why wouldn’t he believe her, she wondered. She had tried so hard to get him to believe her. Why? This baby deserved a father as much, no more than she deserved a caring husband, the father of her child, to work together to figure things out and somehow scrape a life together for their family. Family. Huh, what a word. What does that mean anyway, she asked herself.

Another contraction. She tried to follow the doctor’s directions. She gripped her mother’s hand, who kept talking and talking and talking about when she had her babies, about her births. During one moment, Elizabeth swore she saw one of the nurses look to another nurse with eyebrows raised, as if to say, “Does this woman ever stop?” Elizabeth chuckled at this, a brief smile reaching just inside of her mouth, but not quite showing itself. She wanted to say to the nurse, “No. Try living in my world.” But then she felt guilty and ashamed. It was her mother there by her side. It was her mother holding her hand. It was her mother who helped her pay for the maternity clothes she’d worn the last month or so, to which she felt a moment of thanks that somehow her body was fairly well in-tact.

In and out of her head, from contraction to her sea of thoughts to contraction, Elizabeth neared what would be one of the two most defining and motivating moments of her life, each the birth of her two children, spread nineteen years apart, with a range of men, of hurt, of found love that wasn’t, of convenient love, and finally, of trapped love complexly, simply woven in between.

When Robert was finally born, after the pain had exceeded pain, after the disbelief that this was happening was proven unfounded, Elizabeth held her child to her chest. In that moment, in that space, in that bed, there was nothing else. There was only them, and she was a mother. She had never felt such pride and joy and such peace with the world as she felt in those moments. Her mother’s droning voice and repeated tellings of her stories didn’t bother her. She thought it was beautiful, as it should be. That her husband was home didn’t bother her, not truly. Her trust in the magical wonder of this moment reassured her it would all be okay, that it was all as it should be. As the first tide of tears flowed from her eyes, they carried with them all salt of the fears and anxiety and worries of the preceding nine months, the salt that preserved her and had stunted her growth. Mixed with them was the sweetness of the comfort of the new truth of her life, that she now had a purpose and her mission would be to see this mission through, to love and protect and raise the best son she could. The second tide of tears brought with them the anger and hurt she had known, toward her father, toward the boys and men who had hurt her, toward her husband, and toward herself for the mistakes she seemed to always make. All that didn’t matter now. She was a mother. And finally the tides of tears brought with them relief. A relief from the pressure inside, where so many of her words did hide. She looked up at her mother, and she said the first thank you she had ever really meant, or understood. And her mother didn’t hear her. But it didn’t matter, she trusted it was felt. As she trusted all would work out in the end.

Robert’s parents divorced when he was six. His mother did not win custody, which he thought must have been rare in the late seventies. Elizabeth would later relate to him the many tumultuous years of his young life, of hers and his father’s life. From these tales an anger would grow and fester within him toward his father, and would be seemingly forever conflicted with the familial tie to his father and the conceptual want of a father, much like his mother had felt toward his grandfather.

While his mother had explained that is was to spite her from finally breaking free of his control that his father had sought and fought so bitterly for custody, Robert wanted to believe that deep down it was for him that his father did so. He wanted to believe that his father did care, that he did feel love for him, even though it had never been shown beyond the societal contract between a parent and a child which mandated the provision of shelter, food, and clothing. Beyond that, what else had his father done that would provide any evidence of the communication of love.

How many times had Robert deliberated this problem in his mind? How many times had he broken down every frame of a given memory or interaction, in conjunction with the known history of his and father’s life, searching for clues to support the hypothesis that his father loved him? How many times had he tried the non-scientific approach, trying to just feel in the memories, in their interactions, that his father loved him? And, finally, how many times had he simply given up the thought experiment, accepting that he must, else why A, B, or C, but then D, E, & F seemed to so strongly negate the former three?

Robert had accepted that the equation of his life was not and might never be solved, and that it was not balanced on both sides either, and he knew his father was a major variable of that inequality. This, Robert had learned to accept, yet this, Robert’s thoughts could never escape.

And later, with his three children, once in a while another parent would comment to him or Christine on how they always see him at all the kids’ activities and events, and the first thought that would enter his mind would be the years he played flag football in third and fourth grade. The apartment he cohabitated with his father was across the street from the elementary school he attended, and behind which the games would be played on Saturdays.

On the Saturday of his first game it was a clear, mildly humid, hot day, the kind where you could smell cut grass wafting from yards, hear the sound of children playing in scattered spots. On this Saturday, he got himself ready and left his room to walk through the living room where his father watched TV. He felt a nervous excitement he’d not yet known due to it being his first competitive event.

“Are you going to come to my game?” Robert asked his father.

“What time is it at?”

“One.”

“We’ll see.”

“Okay.” Robert replied.

With that he walked the three flights down the apartment stairs to the ground level, the smell of dinners people had overcooked still wafting in the stale hallway. He walked out, around the corner of the building they lived in, passed the next building and was at the street’s edge. He looked back over his shoulder, up to the windows to the living room where his father sat and to his father’s bedroom. He turned back, crossed the street, walked around the school, and reported to his coach for the game.

Flag football was the best! And the coaches gave a dollar to whomever grabbed the most flags in the game! He tried his best, a few missed grabs here. A few snags there. He tried to block the other linemen when his quarterback had the ball, with a high rate of success. And throughout, during a time-out, a break between quarters, or a moment where his mind drifted from the mindfulness of playing, Robert looked around, looked for his father only to see other fathers and mothers. And when the game ended, he hoped to have tallied the most flags, but he fell short. No prize. No recognition for all his determined work. No hot dog for a dollar at the concession stand like so many other kids were now enjoying. Amid the people now scattering, he realized he was the only one completely on his own. In later years, thinking back on this, experience with youth would tell him there were likely others alone, but physically with their parents because someone had to pick them up. Robert walked home, back around the school, to the road, across past the first building, around to the entryway to his building, up the three flights to open the door and find his father watching TV. He closed the door behind him, stepping into the kitchen, visually out of view of the living room where his father still sat. He poured himself a glass of water. Robert realized he was intentionally hesitating to walk through the living room to his bedroom. He didn’t want to see his father, but he also wanted to wait to give his father a chance to notice he was now home, that the game was over, that he had missed it. Nothing. Not a word.

Robert walked through the living room, not looking at his father. And that was it. And three or four Saturdays later, Robert couldn’t remember, Robert won the dollar, and it was the best tasting hot dog ever. And again, his father sat a few hundred yards away, three flights up, within the walls that provided necessary shelter for Robert, but little else.

And to anothers’ comment on his commitment to being there for his children, Robert would reply that he was “Livin’ the dream.” Some took this as sarcasm. Others as truth. Robert liked to guage their response by saying in a manner that bordered on both, even though he knew, he was living the dream, his dream, to actually marry, raise a home and not just a house, and be the best father any children ever knew. And then a pang of guilt would strike at the knowledge that no matter how he tried, he never seemed to quite live up to that, even though he knew his children would disagree.

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