smoking lights, working nights.

If people ever care about me enough so that I write a memoir, there will be a chapter called, “That’s Tom Mitchell”, and I’ll talk about how my grade school guy friends were convinced you were in the CIA, and the time that they asked me to give them some eggs from our house and you caught me, and then took the carton of eggs and walked to the end of our driveway where they were waiting, then terrified, begging you not to egg them, and you said, “so you boys wanted some eggs?” pulled back your right arm as if you were going to peg them, tossed up the egg and caught it, putting it back in the carton before handing it to them, winking and saying, “just don’t tell anyone where you got these.” And how in that moment, where my 13 year old self was so convinced you were going to embarrass the bejesus out of me, you were the coolest man in the history of the world.

Yes, you may wear a suit and tie and look intimidating and stern, but I know that even when you give us a hard time, you only want what’s best for us, that you are a really sensitive guy inside who just loves the shit out of his family. 

And I’ll definitely mention how lucky I am to have grown up in a house with a father who was not only a bleeding heart liberal but also a self identifying feminist. It made me who I am today and I’m so unbelievably grateful and happy to have had a father who was willing to take a back seat so that my mother could pursue her dreams, and not the other way around. I know you wonder about why I don’t ever have a boyfriend, and really, the truth is you are an exception to the rule in terms of men around me and in general, and because of that I hold pretty high standards for anyone I’d ever consider bothering to call a boyfriend, because they better treat me as well as you treat mom, if not better. I’m saying all this because national women’s month is coming to a close, and you did a pretty good job raising this feminist, and I just wanted to say thanks.

Thanks Downton Abbey for literally ripping my heart into a milliondy pieces. Sitting Shiva until further notice.

“Please watch out for each other; love everyone and forgive everyone, including yourself. Forgive your anger, forgive your guilt, your shame, your sadness. Embrace and open up your love, your joy, your truth, and most especially your heart. Let us all have mercy on each and every one of us; and every day, we will open up like a cocoon, and turn into beautiful butterflies; and live this moment, and the next, and the next, and the next.”

Jim Henson’s last words to us, ones I think we should all try to keep in mind on what would have been his seventy-sixth birthday. Happy birthday Jim, your presence is missed, this world is worse for wear without you.

Legs like tree trunks;
I can’t see the forest.
The green as deep as the sea
With your face on it twice.
Still with Lee in Catalina,
Where I can see the forest.
I feel free as the salted air—
Domesticated and repressed elsewhere.
If I grow roots then I panic:
I can’t breathe.
The suffocating brace of fear
With your face on it twice.
I’ll leave on a jet plane to Marseille,
Where she was Lee.
But then we will not need each other:
Light, ethereal, alive.
You should love yourself most,
Feel free in the salt air.
The sea hugs you like me,
Tides ebb and flow like a violin’s bow. 

Wearing your bite around my neck
(I left my necklace on your beside table),  New York, 2012