Sharing Our Nightmares – A Dad’s Trip Back to Twin Peaks

As a Dad and avowed pop-culture nerd, one of the great joys in my life is getting to share my geek passions with my boys.  I still remember when my little blondie and his oversized noggin’ toddled into my study while I was riding the exercise bike and watching a VHS copy of Star Wars.  One look at the mean man in the black mask was all it took.

Just a few days ago, that same fella, now six feet tall and his head quite proportionate to his muscular frame, grunted his way to the breakfast table.  It just so happened that Phantom Menace, arguably the second worst in the Saga, happened to be streaming live at the moment.  As he dumped cereal into bowl, I cast the movie onto the big screen.  And, like a spell, the big-headed little boy reemerged.  “Hey, Phantom Menace!” he bellowed, and I spotted a unicorn: the smile of a teen on a weekday morning.

Mornings with my younger son are dominated by our shared passion for that great American sociological experiment: Survivor.  If there’s not a new episode on, we pop on a previous season and guess whether the player with apparent control is building the right “resume” or whether a premature blindside might spell her doom.  He is counting the days until he can send in his own video, proudly proclaiming that his negligible appetite will give him the leg up on the “Alpha Males” who can’t handle the lack of food.

But whether it is a Galaxy Far, Far Away, or a deserted island, or even a world of pure imagination, sharing those moments is like sharing a dream.  It floats happily on top of real life, bonding us together in a heady place of love and joy.

But there is another place.

Someplace dark and unsettling.

In that place—that land of nightmares—the sharing transports a relationship elsewhere.

And, it is happening again.

It is happening, again.

I remember coming home from college in 1990 and my mother in her latest attempt to have me meet a nice Jewish girl got me an invite to a friend’s daughter’s house.  She and a group of friends were obsessed with a brand-new show and were going to watch the premiere episode for the eleventeenth time.

I hardly remember the girl—I’m sure she was very nice and I very much hope she’s led a wonderful and happy life.  But my introduction to Donna, Shelly, Audrey, and a dead girl wrapped in plastic is something I will never forget.

Like so many others of the day, the small-town terror of Twin Peaks held me in its grasp.  And the fact that one of my three touchstone heroes (the other two being James T. Kirk and Willie Wonka—Wilder, not Depp) departed the pop-culture coil having been possessed by the evil he had chased since the pilot burnt a hole in my nerdy soul.

As many of my friends will tell you, the show has held a disturbingly large part of my imagination ever since.  Indeed, my Halloween 1999 costume of a psycho with long, gray hair, a jeans jacket, and white surgical gloves talking about catching folks with my “death bag” sure scared the hell out of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters, even though no one knew who the hell I was.

But I knew.

Before rumors of The Return began to circulate, I sat my bored teen in front of the TV and asked him to give a piece of vintage television a chance.  “This isn’t like The Chocolate War, is it Dad?” he groused, having found what I find to this day to be one of the most underrated teen dramas to be a dreary and dreadful bore.  I assured him it was like nothing he’d ever seen.  He was skeptical, but willing to give an episode a try.

“What the hell was that?”

His words as the (red) curtain closed on the pilot.

“So, did you like it?” I replied, unsure whether the little piece of my soul I shared found a place in his.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Another?”

“Yes, please.”

And I dove once again over that dark and alluring waterfall into Twin Peaks, this time with my own boy along for the swim.  I listened to his theories.  We compared crushes.  We eye-rolled as Billy Zane tucked his sweater inside his pants and stole Audrey away from Coop.  But mostly, I got to experience the terror, wonder, and ultimate bewilderment as our hero ended his journey—apparently forever—staring at a bloody mirror with the face of evil starting back at him through a fresh set of eyes.

“How’s Annie?”

That line, and many others, have entered into our daily lexicon.  Because as much as the shared dream bonds, the shared nightmare binds.  For that darker place is more primal, more personal; a shared peek under the bed to find that, yes, there be monsters.

And now, by some Lynchian twist, the ending that has haunted me for a generation’s time has a new beginning.  And this journey with my son has a whole new feeling.  For our first trip to Twin Peaks was very much one of Father and Son.  I had the knowledge, and lived the new vicariously through my boy’s indoctrination.  But now, as an older Giant and older Cooper began this new chapter, we were on a level playing field.  The “Oh, F—k” that launched from his lips so many times with another twist of the proverbial (and occasionally literal) knife are now leaping from me as everything old becomes new.

And so as a parent—and a nerd—it is my nightmares that are truly a dream come true.

Home Run on the Edge of Forever

He’s a strong kid, my big fella.  He was a contender for Varsity this year as a 10^th Grader, but ended up on JV.  It was the classic dilemma for a baseball parent, not sure if being on the Big Club and mostly sitting would be better than being the Big Fish.

I’m voting for Big Fish as of now.

I sat in the stands a couple of nights back watching my boy’s team competing against a team they weren’t supposed to beat.  Indeed, this was a season they weren’t supposed to be competitive because they lost too much underclass talent to Varsity.  But Gus’s Generals came up with the W.

And Gus went deep.

My wife missed the point of contact, as her eyes were focused down on the mound of green billing papers she had brought to the field in her eternal battle to stay true to her profession and her passion.  But she didn’t need to see it, as it made that sound.  That clean, slightly high-pitched and distinctively loud PING! that means the ball has been struck just slightly better than perfect.

The home run itself is something quite unique.  The power and precision.  The ability to do something that is truly indefensible.  And to see the ball go over the wall at the High School level is something of a Unicorn.   Gus’s was just the 4^th Home Run of the whole W-L season—JV and Varsity combined.  Gus was the one-and-only on his team.  Indeed it was the only one we saw from any team the entire season including from the Big, Bad, Madison team with its JV squad full of Juniors.

So as that drive rose, it took us all a little by shock.  Gus’s Mor-Mor was on hand and seemed entirely bewildered.  The confusion from everyone seated behind the plate was compounded because backstop obstructed the flight of the ball.

The left fielder slowed down, and turned to watch.

Did that really just happen?

It did.

Gravity ceased to have meaning on the field as my boy floated ‘round the bases.  He promptly crashed into a sea of navy and gray as his coach attempted to manage the balance between legitimate celebration and showing up the opposition.

In the stands, however, I can attest that gravitational laws were still in full effect, as I leaped and clamored thunderously on the bird-stained metal bleachers.  The joy of the moment was overwhelming, to be there to see my son do something he will always remember.  To think about all that went into that single swing.

The Chocolate Donutz-eating t-ball team;

The pudgy 2^nd baseman with a decent bat taking the 3^rd Grade house championship;

The B-Team catcher starting to find his form;

Dealing with A-Team rejection, concussion, and the monster of self-doubt;

The cup-of-coffee with the A-Team in the 12u wood bat tournament finally proving he could play with the best;

Moving to the big field and back to B-Team;

Working his keester off and moving up to A;

More rejection as an 8^th Grader as he gets cut from JV;

More frustration in 9^th as he struggles to catch up to High School pitching;

Determination to improve as he dives into training to become bigger, stronger, faster, and better;

Getting into a groove as a Sophomore, only to be sidelined by injury;

Feeling his way back after missing two weeks; and

BOOM

The bat sang, and a Dad swelled.  No, more just a Dad.  At that moment, I was every proud Dad.

Wait, no, that’s quite not it.

Oh.

Oh my lord.

I was my Dad.

Divorce and distance had kept him from seeing me play for the most part.  But one spring day he had made his way down from Queens to Atlanta, and sat beside my teenage sister as my Northside Youth Organization Phillies were taking on the A’s.  I had just explained to my teammate that my bat with the grip tape dangling loosely from the top of the handle, “really isn’t a home run bat.”

And then…PING!

That feeling of perfect nothingness when a ball connects just right.  And the ball sailed over the left-centerfield fence.

My memories are watching the ball leave, getting mobbed by my teammates, and the booming sound of a slightly-overweight, middle-aged guy leaping awkwardly on the aluminum bleachers.

And now that memory and this circle each other, making the past feel present, and knowing that this moment will live past me in the stories Gus will, if he is so lucky, tell to his children.  For in the words of the prophet Terrence Mann:

The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

This field, this game, this moment(s) in time was good.

And I remember that it always will be.