I can be kind of a jerk, I know. Things are sort of crazy around here, and it's been a hard couple of years for me. Haven't seen my kids since March. Haven't seen my wife in a year. Somewhere in there I just sort of settled and accepted it. I started thinking I wasn't worth anything, and I blamed it on everyone else. Blamed it on the fact that I was a black man. A Muslim. Blamed it on the fact that I was raised in a foster home. I know that it's not that stuff. It's just me. This is just the way it all happened. I know that. I know that I can be short with people sometimes. I can be sort of haughty, too. I'm working on that.

Anyway, I guess Gerald's hearing-aid could pick up that we were talking, but I'm pretty sure he couldn't hear what we were saying. Jeff and I were several minutes into a conversation about which Egyptian Pharaoh's name sounded the most like our friend Eddie's face looked when Gerald nodded at Jeff and said, "Oh, what? Is he giving you trouble? Don't worry about him, Jeff, he's an angel - there's a sweet man inside there - he's a good man!" He was in complete earnest.

We both looked at Gerald and laughed along with him. When Jeff and I turned back to one another we about died. Jeff and I have been close buddies for about seven months. He's a good guy. Quiet guy. I guess we've been friends ever since we both came here. Nice of Gerald to look out for Jeff, even though neither one of us know him that well. I patted his smooth, bald head on my way back inside, and thought that either his head or my hand felt, for a second, sort of angelic. I smiled.

On New Year's Eve, the whole family runs out into the yard in our underwear to clang pots and pans and make whooping noises at the stroke of midnight. It's a tradition. This year, Eleigh came to the house for the holidays; she stayed in the basement and helped in the kitchen almost every night. Mom let her run the blender for the milk-shakes, and we all thought they were the best tasting milk-shakes of the year. Eleigh found a bowling ball named Janet in the basement and bowled it seven blocks down the lane while we made our annual din with the kitchenware. While I looked for my shirt under the bushes, I thought, "She is the best friend a girl could ever have." I believe it, too.

There is something very, very plain about Eleigh. It reminds me of the pots and pans and the Holidays. I'm not sure why. When Eleigh comes over, we all laugh at the way she talks, at her silly words and sayings. One or two of her expressions make me laugh, but a hundred of them start to move me around, like the phrases she uses are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion, nudging up against me in line for a milk-shake.

She is like the pots and pans. Eleigh is like New Year's Eve. She is that noise, that funny whooping. Eleigh is my family on the front yard at midnight in our underwear. There is something so plain, so odd and old and ordinary, something so nice standing here.

"I'm celebrating," he said, "Every day is a new record."

He's drinking a Coke, celebrating. That's how he is. All he's talking about is being alive. Which, when you think about it, is worth celebrating, I guess. Another day, another record. Ten years ago he didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. Wanted to curl up in a drainage pipe and die. Almost did. Woke up, though. Now he's here, celebrating.

And me, I struggle with the internet, the picturebooks, the blogs, the walls, the messaging. Want everyone to remember that this is a real-life lattice of human hearts and souls. Don't want us to forget this. Don't want to forget that we are connected. That we are connected in a way that is real and raw and meaningful and doesn't have anything to do with electronics or gadgetry. Don't want to forget this. It is first. But I want to use these gadgets as sticks - want to draw pictures in the sand, want to dance out, to show off, to shake up a sense, a rhythm, a reminder that we are all one.

So.

I bring you this great mound;
It is me,
It is we.

Every day is a new record.