What did Heritage Park mean to Dylan? I don’t know for sure, but it did hold something special for him, because he spent quite a bit of time there. The first experience I can remember was pretty emotional for me and the family. It happened in 2006. For a while Dylan and I would ride our bikes together. I guess we would go about six or seven miles. We used to ride around before dinner. One of the highlights was riding by the In and Out on Bouquet Canyon and smelling the grilled onions. I told Dylan a number of times that I swore I could almost taste them. When would head back towards home, we always took the bike path right by Heritage Park, a park built upon the mounds of dirt left behind after the grading was completed for all the new houses built in the area. One day we were riding along a little slope by the park, a place we could build momentum and push it a little, when Dylan’s foot got stuck in his spokes. He went over his handle bars and took a pretty bad spill. Having never had anything like this happen before, I was at a loss. I told him to stay still, because I was worried he broke something. He had his helmet on, which was now cracked, so we were fortunate. It seemed like he hadn’t broken anything, but he had some pretty nasty road rash which looked like something worse to me at the time. I called Donna in a bit of a panic and asked her where she was, and then basically told her she needed to get over there now and take us to the hospital or Urgent Care. While Dylan was being treated, I felt so terrible because it hurt so bad while they were cleaning him up. Ultimately, Dylan was fine. However, he ended up with a nice scar on his elbow that always reminded of the incident.

As a family, we played tennis a few times at the park over the years. The sun always seemed to be pretty brutal whenever we ended up able to get a court.

Later on, while in high school, Dylan used to spend a lot of time with Justin and Malcolm at the park. There were riding their bikes or maybe skateboarding. I’m pretty sure they were behaving themselves for the most part. Then, when Dylan and Thalia got together, they often spent time at the park. Sometimes, they would go there later than Donna and I thought they should, but again I know most of the time that is really where they were.

And now the city of Santa Clarita has allowed us help plant a tree in the park in memory of Dylan. It was a gracious gesture by the city, and we are grateful. We hope that the tree will withstand the forces of nature, so that we can check in on its progress once in a while and reflect on the memories we have had there.

Early Over Last by Dylan Zimmerman featuring Donna Zimmerman

guitar: Dylan Zimmerman recorded in 2013
voice: Dylan Zimmerman and Donna Zimmerman recorded in 1993/1994
mixed by: Jim Zimmerman in 2014

Here are some pretty good lyrics from a song Dylan was working on in August of last year. I took the liberty of calling it “Parked.” He seemed to be having some issue that he was not able to work through and left it unfinished. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to encourage him to finish it, because it is not bad. He wrote this in August of 2013.

I parked my car outside your window,
I had the speakers turned up loud,
I started throwing rocks to get your attention,
You turned around.

I saw you smile my direction,
I felt my feet lift off the ground,
I saw your subtle hesitation,
But I shot it down.

Chorus:

You and I
Like two of a kind,
While I’m keepin’ rhythm,
You’re keepin’ time,

Your little hand,
Fits perfectly in mine,
So know there’s always someone
Who thinks your hearts beating just fine.

…

Dylan grew up with several names. We should have known, since it began before he was even born. For quite a while during Donna’s pregnancy, Dylan’s name was going to Ian. Ian Tyler Zimmerman. We had it whittled down to three names: Dylan, Ian and Tyler. I wanted to avoid Dylan, because of the obvious musical history connection to the name Dylan and Zimmerman. For those who don’t know, Bob Dylan’s real name is Robert Zimmerman. I didn’t want Dylan to be constantly asked about whether that was the intention, so we opted for Ian. This presented a lot of trouble for people for some reason. They didn’t know how to spell it or they didn’t know how to say it. Ultimately, we caved in and went with Dylan Tyler Zimmerman for better or worse. We loved the name. We just didn’t want him to get picked on for it, which he never did. I guess younger people didn’t know their music history like I did. But that was just the beginning. I remember that shortly after Dylan was born Mike Myers had a character on Saturday Night Live that called everybody something-“mister”. “Doug-mister”, “Bob-mister”, and of course he would take it to extremes for maximum hilarity. Well, this seemed to catch on in the small Zimmerman household at the time. Soon, everything and everybody became a-mister. Eventually, it lead to our innocent, unsuspecting first born child. He became simply “Mister” for quite a while. Before, Mike Myers moved on and made a fortune pretending to be an obnoxious James Bond parody character, we grew out of the “mister” period. That didn’t mean we didn’t come up with something new. Only this time it was extremely generic and was usually best delivered with a twang: “Boy”. “Do your homework, Boy.” “What are we going to do about the boy?” This is stayed around for a long time, and still was used periodically right up to Valentine’s Day. Always in a tongue and cheek sort of way. It stayed around so long that Marisa quickly became “the girl.” Whenever we would venture out of the confines of L.A. county everything had a twang when we spoke, especially “boy”. It was more fun that way. Love you, boy.

I forgot to mention that Marisa occasionally called Dylan “Dilly.” Once in a while I would ask her when I got home, “Where is Dilly?”

So this doesn’t really pertain to Dylan’s driving; but I just had to share my most recent events of this weekend that included thoughts of my amazing nephew.

First, being the parent of 10 year old boys you never truly feel that they can grasp the concept of losing a loved one. Kyle decides to share his Pokemon cards with another cousin (from a different branch of his family). During the course of handing over the oldest looking box of the boxes he makes it clear to his younger cousin that they MUST be very careful and NOT to lose any of them because they were the LAST thing he got from his cousin. It was then that I realized Kyle has put it together. Dylan disappeared upstairs at his house during one of our visit and emerged handing over this box of cards to Kyle. I was so incredibly touched that Dylan’s heart was so huge that he knew what this would mean to my boy. One of many acts that showed how amazing he was.

Second, was during a discussion with Lonny about the people count for a birthday dinner for Julie, our sister. Lonny kept counting four for Jim, Donna, Dylan and Marisa. He said it several times before we both looked at each other and did our best to keep control and fall to pieces.

The Boy will be with us ALWAYS. Everyday I find something new that I thought I had forgotten or something I had put off thinking, “Well I will do that later”.

I listen to some Artist vs. Poet and wished so much that I could have that simple text to the boy saying, “Hey, they are pretty good.”

I miss you, Dylan. Love, Aunt Jennie.

I found this buried on an old website we’ve had for many years.  It is a short video of Dylan driving away for his first driving lesson.  The symbolism is incredibly foretelling.  And the lack of any dialogue only demonstrates the apprehension Donna and I (especially Donna) had as parents  about letting Dylan drive.

Dylan and I didn’t have many days where it was just the two of us, especially as he got older. However, I was fortunate enough to have a great day with him as fall was about to begin. Dylan didn’t have to work, and I decided take a week off between jobs when I was laid off at SalonCentric. I wanted to take a day to go catch waves some place where I had not been in the water before. I was hoping for some bigger waves and longer rides than usual. I asked Dylan if he would go with me in case I needed rescuing, since I knew there wouldn’t be many, if any, people out that weekday.

It was overcast and cold. Dylan wore what had become his trademark white and black striped hooded sweatshirt jacket. I wanted to go to Silver Strand beach in Oxnard, since it was close and we had to get back to pick Marisa up from school. We checked out the north end of the beach, and it didn’t look promising. It was freezing cold and look like there would not be much worthwhile. I was determined, because I knew it would be my last chance for a long time. I decided to check out the south end of the beach. We walked out and looked over the huge stretch of sand to the water. This was more what I was looking for. Not quite as big as what I hoping for, but good enough. I got my stuff, and Dylan took a beach chair along with his iPod and phone and headphones, and we made the long walk down to the shore. I probably spent about an hour and half out in the water. Once in while Dylan would get up and walk down to the shore to laugh at me while I was eating sand. It was fun, but that was not even the best part of the day.

After I was convinced that we were sufficiently cold and I was done until a new season, we headed back to the car. The new car. We spent quite a while out on that street trying to get the sand off the board and wetsuit. I did my best to keep from mooning the neighbors while I got into my clean clothes, because I didn’t want to get a lot of sand in the seat. We finally gave up and piled into the car, and turned the heater all the way up.

We cruised around the area a little bit and eventually ended up at Port Hueneme Pier. I don’t remember what we talking about, but I know it felt like a great moment while we talking over the car while I was getting my shoes and jacket on. A seagull flow overhead that for some reason caught our attention. We were probably worried it would shit on us. None the less, we headed out towards the pier with goal being to reach the end, of course. We talked a lot that day. Games, music, life. Even politics. I loved hearing his idealistic left leaning thoughts. I would contrast his with my mostly moderate stance. I would throw out a couple tough questions that neither of us could provide the answers like so many before us. We made it out to the end of the pier where a few people were fishing. The wind was cutting through our already cold bodies, so we picked up the pace and headed back. We passed some fisherman who caught something that gave us pause, but I don’t remember what it was. Maybe a tiger shark. We walked by some young men that looked like they were looking for trouble. I kept my head up and maintained a confident strut — in someway thinking I was protecting my 20 year old son. By the time we got back to the car, we were nearing a jogging pace, because we were so cold. We were hungry and done with the days outside adventure. We drove around a while looking for a place to grab some lunch. GPS may have been involved in locating a Subway. We ate pretty quick in there because it was so damn cold inside the restaurant too. It didn’t matter, because the great conversation just kept coming. Those conversations maintained themselves for duration of entire ride home.

It was a really great day.

A tough day at work, so a memory that usually makes me smile.

I have the greatest memory of Dylan and I wasting an afternoon or two playing around with a first generation QuickCam, when he was 3 or 4. I finally bought one to play around with after everybody else was already on to their second or third generation. I didn’t understand the need, but the experiences Dylan and I had with that stupid thing were priceless.

I was trying to adjust settings on the camera to make the video better, when Dylan discovered that he could see himself on the computer. He would get upset when I had to close and restart the application or restart the computer to install a different driver or camera software. I ended up leaving the application up that worked best, and took a few pictures, some that I have been able to keep for all these years. Dylan would duck under the desk or hide behind the desk chair, and pop up in front of the camera and just start giggling and giggling. He did this many many times. That camera kept him entertained much longer than me. Dylan kept me entertained much longer.

The first year Dylan played soccer was quite entertaining for Donna and I.  One time I remember watching a game or practice happen around him while he picked a dandelion and blew the seedlings into the grass.