TwoBusy

Solstice

The light refracts softly through the glass, casting quiet ghosts against the walls in muted reds and hushed greens, the colors gently throbbing and pulsing in unseen rhythms as though we are witnesses to the faint memory of an aurora borealis — a thing once glorious and brilliant beyond all reckoning, capable of filling an entire sky, left by the thinning of time and memory to this quiet haunting. Outside, beyond the lights, the night flexes and grows strong, deepening and stretching and filling the world in ways we cannot see and will not understand.

She sits on my lap, her small hands holding my hand, the back of her head resting against my chest. We watch the lights and ride together through these long hours, so very far from the sun.

There is so much that she wishes for. That she has asked for, in letters and soft language, to fill that space beneath the gentle bristles of Fraser Fir and the balls of brittle glass and the climbing spiral of clean white lights that step gently, steadily between the branches and up along the thick axis of trunk as it reaches from that pool of crisp water through a maze of butterflies with tiny glass wings and snowflakes captured in midflight and all creatures, great and small, and the shoes of those who were once infants, cast in metal, but who now look together up and up and up toward the crown of a single, distant star...

She says his name, as if whispering the name of God, and asks if she has been good enough. If he will know.

He knows, I say. He knows because I know, and because there are no words big enough to capture or define the enormity of what I feel I do not say more but let it swell my lungs full and heavy beneath the weight of her head and the aurora of her hair, and I close my eyes and try not to think of anything other than this moment, here, with her, and how I wish only for it to stretch on and on to forever.

Her fingers climb the length of my fingers, tiny step by tiny step. "I'm pretending I'm a mouse," she says. "So my presents will be bigger when I come downstairs." Her fingertips are warm, and I do my best to absorb the impact with the grace and solemnity of a forest floor beneath padded feet. "It's going to take a long time to get to the tree, because I'm so small." I cannot see her face, but in her voice I hear a smile growing broader with each word.

Tiny step by tiny step, she pretends her way through the long night. "Maybe I'll be so small he won't even see me."

My teeth press sharp and tight against the insides of my cheeks, trapping the words. Keeping them from escaping. Of how even the unseen and unknowable can become visible to careful eyes.

If we do not say the words, they are not real.

It is four hours since they told me to come back. Since they had not called, and I was in the building, and I came by to ask. The results of a CT scan, reading the world behind my eyes. Probing for an answer to two months of pain and questions.

Their smiles vanishing, voices suddenly growing somber and low-toned. "The doctor will need to see you." Their eyes meeting mine, steady and unblinking. "Tomorrow." My surprise, and unease, and waiting for them to say something to let me know that...

"Tomorrow"

That it would be okay.

And the drive home afterwards, and the phone calls to my wife and the rationalizations and the counter-rationalizations and the way their smiles vanished and their voices changed and

"Tomorrow"

the trees and thick bushes and steady-toothed fences alight with color and celebration and the anticipation of the days ahead, the countdown to the moment when they would come downstairs and all that was hidden would finally be revealed and

"Tomorrow"

the anticipation of those long days, counting them down, one by one by one, each one feeling like it would stretch on to forever and

"Tomorrow"

the things that grow in darkness, warped and misshapen, paler than the moon, and

"Tomorrow"

my daughter, resting her head against the frail cage of my chest, her fingertips dancing against my skin, the room so softly alight with color and her hair, fanning out gold like the rays of some small and precious sun and

this night, this longest night, as we wished our way through the dark and I tried not to hold her too tightly.

Can't Get There From Here

Actually, R.E.M. notwithstanding, it turns out you can — I wrote a new post over at DadCentric, which I welcome you to check out: Advent.

Just click on that handy l'il link, and Eureka! You will, in fact, get there from here. 

::jazz hands::

It's A Major Award!

Gotta say: it was pretty cool this week when Parents Magazine named DadCentric the Editor's Choice for Best Dad Blog. Apparently there's going to be something to that effect appearing in an upcoming print edition of the magazine, too. Which - as you might expect - I'll buy, cut out, and display proudly to the, like, 2 people who know me beyond this stupid pseudonym. 

Obviously, this recognition is a testament to the great work and tremendous effort put into the site by your pal and mine Jason Avant — but also to the great writing of the many good men there with whom I've proudly shared email threads, beers, and occasional Velveeta-filled tater tots. Here's hoping they all joined me in a celebratory moment worthy of such an invaluable prize. 

A brief conversation

Handsome father-type figure: "Hey, sweetie — it looks like we might not have soccer on Sunday, because it's supposed to snow."

6-year old girl: "But it's not even Hallowe'en!"

Handsome father-type figure: "I know, I know... the weather's all crazy."

6-year old girl: "Dammit."

Handsome father-type figure: "You know you're not supposed to say that! This is all your mother's fault."

6-year old girl: "Well, what can I say instead?"

Handsome father-type figure: "Um... shoot. You can say shoot."

6-year old girl: "Shoot? That's an okay word to say?"

Handsome father-type figure: "Yeah. Like, a hunter shoots a rifle. It's fine."

6-year old girl: "Okay. I'll just explain to my friends that shoot means dammit."

<<end scene>>

Well, that was unexpected

Apropos of nothing - and let's be clear: this doesn't make any more sense to me than it does to you - I found out this week that not only did Babble.com come up with a list of the Top 50 dadbloggers... but that somehow, I'd made the list.

Yeah. I don't get it, either.

I mean, it's not that I'm not grateful. Obviously, I'm flattered and stunned and deeply appreciative that anyone would even think to mention me alongside so many other far, far more worthwhile online-types. (And I won't even get into the many terrific writers who somehow didn't make the list.) But I'm also deeply, deeply confused. Let's face it: I hardly ever write, and when I do... well, more often than not, it's not "writing" as much as it's "random lobster images concocted by a true evil genius." And when I do actually write-write, it's generally a nightmare of run-on sentences and tangled metaphor that would give any editor nightmares.

When I think about it, I really kind of suck.

Nevertheless, I'm nothing if not desperate for affection — and so I'll take this at face value (well, as close to it as I can come) and say thanks to whomever was responsible for putting my fake name up on the list.

Let me also take a minute to say thanks to all six of you who actually read what I type here. Honestly — I'm grateful to you on a level I can't really express. Both those of you who are around now, and old friends who were supportive waaaaaay back in the day and who've dropped off my (skewed, limited and extremely faulty) radar... thank you. For giving me a reason to type, on those rare occasions when I type, and for giving me a reason to hope that when I drop a few words into the void I'll hear another's voice echoing back at me.

You guys are, and have always been, awesome. Thank you.

If this is your mother tongue... you've got serious mother issues.

I don't know if there's such a thing as capital punishment for crimes against the English language, but after receiving this DM postcard for a condo on Cape Cod (and a condo for seniors, at that... apparently I'm more decrepit that I'd previously understood) I suddenly feel strongly in favor of it.

On the off chance you can't read the image above, I've taken the liberty of meticulously recreating Gerald D. Coughlan's text - including all original spacing, spelling and diction - for your edification:

Heatherwood at Kings Way in Yarmouth Port,this

Luxury Senior Condo complex is a pleasure to show.This
recently updated 1 bedroom unit has cathederal ceilings w/
private 2nd floor deck.

Monthly fee includes a meal plan,housekeeping.

security,social activities,wellness center and

guest suite. Common dining room,library,meeting room,pool
and outdoor gardens make this property a northside jewel.
Located within the

complex hair salon,crafts room andgame/movie room. Kings
Way has a Post Office and a Bank for

your convenience.This unit has deeded parking garage. Price
to SELL at $98,900.00

Here's my plan: I'm gonna buy Mr. Coughlan a dictionary and a Strunk & White. Then I'm gonna beat him to death with 'em. Then I'll go to a "cathederal" to pray for his twisted, illiterate soul. Then I'll probably have a beer.

Who wants in?

Meanwhile, over on the dark side

With absolutely no prompting or guidance, one of my 6-year old daughters spontaneously produced this piece of artwork last night:

Darth says: "I love blud"

So.

Very.

Proud.

The Distance We Measure

The sounds are quiet, and sad, and I do my best not to pay them attention. The dragging. The soft impacts. The lengthening silences in between. As if those long, smooth muscles are waiting for the command to wind its way through a ragged and fragmented labyrinth of neurons before sparking, lifting, moving in what was once a symphony of coordinated flex and contraction. As if he, himself, is waiting for a suggestion of what to do next.

It is so difficult, prepaing to take that next step.

His feet are bare, as they often are these days. His toes splayed, swollen, bent at unnatural angles. The nails growing long and yellowing. They seem almost claws, and a part of me wonders at the idea that they might grasp these wooden floors like a squirrel holding tightly to bark as it moves, steadily, surely, skyward up along the trunk of a tree. As though there might be some kind of tactile comfort gained through the pressure of these worn floorboards against the unfeeling pads of flesh, the thick welts of callous, the calcified growth of nails like bone. One foot points forward, in keeping with the vague sense of direction his effort suggests. The other skews off in an odd tangent, as if redirecting him toward some unnamable destination offering the promise of lasting comfort and peace.

They are unsynced, in the service of competing agendas. He is caught in between, pulled by hints and suggestions of where to go but no concrete idea of how to ambulate from here to there, to wherever they may lead. He is six feet from the bed. Two feet from the door. Four more to the bathroom. The space before him stretches on forever.

I refocus, and busy myself with the task at hand. Crouched low, against the edge of the sagging bookshelf, beneath the steady downward press of the dormer as it stretches from ceiling to floor. Running my fingers along the spines of each book, testing them for strength and relevance, the track of my touch visible through the years of dust and pollen that have settled across them as the seasons have passed, one to the next, blending together into a fugue of time that no longer holds meaning for the hands that held them last.

Relevance is a fleeting thing, and as I count and measure and judge them, one by one, I use that as my guide — the edge of occam's razor, the defining quality of yes or no. Relevance forms the question, and, as always, the simplest answer is the correct one.

I lift a book from its cradle of dust, and for the first time in a half-dozen years its cover sees light. The color is still a rich, lustrous burgundy. A diner's guide to San Francisco. 2005.

Without effort, my mind runs the math: a half-dozen years after our move from California back to New England. Midway between then and now. A time when the recollection of our long strolls together through North Beach and along the Embarcadero probably still held strong. When his sense memory of the dry heat of Napa, of that heady aroma of oak and wine swirling in glass, of the endless acres of grapevine and the dry hills beyond, was enough to entice him toward the idea of another trip west. Without us, but still worthwhile. A plan worth making.

And quickly, quietly, I place the book in the cardboard box.

My mother's voice offers encouragement from the far side of the bedroom. "Your right foot," she says. She says his name, to make it clear to whom she is speaking. "Lift your right foot." Obediently, his right leg lifts a few inches and then steps forward half a length, and then his left follows suit. His knees quaver slightly, from the effort of keeping him aloft. His hands grip the edge of his aluminum walker tightly, a drowning figure grasping the edge of a life ring. A child clutching the hand of a trusted parent. A man vanishing by inches, holding tight to the only certainty he knows.

A Time Out Guide to London. 2004. Companion guides to Paris and Nice. The streets, the restaurants, the chance to see what had changed in the years since they'd last visited.

Into the box.

A walking guide to Prague. 2005. A place they'd never visited, but one they'd heard me describe in detail — the collision of past and present, the energy of Wenceclas Square, the statues of Karlos Most, the grand scale of Prague Castle... three days I'd spent in 1991 still percolating in his mind almost fifteen years later. That restless curiosity. That hunger to explore.

I chew my lip, gently place the book in the cardboard box, and then wipe the dust and pollen from its spine onto my leg. The mark it leaves will not last.

One by one. Chicago. Montréal. Rome. New York. The French countryside. Guides and travelogues and plans and possibilities. So many places he'd wanted to see. They'd wanted to visit. Such ambitions.

2005. A million years ago. The year our twins were born. A time I hardly remember myself, months fading into a blur of screaming infants and endless nights and trying to find moments for our son and life reduced to survival mode and our focus so completely internalized and I never even considered what they might have put aside, at that moment, to make room for us in their lives and how before they even realized that time was...

Hawai'i. Fodor's. The palm trees and soft sand beaches and lush green mountains and electric blue waters on the cover still visible, beneath the thin skin that had settled and grown across it in the long years since the book was placed on the shelf.

They'd wanted to see Hawai'i.

I rest the book in the box.

He stands half a dozen feet away from me. Half a dozen feet from the bed where he spends most of his long, quiet days. His eyes squeezed so tightly together, I cannot tell if they are open. His hairless, freckled forehead damp with sweat. His concentration absolute, in its presence or absence.

He is somewhere in between. Waiting to take the next step.

I brush the dust from my fingertips, and clear my throat. "Lift your feet," I say to my father. "Lift your feet."

Salt

The light glimmers and pools like mercury, slippery-quick, throbbing unsteadily as though keeping time with the vast heart of the ocean. Somewhere in the distance between us, these shifting and tumbling cascades of salt blush warm with the intimacy of the moment - the brush of a distant sun, the contact fleeting, thrilling, exhilarating - and struggle to leap high and soar free, loosened from the numbing, infinite pressures of fluid. Your laughter skips across the water like a stone: wild with kinetic joy, spinning, spiraling, whipping in tight, frenzied circles faster than I can perceive.

The soft crush and hushed collapse of water against water against sand. The shrill cries of gulls, angular blades of ivory cutting across blue sky. And your voice, registering higher and higher, as you turn against the tide - your arms pinwheeling along the surface, delighting with each new wave - and exhult in this new freedom: you, unleashed upon the sea, seal-smooth in your red swim shirt and shorts, a berry afloat and ripened to bursting with sweetness, sweetness, such great and full sweetness, tiny fish nibbling at your toes as you laugh and whirl and the world whirls with you and

I watch, from a distance,

while beyond you slender cusps of sail catch the wind like water in the palm of your hand, grow full as lungs balooning with breath and cut with precision and certainty of purpose toward that point where sea blends to sky and

with each spin your smile grows broader, your teeth tiny sand-roughened pearls, opalescent, salt-sprayed and shone to new luster

tasting the new world, savoring each breath

the landscape shifting and recalibrating, heartbeat by eyeblink, your legs splayed broad and steady against sand and smooth stone, your pulse racing with the sun as it leaps from wavetop to wavetop, speed reduced from facts and physics to the crystalline purity of now as you

free

of rigor and demand, patience and pratice and repetition and the weight, that crushing weight, of hope grafted to expectation, and all those years you've borne it with bravery - each small step, forward or back, followed by a next, and a next, and the next as they stretch forward to forever - but here, wrapped in light and wonder, it falls away like an old skin, and you are reborn on the waters.

You are a leaf, all autumn auburns and sandy browns and long, thin limbs radiating outward at strange and shifting angles, all hollow bones and lighter than air, borne along with the currents in slow, graceful twists, thrilling at the unfamiliar sensation of release

as I watch, from my distance, not quite letting go

of all that you were, or may become,

but ever aware of your generous smile, your gift of laughter, your joy of the moment

and the deeper waters, lying not far beyond.

Top Ten Reasons You're Better Off With A Blue Exoskeleton

10. Carte blanche to channel your inner Morrissey as you warble: "Blue is what I wear on the outside, because blue is how I feel on the inside."

9. It's fashion-forward. Blue is the new blue.

8. Keeps all the squishy stuff on the inside, where it's supposed to be. Blood, sinew, joy, compassion... all these things belong safely hidden behind a fashionable exoskeleton.

7. D'you know why red lobsters are red? Because they don't respect the sun. Blues, on the other hand, are genetically U/V resistant. It's an evolutionary advantage. Go ahead, reds. Naturally select yourself right outta the food chain.

6. Protection against those who would call you mean names, like "bottom-feeder" or "nasty-ass spider of the ocean floor." We prefer to be called Arthropod-Americans, if you don't mind.

5. Red = communist. Just sayin'.

4. It's a mark of discinction. You've had people say "you're one in a million?" Phbbbtttttt. Blue lobsters are 1 in 5 million, bzzntch. So while you're not a complete evolutionary freak (like those 1-in-30-million yellow lobsters)... as a blue, you're in rare company. It's almost like belonging to Mensa, except for that whole "being smart" thing.

3. Being blue makes it that much harder for them to see you at night, when your claws come out and you're all hunting and skulking and whatnot. That's some serious ninja shit, right there.

2. Blue sky. Blue water. Bleu cheese. Feeling the blues. Deep blue hero stuff. Blueberries. Blue Öyster Cult. The Blue Nile. Trembling Blue Stars. Blues is King. Blue and Grey Shirt. Copper Blue. Blue diamonds. Ol' blue eyes. If it's the stuff of wonder and magic... chances are, it's blue.

1. When destiny arrives and some proto-mutant dino-gator-shark-bear thing finally sinks its teeth into you... do you want to leave to the weak and surrendering sounds of flesh, or the satisfying, defiant crunch of YOUR! BLUE! EXOSKELETON! FIGHTING! TO! THE! LAST!?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

::drops mic; walks offstage::