Why my son isn't special, and yours isn't either

Someone sent me a link to the (no longer airing) television show Psychic Kids the other day.

My son, the person contends, might be like these kids. Not socially maladjusted, probably, and not with these abilities, but he's got a special something. He's not like most kids. Check this show out.

I'd never watched it. I had a feeling it would just rile me up, and I was right. I felt dirty watching it. It really seems to border on child abuse. These smart, sensitive, fascinating kids were getting all the wrong messages; their parents were getting all the wrong messages; and no one was being helped. The kids want validation, guidance, understanding; and they can't get it except through exploitation and fakery.

But here's the thing: I kind of, sort of, understand where the parents are coming from.

No, not like that. I'm still me, after all. Rational, skeptical, wholly anti-woo. What I understand is the parents' urge to have their kids be special. Unique. Like really, really unique. Their talents are different from everyone else's talents, so of course their problems are different from everyone else's problems.

And they're right. The kids' talents and problems are unique, and difficult, and nuanced. Just like everyone's problems. Their kids are hard to reach, and their problems are hard to address. Just like all kids.

I see it in Arizona all the time, these two extremes. At one end, you have the hard, grizzled "I ain't buyin' this 'Everyone's a special snowflake' bullshit; now pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" guys. Think ranchers, cowboys, farmers. Everything is black and white. Every problem is easily addressed, and there's one -- and usually only one -- common-sense solution. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a namby-pamby idiot. At the other end, you have the froofy, kooky "We're just the universe getting to mystically know itself" crowd. Think UFOlogists, Sedona vortex seekers, and the folks who love to talk about the Phoenix Lights while showing you their crystal collection. (I actually had someone do this.) Now I truly love the grizzled Arizona frontiersman, and I love me some dreamy Sedona artists, but this is silly. Truth and validation are not magical, but neither are they simple. It's not always either "Here's your problem. I fixed it!" or "There is no answer on this physical realm." That's what I'm talking about with Psychic Kids.

It's entirely possible that these kids have more -- maybe much more -- talent and difficulty in some areas. The kids have mental issues and aptitudes that their peers won't understand. It's necessary to grant them this validation. However, it's just as likely, and just as necessary to express to the kids, that other children have issues and aptitudes that they don't have and won't understand. You don't get to be the star of the world. You don't even get to be the star of your own world. You're a spectator and participant, and it's infinitely better and more interesting that way.

Maybe these kids' talents and problems lie along more difficult-to-discern, difficult-to-deal-with lines. Maybe the parents decided they don't understand what their kids are going through -- which is fine; but then decided that it must be incomprehensible to anyone, paranormal -- which is not fine. You don't need to resort to magic for your kid to be special. Magic isn't real. Your kid's specialness is. Your kids problems are.

Am I one of those hippie parents who thinks everyone's a winner? Yeah. I guess I am.

But here's the difference: I'm not saying your (or your kid's) special beauty lies in some unable-to-be-grasped magical aura. I'm specifically saying it does not. It's real. You might not be able to grasp it, but it's graspable. It's concrete. You're special, and there are ways to find out how. You have problems, and there are ways to pin them down and address them. Same for your kid. Everyone is special. Everyone's a winner. This doesn't diminish the words "special" and "winner," because we all win at different categories. And we all suck royal donkey balls at several categories as well. Same for your kid.

Apparently (according to the original link sender), this makes me a closed-minded wet blanket. I don't see why. The choices aren't "My kid has black and white talents and foibles that I can readily describe" or "My kid is a magical starchild." Do you really think every kid but a select few is less complex, less nuanced, less worthy of wonder and consideration; than psychic kids, savants, "Indigo" children, "Crystal" children, kids with an affinity for animals, or whatever specialty your kid has? How is that better than "My football player can kick your honor student's ass?"

Of course I think my kid is the most special kid in the world. And it doesn't feel like an opinion. But it is an opinion, and none less valid for being one. He's the most special because of his unmatched (in my limited experience) imagination and way with animals, because of his intelligence and insight, because of his kindness, and yes, because of his flaws. (His ability to focus, for example, is so miniscule that while we were ice skating the other day he stopped, simply because he forgot to keep moving his legs. I'm relieved that breathing is involuntary.) His specialness is born from his specific set of characteristics as well as those of everyone he encounters. His shared experiences and private thoughts write a specific story that's his, and to a much lesser extent, mine and my husband's. His story is staggeringly beautiful. It is mind-searingly tiresome. It is heart-breakingly, uniquely painful. It is heart-meltingly amazing. I'm proud, touched, annoyed, exasperated, and amazed every moment that I'm with him. I try, from time to time, to share some of that with you. But here's the thing -- I share the qualities of it. I share the universal -- or near universal -- parts, including the universal happiness we all feel from witnessing someone's distinct footprint on the world. I share the details to show the beauty. I don't expect the details themselves to impress anyone, because I know they're not objectively special, at least not in the sense that they're unique to us. And they don't need to be. The whole package is special. Isn't that enough?

Which brings me back to what I suspect some of the Psychic Kids parents are doing. Their kids have talents, sensitivities, and problems that happen to be hard to put a finger on. Fine. So spend time with your kids. Validate them, even if your answer is "I believe you, but I don't know what is happening. There is a real answer out there. Let's find it together." Even if it takes a lifetime to find, even if you never find the answer. Because you'll make your own answer along the way, and it will be built of a million real things. Early morning cuddling and dinnertime fights. Walks through meadows in the golden hour and homework nagging. Sleepovers and playground fights. Snapshots by road signs and sinks full of dishes. Board games and cats and dogs and backyards and cookies and toys and baseball games and school dances and a million other things that won't be special to anyone on the planet but you and your kid. And that's fine. Think of the world you'll discover together. Think of the people he'll meet, who'll get to know him in return. He will grow up with volumes of special experiences. What's more, the understanding that it's the big picture that makes who we are, that no one's concerned about his mundane trivialities -- but only because each one of them is carrying a whole universe of their own, waiting to be explored -- I think he'll be infinitely better for it than if you told him he has magical powers and sent him to a spooky house with some wacko.

Never forget ... to live

Confession: I forgot Sunday was 9/11.

OK. I didn't totally forget. I wrote a short post Friday about it, though to be fair, that post is mostly links to incredible works others have produced. I didn't forget. It's part of our identity now.

I got up this morning, though, thinking about life. And not even in a 9/11 or patriotic way, either. Just plain, happy, sunshine-on-my-face, broken-down-swingset-in-the-backyard-with-my-son, big-misshapen-blueberry-pancakes kind of happy. I think this is the right way to go.

"Never forget" always seemed a little odd to me. I know it's our way of honoring the victims and heroes of that day. I know it's about going back, at least once a year, to the day where the very worst brought our our very best. I know it means "Never become complacent," but somehow, I don't see that happening.

"Never forget" is superfluous, in a way. How could we ever forget? And it always looks like an admonition to keep the tragedy alive, to keep the deaths alive. I don't want to do that. I want to keep their lives alive.

It's not just 9/11. I don't remember the day my dad died. I never do. But I celebrate his birthday every year, in some way. I'm positive that's how he'd have wanted it.

"Remembering is all I can do," I overheard someone saying during a conversation this weekend. But, I wanted to say, it's NOT all you can do.

You're not powerless. You can make new memories. You can live more. You can love harder. And you probably are. You get credit for living. You should feel immensely empowered for that. That is doing something. It's not running away from 9/11. It's not forgetting.

I'm the very last person you want to go to for 9/11 expertise, so really, go elsewhere. But if you really want to know my opinion, I think we should add "to live" to our commemorative motto.

Never forget to live.

Maybe it's a reminder to me more than anyone. Because I sometimes do forget.

So I'm going to be sure, today and this week, to go on living. I'll post a "Monday goodies" tomorrow (someone please help me think of a better title for that feature) -- vultures. Which are all about life and beauty, despite what you may have heard. And today, I'll go back outside with my son and squeeze my oversized ass onto the undesized swing set seat once again. I'll hike and photograph and try not to get ant-bitten like yesterday. I'll help my kid bake some brownies.

I'll look east (if I can remember which direction that is) and yes, I will remember. There's a 9/11-shaped hole in my heart too. But I'll go on. Death will have the very last word, after all. I want to have as much to say on the side of life while I'm able.

We hit the father lode

Last week at this time, my husband and I were planning to have lunch with my mother-in-law. As we contemplated if the restaurant would be packed and keep us waiting like a bunch of goobers (not good for an impatient perpetual motion machine kid, a hungry post-church mother-in-law and grandma-in-law, and a couple who manages to turn an idle ten minutes into a passive very aggressive whispered argument over who has been nicer to whom, vis-a-vis an incident the night before involving Tuna Helper), my husband said, "Well, isn't it Father's Day?" My heart/brain/facial expression melted. I raced through options in my head, rushed "secret" trips to the store/cards made/goodies baked, until I realized it wasn't that weekend -- I thought. But I wasn't sure. (I totally promise to be easy on you next year when you forget whether my birthday is on the second or third, babe.)

But others are much more on the ball, and I've been watching/reading a fair bit online the last few days about dads, their roles, their treatment, and so forth, in time for Father's Day.

The thing is, I've never really given much thought to "Do fathers get a raw deal," "Can they do just as good a job as mothers," or "Are fathers treated as second-class parents." Partly because my brain is busy thinking things like "Is the toilet going to flood our bathroom for a third time today," "Why on Earth did the universe entrust me with such an awesome kid and give me such a great partner," "Can we afford mortgage this month," "What the hell is that smell," "What's the difference between an eared grebe and a pied-billed grebe," and "Which Bakugan is blue, again?"

(Not necessarily in that order. Sometimes, though.)

(Yeah, these are all thoughts in my head at this moment.)

But it's also because my own family was never like that. Sure, there were times, many, that my mom was the "primary" rule giver, and when the shit (which, if it was there because of us, we'd better clean it up ourselves or ELSE) really hit the fan, she usually took charge at home because 1) she was the one home most often and 2) she was her (if you know her you'll know what I mean). But they were a team, and my father was about the most involved father one could possibly have. He taught me reading and humor and music appreciation and that Beach Boys are great if you're happy and Jim Croce is good if you're sad and how to be sarcastically snide to the music guy at Best Buy if he calls him "Jim Crochet." He taught me as much about baseball as is possible to cram into a three-year-old's head, and later, everything else about baseball. (I've fallen out of following it, but could still properly keep score in my sleep, backwards Ks and all, and I know that Ozzie Smith switch hit. Go crazy, folks.)

More than that, my dad was sort of a superdad. He was the popular teacher/coach at school, the goofy (though you can't really help but be goofy if you're as tall as a phone pole and wear SHORTS in front of 11- and 12-year-olds), sarcastic, teacher-it's-cool-to-like teacher. If a kid needed guidance or coaching or extra anything, he was there. We shared our dad often, and it somehow always seemed to add rather than take away in terms of his dad-ness.

I've written on my dad before. I pretty much idolized the guy. That, I always thought, is the standard by which all dads are to be measured. I have never exactly made a secret of how I felt.

So already, you can possibly see where my husband could have maybe felt pressured. Just a tad.

But it's not even that. I ... well, I don't hide it exactly, but there are some things I don't exactly broadcast. I used to think it was to not make my husband feel weird, or even my son. But it's me.

It's just: David didn't start out Aaron's.

But that's not how it is at all. The thing is, Aaron chose David. He chose both of us.

If I were telling another story, a romantic story, I’d tell here how my husband and I came to be married one December afternoon, with my son as ring bearer, how the ceremony went on to recognize the union of my husband and son as father and son. I’d tell how we all got to that point -- how Aaron and I had dated through high school and a few years afterward. How we had been the forever and ever couple. I’d tell about taking Aaron to my prom, unbothered when his family threw scandalized looks at my dress straps, as if this was exactly why their son had been home-schooled.

I’d tell the usual tired stories about betrayal and sex and school, and maybe some less-tired ones involving a diabetic coma (his), a black bear encounter (both of us, and we think a black bear), and even more daunting, encountering my mother after a particular indiscretion ("... and a teenage female, last name Henry-Ocean-Sam-Edward-Yellow. I think the male's head is about to implode from mortification. Wait, I just heard 'im yell 'Your mom has a POLICE SCANNER?!' I think I'm gonna make 'em wait a minute more, mess with 'em.") (Most definitely both of us, as my mother was delighted share).

I’d tell how our relationship had survived fights, only to disintegrate from stagnation. How it had nearly torn us both apart as individuals. How I’d dived headlong into a job I didn’t really like, met someone I didn’t really like, had a child, alone, and why I honestly never think about that man. I'd tell who Aaron had used that time to date. How, when we finally became good friends once again after three years of little communication, all of that seemed to fall away and it seemed natural and easy that we’d be together again. How it hasn’t really been that easy, if I'm honest with myself. How I know so completely that I want it, and him, anyway.

But I'm not telling that story. I guess the only important points here are: Aaron and I have known each other for about eighteen years. We've been super-close friends for the better part of those years, if not consecutively. We dated, then we didn't. I had a kid. He married me and embraced that kid. He loves my son. His son, our son.

No matter what we'd ever gone through, even before he was his "father," Aaron was there for David. He was the first visitor when I had him, a fixture around the house when I brought him home. Even before we'd considered anything like getting back together and back when he still thought he hated kids, he loved David. He was covered in spit-up and at least tried to change a diaper. Which is what parenting is, in my experience. I'm not a mushy goo-goo girl. I didn't know how to change a diaper until after I had a son. I am much more kid-inclined now that I used to be, but it's more by immersion and philosophical understanding. Kids are still a pain. But it's different with mine. And that's how Aaron is. He's not a kid person. But he's definitely an our-kid person. He's a dad.


Aaron isn't just like my own dad. Which isn't better or worse, just different. (Actually probably better for me specifically, since I never would have married someone just like my father -- two sarcastic, opinionated, never-backing-down bigmouths wouldn't have worked too well.) We're our own family. He's his own person, learning and growing and loving and screwing it up just as often as he gets it right just like the rest of us. But the one thing that is the same between them is the caring. I haven't known very many people who care as fiercely as my own father, and this one:



Happy Father's Day, baby.

(It IS this weekend, right?)

What I did over spring break

What did you do for spring break?

It's a question I heard asked a few dozen times this week, and not by my son's teacher for an assignment (though my son recently brought home a creature he drew, with phalluses for nearly every body part, which leads me to wonder what assignment prompts they do have).

The moms ask each other.

We moms drop off our progeny and then line up side-by-side at the playground fence, watching, waving dutifully and conversing in varying states of wakefulness. It's like King of the Hill or South Park where they all line up and talk, only the topics are less interesting ("Really? Sale on American AND cheddar at Fry's?"), and I'm sometimes even less eloquent than Boomhauer, depending on whether the migraine fairy has visited that night/morning.


I'm already at a disadvantage here. I parked next to a fellow-mother-acquaintance-friend this morning. She opened the sliding door on her spotless, scratchless, rustless, cat-piss-on-the-tires-less, brand new van and ... wait, no. She didn't open the door; it opened its-frickin-self, like some kind of Star Trek door. Anyway, I got out, helped my son out, and walked around to reattach the passenger-side mirror, which falls off about once a trip and thereafter hangs by its cords like some kind of sad, redneck ornament. We walked our kids in and I was happy to notice that her son and mine were similarly well-groomed, though I'd be willing to bet hers hadn't weaseled out of a bath last night and wasn't secretly wearing two different socks that only matched above the sneakers.

As our kids sprinted off, she smoothed her mint-green cardigan over a pearlescent blouse, and sort of fluffed it out over her Capri pants. I ... well, I don't own a cardigan or anything that could be rightly termed a blouse, and my calves' disobliging habit of not tapering at all pretty much rules out Capris. But I wore that ASU T-shirt and jean shorts. Her hair did this thing that looked sort of like an elaborate frosting swirl and sort of like an ornate piece of jewelry, but still left it looking shiny. Mine was in the ol' standby ponytail. Her feet were perfectly pedicured, slender little French tips to the last toe. Mine ... let's just say I don't have a desire to draw attention to my feet.

And it's not for an office; she goes back home just like me. So already I'm feeling less-than-successful in the effort-making department and wifeyness/momminess in general.

And then the bragathon starts. And let me tell you, guys don't hold a candle to our pissing contests.

"So, what did you do over Spring Break?" Perfect Mom asked.

"Well, we taught our martial arts class most of last week, but we made time to go to the Hilton in Sedona, after a ton of walking and shopping. They have flat-screen televisions there now," said Sporty Mom, who doesn't dress as impeccably as Perfect Mom but looks like what would happen if Angelina Jolie and Jessica Biel had a baby.

"We went camping. And hunting! It was great. Our youngest took his first big animal," said Renaissance Mom, who near as I can tell has done every activity in existence with her three kids. I was at the other end of our row, which was good because I was too tired to keep the distaste from my face when she described searching for a photo devoid enough of gore so her little one could show off his kill. I am an avid non-fan of recreational hunting, and tried to remain politely impassive as the other mothers voiced admiration. I passed the time entertaining thoughts of a Celebrity Death Match-style throw down between Renaissance Mom and PETA Mom, a mother from David's old school; and also by silently thanking the registration gods that my animal-activist son was in another class and wouldn't be scarred for life by today's show and tell.

The pissing contest continued. Disneyland (whoosssssh), Six Flags (pissss), England (foreign piss!), thirteen-kid sleepovers (actual piss! Beat that!), Tiki parties, day camps.

"So what did you do?" Perfect Mom finally asked me.

"Eh, we just stayed around the house mostly," I demurred. "Harry Potter marathon. Playing in the backyard. We went to the Riparian Preserve a few times, did some hiking."

"Oh, that's ... nice," one of them said. "Must be nice to just step back and stay at home for a change. Oh, did I tell you about the fusion food at that rooftop cantina?"

But it's not for a change, I wanted to say. That's how we have fun. Pretty much always.

Sure, about once a year we do the big-V Vacation thing. Sea World, the beach (which is way exotic for Arizonans), ocean kayaking (which couldn't be described as a vacation experience so much as an ordeal, at least the way we did it), that whole bit. We're looking at maybe going to Hawaii some time.

But most of the time our time off is, well, off. Relaxing. It made me think: Am I being too slack? Sure, overscheduling sucks, but aren't you supposed to want to cram as much into your time with your kids as possible?

That's the thing, though. I feel like we do that. We didn't really do much over spring break. We stayed at the house. Read a bunch of books. Watched a bunch of movies (or the same few, a bunch of times over). Went to the park, went on some walks, played in the back yard.

Or maybe I don't realize how much we did. I'm taken in by the argument that proximity-to-house equals loser-vacation.

We saw the sun set every single day. We found ladybugs and they crawled on our faces. We discovered a tree where the cormorants at the preserve like to roost, and we stood there as the sun set and painted the sky orange and pink, watching and listening to them squabble over perches and burp at each other. (Ever heard a cormorant? They don't chirp; they burp. Grab yourself a seven-year-old and find a cormorant. It's good for an hour of laughter, at least.)

We listened to the Canada geese honk as they flew in formation in the evening. We watched egrets; their white primary feathers forming aprons around their forms and glowing almost a painful white as the sun lit them; skim the water as they pulled back to land, necks folding and unfolding in graceful curves. We watched the light play through the trees and the impressionist flowers and grasses, and saw it hit on the glaring red flashes of blackbird shoulders as they called for mates. We feed the geese and ducks.

We saw Saturn through the local observatory telescope, looking as it won't for another fourteen years. The planet's rings are wide but thin, so as the earth passes through Saturn's equatorial plane you can see just a faint line as you get an edge-on view of the rings, and their diminished glow allows Saturn's moons to show more vividly. David didn't want to stop looking. He still hasn't stopped talking about it.

We pulled weeds, and pulled weeds, and pulled weeds. Which doesn't seem like a particularly great spring break activity, but if you happen to be a bug lover, and if your mom's lack of diligence in the yard has turned it into a conglomeration of every arthropod native to Arizona, it's great fun. We found orb spiders, aphids (which explains the ladybugs), rainbow-colored beetles, and grasshoppers in every color imaginable. We'd never seen yellow grasshoppers. We're watching a resident spider as she grows and molts and snacks on crane flies.

We had kicked off spring break with a party for my son's birthday, which was only attended by a few kids (the rest were undoubtedly busy getting passports or firearms), but was full of much sweaty play and cake and Transformers paraphernalia. A few days before, at his request, I had taken him to Chuck E. Cheese, where we spent 30 bucks to win a 25-cent toy and left smelling like feet and pizza, and he had a blast (despite the place housing his one phobia: Chuck E. himself, who, blessedly, never shows up).

We ate cheese sandwiches every day, always on fresh bread with cheddar, Swiss, AND American, the good kind, which was in fact on sale at Fry's. We drank the fancy juice that comes in boxes. We stayed up late every night. We looked at flies' wings and cat hair and leaf cells through the microscope and we played light sabers.

"Mom?" he asked the night of our last day off.

"Hmm?"

"Whenever I'm sad I try to think of you, like what we did today and yesterday. Sometimes when I'm happy too. Sometimes I think of other things instead, but then it always makes me think of you anyway. I like that."

We did nothing for spring break.

And everything.

Looking back

Since I've started blogging at least semi-regularly, I've begun to get requests. I'm one of only a few bloggers among my offline acquaintances, and so it was kind of slow going at first. Blogging. Um, sure. But in the months I've been active, blogging's picked up in popularity among even the uninitiated, and I like to think I've also hit a stride of sorts. So it's my thing now, and I get requests. They take three forms, with some overlap -- the topical ("You have to write on such-and-such issue!"); the experiential ("Come on! When are you gonna write about when you: forgot your pants/hiked the Grand Canyon/got mugged for your trash?"); or the writerly ("I loved reading your essay. You should so post it!").

I find the last one particularly flattering, being a writer and all. But I always feel kind of like it's, I don't know, cheating. I'm supposed to write new stuff, right?

I'm cheating today anyway. But this one's different.

David's seventh birthday is tomorrow. I can't freaking believe it. Seven. And between the preparations for his birthday and assorted drama in my own life, I haven't written much about it yet. I will. But I'm feeling too darn nostalgic right now. So here, a repeat for some of you and with less polish than I'd like but pretty much the way I wrote it years ago, is his birth.

*************

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the blood.
This is not how motherhood is supposed to begin.

Blood soaked the sheets, forming a pool, the slick surface undulating. Mine. It never happened like this in the movies. It happened in those “emergency childbirth” shows - blurry, strobe flashes and a melodramatic drumbeat, the narrator grave.

My most coherent thought was that the shows underplayed the drama.

It had begun routinely. The doctors asked the requisite questions and calculated the number of humiliating positions I could assume. After posing me on hands and folded legs, like a terrified jackrabbit, the anesthesiologist prepared the epidural and reassured me. I produced a crackly squeak, which I hoped he would interpret as a polite laugh.

As I steeled myself for the jab, the electronic beeps monitoring my son’s - David’s - heart rate slowed conspicuously, like a neglected wind-up toy. The doctors’ eyes narrowed.

I was flipped on my right side. “…definitely a placenta abruptia.”

On my back. “…gonna need a C-section.”

On my left side. “… don’t want her to bleed out.”

As I wondered if they would employ a mother-to-be rotisserie, the bone-white sheet turned reddish-black.

“Whoa, that’s too much blood. We gotta deliver now.”

I signed to have the operation. I would have signed for a C-section, lobotomy or castration. My hands shook. My arms, legs, torso followed, as if a maniacal puppeteer were throwing a tantrum with my limbs. And why was it so cold?

My sister stood aside as my mom frantically tugged on one-size-sort-of-fits-all sky-blue scrubs.

“She’s in shock, isn’t she?” she hissed to my mom in a stage whisper. She fingered circlets of hair, pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt up and down - she would not be in the operating room. And there was no father. Only my mom came with me.

Fluorescent lights raced overhead as I sped feet-first down the hall. I gazed at the floor. The beige and taupe tiles became tracer bullets in my path. My limbs crashed against the cot, with a thump-clang-rattle-thump as they hit sheets, frame, sheets again.

It’s all wrong. I’m not ready. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

A Caesarean section, I’m told, takes about forty-five minutes. Mine took nine. I managed to turn my head and watch David’s birth. He was blue. Not bluish. Blueberry Popsicle blue. Ice blue. I held my breath with him. The doctors - there were a dozen now - rubbed him, rolled him, and fed him air. Finally: a small, uncertain, “Wah.” His cyanotic tint faded into a coralline red-pink.

Six years later, I’m still not ready. But you’ll know who I am.

A plastic tarantula, empty juice pouches and the books Slinky, Scaly Snakes and Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! litter my car. A Vivaldi CD I played impulsively on the way to the lake one evening has remained in the player for three months, by decree of my son. The only acceptable replacement, I’ve been told, might be the Shrek soundtrack.

My philosophy discussions, once rooted in Kierkegaard and Hume, now begin with “If it’s time to make baby birds, why do the girl birds run away from the boy ones?”

My bedroom-playroom-home office is a hodgepodge of academia and an advertisement for Toys “R” Us. A plastic Superman bust looks over cosmology texts. A scientific paper titled “Candidates of red shift 5.5-7 galaxies” bookmarks Diego Saves the Whale.

I spend days playing, reading, running, teaching, kissing and making it better. I spend nights, and a few afternoons, working. I seldom sleep. I smell like chicken sticks, bubble mix and Play-Doh.

My prayers have turned from generic petitions to the weirdly specific: “God, please let my son pee in the toilet this time. I’m out of dry underwear and paper towels.” Or, “God, please let me say the right thing when the dog dies. I can’t stand to break his heart.”

Every issue is weighty - eating (you can’t have Pop Tarts nine times a day), religion (sure, God might sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas), animal care (cats and dogs cannot “play robots”). He wants to be an animal rescuer, and volunteer at the zoo. It’s an hour’s drive. I can’t wait to take him.

Asked to name my favorite actor, I couldn’t decide between Squidward Tentacles and Scooby-Doo. My physics and calculus are rusty, but I can recite every Dr. Seuss book and know how many times SpongeBob has taken his driving test (thirty-nine).

David’s wide, tooth-packed smile is an explosion that takes over his face. His laugh trickles like the lyrical, playful flow of a mountain stream. To feel his rose-petal lips on my cheek, or his silky, gold-brown hair in my fingers, is to experience love.

It came to me, at the arboretum, as it often does: just watching him. He danced and swirled near a bush, disturbing a flurry of black and iridescent-blue butterflies, which spun briefly about him before alighting elsewhere. This is exactly how motherhood is supposed to be.

For many a young to middle-aged woman, a pivotal moment of anxious resignation is when she finds herself filing coupons alphabetically, scolding drink-from-the-carton culprits or uttering the phrase “You’ll poke your eye out,” and realizes she has become her mother.

Not me. I have become my son.

I giggled the other day when the cashier farted while ringing up our purchase. I have developed an unusually high affinity for Pop Tarts and string cheese. I was always horrible at delivering punch lines, but I don’t even know the jokes anymore. My son’s favorite joke goes:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me! Ah ha ha! Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me!”

(Repeat for ten minutes.)

Other than that, I don’t really know any jokes. But my days are still filled with humor. I do know, for example, that the nature-show narrative “The boobies come in great numbers, as far as the eye can see,” is good for an afternoon of laughter. I know the simple joy that comes from pulling up to the stop sign beside the neighborhood horse stables at the exact moment two mares engage in synchronized defecation, or the snickers borne from lifting one snail from the dirt only to discover a second one attached to it, the hermaphroditic parts “lined up.” I’ve relearned the joke that “your epidermis is showing.” I know that spelling out the word “up” on the talking computer at the science center makes it say “You pee.” I know that I don’t get invited to any parties. I choose to believe everyone in attendance wishes to avoid being overshadowed by my newly acquired comedic repertoire.

I was warned motherhood would mow me down like a trimmer over wild, unruly grass. Make me into a tame, monotonous turf. Get ready for boredom, I was warned. Be prepared for repetition.

Instead, we have tended the wild weeds in each other. There is repetition, sure, and I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand how the same cartoon episode remains enthralling upon viewing forty five times. But rarely is there monotony. We seem to have an unspoken pact, a refusal to abandon wonder. If this is an anomaly of nature, either his as a child or mine in my simple-minded refusal to be bored, I welcome it.

*************

And lastly, if you're wondering where he got the baby-jowls, I give you me, circa 1980:

Happy (belated) birthday, Dad

I tried and tried yesterday to think of a fitting post to do for what would have been my dad's 51st birthday. I did one last year, and was thinking of him all day. But nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. Fits and starts. I wrote a bit here and there about how he lives on through me in unexpected ways, how he chose "favorite" baseball players whose cards my brother and sister and I would "collect" (starting in infancy; my "favorite" was Keith Hernandez). I scribbled down a list of random quotes I remembered from him:

On religion: "I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything the Pope or the priest does. It's like being an American. If you agree with everything the President does and don't even question it, you're a pretty lousy American."

On buying ten cartons of ice cream: "Well, it WAS on sale."

On an argument with my mom: "Well, sometimes we do argue. We love each other, and we'll be fine by tonight ... but I am right."

On my mom deliberately ruining his eggs (because he deserved it): "That's fine. I LIKE them this way."

On my mom and I arguing: "Well, I think you're both being a little ridiculous!"

On our response: "..." [Retreat.]

On my mom revealing, after months, that she'd switched the brand name for a generic: "Well, yeah. I figured that out right away. I just didn't say anything."

On political affiliations: "Well, you're Republican. We're Republican. Obviously."

After a huge fight once: "You should know something. You and you mom. You're my heroes. You've changed me more than you'll ever know."

But I couldn't wrap it up, tie it to anything. Because I am my dad for better or worse, including my short attention span, propensity to procrastinate and my devotion to my kid. So I tried in two- and three-minute spurts, and nothing. How do you commemorate someone you're already constantly commemorating in your life and thoughts? I talked to my mom twice yesterday and it occurred to me I had forgotten to say anything. But what do I say? Happy Dad's birthday? Probably, I guess. But that seemed inadequate, somehow, which was the same problem that I had with everything I tried to write. So sorry, Mom. Definitely, Happy Dad's birthday.

My son and I went through old pictures last night, and we found some old pictures of my dad and me. (I'll scan them in and add them to this post later today.) My son, without really looking at them at first, saw the kid and the postures and immediately assumed it was me and him.

And then we went for a walk, and saw this amazing pink and red sky.

David knew what day it was. The world knew.

I guess I'll end with a conversation David and I had last night. It was prompted by a book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), which seems more than fitting.

"Harry must be sad his mom is dead."

"Yeah. I'm sure he's very sad."

"Like, when he wonders what to do, and wants to ask her, and she's not there."

"That would be really hard. He just has to do his best. And he has the memory of her."

"But why does the memory make him happy? Doesn't it make him sad that she's gone?"

"Well, of course he's sad. But I guess Harry's happy because the memory is kind of like him, I mean her, still being there. And when Harry needs advice or love, Harry can still think about what he would have said."

"I'm not talking about his dad. We already talked about that."

"I mean she. What she would have said."

"You miss your dad, huh?"

"Yeah. I do, sweetie."

Textually aroused

I know I made fun of memes a while back. So, naturally, I'm passing on another one now. Hypocrite? Me?

But I had to, for a few reasons. First the actual meme, as seen on Facebook and everywhere else: There's a supposed BBC-originated list of 100 books, only six of which the "BBC believes" the average person will have read. The instructions are to indicate those you've read, liked, disliked, and so on.

The only problem is, I found the list on the BBC website, and it's significantly different. Near as I can tell, someone (or someones) altered the list to make it ... I don't know, more impressive sounding? I'm not sure. I know the original list lacks the Bible, Shakespeare, Anna Karenina, Memoirs of a Geisha, and several others that now appear. Maybe I'll redo my list with the original, especially if I don't feel like working but want to feel productive. But my response to the memed one (with my own commentary) is at the end of this post. I've read 48 of the books.

Like I said, I'm responding for a couple of reasons. First, I can't resist a chance to show the world how smart and nerdy I am. Second, I feel terribly clever for knowing it's modified list, though I'm sure plenty of people have already realized that. But third, I sort of take issue with the implications of doing so and of the "list of books to read" phenomenon in general. So I'm, what, eight times more well read than most people? I don't buy that. Or perhaps what I don't buy is the hierarchy of book worthiness.

Because the thing is, I'm obsessed with reading. Obsessed. And I didn't get that way on Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, or even on Lord of the Rings. I didn't read a lot of the books I "counted" until well into adulthood. My obsession started young and was nurtured into a love affair by junior high and early high school, by which point I had still read almost none of the books that appear on any of these kinds of lists.

I almost had to be a bookworm. My dad (whose birthday would have been today; more on that in the next post) gave new meaning to "avid reader," and sort of made it his mission to pass it on to me. He turned me on to nonfiction reading, countless novels, and comic books (Wolverine and Batman were the favorites -- you like them now that they're cool to like? Bone up on your back stories and then talk to me.) We spent nearly an entire summer reading and rereading A Wrinkle in Time, just talking about how it worked.

Add to that my grandmother, my dad’s mother. When we were growing up, she worked at a bookstore across the country. Each month, surplus books would have their covers torn off for some sort of record keeping and the books would be slated for disposal. As a kid, it always used to strike me as somehow wrong that a bookstore could destroy books, business or no. Fortunately, my grandmother couldn’t abide the idea any more easily, and she shipped the books to us. They arrived in huge brown boxes, waiting on our steps after school, wrapped about ten times over in packing tape. The tape became a running joke. She had an inexplicable attachment to the stuff, and it almost made the end result -- the challenge, the wait, the eventual revealing of the prize -- sweeter. Like a strip tease, only with books.

When finally the tape lay in a giant ball on the carpet, we’d fling open the box flaps to reveal stack upon stack of paperbacks, piled tightly together, turned sideways and slid down vertically on top of and beside the main stacks where spaces remained, to maximize the number of books per box. My brother and sister would pick books here and there, but I became nerdily determined to read every single one. It didn’t matter what the subject was -- kids’ novels and older-audience titles, poetry, nature, science, medicine, fiction as well as nonfiction. I even read an Unauthorized Guide to the Mario Brothers, though I don’t play video games. I became obsessed with stories and background information, with different ways of describing things, with characters, with facts. I read every book in The Babysitters’ Club series, and all the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. I read every book written by Madeline L’Engle and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien save a few obscure volumes that remained perpetually on my Christmas and birthday wish lists. I knew each time a new title was due from Christopher Pike or R.L. Stine (pre-Goosebumps series). I read old and new together and mixed genres like a kid at a soda fountain mixes flavors: Rocket Ship Galileo and then Pippi Longstocking; The Wind in the Willows and then a volume ambitiously titled The Story of Mankind. I read a book on a professional painter turned marine biologist, who used his hybrid training to portray sharks in a positive light at a time when it wasn’t en vogue to do so. I read a novel chronicling the last twenty-four hours of the life of Christ. I learned words like polydactyl and metaphysics and struthiomimus. I learned how to build stilts and how to do card tricks. I learned a great many dirty jokes and some clean ones, though I was and still am terrible at delivering one effectively. I memorized “The Raven,” “Jaberwocky,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Casey at the Bat” long before I ever studied poetry in school; and even gave a go at understanding “The Hunting of the Snark,” though I wasn’t able to make much sense out of it, other than to be quite unsure how the boojum was dangerous, or what the hell it was, for that matter. I also learned from books, however, that a boojum was a rather peculiar upside-down looking tree related to the ocotillo, and let my intellectual pride take solace in this fact, unrelated to snarks though it might be.

Yeah, I pretty much thought I was the shit. I must have been a royal pain.

And now David reads all those same books. The exact same ones, many missing covers, others read so many times that pieces of the covers have permanent creases or purple unicorn "Belongs to Kim" stickers that themselves have been worn thin.

Now, I know what a lot of people think at this point. Because, except for a few, there aren't many books or subjects I've just listed that would appear on any "best" list. So the common response is, well, it's still great, because at least you were reading something. At least David's reading something now. That's probably why you went on to read 48 books on that list.

I hate the attitude of "At least they're reading something."

Who needs a caste system of books? Really? "At least?" "At least" is the opposite of why I've read 48 of those books. Conditioning myself to read, and then "discovering" the "real" stuff, has nothing to do with it. I learned to read because my dad and others taught me it was fun. Those boxes were treasure boxes. It's the same reason David reads today. Reading is exciting. We've all learned to read for purely recreational purposes.

Now I'm not saying that lists don't have their place. A list of books college bound students should read, fine. A list of the most educational and accessible books in some field or other, great. I think they're infinitely helpful. But I take issue with the general "these are the best books" list. You know the book that made me a passionate reader? This one:

It contained such scholarly tidbits as the "Cyclops girl," a man who painted with his tongue, a guy who held his arm outstretched for ten years, two women who each gave birth to 69 children, and a temple where "thousands were hurled to their deaths."

The thing was, I read all 332 pages of this book. At eight years old. My neck would get stiff and the carpet would make indentations in my knees, from sitting and reading. The morning light would turn brighter and harsher, and only then would I rise from murderous tyrants and 20-foot-tall flowers to eat a late lunch. I had to read it.

In my mind, some of the only books on the list that would have given me that gotta-keep-reading feeling would be the Harry Potter volumes, and it's not because the writing's that great. It's not, technically. For one thing, Rowling's overuse of adverbs makes me want to barf after two or so pages. But her storytelling rocks. Her dialogue is excellent; the characters tell the story for her. The point is, for whatever reason, these kinds of books fly by for me. They're easy in a good way and accessible and I'm actually a little disappointed when I can't "live" in their worlds anymore. We'd be severely deprived if this was the only kind of book out there, but it's what turns readers on.

Today, David's engrossed in a book about the universe. Catcher in the Rye can't be far behind. But I know it won't precede severed toes and The Hearse Song. We're in the middle of The Goblet of Fire, and I have to pry him away from it each night. He'll never have to have a book assigned to him in his life. He reads anything.

The books in both lists are good stuff, no doubt. And yeah, if you take my Lord of the Rings or Mockingbird, we might have to have words. But even those, I can put down. Whatever combination of good writing and storytelling and one's own point in life makes it happen,
it's a rare book that makes you almost wet your pants because you can't put it down.

Or maybe that's "rare" for me and "never" for sane people. Whatever. Here's my list. (You can stop reading here now if you're totally tired of these things. The list is ugly. I would have put it in the comments, but the spacing was all weird there.)

The instructions, for the uninitiated, were to:
1. Look at the list and put and (X) after those you have read
2. Add a (+) to the ones you LOVE
3. Add a (-) to books you didn't like.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Slash (/) those you don't plan on reading.
5. Tally your total at the bottom

1. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen):X
2. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien): X
3. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte): /
4. Harry Potter series (JK Rowling): X+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee): X+
6. The Bible: X
7. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte): X
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell): X
9. His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman):X (would have been X+ if I'd read it as a kid; still almost + for ideas if not writing)
10. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens): X
11. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott): X
12. Tess of the D'Ubervilles (Thomas Hardy): /
13. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller): X (And there should be a hyphen, list writer. Also, I award my own "+" to anyone who actually uses the term "Catch-22" PROPERLY)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare: X+
15. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier): /
16. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien): X+
17. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulk): /
18. Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger): X+
19. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger): /
20. Middlemarch (George Elliot): X
21. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell): /
22. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald): *
23. Bleak House (Charles Dickens): /
24. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy): /
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams): x+
26. Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh):/
27. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky): X
28. Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck): X
29. Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll): X+
30. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame): x+
31. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): /
32. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens): x
33. Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis): x (can I say "+" on some readings and "-" on others?)
34. Emma (Jane Austen): /
35. Persuasion (Jane Austen): /
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (CS Lewis): X (Um, this IS part of Chronicles of Narnia, idiotic list-maker person)
37. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini): X (It was OK, but I feel like I must be missing something.)
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis De Bernieres): *
39. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden): *
40. Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne): X
41. Animal Farm (George Orwell): X (In 9th grade, I'd have said "X++++," because I thought I was SO smart for "getting it.")
42. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown): sorta * (Meh. Maybe.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): *
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving): *
45. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins): / (Don't recognize this one.)
46. Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery): /
47. Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy):/
48. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood): X+
49. Lord of the Flies (William Golding): X+ (mainly because my dad and I spent a month reading and re-reading it and discussing it.)
50. Atonement (Ian McEwan): * (maybe)
51. Life of Pi (Yann Martel): X+ (Just go along for the ride. Suspend incredulity. It makes it better.)
52. Dune (Frank Herbert): X+ (and also Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune, The Butlerian Jihad, and The Machine Crusade. I'm working on the rest. Yes, I do have a life. Why do you ask?)
53. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons):/
54. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen): /
55. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth): (Don't recognize.)
56. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon): * (I have it. I think I picked it up solely on the merit of its title.)
57. A Tale of Two Citites (Charles Dickens): X
58. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley): X (Again, boy did I feel clever for getting it. I must have been a pain in the ass in junior high and high school.)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon): / (what's the deal with this one? It's supposed to be some big deal, right?)
60. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): * (maybe)
61. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck): X
62. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov): X
63. The Secret History (Donna Tartt): *
64. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold): *
65. Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas): X
66. On the Road (Jack Kerouac): X
67. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy): (Don't know this one either.)
68. Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding): /
69. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie): X
70. Moby Dick (Herman Melville): X (I hated it in high school; it was alright the second time.)
71. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens): /
72. Dracula (Bram Stoker): X
73. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett): X
74. Notes From a Small Island (Bill Bryson): X+
75. Ulysses (James Joyce): X
76. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath): *
77. Swallows and Amazon (Arthur Ransome): *
78. Germinal (Emile Zola): (Don't recognize.)
79. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray): /
80. Possession (AS Byatt): (Don't recognize.)
81. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens): X
82. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell): /
83. The Color Purple (Alice Walker): /
84. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro):/
85. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert): /
86. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry): *
87. Charlotte's Web (EB White): X+ (I loved this book when I was 8 or so.)
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom): /
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle): X
90. The Faraway Tree Collection (Enid Blyton): *
91. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad): *
92. The Little Prince (Antoine De Saint-Exupery): / (Started it; didn't like it.)
93. The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks): *
94. Watership Down (Richard Adams): /
95. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole): /
96. A Town Like Alice (Nevile Shute): /
97. The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas): X (Only after my friend and I saw the movie, because we hearted Chris O'Donnell.)
98. Hamlet (William Shakespeare): X+ (Saw the play too! One of the only formal events I ever attended. DOn't miss that boyfriend, but I loved that.)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Ronald Dahl): X
100. Le Miserables (Victor Hugo): /

I've read 48.

4 hoseys

Little bit of a family resemblance

I can't talk about my father, or my grandfather, or my great-grandfather, without becoming lost in memories of the tastes and smells of my grandparents' home in upstate New York.

Every time we visited New York, my grandparents trotted out a long-standing ritual of herding every member of the family to the driveway. The practice traditionally took place on the hottest, most humid summer day, when everyone sported oily, reflective sheens of sweat and condensation over faces and heads topped by hair frizzing out and up at odd, unpredictable angles. It was under these conditions that the ritual began, every family member grouping and regrouping for photographs. My grandparents had a cherry tree, an oak tree, a lush lawn, and a rose bush. But instead of any of these verdant backgrounds, they invariably chose the white-paneled garage door as a backdrop. About an hour into the routine, everyone would persevere with grim-faced determination, and the countenances combined with the garage gave the shots the look of police lineups. My sister and brother and I have our growth recorded in a series of mug shots.

It is in this form that four generations of Hosey men were captured on film for the first and last time. My great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant who occasionally couldn't recall that I was not my aunt but could tell me the name of the woman who gave him a blanket on the leaky boat to America. My grandfather, a talented writer with a poetic bent (which I discovered, almost by accident, on my last visit with him) who always wore blue trucker-style baseball caps he bought on trips to Arizona, perched loosely on his head so you could see through the part between the top of his head and the top of the hat. My brother, who would one day roll a car at 90 mph and survive, would be homecoming king, would join the Air Force and almost die in training and would return to be an emergency medical technician -- but who then was just my dorky little brother. And towering head and shoulders and chest above them all, my father: math prodigy, winner of every Trivial Pursuit game, commissioner of his fantasy football and baseball leagues, cracker of horrible jokes (which, I've since learned, he learned from his father), terrible but unabashed singer, larger than life in many senses. All but my brother have since passed on.

After the shots we'd talk my grandparents into a shot or two in front of the rosebush -- which were always their favorite, although we could count on mandatory mug shots on the next visit anyway -- and sit on the bench with peeling red paint in their backyard, picking cherry tomatoes from the vine. The round fruits would burst with only light pressure, spraying sweet-tangy juices into our mouths. (Or out of them, if we were really lucky. A projectile tomato bite was one of the rare treats of a New York summer afternoon.) I still only eat cherry tomatoes, although they don't taste as sweet or moist in Arizona. I don't think it's entirely in my head.

It was my grandpa's birthday December 4, the same day we were closing on our new home. Right around that time, my son was making some of the worst puns I'd ever heard.

Damn, I miss those guys.

So beautiful it hurts

The evening before, it was homework that stole our sunset.

He'd promised to do his homework in exchange for an evening stroll. I happily agreed. We needed a walk. He then proceeded to stall doing his homework, to whine about his homework, to get generally snotty about his homework. The sunset outside was amazing. It went from gentle melons and pinks, while he SWORE I was making it up when I gently corrected his spelling; to richer oranges and reds as I received the death glare for reminding him there was a back side to the worksheet; to blues and finally totally dark as he staged a small protest when I tried to point out his name looked like "Pavid" when he was petulantly, deliberately lazy with his handwriting. His homework got done, but we missed our walk, our moment.

And this evening, it was the boogers that did it.

I'd worked hard on my own stuff. I'd tried to catch up in both my personal and professional dealings. I'd taken a break to pick up my son from school, played a board game with him, served a snack, nagged him to do his homework, answered about ten million MomcanIhaves, MomcanIdos and MomMomMomlookitMomlookitMoms, and then rushed back again to the phone and computer. He'd call me back to the living room about every thirty seconds -- if he'd just give me ten freaking consecutive minutes, I'd grumble to myself -- but I was managing, slowly, to hack away at the day's tasks.

He called me out, a-freakin'-GAIN, and proceeded to ignore me once I got to the room. He was watching a commercial wherein the announcer apparently aimed to drill the product name into kids' -- and by extension parents' -- heads through sheer obnoxiousness: "So get ZEROGRAVITYMICRO!!!! Only ZEROGRAVITYMICRO can zoom on the floor, walls, or upside-down! It may even be able to violate the time space continuum! Really! So ask your parents for ZEROGRAVITYMICRO! Again, that's ZEROGRAVITYMICRO! Right now, ask for ZEROGRAVITYMICRO! Seriously, go ask! Now! ZEROGRAVITYMICRO!! Go ask your parents! ZEROGRAVITYMICRO! That's ZEROGRAVITYMICRO!!"

Finally, I asked what was up.

"I just wanted you in the room."

"Five minutes, David. Just five. Please."

Five seconds later, he called me back in. He said his hands felt funny and presented gunked-up fingernails. And even though I had about ten minutes to finish what I had been trying to do before various deadlines whooshed by, and even though cleaning my son's nails is about as easy as bathing a cat, I tried to clean out what seemed to be glue. To accommodate his nails-being-touched phobia, I was trapping one hand at a time and facing away from him, using my body to block his view as I scraped the glue out. About a minute in, however, with the glue now all over my fingers, he stopped me.

"Mom? I think my nose is bleeding."

I looked up. He'd quietly used his free hand to try to wipe it -- resulting in a sort of bloody handlebar mustache look. "What happened?"

"Well, before when I was scratching my nose ... I think I scratched too hard."

Realization struck. "David, what's under your nails?"

"Probably nose stuff."

"David! You weren't SCRATCHING your nose. You were PICKING your nose!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yes huh! Did you put your fingernails into your nose? Did you dig?"

"But I wasn't!" (He was really whining now.) "I was scratching itches on the inside!"

"YOU. WERE. PICKING!"

"Waaaahaaaaa! I'm sorry, Mom!" His feet pounded the hallway to the bathroom. Slam. Muffled sniffling.

Ten minutes later he emerged from the bathroom, sans blood mustache and fingernail boogers. He asked if we had time to go out somewhere. I told him I wasn't sure; the day was almost over now. The sun was just about down.

"But I was waiting for you all day! I would have used a tissue if you were out here! And you said we could go out!"

He was laying it on a bit thick, but he was right. And really, what did I have to show for the day? What had I done? I'd e-mailed and written and blogged and Flickred. I'd worked a bunch and rested just a few minutes. I'd packed and called and cleaned and fixed. I'd even made a start in the Christmas lists. (Actually, one list: "1: Art kit; 2: Butterfly raising kit; 3: Transformers action figures; 4: EyeClops Bionic Eye; 5: NO Zero Gravity Micro...") I'd nagged.


And now I'd made my kid cry.

I really could have been out there.

Seen one way, parenting will always leave you guilt-ridden. No matter how much you play, take care, clean up after, tolerate, sing, laugh, sympathize, admonish, teach or help there's always something you're not doing. There's always something you're leaving out. There's always something you're missing. If you really, truly love your child, then every minute missed (especially if it's because of you) feels like a sin. Like sunsets. In a state with 360 clear days a year and spectacular sunsets nearly as often, if you truly love the planet, how can capturing only a few dozen sunsets -- either in photos or through sheer experience -- be anything but a sin? In either case, it seems the moments consciously treasured will forever be dwarfed by the moments missed.

But we decided to try to go out anyway. We yanked on our shoes (playground sand still rattling in his), grabbed a water bottle each, swiped some dry cat food (to feed the geese and ducks) and dashed out the door. I caught every green light on the way there. The sky was burning orange and yellow. Things were looking up. Still, I didn't figure we'd make it. And sure enough, we pulled up as the sun was dipping completely below the scrub and trees that lined our view over the east end of the water. The sky had turned a dull, darkish shade of faded violet. Crap.

Again, we'd missed our moment.

But he smiled. He dug his hands in the cat food and flung it into the pond. A couple dozen ducks and geese hastened over, casting Vs in their wakes in the darkening water. The geese honked and barked. The ducks chattered. A squadron of egrets flew overhead, impossibly long legs trailing behind them. One duck had taken to flying up as David threw the food, snapping and missing each time. He cracked up.

And we had our moment.

Some moments of parenthood are like blazing sunsets, vivid and Hallmarky and just oozing with overt awesomeness. But others are less noticeable -- and go totally unnoticed, if you're not careful. Sometimes the moments just creep up on you. He'll befriend a friendless girl at school, and you'll just about explode seeing him walk her out one afternoon. Or you'll catch his smile refracted dozens of times through raindrops on a window. Or he's sitting in a cardboard box that he's christened "David's club," and you're the only one allowed to join, and the passwords are "I love David," "We love playing" and "Magic Tree House." Or you'll watch as he coaxes a cat out of hiding or gently holds an insect. Sometimes, he's not even doing anything: just standing, in a baggy shirt, grasping his teddy bear and watching the last rays of light hit the parking lot pavement. And you'll think: Damn. This is My Kid.

And sometimes, mundane moments blossom into vivid Moment moments. He'll be pawing through your books, say, and he starts to sound out the lines in a book of poetry. You abruptly notice the way he holds the hand of an elderly person he's only just met, his fragile fingers resting over the delicate blue branches of the man's veins. You'll be rushing like mad to clean up for dinner and he presents you with a fistful of slightly stuck-together Christmas M&Ms, plopping the mass into your hand and withdrawing his own hand, covered in green and red polka-dots, and declaring that "You deserved a treat." Or you'll be packing, full of worry and preoccupation, and he'll push play on the CD player and dance with you to "Thunder Road," jumping and spinning and grinning just for you at "Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair." And you wonder how does he do that, how does he know, how can he bowl me over so completely? How is life so damn beautiful it hurts, and I only just now noticed?

The sunset unexpectedly turned into a Sunset sunset that night. It put on a second act of sorts, and the rest of the day -- the bills and the deadlines and the forms to sign and folks who won't call me back, the e-mail and mail mail and articles, the boxes packed and not yet packed, the stuff not yet fixed or cleaned or even considered, the homework and boogers -- just ... well, didn't melt away, really. This is reality, after all. But for a moment, they were hidden behind a curtain of deep blue and vivid pink, of bold streaks of orange and yellow, and of the silhouette of my son, his Casper-the-Ghost head and rounded cheek backlit by the surprise encore.

We sat and rode the evening into night. Carpe noctem, apparently. Seize the night.

The next day, we drew each other pictures about it. Carpe parvulus, maybe. Carpe occasus. Seize the child. Seize the sunset. Because the horrible truth is you'll miss out on so many moments. But the cool thing is, for a while, you get a perpetual fresh start, another chance every day.

Also, boogers are harder and less fun to clean out from under nails than caked-in cat food dust, but not as bad as poop or dried blood. Just in case you were wondering.