Nine

...years ago my bride and I got our first mutual look at this little guy.

He came into the world with a shout and a pair of bright red testicles - which I am not ashamed to mention, since he takes great pride in that fact - and has proceeded to make a commotion and exhibit a periodic case of the red ass ever since.

We love the hell out of him when we're not aching to choke the life out of the little bugger. But sunshine or shadow, he is our mutual past, our present, and our direct link to the future.

Happy Birthday, son; you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. I hope we have many more, and always find ourselves wishing for another.

Wuss

There were Two Little Bears who lived in a Wood,
And one of them was Bad and the other was Good.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times One -
But Bad Bear left all his buttons undone.

I think I've mentioned once or twice that parenting is one of those things that are not for the fainthearted.

I'm not really thinking of the physical sort of issues that greenlighting the Kid Project will raise, although between back pain, frequent urination, night sweats, and stretch marks the gross physical problems begin early and continue right through into childhood. This adorable baby toes you kissed in his cradle will stank right through the sneakers when he's eight. Just sayin'.

Disgorging dinner at midnight, frantic nosebleeds, random incontinence; puke, blood, and shit - as a parent you are and will be expected to deal with every loathsome aspect of our human frailty and do so with the sort of revoltingly cheerful perkiness that you thought was the province of Cherry Ames, the student nurse in the old hospital stories.

They lived in a Tree when the weather was hot,
And one of them was Good, and the other was Not.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Two -
But Bad Bear's thingummies were worn right through.

Then there's the time-management aspect of parenting.

Which is; you won't have any when the little eyes are open, from birth to about age fourteen...at which time you'll spend that time worrying about whether the little eyes are looking into a beer bong, or down the barrel of a gun, or at a naked fourteen-year-old promising to love her forever if she just lets him...

Let's not go there.

You will become a warm-blooded entertainment system and jungle gym. You will read a million stories, tickle a thousand tummies, run a hundred races. You will be soccer team, bridge partner, video-game target.

Plus there's the whole "get through the day" question. Sadly, the genetic programming of hairless monkeys does not include the instincts to tie shoes, comb hair, find classrooms, eat lunch, complete homework, pick up clothing, brush teeth, or invent bedtime stories. So you, the Potentially Responsible Party, need to be on hand to make sure that the progeny do not show up at the classroom door looking like a shoeless inbred from Hootin' Holler trailing a scrap of paper and a broken stick.

They lived in a Cave when the weather was cold,
And they Did, and they Didn't Do, what they were told.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Three -
But Bad Bear never had his hand-ker-chee.

And this never stops.

I think I've told you the story about asking my mother when she stopped worrying about me (and I was a difficult and fretful child, I should say; there was never an instance when I had the opportunity to do something that I didn't choose the most fraught, difficult, and fatheaded way to go about it and then insist, when advised that there WAS an easier, simpler, less chancy way to do whatever the thing was jam my fingers in my ears and chant "lalalalalala" as I went on my hardheaded and difficult way) and the look that I got in return which would have curdled fresh milk.

We never stop being parents. When our kids are adults we'll STILL be fretting about their choices, just unable to do more than suggest an alternative.

And what seems like the most unkind and unfair part of the transaction is that we don't get the guarantee of a Happy Ending.

They lived in the Wood with a Kind Old Aunt,
And one said "Yes'm," and the other said "Shan't!"
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Four -
But Bad Bear's knicketies were terrible tore.

I have a friend; a truly brilliant, put-together woman, funny, inventive, just a great woman. She was cursed with a fairly worthless bag of stupid for a husband but put up with him for twenty years to raise two kids. And one of them, the older girl, is a shifty, treacherous grifter. Charming in her way, much like her father with the ability to deploy a certain amiability as long as it doesn't cost her any effort, but an untrustworthy slacker who lied and cheated her way to getting locked out of her own home.

I have another friend whose son has just stopped giving a shit about his schoolwork. He's a great kid; not dangerous, not angry, or mean, or rebellious, but he just stopped caring about his grades. She has been unable to convince him that in three years he's going to have to earn a living and that without a high school diploma that will be somewhere between difficult and nightmarish.

And then quite suddenly (just like Us)
One got Better and the other got Wuss.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Three -
But Bad Bear coughed in his hand-ker-chee!

I could go on and on...the ordinary tales of domestic woe that seem to visit every family in some way or another. When you think about it, it's rather amazing that any kid manages to get into young adulthood sane, unmaimed, and without an arrest record.

My littles are, thank Zoroaster, too small yet for me to have those sorts of worries.

And yet, there are always enough troubles in the world to spawn more.

In their cases, I look at them and try to peer down the road towards adolescence to divine who will have an easy puberty, who a hard one? Who will find themselves the narrow road through the mountains of teen age to the broad, sunlit uplands of a happy and prosperous adulthood, who the broad path down to the hell of trouble and pain?

If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have said the Girl was a likely candidate for the former and the Boy the latter.

Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Two -
But Bad Bear's thingummies looked like new.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times One -
But Bad Bear never left his buttons undone.

Because Missy had the happy, sunny, open, loving sort of personality that lends itself to happiness. People loved her easily, were charmed by her instantly. The black keys of bossiness and touchiness were well hidden as she cheerfully played her preschool arpeggios.

The Boy, at seven, was already showing the kinds of things that made me such a heart-attack for my parents back in the day. Sulky, hard-headed, touchy, easily angered and disappointed, easily frustrated and discouraged. Those two touchstones of school failure; laziness and combativeness.

The negatives tended to outfight the positives for the Peep; his loving, clever, artistic, creative side would just get buried under the weight of the miserable little guy who seemed to lack the facility for happiness.

I dreaded his walking the same road I had, and, yet, seemed unable to do anything about that.But.

(And you knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?)

Lately the little Bears have been trading places.

Take yesterday.

The Boy and I had a terrific day. We went all around Portland in the truck, spent time together looking through Pokemons and buying a new game at our favorite hobby store, agreed that the line at OMSI was, like, crazy long so went down to the Nickel Arcade and shot the hell out of some Terminators (where the Boy drove home the fact that twenty years of military service doesn't make you a better shot than ten months of playing first-person shooter games) and then stopped off at Burgerville for some fries.

Back home we ran down to his school and had a chilly kickabout under the covered training area where he showed me how to head the ball (grin...) and then out for coffee and cocoa and bowling(!) - the only blip; he didn't do well and was pretty sullen about it.

But then we went home for dinner, a movie, and then a couple of games, which he won with glee and good sportsmanship.

He was a great kid and a good companionWhilst we were about that, The Girl and her mom were having a truly difficult day. They went to our little North Portland consignment craft store, Scrap, where Missy was clingy and sulky, then home, to where she was whiny and cranky. She glumped, fussed, and whined through most of the day, only perking up in the evening to become more like her happy self.

She snarled and complained about being asked to pick up her toys and clothes. She was instantly sullen if she was denied a moment's attention from her mom. She was, more than she had ever been, much as she had been lately, something of a jagged little pill.

There may be a Moral, though some say not;
I think there's a moral, though I don't know what.
But if one gets better, as the other gets wuss,
These Two Little Bears are just like Us.

So I think I've come all this way just to settle upon another Hazard of Parenting they don't tell you about in "What To Expect When You're Expecting"; the uncertainty of it all.

Not only can they not promise you the happy ending, I'm starting to think there's no real way to figure out where the damn thing is, or how to get there, or to feel confident you'll know when you have arrived, or even whether you've already achieved it and are coasting into the winner's circle.

In short, we're back where we started; parenting is a contact sport, and anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

For Christopher remembers up to Twice Times Ten ...
But I keep forgetting where I put my pen.*

*So I have had to write this one in pencil.

~ A.A. Milne

Oh, and the last picture? That's the church where Mojo and I were married ten years ago this October.

Full circle.

Or, let's hope, at least halfway.

Dude.

So we're watching this truly bad kaiju movie last night; the kiddos and I (Mojo is somewhere spending her time more productively, picking lint out of her navel or something)."Rebirth of Mothra 3" is REALLY bad. Epically bad. Even-for-kaiju-monster-movie-bad. There's been a whole lot of really confusing, bizarre plot (which we've laughed at) and really confusing, bad acting until at one point one of the excrable Japanese kid actors (EJKA) gives another EJKA a stunned look as he tries to get an explanation for just what the hell has happened (which I'm still not sure about involving time-travel and multiple kaiju monsters) by asking his pal;

"Mothra?"And as the second EJKA looks back dumbly my son turns to us and drawls what should be his line:

"Dude. It's complicated."

You know your kids are growing up when they crack you up.

I giggled my ass off, the Boy preened for the rest of the night for winning the Snarkiest Comment Award, and his little sister was totally confused.

The Boy can be a pretty an awesome kid sometimes.

Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la

I'm beginning to understand my own parents' confusion a little.

I don't recall being a particularly mercurial child. But I know I went through...phases?...when I was in my grade school years of "liking" certain things and then abandoning them. So every year my folks had to use their parental intel skills to suss out whatever it was that I was liking and wanting as gifts for Christmas.And as a kid, that was critical. Without ready cash or access to a way of making cash - since I was too small to work and too cowardly to steal - anything I wanted to possess had to come from someone else.

And it's amazing, now that I think of it, how that made that "stuff" seem incredibly important.

Now that I do have the ability to work and steal (or both, my employer might opine) that notion of accumulating "stuff" seems kind of louche. There are physical objects that I enjoy holding for the pleasure or utility I derive from them. Books, particularly; my bride lacks the same greed for the printed page. Books to me are like friends; if I like them I enjoy returning to visit with them. A genuinely good work of fiction yields new pleasures to me when I re-read it; the work may have not changed but I have, and the words reach me in different ways as the person I am changes.

But the objects are valuable to me for the use of them.

My son, however, is still in the place I was when I was his age. Objects - toys, mostly, since childhood is still about play and play for most children in our material world means playthings - are of value to him for themselves, for the look or the size or shape; the "coolness" of them.

For example, for all that he enjoys playing certain electronic games he has never asked for any of them as gifts. I think this is because they are not tactile enough for him to picture them as desirable swag. He doesn't "see" them enough to desire them, they don't give him the rich feeling of possession that more gross toys seem to.

This year his lusts are all about LEGO kits.Now I will be forthright; I hate these damn LEGO toys.

They're expensive as sin, first of all. And they are wretched as "toys"; heavy, delicate, and breakable even with great care, and an eight-year-old is nothing if not careless. We have a massive plastic bin full of LEGO bits from various spendy LEGO contraptions that lasted less than a week or so from contruction to destruction. If the Romans had built with fucking LEGOs Rome might have been built in a day but would have lasted less than a month.

But this isn't about me, but my son, and what he wants and cannot get for himself.

Mind you, he is required to earn through household chores the money for most of the smaller LEGO kits he wants. I had hoped that would inspire him to treat the things with less brio, but no. The small LEGO sets he buys with his hard-earned (because the Boy is a huge martyr about working for his pleasures, and you'd think that raking leaves was invented for the torment of prisoner's on Devil's Island or the punishment for deadly Sin rather than a way to make a buck or three and keep the goddamn grass from dying) last no longer than the big ones he gets as presents.

Regardless of the particular kit, though, this year is all about the LEGOs and, to a lesser extent, military toys, because the Boy has moved on almost completely from his Star Wars Period.

I say almost because he still enjoys watching the Clone Wars series on television when he remembers to watch it - which is in itself an indication of how far the mighty franchise has fallen, since a year ago he knew to the minute when his beloved show would begin.

So we still have a tenuous connection to the world George Lucas created, although that connection is dwindling as I watch. I fear that my son will not be a lifelong sci-fi geek. Which is a little chastening because I am, a bit, and I see that I have not passed on this particular part of me.

And what's been fun is that his understanding of the stories we watch has grown noticibly deeper and more sophisticated over the short space of a year. When we last talked about this he was just beginning to appreciate that the "clone wars" stories weren't as simple as they were being told to him, and that there were deep difficulties with the simplistic "Jedi good/Sith evil/clones tools" way that Lucas has been telling his story.

The most interesting so far was the "Umbara" series of stories that aired in October.To cut to the nitty, the deal was that you're introduced to this fictional battlefield on this creepily-dim planet, "Umbara". The context is minimal other than that Lucas' "Republic" soldiers have to take this place and the locals (and the local wildlife) resist. The usual military hi-jinks ensue, delighting the Boy who is still all about things that shoot, go fast, and blow shit up.

For me it was another chance to watch the Lucas organization biff another one.

Because there was a potentially terrific story there.

The macguffin was that the clone soldiers you've been introduced to, Captain Rex, "Fives", the blue-and-white Boys of the 501st Legion - the future "Vader's Fist" - are placed under the command of a Jedi they don't know. And who seems to be either utterly whack or tactically insane, because he continually orders them into fatal attacks or pointless and dangerous movements and then threatens them with military justice when they protest. This mook, a four-armed gitch called "Pong Krell", is presented as a fiercely strict commander who gives orders and then refuses to hear any questions about them.The Peep was puzzled by this.

"Why is he doing this?" he kept asking, "Why is he so mean?"

I wondered that myself. Because Peep's question lies at the heart of a great, terrible story, a story as old as fighting men; which is the danger - obeying a commander who might be a fool, or a savage, or a madman...or disobeying a commander who may be seeing tactical or strategic levels not visible to the squad-level grunts? Where is the line that can't be crossed? Where does obedience to military order become suicide or, worse, homicide?

Great fiction has been made around this very question; films like "Paths of Glory", novels like "Catch-22", tales like the "Illiad", focus completely or in part on the complex relationship between fighters and commanders.

And in this case there's this huge rock in the story-stream up ahead; the moment that Lucas' just-self-elevated Emperor orders his army to kill all their Jedi officers; "Order 66".

You might think that this could have been a story fraught with brilliant opportunities to examine the relationship between these men - slave soldiers bred to die for a Republic that gave and owed them nothing - and the leaders placed over them. To look inside a man like "Captain Rex"; a veteran professional, a created-man bred and trained to obey, but already a survivor of dozens of Lucas-battles where he and his friends and fellow-troopers are taught to stand without cover and shoot or move until killed, and scores of them are, and get to understand how he thinks and feels about beings like his new general.And, in particular, you'd suspect that he'd have figured out by this time that his Jedi "officers" have none of the tactical training he's received. They have certain psychic skills but even those are not by nature useful in battle. So there's no real reason for a man like that to trust another being whose primary qualification for combat leadership is some sort of participation in a woo-woo Force religion and the ability to twirl a laser-sword.

You might also think that this would be a terrific opportunity to look at the relationship from the other side; from a member of a semimonastic Order instructed to avoid "relationships" suddenly placed in the most intimate of relationships - of deciding who lives and who dies. Of being a being gifted with mental powers who is thrust into war and told to command soldiers whose skills are merely physical to overcome physical fear and death in order to win sordid, gross political objectives.You'd be thinking that the story had a chance to examine the same things that Karen Traviss did such a hell of a good job developing in her "Republic Commando" books with special effects no more sophisticated than damn good writing and an adult sensibility; what is obedience, and what is responsibility? What is courage and what is cowardice, what is the way of a man with other man, and what are the ways of men and women?For if fiction, regardless of genre, has any value other than as brain-candy it gives us a chance to step out of ourselves into other people, other places, even other worlds and enjoy thinking about the galactic range of choices we all face, about the consequences of those choices that we make or those that are forced upon us. It can entertain while it makes us more thoughtful, more humane people.

But you'd be thinking without reckoning with Lucas & Co.

The man must be an eight-year-old in the body of a grown-up. I swear.

I'm not going to give you a review of the whole magilla; it's not really germane to my post and, besides, Peter over at "Lightsaber Rattling" does a better job than I ever could at discussing the whole story. But basically, after a ton of time spent on relatively aimless (but visually cool) thud and blunder, the clone soldiers in the television story finally turned on their Jedi master - the near-impossibility they found the task of subduing him made a subtle point about the mechanics of "Order 66", though I'm not sure that was Lucas' intent - but it turned out that he was neither a sadistic fool nor a misunderstood genius but that weakest of cinematic conventions, the Hidden Enemy. He was a "Sith", not a "Jedi" at all, not a bad officer, not a clueless but insecure fucktard, not an incompetent promoted above his abilities and furious at the innocent soldiers that forced him to demonstrate just how incapable he was...but a simple Black Hat, a cartoon baddie, a cardboard villain who has been murdering his troops because he can and because he likes it.

And the soldiers didn't have to confront the questions they raised about their commander, about what they would have done if he HAD been an incompetent commander, a brute, a fool, or a power-mad rogue. He was just Evil. So they killed him.The Boy was fine with that; they're surprisingly callous at eight. But I wasn't, and I found myself regretting again that the creator of this facile universe was not a better father to his creation that I was to my own. I just wish that ol' George had a little more Karen Traviss in him.

I'm still a retired clone trooper at heart, and I will always have a soft spot for the boys in the white armor. But my son, hard-hearted little realist that he is, knows that clone troopers are born to be used up and forgotten.

So while this Christmas there's still some lingering affection for the clones and their world I get the sense that soon we will not visit Rex and his comrades, still fighting their eternal war in the pages of books and on the screen, forever new to some boy somewhere else but soon to be lost to us, my big son and I; nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.Not gone, just marching far away.

Hey, hey, It's a Sunny Day

Last weekend we had a sunny Sunday

Sunny.

Do you understand what a wonderful thing that is?

We're deep in autumn here, and in the Northwest that means rain. And the winter is fast approaching and that means constant rain.

Tomorrow, for example, we're set to have a typical Northwest late autumn-early winter day; sunrise at 7:25, sunset at 5:30, overnight low, 42F, afternoon high, 46F.

It's a wonder that none of Lewis and Clark's GIs sucked the musket muzzle after 184 days of THAT shit. I've lived here twenty-one years and by February I'm twitchy and tend to make funny noises when I hear the gutters fill up. I can't imagine what it must have been like to experience our Black Months with no warning.

But it was sunny Sunday. Sunny, I say!The thing is, I've been working a LOT of long days; early mornings, late nights. This means that Mojo gets stuck with a lot of childcare. And as adorable as our little urchins are, they're also the sort of hard work that five and eight also are, and so when I can I like to try and give my bride some refit time. So Sunday I stuffed the kiddos into "Bob" the white Subaru and took them away.

We did All Things Kid; went to Chuck E. Cheese, went out for lunch at McDonalds

(or as our friend the Poet likes to call it, the Icky Clown House, which I consider pure genius and far above the sort of nickname that I recall from when my college chums and I thought we were being witty - "L'Arc dOr" and "Chez Ronald's" and that sort of thing)

and then off to our local hobby store to look over Pokemon cards. We ended up in the Hollywood district of Portland so the Young Padawan could go to his jujitsu class, and that left just Little Miss and I to pass a couple of hours together.And so we did.

We sauntered across the street to the Whole Foods market where the Girl found a teeny shopping cart Just Her Size and proceeded to have a wonderful time pushing it about.These "Whole Foods" places - you may well have them, I think they're a national chain - have all sorts of oddities and quarks. We dove deeply into the Asian aisle for some of what Missy calls "seaweed" - the dried nori she snacks on - and into the juice aisle for fresh apple cider. We came across a "nice lady" who gave us some delicious plum jam (from Hood River to the east up the Gorge) on a vanilla cookie, so of course we had to find some of that jam and those cookies.

Lamb, and some craft beer, and a couple of apples later we were heading out the door but stopped at the little tea kiosk (a coffee bar would be too...mainstream...for Whole Foods in Portland) for some savory oolong. Taking our paper cups we crossed back over the street and found a tiny parklet between the main road and Peep's gym to sit and enjoy the warm sun and sip our teas."This tea is spicy!" Missy reported. "I like it, but the tea at dim sum is better. Because it comes from China, like me."

So I had to tell her the story about her adoption, and how we met her. And she told me about how she knew Chinese words. And we looked up at the blue, blue sky through the saffron-yellow leaves above us. And talked about clouds, and dinosaurs, and why some birds are fat.And as I held her dear weight over my heart I felt the weight of the knowledge that this little girl was only mine for a moment.

And that our artless talk and random time together would slip away like the heat leaving the cup in my hand.

And I wanted to stop time, just stop it, and sit there forever in the slow autumn sunlight with my little girl on my lap, and hear her funny little voice, and stroke the anthracite sheen of her hair and just love her until the stars burnt to cinder and the world ended.And then we finished our tea, and I tossed her up on my shoulders, and she rode above my head all the way down to pick her brother up and go home.

My Son

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains. It seems
no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the gold interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight. I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready...

Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.

- Sharon Olds

Happy eighth birthday, buddy. I love you.

Cool Things in North Portland: Aging Drummer Boy

The Peep and I went to the U.S. Open Cup match tonight at University of Portland's Merlo Field.That doesn't sound like a great event, until you looked up at the lowering sky and felt the cold wind whip the rain down the back of your neck. It was a nasty night, a night for true supporters only, and I wasn't sure if the Boy was really ready for all that the match would entail. My bride, whose passion for soccer is of a passionately tepid nature, eagerly passed the ticket I intended for her to our son. I was a bit nervous. Would he be enough of a true supporter to brave the cold and rain for two hours?

He was.He stood with the Timbers Army and cheered the team, cursed the gormless linesman, jeered at the visiting Chivas USA thuggery. He drank a ginormous soda pop and ate a third of a hot dog, and ran about in the rain, staring up at the sky.

"They're like little snowdrops!" he commented at the fine rainy mist sheeting through the field lights. He was right; they were like small snowflakes twisting in the night wind.

He kept hoping and cheering all through the long, scoreless match until the 84th minute when Timbers midfielder Jack Jewsbury put us up 1-0, and again two minutes later when defender Eric Brunner made it 2-0.And then he hopped in puddles and skipped home through the shining streets, talking about everything we had seen and done, marveling at the shiny white gravel and the lost lacrosse ball he found, tumbled into the house with happy babble, and then into bed with yawning cheerfulness.

It seems that he is following the drumbeat of his dad's passion for the Beautiful Game. That gives me a small, secret smile; I don't know if I've ever passed one of my affections on to him before.

I came in to "check on him" to find him lying back still awake. He told me a very odd little story he had created from an incident from the televised game we watched two weeks ago, and then gave me a hug.

I hugged him back and kissed his soft, little-boy-smelling hair, and tucked his fleece blanket more tightly around him, and with that left him to running fleetly on the floodlit night pitch, the stormwater flying from his boots as he ran on to score the limitless goals that seven-and-a-half can gift you in your dreams.

Crushed

Well, that didn't go well, did it?

Auburn is the national champs of big college football and the Oregon Ducks are flying home tonight having lost - another - big bowl game to an Eastern/Midwestern team.I'm not going to get all Oregonian about this; "Well, they had a great season...it was so close...they played so well...we love our Ducks!"

It was a good season, and that had what to do with the fact that Auburn pushed the Duck lines around like rubber fuckdollies around all night? Thomas had a mediocre game, and James was never really a factor. Oregon's offensive plays were poorly chosen and the lack of anything resembling blocking meant that they were typically ineffective. The pass coverage was weak, especially underneath.

Nope, the Ducks got pwned, and as a Viking, I can shrug about it. Yeah, sucks to be you, Eugene. Come back to me in a dozen years without a bowl and getting regularly run over 40-7 at Boise Fucking State; that's your basic Portland State season. Oh, well.

But there was an amazing thing to watch tonight, and that was the Peep.

He was rabid, fanatic - he didn't understand first downs, or incomplete, or possession, but he shrieked with joy when the Ducks advanced and moaned in torment when they retreated. When Oregon tied the game with just minutes to play he was practically manic, gibbering like a loon with predictions of humiliating Auburn defeat and bouncing on the sofa in eagerness to watch this public embarrassment. And when after choosing not to onside-kick (Gee, Coach, Auburn has been going through your D-line like a bunch of horny women's rugby players through a Tri-Delt house - what made you think that your guys were going to tighten up now?) the Ducks gave up the game-winning field goal the Peep was cast into the uttermost gloom; he fell like Lucifer, from the highest pinnacle of exaltation to the deepest pit of despair.He cried, a little. He hugged his knees and looked at the Auburn players celebrating on his television screen like Smokey the Bear watching every forest in America burn. He collapsed into his mom's arms.

"I don't want it to be over!" he wailed, "It's not fair, I don't want the Ducks to lose!"

He subsided in Mojo's embrace and went quietly into bed, but when I went in to kiss him goodnight I found him a little sniffly. I kissed his sweet-smelling boy hair and hugged him.

"You were a good Duck fan tonight, little man," I told him, "you cheered your heart out for your team, and that's all any fan can do."

"But they still lost..." he muttered, "It's not fair."

Ah. The ultimate betrayal of childhood; it's not fair.

How do you explain to a seven-and-a-half-year-old that life isn't fair? That good teams lose, that good ideas are ignored, that good people go to shopping malls and are shot dead by maddened ignorant fucktards?

That loving parents lose their jobs and lose the homes, that sweet children get cancer and die, that decent men and women are broken, bereft of hope and shattered by grief?

That airplanes fall from the sky, automobiles crash, bones shatter, bullets rend and tear, hearts break, lives, and hopes, and cities, and great empires, come to harsh and bitter ends?

I hugged him again.

"Sometimes life isn't fair, buddy. But that doesn't mean you don't stop loving and hoping and trying. It just means that you don't always get what you want for what you love and hope for. It's that you know that you did everything you could, and did your very best."

He gave a dissatisfied grunt and burrowed deeper into his pillow. And I kissed his brow and turned away.

Because sometimes it's not fair, and sometimes daddies can't make it so.

New Math

So I was helping my oldest kiddo with his homework tonight.

Homework? I hear you say. Homework, in second grade?

Yep. Welcome to the brave new world of American childhood.

The Peep brings home one of these four- to five-page collections of foolscap every Monday and has to turn them in Friday morning. They are typically composed of a page of writing work, another of reading-and-comprehension, a couple pages of math, and a front page for the boy to record his reading, which is set at 20 minutes a night.He's terrible about it, of course, as you can probably remember from your school days. There's always something better to do than homework - blogging, for example - and the seven-and-a-half-year-old mind is a gossamer and flittery thing. So Mojo or I usually have to wrestle him into submission to get the work done. It is a process that all parties genially dislike.

Tonight we did the math worksheets.

I realized after I started that this was actually pretty sophisticated math for second grade. The sheet header showed a variety of domestic pottery labeled with prices in cents. The teapot is 72 cents, the glass 18, the frying pan 57, and so on. Down the page were a series of written questions, such as; "Alisha has 50 cents. She buys a glass. How much money does she have left?"

I sat down with the Boy and we looked at the first problem. We read it over. I looked at him.

"I have to think." he said. I waited. He thought.

"What should we do to start?" I asked.

"I'm thinking." he replied.

I waited.Finally I pointed to the example the sheet provided. "Look how they set up this problem. How can we do that here?" I asked.

"I'm still thinking." he replied. "It's time to stop thinking and do the problem." I hissed, at which he protested "I'm thinking! Mister Chun says we need to think about the problem!". His mom added that he was right, and he was told to think about the problems. I looked down at the page, frustrated.

"Do you know how to do this math problem, buddy?" I asked as neutrally as I could.

He frowned at the page. "I think I do." he said uncertainly. "Then what are you going to do?" I asked gently. He wrote down a number "nine" in the box with the problem. "That's the answer." he announced, in defiant hopefulness."No, it's not." I replied. "You don't know how to do these, do you?" I asked, wondering at the sort of math class that would start a kid on double-digit addition and subtraction without showing them how to convert tens into units.

So I showed him how, while you couldn't subtract the 8 from the 0 in the units column you could "break" a ten and convert it to ten "ones", then add the ten to the 0 and make it 10...then subtract 8 from 10 to get 2. And then you made a little mark striking out the tens value and reducing it by the one "ten" you moved. And subtracted the tens.

Little man was resistant at first until he saw how this method actually worked better than guessing or whatever sort of computation he was doing initially. By the time we reached the bottom of the second page he was anticipating me in "breaking down" the tens, converting single digits to teens, adding and subtracting.

The thing is, it took me a bit of thinking to remember how I do simple double-digit addition and subtraction; it wasn't nearly as intuitive as I thought it was. And explaining it to a second-grader was almost as difficult. But perhaps the most difficult part was understanding what it was he didn't understand and why. What seemed obvious to me was completely opaque to him; he couldn't make the cognitive jump from the written description to the setup of the numerical problem, and he couldn't do the simple unit addition and subtraction in his head as I could. It was difficult not to see his incomprehension as stupidity, and his math errors as carelessness.But he kept at it; he slowly worked through the word problems, set up the numerical problems, corrected his math errors, and carefully wrote down each answer. I don't think he ever enjoyed the process, but I think he got some satisfaction from doing the work correctly and well.

And then he hopped up and bounded happily down the hallway to the tub to splash and play with his toys, leaving me tapping the eraser of my pencil on the paper covered with childish handwriting, cartoon cups and plates, and wondering just what we had accomplished.

Tradition!

Big Boy came home this week with something called "Thanksgiving Homework" from his second grade class.

This consisted of a two-page (double-sided) sheet with some fairly incursive questions about what he had done for T-giving and things like his personal favorite sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the holiday. Oh, and he had to draw a family tree.The question that stumped us, though, was regarding "family traditions".

Because, you see, we're the very worst sort of rootless, mongrel Americans. Homogenized, pasteurized, bland...our families got to this continent and dropped their old customs and mores like a live grenade.

And we have so far successfully resisted the late trend for "re-traditionalizing" families and holidays. We gesture towards the occasion, but, really, I am an utter pagan and Mojo, who does randomly lurch towards some sort of holiday spirit now and then, is really too slothful to complete the effort.

So we sat there, the three of us; the Boy poised with his pencil and his shining evening face looking for parental guidance, and my bride and I, utterly clueless. Bereft. Vacant of inspiration. Utterly gobsmacked.We could not think of a single, solitary family "tradition" - for Thanksgiving, or for any other holiday, for that matter. We were adrift in a sea of postmodern American anomie; we had no traditions.

Finally, in the way my mind always works, it drifted from trying to think of a family tradition to the notion of tradition in general and from there to historic quotes regarding tradition, and from there to Winston Churchill. And that's where I came upon a suggestion for the Peep.

"Rum, buggery, and the lash?"

Mojo and I were forcibly struck by the likely reaction of Peep's very dignified second-grade teacher confronted by this as a family tradition, and spent the next four minutes or so snorting and giggling.

The Peep was NOT amused. He had no idea what the three things were, but he knew that his parents were being irresponsible, and refused to write it down. I think he settled for "Eating Thanksgiving dinner with family".Smart boy.

I suspect that if one of our children turns out to be a serial murderer or a Wikileaker no one at the elementary school will be surprised. We're such bad parents.

Empire of the Ants

The louring rain and decreasing warmth have send our neighboring sugar ants looking for a cozy place indoors, and their anabasis debouched on the kitchen counter tonight.

"Daddy! Daddy!" shrieked little Miss down the basement stairs "Mommy says bring the ant spray quickly quickly because the ants are in the cabinets!"I fished the can of vilely toxic ant death out of its receptacle and arrived in the kitchen to find a dancing daughter and a disgusted wife staring at the now-empty shelves where the little scuttling bastards tried to hide from their chemical doom. I stood between my womenfolk, respectively antic and revolted, surveying the prospective gas chamber for our latest boxcar of formicidae like a dyspeptic Mengele eyeing the latest trainload of particularly degraded untermenschen.

"How the hell did they get in there?" I protested, producing a volley of frantic questions from the little girl and a sour look from the big one. "How the hell should I know?" she sighed, "Just use the damn spray, please."

So we moved all the fruit and veggies and flour and eggs and butter (Mojo was in the process of making some carrot cake-like object when she discovered the marauders inside the cabinet) off the countertop, I deployed the chemical munition (advertised as a persistent agent that would keep the little bastards out for "up to 4 weeks!") and used a towel to recover the bodies of the footsoldiers unable to evade the chemstrike, and carefully replaced the food in sealed containers back in the contaminated zone.

[It may say something about me that as I did this I had a brief flash of memory of something I did in back in the 1980's; my platoon was detailed to the Airborne Test Board for something called PAPRICCA - pronounced like the spice - which was an acronym for "Parachuting Procedures in a Chemically Contaminated Area".

This beauty started with the idea that the U.S. Army desperately needed to get somewhere that some other inconsiderate sonofabitch had brined with something nasty, like nerve gas, and that the best way to do this was to drop some parachute troops into it. The actual "parachuting procedures" included a series of exercises where the process of military static-line parachuting was performed while in what we called our "MOPP" suits (a silly acronym that stood for "Mission-Oriented Protective Posture" and was used interchangably with the term "CPOGs", "Chemical Protective OverGarments") and culminated with actual parachute jumps while wearing a protective mask - what a civilian would call a "gas mask".

Needless to say this training was disliked to the extreme, since as training it ranged from the exhausting and uncomfortable to the downright dangerous, and my memories of it are not fond ones. The then-new KEVLAR helmets didn't fit over the pro-mask and had to be taped on with hundred-mile-an-hour tape. The 130-knot slipstream of a C-130 had no respect for this jacklegged arrangement, which meant that almost everyone lost their helmets within seconds of exiting the jump doors. And, worse, the opening shock of the T-10 parachute usually jerked the pro-mask down the face of the jumper, who was suddenly blinded by a black plastic shroud just as it was crucially important for him to know whether his canopy had opened correctly and was not at the moment streaming above him, a useless nylon exclamation point identifying him as The Most Totally Fucked Trooper in his platoon. So about half or more of the test platoon troops ripped off their masks, making their notional deaths from the notional nerve agent certain and immediate upon landing. It was, in short, a total goatscrew.

Unsurprisingly, this tactic was never actually incorporated into the 82nd Airborne SOP. But that was PAPRICCA, and gassing the ants reminded me of it.]

Mojo went back to her cooking, but Little Miss was fascinated by the ants. She followed me downstairs to try and find some ant baits."What does these do?" she asked. "Why we need to get the queen ant?"

So I explained to her about ants, and queens, and eggs, and then we had to go to the computer and watch a YouTube video, and then she wanted to know why the queens couldn't walk far, and how they got into our house, and how the eggs got in the queen, and how the eggs got out of the queen.

And then she wanted to know about how eggs got in mommies, and how eggs turned into babies, and how babies grew inside mommies, and how babies got out of mommies. So I showed her pictures of her Mommy when she had the Peeper inside her tummyand we tried to watch a video of babies coming out of mommies except YouTube thought that you had to be over 18 to see that, and I couldn't be bothered to set up a damn YouTube account, and the hell with it but trust Daddy, sweetie, the baby comes out of the mommy's puff-puff. You did, Peeper did, Mommy did, I did, too.

(I should add that both of my kiddos know the proper words for the male and female wedding tackle. And sometimes we use the word "penis" rather than "wiener" or "junk", depending on the formality of the occasion.

But for some reason the word "vagina" just seems too cold and clinical to this family. The Boy first coined the term "puff-puff" for Mommy's girl parts, and for some reason we all like the expression. It just sounds soft, cuddly, and friendly. Girly. So. Puff-puff.)

But cuddly or no, Missy was horrified.

"No! No, no, no!" she pronounced, "I don't want babies coming out my puff-puff!"

"Not now, silly," I assured her, "It's only when you're older, when you're grown up, and only when you want it to."

"I will never want to." stated Little Miss, "No, I will 'dopt two babies, from China, because that doesn't hurt."

I told her that, indeed, sounded like a cunning plan. Then I picked her up and carried her upstairs.

Her mom and brother were watching something warlike on The Military Channel, so we settled into one of the wing chairs.

"How come the ants don't know about the poison?" she said, bouncing on my knees in a way I recognized prestaged a bit of girlish cleverness. "How come they don't talk about it?" I explained that they couldn't talk, that their mouths didn't work that way, that they communicated by smell. That if she were an ant, she would have to fart to say "I love you."

"Eeeew! Stinky! Nobody could love a fart!" she declared. Then she smiled a wide, triumphant smile and announced the conclusion of the evening's discussion.

"We're a LOT smarter than ants, Daddy."

And with that she wriggled off my lap and scampered away.

Beautiful game

Now that we're down to the final tour teams I wanted to talk a little about what I've seen at this year's World Cup, along with some footy talk in general. And I need to hurry, because this year's Tour de France has already started!

After a fairly mundane croup stage, I have to give FIFA credit - the Round of 16 and the quarterfinals have produced some wonderful soccer, some terrific drama, and some juicily awful errors to give us something to talk about.

Perhaps my most delightful surprise came yesterday with the Netherlands comeback win over Brazil.

Don't mistake me - I love Brazil, land of the Beautiful Game - I wasn't down on the cariocas. But I've had a tendre' for the Hollanders ever since I fell in love with the Clockwork Orange and their "total football" back in the Seventies. The World Cup finals losses to West Germany in 1974 and Argentina in 1978 seemed unjust to me at 17 and 21; Cruyff, Neeskens, "de Kromme", Jongbloed...they were so good. How could they NOT be the champions of the world?I had big hopes for this year. But when Robinho slipped through the Holland defense to put the Brazilians up 1-0 with more than an hour to play, well...I had a doctor's appointment and turned off the truck radio with some, but not overwhelming, regret.

When I turned the truck over a half hour later I thought I was hearing wrong. Brazil down a goal? Down a player? What the..?

But the Dutch Masters hung on, and now they have a chance to wipe out the Seventies. I'll be there cheering for them Tuesday. Oranje boven!

The German team, though, looks terrific; young, energetic, dangerous on the attack and the counterattack. They have looked better with every game; their demolition of the Argentine side was murderous, clinical. I see the Germans as the other potential finalist in the group of four. Spain has been as good as they needed to be, but have lacked anything like the skill they showed in the UEFA championships. Uruguay is just dour; frankly, I'm sorry that Gyan missed the 120th-minute penalty that would have sent them home.An what about the Big Show in general?

Well,

1. The finals have been as entertaining and spectacular as ordered. Play ranging from transcendent to dire. High drama, low comedy, heroes, villians, and Diego Maradona. I don't think anyone, at least any soccer fan, can complain we haven't had our feast of footy. It has been a wonderfully crazy tournament so far.

2. Yes, some of the officiating has been dire. There does need to be a goal-line camera. Referees need to be better evaluated, and the incompetent ones removed. And in some cases the rules themselves should be evaluated.

I'm specifically thinking of the handball committed by Uruguay's Luis Suarez. I've thought about this and although I have some sympathy for the argument that the notion of allowing the referee to "award" goals is a slippery slope, I have to think that the current rule is not severe enough. Here was a clear case of a man committing a foul, preventing a sure goal that would have beaten his team. He was ejected from the game and the Ghanaians given the penalty. But they missed the PK, and the cheater's team won. Even Suarez caught the injustice of the moment; "...the way in which I was sent off," he said, "truth is, it was worth it."

But overall the bad calls have not been sufficient to destroy the flow of the games or the overall competition.

3. There is something very wrong with many of the traditional European soccer powers. Italy was dire in this year's finals. Spain has looked pedestrian, and the once brilliant Portugese barely managed to get out of the group stage. France, not a "traditional" power but one that has done well lately, was beneath awful. All of these national teams need to take a hard look at their domestic leagues and their young players. Or they will not be here again for some time.

Note that I am inclined to be less severe on England for the rather sad reason that I don't see England as a "traditional soccer power" any longer; it is, rather, one of the "other" European sides that occasionally make it to the finals because UEFA has so frigging many places. England has become a Slovenia, a Switzerland, a Greece, or a Denmark. The fact that the British tabloid press and the England supporters haven't realized this is rather pathetic but doesn't change the fact of it.

4. As for the rest of the world, well, it was nice to see both Japan and one of the Koreas go through to the Round of 16. It would be even nicer if another of the Asian sides could get that far next time. We already know that Japan and the ROK have the skill...how about the rest of Asia?

And much as I'd welcome fewer UEFA spaces, can we stop pretending that there is any reason to send one team from "Oceania"? And I would suggest that although the Asian teams are better, the notion that four should get berths in the finals? Please. Oceana and Asia could conceivably get four between them.

Anyway, it's been a great time, and I hope that the next three games will be as good or better...And in case you don't remember, we have our own soccer club here in Portland, and they may not be Germany or Brazil but those of us who consider ourselves part of the Timbers Army love them all the same.Usually I go to Timbers' games with my friends and stand with the Army, to sing and chant and support the club. But this Saturday Brent and Julie were not in town, so I took my son. Big Peeper was as excited as a seven-year-old can be, wrapped in his borrowed scarf and toting his vuvuzela, as we designated his plastic horn. We rode the MAX train in from North, pointing out the other Timbers supporters, and sights along the way. We queued up for hot dogs and sodas and Red Vines before heading up to our seats, close but not too close to the Army for sensitive seven-year-old ears.Normally I am an emotional wreck at the games, exulting over goals, fretting for poor play, all atwitter if the game is close and the visitors are pushing forward.Tonight I had the chance to sit back and enjoy watching my little guy watch the game. He cheered every shot, on or off target. He jeered every Vancouver foul. He ate his junk food, blew his vuvuzela, climbed all over me, and just generally had a terrific time. That we took 25 shots and didn't score, that we ran off the field with a scoreless draw? He could have cared less. The game itself was the best, even better was the chocolately cupcake at saint cupcake afterwards, better still the fireworks we lit off when we got home.He tumbled into bed smiling.

As I had found myself smiling, too, at my son, as he shouted his joy to the sparkles crackling in the night sky.