Ten

I'm here, sweetie.

What was it? Was it a bad dream?

Yes, I hate those, too. Even when you know they're not a really real thing, they're still scary. Here, let me wrap you up a little and I'll sit with you for a while and tell you a story. Would that help?

Okay, well, it's sort of an old story, but it's about you so I think you'll like it.

Ten years ago today your mommy and I were all excited because it was your birthday. Your mom was excited about today that day, but I was excited about tomorrow.

Your mom, who is a very much more sensible and realistic person than your dad, was excited because that day was the day you were going to be born. She'd carried you around for nine long months and she was so ready to have you come out and meet her. Being pregnant with you had been tough for her, and she wanted you to be born. She was ready to be a mom rather than a baby-carrier. She was ready to be YOUR mom.

I was more excited about tomorrow, though. Because I hadn't been able to do anything with you - you were inside your mom's belly and all I could see was the funny shapes you'd make on her tummy when you moved - I was so excited to be able to do stuff with you. Dads are funny like that - we like to do things; tell stories, and tickle-fight, and run and kick footballs, and scare boyfriends, and talk with you.

Yes, you, with that funny look in your bright button eyes, just like I'm talking with you now. That's the sort of thing dads like, and that's what was exciting for me about today-ten-years-ago.

So I went to the hospital all excited about tomorrow.

But tomorrow never came for us, did it, lovey?

Because something happened, and you never woke up like you woke up just now. Somewhere inside your mom's belly you passed from that darkness to another darkness, a true-life scary dream, one that no hugs and no stories could chase away.

So there were no tomorrow kisses, were there, little girl?

No nighttime talks, no bedtime stories, no tears to wipe away, no soccer games, no boyfriends, no tomorrows at all. Ten years of no tomorrows.

All that remains of you are gray ashes in the little urn beside my bed and this, these sorrowful nights when I dream that you sit up in the bed you never had, your dark hair all atousle from your pillow, your skinny little-girl arms wound around your knees and your eyes shining in the darkness as I tell you about the dreams I had that, as dreams often do, faded into formless nothings in the light of day.

Are you sleepy now, lovie? Are you ready to go back to sleep?

Of course you can give me a hug. No, no, I'm not crying. Just something in my eye.

Snuggle down now.

There. Alright, goodnight, sweetie.

Happy tenth birthday.

Sleep tight, lovie.

Goodnight.

Goodbye.

Bryn Rose Gellar 3/1/02-3/2/02

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.

I Am a Camera: Sunny Black Friday

Nothing profound. Just had some nice snapshots of this past week.

We had our first frost last Saturday morning. I wanted to capture some of the images.
Love the delicate frost tracery on the grass. But this sort of thing is terribly ephemeral here - by ten o'clock it was raining again and all the fragile beauty was gone.
Last bit of frost-art, this one from "Lake Amherst", the low spot in the curb where the rainwater pools up.
The Peep took this on the way down Hawthorne from Grand Central Bakery. That's the "Bluebird of Death" hanging from the mirror, by the way.
a very Portland sort of November - stone and rain and fallen leaves.
Missy loves her some ginkoes. "They come from China, like me!" she enthuses;
This is another of Missy's snaps, and a good one to close with; our shadows toddling companionably along the street towards a sunny day together...
Hope you and yours are also enjoying this time together.

Full-contact Birthdays

Not for the faint of heart.But eight years ago today a little guy came onto the scene and changed our world. He's gone through Elmos and Thomas Trains and Star Wars and now he's a fierce soldier fighting the cyberwars of otherwhere. But he's still my beloved Peep, and he and his little sister still rock my world.Your feet go so quickly now, and your strides are longer every evening. Every morning I wake and find that time has stolen away the little ones I put to bed the night before and replaced them with a bigger girl and older boy, a little taller, a little wiser, a little further from the soft, warm babies I held to be enfolded in the sweet baby smells and to touch the soft baby skin.

I love you both, my little hostages to Fortune. May tomorrow and tomorrow see us safe abed and all well.

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.

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.

Missy's Annunciation

Kiddos are funny little creatures. Our little one, for example, has become fascinated lately by her parents' anniversary (which was last Wednesday, BTW).

This has manifested itself in several ways, including repeated requests to look at the wedding pictures, conversations about the day, and, most recently, several pictures by the young artist celebrating the wedding and showing her parents in various guises.This was her work from the actual anniversary morning. In case the symbology is hard to understand, I have included an annotated version below. The figure on the left is Mommy, with bridal crown and flower "because it's pretty". You will note that her big brother is present in utero, since an essential part of the story is his presence at the wedding in Mommy's tummy.Daddy is on the left, with his hair standing out like he is licking an electrical outlet. The curlique at my neck is a combination of a bowtie, which she has seen in the pictures, and a ribbon, "because it's pretty".

Overhead Missy herself descends like an angel in a Renaissance painting, complete with widespread dress at the bottom, which I understand is a tutu.At any rate, I thought you'd enjoy this glimpse into the Little Girl's mind. She loved drawing it, and considers it among the finest Western artwork.

I tend to agree.

But I might be biased, mind you.

...and the bronze medal goes to...

...my bride, and I.

It was eight years ago today that we gave in and became a legally recognized domestic partnership in the State of Oregon. Since then there have been Chinese orphans, diverticulitis, cat yack, about a cubic kilometer of filthy diapers, and hard choices about music and where everything goes in the china cabinet.

But through it all, you have ever been my strong arm, my clear voice, my encompassing mind, my open heart. What I am, as good a man, as loving a husband, as giving a father, I owe to you as much or more than to myself.

These have been good years.

In the words we spoke on our wedding day, Donne's words,

"Now, as in Tullia's tomb, one lamp burnt clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,
May these love-lamps we here enshrine,
In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.
Fire ever doth aspire,
And makes all like itself, turns all to fire,
But ends in ashes ; which these cannot do,
For none of these is fuel, but fire too.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts."Happy Anniversary, love.