Cribsheet

2010-05-16T14:17:00.001-07:00

Isaac: "I think that's virtually impossible. But I might not say that if I knew what virtually meant."

Cribsheet: Special needs week

2010-05-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well according to a post I saw on Facebook, it's special needs week. I've been thinking about this issue a lot for the last few years because my son has a complex constellation of odd issues...a little bit Aspergers, a little bit OCD, a little anxiety disorder, a LOT of Sensory Integration Disorder, a heaping dollop of WTF and a smidgen of boogie-woogie flu. He zigs where the world zags. And those are just the deficits...what I mean is, he is also weirdly smart in some ways.

When he was 3 years old and we were driving in the car he said: "Why do some cars have their lights on?" (it was daytime) and I said "There have been a bunch of studies done that show there are fewer car accidents in the daytime if people have their lights on." he instantly responded: "Then why are some people driving with them off?"

Since I've spent so much time around him, and studied his quirks so intently I've realized that I am a big ball of quirks too. As a grownup I've become slightly more adept at hiding them but all my weird processing issues are alive and if this is the right word, well. The other night I was teaching a class and I had a window open ( not many classrooms left where you can do this) and I realized I had the window open because I don't feel like I can think with it closed. I subtly feel oppressed by claustrophobia if the window is shut. And then I had to close the door because people were talking in the hall and I can't think when I hear talking as I am wired to process sound. I am a complicated ball of adaptations to my own system, hoping to appear normal to the world at large.

You may be "special needs" (undefined) yourself if any of the following apply to you:

Uncomfortable clothes ( scratchy, tight collars, weird feeling fabrics, annoying labels) make it hard for you to focus completely on something else. You can't really think clearly or concentrate in a room full of sound or in a place which is visually very busy. You are scared of heights, or speed. If you seem to have to come at things from a direction other than the "official" way. If anxiety floods you when certain issues are raised and you simply feel that you can't process them at all right now.

These are just a few that are near and dear to my own heart but there are many more, from other parts of the spectrum(s) that I am not so familiar with. If it seems to reduce "Special Needs" to just an exaggerated case of the human situation then "By George, I think you've got it!"

AS kind of a friendly shout out to the all the good hearted special needs teachers and helpers out there here's a story about them.

Isaac loves to say things in his own made up language LIKE ALL THE TIME: To answer normal questions and such. Those of us who spend a lot of time around him actually learn what he means and take it in stride. Well today as I was walking him into his school, (with Isaac being most reluctant to go) his special Ed assistant Ms. Currier saw us coming and peeked at him through the staircase banister with a friendly smile.
"Glibble Norf!" She said.
I said, "Isaac, someone speaks your language!"
Isaac couldn't help smiling and he walked of his own will into the classroom.

Thanks Ms. Currier, for understanding my little weirdo.

Cribsheet: Time and tide.

2010-02-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful warm Spring like day. Isaac and I went out to the beach, turning over rocks in the low tide zone, finding hundreds of little crabs. We picked up a few on our shovel and they tried to fight us. As we were leaving he said: "I guess we gave them some great stories to tell their grandchildren."

Cribsheet: Thank you, I'm here all week!

2010-02-17T11:01:00.000-08:00

Got a link to a video via email.
All the kids in Isaac's class are saying happy valentine's day to a kid who just changed schools...
21 kids one after another saying "Happy valentines day Owen"
No sign of Isaac for a long time - suddenly annoying hands in front of the lens. And again.
And again. Surprise, it's Isaac.
Finally, Isaac's face.
He sings a little dramatic theme music.
Isaac: (loudly) " How many cows does it take to feed a fish?"
Teacher: "um...how many"
Isaac: (with great satisfaction) "Zero!"
Camera moves on.

Cribsheet : The man who kept nothing

2010-01-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

My Mother and Father were very different people and ultimately went their separate ways but they did have a few things in common. They were rationalists, they disliked bullshit, they leaned left, they liked a good joke.

My Mother kept treasured things like she was running a little museum She kept the albums of family photos going back to the beginning. She had a knack for picking tiny significant things as keepsakes: A tiny indian head penny bank full of pennies , a little writing book of mine from first grade; an envelope of confetti from the celebration of VE day (WWII) in Times Square.

But my Dad kept nothing. There were no pictures of him as a boy, no mementos. His father died 3 years before I was born but I have never in my life seen so much as a photo of him. I have no idea what the guy looked like except I heard later he was lanky like my brother. I'm short and compact like my other Grandpa.

My Dad was a writer. He was an advertising copy writer in the fifties and early sixties on Madison avenue. He was a Mad Man, and when I watch that show I can practically picture my brother and myself as the generally ignored children in the background. He won a number of advertising awards including one for a rather risque commercial during the black and white fifties where the two protagonists were only seen by their glowing cigarette tips as they exchanged pillow talk.
He also wrote the once famous "Please mother, I'd rather do it myself!" Anacin commercial.

But before he wrote commercials, he was a poet.

While he was an ensign in the Navy in WWII he wrote this:

FOXHOLE ELEGY

Far off, she sleeps,
And where she is, a baby cries.
Where I am, a soldier dies.
And God's on a mountain, hiding his eyes.
Far off, she sleeps.

Far off, she wakes
And where she is, the grass weeps dew.
And where I am the quick are few,
And I sleep close to a man I slew.
Far off she wakes.

By A/S Richard B. Miller USNR

And after it was published, Carl Sandburg wrote him a letter of encouragement, to tell him he thought he was a great talent.

This was the only poem I had ever seen by my father and I had as good as forgotten it. But while cleaning out boxes of papers my Mom left behind when she died, I came across a big fat manilla envelope stuffed full of papers and on the outside was written in my Mom's handwriting:

Richard B. Miller: Poetry, etc.

And I realized in a moment that I was in possession of a pile of his poems, all entirely new to me.
My Fathers' voice with new things to say, 4 years after his death.
I opened it and checked just enough to see that it was real and tucked it away in a safe place. I have been waiting for the right state of mind to sit down and go through it, but so far the right state of mind doesn't exist.

But I've been feeling a pressure grow in me to look and last night I took out the first one in the stack and read it. And it was good, it was actually very good. Not great but solid and clear and carpentered true. And more than that, it was young. It was edgy and lean with an energy younger than I possess today.

I put the rest away, determined not run downhill through them. I will take one out every couple of days for the next month or so till I run out, listening to my Father talk to me for the last time.

Cribsheet: Wii, Myself & I

2009-07-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

So I wanted to get a gaming system for the boy and me and just a little looking convinced me that the Wii was the way to go. I didn't want him sitting passively, building up massive thumb muscles and nothing else. Some other systems have better graphics and maybe even better games (from a grown up gamer point of view) but the Wii is the most truly family friendly gaming system out there right now.

So I got the system and there are pluses and minuses but I have to say on balance it's been awesome. And partly for reasons I didn't see coming.

Like more than just the fact that he would have to be standing up and moving around, this system requires him to work on his larger and smaller motor skill issues just to play the game. In the games he responds to physical challenges that he would never be brave enough to face in the real world (and nor would I for that matter)but in the sunny, candy colored world we play in he learns timing and nuance and swift action.

In Mario Kart, he steers away from cliffs, flips over ramps, throws shells while driving. In Lego Star Wars he jumps over obstacles and swings and twirls his light saber in the cross the chest motions his Physical therapist said were so important. There seems be a neurological component, stifled in Isaac that needs to learn this.

The other issue, strongly related, is that Isaac, with his crabby and rigid temperament disliked games with others, disliked games with rules. Every game with Isaac quickly became a version of Calvin ball where the rules are entirely at the discretion of a weird little boy. Naturally games like that played with anyone but an overly indulgent Poppa dissolve into furious frustration.

Well, because the game is a thing and not a person he seems to accept that there is no point in arguing and you either play the game or you don't. And so, he plays and he learns the rules and more and more he accepts being bad at first because he knows he'll get better. And that is a dream come true for me. I play with him and as we laugh over our successes and complain about our defeats it's amazing to suddenly realize how far we have come.

One amusing side note has been the fun of creating the Miis or avatars that represent you in the games. Isaac and I both enjoy making Miis though we do it very differently. He likes to make these weird, elfin starry eyed creatures who look related to Dr. Seuss characters and I like to see if I can create close approximations of real people. I started off by making people close to me and then began making people I am no longer close to, moving on to historical characters and finally into fictional characters. So now as I go running on Wii island I routinely pass (along with hosts of elfin, starry-eyed Seussians) My Mom and Dad, my grandparents, friends, old girlfriends, Hitler, Stalin, Voldemort, Tony Soprano, Groucho Marx and dozens of others, all smiling and waving as they jog past on a another beautiful day. If you are reading this I probably know you and if I know you, you probably have a small round digital existence on my Wii.

Pictures: Seven Years Old

2009-06-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Image: The Sunflower Seed Six

2009-05-31T00:51:00.001-07:00

I made a graphic which captures the feel of the stories...at least a bit.

Cribsheet: CITIZENS OF ERIBITE!!!

2009-05-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Cribsheet: The Bottom of Sidney's Ninth.

2009-05-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

My cat Sid just died. He was 15 or 16 years old and succumbed to cancer. I had him for 13 years during which he warmed my heart and lightened my days by being a warm, smart and funny companion. He was a friendly big guy who would tag along with you to whatever room you went to and just curl up nearby for the pleasure of being close. He made friendly eye contact all the time. At night, Sid would jump onto my bed and slide under my left arm so he could put his head on my shoulder, and his paw on my arm. It's easy to take cat company for granted but I am realizing how much he was a part of of days being good for me.

Love at First Sight:

I met Sid in Eugene, Oregon 1995 while shopping for a kitten to bring some joy into a house where my former sweetheart's mother was dying of cancer. We were looking for a sprightly little fuzz-ball and found one who promptly leaves this story by quickly finding another home after becoming a gigantic pain in the ass. However, while we were looking for this kitten I spotted a really large black cat lying in the exact center of the wide open cat room. The other cats were giving him a wide berth so he was easy to spot. He had a mellow gravitas about him. I went over and gave him my hand to sniff and patted his head. He gave me a friendly look right in the eyes. I continued browsing but I kept going back to say hi more. We played a little and when he stood up I was amazed by what a big strong cat he was - just solid muscle. We decided we'd best get the little fuzzy kitten. I rubbed his head and said goodbye and he gave me a serious look.

We drove the 15 miles back to Eugene and I couldn't stop thinking about this cat.
I was feeling sadder and sadder to leave him there and when we pulled up in front of the house and I had tears in my eyes. I said to Megan, "I have to go back and get that cat." to her credit she had no problem with that and off we went.

When we got back to the pound and told the lady there that we wanted that big guy in the middle of the room she got tears in her eyes too. She told us everyone there loved him and he was only a day or two from his last meal. As we gathered him up and finished the paperwork other workers came up beaming to say how pleased they were.

We settled in and began a happy life together. He was so brave and calm he made friends with dogs. Every morning after breakfast he would saunter over to the neighbors who would let him in their garden gate. We often saw him in the neighbor's yard sleeping in a pile with their big dog (and regularly eating his food. He got the name Sid from a book my niece was reading about a big black cat named Sid who lived in six different houses under six different names and ate 6 dinners a day.

Some fun memories of Sid:

He would "count coup" on Megan. He would lie in the middle of the hallway so you had no choice but to step right over him and as she stepped over he would whap her on the leg and run away like: hee hee hee! (and he never did it to me.)
He drank water from a cupped paw like a camper next to a stream.
If he was on the wrong side of a closed door he stuck his front paws under the door, grabbed hold and shook it creating an incredible racket.
He was an indulgent "single Dad"to intense and quirky Ira , our next kitten who endlessly messed with him.

The Descent

I guess he started looking sick about a year ago, losing weight at a frightening rate. Finally about a month ago he stopped eating. I bought every treat I could to tempt him - my house looked like a cat cafeteria. Maddeningly, he wanted food but almost seemed not to recognize food as food.

Isaac's Mom who is a nurse came and taught me how to give him fluids and shots. It freaked me out to stick needles in him but he was dehydrated and hurting. His quality of life was still touched with enough moments of cat happiness: He slept in the sun up on the deck. He watched the tall grass waving and lifted his head at birdsong. He slept beside me with his paw on my arm, his head on my shoulder. He bonked heads, affectionately.

Besides, It's a damn serious thing to take away a minute of someones life. I struggled with worry and fear, noting every little loss wondering where the line was. The morphine kept him free of pain but he was so delicate so weak on his legs. He staggered to the litter box, keeping the rules of dignity to the end. I warned Isaac that Sid was very sick, that I was afraid we probably wouldn't have him much longer. He came up to Sid and patted his head. "Always remember we love you." he said.

Finally on Saturday night after I had put Isaac to bed and I lay down on the floor beside the little makeshift bed with heating pad I had made for Sid and I just held him in my arms. He bumped my head a little with his and looked at me, haggardly. He touched his paw on my arm over and over: with an almost "there, there" kind of feeling. I went out to the living room to do some work on the computer and in a few minutes when I got up I found him there beside me, he had dragged himself out to lie beside me with literally the last of his strength.

I picked him up and cuddled him and laid him on his bed before going to sleep.

I woke in the morning with a flat foreboding feeling. Sid was stiff and cold, one leg bent awkwardly beneath him as if he had tried to rise again before dying. Isaac was running around the house being a happy six year old.

I made him some breakfast. He watched TV. I went out and dug a grave in a sunny spot in front of our Douglas Fir (Doug) where the red clovers are blooming like mad.

After breakfast I turned off the TV and told Isaac that after being so sick, Sidney had died. Isaac cocked his head like a dog hearing a strange noise and glanced over at Sid, confused. I said "come on, let's go see him." We walked over and sat with Sid. Isaac said: "His eyes are open"

I said, "but they aren't seeing anything. Sid has left his body behind and he's in absolutely no pain now. Do you want to touch him?"

He reached out and stroked Sid's head and sat quiet. "Can I watch some more TV?"

"OK."

I continued working on the grave. Finally it was big enough and cleaned out enough. I got a Chinese red cloth, laid Sid on it and folded three corners up to his neck. Isaac came to look as I folded the cloth over Sid's head.

We went outside and I gently laid him in the bottom of the grave with his head pointing toward the house. We both started to cry. "You were a wonderful and loyal friend. "I sobbed "Thank you for coming into my life."

We laid small containers of food and water next to him and Isaac scattered a whole container of catnip over Sid's body. I covered Sid with soil almost to the top of the grave and we planted flower bulbs in the top two inches and laid a flat paving stone over his head. I have never understood neolithic funerals better than I do today.

And we cried some more. Isaac said: "I hate Spring."

Me: "Because Sydney died in Spring?"

Isaac: "Yup."

I decided we better get the hell away from the house and out to the beach - not just sit there in misery. Isaac dragged his feet and didn't want to go. "I hate everything."

"There are many things in life still to love," I said "the beach is a good place to remember how much we love Sid and also see how beautiful the world is. "

He said: "The world is a dark place."

I said: "The world is dark and it is also bright. It is both."

In the car on the way to the beach we drove past a place selling grave monuments and he muttered sarcastically:"That's a good business to be in, selling grave stones."

His Mom told me that the next night at night time prayers he stuck his tongue out at God.

***

This morning I drove home after morning classes and before afternoon classes and looked at Sid's grave. It was raining lightly.

I went inside and got a permanent marker and went out in the rain kneeling beside the grave - I wrote on the paving stone:

Sidney:

An Amazing Cat.

He was ours

and

we were his.

Love forever.

Wisdom of the ancestors, Part 1: Hjalmar Georg Lundstrom

2009-03-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Isaac,
This is my attempt to distill the wisdom (and lack thereof) of your recent and more recessed ancestors into some bite sized pieces. It doesn't mean I have actually acted on any of this wisdom, merely that I can describe it.

Hjalmar Georg Lundstrom was my Grandpa, my Mother's father. He was born in the Houtskär region of Finland in something like 1885. I'll have to check my dates. His Dad died when he was a child and he and his brother had to work hard while very young.
Lesson 1:
He was a fisherman and a carpenter and came to the United States around 1900 to get out of being a fisherman and to escape being drafted into the Russian army.

Lesson 1: at all costs, avoid being drafted into the Russian army.

Lesson 2:
He found my Grandma Aina Helena Sundburg when they were young and poor and working in Brooklyn. She was a maid and he was a carpenter living in a single mens barracks (different world). Grandma didn't take him seriously - they dated - they didn't date - and dated again. She finally went back to Finland to consider her options. He showed up to be with her. They got married and had six kids.

Lesson 2: If you want something, prove it.

Lesson 3:
Once he had a mishap and cut off the end of his nose with a circular saw. He walked over and picked it up out of the sawdust and taped it back on with electricians tape. It healed. No problem.
Just a little white scar around the tip of his nose forever after.

Lesson 3: Fuck it, move on.

Lesson 4:
He designed and built houses, had six kids, wrote poems and played the violin.

Lesson 4: Get busy.

Lesson 5:
He died at 95 years old in his bed.

Lesson 5: Die at 95 in your sleep, my boy.

Cribsheet: He has your head...

2009-01-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

This is a sort of follow up to "Waiting for a label". We moved quickly though the tests and had our big meeting. Everybody has been wonderful but I couldn't help feeling a sense of dread that we had cranked up some sort of huge machine which for good or ill would "Process" Isaac.
He doesn't exactly fit any box that has been suggested...he isn't autistic. They don't think he is Aspergers either because of some interesting subtlety in his communication style and ultimately he can relate to others better than a standard AS kid. . While he has a huge vocabulary he isn't "the little professor" of an Aspergers diagnosis. He simply uses the words meaningfully in context and moves on. It isn't important to him to use big words, he just often does. As a thousand other Cribsheets have mentioned, he has motor skill issues from his prematurity and has a whole constellation of Sensory Integration problems. He is also a little OCD and full of quirky little patterns that have to be followed. Lots of little kids are rather weird but Isaac DOES stand out. He also has a temper without any normal metering control and serious difficulty calming himself from any frustration. He has trouble following instructions or doing anything any way but his own.

In short he is a lot like me.
More and more as we have gone through this process I have alarming moments of realization that ... well...basically...I do almost every weird freaking thing he does. I don't much want to advertise this but I am a ticky, anxious, easily frustrated, grumpy and melancholy person. I am oversensitive to many stimuli, a bit of a rigid pattern follower, I even do some of the strange sub vocalizing things Isaac does. S*I*G*H. I had a horrible time in school, bored out of my mind, clock watching, dreaming and just kept a low enough profile to slide through. I had to do things my own way to the point of adopting a peaceful "civil disobedience" approach with my teachers.
"Are you going to take this test today?"
"No thanks, I'm going to read this novel."

Funny ideas and interesting thoughts are almost constantly sparking from inside me but I believe the price I pay for this ride is the angry, oversensitive, restless and convoluted brain I have to use for navigating this life. And Isaac has at least some of this same predicament.

I need to learn how to help Isaac learn to use what he has well but I only know a little about using my own quirks well. Mostly I cope with them or work around them. Simply correcting them sounds impossible.

From his Mom's side I believe he gets his catastrophizing. I don't do that and I don't remember my folks doing it either. When he's upset he also does this thing that I believe is called "Splitting". Splitting is when you get mad and go completely into black and white mode. You can't remember anything good about someone whose behavior in your eyes is Bad. He assumes the worst intentions from others and never lets a potential offense pass without comment. "You're the WORST Daddy EVER!!!"

These traits are such a recipe for misery and loneliness that it breaks my heart and I feel like I need to help him steer away from disaster. It's a disaster that might come at 10, 20, 30 or 40 but he is no less steering for it and it's no less real for being far away. In fact if my life is any example it can happen at all of those ages...

Hope
A unexpected ray of light shone in from seeing his pediatrician who mentioned that we should get him checked for low iron. We expected nothing but it turned out he WAS!
From what I can gather, an iron deficit can make kids grumpy, impulsive, hard to soothe. He's getting Iron supplements now to bring him back up to where he needs to be. I also learned that Omega 3s and B complex vitamins with minerals have a very positive impact on mood. So we're on it. He's getting these every day and damned if doesn't seem to be making a difference. He sputters angrily in his way but then seems to cool his jets quicker he seems to be less opposed to things just on general principles. I am encouraged.

He has had to leave his sweet little school because they just couldn't manage all of his needs along with 27 other kids. The good news is we have gotten him enrolled in a wonderful school with a real support for special needs kids and to our amazement he really likes it...
Thanks for listening,
Hugh

PS
Two nights ago we finished reading our bed time story and he hopped out of bed to go potty. From the bathroom he yelled:
"Hey, can we read another one?"
I said "No you have to go to bed."
He put on his righteous outrage face and sputtered: "I hate you!"
I kissed him on the head and said "Well I love you Isaac."
I walked out of the bathroom and he was quiet - then he said:

"I feel like I want to argue with you about that but I'm not sure how."

Cribsheet: Can we Fix it?

2008-11-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Well...

the election is finally almost over. John McCain has the endorsement of Joe the Plumber but Barack Obama has gotten the much desired endorsement of Bob the Builder, whose catch-phrase "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" has been absorbed almost whole cloth by the Obama campaign. It made me speculate about the other kids characters. Thomas the tank engine is clearly a Democrat (he's the little blue engine, remember?) and in your heart you know who Cruella de Vil is backing.

Ninja Boo

Well the season is Fall now and the trees are still full of beautiful color but past the moment of perfection. Most trees have a "male pattern baldness" feeling.

Halloween was fun. It was the first time I've had Isaac on Halloween and as a result I sweated getting things right. After scanning a catalog of costumes together, I got him his request: A ninja. I'm sure his Mom was less than thrilled but she thoughtfully said nothing. He HAD wanted to be Darth Vader so I thought he was stepping in the right direction. I also wondered which neighborhood to trick or treat. My own neighborhood seems a little disconnected to me, without much community feeling. I know some neighbors enough to wave to but not many. I shoot the breeze with basically nobody because I'm shy. Anyway, I wanted to make it the normal happy thing where you put on your costume and wander out into your own neighborhood so that's what we did. Isaac and I set off in the early darkness and went to every house that looked "Halloweeny" and everyone was so nice! My neighborhood is FILLED with nice people. People were THANKING US for trick or treating. I realized that at all these nice people were hungry for that connection and that memory. Someone told me that most kids were trick or treating at the MALL. It now seems strange to me too that back in the day little kids were dressed in weird costumes and dumped into the streets to wander, begging for candy from strangers. But honestly, people: The Mall?

Here's a gallery of Isaac's Halloween

Waiting for a Label

Isaac is in Kindergarten and has been to see the principal about 30 times since the beginning of the school year. Three times in the first week. He fights, he bites, he doesn't adapt. This isn't quite fair, he gets along and finds a way most times - more times than not - but he fights and has problems more than most. He has the temper of both of his parents, but mainly me. Not a blessing. He is also a professional catastrophist. He showed up in this universe with a strange bias in favor of trouble and strife. If he could have spoken at birth, two months premature, 2 pounds 15 ounces he would have said "I knew this was going to happen".

He is such a constellation of blessings and curses. He is grumpy and difficult but everybody who works with him develops a soft spot for him - with all his problems he has a very lovable nature somehow. I know he can be very rough and harsh. It's very reassuring to see seasoned special needs professionals spend time with Isaac and get what's good about him. At times I feel like I am raising my own Father, Isaac has some of the same challenging traits he did.

From Magnussen Park

Isaac has been undergoing a battery of tests, basically everything that can tested on a special needs kid so that we can come up with a clearer picture of what is really up with him.

On Wednesday we are going to meet with all the Isaac evaluators to get a report on their best guess about who Isaac really is and what should be done. It's scary...really scary because we may not be able to stay at his current school anymore. His Mom and I are biting our lips and worrying ourselves just about sick waiting to see what will follow.

In other news: Isaac took part in Track & Field this Fall. If ever there was a BAD CHOICE of a sport for Isaac it was this. Completely absurd. But he picked it himself and by god he stayed with it with the help mainly of his Mom and also me. He was always last and knew that he was always last. And not just a little last...last with a bullet, way last, extra last.
But.
Isaac the grumpy...
Isaac the whiny...
Ran these races - knowing he would be last.
And in the final race of the season with like fifty kids running he came in SECOND to last and he said "Mommy - Daddy...I didn't lose!"

A gallery of Isaac at a track meet.

Love to all.
Hugh

Gallery: Playtime with Kira and Leslie:

2008-05-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/hugh.studio30/Playtime

Isaac is so funny. He wanted a short sleeved shirt and I didn't have one so I cut the sleeves off a shirt that was too small for him. He found the sleeves and wore them . The his pants got wet and he rolled up a leg.
He thought he looked very cool.
I didn't argue.

Kira is absolutely adorable. The other day she was showing Isaac and me her room and she accidentally fell into her laundry basket. It felt just like little Roo in the Winnie the Pooh stories disappearing by falling into a mouse hole.

Leslie, the littlest one kept wanting to see every picture I took on the camera screen. I would take the picture, She would ask to see it and then she'd say:

"Oh, Cute!"

Video: The Squirrel that got away

2008-04-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

Video: Wheels

2008-03-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

a tiny sweet memory that I don't want to forget was Isaac's favorite push and ride car over at his day care lady's house. He named it "Noodle" and he loved it and fought over it often with other kids. His little friend Kira's favorite was named "Little Pink". Noodle eventually was too broken up to keep and Isaac found it hard to talk about. He named it Noodle because noodles were his favorite thing.

Videos: Isaac Wan Kenobi

2008-03-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

Cribsheet: Throbbing Purple Foot of Misery

2008-03-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

(rediscovered cribsheet Isaac at 4)

Well I've been doing something special to relax these days, twice a day I grab an ice cold bag of frozen peas and an Ace bandage and strap the peas to my gigantic, throbbing,
purple ... foot (what did you think I was going to say?) of misery and stick it up in the air for half an hour.

We were out at the park Sunday before last and had a great time and M and Isaac and I were walking back to the car - I was carrying Isaac because he said he was tired. We were all of two hundred feet away from my car when I stepped in a hole (a crevasse, really) and twisted my ankle (if the phrase "twisting my ankle" can really describe a situation where my toes and my heel meet on either side of my knee) and found myself falling forward and trying to put Isaac down without dropping him. I was wearing these big heavy boots and basically rolled my whole ankle sideways so badly that for a few minutes I thought I might have broken it. I sat there trying not to freak Isaac out or make M think I was acting like a baby but OH MAN THAT HURT. So for a week that ankle was twice it's normal size and purple as a grape. Now it's one and a half time normal and looks like a cartoon foot. So the best part of the summer moves past with me walking like the aged sidekick character in old westerns.
I'm looking at things a bit more grumpily than usual as a result. Anyway. Oh yeah, The kid. Right.

He picked up a little pen and started zooming it through the air over his trains. "Who's that?" I asked.
"That's Gimmee," he said, "Gimmee the Flying Sports Engine!"
"What does he do?"
He raised the pen tip and scribbled in the air - "He draws pictures in the sky! And at night he shoots out fireworks!"

We've been dreading harsh language creeping into his conversation knowing of course that some is inevitable.
The phrase "Shut Up!" may not sound harsh but it is kind of rough and mean, the only exception I can think of is:
"Shut UP!" used as in "You've GOT to be kidding!"
But Isaac hears the little engines in the Thomas stories telling each other to shut up and it finally came out of his mouth the other day while playing with his trains - and it made me laugh out loud. As usual he was lying across the tracks having engine encounters and suddenly I heard him say:

"Shut up, suggested James"

That's My Towel
We have a little game we play that is right out of the wolf or dog play book, it's called. that's my towel
This morning he said "Daddy can we play that's my towel?"
I threw him a towel and he grabbed it and I ran after grabbing it it too yelling "Hey, that's my towel!"
and he says, "NO it's MY towel"
and we both pull on it and growl and assert towel ownership over and over while running from room to room.
Try it with a loved one this weekend!

Cribsheet: Muckle Bad Dad

2008-03-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Rediscovered Cribsheet: Isaac at about 3.5 or 4 years old

Random notes
Isaac: (Picking up the little green train, Percy and waving it about over the track) "Percy was amazed to learn that engines could fly."

Isaac: (while I was drawing a picture of James the red engine) "Ladies and gentlemen, we're drawing a splendid red engine."

I started teaching him to howl a long time ago and he didn't every really do it - till now. Now we howl together fairly often - it's very satisfying to howl with your family - I recommend it. We just up and do it once in a while when the mood strikes, not too often. We were taking a walk and I howled and he started howling - "My little wolf cub" I said
"Ow0000 -I'm a wolf cub!" He said.

Muckle Bad Dad.
What you need to know:
In one Thomas story there is a little Scottish engine and a bad recalcitrant brake van who is causing trouble.
Bad Brake Van: "I'm essential!"
Scottish engine: "Ye're a muckle nuisance - It's tae leave ye behind I'd be wantin. what are ye in the end but a screechin and a noise?"

Ok. Remember that.

Isaac and I were at Green lake walking and stopped to rest under a tree in some shade. We had a great time tossing pebbles in the lake then he noticed the lumpy roots of the tree we were sitting under and asked about them. I told him a tree is similar above and below, that the leaves are drinking sunshine and that the roots are like branches reaching down into the earth drinking water. "What's all this rocky stuff?" he said, feeling the bark. "That's the skin, called bark. It 's rough and thick to keep the tree safe." He smiled up at the tree.
"Let's call it Duke!"
I looked at the one across the way - "Let's call that one Betsy."
He pointed across the way "And we'll call that one Googi! And that one Spoogi!"
He pointed at every tree in sight, giving them silly names and slipping into hysterics over his own goofiness, giggling till he was nearly out of breath.

I went and sat on the bench. He walked over with a funny smile. "I'm essential!" he rasped, like the brake van.
In my best'worst Scottish accent I barked at him: "Ye're a muckle nuisance - It's tae leave ye behind I'd be wantin, what are ye in the end but a screechin and a noise?"
I heard a loud snort behind me and looked over. A woman was walking by on the path give me a burning glare that said I was a monster Dad.

Cribsheet: Use the Fork, Luke

2008-03-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

Rediscovered Cribsheet - age 1.5

So he is using more words, naming things we didn't think he knew. Suddenly those aren't just birdies, they're Geese. Or Geef, anyway. This makes any cursing in front of him less and less OK. The other day I yelled at a bad driver: "Cheese and crackers, you Jackalope!"

He is very taken with bugs at the moment. He saw an ant on the kitchen floor and after his usual "Dat?" he laughed and crawled around after it saying "bug, bug!".

I think he was surprised they are so small, in kids picture books horses and beetles may stand side by side like guys in a police lineup with no indication that one towers over you while you tower over the other. I told him it was an ant and a couple of days later M spotted another one on the living room floor...

WE NOW STOP FOR A BRIEF CLARIFICATION: M'S HOUSE IS NOT FULL OF ANTS - REPEAT, M'S HOUSE IS NOT FULL OF ANTS. THAT IS ALL.

....and he told her "Ant!" I found an ant puppet at my house, (what's the matter, don't you guys have ant puppets?) it has this big soft black ant body and a tight black glove underneath and when you put on the glove it looks disturbingly like a giant ant is walking around. I tickle him with it and he laughs and laughs. I also have a grasshopper puppet (Yes, that's it for insect puppets - hey, my Mom sent these to me from the Salvador Dali museum years ago) again, Grasshopper body with green glove underneath. For some people, deeply disturbing; for Isaac, love object. Waking fitfully from a nap several times today he would call out "Bug? Bug?" and cuddle close to it.

He made out very well at Christmas, very likely the last one of so little expectation. Utter innocence about presents. Great stuff to play with just kept appearing: Legos and puzzles and trucks and tractors. "Cool, you guys seem to be getting your act together as parents! I just want you to know this has been a very nice morning".

Really the tree was a lot more startling. He got up from a nap and uttered his first complete sentence. "Why is there a tree in the house?" OK, I'm lying. But that was the unmistakable look on his face. Then we started to cover it with shiny objects and toys and repeatedly shoo him away from getting too close. Crazy, crazy mean people.

The "Understanding your Kids" type books say this is a time of great negativity and we sort of see it but it really hasn't been bad. He likes to say "No" and occasionally just sort of sings it out in relation to nothing in particular. And he will say it intensely about things like teeth brushing. ("No, No, No!") He teases a bit which seems like it's about both testing limits and sense of humor. Sometimes he will do something that we have established is not OK with the parents and as I stop him this little sly smile appears on his lips like "Gotcha!".

Well I just went pick him up at day care when M got buried under a pile of paperwork. He didn’t want to leave and wriggled and and fought getting dressed for the road, even yelling out “No Way, No way!” (I guess our day care lady, Maureen says that to him when he goes over the line.)

Overall what is extraordinary is how sweet he is. He pretty well turns both of us inside out and upside down with love - two people who may have lived good lives but may not have been really open to love in all it's terrifying vulnerability - suddenly tiny pink hands the size of half dollars rip away all our defenses and the flood pours in. In my last note I talked about missing my Mom and how it's sort of like this endless ringing telephone that can never pick up. Well I’ve had kind of a nice experience on that issue. When she died I realized no one would ever love me that much again, I think that is sad but reasonable. It makes sense that no adult can love you like your Mom or Dad loves you. We all probably spend a lot more time on this issue than we ought to, comparing our deals and compromises to the transcendent connection of birth. The child thought is that no one can love me that much again and the adult thought is that I might get to love somebody that much.

I know how much my Mom loved me as I get to know Isaac – it feels like seeing something familiar from a new angle – like I’m just passing on what I got to the next guy in line. I can feel my Mom’s love in the exchange of this love.

The happier I am the less likely I am to be aware of “My Needs”. In my deepest sadness I am almost nothing but “My Needs”. When I am blissed out I hardly even seem to exist! When I am a selfish jackalope I feel as real and as unyielding as a brick wall. It’s amazing and ironic that we wish joy for ourselves but actual joy takes us OUT of ourselves.

Happy New Year!

Be well – more soon.

Hugh

Pictures: Swimming Lessons

2008-03-13T00:03:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from Isaac at swim lessons - click this text to look

Video: What Kind of Monster?

2008-03-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

Cribsheet: EEeeww!

2008-03-04T17:10:00.001-08:00

(Rediscovered Cribsheet - Isaac at 3 - out of sync)

Well, he is getting taller and skinnier and I see a little more of his own non baby face taking shape - he is so beautiful that it pulls me up short sometimes - but I am madly biased - he has a little more sense of distance - there are times when he plays so intensely all by himself - he loves to know that we are near though, that is very important. When I watch him in the morning I may dash away to try to get something done on my computer - a moment later he will come back and grab my hand and tell me something has happened that I must come look at - almost always a train wreck - his little wooden trains piled up as they have been a thousand times before. I say "My goodness what a terrible wreck! Are they OK?"

and we start to put them back on track. When all is well I rush to the computer and type 4 words and a little person scampers in again -'Daddy, a little green engine is in trouble!" So I do my work in 5 second intervals between train wrecks.

And yes, it sometimes it shows.

His Mom took him in to the doctor for his 3 year check up and he is "low tone". Whatever the reason it IS common in kids who were preemies - his sense of balance is weak and he continues to be a slow developer at running & jumping. Both of us feel he will grow out of it but we want to learn whatever we can about exercises, techniques etc. to help him move forward. When he stands on uneven terrain he can't look up at stuff - you can see his whole body concentrating on not losing his balance. At the same time though, he is getting better at these things and can climb up into the car seat from ground level and plop into position. He also seems to more enjoy falling in play - I give him horsey rides with slow clip clops around the house and then it goes faster and faster and I yell "runaway horse!!" and throw him onto my bed. Not long ago that would have been traumatic or nearly or only fun once but now he will ask for it again and again till I am gasping.

Meanwhile of course he is amazing verbally. Not long ago his Mom had to take his little green train away when he threw it in a mad moment.

The next day he mentioned it a couple of times (though he had had it back since ten minutes after the event) and on the way to daycare I was singing "You are my sunshine". I sang a couple of verses (and by the way, has nobody noticed what a DEPRESSING song it is? We sing it like it was cheerful but it's a song of gloomy woe and loss! But I digress...)

I got to part that goes "You'll never know dear, how much I love you..."

and perfectly on note and in rhythm, Isaac sang "Momma don't take my green train away!"

For the last week I have been sick - I was coughing a lot in the car on the way to daycare today and Isaac said "do you still have that cold, Daddy?"

And I said "Yeah, I'm mostly over it but I'm coughing because I've still got a lot of mucus in my nose and throat."

And he said "Eww!"

Video: Silly Noises

2008-03-03T23:28:00.000-08:00

Apres Swim

2008-03-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

Cribsheet: Talking to my Nose

2008-03-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

(rediscovered - out of sync Cribsheet)
Well Isaac continues to amaze us in so many ways. Those of you who are about to get to see him will notice right away how much more he is like a little boy than a toddler now. He is temperamentally much the same little person we've been keeping company with for going on three years but the articulate and funny expressions of that person pull me up short sometimes - I love where we're at but I find I already miss the little baby and the tiny toddler of yesterday, I know his Mom does too.

Here are some tiny little word snapshots of Isaac, recently.
We were at the park in the playground. As usual, we were playing with pebbles in this boat like structure. He was gathering piles of pebbles on the bench seat sides of the thing and pretending they were food and he was cooking them. He named and offered them as he cooked:
"These are chingosans - would you like some?"
Oh yes, Isaac they're delicious. And so on - he is remarkably comfortable making up crazy words and just using them in conversation. There were things like glernytibs and wimbledimps -sort of like a Dr. Seuss restaurant menu.

Anyway, I told you all that to tell you this - he picked up handful of pebbles and looked at me sweetly -
"Sorry, Daddy" He said.

I got out something like: "Oh Isaac, you have nothing to be sorry -"
before he whapped me right in the face with the handful of pebbles. He had an impulse, knew it was wrong, very thoughtfully apologized and then went ahead and did it! I should have been mad or corrected him but I laughed till I fell down.

Around the same time he took to asking me where the *********** was? With "**********" standing for a noise that really sounds like a word but you can't quite make it out - the first few times I said stuff like "I can't really understand what you're saying" and asking for clarification but I suddenly realized he was just having me on - and when he'd ask I'd say "It's over there in the corner" or "it's right behind you" and he would be perfectly satisfied!

Me-My-Mo-Menis

I taught him the Banana-fana song and he loves it, you know like: "Isaac Isaac bo-bisaac
banana fana fo fisaac
me-mi-mo-misaac
ISAAC!'
He made me sing it with the name of every person we know (granpa granpa bo banpa) and then on to every kids show character - (Thomas Thomas bo bomas) and all was well till we got to a Bob the Builder character named Muck. I started in confidently Muck, Muck bo buck
banana fana fo - UH OH

you see the second line always uses F instead of the person's proper initial.
So I said it - I said it as simply and nonchalantly as I could so it wouldn't stand out as anything special that he would home in on and start repeating loudly in public somewhere - to my knowledge we've both been pretty good about not cursing in front him (someone almost smashed into us in traffic the other day and I called him a fool) and he didn't seem to notice anything special about it so I thought I was off the hook.

Till he said "sing penis!"
That's a bit of segue, isn't it. He clearly has a reference point for "naughty stuff' even though I never see any sign of self consciousness in him or awareness of naughty things.
So I sang it - You might think I'm stupid but I was trying to keep it simple and light -ordinary and no big deal:

"Penis Penis bo benis banafana fo fenis
me-mi-mo menis PENIS!"

And thought I was clear till he said "Sing Chuck!"

Look. We don't even know a Chuck - I wouldn't have felt confident that had ever even heard the name "Chuck" but this kid seemed to know what would happen to it on the second line of the banafana song. I told him I wanted to do something else. Scary clever.

The other night I had a dinner for some old friends here and Isaac was in attendance -as dinner wound down Isaac decided to start handing out little golden tomatoes to everyone - we all played along and ate them because he was giddy with pleasure running around feeding us - his joy was so palpable - he ran out of sight into the kitchen for a moment and then ran to see us all smiling at him - he said:
"This is FANTASTIC, people!"

I came upstairs the other morning as Xxxxy was changing Isaac's diaper - She was laughing and said "What are you doing?"
His little hand was cupped over his mouth and nose and he was babbling quietly in some completely made up language.
"I'm talking to my nose." He said calmly.
He's adopted this goofy little baby bonnet at day care and it's his hat now - It's so odd and like beyond not stylish but I've started to love it on him.

I'm including a particularly goofy pic of wearing reading glasses and the bonnet - he looks like an 18th century farm wife.
warm thoughts to you all - Much love, Hugh

Cribsheet:Demented Dogs and Flatulent Penguins

2008-03-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

(rediscovered Cribsheet - out of sync)
We're hitting an especially high tone this time, eh?

Greetings to all and sorry to be out of touch so very long. All our well established patterns were broken up by Isaac's Mom moving to her friend's house. So now even simple tasks like taking pictures and getting at the computer are more complicated than they were. Isaac and his Mom are upstairs at P's house and it's a sweet little space and a nice home. I come in as usual at 7 in the morning to watch Isaac. We go downstairs to play and run into the problem of P's sweet very old dog Maggie.

Every morning at 7:26 I step in a puddle of dog pee on a once exquisite Persian carpet. Many days worse things lie in wait. Maggie is sweet natured but half out of her mind. She asks to be let out of the back door to go pee in the yard (well OK, not in so many words) and I let her out and she takes care of business - except that lately she has taken to asking to go outside when she doesn't need to and then she stands around out there looking sort of confused before barking to be let back in.
Then she forgets that she just asked and asks again - and again - and again - and again - and because I am trying to cut down on profound grossness in the living room I am afraid not to let her out. I spend my mornings being ordered about by a 400 year old dog and a two year old boy.
Maggie's other quirk is The-Look-Of-Profound-Sadness which she nails me with every time I happen to look her way. When she catches your eye you feel a vertiginous drop toward an infinite horizon of ever deepening despair. It is a look of such woe and sorrow that the complete works of Ingmar Bergman on DVD would help you cheer up afterwards.

We generally head for my house about 8 o'clock for Sesame Street and other vehicles of the gay liberal satanic agenda. One show that Isaac likes that completely baffles me is called "Boobah" a show which makes "Teletubbies" look edgy and concerns itself with six primary colored dancing, flying and apparently farting extraterrestrials who make children dance. When they fly or dance the sound track plays "whoopee cushion" noises so frankly, I don't know what else to think. Isaac thinks they look like penguins. To my eye they resemble brightly colored penguins as much as they resemble some sort of ambiguous genitalia. They name their characters as they leave their UFO style sleeping quarters to dance and I cover ears and make noise so I won't learn their names. I know the names of everyone on Sesame street - everyone on Mister Rogers - everyone in Thomas the Tank Engine and even, God help me, everyone on Teletubbies. I will be damned if I will learn the names of the multicolored genital-oid dancing flatulent penguins of Boobah!

Isaac has been great. Very dear and funny and we have to constantly revise our sense of what to expect from him. He is braver physically which is a nice thing to watch happen but he still has this odd way of noticing any mention of things to be cautious of and talking about them a lot. Apparently he heard someone say the phrase "pissed her off' because he randomly shouts of "Pister Offer" with glee and intensity. We pretend nothing happened. It could have been me, but I don't remember. He babbles a kind of jibbity jabbitty blibbity blabbity scat jazz jabber which is interesting because he also using really complete articulate sentences much of the time. The scat jabber rhymes and he is really getting into things that rhyme - a friend of XXXXX's gave him a little toy beaver and he was playing with it - because my head is full of nonsense I said:
"Beaver B. Bumpkin." Isaac laughed and said "Beaver B. Bumpkin, sitting on a pumpkin. "

Tonight he said:" Mommy, I have a very good book downstairs which I think you'll like."
I'll send more sooner - love and good thoughts to you all, Hugh

Cribsheet: Peanut of Mystery

2008-03-03T17:02:00.000-08:00

(rediscovered Cribsheet from age two - so out of sync)

Well, It's Fall and the days have been beautiful cool jewels but they are growing foggy and soggy.

Isaac is a little sick today with a very minor temperature and he is droopy and sleepy as a result. I'm going to take advantage of nap time to say to you all and tell a couple of fresh stories.

It's Thomas the - Goddamn -Tank Engine all day and night.

That cheeky little engine and his minions have filled the house - and turned it into a rat's nest of track and little grumpy trains. The Thomas stories are a little weird because they are full of grumbling and selfishness and frowny faces. There is one basic story line in Thomas series - they fall off the track or bump into something and there are dozens of these stories. As Isaac plays with the trains (He has two states of being right now, asleep or playing with the trains.) it becomes more and more about incredible disasters and pile ups.

He comes and takes us by the hand and showing us the carnage says: "Are they OK? Are they OK?"

Actually, I think I'm starting to understand Thomas better for a two year old - It's full of adventures that go wrong and then "getting back on track". It's what he goes through all day.

He isn't two - he's Very two. He's violent and angry and tender and cuddly and that's during a random 15 second period.

He loves music and we play it a lot and sing a lot - he can sing all of the ABCs and twinkle twinkle little star and Itsy bitsy spider - and lots of bits of other songs - I find it wonderful to hear him. I like a rather strange band called "They Might Be Giants" and frequently play a song called "Dr. Worm" and now I can occasionally hear Isaac singing quietly to himself: "They call me Doctor Worm, I'm not a real Doctor but I am a real worm, I am an actual worm..."

I bought him a harmonica a while ago and we now and then do what I call the strange hillbilly dance: He has me play what passes for a song on the harmonica while he does this weird little jerky dance. When I finish he says: "Yay!" and we return to whatever was happening before. For some reason we have to do it in the kitchen.

Peanut of mystery:

You know we look under rocks to find interesting bugs. Well I lifted up a big rock on our regular rounds and we found a fully intact peanut under there (where there had been no peanut before). Logic suggests it must be a squirrel who did it but this is a big, heavy rock half covered with earth. It would require 7 or 8 squirrels working as a team to place that peanut under that rock and replace the soil around it. Or else a single seventy five pound squirrel lifted out the rock and daintily placed a peanut there before cleaning up and moving on. Either way I am disturbed.

Isaac Ball

Some of you may remember Calvin ball from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes - kinda similar. When Isaac and his Mom went visit Isaac's Aunt, Uncle and cousins. They introduced him to baseball which apparently Sam is really into and quite good at. At bat though, Isaac insisted on holding the bat by the fat end and tapping at the ball (on its T-ball perch) pool cue style.

When they returned his Mom and I thought we better try to introduce him to sports a little more and bought some little guy baseball stuff. It's a complete failure - the idea of rules everybody has to follow is clear to him it's just that it means the rules as he see it - right now and subject to change when he sees it differently.

I took him out in the backyard and set up bases and a batting post and Isaac tipped the ball of it's perch with the skinny end of the bat - ran in a wacky ricochet pattern around the yard and back to where he started and shouted happily to me (as God is my witness)

"Isaac a team player!"

Which I'm thinking an amused relative might have told him back in Pittsburgh. All of our best to all of you,

Sooner next time,

Hugh

Video: The Planet Song

2008-02-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Video: BUBBLES!

2008-02-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

"It's Like a dream come true!"

Cribsheet:: Sword Play

2008-02-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

Like most parents Isaac's Mom and I struggle with the question of weapon toys. Boys are drawn to them like crows to shiny pebbles or celebrities to cocaine. My intuition tells me that it's healthy and natural for boys to play at fighting. Hell, not just my intuition, my memory. It was a tremendously powerful drive, a longing and a need. Playing war was one of the most deeply satisfying games I can remember. If I could run in the streets with friends pretending to shoot at each other without actually being hospitalized or jailed I would be doing it this moment. I believe playing with weapon toys is a way boys express aggression but that's only a piece of what they are doing. They also learn restraint, team work, peck order, story telling, and possibly nobility.

Isaac and I have fights as the centerpieces of all our stories. He demands it. Always we are good guys, always we show mercy and look for ways to mitigate damage. But always, we fight. I think he needs to explore this to figure out how to be good and strong at the same time. I think the Mommies and Daddies who shame kids away from fighting toys are doing harm - it's as if they simply disapprove of this developmental stage and in the name of being responsible shrug off responsibility. They want their boys to be good but I think they overlook how much the boy needs to feel strong in order to feel like being good. I think they are turning their backs on the the animal soul of their boys because it offends their delicate sensibilities. Isaac's Mom struggles with this more than I do but she fundamentally gets it - that it's a part of boy nature that is inseparable from the boys inner life.

Picture Gallery

Valentines day at School

2008-02-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

The kid with the orange stripe across chest is Isaac

Cribsheet: My Name is Dexter Nibble

2008-02-21T17:46:00.001-08:00

"Dexter Nibble was a talented mouse. When he was tiny, pink and nearly hairless he would lie in his crib and sing silly baby songs and tap his fingers and toes. Later he would turn any room he was in into a music studio. The kitchen - the bathroom - the echoing hallway. Everywhere that Dexter went - Music went too!"

That's how my written version of The Sunflower Seed Six begins. The Sunflower Seed Six started as a story of some jazz playing mice and their adventures as they play music at a cats birthday party. For some reason he couldn't get enough of of these guys. This gang of mice caught his imagination and wouldn't let go. Earlier cribsheets have covered some of this territory but the phenomena has grown and developed in many strange ways. The Sunflower Seed Six quickly became adventure heros rescuing the puppies from 101 Dalmations and going on to endless (I'm not kidding) weird, fascinating stories. I often start to write about these things just after they have peaked mostly as a note to myself so I will remember but this phase, while calming down, isn't over at all. It has morphed into a dramatic alternate identity that co-exists with his life as Isaac. For months now, maybe a year, if you call him "Isaac" there is a chance that her will reply: "My name is dexter Nibble".

I was taking pictures of him out at Discovery park and he was making those awful faces that kids sometimes make. He looked most like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes when being a monster. I said "Hey, what does Dexter Nibble look like?" and his expression transformed into this gentle smile.

A moment of silliness

2008-02-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

Fascinating video

2008-02-06T01:59:00.000-08:00

Five dangerous things you should do with your kids

Cribsheet: Hammered

2008-02-05T23:09:00.000-08:00

My Dad died in October 2005 a month after Isaac's Mom brought her lawsuit against me trying to take Isaac and move to Colorado. It took a year and a half of desperate measures and sleepless nights to get through to the end where I have Isaac somewhere within shouting distance of half the time. Shortly after the end of the lawsuit I realized that I had something like PTSD. I'm not trying to put myself in the category of people who have suffered great trauma as in wartime but that year and a half of wondering if someone could come to a door and take Isaac away and there was nothing I could do about it cost me in ways I find hard to communicate. I got in touch with the excessive and obsessive side of me that can argue with someone who isn't actually there for about seven hours while I should be sleeping. And I got in touch with my inner drunk. A couple of months after the end of the lawsuit I was feeling sad and heavy and old and drinking too much.

I rented a movie called Islands in the Stream - a movie of Ernest Hemingway's last book. It was made in the mid-seventies and I saw it when it originally came out. It stars George C. Scott. Scott has always reminded me of my Dad. I sometimes like to watch Scott's movies when I miss my Dad. He had some of the same burning pressure inside - the same anger that always had to be carefully controlled and in this movie Scott plays a Dad with a mix of emotional distance and tenderness that also reminds me of my Dad. I haven't seen it in years and it's very beautiful if a little dated.

Well the thing is that I was pretty drunk while I was watching it and I was starting to come down with a wretched flu that made me shiver with chills and ache in every muscle. At one point Scott's character tells a friend of his that he's not bringing him on important trip because he's turned into a rummy. For some reason with the combination of my Dad in my mind and Scott on film and the disease and the liquor I just quit right there and then.

I was never gross or weird around Isaac. I wasn't a bad drunk or a mean one (actually an almost invisible one) but what I realized is that I was signing off on future happiness and setting an example of just getting by with my misery. I was just self medicating through the period between one day and the next. At this point I haven't had a drink for two months and I feel fine and it's surprisingly really no big deal. I don't think I was really an alcoholic or this would have been a more demanding transition. It reminds me of when I quit smoking many years ago - there is always the sense of fear about quitting, a sense that something terrible will happen... Then the strange anti-climax of walking away from your own chain and seeing it for the simple foolish thing it is. It seems almost ridiculous that it held such sway.

Guilt Trip
Isaac is almost 5. It's amazing. He was a baby just a minute ago. You've heard everyone else say such things, now it's my turn. He is sort of tall and thin. His attitude is grumpy and sweet and playful and manipulative. I cannot believe the guilt inducing things he pulls on me at times. The other day he whacked me with a sword (small, plastic) and I read him the riot act about doing such things. He sobbed: "I thought my Daddy LOVED ME!". I have never in my life voiced anything like this to him and I doubt his Mom has either (though I snarkily think it sounds more like her) . I think he came up with this entirely on his own. More and more I think people just are what they are from the very beginning and our stories about how "This happened and it changed me" are just fancy ways of rationalizing our peculiar and frustrating natures. He is sort of too clever in some ways. He forgets nothing, asks test questions to check my memory - makes up alternate words and answers with them waiting for me to translate. we read chapter books at bedtime and he loves them and lives very deeply in stories. 101 Dalmatians is a very big story for him. He is still challenged by large motor skill stuff (from his preemie days) and I can see him working these limits into how he does things and how he defines himself. I am doing what I can but I don't know how much I can do. I get him out kicking the soccer ball - climbing hills - wrestling. He was sort of delicate about anything happening to him - one of those kids who says "ow" more often than they really should. I bought us some of those big foam "Noodles" the swimming flotation toys - and we whack each other over the head with them all time, we joust and quarterstaff with them and I am proud to say that my son can now be whacked in the head without becoming whiny and upset.

Telling stories in my sleep
I have to say I am proud of my story telling self. I can extemporize a kids story that takes off, goes somewhere cool and lands on time. Some of my favorites:The Sunflower Seed Six about a bunch of jazz playing mice and their adventures.The Poo Poo Pirate Ship about well...um...details upon request.The Bloops a race of round yellow aliens whose sun burns out so they go to the intergalactic hardware store to get another. These days because he loves 101 Dalmatians so much, he has me tell him stories about the Sunflower Seed Six saving the puppies from Cruella DeVil in a such a variety of places that I am now hard pressed to think of a single new location. We have saved puppies in the mountains, under the sea, in the desert, in deep underground bunkers, even on the moon! I'm sparing you the 15 or so others.Once in a while when I'm telling stories I am so tired that I just start to drift off. What's bizarre is that I continue to talk. The narrative thread gets a little shaky at these times however. Isaac will say "What?!" or I'll sort of snap to attention and realize I'm doing the storytelling equivalent of driving off the road. It's really weird.

Well anyway, I just wanted to reach out to those of you I care about and hardly ever talk to, just to catch up a little. I guess I'll finish with a lovely thing that happened with Isaac a couple of weeks ago. We had had a great day together and I told him that his Mom was coming to get him in a couple of hours. He said "Can I keep this day?" I said "I guess you can keep any day that you remember."He said, "I keep all my days with you."

Talk to you soon,Hugh

----------- *** ----------

Some things I want you to know about my Dad
October 25 2005

His Name was Richard Bruce Miller.

He Died Last Night at 2am

He was Eighty years old.

Five years ago he told a young man in a 7/11 who rolled his eyes at Dad's old man disorganization:
"I may be an old fart, but I never had to work in a 7/11"

He reminded me of George C. Scott - if Scott was funny
He reminded me Of Rodney Dangerfield - if Dangerfield was a little menacing
He was deeply loyal.
He went to Yale.
He often put his foot in his mouth but always felt bad about it later.
He grew up in a family where unkindness was the rule and he did his best to undo that rule with us.
He was born into a wealthy family. An early memory was sitting in a limousine with his sisters Joan and Carol.
Then they lost everything in 1929 and the family struggled to retain its sense of privilege.
He was very sensitive and shy. He was afraid of emotion. He was very slow to trust.
He hated his Mom and never forgave her for her meanness to him.
He was a serious athlete when he was young. His nickname was "Whitey" for his bleached blond hair.
The New York Yankees auditioned him for a pitcher.
His mind was quick and logical. He loved to read. He was good at math. His handwriting was atrocious.
He was a Lieutenant in the Navy in World War II. He wanted to be a fighter pilot but he was "color weak" he studied the color charts to try to fake his way in but he didn't succeed. In the war he never hurt anyone: The closest he came was unsnapping his pistol while in command of a small contingent of military police during a riot in Rome over black-market cigarettes.
The closest he came to getting killed was when a ship in his convoy misinterpreted navigation signals and nearly hit them amidships.
He wrote nationally played TV ads working on Madison Avenue in such advertising institutions as BBD&O. A number of his ads won awards and one became a silly pop-culture catch phrase for a while: "Please Mother, I'd rather do it myself!"
He was a rock-ribbed old fashioned Liberal. He spent a night in jail early in the civil rights struggle for participating in a non-violent sit in with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality).
Over his life he was married to two beautiful, smart women who loved him.
Each time for 27 years.
After years of bitterness and alcoholism he had a dark night of the soul where has sat with a gun in his hand all night trying to end it all in a motel room in the deep south. And he realized he wanted to live.

And step by step, he followed the subtle signals toward happiness and began to let himself fall in love with life. He let the beauty of the world penetrate and he was never exactly the same afterwards.
I will never forget him looking at the little ducks in a pond in Montgomery, Alabama with a tender, amused smile that almost didn't dare to believe it's own happiness.
He and Joyce (His second wife) were one of the truest love stories in a marriage I have ever seen. Thier love for each other was profound and silly and tender. He never stopped being grateful that he found her and had her for his own and she appreciated all the good things about him that not everyone could see.
I love you Dad, I will never stop loving you.
Thank you for my life and for being my Dad and loving me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

So my brother says:
"He's in a better place than any of us."
And I want to say
"How do you know? What place are you talking about?"

But I don't say it.

Of course what I'm thinking is that probably he isn't any place at all.
That the great event rolling through time and space between 1925 and 2005
known as our Dad
has popped quite entirely out of any existence at all
Which is awfully strange till you consider that he
didn't have any sort of existence at all until
1925...

Like a magic trick attended by a small happy audience then
& evoking shock & misery from a small different audience upon it's completion now

My Father, for his final trick, disappears entirely.
Never to be seen by under any circumstances by anyone ever again.

And like a cosmic yokel
like a rube
I gawk

"How did you do that?"
Silence.
"Oh Yeah...right."

And the Religionists say he's here or there
and the Atheists say he isn't anywhere

And I want to think he's somewhere
but I can't... I don't know how.

When someone dies it's like a bubble breaking
and the Nothing rushes to fill the spot where Something lived.

And the something is so very gone
it's as if it was never there.
As if the normal state of the universe was nothing
and something is a revolution
an uprising against
the non existence
no sentience

The universe is a loving and wise place to extent that we are loving and wise
the universe is sentimental, even Motherly to extent that we are

The religionists with their insistence that God do what we say
The all mysteries can be understood
that a tribal history trumps science
That families exist independent of bodies
and reside in a fixed and permanent heaven

But really Nothing is just the necessary background to Something
and something is the necessary foreground to Nothing

living things are bubbles in the ocean of nothing
to God maybe nothing is palpable

maybe nothing is
the key ingredient in making something.

Cribsheet: Car Wash of Pain!

2008-02-05T23:04:00.000-08:00

He's 4 and a half (it's January 07) and he's like an optical illusion that changes with the angle of view. He's still just such a little boy and yet he's way way way past toddler. He's thin with little baby fat in his face. He's still small and so innocent and crazy scared of little things but he's determined to be tough and the urge to fight is strong in him.
The other night, playing with cars and tinker toys we built (following his instructions all the way) the... car wash of pain! It had features to spray the cars with cold water, beat them, smush them and chase after them to bring them back when they ran off.
He really has an intense and strong personality and he is far from a push over. He's like a cat you love. You say "You're such a good cat" but you are under no illusion that the cat is "good" (ie: thoughtful, kind or ethical) merely that he's his own perfect thing and he's cuddly. What a good Isaac! He tells me he's bigger and tougher and stronger than me. We rough-house and I toss him around and flip him and spin him, we wrestle and I let him win by dancing on my belly. The poet Robert Haas made mention once of "the poppa body" the Dad who gets climbed on, tread upon, smushed, piled on, etc. It's delightful to be and I will miss it when It's not my role anymore.
For some reason, either my influence or just inborn, he has a powerful drive to be funny. About half the time this works and about half the time it's anywhere from neutral to awful. The best funny stuff he does is out of a clear blue sky.
I brought him in from the car one day and went back to unload some more things. When I came back in he was holding my telephone up to his ear and talking, saying something like:
"This is Isaac, Is everything ready? OK, thanks, goodbye".
I said "what are you doing?" Isaac: "Making a phone call"Me: "Who are you calling?"Isaac: "The officials."
He's also got a lovely way of seeing connections and a gift for metaphor. We were putting up glowing stars in his bedroom. He put two stars side by side and he said "This is you and me." he put one a little off to the side and said "this is Mommy" and put two up above and said "this is Grandma and Grandpa" he put a few more stars up here and there with names for the people and pets they represented and stood back to look at it and said. "I'm making a star map of my people."
He also made up a good rhyme about the holidays, it came out so perfectly that I can't believe it's really an accidental rhyme.
Isaac Compares the Holidays:

"Halloween is better than Christmas
scary is better than sweet
and it's also better than Thanksgiving
because on Thanksgiving all you do is eat"

As long as he's been able to really follow stories I've been making them up for him and lately our story telling is team based which involves a certain amount of sacrifice of quality control on my part but some of his story ideas are great. Sometimes we cooperate on bedtime stories, both of us wandering forward through unknown territory nudging the other in the direction we want to go. The problem is that when you are a parent you tell the story like an airplane trip. That is, it gets itself organized, lifts off, has some excitement and comes in for a landing. When Isaac sees a shared story coming in for a landing he grabs the controls and sends it off on another trajectory. "Suddenly they saw a light under another door!" Until at last the Dad packs his parachute and bails out somewhere over Omaha.

To be worth anything

Isaac my golden son
still just a tumbling cub
you delight with laughter and charm
with beauty and grace
with songs and play

You will grow up tall and smart and
articulate
with a nice face
and bright blue eyes
and insights that surprise people
and comments that make them laugh
and a talent or two that might be great

But to be worth anything
you must fall to earth
and taste ashes
and unanswered longing
and break your heart

letting the sympathy
and compassion
and gratitude
grow out of the shattered pieces
till you can stand
in a field
of ragged grass
and share its humble joy
at the light and sky and the wind

and so my son,
who I love more than anyone,
I wish you sorrow

But please God,
only just enough
and no more

Cribsheet: **** vs. Miller

2008-02-05T22:58:00.000-08:00

Isaac's Mom wants to move back to Colorado to be near her family.

Her father doing well now but facing a scary prognosis and she wants to be near him and enjoy life with her family while life is good. I don't blame her in the least for that desire. However, I have now been served court papers in pursuit of this end and I am staring down the long barrel of deadlines and court dates and judges and most importantly, the possible loss of my son. So the end of the gentle times is here. We are two people fighting for our lives, as we see it. I feel a panic that wakes me at 3 or 4 in the morning and won't let me go back to sleep. A steady internal drip of adrenaline throughout the day gives me that feeling that my heart is exposed and an icy wind is blowing into it.

If I lose I am faced with either the loss of my son (which is not survivable) or the loss of my city and my home and my job and every friend I have (which feels pretty close to not survivable). Because I am a man with pretty much only friends for family now. My life may not be much by anyone else's standards but it's the only one I have and I feel I must defend it. If she loses, she loses the extended family connection and home she wants so badly and her heart breaks for the lost connection and contact.

I think we both feel that Isaac needs both parents, but I feel she should stay, and she feels I should go. For context, picture Isaac rocking from side to side alone among the other split family children in the special section in the back of the airplane, from here to Denver and back again and back again and back again and back again through ages 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and on and on. Lovely.
Somehow we are trying to conduct this misery without Isaac catching on to what is in the balance.
I wish we could salvage a win-win-win story from this and I think we are both longing for a good solution but dear God, where is it? What can it be?
I have heard that melodrama is good vs. evil and that tragedy is good vs good.
So long for a while.

Hugh
PS -Boy is running and climbing like a mad thing - and making up songs - and making up more words with definitions - and being ever so naughty - and getting taller - and sweeter and more beautiful all the time - sounding out words - he is undaunted by any parental disaproval - it is quite terrifying - though I sort of admire his guts - he is apt to laugh at us when we scold - yikes!

Cribsheet: Peas and thank you

2008-02-05T22:51:00.001-08:00

He is vacuuming up information about everything as always, continuing to follow all the threads talked about in earlier crib sheets. He is getting very interested in letters and numbers. He knows many & points them out with excitement. Words become sentences. The first sentence I heard was a few days ago, looking at a picture on the computer screen "That's a fish."He is more strong and agile and if he wants down and out of your arms it's a little more powerful as an argument than it was. But he seems a little tentative about some physical stuff like walking on rough uneven terrain or getting down off M's bed by himself. Neither of us knows what to make of it but we are just going to try to help him have more fun with rough-house play without making a thing out of it. He continues to be fascinated by bugs. Yesterday he found a little dead spider on a window sill and cheerily greeted it: "Hi Bug!" and pointed it out to me. I gently blew it away hoping he would think it just decided to leave. But he launched into calling out "Bug? Bug? Bug? Bug?" and after awhile sadly said:"Bye bye Bug."We were at a coffee shop the next day, me having coffee and him cheerios when he noticed an ant on the floor and got very excited. We had dropped a cheerio (or ten) and the ant was inspecting it. He saw this and picked more cheerios out of the bag and dropped them deliberately around the ant.

I give him something interesting to hold onto and look at when I'm changing a poopy diaper. I gave him a little shiny red "Hot Wheels" car and he was looking at it and said "Truck" so I said "Car" and he said "truck" so I leaned down at him and said "Car!" and he laughed and said "Truck!" and we went on and on getting more and more amused at our own silliness. When he says "No!" like a mad little toddler I find I can often change the tone just by being amused. Not mocking, just playful. Months ago we were watching an old movie with William Hurt on TV and Isaac looked at him and said "Daddy!" and I thought "Natural Mistake”. A week or two back I didn't shave for a week and wore my glasses and my black baseball cap a lot. We were in the video store with him in my arms when he pointed at a video and said "Daddy, Daddy" I thought "Which handsome movie star has he mistaken for me this time?" He was pointing at a picture of Michael Moore on the cover of "Bowling for Columbine". yOw.

He says "Please" but it's pronounced "Peas" "Pick me up" is "UP-Peas”. He helps to put away toys and books at bed time. It's amazing.

Cribsheet: 5,6 pick up tricks

2008-02-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

So Mama & Poppa are falling in love with baby all over again. We’re in the grip and we got it bad. Except for short excursions into raw and nasty toddler moods he’s just a tender, shining little person. We walk beside him trying to hold our guts in place.

Right now M is lying on the couch reading with Isaac completely zonked out across her, his head on her shoulder. It’s a strange communion when he sleeps on you, it’s like getting vitamins and warmth from sunshine after a long winter.

He is leaving certain baby words behind, Buttnee becomes button & Mimi becomes mouse and we are both impressed and suddenly wistful as another cute little stage waves goodbye in the rearview mirror dwindling out of sight. He’s undergone a growth spurt which makes him look more like a little boy and less like a baby though it’s hard to see what changed.

He is using full sentences at times now and picking up the alphabet and numbers with a particularly keen interest. When he wants to count things he points at them one by one while he says “five – six - five - six”. He loves to learn and it’s fascinating to get to be a teacher to him, watching him construct a universe piece by piece. He takes things in with such interest and attention to detail that I find I have to play the game better myself at times. He observes and talks about tiny details and I find myself looking hard at things he mentions and almost always finding his perceptions accurate. The other day he made a better word choice than I did. I took him out to Magnusson park to watch the kites flying at kite hill. As we were getting ready to go I saw an interesting kite with dozens of little dangly strips of cloth flying behind it and I pointed it out to him. I struggled for a word to describe it and I said “Look, octopus kite.” He looked and said “Jellyfish Kite!” and he was right, that was much closer to it.

The other day we took him out to a public playground in the park and suddenly came face to face with all the dark probing questions that arise from swings and slides and - those – other – kids. He has this odd, cautious quality I’ve mentioned before and to be fair he’s a little under the weather with another cold but at times he plays like a little Swedish philosopher. Swings leave him cold and slides are interesting but as worrisome as being asked to skydive. He walks over rough ground about as well as I roller skate which is to say uncertainly. We put him into this cool boat-like play structure where he carefully sifted and examined the tiny gray pebbles underfoot – moving them from hand to hand, throwing them over the side and dropping them through a little hole in the stern on the “ship”.
Another kid much bigger than Isaac came to play in the boat, spinning the tiller inches from his head. Cautioned by his Grandma to be careful he got mad at Isaac and when he thought nobody was looking he picked up a handful of pebbles and dirt and tossed them at his face. They missed, falling harmlessly but I yelled “Don’t do that!” and watched that kid like a hawk for the rest of our stay. I was thinking of that kid as a little monster when I remembered that Isaac has once or twice whapped a smaller baby at daycare.

I remember someone once said that children before they are socialized are 360 degree personalities radiating everything outward. Naturally and rightly we can’t stay that way. In a social world an adult radiating a 360 degree personality is a hour from prison or an insane asylum. It’s HOW that burning wick gets trimmed that concerns me. Isaac, keep as much of your fire and light and heat as you can while being a nice person, a trustworthy person.

M and I took a poetry class these last six weeks with a retired priest from her parish. The priest, Fr. Dick Basso, is an amazing guy. I went with M a few times when he was giving mass and the guy truly had the gift, he was doing exactly what he should have been doing with his life. I’m not a churchy guy but I really enjoyed mass with him. Also, when M and Isaac were laid up in the hospital in the days when Isaac weighed in the single digits, Fr. Bass came happily by to giving them the blessing for the sick. Anyway I guess he’s been teaching literature to high school students for years and perhaps he missed teaching perhaps he offered this class through the parish. We both mainly wanted to go because the guy was just so wonderful that we wanted to see more of him. We walked in after many, many months since he had seen either of us and he asked M not how her little boy was doing, but how Isaac was doing. See what I mean? This is a big parish and he was in demand everywhere but he remembered the few short meetings enough to inquire by name.

Anyway, that’s the news from Lake Woebegone.
Talk to you soon.

Cribsheet: Let's get Physical

2008-02-05T22:38:00.001-08:00

Boy is busy trying to catch up on the physical side.

Lately he's been getting a wind in his sails and wanting to move more like a normal kid. I know that sounds terrible, like I don't think he's a normal kid but the fact is, he's got his issues and they all go back to being a preemie. He is what the docs call "Low tone" or hypotonic which means his muscles are a little weak and it affects his coordination and motor skills. His balance isn't very good, and he's always been a strangely careful kid - feeling his way up and down stairs - carefully navigating bumps in the sidewalk I can hardly notice. His run has been an awkward fast walk and he doesn't like challenges to the status quo - he has never been a kid who liked riding on shoulders or getting tossed in the air, at least not much or for long. He has always (of course) been this way but I didn't think HE had much noticed it, he seemed so confident about who he was and what he wanted to do. He seemed like the poster child for sensitive-little-verbal-kids-who-just-aren't-that-into-it. But lately I have this feeling like he's thinking about and even worrying about it a little. We'll be doing something together and he'll say "I'm really strong" or "I'm going really fast!" We feed him images about being a big strong fast boy and believe me we are fairly stealthy about it - just trying drop in a lot of positive stuff about having fun using his body. But it's dawning on him that he isn't as easy in his body as kids who are even younger. He's starting to notice and it bothers him.

He'll say things like "I love riding my tricycle!" or "I like to go fast on my tricycle" but the fact is, I bought him this stupid little cheap tricycle a long time ago and he was really excited about it and hopped on it and went around the block pedaling (but with me pushing - killing myself bent over pushing this thing and remembering all the way that I didn't buy the one with the big pushing stick attached to the back) and that was about it. He's been out on it once or twice since then with really minor results and now almost always turns down any chance to get on it. When he does he just paddles along with his feet on the ground. So today with a whole day together, I was tossing about for something to do - and it's always too easy to let the kid just hang around the house playing which is what he says he wants to do because to tell you the truth, I kind of feel like hanging around the house playing too. But damn it it's a beautiful day and how many are left in this season? And for now it's my job to get him out and moving. So I get this idea - "Let's go back to Patty's house and grab your tricycle and we'll go to the park" and he was for it so we took off.

The park I had in mind is Magnussen, a former Naval base by Lake Washington with a couple of miles of flat walkways and tall poplar trees and abandoned sealed up military buildings and weeds up to your stomach. One of my favorites - I love scrubby old places with ruins, especially if they are down by the water. Now we get to the park and get his tricycle out and put his great silly helmet on and he sits on the trike & bursts into tears and says with this oddly confessional tone as if he was owning up to a crime: "I don't know how to ride my tricycle! I don't know how to go fast on my tricycle!"

He wasn't angry, he was sad. He was acting like he'd let everybody down.

"You can learn, sweetie" I said "nobody knows how to ride till they learn."

"But I can't learn!" He wailed with huge tears falling "I can't learn."

For a moment I sort of blanched because I was shocked that this playful little guy I know so well had such complicated and dark feelings about anything: "I can't learn?"

"You can learn" I brilliantly suggested.

"I can't" he sobbed.

So instantly and intuitively I decided that the best thing I could do would be to lie to my son.

So I picked him up and cuddled him and I said, "Can I tell you a secret? When I was your age I felt exactly the way you do - I didn't think I could learn to ride my tricycle and I felt terrible but my Mommy and Daddy worked with me and taught me and I learned to ride - it was a lot of work and I had to try really hard but I was so happy when I learned!" Maybe it wasn't a lie, I have no idea.

Grimly and still crying he accompanied me to a very gentle little hill nearby and I put him on the tricycle and put his feet on the pedals and told him to push and he went downhill suddenly laughing happily - "I DO know how to ride my tricycle!"

Until he got to the bottom where gravity forced him to a stop again and the tears started all over. And this is the kind of moment where you just want to say "The hell with it" and let the kid off the hook - You see two roads - One where you are dragging a miserable kid through some big lesson because it's "good for him" and another where you shrug off the implications of giving up and just tell him he doesn't have to do it. And they both sort of suck.

But you DO have to do something.

So I talked him into going back 4 more times - each time at the bottom he was mad and frustrated - each time he was rolling downhill he was pedaling and happy - The last time he hopped off the tricycle happily called out "I'm all done!" and started to run off down the walkway. I shouldered the diaper bag, camera and discarded helmet and and tricycle and set off after him. Watching his little figure prancing along under the blue sky thinking about how he was meeting up with a new kind of problem - a conflict with himself.

The rest of the afternoon was very nice. I caught up with him and we reached a scrubby little apple orchard at the moment that an apple thunked to the ground. He was delighted and we practiced throwing fallen apples and chasing them - then to my surprise he got back on the tricycle again and practiced some more - he was so beat when we were done that he conked out in the car and stayed asleep even as I carried him inside and laid him on the bed.

Cribsheet: Living and dying and carrying on.

2008-02-05T22:34:00.000-08:00

So I have a kid running round my ankles looking up to me asking me to tell him this is a nice world - tell me the spiders aren't scary that they are nice sometimes. Why do cats chase mice - why do dogs chase cats? Why don't you want me out of the street? There was a ghost in that video, what is a ghost? Why don't the big kids want to play with me?

My Dad is slowly dying. It's a degenerative disease and there isn't anything to be done except take good care of him and try to make him comfortable and lessen his fear and discomfort. They figure he has 6 months to a year. I know these estimates can be wrong but I also know he is eighty years old and not feeling well.

When I was small he was the big angry one. And yet I remember adoring him. My love for Dad was always a little scared. He was huge and powerful and seemed angry a lot but I think there was a period where I was his little guy and he loved me too. I remember him lying on the bed and me (as a tiny little guy) pounding on his back. Just wailing away like a crazy thing and him laughing like it was charming. I always got a feeling like he loved whatever was fierce in me. We played soccer, my Dad, my brother and I in Central Park in New York and I would fling myself after the ball like a madman because he laughed with such pleasure at my intensity.

Then I lost him to fear. He drifted off into the fear of financial failure - and the rest of my childhood he was the worried drinking man who never had any fun with us. I think I learned that the adult world was a very bad idea from my Dad. As a kid I remember looking up at the building he was working in in New York and shuddering thinking about what he was living out. I remember trying to stay out of his way. I remember concocting ten thousand ways to make him laugh because he so badly needed to. I remember his wit flashing like a sword and trying to stay close but just a little out of reach. My Mom seemed like such a reasonable presence my but Dad seemed like a force of nature that you could only warily try to predict. I told him later how he seemed when I was a kid and he said: "You've got to be kidding, I was a pussycat!" As time passed as an adult I came to see his inner pussycat - he really has a very tender and shy heart but it was masked by fear all those years - things hit him really hard and he gets shaken to his core by worry and worry makes him growl. In his cups when I was young he would tell me that when my brother and I were all grown up he would do himself in - as in "his work would be done and he could go". I realized with a start one day in my twenties that that message equaled "If you grow up I'll die."

I don't much blame him now. He was caught in a bad dream and he didn't know how to climb out - and much to his credit, a couple of years later he did. He turned his life entirely around. I love my Dad very much though always with the wistfulness that I wish I'd had more of him.

I struggle to make grown up decisions. I tried to play an eccentric game nobody else was playing so the rules and the outcome were up to me. I tried to dive between the cracks in the world and not get sucked into adulthood and it turns out there is a terrible price to pay for it. It was an attempt to slip past mortality and limitation and the entire point of life in this strange world seems to be informed by mortality and limitation. If there is a spirtitual equivalent for waste in this world I think it is the thing not used up: The spiritual virgin who will not be touched by life. We are fires and we are here to burn up with loving each other and exploring the mysterious world till there's nothing left of us.

I never understood love till Isaac came into my life.
In every relationship where someone was in love with me I wanted to hold their hand and comfort them till they got over it.

And I did.

And they did.

And as they resumed a cool headed understanding that I was not that important I would suddenly realize how much I didn't want them to get over it. I was suddenly quite desperate that they not get over it. I always knew too well what an ordinary person I was inside and how prone to disappoint. Anyone losing sleep over me looked like someone who needed cool compresses and aspirin. I think I knew when they were in love with me that it was a dream and dreams seem far too unstable to invest in. I don't know what I thought the alternative was: A cool headed love affair? A rational decision to love another person? I could never have done that but I think I was partly scared of the particular. What if this particular relationship isn't really it? How do you know? How can you ever really know?
It's not that loving a child is romantic but it is a state of being in love helplessly and truly and until I felt it I didn't understand that loving isn't at all about things making sense. It isn't even about truth - It's about giving it up and surrendering to being a human animal. And living out the mortal and imperfect life we have received with all the intensity we can give to it. If I could have learned it earlier I might have been a happier person. I might have let a grown up love me. As it is, I'm grateful simply to know it and have an opportunity to experience loving someone this much. From the first time Isaac's tiny finger wrapped around mine in the neonatal ward I have been wrapped around his finger. This tiny person knocked down the walls I couldn't touch simply because he was mine and I was his and I couldn't argue it or rationalize it. As a teenager he will wake up from it and realize what an ordinary person I am, he will realize with horror what a flawed ninny I can be and recoil from the knowledge that he's made of the same stuff. But it won't matter much because he'll likely discover another view of me later - I'll just have to live with the exile when it comes.

He's a cub right now and he must grow up and he will and someday he will look back and know as a grown up person that he was loved as much as a child can be loved. That he brought so much delight - that we exulted in the love of baby and parent that was is as automatic as gravity - and until he has kids of his own he won't have a clear idea what it meant to me. When my Mom was alive her love for me was like the sun shining on my life & I was so acclimated to it that I didn't realize till she was gone the little extra bit of warmth that had always been there - it clicked off like a light when she died and a cold wind I had never felt before began to blow. What Isaac gave me was the chance as a sort of grown up to feel that sunshine again by giving it to another.

To live in this world
You must be able
do three things:

To love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to
let it go,
to let go.

-Mary Oliver
from American Primitive

Cribsheet: 2 foot 2, eyes of blue

2008-02-05T22:27:00.000-08:00

The big negativity shows up at times now, mostly when he’s tired or hungry and manifests as a kind of furious contrariness. A desperate need for mutual exclusives.
“Up Up Up “ till he’s up…then ”Down! Down! Down!”

He’s still his sweet self a lot of the time. But at times he seems like the biggest victim of his own mood (I guess that’s true for all of us really). Toddler moods look like a nightmare where you lack the skills to comfort yourself and cool down from any little thing. He looks like he is infused with more power then he knows how to handle and just rattles with the stress of it. He’s in a growth spurt and gobbling up knowledge like mad and it demands a lot of him. At times he is provoking but we do our best to keep cool and steady. There are advantages to being somewhat geezerly.

The physical caution I talked about before is still there but he’s having more fun scampering around. We go out in the back yard and I blow bubbles and goes after them and pops them. He runs and dances and talks about it. “Running!” “Dancing!”

He sings “shake your booty’. Only that line thankfully. No, I can’t imagine where he learned that.

He is SO verbal! He surprises us with something he says almost everyday.
We were in the backyard yesterday and he pointed to a patch of moss and said:
“Grows…moss”
At daycare he started calling people by each others names then laughed and said: “Joke!”
Another day he turned a book upside down and pretended to read it, then he put it down and said “Isaac funny!”

I’ve had what I guess must be a sinus infection for the last two months – this is like being on day six of a cold for eight weeks. One of his phrases is “Daddy coughing”. Great. My Doctor said “The only people who get it worse than day care parents are teachers”.
Perfect.

Cribsheet: Tolerable Twos

2008-02-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry it’s been so long.

Well, two years ago most of us were running around a hospital in Seattle and trying to get some traction under the idea that M was seriously sick and a baby was immanent. Of course we didn’t know anything about how well most of the next steps would go so it was like awaiting a crash and not knowing how bad a blow to expect. Would the baby be all right? Would M be OK? Would her Dad hunt me remorselessly over the surface of the earth while wearing a long black trench coat? It certainly wasn’t obvious at that moment.

Two years later we have all dodged the bullet – all three of us alive and well. Although for some reason every time I see Isaac's maternal Grandpa he finds a moment alone to say in a Clint Eastwood whisper: “You feel lucky punk?”

Little Isaac stories from recent days:

The other night we looked at a book about babies with a baby on the cover. He pointed at the picture. He said: “Dat guy’s a baby!”

We were shopping in the grocery store and an older lady working behind a counter smiled at him very sweetly. He smiled back and called out “Hey pal!”

We saw the larval form of a lady bug and I explained to him it was a baby lady bug. He smiled broadly and said “Baby bug!”

Doodle bugs (also known as potato bugs and roly poly bugs and pill bugs) instantly became “Noodle bugs”.

I made a huge stupid mistake today. I gave him a snack of grapes and cheese and crackers and when he left a bunch of grapes on the table I started tossing them high into the air and catching them in my mouth. He became hysterical with laughter which only encouraged me. I kept going and in a minute he was throwing grapes up in the air and then at my mouth. I calmed him down and he said “Daddy is silly!”.
Too Right.

He seems more present and involved with every day. He hears lines in songs on the stereo and repeats them. He sings a little. He saw a candle on a table and sang (tunefully) “Happy birthday to youoo”.

There are a thousand lessons of the last two or three years and I can’t claim to have processed or understood even half of them, there are many ways in which I am aware of my ongoing failure to come through with all that I ought to be and all that I ought to do. That aside though I am aware that I spent most of my life before Isaac only flirting with change afraid of what any real change would mean. Real change only happens when something is sufficiently important or undeniable that it pulls you on and on down a different road than caution or convenience would advise. It’s a burden which is gift to carry. Not to be a sugar coated Pollyanna – it’s not always fun and parts of my life feel like they are wilting on the vine but I can’t imagine my life without him.

I talked to my Dad today and he was a bit confused and spoke calmly about death and release – he is almost 80 and he and my step mom have had an awful lot of health problems. It freaks me out but I guess it’s a little relief to hear his lack of fear. Oddly, one thing that is completely clear to me since Isaac’s birth is my own mortality. Sometimes I feel it sitting on my shoulder, not in any big hurry but utterly real. There is a classic story of a man asking a monk what is happiness? The monk relied:

Grandfather dies
Father dies
Son dies

And what is clear is that any variation from this is the kind of story that haunts a family. We are lucky to have dodged so many falling anvils and slippery stairs and in the time we are allotted we should love loudly and bravely and drink deep of all good things.

Blessings on you all – thanks for listening,
Hugh

Cribsheet: Power of limits

2008-02-05T17:48:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago my Mom died and something in my life broke. Some of you know all too well what it's like. Like driving with a flat tire or maybe with a strange metallic whine coming from the engine and a creeping sense that the outcome of the trip is in more doubt than you guessed. I think of her every day and the way I miss her rises and falls, now gentle, now fierce. It is a force of loss.
Isaac has come into my life as a corresponding force of connection. I am bound to this world as I have never been before. The force of a kind of river is at my back pushing me on through my stupidity and despair. My weakness is still very much in the game but it is not an "out". I know a kind of love I never knew. My life is too simple & boring, even lonely. But somehow it has a knitting together force that is new in my experience. Becoming a parent locks you in a world of little necessities and circumscribes your choices and freedom all the while deepening the quality of your relationship to life itself.
Weird.

Cribsheet: Scary Cows and Jolly Swedes

2008-02-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

Cows are not scary but they say "Boo" What does the cow say? Boo.
We played hide and seek yesterday and when he popped out from under the blanket he would say "Bo" I finally figured out this must be "Boo" learned at daycare as kids did halloween things. I like to picture him hearing this and thinking "Well that's just silly. They must be saying Bo."

He got another of those crazy hard plastic toys that look like a cartoon animal and go off like a car alarm playing the same damn six little kid songs if you bump them.
This one was disturbing to him. It's supposed to be a caterpillar with a long undulating green body but it also has little wobbly wheels and antennae on it's head and all down it's body in the form of bright balls on flexible springs. He looked at it and was fascinated and then obviously disturbed. The unmistakable look on his face was: "What the hell IS that?" For a couple of hours there was a degree of toy tension not seen since the "Big Red Ball of Death" episode. He pointed at it every couple of minutes and said "Dat?"
"It's supposed to be a caterpillar "
"Dat?"
"A caterpillar - a kind of bug"
"Dat?"
I found a picture of a green caterpillar and showed him and pointed at the toy.
"It's a caterpillar, a kind of bug."
a few minutes later he looked at it and in a relaxed way said "Bug." like you might say "Well alright then."

Things you never hear:

Jolly old Swede
Mellow as a German

Cribsheet: DAT?

2008-02-05T17:30:00.001-08:00

He's walking "hands free". His cautious temperament finally felt ready to let go and he just started strolling across the living room. Now he often walks in odd patterns that are unmistakably about fine tuning the controls. He walks in little circles and stoops to picks things up and keeps on cruising. It's a careful little waddle with his hands in the air but he's making a break for it.

He is obsessively gathering data about the universe. His most common phrase is "Dat" meaning "what is that?" And we go through every book naming names and qualifying definitions. "That's a baby bear" "That's called a dinosaur, it's like a lizard but very big" "That's a truck it's like a car but bigger". For a long time we lived in a one word world meaning what we heard was kitty (Ki), doggie, birdie, etc. The most exciting thing verbally is that he is starting to hook up little things that go together. We have a tourist guide to Florida with herons on the cover and he looked at it and called out "birdie" which is obviously nothing new but I walked us over to it and picked it up to look at it and he said "bird book". We count things on the pages of his books (one two three four) and when we ask him to count he goes like this: "One hoo dum hmmm buh" or "One One One One".

He points at zero and says "None." I can't figure out what this means, he's either parroting us talking about numbers or he is recapitulating the discovery of zero itself, one of the critical scientific revolutions leading to all the science and technology of our modern world. I think probably that's what it is.

The other night at dinner he was talking in gibberish paragraphs that were like listening to a slightly familiar foreign language being spoken.
"Ribula norgo blahbiddy bodly pa dinku mor atoffa Birdie. Norbhd a bindu ohsa bladdiby Mommy and Daddy."

To us this is pretty spectacular.

Things we call Isaac:

Cutie Pattootie
Sweetie Petitey
Tiny Whiny
Tiny McWhiny
Zoomy Kabboomy
Zoomy
Zoom
I
I-Boy
Little
& of course Boo Boo Head.

Cribsheet: I hate Timmy Tiptoes

2008-02-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Toddlers are passionate and frequently negative. The books say this is the beginning of them carving out their individual identity. It makes sense to me that you have to be able to say No or your Yes is always going to be weak. So there's a part of me that is fine with him uttering his offended little denials of this food or that book but it isn't altogether easy to say good bye to the easy kid who took what he was offered and enjoyed every book. He is still a sweet and really good kid but he feels more frustration and sadness and it's strange knowing how much more lies inevitably, ahead. As a parent I sometimes have the heartbreaking feeling of having gotten him into such a terrible mess and yet I know that the being game is the only game in town. If you don't exist you don't cry but you don't laugh or love either. When he wants a book read to him (450 times in an average day) he makes a noise like the music during the shower scene in "Psycho". How does one respond to this?

Isaac: "RE - RE - RE -RE!" (Spider cracks form in all glass objects.)
Daddy or Mommy: "Of course sweetie" or "For Gods sake, cut that out" or simply "AiYEEEEEE!"

He is still wild for birdies. He goes to bed calling out to them and wakes up asking after them. When he recognizes one in a drawing or photo he has to shout it out with the satisfaction of seeing something very important. Buses and trucks also hit this sweet spot as well as dogs and cats but without the edge of sheer intensity that birdies bring.
I took him to Green Lake yesterday and we walked into a wild wind. Whitecaps were leaping and leaves flying but strangely it wasn't very cold. I wanted to walk him to where the birds are but didn't find them at the usual spots we walked on and on around the lake and finally found a collection of ducks. They looked us over and watched expectantly. I threw them some cheerios and they came closer. Now lately when showing Isaac pictures of ducks we say:" Quack quack quack" as duckily as we can. His rendering of this is "Gaga": He calls them gaga birdies. Now meanwhile, seagulls and grebes and geese and crows had all gathered with that sixth sense for handouts. Isaac became incredibly excited, laughing and after telling every single one that it was in fact, a birdie, he began to yell at them in what I guess he figures is their language.
Ga Ga GAGAGAGAGAGA! GAGAGGA! GAGGAGA! Ga Ga GAGAGAGAGAGA! GAGAGGA! GAGGAGA! GAGAGAGAGAGA! GAGAGGA! GAGGAGA! For at my best guess, around a minute and a half. He looked like a tiny little Mussolini yelling at a crowd of fascist ducks. He got so worked up that I started to realize I had gotten us into something tricky to get out of. Here he was communing with his "people" at last and it was getting on to time to leave. As I pulled the stroller back from the lake and started to roll away he bust into tears and deep throated sobs. Good going Hugh. He is a baby though, and within a few hundred feet started to notice other birds and dogs such and grew quiet. But he's now old enough that he's getting his feet caught in the glue of wanting and needing and not wanting to let go. You're welcome kid.

Conversation in the car on the way home:
Isaac: Hewo.
Hugh: Hewo.
Isaac: Hewo.
Hugh: Hewo.
Isaac: Hewo.
Hugh: (oops) Hello.
Isaac: Hewo.
Hugh: Hello.
Isaac: Hello.
Hugh: Hello.
Isaac: Hello.
(Silence)
Isaac: Hewo.

Things I can't believe I said this week:

"Please, no. I hate Timmy Tiptoes"

"No, it's a boat not a dog. It looks like a dog, and it has a dog face but it's a boat."

Cribsheet: Do you like my party hat?

2008-02-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

Well it's been too long since a crib sheet went to press (or to "press
send" at any rate).
Most of you getting this already have a pretty good idea how our marathon trip went but if you don't...it went fine, thanks. We all got along well. Isaac was a trooper generally and it was fantastic to see the grand parental units in Florida and Colorado.

Isaac is grumbling his was through the arrival of molars but especially with a little ibuprofen on board still dazzles us with sweetness on a regular basis. He is very, very close to walking without help and I suppose we should savor this golden brief moment before we have to run our butts off for the next several years. What happens is that after acting very cautious about walking or standing alone he suddenly just seems to forget to hold onto anything at times. Just the absence of any support makes him look at those moments, more grown up.

He knows many many more words that he can say. He absorbs books like there was something in them that might explain everything and so we keep delving into the mysteries of books like "Go, Dog. Go!" and especially any picture and word books that touch upon his favorite subjects. He grabs a book out of the pile (they didn't start in a pile but they end up there every single day - life with a baby is like making those Tibetan sand paintings) and waves it at us insistently saying something
like "Yagadi!" Which apparently means "Your king commands you. Read!"

The Isaac Hot and Not list:
Hot: Buses, birdies, kitties, cars. planes, doggies, playing.
Not: Molars, vegetables, denial of any whim no matter how small, falling.

Love to all,
Hugh

BIRDIE!

2008-02-05T16:58:00.001-08:00

Well...I'm all at sea. I don't know where I left off but I know it was a while ago. Isaac is Six feet tall and taking pre-med at UW.OK not quite, he's fat and small and still a baby though a big strong smart one. As my earlier email to most of you this week mentioned, the word "birdie" is filling in for well, all the other words. It could be summed up by this phrase: "If you don't have something birdie to say, don't say anything at all." (Except bye bye and cat).He is still using his parental slaves to hold his hands while walking across open rooms but he is round pink lightning along walls, off couches and beds and after rolling toys and cats.Some of the cool stuff I could tell you doesn't fit well into anecdotes because it's about the little things he notices by listening and looking and the ways he tries to communicate. No example really rates a story to you (I have some self respect left) but he is more observant and involved and relating in deeper ways. When he was really an infant and he put his head down on my shoulder it was sweet but it meant he was going to sleep. When he does it now it means "you're my person" and it is to die for. He's very grumpy when he's grumpy and he's very sweet when he's sweet. We play "I'm Gonna Get You" and he laughs and squeals with a purity of joy that makes me feel less cynical about life, the universe and everything.Here's to you all

CribSheet: Tales of the Golden Monkey

2008-01-04T20:20:00.001-08:00

That's what he has turned into. A little shiny pink and golden monkey.
Life is a series of wild workout sessions involving getting up and walking (along things or with adult hands) and sitting down and crawling at speeds approaching 30 mph.
Isaac's list of things to do today (and everyday)

Mommy's papers must be rifled: They are strangely flat, smooth and complete.
Cat dishes must be checked for interesting surprises
Everything on the floor must be tasted
Attempts to reach the cat box must continue (What is so special that Mommy keeps it all for herself?)
Touching electric outlets makes parents run and scream. What else can they do? Possible flight or dancing?

He is very bright and sweet. He isn't that sweet while teething but who would be? Interesting vocalizing; he calls me (and other things) "Danya" adding this odd "ya" to various sounds. We think he may be Russian.
He impressed the heck out of us by learning something very interesting. He had a tendency to try to plunge head first over the side of anything he was on and wanted off of. This scared me and I would stop him and rotate him around and slide him down feet first till his feet caught under him and took his weight.
Yesterday he did this all by himself. We applauded and told him how smart he is and he applauded too and looked thrilled!

Projects: I am trying to teach him to howl like a wolf. My dream scenario is this: He is at day care and another parent who doesn't know him well comes to pick up their kid. Following some internal gut sense of timing Isaac tilts back his head and comes out with a long haunting blood chilling howl.

Yours for good mental health,
Hugh

CribSheet: Motor Skill Madness

2008-01-04T20:16:00.001-08:00

Boy is insane.
Thinking proccess seems to be "Must get up! Can't get up. WhAAA. Good. Big Monkey holding me up. Must walk! Can't walk! WhAAAA.What's that on floor? Yummmm...Styrofoam.To hell with stupid toys, where are the heavy sharp things?"
Incredible new skills crawling sqirming changing from sitting to lying down. He's pretty much break dancing all day. Pappa is frazzled, as baby charges randomly around Momma's house suddenly looks like The Zone of Death.
Sometimes he gets tired and pauses to look up as if to say "What in the world is happening to me?"

He waves. He says Hi. Mostly when we're just hanging around.

Love to all.
Hugh

Cribsheet: About a boy

2008-01-04T20:11:00.001-08:00

Isaac is a big healthy boy at 22 in. long and nearly 20 lb.. but my friend Amy has just brought a little fellow named Oliver into this world (Yesterday!) who arrived weighing 10 lbs and measuring...22 in. long!
Haven't seen them side by side yet and I'm not certain I'm ready to but I'm very happy to welcome Oliver to "Life, The Universe & Everything".
Isaac is still struggling to crawl even though he now often succeeds at moving forward with strange worming undulating motions or a maneuver I can only describe as a kind of "Last Scene of The Bruce Willis Movie Body Drag" where the elbows carry him painfully forward. The whole thing seems to strike him as disturbing and he looks at us like callous bystanders who would help if they had an ounce of humanity left.
He is doing a very annoying (though understandable) thing - he holds his arms up and open to me like "Daddy I need you" and when I pick him up leans his body where he'd like me to take him. It looks he needs Daddy comfort and then it turns out he's just hailing a cab. Babies are
diabolically clever manipulators.

He's more truly here all the time - and that's sort of the scary thing. We have to watch what we say and do more. The cat starts to destroy the couch and I yell with this big voice he hardly ever hears and I look down to see this tender little face big eyed, looking at me like I'm a little scary (picture Cindy Lou Who asking "Why are you taking our Christmas tree Santa Claus, Why?"). Yikes.

Love to all,
Hugh