The Still Point of the Turning World

Take a Kid Fishing

2010-08-26T14:32:00.005-04:00

I had to stretch my steps to avoid the cracks between the greying planks. At each inch or so of space between the decking, my eyes would follow the white foam gathering at the tops of waves that ran beneath us to the beach. When my grandfather, Poppy, found a spot along the pier railing, usually just behind the breakers, I continued on while he got everything set up. My circuit to the end of the pier and back was an intelligence gathering mission. I stopped at every sea-water-filled bucket and ice-packed cooler to examine the contents: usually croaker, whiting, or red drum awaiting an evening fish fry, and I asked the leather-tanned fishermen, between long pulls on their beers or long drags on their cigarettes, what bait they were using.

The top of the railing was bloody when I got back to Poppy and two lines were already in the water. The blood was from the bait, aptly called bloodworms. After a bit of pocketknife surgery, one of the foot-long parasites easily filled the four hooks of my grandfather’s two rigs. I reported what I had seen on my recon mission, and my grandfather chewed over the information, working it in his mind like he worked the plug of Redman in his cheek, trying to determine whether or not we should add some cut shrimp to our arsenal of parasites. Most fishermen preferred shrimp, not necessarily because they are more productive at the end of the line, but because bloodworms are poisonous and can deliver a pretty nasty bite, much like a bee sting.

Poppy was all business. Most of the fishermen leaned their rods on the railing and reclined, soaking in the sun or stealing a glimpse at the stream of bikinis coming and going on the pier. My grandfather remained taut and attentive, and so did his line, a length of which he always kept pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Poised to set the hook, he felt every nibble and, consequently, we filled our bucket while our pier mates mostly fed the fish. I held the second rod and tried to emulate him, hoping not to show my youthful impatience by jerking the rod back when all that had disturbed the line was the swell of a wave. When I got something on the line he helped me reel it in, but I always hoped he would get hooked up first so that I might get to pull one in all by myself while he was busy landing his own.

I was six or seven years old and clad in an orange T-shirt with a Bugs Bunny decal ironed on. For luck, I wore it every time we went fishing. I can remember an old Polaroid. I’m grinning, holding up a string of bream from our freshwater pursuits that reaches from head to toe. Bugs is taking a chunk out of a carrot. I just about lost a chunk of my face that day on the pier. Despite good fishing, I had grown antsy like all little kids do, so I set out down the planks to chart the progress of our pier mates. I looked up from a spot-tail swishing water in a bucket in time to see Poppy pulling in another one. By the time I returned, plastic flip flops snapping at my heels at every quickened step, my efficient grandfather had already bucketed the catch, rebaited the hook and, unaware of my position behind him, hoisted the rod over his shoulder. I was too close. I got a mouth full of bloodworm, a hook snagging in my lower lip as my grandfather turned the lead weight around at the onset of his cast. The sensation of extra weight on the line signaled for him to stop. It’s better to rip off a Band-Aid than work it off slowly, and I think I might’ve preferred that he had continued with the cast no matter how much of my lower lip went to sea. Instead I tried to stay still while he worked the barb loose with red-stained fingers, the bait’s blood mixing with my own.

I cried through the lecture until he suggested that maybe it was time to go.

“No, one more fish, Poppy. I promise not to get near the hooks.”

* * *

Now when I walk down that pier I have to shorten my stride, making choppy steps to stay on the planks while Silas stretches his legs to keep pace, his Crocs settling safely between the cracks, at least until he catches a glimpse of the first bucket. Then, pier rules and mother’s backs be damned, the boy takes off, running over the cracks until he finds a bucket brimming with a bountiful catch. Cutting tight circles in their holding tank--their final resting place--the fish arrest Silas’s normally scattered attention. He wants to touch them, but thankfully always politely asks the angler for permission first. Squatting, he strokes their silver sides. Eating the fish never occurs to the boy; to him they are part pet and part playmate. And he must have some of his own.

Before the discovery of fish our beach time was spent erecting sand structures that never got very tall before boy Godzilla un-erected them with a stomp (or ten). We played with trucks. We gathered shells. We rolled around in the sand fighting over a little Nerf football. We threw sand; okay, he threw sand, usually at me, but sometimes karmic wind gave him a taste of his own sandy medicine. When we got hot we waged war with waves in the shallow water until we cooled off. We played a game called chase Silas to the horizon and carry him back, kicking and screaming. This fun game featured the boy marching down the beach to each little tourist settlement--an umbrella, coolers, beach bags, and beach chairs or towels positioned based on their occupant’s taste for the sun--to beg food or toys off total strangers. Admittedly, I didn’t mind this game so much when he employed his considerable cuteness to get an audience with attractive ladies. But for every beach beauty there were two or three Earls, peering down at us over their beer guts, wondering why this long-haired toddler was rifling through their stuff.

Fish put an end to his wandering. We started small. Really small. I found an old butterfly net under the beach house and learned to catch mud minnows, who were tossed so far up the beach by incoming waves that sometimes they had to swim back on their sides, riding the tide as they sought the safety of deeper surf. Even in such shallow water they weren’t easy pickings, and for every 50 stabs with the net I might collect one darting fish. That one shiny minnow, no bigger than my thumb nail, would buy time until I caught the next one. I soon learned to double my odds, stalking the shoreline until I found a school of minnows and waiting for the push of an incoming wave to force an unsuspecting fish into the waiting net. If I found the net empty, I would pivot in the divot the wave dug out beneath my feet and try to pick one off on the second leg of its round trip.

Sometimes we dug a deep hole near the water and waited for a wave to fill it. Silas sat in his sandy aquarium, harassing our catch as they circled their confines, plotting an escape that wouldn’t come until a strong wave caved the walls of the watery fortress. The boy developed his own minnow transport system, plunging his Tonka dump trunk into the shallows, letting water rush into the bed before following me down the shore. The net went in. A fish came out. He held it for a moment, admiring the bright shine the sun extracted, released it into the truck bed, then beep beeped the truck backwards to his makeshift aquarium. He dumped the entire contents into his pool and the cycle began anew: fill truck, find dad, wait for fish.

“It’s time for lunch.” “It’s time for more sunscreen.” “It’s time for dinner.” “It’s time for bed...” Anything I said or did that threatened to break the cycle was met with the same response: “One more fish, Dadda.”

Eventually we moved on to bigger and better fishing technology, a casting net that allowed me to ensnare finger mullet. Now I was bringing in several fish at a time and the boy’s aquarium looked like a display at the live bait shop, except there was a boy in the middle of the tank with a butterfly net scooping out the bait. He would trace a fingernail, softened by the surf, over the silver scales and pet the fish with pruny fingers until I coaxed him, finally, to return it to the water before it wasn’t live bait anymore.

***

Our strip of sand cut a path between the blue-green ocean and the brown, muddy waters of a crab and oyster-laden inlet. The sun was just starting to color low-hanging clouds over the inlet, its westward sinking signaling the dinner bell, when a father and two sons rose, backlight at the top of the dunes, poles in hand. Down they came, stepping quickly despite the encumberance of gear, racing the sun for supper. At the shoreline they shoveled sand away from the water and picked off unearthed mole crabs (or sand fleas, depending on how southern you are) on their dash back to the sea. The little armored crabs found new homes on hooks and, with the help of four-ounce lead weights, took a flight beyond the breakers. It didn’t take long for a rod to bend.

When Silas picked up on the excitement I knew it was going to be a late dinner for us. By the time the catch was flopping on the beach, he had splashed out of the mullet farm and rushed to the scene. Seized by a convulsion of pure glee, he stretched his arms straight down at his sides, fists balled, thin muscles taut, and bounced up and down, gradually rotating to face me as I caught up.

“It’s a shark, Dadda!” he squealed. “It’s a shark!”

The fishing family’s patriarch removed the offending species from the hook quickly and gave it a disgruntled heave back to whence it came. A foot-long sand shark is nobody’s idea of dinner. But that’s all they got--little sharks--one right after another, while Silas looked on with an unyielding sense of awe. Down the beach I dug a trench and herded the boy’s now forgotten pet mullet collection back to sea as the blue of the horizon faded to deeper and deeper shades. Soon there would be no horizon. The fishing family disappeared over the dunes at dark, and I finally got a hold of my prize catch, who asked, “Can you catch me a shark, Dadda? Please?” as we headed for the break in the sea oats that led to dinner and a long overdue rest. “Tomorrow,” I said.

It was a short night. As soon as dawn crept in through the blinds the boy wrestled free from our cuddle and jerked the covers off the bed, which is his not so subtle way of motivating me to get moving. I buried my face in a pillow, determined to return to slumber, but it was unburied by the whiplash from each boy bounce. Jumping up and down on the bed, he repeated two words: “You promised,” until I pulled on some clothes and we were off to the bait and tackle. I had dreamed of this milestone day--no minnows, no mullet, but a proper day fishing--since his conception, but after waiting years for the moment I could’ve happily pushed it back until the afternoon, or at least until eight a.m.

The bait shop was like our mullet farm on steroids. Bubbling tanks contained all manner of tempting treats for trophy fish, including our friends the finger mullet and mud minnow, as well as other small fish, fiddler crabs, and live shrimp. Silas stared while I shopped. I picked up an eight-foot pole for surf casting, a couple of rigs with specially shaped weights for keeping the bait anchored despite the steady onslaught of the surf, a bait knife and bait bucket, pliers (just in case something scary came back on a hook) and, with apologies to my grandfather, frozen shrimp rather than bloodworms.

Back at the beach house, I forced a bowl of cereal down Mr. Excited’s gullet and chased him around the porch until he was thoroughly lathered in zinc oxide, then I pack muled our haul from the bait and tackle shop to the beach. I worked a shrimp free from the frozen chunk, released some orange goo when I pinched its head off, shelled it, and cut it in two equal parts, one for each hook. I waded out and listened to the satisfying sound of monofilament leaving the spool after I launched the line over the breakers. I kept the reel open as I made my way to the shore so I didn’t pull the bait in with me. When I hit dry sand I snapped the reel closed and cranked it tight. I eyed the section of PVC pipe I had brought down as a rod holder, but then I thought of Poppy on the pier, forever watching the ocean, line pinched to feel every nibble. I would only use the PVC for baiting hooks. A rod belongs in your hands, so I rested the butt of it on my hip, took a length of line and felt it cut into my finger. I watched and waited, trying to resist the urge to jerk the rod tip back every time a wave pulled the line a little further into my flesh.

It wasn’t long before I felt the unmistakable back and forth signal of a bite and set the hook hard, pausing for a second to feel the satisfying vibrations of the darting prisoner before turning the crank. Fish on! Silas abandoned the dump truck and pastel plastic beach buckets and appeared at my side, sharing my excitement over solving the mystery at the end of the line. The mystery was partly solved before I cranked the fish to shore. It rose, clearing the water with a leap, tail surfing the green sea in a desperate attempt to spit the hook. Glimmering silver scales, and the fact that it jumped at all, meant that what we had was definitely not a shark. It turned out to be something more dangerous, a juvenile blue fish that maybe went a pound. After I worked the hook free I showed Silas the blue’s impressive rows of razor-sharp teeth, and we both agreed that it would be better for him not to handle this aggressive predator. I met a weathered fisherman once with a stub of a thumb: the culprit, a big blue. Big or small, they make for great sport fish but not very good eating, so I waded out to my knees and set our first specimen free.

Blue fish “run,” meaning that they migrate in a large school that seems to morph into a veracious pack of feeders all at once. Find one and there are likely many more where it came from, so I worked quickly to rebait and return the rig to about the same spot. Silas was in my pocket as soon as I returned to dry land. He also anticipated a quick hook up. A minute is an eternity in the life of a child, and after 15 minutes of all quiet at the end of my rod I had resigned myself to the prospect that the run was over. And the boy had trailed off, back to his toys. I hoped that he was really ready for this, that he could stave off his demands for attention long enough to let me hook him what he really wanted. I felt a desperate pressure to catch something, so I started jerking the rod tip back and pulling in baited hooks at every tug from a wave. Or I’d reel in the rig to find that I had given a crab or pinfish a free meal. Silas reappeared every time I started turning the crank, and, head down, turned back to his toys when the rig bounced up empty.

I tried to channel my grandfather, the man who used a .22 to pick off squirrels and rabbits that dared infiltrate his garden, and ate them. The man who came home with a deer strapped to the hood of his Buick after a successful hunting trip. The man whose quiet patience always yielded a stringer of fish. I resolved to quit freaking out over every tug of the sea. I’d plant myself, gentle, foamy waves lapping at my ankles, line in hand, until I felt the sure tug of a fish. And, finally, I did. This is no fish story; the rod did not double over and I never had any energy sucking battles. But, as the sun moved behind me and scoured my neck a bright red, the bites came. Maybe the smell of the bait had finally gotten around. One little shark, two little sharks, three little sharks...we never waited more than five minutes before I was taking back line.

The little scavengers were exhausted by the tug of war and fell limp in my hand as I worked out the hook. They had jaws full of teeth, but they were too small to do any damage. I even ran my finger over the teeth and let one gnaw on me a bit to make sure it was safe for Silas to handle. He took them with outstretched hands and no fear, though curious beachcombers were a bit more weary when he ran up to them and shoved the captives into their personal space. To save the sharks, and the old ladies with their grocery bags full of shells from heart attacks, I urged him to take them back to water so they could grow up. “We’ll catch them again some day when they’re bigger,” I promised.

We did catch one decent-sized shark, a scalloped hammerhead of about three feet with a nasty disposition. Silas chose to let me put this one back. When I turned him loose in waist-high water he turned to face me rather than dart back to sea, circling menacingly a few times before I plowed through the water to the safety of shore. I walked down the beach a bit before wading in for the next cast.

By the time darkness arrived to put an end to our day we had landed 18 sharks along with an assorted oddity of sea dwellers, including a sea robin, puffer fish and, believe it or not, a starfish who had sucked a bit of shrimp into its hole. The starfish rode the line all the way in despite not having been pierced by the hook. We managed to snare a few careless bait-stealing pinfish and some red drum, both good eats, but I wasn’t confident that we would get enough to make a meal so I threw them back. And, unlike my grandfather, I didin’t have a wife waiting to tackle the always pleasant job of cleaning them.

After we reached double digit sharks I told the boy we were done for the day. “It’s getting late; it’s time for dinner. Maybe if we hurry we can play with trains before it gets too late.” But he wasn’t satisfied, so I kept pulling them in until it was too dark to be fumbling with hooks.

“One more shark, Dadda,” was his new refrain.

We were back at the bait shop first thing in the morning for more shrimp.

Adjunk

2010-08-19T12:27:00.002-04:00

I was hunched over in the backyard, left hand gripping my knee and right hand, index and middle fingers extended, pushing as deep into my throat as possible. I had tried to disappear quietly, easing the sliding glass doors open and finding a site in the yard where none of the house windows would reveal my position to our dinner guests. I hope it comes loose quickly so I am not missed. I hope they don't notice my flushed face when I return, the beads of sweat on my forehead.

I don't have an eating disorder, but I might as well. Eat. Choke. Force myself to gag. Repeat. Seized in my throat by unpredictable spasms, solid food refuses to go down; it has to come back the way it came in. Steak and chicken have been removed from the menu. Even a well-masticated Triscuit feels like swallowing a chainsaw.

When the fear of getting something hung made it impossible for me to enjoy entertaining guests or eating out for fear that I would have to excuse myself to get the suspended morsel unhung, I phoned my family doctor. After filling my mind with visions of cancerous cells clogging my esophagus, he sent me to a GI. The GI, who I met about two seconds before succumbing to anaesthesia, determined from my symptoms that an esophagogastroduodenoscopy was in order. Not surprisingly, they call the procedure an EGD for short. They put you out for the EGD, which involves snaking a tiny camera down your throat, stomach and the upper reaches of your intestines. I would not want to be awake for that. The last thing I remember was the lens of the camera swimming for the pried open cave of my mouth like a lone fish eye.

Before the procedure a nurse showed me to my gown and then threw the curtain closed on her way out to give me some privacy. I undressed, clumsily fiddled with the ties until I was more or less covered, and waited for the nurse to return to rub up a vein for the IV. She didn't come back for awhile, so I went in search of something to read, finding the latest copy of the local home showcase magazine beckoning from a rack on the wall.

The chancellor's house from the area university was featured. I've got two degrees from that university and I've been teaching there part time for five years, but this was my first glimpse inside the behemoth mansion, a 9,000 square foot structure with two kitchens; the whole thing cost two million dollars to build. The dining room seats 66, but apparently there's no room for adjunct instructors at the fund raising dinners. And that makes sense. How much could a person making $15,000 a year afford to give?

I flipped the page. The main kitchen has more sinks in it than my entire house. Glimmering stainless steel appliances, adorned with the prestigious Viking label, broke the expanse of granite countertops. I am sure the appliances alone cost generous alumni donors more than my salary sets back the taxpayers. The fridge was bigger than a dorm room. The island seemed more like a continent.

Owing to economic recession, the chancellor's university had a hiring freeze for the 2009-10 academic year. The following year the budget was sliced by six percent, and the university passed the buck to students through a $500 tuition hike. My salary, which is less than half of what's considered a "living wage" for where I live, has remained stagnant for the last two years, and is up only a few hundred dollars from what it was when I started. Perhaps, given the current economic climate, the opulent spread of the chancellor's mansion was poorly timed and in poor taste. Like a lot of things lately, I had trouble swallowing it.

Down the hill from the chancellor's house, working quarters aren't quite so luxurious. I am housed in my department's adjunct office. The office was once a classroom, but due to its position above the aging hall's boiler room, it was deemed unfit for teaching purposes. In winter, when the archaic heating system strains to heat the building, the room constantly shakes like a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. In the room's next life it housed the graduate assistants, but their vociferous complaints led to their exodus into a cushy room across the hall that has--shudder--window air conditioning units. My office space enjoys no such amenities, yet, despite the shakes in winter and the oppressive heat in August and September, there is always a crowd. It's not really my office at all, but rather a communal earthquake grounds shared by 14 of my coworkers. The 14 of us inhabit 14 desks, strewn about the crowded space, taking on various shapes and sizes, no two alike. We share four computers, hand-me-downs from the grad students across the hall. There are two printers. One that doesn't work and one that sometimes works.

The adjunct office is not exactly a welcoming environment for student consultations, as you're constantly reassuring them that the trembling structure isn't going to collapse on top of them. "I promise you're not nervous," I joke. "It's just the room that's shaking." But, as I leaf through the home magazine and see the chancellor's master bathroom, with its separate room for the toilet, so spacious that I could park my beat up truck in it, and its dressing room that dwarfs my son's bedroom, it became more apparent than ever that the conditions--both physical and financial--that I work in are no laughing matter.

Half of my department is staffed by non-tenure track faculty, most of whom are part-time employees despite their wish for full-time work, and none of whom have had the right to vote in committee and department meetings. It's the apartheid of higher education, and, not surprisingly, the caste system creates a lot of animosity between the haves and have nots. We want a living wage, we want health benefits, and we want the right to vote on department matters. The tenured faculty fight to stifle our upward mobility, clinging to the power bestowed upon them by their PhDs like politicians trailing in the polls.

And their numbers are down. According to the New York Times, only 27 percent of college classes are taught by tenured professors, down from 75 percent 50 years ago. When a tenured professor retires, universities, ever conscious of their bottom lines, can replace the outgoing professor with three part-time instructors, give the part-timers the maximum number of classes that they can teach without qualifying for benefits, and save a boatload of money. We're quick to admonish Walmart for such behavior, but the public universities entrusted in developing the workforce that will be the lifeblood of our country's future get a free pass.

By every measure--student evaluations, peer reviews, and the end of year reports from my supervisors--I am an excellent teacher, as are the majority of non-tenure track and part-time instructors I've huddled under the door frame with in the earthquake room. A PhD and the comfort of tenure does not necessarily make for a better teacher, especially for those professors who view teaching as an annoyance that gets in the way of their research responsibilities. Most adjuncts are highly motivated teachers, and we can focus all of our efforts on teaching, as most of us are not expected to contribute research as part of our jobs. We work semester to semester with no job security. We're certainly not in it for the money, so it follows that we not only have a passion for shepherding our students to the essential knowledge they need in their academic and professional careers, but also that we must perform our jobs well in order to keep those eleventh-hour emails offering us one more class, one more paycheck, from disappearing from our inboxes.

But, even though most part-time instructors do their jobs well, the system hurts students. Because they are so poorly compensated, adjuncts do not have one job. Many, like me, pick up a class or two at the closest community college (in fact the local community college has syphoned many of its full-time faculty from the pool of adjuncts at my university). We teach for online schools like the University of Phoenix. No matter how competent and motivated the instructor is, she or he cannot possibly serve the individual needs of their students as well while teaching seven classes as they can while teaching three. And the overload of caffeinated late-night grading and planning sessions can lead to burnout for even the most dedicated teacher. Whether it's due to burnout, frustration with the lack of a voice within their institutions, or being forced to find another career path for financial reasons, adjuncts are a transient lot, and the heavy reliance on them creates instability in the foundation of our higher education system. If the bottom line was providing the best education--to truly best serve the public that supports them--then public universities would take care of their best teachers. But the bottom line is not providing the best education. The bottom line is the bottom line, so adjuncts will go on being exploited, reheating the leftover beans and rice while, up the hill, a chef prepares gourmet fare for the chancellor's well-heeled guests.

But I couldn't swallow that steak dinner anyway. To the bemusement of the nurse, I babbled nonsensical dream words as she welcomed me, begrudgingly, back from the twilight sleep. At first she, too, seemed to be speaking in a foreign, syrupy tongue, but I finally made out the message: "You're waking up. The doctor will be in to see you soon." As the cloud of anaesthesia burned away, I thought about my son. I didn't have any health insurance before he was born, but the responsibility of taking care of him brought with it the responsibility of taking better care of myself. So I shell out $400 a month out of pocket, and if not for that I wouldn't be here with my ass hanging out the back of my gown. An EGD can cost as much as $2,000 without insurance, and that's not in the adjunct's budget. Today my bill will be $30. And, thankfully, that $30 bought some piece of mind. The doctor's camera didn't find anything out of the ordinary in my esophagus. No cancer. He explained to me that stress and acid reflux are likely the culprit for my esophageal spasms. The throat uses contractions to move food to the stomach, but the spasms make these contractions irregular, uncoordinated and overly powerful. Instead of being moved to its next stop on the GI train, the food gets stuck.

I was ready to get unstuck. There's a note on the door of my department chair's chambers explaining that he is in, but the door is closed to keep the cool air from escaping. He has an air conditioning unit too. The cold front that greeted me when I entered was refreshing. I had spent the last hour sorting through the last five years of my life, dumping most of the desk clutter into a recycling bin I had dragged from the hallway to my sweltering communal office. The chair's secretary announced my presence and I strained a "Hello" over the droning of the AC. I felt out of place in my plaid shorts and polo shirt, products of the clearance rack at Old Navy, when the chair rose to greet me, resplendent in a dark, tailored suit.

"Is this easy or complicated?" he asked. I had no appointment and he was expecting someone.

"It's complicated, but it won't take long, " I promised.

I told him that I would not be returning for another semester without a raise and benefits. He mumbled something about budget restraints, wanting to help me, but not being able to wave a magic wand.

I spent nine years as a student at that university, getting a degree in journalism, a license to teach high school English, and finally an MA in English Education. I spent five years teaching there. But I walked out the door without mixed emotions, without even a tinge of melancholy. No regrets. I don't need this stress.

Maybe Walmart is hiring.

"This Is My Rifle; This Is My Gun. This Is for Fighting; This Is for Fun."

2010-07-25T00:01:00.003-04:00

After years of steady "No's," I finally caved to the boy's constant pressuring for his first toy gun. It's not a Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock, so at least he won't shoot his eye out. His new piece, an overpriced, malfunctioning, cap smoking pistol from Tweetsie, is dubbed the "Doc Holiday." I keep trying to get him to say, "I'm your huckleberry," but he has other ideas for this extension of his manhood. The boy strapped the holster on, shoved his piece in it, and slung it around to rest between his legs before engaging in a series of pelvic thrusts.

"Daddy, this is probably unappropriate," he said, smiling proudly. (And, for the record, I do realized the correct word is "inappropriate.")

"I'm pretending my gun is my willie!"

R. Lee Ermey would've had his ass. I just laughed my ass off.

"Dad...You Wanna Have a Catch?"

2010-07-14T01:02:00.004-04:00

I don’t even have to watch the whole movie. I can aimlessly scroll through the channels and if I happen to hit Ray Kinsella asking John—Dad—if he wants to have a catch, then a saline solution quietly seeps from the corners of my eyes. That scene kills me.

Here’s why: I had the best father a young man could ever imagine having. The older we got, the stronger our relationship became; he was my best friend, someone I talked to every day, about everything. But, when I was a boy, we both missed out on a lot of those moments Ray and John shared at the end of “Field of Dreams.” My father was never absent, like John in the fictional film; he provided for his family, and satisfied my every want and need save for one. Games of catch were few and far between, and I am sure this fact was as hard (perhaps much harder) for him as it was for me. My father, then an All-American athlete on a football scholarship at Carolina, contracted polio when he was 18 years old. Despite a death sentence from his doctors, he won the war against polio, but his body forever bore the battle scars. My dad was a month shy of his 40th birthday when I was born, and by the time I was serious about baseball he was walking with a cane. Two metal braces, strapped to his thin thighs, snapped in to his specially-made shoes to steady him. His right shoulder, frayed from years of helping do the work his atrophied leg muscles refused to do, ached from the Nerf football tosses my mother shunned in the house. And we weren’t more than ten feet apart.

So it was a rare treat, for me at least, when, balky shoulder and broken body be damned, he gave into my constant requests for a game of catch. The routine was always the same. I snatched my well-worn Rawlings mitt and my best baseball, no matter that we would be playing catch in the driveway and it may get scuffed—this was a special occasion. Richie Zisk was not exactly a household name, but he was in my house, as his cursive signature was branded into the palm of my glove. I dragged the aluminum folding lawn chair from the carport, where my dad’s blue whale of an Oldsmobile 98 was taking a break from guzzling gas, its rear bumper jutting out into the driveway. I unfolded the chair and set it in place, buttressed against the pole of the adjustable basketball goal my dad would always promptly replace when my friends and I got big enough to dunk it.

He soon ambled out, feeling his way to the chair with his cane. Dad’s plaid, short-sleeve cotton shirt clashed with the orange and green woven nylon as he unlatched his braces, allowing the knees to bend, and collapsed into the chair, a little winded from a diaphragm weakened from polio and a paunch that extended a little further over his beltline each year. He was in his late forties, but when he sat his pants climbed to the heights of a much older man, revealing the blue wool dress socks he wore to work every day. The metal of his braces caught the sun and shone like the chrome from the Olds.

I don’t even remember if he wore a glove, but, owing to his leather-helmet era toughness, I seem to remember him shunning the protection of a mitt, snatching my pre-adolescent fastballs with his bare hands. Fortunately for him, I never had much of an arm, but thanks to my immovable target and the pressure of not wanting to screw this rare game up by short-hopping him in the shins, I developed pretty good command. Tired-armed coaches from little league through high school would later call upon me to throw batting practice, which was both a blessing and a curse. I was valued for my ability to consistently throw strikes, giving my teammates ample opportunity to take their hacks, but my rubber right wing would never be seen as anything more than a batting practice arm. Oh how I longed to pitch in a game.

Most of my childhood pitching dreams—protecting a one-run lead in game seven of the world series, bases loaded, two outs, a 3-2 count on the batter in the bottom of the ninth—were played out alone in the driveway, a tennis ball in my hand instead of cowhide. I gave a running play-by-play to my audience of bushes: “With two strikes on the batter, Schmidt inches back a step at third. Sandberg has a foot in the outfield grass at second. Sanders is set; he delivers…” It would’ve been nice to get strike three just once, but the brick wall of our house that served as my backstop predictably bounced a one-hopper back to me, and I tried not to bobble it before recording the last out and getting mobbed by imaginary teammates. Looking back, even if those dreams had come to fruition, they could never measure up to the satisfying smack of leather into the leather of my father’s strong hands. He would give me an enthusiastic “strrrrrrikkke threeee!” before a flick of the wrist lobbed the ball back to me. I never wanted to let him go. Damn the darkness. Damn the dinner bell.

* * *

So now, with no cornfield to plow, I wait, not for the prompt of voices, but for the next generation of father-son catches. The overzealous purchase of a mitt, bought for the occasion of Silas’s first birthday, has languished for years, gradually settling to the bottom of a bin along with the detritus of plastic baby toys. I reserve hope that one day the boy will take an interest in it, and he’ll ask me if I’d like to have a catch. I may have to explain to him that sometimes people cry because they are so happy.

Dog Will Hunt

2010-07-08T03:44:00.002-04:00

I passed the remnants of an old apple orchard to the left. The occasional green apple, for whatever reason fallen too soon, crunched under rubber as my tires tried to keep traction on the road that was little more than a rocky runoff from a spring up the hill. Those rocks brought me here; I meant to harvest flat stone to use in one of the dozen or so overdue landscaping projects that may, if ever completed, fulfill my existence. But yard projects just churn on, like this uneven road, grinding and grinding.

I wasn’t alone on this uphill battle. Lina, who bears a close resemblance to her pariah dingo ancestors, and Dude, a golden retriever, trotted amiably along with their designated pack leader, a green, well-worn Honda Ridgeline. Dude takes the riskier path, tight by the truck cab’s driver door unless the narrow width of the sunken road forces him to higher ground. Lina stays a few inches off the back-left quarter panel, just at the rear bumper. I try to keep one eye trained on them, tongues wagging in the July heat, and one eye on the road. When the road allows me to speed up, they speed up; they slow when I slow. Too bad they tug like draft horses when they’re at the end of a leash.

I reached the end of the uphill climb where the road doglegs right over the creek, just past a bent and rusted “for sale” sign, and stopped right there in the middle of the track. Rush hour on this rocky trail is a hunter on a four wheeler passing by maybe once a month, once in a blue moon, so there’s no need to pull to the side, not that there’s much of a side anyway on a path so narrow that weeds clutching the road bank scrape the truck on both sides. A few days earlier Silas caught his first salamander here after it darted from a flat stone I pulled from the creek bank. It was a good spot not just for its easy access to the creek’s rocks, but also because the creek created a diversion for the boy while daddy did his work. But there would be no need for such a diversion today; the boy was at the bottom of the hill playing with a friend whose family rented one of the two still-habitable farm houses among the many old homesteads that dot the expansive property. I planned on steady work.

By the time the parking brake wrenched me in place, Lina and Dude had ambled into the pines that had taken over most of this forgotten landscape and carpeted it with a thick layer of brown needles. Though they quickly disappeared in the woods, I knew they would both reassume their pack position as soon as the engine fired again and they heard the call of rocks grinding under rubber.

Lina hunts and herds. Many a startled chipmunk or rabbit has sent her through the thicket in an impassioned but usually fruitless chase. She’s slow to give up, but eventually heeds my call to rejoin the pack and stands patiently while I pull the thorns. She delights in her power to send cattle on a stampede, or circle them in a tight knot, or at least she does until some angry farmer and his lead puts an end to it. I marvel at her herding instinct, and wonder where in her lineage she picked up the trait, but I don’t want to lose my best friend so I try not to encourage it.

When Lina herds she runs with a low, swift gait, gliding fearlessly but dangerously at the hind quarters of any cows that don’t start running before she gets close. I’ve never seen a rebel buck more than once before falling in line. On the hunt she is a different animal altogether, her wide, pointed ears perked instead of put back, her tail a backwards “C” over her haunches instead of held low. The coat at her withers scrunches forward and stands erect, changing her entire profile, and she bounds off four pogo sticks at her target like a bouncing wrecking ball off its chain. The herd is graceful; the hunt is pure power, or at least as much power as a 40-pound pup can muster.

It was the wrecking ball that broke the steady drone of flat stone thumping the hard plastic bedliner. Lina sawed through thin pine limbs, bounded behind me and across the road before disappearing downstream. I didn’t get a glimpse of what she was after. Dude trailed. I got a look at his expression and it seemed he was running more out of curiosity than sport.

I went for more rocks. This time my work was interrupted by a shrill and distant distress signal. I think now that my mind didn’t know what to make of the sound, so it made it into a familiar sound, a boy crying out. Had Silas followed me up the path and gotten hurt along the way? Did he get trampled by the stampede of dogs?

The cry definitely sounded human, but each time I called out for Silas the intermittent scream went silent. If it was Silas, or anything human that was hurt, and it had the lungs to muster a wail at regular intervals, then surely it would answer my shouts. My call should have elicited a response, not silence.

It was definitely animal. What did Lina sound like when she was hurt? I’ve seen her try to catch bumblebees in her mouth, all the while getting stung by the nest she disturbed, without ever so much as a flinch. Once I heard a little whelp when she twisted a paw wrestling with Dude. But what if she was really hurt? What if she was caught in some hunter’s trap? Would it sound like this?

I called for her. Again the distress signal faded away at the sound of my voice, only to pick up again after a moment of silence.

I kept calling as I worked, maybe another minute or two, filling the bed until the black of the bedliner floor had almost been rubbed out by rock. The cry was calling me, but the pull of uninterrupted work is strong when you have a boy out of school for the summer. After my initial panic, the voice of reason kept telling me it was nothing. Keep working.

Then Dude came back. Alone. Lassie he ain’t, but when I asked him, “Where’s Lina?” he turned back into the pines and I followed. It was hard to match his pace while performing the difficult eyesight balancing act of looking down for snakes and poison ivy while looking ahead to steal the first glimpse of what was making that foreign, forlorn noise. I tried to stay amongst the pines; closer to the creek progress was slowed by stream-fed weeds that have marched unchecked for decades.

The cries faded out as we drew closer. Dude dropped down the creek bank and Lina popped up downstream, just far enough away not to startle me but close enough to see she was fine. But it wasn’t Lina that Dude was taking me to. It wasn’t a kid. It wasn’t a dog. It was a deer, old enough to have outgrown its dappled days, but still elegant and fragile as the neck of a swan.

Bambi’s big sister was on her side, legs outstretched and motionless in the water. Her neck curled upward, allowing her tiny mouth to stretch out for air just at the stream’s edge. She breathed steadily. It wasn’t labored. Her black eyes showed a trace of fear; otherwise, I might’ve convinced myself she was reclining in the stream to shake the heat of this humid afternoon.

Dude went to her first, licking her ears and neck with what seemed like affection. Then he stretched out beside her and drank, between pants, from what I hoped wouldn’t be her watery grave. Lina stayed on the bank, as ordered, as I approached. When I got close, all four legs twitched as if to gallop, but she didn’t get up, she didn’t get away.

I made for the truck, less careful this time, briars gripping and ripping my ankles as I ran up the hill. I had left my phone sitting on the dash. Her lifeline. But the wildlife commission simply told me to let nature take its course. And when I got back to the creek bed, it had.

With one hand I brought her back hoofs together and lifted her from the stream to keep the imminent decay from contaminating it. Blood stained her white underside as a pair of fresh wounds, unplugged when I lifted her off the sandy creek edge, flowed anew.

I’ll never know what exactly happened. Was the deer injured in the chase? Had it already been hurt, and the dogs stumbled upon it after their earlier chase concluded? Was the deer in the clutches of a bobcat or panther, and Lina and Dude chased the cat off, causing it to abandon its prey? Not likely. The evidence suggests that Lina caught it and killed it, likely breaking its neck or severing its spine once she got her teeth dug in. I think I feel near equal parts pride and sorrow that I sleep with a killer.

* * *

On the ride home Silas asked me what that noise was.

“What do you mean, ‘that noise’?” I asked, playing dumb. I am sure I will never forget "that noise," and I am not surprised that he heard it too.

“That screaming noise from in the woods.”

My first instinct was to tell him that it was probably just an animal who got lost from its mommy, and that its mommy would be back soon to save it. But that seemed like a rotten thing to tell a kid whose mom left him when he was twenty months old, so I told him the truth.

You've Got to Crab Before You Can Walk

2010-07-07T01:30:00.003-04:00

I'm not one to hold on to things. Mind you, there are likely multiple science experiments underway in the refrigerator at this very moment. Some people have poor hygiene; I have a poor housekeeping gene (though I suppose one could argue that the two are related). I have no sentimental attachment to the jug of greenish, curdled milk tucked behind the cavity-causing Juicy Juice in the back corner of the fridge. The leftover mystery meat, on a greasy plate covered with ill-fitting plastic wrap and an impressive layer of bubbling white mold, is not something I feel like I just can't part with. When I do hold on to things too long it's likely due to that defective gene, not to mention a severe case of being time-management challenged, but it does not owe to a sense of nostalgia. My collection of keepsakes could fit in a frozen pizza box (which reminds me that I need to throw away some leftover frozen pizza as soon as I can find the time).

The fridge, at least, is off limits--"That's an adult door!"--but I have a little helper in the collection of considerable clutter in all other corners of our humble abode. The boy must have over a thousand toys strewn in various outposts around the house, some draped in dust and cobwebs. If I ask him if we can get rid of some of his stuff he never plays with anymore, his answer is predictable. Not only does he refuse to yield his stash, he even wants to hold on to each and every spent battery that's popped out of his DC-powered toys. Occasionally I'll sneak something out to the trash if it's beyond repair, or find a place to donate it if the toy might yet pique the interest of another child. He hasn't busted me tiptoeing out to the trash or noticed anything missing yet. I imagine that if I dared look hard enough under his bed, the place where he bulldozes all of his belongings on the rare occasion when he "cleans" his room, it would be like a free trip to the toy store thanks to all the things we would rediscover. Things that, despite not having been played with in months, he would never consider giving away.

I do have a 2T Hines Ward replica jersey to honor the one for the thumb*, but other than that I haven't kept any of his clothes, not even the cute little flannel footed PJs. If I ever did dare a recon mission under the bed and found an old pair of jeans lurking there from the days when clothes were measured in months rather than years, I would hand them down without a second thought. I can guarantee two things about those hypothetical pants. First, they would have an adjustable waistband. The straps, pulled to the tightest setting, would dangle all the way down inside the legs. Noah might've been a better name for the boy. If you put him in pants that actually fit his waist it appears as if he is preparing for a flood. His pants are always cinched up like a Hefty sack, but, as I look down to see how my waistline has expanded in my middling years, I suppose that's not such a bad problem to have.

Nowadays the knees in his pants survive for two weeks, tops. He is fond of building up a bit of steam and sliding across hardwood floors on his knees, and the boy spends the bulk of his day scuttling back and forth on his leg joints overseeing various construction projects (Legos, wooden blocks, train tracks--if you can build it, he will come). But the second thing I can guarantee about that hypothetical pair of 6-9 month jeans from years ago is that the knees will be good as new. When the boy was a baby, he didn't crawl on his knees at all, but rather his hands and feet, thus sparing pant knee fabric from wear and tear. I've heard it called bear crawling and pushup crawling, but to me Silas's style most resembled a ghost crab, the kind beachcombers illuminate with flash lights on midnight strolls. Rather than lumbering to his den like a bear, Silas hurried and scurried about with great speed, like the next toy he was after was the safety of a sandy burrow.

You see those commercials on TV with the parents, trendy new recording device in hand, catching baby's first steps with looks of unimaginable glee on their faces. I had that look. But what they don't show you in those commercials is the aftermath. Junior's increased mobility leads to louder sounding thuds, as junior now falls faster and from further up than he did when crawling. Junior's new perspective also leads to a whole new round of baby-proofing, but the worst side-effect of this walking experiment is that junior is...gone. A few days ago you could set the little booger on the carpet, go hunt the remote or maybe hold your nose while you pull your favorite beverage from the fridge, come back, and there's junior, right on the carpet where you left him. Take your eye off the little booger now and you're putting out an APB. It's like a daddy bird returning to the nest with a nice mouthful of regurgitated worms only to find that the chicks have flown the coop. They don't develop this walking skill to not use it, so just when you think you're past the worst of it--the sleepless nights and all the times your shirt was used as a barf bullseye--baby steps run you ragged.

Silas, perhaps owing to his crab crawl technique, achieved the joyous milestone of walking at an early age. (It was nine months and four days, but who's counting?) He was already on his feet, and it didn't take long for him to start pulling himself upright on couches and coffee tables. All that's left is to let go. During his first "Look dad, no hands" moments, he wobbled like a tightrope walker, arms outstretched for balance. He would take a step or two on those baby bowlegs, then cling fast to the nearest support as he mustered courage for another attempt. He had taken a step or two in this fashion hundreds of times, but it wasn't until he took six full steps, away from the wall he had been using as a crutch, that I considered it his first walk. I was on the phone almost before his rump, cushioned by a mound of ill-fastened cloth diapers (I wrap babies about like I wrap presents--poorly), hit the hardwood floor.

"Silas is walking!" I exclaimed to my dad as the boy sat with a bemused look, legs stretched out in a V. "Six steps without holding on to anything."

The boy pulled himself up and went back to work on walking. I was his destination, so I crept backwards, trying to encourage him to beat his personal best. Eight steps. Thump. Ten steps. Thump. The next day we were off to show the grandparents, and four days later he was running. RUNNING.

And I am forever playing catchup to my little ghost crab.

* For the sports challenged, "one for the thumb" refers to the Pittsburgh Steelers' fifth Super Bowl victory (and the championship ring that comes with it).

Snakes Alive (part deux)

2010-06-07T01:27:00.005-04:00

(Before reading, scroll down and read "Snakes Alive," the prequel to this entry.)

I put the boy down on the cool patio of river stones and dragged the cooler over the log, hair still erect on the back of my reddening neck from our encounter with the snake. We tiptoed silently up the bank to the fork in the river, the place where our pebbled beach was widest, and I tucked the cooler under the shade of some scrubby brush to keep it out of the sun. While I gathered smooth, round stones for skipping, the boy pried the biggest rocks he could muster out of the sand and gave them a sudden, satisfying bath along the river's edge, delightedly giggling each time the displaced water from a shot-putted rock soothed the heat off his skin. It was a hot afternoon. Meanwhile, I picked out a target. It's not enough to just skip the stones; I hoped to hit a distant rock rising from the river's surface. Silas wasn't impressed, even when a perfect stone, launched with my best Kent Tekulve submarine motion, skipped too many times to count. He had seen a thousand stones skipped and a thousand concentric circles radiating from where the stones left their mark on the water.

Kent Tekulve demonstrating the proper form to skip a rock.

"Dadda, can we catch crawdads now?" he asked, substituting the "y" with an "a" to compliment the persuasiveness of his tone.

"Not yet, I've got to hit that rock."

He knew I meant it. He grunted, and, though he was already thoroughly soaked despite not setting foot in the water, he went back to unceremoniously returning large rocks to the river to pass the time until a skipping stone found its target. It's easy to skip a stone, but no two are precisely alike in weight or shape, so aim is another matter entirely. But after gathering another round of ammunition, I finally grazed the target.

"Got it!"

"Oh daddy," he grumbled, shaking his head. It was the toddler equivalent of a teenager saying, "It's about time, old man."

He went for the gear, a bucket and a Cars minnow net with Lightning McQueen smiling from the plastic handle. If I had one tenth of the merchandising sales from that movie we would have butlers bringing us our crawdads while we lounged in a Biltmore House-sized estate. A Cars minnow net? They left no stone unturned. And neither would we. Wordlessly, the boy handed me the net and then plunged the bucket down to catch the river, finally getting his frog wellies in the water. Here, in shallow water and out of the reach of the strongest current, the riverbed stones collected a fine moss that attracted tiny snails. We tried to take care with our footing, both to remain balanced on the slippery stones and to mind the mollusks. The boy brought the bucket back to the bank before rejoining me in the shallows. All there was left to do was slip a slimy rock out of place and see what darted out. More often than not on this stretch of the river, each displaced rock meant a displaced crawdad. Sometimes, eluding the net, a homeless crawdad would find shelter under an adjacent rock only to realize that there was no vacancy. They are territorial little boogers, so the smaller of the two would hit the open river, or the net if I was quick enough. Soon, we had a bucket half full of unhappy boogers climbing on top of each other in hopes of breeching the rim of a bucket shadowed by the watchful posture of a boy.

When Silas started pegging the would-be escape artists with pebbles I told him it was probably time to let them go. Forever in his passively defiant state, the boy had a suitable compromise. He informed me that we would construct what he called a "quarium" to house them, making the crawdads free from the confines of the bucket, but not entirely free. The rock walls went up at the edge of river, and before long we had what looked like a miniature campsite fire pit ready to call the crawdads home. He took the net and fished them out of the bucket, shaking the net ever so not gently until they found their way into the pit. Each one, like a newborn sea turtle, instinctively made for the water, only to find their path obstructed by our hastily constructed pit. The smallest amongst them would wedge their way out eventually, but the boy was waiting between the quarium and the water, and after recapturing the jail breaker he would examine the pit and patch its weak points with a few more stones. Fortunately for the captive crawdads, the one thing the boy likes better than building things is destroying them, and after I promised lunch after their release, Silas went Godzilla on the quarium and our pinchy playmates scurried back to the safety of their rocky river home.

Our shadows had shifted to the east, so lunch was long overdue. We rinsed our hands in the river water, though the boy quickly used his grimy shirt as a towel, recasting his tiny fingers in grit. Watching a boy eat a PB & J with filthy hands, smearing a mixture of the sandwich's filling across his face and sleeve in the process, is the sort of thing that might make you recoil in germaphobic horror before you're a parent, but somehow it doesn't bother you when it's your kid, especially if he trained you for this moment with volcanic outbursts of spit up all through his first year. He made his way through the meal as I looked on, toothlessly grinning. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing your kid eat. He offered back a smile full of teeth; a bit of purple oozed through the gaps. But at least he didn't show me an open mouth full of food. Progress.

After the boy shotgunned a sippy full of Juicy Juice we burned off the sugar buzz with a wade through the water, his hand, pink from the chill of the river, seeking the warmth of my own hand whenever the water got deep enough to flood his wellies. Deep, rushing water is one of the few things that triggers his fear mechanism. That and snakes, but by now the snake that greeted us was a distant memory. Shivering in his drenched swimsuit and t-shirt, the boy made his way to shore, ready for the hike back to the truck once I pried off his wet things. The jelly stains in his fresh set of clothes were faded from the wash.

When we got home I pulled out the laptop and googled snakes of North Carolina. According to the Davidson College snake identification website, "The northern watersnake is often mistaken for the cottonmouth because of its dark coloration and habitat preferences." It wasn't even a poisonous snake after all.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

2010-04-18T23:55:00.003-04:00

Me: Ella, would you like a breast or a thigh?

Ella: Whaddoyoumean?

Me: Would you like white meat or dark meat?

Ella: White meat.

Me: Silas, would you like white meat or dark meat?

Silas: Dark meat.

Ella (keen sense of justice piqued): I want dark meat, too!

Me: Ooh, once you go dark, you never go back.

I return to the kitchen; carve.

I hear footsteps.

Silas: Daddy, I want white meat, because I want to be able to come back.

In life, and in chicken, it's good to keep your options open.

"Snakes Alive!"

2010-02-28T01:04:00.006-05:00

His kelly green frog Wellies hopped across the bridge before I had even gathered our things, a bucket and scoop net to catch crawdads and a cooler containing a picnic lunch; the boy knew the way well. "Wait for daddy," I shouted ahead. Grasshoppers scattered in his wake as the boy, impervious as ever to my commands, hurried onward. I wanted to walk in first where the trail to our favorite spot on the river narrowed before finally disappearing in a tangle of weeds. If someone was going to surprise a snake, better it be me. "Silas, wait for daddy," I repeated, louder this time. But his purposeful pace continued unabated, and I felt my shirt already grabbing me where the shoulder strap held the cooler to my back. It jostled back and forth like the sun-drenched blond tendrils that kept pulling further and further ahead.

The bridge behind us spanned a thin finger of the river. We were headed a half mile upstream. The river forked there, carving parallel waterways around a thin green island before its tines united just downstream from the bridge. The river island was our playground.

The boy paused at the edge of the weeds that stood between him and the rushing water and grinned back at me. Before he could disappear like Shoeless Joe into an Iowa cornfield, I played the snake card: "Watch out for snakes!" He pulled a Wellie out of the weeds and waited. As I covered the ground between us, I pondered the ethics of telling him that there may well be a nest of snakes under his bed, poised to strike if he gets up before 8 a.m. on a weekend morning. Snakes, apparently, garner more respect than dad.

"You can go first, daddy," he said reluctantly, and I cautiously tiptoed into the growth, more concerned about leaving leaves of three be than bothering cold-blooded reptiles. I pinned back the briars, careful to find a smooth length of stem, and ushered the boy through, then nimbly took my place back in the front of the line. I am the protector. This process repeated itself until we came to our last hurdle, an uprooted tree trunk that a once-flooded river had left like a privacy fence for the pebbled beach behind it. I wedged the cooler into a section of roots, put my hands on the trunk and sprung over like I was leaping a chain-link fence. I was in midair and at the mercy of gravity when I saw it. A cottonmouth had been kind enough not to make a liar out me.

Arms outstretched, Silas said, "Pick me," which is short for "I would like to be lifted over the log now." "Pick me, pick me," he repeated impatiently, but daddy moved only enough to outstretch a palm in his direction and issue a "shush" that was likely inaudible over the river. The words "no service" scrolled across my mind--my cellphone was useless out here--and I had visions of stripping away fabric from my t-shirt and tying them tight to stymie the circulation of my tainted blood. I imagined myself contorted into some Cirque du Soleil position to suck the poison out of my own bite. I thought about the snake I nearly stepped on as a child; I was straddling it, looking for the next dry rock to leap to in the creek bed, when my friend's eye managed to separate its camouflage pattern from the rock it was sunning itself on, the rock I was standing on. Having your friend point to the area between your legs and yell, "Dude, snake!" is awkward in any context, and it was certainly enough to paralyze me for a moment. But the snake remained coiled, never moving to strike. My calf muscles tightened. My toes dug in. Finally, I jumped free. We stoned it to death from the safety of the bank.

So here I am paralyzed again, though this time the snake, thankfully, is not between my legs, but a couple of feet away. All but its tail end undulates in the shallowest of water. The last two or three inches of its tail, wrapped around a water-logged branch on the bottom, is a delicate anchor against the current. The snake faces upstream, waiting on the river to serve its next meal. I wish this snake no harm, and hope it feels the same towards me. Its head is rigid despite the rippling of its body; its right eye seems trained on me.

And Silas is wondering what's wrong. "Daddy?" he whispers. "There really is a snake," I whisper back out of the side of my mouth, my palm still outstretched but my head turned away from him, monitoring the river serpent. My peripheal vision reveals a boy trembling from head to toe like he just moved from warm water to cold air. His eyes spread like the whites of an egg dropped in a frying pan. There is more excitement than fear. "Can I see?" he whispers. "Yes, but you've got to try to be still and quiet. Come here." My palm curls around; the two fingers left extended beckon him. He trundles to the trunk, and I slowly rotate my torso until I can get my hands around his. I stood him on the trunk, where he supported himself with an arm around my shoulder. We watched.

For several minutes the only sounds came from the running water and the rippling of tiny waves on the smooth stones beneath my feet. The water's shimmering movement, matched by the subtle swaying of the snake's dark bands, was all that stirred. Finally, with a twist of its tail, the snake pulled anchor, turned downstream, and let the river rush him away from this intrusion.

An Uncommon Man

2010-02-25T01:18:00.001-05:00

First off I would like to thank Karen for her inspirational words; her and her family have meant so much to my father and my family. All of you gathered here today are so special to us. I feel like it’s a family reunion because Sam was such a father figure to so many, and I genuinely appreciate you taking time out of your busy lives to join us. Thank you in advance for indulging in my words and please forgive me if my message is interrupted a time or two along the way by this bottomless well of tears I’ve tapped into so often since Sunday night.

Those tears almost kept me from ascending this stage. I have a confession. When my mom delivered the hardest news I’ve ever received Sunday night, I crumpled to my kitchen floor and sobbed and sobbed as dinner burned and burned. Tater tots were baked into bits of charcoal. The sizzling mass on the stove top became forged forever to the supposedly nonstick surface of the skillet. But it’s not my culinary failures that I want to confess.

I have imagined this moment, being here in front of you, for the past five or six years. My father’s passing did catch me totally off guard, and I remain somewhat stunned by his earthly mortality. But, somewhere in the back of my consciousness, whispers of this day’s inevitability have been growing louder for years. And, when this day came, I was determined to speak, to somehow try to pull off this impossible task. It’s pretty daunting to try to be as good, even if it’s just for ten minutes, as my father was for nearly 74 years. But I feel like that’s what I’ve got to do: deliver a Sam Sanders-sized legend of a eulogy in order to do him justice.

So, my confession is that just minutes after I learned of his death, I was already chickening out. I was terrified by my tears. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we are all united today, brought together by our own tributaries of tears into one common pool of people with one purpose, and that purpose is to celebrate the life of a very uncommon man. There really is nothing uncommon about my grief. I know many of you have experienced the same range of emotions I have these past few days: I’ve been immobilized by the sort of spastic crying jags that I thought only existed in the movies. I’ve performed mindless, mundane tasks in a fog of disbelief and denial. I’ve been angry at my father for forcing me to suddenly grow up after all these years of spoiling me. And I’ve even had the audacity to questions God’s plan, His timing. But enough whoa is me. There is just one thing that makes my grief noteworthy, exceptional, uncommon, and that is that I am grieving–WE ARE ALL GRIEVING–an uncommon man.

My father honed the toughness that would characterize his entire life in backyard rumbles with brothers Tom and Adam at mom and pop’s house on 1025. He further developed his toughness on the football field. He would’ve run through walls for his revered coach at R. J. Reynolds, John Tandy. And he would’ve done it without all the pads, molded hard plastic helmets, and safety gear they wear nowadays. All he had was a leather helmet, and I remember him telling me how he hated to have to wear that. His gridiron exploits earned him much fanfare. He was all-city, all-state, All-American, and he received a full scholarship to continue his athletic and academic pursuits at the University of North Carolina. He participated in the Shrine Bowl and was inducted into the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Sports Hall of Fame. That would be a pretty uncommon resume if I stopped there.

He was also an uncommon patriot. Throughout his life he took his right to vote very seriously and always exercised it, and he was very active in the campaigns of the candidates he supported. After football, he had planned on joining the Air Force to protect his nation’s freedoms as a fighter pilot. But polio set a new course for his life.

A majority of those afflicted by the polio epidemics of the late 40s and early 50s would fully recover, but the odds of surviving the rarer and more severe type of polio my father contracted were dire, and if it weren’t for the iron lung that he later jokingly blamed for his claustrophobia, someone else would’ve spoken at this service more than 50 years ago. My brother said it best when we spoke Sunday night: he, my sister and I could’ve very well never been born, and every day my father enjoyed after polio was a lucky day. But it was more than good medical care or luck, it was his toughness and his uncommon will to survive that preserved him. And I am so thankful for my father’s uncommon will to live whenever I think of my blessed life and all the years I have to look forward to with my spirited son.

I can best sum up my father’s attitude to this notion of being handicapped with an anecdote about a piece of legislation that was passed some years ago. We were watching the evening news when a story ran about a bill that would force businesses and public buildings to adopt a slew of handicapped-accessible standards. “This is great, dad,” I said. “This will make it so much easier for you to get around.” He told me he thought the bill was “Horse-” Wait a minute, we are in church. He said the bill was rather silly. My father believed that you don’t lower society’s standards to placate the lowest denominator, and that, no matter what obstacle is placed before you, you rise to meet it, to overcome it, rather than sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself. He could have used his polio-ravaged body as an excuse to syphon checks off the public trust, but my father had uncommon pride.

And though his body betrayed him, his mind never did, and that’s where he turned to make his way in this world. Growing up I never wanted for anything, and I never felt neglected by my father’s attention to his business affairs, but I also understood that his job was 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Athletes often talk about work ethic. They know that if they’re not lifting weights, running the extra lap, or shooting the extra 100 free throws after practice, someone else is. Someone is getting better, getting ahead, while they’re slacking off. My father’s mind, whether at home or at the office, never slacked off. And the dedication he had shown as an athlete, the uncommon worth ethic, translated into uncommon success in the realm of business.

And his business was a labor of love; it was the family business. It took uncommon courage for him to leave a steady paycheck at Integon, to take this huge risk with a wife and three mouths at home to feed, and join with his brothers to try to revive their parents’ struggling company. Lentz was more than revived; it thrived, and not only did it feed my wordy mouth and the mouths of my siblings, but his hard work, inspired by his uncommon dedication to provide for his family, feeds my son and will some day put him through college.

But as well all know, my father provided for more than just his kin. In 2007 alone, he gave to over 20 charities, churches, and academic institutions. His steadfast support of the American Cancer Society and the V Foundation might help save the life of someone you love. He has supported charities for the elderly, charities for wounded soldiers returning from overseas, and charities for the impoverished. His work with the Winston-Salem Foundation will send a deserving R. J. Reynolds student to college. He even donated the funds necessary to break ground for the new playground at my son’s school. But it’s not just the breadth of his generosity that is uncommon, it’s also the spirit that guided his giving. I know when I give gifts it’s tainted by extrinsic motivation; it makes me feel good. But I truly believe my father’s motivation was always purely intrinsic; he gave to make a difference and to make others happy. He never wondered what was in it for him.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the support my mother gave my father through the years. He never wanted to have to be waited on, and that stubbornness I’m sure at times made him unpleasant to serve, but even simple tasks like getting a tumbler of water or refilling his empty wine glass became increasingly painstaking as his mobility declined, and my mother was always there to serve him. But that’s understating it; she stood behind him. And I ask that as we honor him we also remain cognizant of the difficult time she has ahead of her; let’s remember to stand behind her.

Words have always come easily to me, some of you who are eager for me to shut up so we can go eat might think they come too easily and too often, but words fail me when I try to capture what an uncommon father Sam Sanders has been not only to me, but to all of us. Growing up I felt this tremendous pressure to follow in my father’s considerable footsteps. It seemed logical to me that I should take all that he had done one step further. But I’ve long ago come to grips with the fact that I’ll never be an All-American; I’ll never persevere and triumph over what, for a lesser man than my father, would’ve been insurmountable obstacles; I love my job as a humble school teacher but I know it will never pave the way to riches; and I know that I’ll never give so much and touch as many lives as he did; but, as a father, I will strive every day to live up to the example he set for me. And that’s the most uncommon praise I can offer this uncommon man.

Unfortunately, I was born too late to truly appreciate how great a man my father’s father was. I have a couple of grainy images of my grandfather in my mind’s eye, and I seem to remember that even as a toddler I understood that he commanded respect. When he spoke, I listened, even if I am unable to recall now just what he said. Since the birth of my own son I have had one recurring prayer request: I pleaded with God to let my father hold on for long enough so that my son could form a lasting bond with him. When he is my age, I want Silas to remember his grandfather. And these last few days I’ve really struggled to come to grips with why God didn’t grant my prayer request. And the words my mother spoke through a cracking voice on the phone, “He’s gone,” echo endlessly through my mind. But I know that my father loathed the prospect of losing his independence, of deteriorating to the point where he was completely beholden to others to function day to day. And I know he never wanted to lose the sharp clarity of his mind. So I am going to have to trust God’s judgment on this one. I don’t think my father would’ve wanted his grandchildren to know him as weak or confused. And yes, literally he is gone. That’s a reality I am sure I will never fully come to grips with. But yet he’s not gone so long as we keep him alive with our stories. So whenever your paths cross with Silas, or my brother’s beautiful daughter, Stephanie, I ask you to keep their grandfather alive with your stories, so they can know, like we know, what an uncommon man their grandfather is.

I teach writing. I know from listening to my students that introductions and conclusions are the hardest part. It wasn’t hard for me to get started talking about my father, but I honestly have no idea how to get to the end. I want to mention Karen Rollins again because she was so instrumental in my father’s walk of faith over his last few years. I know my dad was always a believer, but I witnessed such a change in him, a softening of his heart that I attribute largely to the spiritual search Karen shepherded him through. I was always very close to my father, but in his later years our relationship grew tremendously. The best example of this I can offer is that, rather than a rare treat doled out at a safe, manly distance, the words “I love you” became a ritualized ending to every visit home or telephone call I shared with my father. So I’ll leave you with this, proof that as stubborn as I am I did listen to my father and I learned from him. You will never regret the times you tell those close to you that you love them, but you may regret it if you don’t. I love you, dad. And I love all of you, too.

Boo(b)!

2009-10-19T22:16:00.004-04:00

It's October in the High Country, and that can mean only one thing: it's time to take the boy to the Ghost Train. Then, for about a month after the ride, it will be time to reassure him that werewolves don't really exist as he climbs into my bed at 4 a.m. night after night after night.

I was privy to quite the kid conversation about the Ghost Train today on the playground. Silas was running around all willy nilly, as he's wont to do, when another boy approached me, kickball in hand. Fade to flashback. I was rewriting history in my mind--no longer was I the last kid picked, the sucker who shinned easy pop ups for easy outs on high bouncing pitches I should've let pass, but instead I was booting the orb so far from the dusty home plate that it became a salmon-red pingpong ball disappearing over the distant horizon--when the kickball thumped off my chest, startling me to attention.

Kickball kid just grinned at me. He must have an older brother, or a real hard time dressing himself. The collar of his shirt was so stretched out, I could see most of his chest. After the kickball surprise, I kind of wanted to sling him down by the shirt too. The gaping neckhole revealed a chest adorned with a fading temporary tattoo.

"You get that ink in the joint?" I asked, retrieving the ball.

"Huh?"

I tossed him the ball. He caught it, tossed it back.

"Where did you get that tattoo?"

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"You must have a tattoo gun at home," I said.

This intrigued him.

"Naw. Does you'ins have one?"

(For those of you who ain't from around here, "you'ins" is mountain for "ya'll.")

"No, no tattoo gun, but my son has gotten tattoos at Tweetsie before."

The ball continued its path, back and forth. Most kids flinch when the ball gets near, taking their eyes off of it. This clearly wasn't his first game of catch.

"You catch with your eyes," I said, "not your hands. You've got to see it to catch it."

"I know it," he said, as if this was the most ridiculously simple thing anyone had ever told him.

The ball passed between us a few more times before he broke the silence: "I gone to Tweetsie once when I was a little bitty baby."

A girl kid drove her tricycle between us, slamming on her foot brakes and interrupting our game. She was drawn to the word Tweetsie like a bumblebee to nectar.

"I went to Tweetsie last weekend and rode the Ghost Train!" she buzzed.

"Were you scared?" I asked.

"I wasn't scared til the creatures came on and then I hid in my mommy's boobs!"

"OOOH, GROSS!" said kickball kid. He probably had a very different opinion a few years earlier, and I'm guessing that once he gets his coodies shot his love for mammaries will fester anew.

"They're not gross," girl kid insisted. "My mommy's boobs smell nice!"

I had at least 27 responses flutter through my head; fortunately, all 27 were successfully snared by my filter. Nice smelling boobies. I can't really compete with that, but maybe, as the Ghost Train clatters across the tracks, if I've got on enough deodorant I can cram the boy's head under my hairy pit and look forward to some uninterrupted sleep later that night.

Boy Toys

2009-10-16T01:26:00.003-04:00

Logic cannot compete with toys, and my boy has greedily consumed the McDonald's Kool-Aid. After a recent perfect day on his behavior chart at school, I gave him the honor of choosing our dinner destination. On our guilt-ridden ride to McDeath--nothing screams "YOU FAIL AT PARENTING" like serving your kid fast food--the boy readily admitted that he really doesn't like the food; he chose the Golden Arches for the toy surprise. I tried using this nugget of information to save his arteries and general well-being from Chicken McNuggets, but my pleading fell on deaf and frequently infected ears.

So there we were in the pick-up window line (he gets rather upset if you call it a drive-thru, and rightfully so, as you don't really drive thru anything). As we settled in about fifth in line for the privilege of cementing our early demise with greasy processed food, the boy eagerly eyed the display promoting the latest greatest Happy Meal toys, Bakugan Battle Brawlers. I had never heard of such a thing, but the boy assured me that we have seen them on TV and that he has always needed one. The bottom half of the display featured a selection of Build-A-Bear Workshop stuffed animals. After studying the sign for awhile, the boy said, "I like being on top." I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Huh?"

"The boy toys are on top, Dadda."

"Oh."

"Why are the boy toys on top?" he asked.

"Because McDonald's is reinforcing the oppressive patriarchal structure of American culture."

There was a long pause as Silas chewed on that statement. We inched forward one car length. I was thinking about how the boy toys are not only always on top, but they also fuel gender stereotypes. In this case, the boy toys are brawling action figures. Boys are brawling action figures. The girl gets to nurture her little pink bear. A woman's place is...

But then my thoughts were interrupted.

"I think it's OK if Ella is on top sometimes too," he said.

This is Mickey D's idea of an appropriate toy for a four-year-old boy? I'm sure I'll be uttering
the words, "Multi-headed dragons are not real; go back to bed" at 4 in the morning real soon.

Tackle Me Game

2009-10-07T01:46:00.007-04:00

We have balls, lots of balls. I'm not particularly good at denying the boy any of his wishes, but this fault is most acute when it comes to any remotely spherical object. We have golf balls, baseballs, super bouncy balls, little balls with bells in them that are supposed to be cat toys, stuffed balls, wiffle balls, balls with suction cups that stick to glass surfaces, footballs and basketballs of every dimension, soccer balls, balls with tails and wings that guarantee a perfect spiral every time (so long as you're right handed, which the boy is not), and a rainbow of those cheap plastic balls always found piled to the ceiling in grocery store bins (the ones strategically located in the candy or junk food aisle). We even have balls that light up when they strike a hard surface, like my head. And striking my head with balls is why the golf balls and the baseballs are now stored out of the boy's reach. I actually blacked out once after taking a shot from a Titleist projectile fired from close range.

I'm not going to make it a big secret or sugar coat it: I'm one of those parents who fully intends on living vicariously through my kid. While other more well-adjusted, good-intentioned parents were playing classical music and reading stories to their unborn children, I was whispering to Silas about how some day he would be 6-foot-4, left handed, and throw absolute gas. You will bring the cheddar, boy, and you will bring it with a lot of late movement. I even have a personalized license plate that reads "LHP" (left handed pitcher). I kid you not. So it's no wonder why every time the boy's eye is drawn to something that bounces, dad says "put it in the cart."

Early intervention is key for fathers hoping to live vicariously through their sons.

With Earl Woods-like determination, I was placing a ball in the boy's hands incessantly from birth. He would pick up some other, less desirable toy, and I would stealthily replace it with a ball, taking care, of course, to position said ball in his left paw (contrary to popular belief, he comes by his left-handedness naturally, though I did contemplate tying his other less potentially college scholarship worthy arm behind his back). Eventually he started throwing the balls, likely in frustration since he wanted some other toy, but that was of no consequence thanks to the miracle of positive reinforcement. Every time a ball spun off his fingertips, dad, wild with enthusiasm, scampered after it, returned it to his left hand, and excitedly beckoned him to throw it again. And he did, again and again.

Look at those mechanics. I smell early retirement.

I was hopeful we were nearing our first breakthrough, a literal one featuring a ball actually breaking through a window, but somewhere around age two my plans for the little prodigy got derailed. Dad's campaign of positive reinforcement was no match for the vast marketing conspiracy that propelled Thomas the Tank Engine into our playroom (and living room, and bedrooms, and hallways, and staircases). Our veritable corncucopia of athletic equipment now pales in comparison to our stockpile of steamies. But every now and then, as we push past the cheesy poofs, I'll catch a glimmer in the old boy's eyes.

"Daddy, can we get a ball?"

I have to fight back the gratifying urge to quickly proffer an enthusiastic YES! But it's bargaining time, and I mustn't give away my hand.

"But you don't ever play with all the balls you have now," I reason, suppressing a smile.

"But I will play with this one," he insists.

The deal is almost closed. My temporary escape from the monotony of playing with trains is imminent.

"OK, but you've got to make me a deal."

"A deal?"

"When we get home, you've got to pick up all your trains to clear some space to play tackle me game with your new ball."

"OK, Daddy. I love tackle me game!"

...

As I put the groceries away, I hear the satisfying clink of wood and metal meeting as the boy chunks the whole Isle of Sodor into the train trundle. The pleather mini-football rests at the bottom of the plastic grocery bag, tinting it brown where the surfaces of bag and ball meet. It's on the kitchen counter, secured with a watchful eye. Silas will get it, but only after I've inspected his handiwork in the playroom. He appears, grinning, and announces that all of his toys are picked up. For once they really are, so I slowly remove the ball from the bag, a rabbit out of the hat that has the boy's full attention. Holding the ball out an arm's length, I tantalize him while, on springs, he bounces up and down, reaching in vain for our new toy. His words bounce too, keeping rhythm with his pogo feet: "Da-Da-Dee-Dee-I-I-Want-Want-My-New-Ball-Ball!"

"You'll never get this ball," I declare, tucking it under my arm for a rumble around the playroom, "because you can't tackle me!" Within two seconds, the boy has wrapped himself around a leg that lumbered in one place for too long, and I'm dragging him across the bright colors of the United States of America carpet map, hoping to unveil my touchdown dance in the Atlantic Ocean. Score! But what's this, before dad can make it across he stumbles, falls dramatically, and the ball is unloosed.

"Oh my gosh, you can tackle me!" I tell him, as if there was ever any doubt. He always "wins" tackle me game. He turns the ankle from the toppled tree loose, scrambles to his feet and jumps on top of me in an act of unnecessary roughness. The boy, unaware that dad's fall was, at best, the work of a C-list actor, is so pleased with himself that he seems to have forgotten something. After a few more unnecessary roughness penalties, I got enough air back into my lungs to pose an important question: "Where's the ball?" The wee man's eyes went wide as saucers, and he launched himself on a recon mission to find his fumbled comrade. I reached for anything I could, a bit of t-shirt, an ankle, but soon Silas scoops up the ball and turns to face me. Beckoning me, he repeats our familiar refrain: "You can't tackle me!" and it's on like a pot of neckbone. I drag him down a few times, let him run me over half a dozen times, collecting a bit of carpet burn as I am plowed through Nebraska, but no matter what I never get to go on offense again.

"Can I have the ball again?" I ask.

"No, it's my ball."

"Pleeeeeese, you never let me have have the ball."

"OK, Daddy, but you have to..." he pauses, cocks his arm, and fires a tight spiral across the playroom "...go get it!" His back is turned to me as the rest of the sentence trails off his lips; he's already giving chase before my cranky limbs so much as move. Wild laughter fills the room as he swarms on top of the ball with a dive. The ball squirts free and he pounces after it, trying to follow the unpredictable pattern of an oblong ball's bouncing. He always seems to secure it just as dad finally arrives.

"You're too slow, Daddy," he says, bucking me off of him before launching the ball once more. As my futile attempts for another turn continue, sweat affixes curls to the delighted boy's face and forehead. He throws; we chase; I finish second in a two-man race. Finally, he makes a tactical error, telegraphing the path of his next rifle-armed release. Superman-style, I lay out, sacrificing my body for one fleeting moment of glory that will only be witnessed by a little lefty QB and the carpet fiber people of Pennsylvania. I swatted the little wad of pleather skyward and wiggled under its wobbly descent just in time, scooping my hands under it for a clean interception.

The turnover, plus a bit of taunting, puts the boy on tilt. "You can't tackle me; you can't tackle me; you can't tackle me!" I teased, dancing around the room on tip toes like a wannabe Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, high stepping and stiff arming Silas's sweaty head. I think the time has finally come to toughen him up a little bit, to not let him win. His cheeks flash caution red as frustration mounts. Finally, having had all of his ankle grabs thwarted, the boy throws himself on top of California, fetal positions himself, and bawls: "Fine, I don't want to play tackle me game!"

Billy "White Shoes" Johnson

My heartstrings are forged from tug-resistant solid steel: "Crying ain't gonna get it, boy."

He responds with some sort of unintelligible grunt, a mix between an elephant trumpeting and air escaping a balloon, and pulls himself up to his knees.

"If you want it, come get it," I goad, waving the ball back and forth like the red cape of a matador.

The bull boy launches, and misses on his first charge. High-pitched panting accompanies him as he regroups.

"That's good, boy. Use the rage!" I stoke the fires as he sweeps unsuccessfully past again. I'm breaking ankles like Barry Sanders (no relation).

But the boy is a quick study. This time, as I'm smiling, laughing and posing for the Heisman, he doesn't take any time to regroup. He's sprawled out on the Midwest and wrapped around my ankles before I know what's happening. My knees knock together, buckle, and down I go. Now I'm the one in the fetal position, clutching the ball for all I'm worth. He quickly tires of trying to pry it loose, resorting instead to his favorite form of father abuse: submission wrestling. I feel his thin arm slide under my chin. He layers one arm over the other and hugs tighter and tighter... I'm getting choked out. I'm furiously tapping out, but he's too crazed to obey the universal sign that this fight is over. Elmo is smiling at me from a boxed puzzle on the bookshelf. Elmo is fading. Elmo is waving goodbye. I let the ball slip out; it's my only hope. Crazed kid doesn't notice. From under my crushed Adam's apple the word "ball" gasps its way into the air. "Silas...the ball." I feel him slowly releasing my larynx and, finally, air rushes in, nourishing my lungs. I catch a glimpse of one little bare foot and feel two little hands on my back, propelling the wee man on his hunt for the ball. But it's nowhere to be found. He looks back at me, examining my eyes for the truth.

"I don't have it, I promise," and I don't, but I see the point of the ball peeking out from under the sofa. As soon as he turns to canvas the floor for the football, I slip it out from under the sofa and run, again shouting, "You can't tackle me!" Judging from the boy's expression--he truly looks possessed--perhaps I've pushed this tough love a bit too far. I've got the whole of the United States of America carpet map between us; I hope that will give me enough time to plot my next move. The boy takes in my eyes through tear-stained vision, crinkles his nose, clenches his teeth, and begins to run. His feet move. His arms pump. But he's not coming forward. He's a cartoon character stuck in place. I can see his torso, his enraged, demon-possessed countenance, but the arms and legs spin like a fan on hi. He is a smoke-trailing blur, and I am frozen in awe. Then, like Adam Sandler in Waterboy, he takes flight for the hit, covering North America like he'd been shot from a cannon. The force of the tackle and subsequent fall separated me from the football and sucked out all the wind I had managed to gather since escaping from the rear naked choke. The boy, ignoring the bounding ball, loomed over me like Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston. Tackle me game is over. And there ain't gonna be no comeback.

After a moment, I look up at him, and I'm encouraged by what seems to be a trace of recognition in his eyes. Trying to further coax the demons to relinquish him, through gasps for air I ask: "Would you like to play with trains?"

The Joy of Fatherhood

2009-10-03T21:31:00.002-04:00

For a couple days before her visit, and for a couple of weeks afterwards, Silas becomes obstinate, unruly, and utterly incorrigible. My boundaries have the strength of Jell-O. No means maybe, no matter how many times it's repeated. Simple requests are met with a sort of passive defiance; he hums along ignoring me absentmindedly, as if he didn't hear. Sometimes I try to pretend I don't hear a hurtful earful: "My mommy won't make me fill my marble jar before I get a reward. My mommy will let me eat whatever I want. My mommy will read me two stories at bedtime."

"Mommy ran away, abandoned you before you were even weaned," I want to scream. "Mommy gets to swoop in like Santa Clause a couple of times a year, shower you with gifts and candy, then leave you again, leaving me to do all the hard stuff!"

Instead I play it by the book. While inwardly seething, outwardly I never put her down (at least not when he's within earshot). The experts say to never say anything negative about the unapparent parent. Children nearly always put the absent parent on a pedestal, and typically target themselves as to blame for that parent's decision to leave, so throwing the cherished absent parent under the bus can not only drive a wedge between the child and the custodial parent, but also ratchet up the child's sense of guilt. Everything is your fault when you're four, so if the absent parent is a "lying, no good, selfish, irresponsible, neglecting deadbeat," it's somehow the child's fault. So, every impulse to the contrary is choked off before it escapes, and I defend her to defend him.

Even though I know it's normal for children to put the absent parent on a pedestal, and even though I hold steadfast to the belief that, in the long run, Silas will understand and appreciate the steady, unconditional love he has only found from his father, at the end of the day logic offers little solace when, while refusing to eat his dinner, the little person who your entire life revolves around tauntingly tells you that "When I see my mommy, I'm going to run and give her a great big hug, and I'm not going to give you one."

Bicycle Bully

2009-10-02T00:42:00.003-04:00

At the park:

Joey: Can I have a turn? Can I have a turn? Can I have a turn?

Silas (sheepishly): Um, I don't think I even know you.

Joey (stepping in front of the bike, grabbing the handle bars, shouting): I AM JOEY AND I AM FOUR YEARS OLD. I AM A BIG BOY!

Silas (not sure what to say to that):

Joey: C'mon, lemme have a turn.

Joey's mom (disinterestedly in the distance, before returning to her cell phone conversation): Joey, he may not want you to ride his bike.

Joey (undaunted, still holding fast to the handlebars): Can I have a turn? Can I have a turn? Can I have a turn?

Silas: But this is my Christmas bike.

Joey (contorting unnaturally, eyes glowing red, whiny pitch increasing to nearly unbearable levels): Puhleeeze? I'll bring it right back.

Silas: Well, OK. But only one lap.

Joey (shoving Silas off the bike and scampering aboard, flailing at the peddles before finally finding traction and speeding off):

(This is where "thank you" should've entered the conversation.)

Dad and Silas stand still, looking at their respective feet, listening to annoying cackling of Joey's indifferent mom, who's still engrossed in her cell phone conversation.

Dad: Thanks for sharing, Silas. That was nice of you.

Silas: When are we going to get the bike back?

Dad: I don't know, boy. I don't know. You want to go swing on the swings?

A Fourth Outline in the Haze

2009-09-25T00:02:00.002-04:00

Work responsibility has not usurped my will to blog, but it's doing a number on my time. So, until something new graces these virtual pages, this recycled Facebook note will have to do. It's from April, and all this rainy, foggy September weather reminded me of it...

2 a.m. walks in a cold rain are one of the many pleasures of dog ownership. The Dude, our golden retriever pup, has developed the annoying habit of rooting around for just the perfect spot to drop a deuce. Sometimes this can take 15 or 20 minutes, which is far too long when it seems a thick layer of misty fog has infiltrated your very soul.

Tonight, as is frequently the case, The Dude and I had a third member on our expedition, Orange Cat. Orange Cat may actually believe that he is a dog. He used to fetch before I got too lazy to keep up his training. And unlike most self-respecting cats, he gladly ventures outdoors in the rain. Grooming himself is also out of the question.

So there we were, enveloped in a fog so heavy that I frequently stumbled over the edge of the road or into potholes because I couldn't see all the way to my feet. Dude's pulling the leash taut, sniffing every blade of road-side grass intently, while Orange Cat trots amiably along. And then Orange Cat's posture changed. He reversed course, back towards home, and in the distant glow of our front porch light I made out the figure of a fourth outline in the haze. Surely Phoebe, our elderly, mostly housebound cat, would have sense enough not to venture out into this cold soup. But the way Orange Cat approached the silhouette, confidently, tail in the air, and the way it, too, approached us with an air of familiarity, meant it had to be of a familiar fur. The noses of the animals even met.

Despite his breed's nose, Dude isn't always the most aware pup. A night before, we nearly walked right into a spotted bovine, obscured in the fog, before the dog's sensors tripped and a barking frenzy ensued. But, finally, he became aware that our three had grown into a foursome. I felt the nylon of the leash strap dig into my hand as he yanked me towards the nosing shadows, and then the fourth member of our party emitted a low rumbling, like a grizzly bear.

But, thankfully, it wasn't a grizzly bear. Just a possum who, like us, was on an early morning stroll.

Dude never did take a shit.

Love Triangle

2009-09-18T02:33:00.001-04:00

Ella, the boy’s step-sister, has frequently proclaimed her intention to one day take Silas’s hand in marriage. The boy, though prone to sew his wild oats with an endless string of babysitters—if making them play trains with him can be considered sewing wild oats—does not object, and insists on at least seven kids. Ella also planned to marry some kid named Carter from her daycare. Apparently she’s learning from my example—one marriage is never enough. Or maybe she’s planning a move to Utah.

Now she’s in big school, and this Carter kid appears to be a flash in the pan. That would be good news for Silas if it wasn’t for David, the BMOC of the kindergarten class at Blowing Rock Elementary school. Ella made the connection tonight at the dinner table that there’s an Ella, a Rachel, and a David in her class, just like at home. But there’s nary a Silas at her school, and perhaps that’s telling, as the boy appears to be a passing cloud in her distant nuptial forecast.

“Oh, David! I am soooooo in love with David,” she announced at dinner, picking at her last bit of a second helping of shells and cheese in hopes that dessert would be her reward for making a happy plate.

This revelation piqued the boy’s interest. His expression seemed to say, “Who is this David mofo? I wonder if I can kick his ass?” Apparently he inherited his dad’s jealousy gene.

“I’m sure David’s great,” I interjected (after all, he shares my name). Then I stirred the pot: “But you’re still going to marry Silas, right?”

“I’m still going to marry Silas, but I’m going to marry David first,” she proclaimed.

First is everything when you’re a four-year-old. Second is just the first loser. Silas did not take well to being a loser. The boy, jilted by a would-be lover for the first time, folded his bottom lip inside his mouth, squinched his nose, put a death lock on Ella with his eyes, and Romeo-like, held his breath in an attempt to put a premature end to his unrequited existence. Two silent tears did nothing to quench the red hue that rose in his cheeks.

Feeling a bit complicit in this unfolding melodrama, I tried to restore peace to the dinner table.

“You guys won’t be getting married for like 20 years; you don’t have any idea who you’re going to marry,” I said.

The boy finally gasped a big chunk of air. In a soft almost inaudible pout, he said, “But I want to marry Ella.”

She stared at him with a mix of, I think, compassion and delight. She didn’t want to hurt her future second husband, but the strange power she discovered over the opposite sex was exhilarating. In my mind I imagined an endless string of broken hearts.

“You know, you don’t even have to get married,” I told him, still hoping to defuse the drama. “You can take care of me when I get old instead. We’ll move to the beach and go fishing.”

This set the gears in the boy’s mind turning. The pout gradually receded from his voice as he made a plan. Dad would drive the boat and he would hold the pole. We would catch those fish with the swords. I have to admit, this was sounding promising.

Ella, drawing the salt from her well-sucked thumb, sat quietly, taking this all in. Cheer finally returned to the boy’s voice as the father-son fishing scenario swelled with more and more details. It turns out that I will be a shrimp and shark sailboat captain, and we’ll use nets and little hooks. The little hooks are so we don’t catch any big sharks. We’re planning to eat the little ones.

Defiantly, he concluded: “I don’t want to get married. I’m going to live with my Dadda.”

Ella burst from the table, crying out indecipherable utterances of unbearable pain en route to her bedroom, where she threw herself on her bed and buried her face in her pillow.

Rachel called after her: “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sad!” she shouted. “I want to marry Silas!”

Perhaps tonight the boy learned a valuable lesson too: always play hard to get.

Dear lord, I wonder what it's going to be like when they get to high school?

Once More to the Sanderling

2009-09-17T01:51:00.001-04:00

Essayist E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake," a vivid description of a trip he took with his son to the same lake where White's father had brought him as a boy, always stirs my memories of my own father and our sojourns to the Sanderling. Now my trips to the coast are with my own son. The years and the yearning fade away, and, if only for a few days, three generations merge into a single grain on the grand strand. Here's a passage from White's classic:

I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling the bedroom, and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along the shore in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. The sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely new feeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger.

My father is with me always, but nowhere is his presence more acutely felt than at our family beach house. Silas would be so fortunate if, when his father grows up, I can become half the man my father was.

Existential Crisis

2009-09-14T00:25:00.003-04:00

On our way to school one morning...

Boy: "Dadda, who made the grass"

Me: "God made the grass."

Boy: "Dadda, who made the trees?"

Me: "God made the trees."

Boy: "Dadda, who made the John Deere elevator?"

Me: "Excavator?"

Boy: "Yeh. Ex-cuh-vuh-lator. Who made the excuhvuhlator?"

Me: "Well, people made the excavator, but God made the people."

Boy: "Dadda, who made God?"

Squirmy Wormy

2009-09-12T02:51:00.006-04:00

In a 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Al Gore claimed: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." I am forever in his debt for the Internet. I can hardly even remember the days when I used to waste countless hours that would've been better spent sleeping (or studying, or working, or writing, or living) in front of the antiquated black box that my elders refer to as the boob tube. No more TV for me. Now, procrastination finds me courtesy of Facebook and online fantasy baseball. Ah, Al Gore giveth, but he also taketh away. Another of his inventions, global warming, has down right ruined the once cool and breezy Blue Ridge Mountain summers of my wayward youth. Upper 70s = windows and screen doors open and the peaceful song and dance of chirping toads chasing chirping crickets. Upper 80s = an expensive call to the friendly HVAC technicians at Watauga Heating & Cooling. They were so friendly, in fact, that they used Senator Gore's technology to download countless hours of pornography to my PC while doing the install. I imagine they probably just tacked on "Cooling" as an after thought since no one really needs air conditioning in the mountains. Right? Not any more, thanks to Senator Gore. I’m not suggesting some grand conspiracy theory—I don’t think the porn industry and Gore are somehow “in bed” together, leading to countless porn downloads by countless HVAC techs across the globe—but, regardless, no longer are my late night (porn-free) surfing hours accompanied by nature's music; instead, the steady hum of the ironically named heat pump drones on.

(Before I go on, I would like to apologize if you got a distasteful mental image when I mentioned Al Gore, the porn industry, and “in bed” above, all in the same sentence.)

So what does any of this have to do with the boy? Well, Silas, who has an aversion to wearing clothes anyway, didn't seem to mind the heat. He was not yet two at the time, and the promise of central cooling gently circulating pet dander throughout the house wasn't enough motivation to get him to suspend his constant desire to be held and/or played with. I had to 86 an old stack of mostly rotten firewood to clear a spot for the air conditioning unit. It was a sizable stack, but with only normal delays for freaking out every time an upset section of log revealed a giant snake or spider, I could've knocked out the job in about an hour or two. But the wheelbarrow wasn't full once before the boy, already bored with the dump truck load of toys I hauled out to the yard for the occasion, took to writhing and crying in the grass. I might've stuck him in front of the TV and gotten back to work, but, at not yet two, his taste for TV was still undeveloped. I couldn't even trust it to get an uninterrupted shower in, much less a project in the yard. And besides, I was still idealistic enough as a fledgling parent at this point to think that I would be forever limiting his exposure to the evils of television. Fortunately, I did have just the thing for this, our trusty backpack. Before I loaded any more wood, I loaded up the boy, snapped him in, and slung him over my back. He directed the rest of the project contentedly from his perch between dad's shoulder blades. More projects have been neglected than completed over the years, I'm afraid, but the backpack quickly became an integral tool whenever dad became motivated to tackle chore time. It was particularly useful for doing dishes and laundry; you can only wear the same shirt so many days in a row.

The backpack: it's how house and yard work gets done.

It doesn't work so well for inside jobs, but by the time the boy outgrew the backpack I had discovered another method for making yard work manageable: earthworms ("squirmy wormies" in boyspeak). I don't know if Al Gore invented the earthworm, but they seem to be thriving in our little corner of the warmed globe. Every time a bored and attention-starved Silas approaches, one needs only to turn a bit of earth, pluck out a worm, and—voila!—five or ten minutes of uninterrupted time to get back to work. He takes some leaves, a bit of dirt, and makes a "quarium" for them. The little trunk of his tricycle, the backs of dump trucks, Tupperware containers—if it will hold worms, it has. The health of our yard and garden, robbed of the benefits of so many worms, would probably be considerably improved had we not discovered how much the boy loves them, and my conscience doesn't care to count how many of them have been martyred in the name of weekend warrioring in the yard. Collecting squirmies is not in and of itself the problem, it's the not letting them go. Invariably, a dump truck is left out in the rain, and its bed becomes a watery grave for floating, bloating worms. Or a Tupperware bowl goes untended for a few days under Al Gore's sizzling sun, shriveling and finally baking its occupants. Now Silas has become pretty adept at capturing and sequestering squirmies all by himself. Instead of constantly badgering me about my progress in detecting them, he'll burst around the corner, worms snapping back and forth in both hands as he bounces up and down, and shout "squirmy wormies!" For a few minutes anyway, I’ll plod on with my yard work—no weed is safe.

I’ve been working on convincing Silas to do the environmentally responsible thing and practice catch and release. Ol' Al, not to mention countless captured squirmies, would surely appreciate that.

Delicious and nutritious.

Nightcrawler tiara. It's what all the cool kids will be wearing this summer.

There's Plenty of Room at the Duneside III

2009-09-10T01:07:00.003-04:00

I’ve never really taken the boy anywhere, well not anywhere other than his grandma’s house and Garden City. We are so blessed to have inherited a beach house—passed down through three generations—that we’ve always just high-tailed it to the coast whenever the opportunity to vacation presents itself. And the fact that the beach house would not be vacant Labor Day weekend did nothing to quell our urge to splash in the surf, so we decided to carve out a new adventure. OK, so we went to the same beach, but this time we’re renting a tiny one bedroom condo. Baby steps. Maybe some day we’ll choose an entirely new destination. I can safely say that we will not be returning to Duneside III, room 202.

We drove down late for two reasons: I was hoping for some peace while Silas slept (have you ever traveled with a four-year-old?), and I wanted to miss the migrating mass of wide-eyed humanity making one last dash to the beach before the unofficial end of summer. No luck there, as we became the caboose of a fifty-mile long train thanks to a nasty pile up near the dreaded Conway bottleneck. An hour and twenty minutes of sitting still in the truck afforded me the opportunity to surf the full glory of Myrtle Beach’s still distant classic rock stations, and I heard “Hotel California” no less than three times. Some dance to remember, some dance to forget, indeed. Thankfully, Silas slept through the whole clusterf*ck, and by 1:30 a.m. we were living it up at the Duneside III. They haven’t had an air freshener here since 1969, and you can actually see puffs of thirdhand smoke emit from the furniture when you lower your haunches.

Duneside III is nestled a shell’s throw from the Kingfisher pier and Sam’s Corner, a 24/7 greasy spoon that, along with the pier, form the epicenter of what used to be a sleepy little family beach town. Rather than kingfishers, or any type of fishers, for that matter, the pier is home to a pair of watering holes, one at the base of the structure and another at its termination, way out over the breakers. An endless stream of vacationers traverse the pier as if walking to its end and back is their own personal pilgrimage to Mecca. A full moon, wreathed in a halo, keeps watch from a nearly cloudless sky overhead, but, at the very limit of my vision, an occasional flash of lightning fills in the endless, black stretch of ocean with a fleeting boundary, the distant horizon. I don’t think the rain’s headed our way. Waves approach in a series of tiny detonations set off by the shearing of the pier’s pilings. But the tranquility of this scene is ungraciously interrupted by “live music” in the form of a sort of dueling banjos of bad cover bands taking place on the pier, which brings us back to “Hotel California.” Now I’ve heard it four times in the last few hours, but never quite like this. And, I hope, never again quite like this. I think there’s an unwritten rule that no band shall ever cover “Free Bird.” That would be blasphemy somewhere on about the same level as diddling the preacher’s wife in church, on a Sunday, during the service. And if we were going to construct a top ten list of songs that should never be covered, “Hotel California,” while paling in comparison to “Free Bird” in terms of its rock anthem awesomeness, would at least make the top five.

The band closest to the beach, and to my position perched on the balcony of Duneside III 202, is mercifully taking a break to blow the meager contents of their tip jar at the bar, allowing me to hear Bob Segar’s “Turn the Page” wafting in from cover band #2’s position out over the Atlantic. The band on break played the same thing not 15 minutes ago. And this, too, is a song that belongs somewhere on our list of songs not to cover, as your local everyday-ordinary-average-run-of-the-mill cover band probably cannot relate to the concept of “playing the star” or being “strung out from the road.” Later, a painfully long drum solo is punctuated intermittently with the snap of bottlerockets. Their whistling blasts make me flinch every time. In my mind’s eye I see a chubby bleach blonde emerging from Wings with a new thong. She will don it for her stay on the back of her boyfriend’s crotch rocket, clinging tightly to him as he pops wheelies up and down Waccamaw Drive, and Myrtle Beach’s annexation of the sleepy little family beach of my youth will be complete. I just hope I can sleep through it.

I smoke the day’s last cigarette by lying down in bed.

Toy Story

2009-09-09T00:59:00.003-04:00

"David, you're the bestest David ever in the whole wide world."

The boy often calls me by my first name, which I do not mind. I call him by his first name, too.

I replied, "Aw, that's so sweet. Thank you. You're the bestest Silas ever in the whole wide world."

"Thanks, David. And you know what?"

"What?"

"You're the bestest toy buyer in the whole world."

There's always a catch.

Toy Story II

2009-09-09T00:26:00.002-04:00

Circumstances conspired to my committing one of the least pardonable sins of parenthood on a recent road trip. I gave in to hungry boy's incessant requests to patronize the Golden Arches (better known as McDeath). At least he got apples instead of fries with the Happy Meal. Silas, of course, cared less about the food than the toy surprise that dad would pass back to him once his food found its way to his belly.

"It's a transformer, I think," I said as I made the awkward handoff to the seat behind me.

"It's a robot, dad, not a transformer," he corrected.

It was a robot, one that fired projectiles from a gun-like attachment sprouting from its right arm. I was thinking about potential lawsuits as the sun said its final goodbyes, heading west. Darkness infiltrated the cab, and I heard the boy rummaging about, straining the limits of booster seat confinement. He had dropped his new toy and, whether or not he could reach it anyway, could not see enough to pinpoint its whereabouts.

"Turn the light on daddy," he said.

I explained to him that I couldn't. It was distracting, kept me from seeing out to the road that I had to concentrate on.

"It's just not safe," I said.

"Just for a second, daddy."

"Not safe," I repeated, "You'll just have to get it when we get home."

"Nooooooo," he moaned; an annoying blend of demanding and whining creeping into his tone. "Turn the light on!"

"No," I said, finally. "And no amount of whining is going to make any difference."

"Fine, than you're not my father. And I'm never ever talking to you again."

There was a long pause. In the silence I determined to ignore the hurtfulness of those words. He didn't mean it.

I think he was considering the impossible impracticality of this vow of silence.

"You're not my father," he repeated, before adding this amendment: "And I'm never ever going to talk to you again, unless I want food or a toy."

I couldn't help but smile a little at that.

Through the rearview mirror, I saw the defiant set of his jaw in the lights of a passing motorist. His countenance soon softened; he drifted off to sleep. I think we both needed it.

First Blood

2009-09-01T02:19:00.004-04:00

It was born in his marrow. It merged onto the circulatory superhighway at various onramps throughout his skeletal system. Driven by a double pump, it circumnavigated every vessel of his being, carrying both the essence and detritus of life. Its work chanced to bring it to the nasal cavity just as Silas was mounting the arm of the living room couch which, to a boy of four years, bears a strong resemblance to a diving platform. For this dive, Silas would be performing a leap of faith onto an adjacent piece of furniture. There was only one witness--Silas's five-year-old stepsister, Ella, who steadfastly maintains her innocence--so details are sketchy. What we know for sure is that something went terribly wrong, and it--his blood--was forever loosed from its confines.

The red river's crest was barely visible beneath his left nostril when a series of powerful sniffles sent it back through the nasal cavity, down the throat, and finally to the mouth. Meanwhile, a steady flow of tears served as the catalyst for increased snot production. En route to the mouth, the red river picked up this snotty debris. It pooled there on his tongue for a second. Unseen taste buds, housed in the papillae bumps on his tongue, alerted the brain to the presence of a strong metallic taste bathed in a slimy sauce of saltwater and bacteria. This was not to be swallowed, replied the brain. Silas tilted forward, formed a wide O with his mouth, and, in an action best described as a hybrid between spitting and spitting up, listened to his brain. If only he listened to and heeded the innumerable warnings from grown ups about not jumping on (or off of) the furniture, this snot island dotted plasma puddle would've avoided an unexpected off ramp onto the kitchen floor.

This was his first bloody nose. Before the damage could be assessed, Silas had to unlearn the urge to try to retain free flowing liquids with his well-honed sniffle. Due to his impatience with nose blowing--you have to stop playing for like two seconds--he is rather adept at sucking up snot. If no grown up sees the emergence of those green-yellow bubbles, it never happened. I was actually delighted that, unlike most other kids you see on the playground, my boy was usually bereft of the two-pronged snot highway. I cannot count how many times I've been staggered by this unsavory image: daydreamy children with curious, probing tongues sating themselves with the salty emissions of noses chilled by a cold winter wind. It's not chicken noodle soup, kids, but I digress. On this occasion it was important for Silas to stop sniffling so the headwaters of the red river could be properly charted. Was the bleeding isolated to the nose, or did he have a mouthful of missing teeth, too? It was hard to know with blood springing out of so many holes.

By now Rachel and I were pushing a small forest's yield of paper towels in his face. "That's good," I told him, as he mouthed deep breaths one on top of the other, "just try to slow it down a little." The sight of the towel growing red did little to stem the hyperventilating, but at least his nose finally, reluctantly relaxed. Chaotic conditions in the kitchen weren't helping matters. The boy still favored tears to words. Ella, ever fascinated by all bodily functions, crowded in for a better look, all the while simultaneously absolving herself of compliance in the accident while scolding Silas for not making good choices. She takes after her mother in the latter regard. Rachel, the self-proclaimed bad cop in our sometimes blend-resistant miniature Brady Bunch, reminded Silas how many times she had told him not to jump on the furniture. ENOUGH! Still unsuccessful in my attempt to survey the damage, I shooed the womenfolk from the kitchen and tilted Silas's head back, hoping that the platelets could better do their job with gravity on their side. I prodded his mouth open. The three grand worth of dental work that had repaired the damage done from relentless Juicy Juice toothbug attacks was intact. It appeared the river's source was purely nasal in origin.

The boy's hands, too small and too delicate, despite the dirt under the nails, to seem real, became blood-speckled as he pawed at the paper towels. "I need to wash my hands; I need to wash my hands!" he squealed, freaking out as he saw that he wore his own blood for the first time. I think he was less concerned with hygiene than the prospect of running out of blood, so I assured him his body would make more, hoisted him onto my hip, and hefted him down the hall to the bathroom. His tight hug dotted my evergreen shirt with festive splotches of red, a development that amused him. By the time we got to the bathroom--five seconds at the most--the tears and his blood had almost dried up and he couldn't wait to see his booboo. He smiled at his Rudolph-red nose, and, rather than wash his hands, plunged his face under the sink's still-cold stream, instantly undermining the persistent work of his platelets. The blood ran anew, and Silas, laughing hysterically, flashed the translucent red teeth of his smile. It's amazing how quickly the fortunes change at four.

Two days later I chanced to find him on the arm of the living room sofa, toes taut, body leaning forward, contemplating his next move. Our eyes met. He slowly climbed back down. His guilty smile was blood free, for now.

Take It Like a Man

2009-08-24T23:31:00.003-04:00

It looked like a couple of cats had been sleeping on my chest and were startled awake, leaving a zigzag of red welts in their wake as they dug in and dismounted. But the animal was a twenty-month old boy in withdrawal. A boy equipped with beaver-like sets of incisors, a quartet on the top and the bottom, perfect for latching on, extracting. And I couldn't give him what he wanted.

Attempts at sleeping Silas in a crib were short-lived. It was just too dangerous. There are two types of cribs: ones he's ejected himself from, resulting in a loud thud of head hitting floor, and ones he's never been in. So we climbed into his big boy bed and under his sheets--bears playing polo--at an early age. I knew it wouldn't hold him, and that he would seek me out in the night as soon as he woke up, but at least he could come and go without the risk of brain damage. Story time consisted of me plunging diligently ahead while he ignored me, opting instead to slip from his sheets to circumnavigate the bed's stuffed mountains of animals on all fours. Even if he wasn't paying any attention, he always protested when I put the book down and reached for the light. If I had a dime for every time I've heard, "One more book, dadda...".

The noisemaker droned on. I put a knee up to protect certain sensitive areas from the incessant wiggling of sharp elbows and knees. Toys, strewn about the floor, slowly revealed themselves in the soft glow of the night light. I hummed a lullaby or two, coaxing him back under the sheets. He alternated between stillness and restlessness. Silas's first haircut wouldn't come until age four, and the cold damp of his tendrilled mane, still wet from bath time, soaked through my t-shirt when he pressed his head to my chest. I hoped against reason that stillness would win out soon, and strategies of extraction played through my mind. It was hard to escape without waking him. Maybe he would fall asleep close to the wall; I would arrange a buffer of pillows and stuffed animals to guard against an accidental exit from the open side of the bed.

But he didn't fall asleep. Silas submarined lower, sinking his head from the crook of my armpit to the depths beneath the polo bears. His hands worked at my shirt, forcing it upward to reveal two red bumps amidst a tangle of fur. He did his best--or his worst--to find the milk that so many times had soothed him to sleep. I nudged him away. He fought me to latch on again. I pried free, not delicately enough to avoid wincing. This must be what it feels like to get tattooed, I thought. He tried once more; I resisted. Now my chest was damp from a mixture of wet curls and tears. So I resolved to lie there and take it, I suppose, like a man.

She left when he was 20 months old and not yet weaned. Each night, for weeks and weeks after she was gone, the last thing I did before I left him, finally sleeping, was fetch my shirt from the floor by his bed and pull it over my head to cover the wounds that never heal.

An angel's smile reveals an assassin's teeth.

Drop it like it's hot (lava)

2009-08-20T16:49:00.001-04:00

Silas: Why do they call it chocolate lava? We don't eat lava, right?

Shoutout to the New and Improved Mrs. Sanders

2009-08-19T01:44:00.003-04:00

Someone pointed out to me that the previous post neglected to mention that it's not just the two of us anymore. In my fledgling and oft-neglected blog, most of the focus has been on cataloging my experiences raising the boy alone. But I would be remiss not to point out that I am blissfully re-married, and now the burdens of parenthood and managing jobs, school, bills, a home, a garden--everything--are shared. And it doesn't feel like a burden at all. The picture below attests to the fact that our future's so bright, Rachel's gotta wear shades. And those bright, beautiful smiles in the picture should make it obvious why I'm finding it so hard to get motivated to go back to work.

Just the Two of Us

2009-08-18T12:48:00.003-04:00

I had only had my new truck for a couple of weeks when my wife, with little warning and carrying not much more than the clothes on her back, climbed in the cab, highlighted R with the gear shift and backed down the driveway and out of our weekday lives. Four months shy of his second birthday, Silas didn’t grasp the magnitude of the situation. Mommy was leaving us. I thought probably for good. When she tried to hug him tight, he wriggled from her arms and insisted on scavenging through the minivan, the ride I would be keeping since I refused to let him go. I hated to part with my new toy, but the minivan was more practical for my new gig: single dad. It’s not like there was really anything to consider: truck/boy. It’s an easy call. When she announced that she was leaving my reply—after months of fighting and fruitless attempts at therapy—came without hesitation: Do whatever you want, but the boy stays with me. She agreed without argument, so I had custody of the boy during the week and my truck on weekends. We met nearly every Friday evening at a rural gas station equidistant from our separate dwellings to trade vehicles and mammals (I got the dog for the weekend; she got the boy). I got out of the minivan, into the truck, and beat it back up the well-worn path to the mountains. Usually, I left Silas sleeping in the back. I hated leaving him without saying goodbye, but not wanting to interrupt his nap afforded the perfect excuse not to have to exchange pleasantries. There was nothing pleasant to say.

I remember the tail lights glowing red and the finality of the instant the glow left. The marriage therapists, a husband and wife team, had mostly just sat and listened, emitting the occasional “hmm” and “oh,” verbal feedback to either show they were actually listening or to encourage one of us to keep talking. They offered up the occasional “How does that make you feel?” bullshit. But, with the image of tail lights imprinted on my closed eyelids, I realized they only offered one thing of value. When she told them she was thinking that some time apart might do us some good, they broke from their non-advisory stance and quoted some studies that showed that couples who split up rarely find the path that leads them back together. Don’t go, they told her. When she left anyway, despite her assurances to the contrary, I knew that it was for good.

The truck disappeared around the sharp curve below the driveway en route to an empty apartment over an hour away. I climbed in the van through the open sliding door, reached over the driver seat, found the keys, and cranked it up. Finding Nemo flashed on the tiny DVD screen above us, and Marlin’s undersea search for his abducted son briefly diverted Silas’s attention. Still in fleece footed jammies despite the muggy August morning air, he appeared to have been debating whether or not to eat whatever it was he had pulled from beneath the seats. I jerked the lever, and the sliding door lurched noisily down its track before sealing shut. Before the air conditioning got good and cold, two lanes of wet traffic traversed silently down my cheeks.

It’s difficult to reconstruct the right reality, to explain what I felt in that moment. It would be easy to reach the conclusion that I was hurt by the breakup, but part of the cocktail of emotions included, instead, a large shot of relief. With her removed the expectations were removed. I would pay the bills, cook dinner, wash the dishes, push the vacuum, pull the weeds, and, most importantly, care for my son’s needs. For months I had been doing all of this anyway as she slept the days away or whiled away countless hours on the internet. Now I wouldn’t expect any help, and there wouldn’t be any fingers to point or shouting matches when the help wasn’t forthcoming. But even if I had been virtually living as a single father while we all still shared the same home, there was something intimidating about those two words—single father—and something shameful about not being able to mask that reality. I tried to pretend that we needed the money and she couldn’t find a job in Boone so she had to leave. It was just too far to commute, so she got a little apartment. It was only temporary. But I knew better, and soon everyone else—family, friends—would know too. More than loss on that day, I felt the chest-compressing weight of failure and anxiety. Not only would concerns over how the breakup would affect Silas in the short and long term always lurk in my shadow, but I also had to figure out what to do with him. I started work in a week and, thanks to the sudden and unexpected departure of the person who was supposed to be Silas’s primary caregiver, had no daycare lined up. Thankfully, I was able to orchestrate a team of baby sitters to tide us over until a fulltime slot in a daycare became available. He’s been in good hands when he’s not in mine. But, now three years later, with his mother relocated across an ocean to London, the fallout of failure still lingers.

I hear Bill Withers singing:

We look for love, no time for tears

Wasted waters's all that is

And it don't make no flowers grow…
Just the two of us
We can make it if we try

And we’ll keep trying until the doubt is replaced with castles in the sky.

I'll Have the Ketchup and the Catsup, Please

2009-08-11T09:52:00.002-04:00

I just watched in horror as the hot breakfast I was implored to drag myself out of bed to cook slipped, uneaten, into the trash can. The fork skirted around scrambled eggs and hashbrowns as if they were radioactive waste. The fork deftly scraped every atom of ketchup off the plate, leaving the remainder untouched. More ketchup was called for, the fork again sucked clean, before "I'm full" was announced. Soon someone will realize that it's a long, long time until lunch.

Lotty Dotty We Like to Potty

2009-08-03T21:03:00.002-04:00

Rachel: Ella, what's going on in there?

(very long pause...finally Ella comes running, pulling up her undies)

Ella: We had a very potty iscussion. I went poop twice and Siwus went poop once. And my panties were aw da way down. Downstairs. And we were saying we were gonna pee on things.

Conversations and Questions

2009-07-31T00:06:00.003-04:00

Silas: Daddy, I want to see my momma.

Me: It's too late tonight (his request came after 9 p.m., which is not only past his bedtime, but means it's after 2 a.m. in London), but we'll look for her on the computer (skype) in the morning.

Silas (his back turned from me, masking, I think, a tear or two): No. I don't want her on the computer, or on the phone, I want to hug her.

Someone please tell me what page to turn to in the playbook for the appropriate response to this request.

The Origin of The Dude

2009-07-22T01:50:00.002-04:00

Anyone who has subjected themselves to the uniquely blissful, trailer park zen experience of watching The Big Lebowski knows that it's one of the F-bombingest movies of all time. Ostensibly, our golden retriever pup came by the name The Dude to pay homage to Jeff Bridges' turn as The Dude in the cult classic, and it never gets old to turn the phrase "The Dude abides" after our Dude performs rare acts of obedience (it turns out that Marley might've been a more apt monicker so far as film allusions go). When he's not abiding, which is most of the time, our Dude is dislocating the shoulders of anyone who dares venture on a walk with him, humping the neighbor's dog (who is male, yet oddly doesn't object), or getting one of us up every 30 minutes to take him out for an explosive diarrhea session after he's ingested yet another foreign object. Instead of "Shut the fuck up, Donny," it's "Quit fuckin' shitting, Dude," at four in the morning.

One should never let reality get in the way of a good story, but in reality The Dude's name has much simpler origins. We purchased the pup as a Christmas gift for my father in law, who had recently laid to rest his golden oldie, Chester (the Molester), who had in fact made his mark like an old male dog before becoming an old male dog and succumbing to the vet's needle. Things got really ugly towards the end, and it had to be done. We decided to just call the new model Dude, as not to get too attached, while we sheltered him until Christmas. It seemed like such a thoughtful gesture to replace the fallen golden with The Golden Dude, as my father in law has taken to calling him. Unfortunately, my mother in law had other ideas. Adamant about not having another golden, she went out--with full knowledge of the gift we had in store for her husband--and got a dog from the animal shelter a few days before Christmas. We gave them The Dude anyway, but two pups proved to be too much, and a few weeks later our thoughtful gesture was re-gifted. And the dog we didn't want to get too attached to has been sitting at my feet ever since.

Much to my better half's chagrin, I stubbornly clung to the name, The Dude, until it stuck as his official name. The only problem is that I call everybody dude, and this has created a few instances of confusion for the other boisterous boy that, like the dog, is rarely anywhere but attached to my hip. "Dude, No!" are common words around these parts. Sometimes a surprised Silas will get a hurt and confused look and ask, "Do you mean dude me no or Dude dog no?" Most of the time it could probably go for either of them, kind of a blanket condemnation of all preschooler and puppy bad choices, but Silas is very relieved on the occasions when it turns out that he is in the clear.

I love how the boy says dude, drawing out the ooooh in his angelic drawl. Hearing him say it got me to thinking. Maybe The Dude's name does have deeper origins; dude was in fact the very first word the boy ever uttered. Long before my dog walking days, I'd strap the boy in the backpack carrier and traipse around the neighborhood giving him language lessons. Well, I suppose it was a lesson if you consider my repeating "Daddy" over and over again in hopes that it would become his first word to be a lesson. He had the "D" down, but the stuttering "D-d-d-d-duh" sounds were soon followed by an ooh instead of an ah. Add another "D" and you've got "duh-oooo-duh."

"No, Da-a-a-a-a-a-d," I'd coax.

"Duh-oooo-duh," he'd reply.

"Howabout Da-da," I said.

"Duh-oooo-duh," he insisted.

Sigh.

Defeated, I decided to nurture the boy's new gift of language as best I could. The cows in the pasture up the road must have thought it strange to hear me and Silas inflecting the seemingly endless varieties of "dude," like in the beer commercials, as we took our evening strolls. Soon we were delighting in similar sounding words like doo-doo and dookie. It's much nicer to say than it is to scrape off his bottom during a diaper change. "Dude! Did you go doo-doo?"

Since then we've had many adventures (and misadventures) with words, like the time when--in front of the babysitter, no less--two-year-old Silas drove his ride-on toy into the wall at breakneck speed, nearly tumbled over the handle bars, and shouted, "FUCK!" Maybe he wasn't all the way asleep yet that time when I watched The Big Lebowski while he snuggled me in bed. Dude, everything comes full circle.

Everybody's Searching for Something

2009-07-21T01:00:00.003-04:00

This was a paragraph or two jotted down at the beach over two years ago. It's since been through a few revisions, finally morphing into what you see below:

Last night my eyes searched the sky for a coy moon. It’s less than half a moon, yet much more than a sliver. There’s enough glow to backlight the hazy clouds, so I know just about where to look as I anticipate its triumphant return through the puffy, cumulous outline. It’s like a game of hide and seek with the clouds in total control, at least until the sun breaks over the horizon. The night before things were much more clear. The moon, then half full and undaunted by drifting encumbers of clouds, parted the sea with its spotlight. The shaft of light ran from the tide pools to the distant horizon, illuminating each swell as they approached the end of their journey. Beyond the moon’s beam was a cold darkness, an impenetrable black framing the glowing ocean. It was as if a path had been illuminated for me. Whether gliding back and forth on a porch rocker, or traipsing barefoot in the cool, moist sand, the moonbeam beckoned me, seemingly coming to an end at my feet no matter where they stood. I felt then as if I knew my way; I could walk across that water.

But I barely got my toes wet. I just watched, taking in the scene in awe. And then, before I knew it, the moon gave way to a brilliant sunrise. The haze amplified the orange glow that foretold the sun’s arrival, until finally a blinding orb rose from the sea and burned away the haze. It was a new day, yet it seemed like an ending. And I missed the night.

That afternoon was a science lesson for my two-and-a-half-year-old son, Silas. What do you call a group of porpoises? Cattle roam in a herd. Geese fly in a flock. Whales putter through the sea in a pod. Whales and porpoises are close enough, and the alliteration is nice, so why not? Yes, we saw a pod of porpoises. They danced to the surface for air in pairs just beyond the cresting of crashing waves. Pelicans, too, worked the unseen, from our vantage point on shore anyway, school of fish. The noble sea birds stretched their necks and tucked their long wings, morphing into a missile before dive bombing into the unsuspecting school, more often than not emerging with their gullets full of sea water and lunch. Silas, taking it all in from his familiar perch on my right hip, asked, “Ride, dada?” Just like all the horses and cattle he sees during our drives in the rolling hillsides of home, he wanted to ride the porpoises. It’s hard to convince a toddler of the impossibility of some things. But he comes by it honest; just two nights ago I thought I might walk on water, and even if on the following night the moonlit path eluded me, I know the way may return tonight, tomorrow night… I am a dreamer.
But back to our science lesson. The tension was mounting, and I knew that if I did not redirect my son’s attention, I would either be plodding through the chilly ocean in search of an amenable porpoise, or watching the boy thrash about like a beached whale when I told him, finally, that we simply could not ride the black, bottle-nosed mammals. Tantrums at two beat all. But the little diggers came to my rescue. I had to look no further than my sea tickled toes, where tiny clams, deposited by the surf, left the safety of their colorful calcium shells, latched on to the porous sand, and burrowed under the surface. We had to look fast, as a second or two after each wave passed, the clams were gone, either swept away by the next wave, or adroitly angled just below the surface in the nick of time. “Look at the little diggers!” I exclaimed. I didn’t know exactly what to call them at the time. And, reluctantly at first, Silas obliged. But once he caught sight of one, with its lavender spirals radiating from the ligament uniting its perfectly symmetrical halves, he was hooked. The porpoise pod was now free to roam in peace. And the little diggers got an assist, as Silas quickly learned to grab handfuls of wet sand, spot a digger, and splatter the sand on top of it just before the arrival of the next wave.

That evening I pulled the trusty Audubon Society guide off the shelf. The little diggers are called coquina. Scarcely the size of your thumbnail, they come in nearly every color imaginable, their iridescent white circled by various shades of pink, blue, orange and brown. Silas saw their picture and, pointing, shouted, “Diggers!” They are so plentiful in some areas of Florida, the guide informed me, that their shells merge just beyond the low tide line to form a kind of limestone coral. Much of the architecture in St. Augustine, America’s oldest city, is constructed from the sea-swept remains of coquina. I’m not sure Silas will remember much from this lesson other than that the coquina share his love for digging in the sand, but I hoped that somehow my own curiosity rubbed off on him, and that, as he ages, perhaps he’ll trade choo choo trains and animated movies for books.

The next night at sunset we returned to the water’s edge in search of the little diggers, finding them plentiful. And for every one that burrows its way under the surface, half a dozen half shell remains, presumably picked apart by the last wintering sanderlings, tumble by like rainbows in the foamy green surf. I wanted an intact remains as a keepsake, and mined the shell-specked sand devotedly while Silas gathered larger shells and smooth, sea-worn stones to toss at the oncoming waves. Often I would find two coquina shells that looked nearly identical, but trying to fit them together revealed less than a perfect match. It seems that in life they are perfectly mated, but in death they are forever separated. I could’ve plucked any number of live ones for my purposes, but it wasn’t for me to take that, to have that.

Silas went to bed with his father, but awoke three hours later to find himself alone, dad out searching for the moon, foolishly, for tonight the clouds returned, bearing rain. The window to our bedroom stood open to better hear the ocean, so I heard his faint cries of “Dadda” break the rhythm of the surf from the adjacent porch, and quickly rose to soothe him. He asked for a hug, and my arms sought him out through the darkness. I held him tight until it seemed he had drifted back into his dreams. But before he slumbered, he wriggled free from my arms and showered my face with kisses. “Thanks for the kisses,” I whispered. “Thanks for the kisses; now goodnight, sweet boy.” And I slipped away, still dreaming.

Puppy Love

2009-07-19T09:41:00.002-04:00

These words replaced my sleep this morning ("Dude," for those who don't know, is our dog).

Ella: Dude was licking our butts. And we let him because it tickles.

Silas: But did you know, that dogs sniff butts to make friends? And last night, Laurel, I sniffed her butt because we were playing puppy and making friends. But I just sniffed it once.

The Tummy Timebomb is Ticking

2009-07-07T01:32:00.003-04:00

It's reasonable for me to hope he hits the toilet. Since he was born with an epiglottis that didn't form a proper lid over his esophagus until he was 7 months old, Silas honed his vomiting skills at an early age. It wasn't uncommon for him to return his milk, along with rancid smelling stomach juices, 10 or more times a day when he was an infant. Since then barfing has evolved into a form of expression. Get him upset enough, and the boy rewards you with a putrid projection of half chewed goldfish and bile. That's mighty good motivation to encourage him to "use your words" to express feelings.

If anything, from the common cold to a nasty ear infection, invades his immune system, a few days of intermittent vomiting is sure to ensue. That brings us to now. Not too surprisingly since he seemingly clings to me 20 hours a day, Silas has acquired the energy-sapping cold that I haven't been able to shed for the past four days. I knew something was up when he refused food all day. The kicker was when he fell asleep on the couch before dinner despite the fact that we had company, Rachel's friend Brady, who he adores. The boy is radiating heat like the tip of a cigarette lighter on the fourth of July, yet he says he feels cold. His breathing is quick and labored. He is sick alright. And I wait, praying that tonight I won't be faced with the difficult decision of which to do first: soothe him back to sleep or mop up his mess. I can almost feel the warmed remains of the last thing he consumed, a yogurt parfait from McDonald's, penetrating the paper towels swaddled around my reluctant hands.

I have hundreds of barf stories, each its own merit badge of fatherhood. His excellent control of his regurgitating faculties is both blessing and curse. He has become quite adept at hitting the toilet (more on that in a minute), but he also has the power to summon his cookies whenever it suits him. The boy detests school, and he has a knack for developing sudden and suspicious early-morning illnesses as dad frantically tries to shuttle him off and get himself to work on time. One morning I felt like I was being duped, so I loaded him up with ibuprofen ("This will make you feel all better so you don't have to miss school and daddy doesn't have to miss work") and slapped him in his car seat, figuring a little over-the-counter pain meds couldn't hurt since the only thing really wrong with him was an acute desire to cuddle with dad on the couch watching Thomas the Tank Engine all day.

"Daddy, I don't feel good," became the chorus on the way to school, with a healthy dose of "My tummy hurts" spliced in for good measure.

"The medicine will start working soon, and you'll be all better," I assured him.

"Nooooo," he whined, stretching it out into several syllabus, "I don't want to go to school. I want to go to your work with you, dadda."

That confirmed it for me; he only breaks out "dadda" when he is in his most manipulative mode. The wee man is trying to pull a fast one on his old man. I walked briskly ahead of him down the hall to his classroom, my chin held high as he came dragging along behind me, tethered to my hand. I have won this power struggle. But as I looked back, the smug little smile at the edges of my countenance faded. A swell of sea green washed the color from his cheeks. He was going to blow.

"Silas, don't..."

It was too late. The teachers' bathroom was two turns and twenty feet away, and a stream of breakfast was already shooting from his hole like a garden hose half-plugged by a thumb. My grip tightened. I swear I heard him gurgle "hurry, daddy" as he hung like a flag taut in the wind behind me on my sprint to the john. Miraculously, instead of settling on the walls and floor around us, the foul lava lashing from the vomit volcano became a lasso-like extension from the boy's tongue. He guided it safely through tight turns before snapping it home with a violent splash, even having the courtesy to miss my hand as it lifted the seat just a split second before impact. It was like watching a scene out of The Matrix, only with barf instead of bullets.

Silas braced his hands on the toilet's edges and hunkered down, determined to deliver the rest of his load. His tiny body recoiled and backfired again and again until, finally, the flush told us it was over, for now. My head bowed--not only had I lost the power struggle, but the boy really was sick--I helped him wash his hands. We scurried out of the school house the way we came in, and I noted, thankfully, the lack of puke particles in our wake.

"You did a great job getting it in the toilet."

"Sorry I threw up, daddy," he said, twisting the knife of guilt another notch deeper.

"It's OK. You couldn't help it. You really are sick."

Plan B.

The only thing that stresses me out more than running late for work, I now know, is running late for work with a vomitous three-year-old in tow. He's not feeling well, I reasoned, so he will gladly sit still and draw with crayons or play on the classroom computer. No one will even notice him.

In unison, twenty college freshmen--even the guys--greeted us with, "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww, he's soooooooooooo cute," as we burst into the class in our familiar formation, dad striding ardently with Silas, squeezed hand turning red, dragging along behind. So much for not noticing him.

"OK buddy, sit right here and draw," I said, plopping down a pack of paper I ripped from the copier on our dash to class.

As I made my way through the aisles, returning a batch of essays I'd recently commented on, I explained that the boy was sick, and that he would be joining us today. After I had handed back just a handful of essays, the boy announced that he had something to show me, and the class's progress was stunted again and again as I examined his quickly dashed off scribbles. He tore through the stack like a star athlete signing glossy 8x10s.

"That's nice, but there's a lot more space here where you could color."

"No, I'm done with this one."

About three words into my general feedback on what students could focus on to improve their essays in their next draft, Si announced that he had another one to show me.

"It's a snake, dadda."

Snakes and the ever-so-similar letter S--which figures so prominently in his name--were the only two representational symbols Silas had a grasp on at the time.

"That's great, it really is, but can you show me all of your pictures after class?"

My face glowing red, I forged ahead, hoping to spark a discussion on the day's reading, but not one eye in the room was on me.

"I'm out of paper, dadda."

"You can use the backs," I replied, bunching his minimalist Pollocks together and flipping them over.

"I don't want to draw on the back."

Rather than fighting this battle I returned to the notes on my legal pad for the day's class. I threw a question out to the group....

Silence...

I could feel the boy moving behind me but tried to ignore it. No one is looking at me, but at least, for once, I don't see anyone texting as I scan the room.

More silence...

Then, finally, laughter as a series of snakes took form on the chalkboard. He hummed as he made his way left to right, his shirt gathering a line of white powder.

I don't remember now what bribe was proffered--a trip to the toy store, an edible treat--but after I whispered in his ear he again agreed to sit quietly, and the waxy residue of the crayolas left their marks on the back of the copier paper. I strode confidently back into the role of teacher.

"OK class, now we can start."

College girls, several of whom have served as his attentive babysitters over the years, are his favorite demographic (can't really blame him there). Even the most devoted dad eventually reaches the threshold of tolerance for building train tracks, and Silas cherishes the level of doting attention that only comes from a hired hand. Before me I saw a group of college students, and it was my duty, even under these circumstances, to shepherd them on their quest for knowledge. But the boy's eyes saw prospects, a fertile ground from which he would harvest a hide and seek partner. Only a minute or two after his pledge of silence, Silas crept from his seat and sidled over to the young lady closest in proximity, gazed deep into her eyes and uttered the line that would do us in for the day: "Will you be my babysitter?"

Uproarious laughter filled the room.

At that point I probably should've offered her some extra credit to remove him from the class and entertain him for an hour, but clear thinking was beyond my meager capabilities at this point. I couldn't have been more embarrassed if I had farted in church. I so clearly had a complete and utter lack of control over my kid!

"OK, this isn't going to work. Give me your journals and check your emails; I'll send you instructions on how we're going to make up what we missed today. Class dismissed!"

The boy was very popular with 20 college freshmen that day. Actually, make that 60 college students. I had two more classes later in the day, but rather than repeat this disastrous scene I just left their essays in two neat stacks at the front of the room, and instructed them to check their email for the day's notes and a revised schedule.

One of my students played with him for a bit while I gathered my things. Surprised by his level of energy, she asked me if he was really sick. I was sure to tell her at our next class that, not ten minutes after she posed that question, I was trying to squeeze his head through the neck of a barf-encrusted shirt and prying chunks of smelly, half-digested cereal out of the crevices of the boy's car seat. He puked all over himself, his seat, and the truck on the way home.

. . .

Two days after the cold that inspired this trip down memory lane, I'm happy to report that the boy seems to be back to good health, and that, for perhaps the first time ever, we survived an illness without any throw up!

Silas Blows His Own Horn

2009-07-05T13:28:00.003-04:00

Conversation this morning after the boy's bath:

Boy: My willie looks like a slug.

Dad: Huh. It's not all slimy, I hope.

Boy: I have the biggest willie of all the boys at my old school.

Dad: (Shocked into silence, wondering what exactly they do at school.)

Boy: My willie is sooooo big, daddy.

Dad: Um. Ok. Well that's good. It's good to have a big willie, I guess.

Boy: And you have a giant willie, daddy.

Dad: Um. Well actually.... Um.

Footprints

2009-06-13T23:07:00.003-04:00

I am a wide, flat river stone.
He crouches, poised to spring from me
to his next adventure.
More and more
I feel the emptiness of wet footprints.

Watauga #6

2009-06-05T03:22:00.002-04:00

It probably wasn't really a question of a 12-year-old's manhood. Playing our fourth game in two days, all of us mountain boys were wilting in the 99-degree heat. In that heat the fires of frustration are easily kindled, and the AAU baseball team I coached had done plenty to fluster me that weekend. But if we could've hung on to win our last game it would've salvaged the weekend to some extent, left us without a bitter taste for the ride back up the mountain.

The bases were drunk with two down, and we clung to a one run lead. "Roll us a ground ball," I shouted out to the mound, "and we'll get out of this thing." The pitcher obliged, and the batter sent a topspin bounder to third. Just knock it down, smother it, step on the bag and let's dump the ice from the coolers and head home. In his defense, he caught an in-between hop, and, unlike most plays at third, it wasn't a reaction play; the ball wasn't hit hard and he had a little time to think about it. Letting the ball play you was not an acceptable thought. Our third baseman abandoned his crouch, straightened up, and hopped a bit backwards as the ball careened off of his knee. When it was finally corralled by the glove of his neighbor, the short stop, the game was tied.

Their first base coach shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "Tough break." Our eyes met, and, inexcusably, regardless of the sweltering anger boiling within me on that unforgiving day, I replied, "That kid needs to get the beans beneath the frank."

I don't even remember how they finally put us out of our misery, but we lost the battle. What I do remember is that comment, and I've spent the last six years regretting saying it as the boy whose manhood was questioned proved time and time again that he is tougher than I'll ever be. Our third baseman that day was Will Dicus; no one knew at the time that a battle bigger than any baseball game was raging inside him.

A few months later Will, then 13, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. The prognosis was dire. A return to the diamond seemed unlikely, even insignificant in light of his new opponent. Will was competing for his next breath, and the doctors placed their bets on cancer.

Will, of course, had other ideas, and even after losing part of the bone in one leg to cancer surgery, he was eager to limp back out to the mound. Though he had played other positions when not pitching, on the bump is where he most excelled. Baseball, as the slogan goes, is life. And it turns out that baseball wasn't such an insignificant concern in the case of Will Dicus; it was the driving force that kept him climbing the bullpen mounds and defying the grim prognostications of the experts for so long.

"Sorry I'm late, coach. I had chemo this morning," said the wisp of a right-hander as he ambled in from the cold to join his teammates in the indoor practice facility.

"Feel like throwing a pen today?"

It was a stupid question. That five ounces of cowhide and cork was cancer's kryptonite in Will's right hand.

"Yessir," he said, already angling towards the mound.

It doesn't take long to find a volunteer to suit up to catch him. Over a year after his diagnosis, cancer had taken the zip off his once overpowering fast ball, and, now a member of the Watauga High JV baseball team, Will is learning how to pitch. At the tender age of 14 he's like a grizzled veteran who, after the mileage on his arm has robbed him of his best stuff, reinvents himself as a crafty control pitcher. Every practice pitch is pain and joy. Physical pain, to be sure, and mental anguish when the catcher has to move his mitt to snare a stray fast ball, or when the curve ball spins, screaming hit me as it meanders through the strike zone rather than darting down and away for a swinging strike. But, mostly, there is joy. Joy to be a part of a team, to wear that uniform, to compete. Joy to play the game you love. Joy in every never to be taken for granted breath.

We had a wealth of pitching that year; in fact, four of Will's teammates would go on to play college ball. Every night at home I'd fiddle with lineups and struggle over whether or not to pitch him in a game. I wanted to find the perfect time to ease him back out on the mound, but time and innings were commodities in short supply. Before cancer, he was always his team's ace, but now he didn't give us the best chance to win. But this is the JV baseball team, not the world series. How can you measure the joy it would bring him to get back on that hill against wins and losses? What if the opportunity you denied him means that opportunity is forever lost?

He and a few of his friends on the team got into a spot of trouble during the season. Boys being boys. Sometimes boys need a bit of extra "conditioning." I stood, arms folded, as his teammates ran from pole to pole on the outfield warning track early one Saturday morning. Behind me in the dewy grass, I hear the grunts of a 14-year-old young man, emaciated, skin pulled taut around his cheekbones from the cancer treatments, churning out pushups.

"Will, get up."

"Coach, I can't run, but I can do pushups."

"Will, get up."

"Coach, if my teammates are being punished, I want to be punished, too."

"Will, get up."

"Coach," he said, a few blades of cut grass clinging to his trembling arms, "I made the same decision they did."

I took a knee, looked him in the eyes. "Stop. This is supposed to be punishment for you, not for me. I can't watch you do this."

"What can I do instead?"

His teammates reached the pole. Sucking air, they asked how many more. "Keep running," I barked.

After much negotiation, Will reluctantly agreed that dumping out the thousands of baseballs in the practice building and sorting them into buckets--heavy, water-logged ones in this bucket, BP balls in another, balls for taking infield here, balls in good enough shape for a pitcher to use for a bullpen there--was an acceptable punishment. He didn't want special treatment.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY...EVENTUALLY

Spring time in the mountains is a hard time to play ball; the rain and snow resulted in a schedule logjammed with makeup games, and by the end of the week Will's number 6 would finally be called. We needed his innings; instead, we got more rain and his first start was washed away. But, finally, he got his shot.

"Will, go get loose," I said. There was the slightest hesitation; he had this look on his face that said, "Seriously, me? Now?" But he quickly shuffled out of the dugout and found the bullpen mound. His teammates actually cheered. Eventually I had to send someone to get him; apparently I should've told him to get loose QUICKLY. "Ask him if he would actually like to pitch in the GAME," I said. His teammates were on the field waiting for him as the gate behind the dugout finally opened, and Will's appearance was met with the thunderous approval of all the Watauga faithful in attendance. Perhaps he just wanted to make a grand entrance.

Despite the beauty of the moment--a young man proving the naysayers wrong and fulfilling his dream of pitching high school ball--his outing was not a thing of beauty. He walked a batter, allowed a few hard hit balls, but he preserved the shutout in a lopsided win over North Forsyth. Our opponents' parents and fans must have been scratching their heads. Why was everyone in our dugout and in our section of the stands hanging on every pitch in a game that had long been decided? Why had the volume level suddenly been cranked from whisper to roar? I coached baseball for more than 10 years, and I'll always remember those three outs more than any other moment. I wish those North Forsyth parents knew they were witnessing a miracle that day. After the last out both teams lined up on their respective foul lines and filed past each other, exchanging the traditional post-game handshakes and "good games." The opposing coaches were heaping compliments on me about what a well coached team we had when they sensed that something was amiss.

"What's wrong?" asked one coach, a leathered, stump of a man with white hair escaping from under his cap.

"Just stay with me a minute," I said, keeping my back to the team as they trotted down to the left field corner for our post-game talk.

"You ok?" said his younger, leaner assistant.

"Just give me a second."

I remember trying not to make eye contact. My turf shoes scratched at the dirt in front of home plate.

"That kid's got a bad deal," I choked out finally. The tears came. "The one that pitched the last inning, Dicus, he's got cancer."

"No way," said the stump. "Gosh, you wouldn't know it; he threw the ball well."

"You should've seen him before cancer. He threw harder at 12 than he does now, but he works so..."

The word "hard" was unintelligible, consumed by the high-pitched whir that accompanies the failure to hold back tears. There was so much more I wanted to tell them about Will.

I had my left arm outstretched, my hand clasping stump's shoulder. He was holding me up as my blurred eyes continued to monitor the progress of my feet. He broke the short silence: "What's his prognosis?"

"Not good. This could be the last time he gets to pitch."

"That's just a shame; it just ain't fair," Stump said.

"I know it. I know it. Hey, I gotta go talk to 'em. But do we one favor, ok?

"Sure, anything."

"Pray for Dicus."

With that I took off for the left-field foul pole. It was the shortest post-game speech in history, but I more or less held it together. I'm sure the more perceptive among them could tell I had been crying.

Will's ERA his freshman year was 0.00. One game, one inning pitched, and no runs allowed. But it wasn't his last game by a long shot. When his health allowed, he contributed a few innings over his sophomore and junior campaigns, actually throwing a no-hitter against Freedom in a JV game and gutting out five innings in his lone varsity start, a win over a good West Wilkes club. When you looked at his stuff, it was hard to figure how he got anyone out. It must have been his will, his determination, his competitiveness, his passion, his confidence, how he cherished each pitch. Most of all, it was those eight guys with him out there who absolutely refused to let him down. Maybe it was divine intervention, but somehow his teammates made plays behind him that they couldn't otherwise make. It was like the deep green canvas of the outfield grass had been repainted with streaks of Watauga blue. Guys were flying around, making plays.

But the end of Will's story didn't play out the way the Hollywood script writers would have written it. The ever advancing cancer had spread throughout his body, viciously attacking the lungs, squeezing the air from him. Each day required a stronger cocktail of pain meds, and Will wouldn't get to take the ball his senior year. I've been away from the program for a few years now, not by choice, but by necessity. I have my own son, whose mother left us when he was 20 months old, to care for. Even if I wouldn't be there to witness it, I had been certain that Will would get the ball on senior night and, with his teammates, find a way to win the last chapter of the epic tale he had woven for so much longer than any of his doctors had expected. I would tune it in on the radio, read about in the paper. The tears would flow all over again. Instead, I read an article about how Watauga's senior night, usually the last home game of the season, had been moved up; it would take place on the night of one of the first games of the year. The article didn't say it in so many words, but I knew Will didn't have long. Even without the prospect of pitching as motivation, baseball sustained him. He supported his team as they claimed the conference championship. He fought on through the year, but when Watauga got upset in the first round of the state playoffs, bringing an unexpected early end to their season, Will was lost. His mother posted in her online journal what her son had told her: "It's all over." And a little over two weeks later it was.

Will's mom signed off every journal entry with the same three words: "Hug your kid." It hurt to hear the news of Will's passing on Monday. As a father, I tried to imagine being in Will's parents' position. As a coach, I grieved for the young men I forged bonds with on the baseball field. But no tears came. When I finally lumbered off to bed, I found myself pausing in my doorway before glancing across the hall and taking a detour. I crept into Silas's room, wedged myself into his bed and wrapped my arms around him. Then, the tears came. I felt the loss. I felt their loss. There was no miracle ending for Will Dicus, but the lessons from his too-short life will make a lasting difference in the countless lives he touched. Thank you, Will, for teaching me to never take my son for granted.

Hug your kid.

Sleepy Time

2009-05-26T23:58:00.003-04:00

For the first six or seven months of Silas's barf-infested existence--he had reflux so bad that after the third or fourth time I got spit up on in a given day, I'd just forgo the clothes change and wear it with pride--sleep came in one of three ways: rolling around the Blue Ridge Parkway or a gravel road in the snug comfort of his car seat, swinging in his Fisher-Price chair, or in my arms after a long song and dance routine. He was, it seems, always on the move; that hasn't changed. I was in graduate school then, and I don't know how many times I pulled over to the side of the road after sleep found him, pulled out whatever book I was behind on, and started reading. If I heard a peep, I'd gently slide the gear shift to D and drive around until I thought it was safe to open the book again. But gas isn't cheap, and replacing the swing's 8 D batteries (it could actually simulate weightlessness on its fastest setting) also left the wallet wanting, so most of the time I fired up the CD player and crooned, pathetically but proudly, while shuffling about the room until he dropped off. I learned through trial and error that 80s pop did the trick best. Baby music CDs and traditional lullabies left us both bored, and my attempt at a high and lonesome sound to accompany bluegrass music sounded like cats fighting in an alleyway. No one could sleep through that. One night I even spun something from my very sparse collection of punkish metal, Rage Against the Machine. Three hours later his heart was still beating about 300 times a minute; he is truly born to rage against bed time.

Once a tenuous sleep was finally achieved the true dance began: the cribbing. As often as not, I'd end up just outside his door making all sorts of promises to God I knew I'd never keep as a first lone whimper grew to a crescendo of wailing. Sometimes I didn't even make it out of the door before the water works unleashed a torrent. As soon as I held him against me the crying stopped, and, just a minute or two after I thought I'd "put him down," sounds of "Hungry Like the Wolf" and the shuffle of two exhausted feet mingled again over the hardwood floor.

Then came the experiment. Tough love. Conversing about the shared struggles of parenthood with your peers can be an immense comfort; it's confirmation, I think, that you're not the only one plagued by doubt about your parenting skills. You're not the only one who sucks at this. Relating is nice, but advice from other parents is often about as useful as my nipples (and just how useless they are was a lesson Silas learned slowly, after much biting). A couple of these other parents convinced me that if I told Silas it was bedtime, gently placed him in his crib, and let him cry it out until he finally gave up and dozed off, my bedtime problems would finally be solved...IF I had the resolve not to go in and pick him up for two or three consecutive nights. It came down to a battle of wills. On the first night their kid cried for just 20 minutes before sleep triumphed. Their kid gave in to sleep without a fight the next night. I hate their kid. My kid showed the stamina of Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens, except there was no symbolic death (i.e. sleeping), and I finally broke down and went to soothe him. Silas had blared demon-possessed screams for an hour and a half. I sought out the darkest recesses of the house and countered his cries with one of our familiar 80s mixes, but I could still hear him. And then the next night: second verse, same as the first. His stubborn cries only subsided when, after another hour and a half of languishing in guilt, I admitted defeat and went to him. I can still feel his tiny chest heaving against the hammer of my heart.

The next night saw an end to the very brief life of the crib. He was back in my bed, and would remain there for the next two and a half years. Even now, it's not uncommon to awaken to Silas's utterance of a single word that says it all, "snuggle," and find him wedging himself under the covers at four a.m. Sometimes I'll wake up in the morning surprised to find him next to me after he's tiptoed noiselessly across the berber and slipped under cover undetected. The music has faded, replaced by a bedtime story (or two, or three), and a long cuddle before he drifts off. Broken and spent, each night I still perform a Houdini-like escape, untangling myself from his clutches, still trying to catch up on reading (only now that reading is most likely to be in the form of a formidable stack of student essays).

Below are a couple of shots of two-year-old Silas, himself looking spent. In the first picture he's scooting around the bed, steering clear of the diaper placed neatly atop his jammies, as I incompetently cajole him to come hither. The most troubling thing about the second picture is not his outfit--boots and a hat and otherwise birthday-suited--but the bloodshot-eyes red digital reading that mocks me; it's 12:01 a.m. and the lights aren't even out yet. Silas's time with me has truly been a sleepy time, but sleepy time always finds him...eventually.

Crack Attack

2009-05-25T01:36:00.000-04:00

Conversation with boy (after reading bedtime story and turning off the light):

Silas: Dad?
Dad: What?
Silas: I need to sanitize.
Dad: Why?
Silas: You know that thing you told me not to do?
Dad: What thing?
Silas: Not to scratch in the crack where my poop comes out.
Dad: Uh huh.
Silas: I did that.
(Dad traipses off to the bathroom, returns with sanitizer)

The boy will do anything to forestall bedtime for one more minute.

Heads Up: A Boy is Born

2009-05-22T01:21:00.000-04:00

It's coming up on 4 and 1/2 years since life sprang from above a crimson pool on the laminate wood floors of the birthing center, room 4. The incessant coaching to push, the exhausted wailing, was replaced after nearly 24 hours of hard labor, not with sighs of relief, but with the aghast exclamations of the nurses. They cried out in unison, hissing a shrill alarm as the cold shine of the stainless steel surgical scissors extended from my palm. The mouths behind the surgical masks were surely agape. "What's wrong?" I demanded. One nurse regained her composure: "Nothing. Nothing's wrong," she said assuringly. "It's just that they're not supposed to be able to hold their head up like that." As I cut Silas free they explained that newborns can't hold their heads up, but when my boy finally emerged he bent his head upward, wide eyed, and craned his neck to survey his new surroundings. Untethered after two snips--the first one was reluctant--Silas was booked into his bassinette, where the nurses inked and printed his feet after working intently to smooth away the coat of ooze he came out with. Then I had the first contact with my son. Hesitantly--despite his early mastery of head movement, he seemed as tender and breakable as an early spring shoot--I probed him with an outstretched pinky. He latched on; his grip grows ever tighter.

Over these four years and change, I've sketched out a handful of memories of fatherhood, occasionally besting the blinking cursor with something that, if not for its overwrought sentimentality, might resemble readable prose. Intermittently at best (though my child is a daily inspiration, I am no daily blogger) this space will house those sketches that heretofore have remained imprisoned among countless handouts and assignment sheets in "My Documents." And, hopefully, new sketches will emerge in time. I invite my family and friends to indulge me with your readership as I indulge myself in the love of my spirited Silas, my still point of the turning world.

Genesis

2009-05-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon David, who created this blog.