Milestones

Life is full of firsts and lasts and yesterday we rode the train to the small town of Koenigswinter, nestled in the first of the low, cool mountains along the Rhine as you enter the Eifel range. He will be spending two nights away from home with his First Communion class, the boys and girls from the Third year at his school. It is quite an adventure for him and he nearly missed it. He caught a stomach bug over the weekend and it was very doubtful he would make it. He missed the bus ride up with his classmates, but we joined them in time for lunch on the first day and that made him happy, as happy as I have ever seen him.

And I was happy for him, that he was able to participate in this rite of passage, the slow moving away, another step in his growing up. He must have been ok last night, the bug must have left him, because I didn’t get a call and I was dreading it. I wanted him to have this experience, to share it with the children he has known now for the last three years, a significant swath of time in the life of an 8-year-old. They were happy to see him and cheered when he walked into the lunch room yesterday and took a seat at the table with his pals. And I got back in the cab and then the train and came home, to this very quiet place.

Marks on the Cabin Door

Photo: T. Quick

Marks on the Cabin Door


Summer is winding down; there is that unmistakable chill in the evening air that signals the waiting fall and HH has just celebrated his seventh birthday. Time to take it in, and write it out, my way of absorbing events, the passage of time, processing the important and not so important events in my life and that of those I love.

I am not sure why the end of summer is the point in time I have always felt marked the end of one year and the start of another. Perhaps it’s a carry-over from school days or some vestige of my agrarian roots – the shorter days, the rush to bring in the crops before the frost, lardering in anticipation of the dark winter ahead. Nevertheless, it has always been so for me and in recent years, the celebration of HH’s birthday has only added to the significance of the season.

There is a series of marks, short black dashes, on the doorframe of his bedroom in the Catskill cabin we retreat to each summer, one for each year. We began standing him up against that doorframe when he was two and at the end of every summer, we marked his progress. That mark on the door is a short-hand note, a too-brief but nonetheless telling point, reminding us of summers gone by, of events, firsts, storms – personal and climatic – and how, with each passing year, HH is growing up.

I started this, I don’t know what to call it exactly - blog, diary, journal, at about the same time the first mark was scratched on that door. I am an older father, far older than most men with a seven-year-old son, and the habits of my life have not always been healthy ones. HH has finally arrived at a time in his life when his memory will be capable of storing events away for a lifetime. However, I have no doubt that much, if not most, of our time together will be lost to him. There is only so much a picture can communicate, and so I took up this habit in the hope that he might have something of me, the words behind the pictures of summers passed, and in the process, know the father he will, in all probability, largely forget.

We saw our first Yankee game this year. It was a sweltering July afternoon and the Yankees beat the Angels 10-6. It was my first time in the new Yankee stadium and HH’s first major league baseball game ever. Growing up in Germany, HH had heard a lot about the game of baseball but he had never seen a game. He has been wearing a Yankee cap since he was two and we sing, “Take me out to the Ballgame” but only as a marker to indicate that the aircraft he pilots from the top of his bunk bed has landed in New York. Until this summer, he had no idea what the song was really about. He did recognize the National Anthem and he hummed along with the crowd. When it was over, and everyone sat down, he turned to me and asked when the song for California was going to be played. Before this July afternoon, his experience of sporting events was limited to World Cup Soccer matches where each team’s National Song is played before the match. I explained to him that California and New York were part of the same country, one song, one nation, indivisible, etc …

We had the good fortune of attending the game with my friend Herb. Herb and I worked together for a number of years in the TV business and he is one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject of baseball. Herb and I often found ourselves in foreign territory (our common National Anthem notwithstanding) during the World Series. One night during the Boston-New York series, he told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was not to call the police or the front desk or attempt to break down the door, should I hear strange, loud noises or banging on the walls from his room. Herb is a participatory baseball game watcher and the World Series (particularly the heated Boston-New York rivalry) often called for extreme participation.

We ate our way through the New York- California game, popcorn, hot dogs, lemonade and beer, but alas no crackerjacks – and HH was thrilled. The new Yankee stadium is quite an impressive place; huge, loud and commercialized beyond belief. That said; the game was terrific with home runs and great plays and Herb there to give HH and me stats on all the players as well as a measure of historical background on the game. That afternoon, we took the subway back to Brighton Beach where we spent the night with friends. It was our only day in the City this summer but it was a full one. We returned to the mountains the next morning and spent the rest of our summer there.

Part 2 to follow …

Scarlet Fever

When HH is sick there is a great deal of second guessing and feeling the forehead and taking temperatures with three different thermometers , two of which read Celsius, which send me running to the internet to see if he’s sick in the European sense of sick. Then there is the sitting at the edge of his bed and watching him part, trying to decide if those bright red cheeks are a sign of something terrible or simply the result of the extra blankets or the fact that I forgot to remove his socks when I put him in bed at 4:00 in the afternoon when he nearly fell asleep on the floor in the hallway after taking off his jacket when we got home from school.
Sitting on the edge of the bed may be the toughest part, particularly if there is a little rattle in his throat that brings out a soft snore and the hair around his face is wet with perspiration from the fever. The temptation is to wake him up to make sure he’s ok or at least not any worse than he was before he fell asleep. I’ve done that, awakened him to make sure he wasn’t delirious, but he usually just tucks his small, smelly bear to his face and falls right back to sleep.
But it’s the middle of the night when all the doubts and fears peak, when he shows up at the side of my bed crying because his cough is so strong he can’t sleep or his ear hurts or he has vomited all over himself. That’s the time when I wish I were back home, back in the place I knew when I was a boy growing up, where I know the routine like the back of my hand. I know the numbers to call and just the right tone of voice to use when speaking with the doctor or the nurse or the intern on-call in the emergency room. It’s times like these when I fell like an alien here, not just a foreigner or an American but an alien, someone who for all the studying and acculturation I’ve gone through still doesn’t and may never know the ropes like a local. And the damned thing about it is that HH is the one who is suffering in the bed next to me, where I’ve settled him down with a dose of children’s ibuprofen and a cool cloth on his forehead.
This week he came down with Scarlet Fever, just hearing the words sent a wave of dread through me. He’s taking his medicine now and I think the worst is over but there will be other nights, I know there will, when the light in my room comes on unexpectedly at 3:00AM and his bright red face stares up at me with that unmistakable “I don’t feel well” look and it all starts over again. Tonight, at least, we will both sleep soundly. I hope.

That’s your grandfather jumping out of the plane …

This weekend HH’s grandfather, T. Moffatt Burriss, was honored for his courage during World War II in the capture of the brides in Nijmegen, Holland in the battle known as Operation Market Garden. Beatrix, Queen of The Netherlands, Prince Phillip of Great Britain, US General David Petraeus, the US Ambassador to The Netherlands, the German and Polish Ambassadors and numerous other military and civilian officials gathered to recognize the sacrifices American soldiers made during the liberation of Europe. It was an eventful and memorable weekend and His Holiness was there.
He missed a day of school and would be three days away from his favorite toys, but when promised a hotel room with a television, he was willing to go along. Before we had even left the neighborhood he was asking how long it would take to get there and when we were coming home. I explained to him that we would be going on a long trip, like when we went to America this summer. He got it and really didn’t bother with the question more than once or twice more during the trip. Later that morning, in a cow pasture about 20 minutes outside of Nijmegen, he watched his “Big Pa” parachute out of an airplane four days before his 90th birthday. He hit the ground smiling and we were all relieved. Another veteran jumped with him but his landing was not so smooth. He’s fine, but he had a few cuts and bruises and required a visit to a local hospital.
It was a powerful moment witnessing these two men who in their 20’s had jumped from their planes into a battle where a huge number of them would not survive. The impression I was left with was not just how remarkable their accomplishments are, but how it must feel for them to be in that pasture together, sixty-five years later. Whenever two or more of the veterans were together, one could almost sense the bond between them. Few experiences in life bind men together as do the nearness of death and the loss of friends.
We spent the weekend attending commemorative events and watching parades. But we took a big break in the middle for HH to visit one of the local playgrounds in Nijmegen. I’ve attached a picture because it was probably one of the nicest playgrounds I’ve even seen. We spent a good deal of time there and then took a long hike through the Dutch countryside. It was a full day and we expected HH to go right to bed. And we almost made it until he turned on the TV and caught a German Volksmusik program that he watches when he visits his German Aunt and Uncle. For those of you who have never heard or seen this music (I say seen because the costumes are a major part of the experience) it is very traditional, with accordions and rousing choruses and dirndl skirts for the ladies and lederhosen for the men. It’s beer hall music, German country and western and HH loves it. He was clapping along and laughing – he even knew some of the singers. It is all lip-synched and most of the performers were fortunate that the lighting technician was a forgiving person, but he enjoyed it and we enjoyed him enjoying it.

The big celebration was on Sunday and the entire city of Nijmegen was locked off – no traffic in or out. The Dutch have become very serious about the Queen’s security following a recent incident where a man drove his car into a crowd, killing seven, during an appearance by the Queen earlier this year. We sat in the VIP section behind the Queen and the other dignitaries, but we didn’t see much of the Majesties from our seats. It was nevertheless memorable and I hope HH will in fact remember some of it. Although if I had to guess, I would say the playground and the Hotel TV were probably the things he most enjoyed about the trip.
We made it home to Cologne and are awaiting word that Pig Pa made it home to the US safely as well. He is a remarkable man, not only for what he has done but by what he continues to do each day - engage life. Even while acknowledging the extraordinary events of his past, he was active, jumping out of that airplane at his age – at any age – and when he hit the ground he wasn’t saying how he was happy just to have survived, he was making plans to do it again. That’s a lesson worth remembering.

HH and Superman

A few weeks ago, we went to visit his HH’s Grandmother in South Carolina. The two of us set off on our adventure with his backpack loaded with his special friends, the ones we don’t go anywhere without, while I carried the rest of our gear. No matter that he’s less than a quarter my size and weight, his stuff still occupies 75% of the space in our luggage. I thought when he emerged from toddlerhood that the age-to-baggage ratio might level out a bit but it hasn’t.

I struggled to balance the three bags I was carrying while keeping one hand free to hold his as we made our way through check-in, security and finally to our gate. We arrived early, which was a good thing because somehow our seats had not been assigned together and I was not getting on that plane unless the two of us were sitting side by side. We trudged through Newark airport, my hand sanitizer at the ready, supplemented with regular warnings not to put his fingers in his mouth or nose.

There was a good deal of time to kill so we sat on the floor in front of the window overlooking the tarmac and played an airport version of “Mack and Hop-Sing” our daily ritual starring HH as the all powerful Mack, mayor of our town, police officer, pilot, farmer, train conductor and Viking and me, as Hop-Sing, his black, Mexican brother. He’s never commented on the fact that his character is white and mine in black and I’ve never brought it up. It just happened that way because when we started playing the game, we had one white and one black, plastic Lego man. I’m secretly very happy it turned out that way and I’ve not made a point of noting the difference, that time may come but it hasn’t yet.

Playing on the floor of the Newark airport terminal filled me with parental dread. Our travel kit from Germany included Tamiflu, surgical masks, a stock of hand-sanitizer and anti-bacterial wipes. I admit to being a victim of the Swine Flu scare but I figured it was better to be prepared than sorry. During pauses in our game, HH would wander over to the window and marvel at the heavy equipment, his face pressed against the glass, followed by my constant reminders not to lick it. I was relieved, somewhat, when we finally got on the plane and underway. The flight was good; he slept most of the way waking just in time to relish in the turbulence as we began our decent onto Columbia Metro Airport. HH loves turbulence, while I, on the other hand, was doing my best not to hold his hand too firmly as our plane waddled toward the runway.

We picked up our rental car, made it home, had a quiet meal and went to bed. The next day we visited with family and he turned in later than normal, complaining that my brothers and sister made too much noise at dinner and couldn’t I ask them to keep it down a bit. The next morning he awoke crying with a fever and a headache. I monitored him for 24 hours and when the fever didn’t let up and the headaches continued and the cough developed, I took him to the Doc-in-a-box down the street to be checked. He was diagnosed with Type A influenza. I was told the State Department of Health had requested samples for further testing and that I would be getting a call in 48 hours with the results. I was not to travel outside the country and had to keep him and myself in isolation until we received the test results. My family had to leave the house, my sister had to bring food to us, and HH was not allowed to leave the house. My worst nightmare was coming true and we were far from home, away from our family doctor, away from his mother, and not happy. The only saving grace was the wide-screen TV set in the den. I set HH up on the couch, with a TV tray and a blanket and for the next three days, he watched TV and coughed. I slept in his bed with him, more to comfort me than him although it was at his request that I joined him. There was no way I was going to sleep in another room, not with him in there coughing and sweating. I didn’t sleep much that week but HH had a ball. We don’t have a TV. I expect one day I’ll be forced to buy one but I hate the things and haven’t watched TV regularly for a decade or more. I turned it on in the late morning of September 11, 2001 and pretty much kept it on for a year until it finally got to me, again.

On those rare occasions when he does watch TV, like when he visits his Oma or his Aunt Doris, HH doesn’t usually watch the news. Once while perched in his Oma’s lap he caught a news segment about an airline crash and came downstairs to ask me what happened to all those people in the burning airplane. I reminded his Oma once again why we didn’t have a TV and to please keep the TV on kid’s programming if it had to be on at all. However, during our quarantine in South Carolina that damned TV was a life-saver and when it was finally time to fly home, HH had very mixed feelings. He wanted to go home – he just didn’t want to give up the TV. I had finally reached his Doctor and who told me that as long as HH was taking the Tamiful and his temperature didn’t exceed 101, he could fly, with a mask. So we finally made our way home. HH wasn’t fully recovered and would need to spend another week mending. Knowing he was going to be home, in bed, with little or nothing to do, and with a full-blown TV habit, we resorted to video.

When he first looked at the two-DVD boxed set of Superman (the animated version) he was curious but not elated. He as a Spiderman guy and although he had heard of Superman, he wasn’t a fan. Well, after three days of watching that DVD he was hooked. Mack and Hop-Sing have now been transformed into Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen. Lois Lane is there, Lex Luthor, Perry White and the entire cast of villains and support personnel from the city of Metropolis. He rediscovered the Superman t-shirt I had picked up for him last fall and rarely takes it off. Superman fascinates him. Two nights ago, on the Summer Solstice, he refused to go to bed until it was completely dark outside. So we sat up in the living room and he talked to me until he began to nod off. He waxed eloquent about the planet Krypton, about Superman’s costume and how he (HH) was going to invent his own version of the Superman outfit so that we could do our grocery and toy shopping without the muss and fuss of driving.

HH is fully recovered no, his Swine Flu results were negative, and although he still has a bit of a cough, he is pretty much back to his old self again. The two of us went fishing for the very first time yesterday. We caught two small fish and released them and life is beginning to resemble something like normalcy. The big difference between now and before our trip to Grandmother’s house is Superman. I don’t know how this will turn out – I never do – but I hope the call of summer, the warm days and the lure of the lake, will take his mind off the DVD player and the new superhero who has taken up residence in the imagination of my son.

Toys of War

Dear Son:

Last night we talked about Vikings and Knights and the end of the world. Good guys, bad guys, and the battles they fight are much in your thoughts these days and therefore in mine as well. I suppose it’s inevitable that you would want to take up your wooden sword and your plastic pistol and act out the battles you have been watching in your Viking cartoons and that you have seen the older boys at kindergarten playing, but some part of me is still surprised. I don’t know if surprised is the right word exactly, disappointed is too harsh, but some hybrid of the two is what I’m feeling. In the back of my mind, I knew it was coming but I thought it might wait another year.

Yesterday when I picked you up from school, the girls were sitting together on one side of the room playing with dolls and the boys were on the other side building forts and Viking ships from Lego blocks. Last year at about this time, I would just as likely find you in the play area with the girls, cooking dinner or playing house, but that doesn’t happen anymore. When I was a little boy I played with toy soldiers and acted out battles just as you are doing today, but as my generation came of age, we staged a sort of revolution, in which the toys of war we outlawed. Many of my contemporaries decided not to allow these toys in their homes and for your first five years, I did the same, politely refusing gifts of that sort when well-meaning aunts, uncles and others offered them.

All the little rules your parents impose, the walls we build around you to protect you from the ugly side of life, the boundaries we set hoping to frame the contours of your choices: What effect do they really have in the end? The influences of the world outside our home are strong – they will not be confined within our walls of will and admonition and with every passing day, you are spending less of your time with us and more of your time with your friends, a division that will only increase as you grown up and away.

We played on the living room floor after dinner last night. You refused to go to bed until we had staged a battle. We had been playing earlier that evening, building ships and fortifying the castle, but you insisted on staging a battle with the bad guys. So I gave you a fifteen-minute reprieve from bedtime, took up my position with the bad guys’ ship and attacked the castle. When it looked like I might get away with the chest of gold you had hidden in one of the turrets you threw a mild fit. I knew you were tired and that it had probably been a mistake to keep on playing at that hour of the day, when disappointment so quickly turns to tears, and I tried to calm you, asking you what was wrong. You said you didn’t like losing. Ultimately, we got going again and you captured my one remaining soldier and threw him in jail. As we were making our way to bed, I reminded you that one doesn’t always win each battle or conflict in which he is engaged, that is was inevitable that there would be failures and that failing was ok if you learned from it. You were not convinced and reiterated that you didn’t like losing.

You asked for a story that night, a “real” story you said, something made up, something imaginary. I struggled with what to say (I couldn’t come up with anything) and mercifully, you asked me to tell you the story of your mother. When the story was over and you started to get a little bleary-eyed, you settled into your pillow and got that look you get sometimes, of a tired, old man trying to make sense of the world for his troubled son. “You know Papa, when I die the world will still be here. The world goes on and on. The buildings will fall down, even the Dom Cathedral will fall one day, but not the world.” And with that, you rolled over and went to sleep.



I love you,
Papa

The “Venus” stage

We’re reading “The Borrowers.” It’s a small, quirky book about a family of three miniature people who live under the kitchen floorboards of an old house. The book was published the year I was born, but I first found it last fall during a trip to New York. The book has chapters, something new for HH, and I have been reading it to him, one chapter at a time for the last week or so.
When I first brought the book home, he wasn’t interested in having it read to him. There is only one illustration per chapter and the subject of little people living under the house wasn’t appealing. So I waited a few months and tried again. He still wasn’t particularly excited at the idea but one night I just launched into the book and when I reached the end of the second page, I asked him if he wanted me to keep reading. He gave me an enthusiastic nod, although I could sense he was not completely sure why he wanted to hear more.
The book concerns the lives and adventures of a father, mother and young daughter who are the sole remaining “Borrowers” in a house that had once known three or four such families living behind the walls or under the floors of the house. One by one, they had been “seen” by one or another of the occupants of the house and decided to move away. One unlucky character fell victim to a cat that had been brought in for that very purpose.
As the story opens, the father of the family confesses to his wife that he too has been “seen” by a small boy who was in the house visiting his sick aunt. The language is a little complicated for HH and every now and then I have to stop to explain a word to him. But otherwise, he is completely taken by the story. More than once, he has asked me if the little people really existed. I told him I didn’t think so but that many people over the ages have held such beliefs. Last night he asked me if Mama believed in the little people.
I told him he would need to ask her himself. He asked me when she would be home again and I told him. He rolled over into his sleep position then reached his hand around his back to find mine. I sat there with him while he held my hand and slowly went off to sleep.
Lately he has had Mama on his mind. It has been our practice to alternate nights with HH. One night I will read to him in English and the next night Mama will read to him in German. It has worked pretty much like that since day one, except for long stretches when one of us was away for work. Recently however our routine has changed. More often than not, after I have given him his bath and dressed him for bed, he will ask for Mama. “But its Papa’s night,” I say. “You can read to me tomorrow.” Then he gives me a complicated explanation about how many times I have read to him and how many times Mama has read to him and why tonight is Mama’s night – period.
After a few nights of this, I ask him if he enjoyed having Papa read to him. He got a wee bit serious and tried to explain to me that the parent from whose belly a child was born, was naturally a little more important to that child. He spoke in the third person and seemed to be making an effort not to hurt my feelings.
A while back, the fact that we were both “boys” and had the same anatomical gear, was something that bound us together. During that period, he would more often than not, prefer to have Papa read to him. That period has passed. It may reappear at some later date, but for now HH is in his “Venus” stage and being with Mama is very important to him. These shifts have been an irregularly periodic aspect of living with HH. At times, he prefers to be with Papa and during other stretches, he prefers to be with Mama. He never really excludes the other parent completely but he does express a clear preference for one over the other. I haven’t read up on this because it seems very normal somehow, like a runny nose or deciding one day that he never wants to eat another egg. But I am curious about it – and I find his awareness of the nature of his early relationship with his mother, particularly interesting.
Living with a five-year-old is never dull and it is frequently joyous. The flip side is of course something that all parents share: Fear. It takes its form in every possible situation from crossing the street to administering a new medicine, planning for the future (that’s the one that keeps me up at night) and generally, to the question of whether I am doing what I should be doing as a parent. Am I making the right choices for this little person? The only down-side to the current situation, is that being the parent on the “”Mars” side of the equation, causes me to think about how I’m doing as a parent. That’s not a bad thing. It’s probably a good idea to reflect on your parenting now and then, make adjustments as needed, and introduce something new into the routine. But at the same time, the loss of your child’s attention hurts a little. I think I’ll have to ask Mama about it.

Time to Play

The economy has me in a slump. It is tough these days to write about daily life without referring to the ever-present predictions and manifestations of the international economic meltdown. You turn on the news or pick up almost any periodical and the first, second and third stories are all about the worsening economy – this company has laid off 10,000 workers or this company has filed for bankruptcy or this company has closed its doors forever. As a result, I’ve been writing less and reading more. The problem is that reading about what is happening around me doesn’t do much good. Ok, I’m informed about the events of the day, but what can I do about it?

HH doesn’t know anything about the global financial crisis. His world is an oasis from the ups and downs of the economy. When he comes padding down the hall each morning and commands me to join him on the living room floor for a session of Lego-world play, it is truly an escape. This realization didn’t dawn on me at first. We’ve been playing some form of this game for a long time. Like many little boys, HH is a constant builder. At first he used large wooden blocks, then Duplo Lego blocks and now he’s graduated to “big-boy” Lego. The building materials have changed but the game is pretty much the same, although the complexity of the story lines have evolved as he becomes more aware of the world around him and better able to express himself. In the last year, the intensity of the playing has noticeably picked up. It is the first thing he talks about in the morning – the very first thing – and the last thing he talks about at night before we slip into story time.

I have a confession to make - lazy father that I am. There were many times when I wished he would forget about Lego play and read a book or paint a picture or do almost anything but insist that I sprawl on the floor with him and give voice to the 20-odd characters who inhabit his miniature world. That’s my primary role in the game – voicing the characters. Each one has a specific voice and personality. HH voices about four of the characters and I do the rest. At the end of a session my voice is shot and my knees are sore.

Then about a month ago, after reading a particularly gloomy article, I realized that my son was offering me something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Short of soaking myself in whiskey, playing with him provided me with an opportunity to escape the real world for a moment or two. I’d forgotten how important play is in life, not just for children but for us grown-ups as well.

The other day he was playing with his milk, blowing bubbles through his flexible straw and dripping milk all over the table. I was tempted to say - “Don’t play with your food” - a phrase that came from some deep corner of my memory and nearly passed my lips before I suppressed it. I did caution him to keep his milk in his glass but I was reluctant to tell him not to play.

The next time he said, “Papa let’s play Mack and Hop-Sing” (that’s what we call our game) I was actually eager to join him. I forgot about the sinking stock market and the likelihood that the new project I was counting on might fall victim to the budget ax that has devastated so many in recent months. I don’t imagine that HH has picked up the pace and intensity of our playtime together because he senses some need in his Papa for more “down on the floor-time”, but I can’t help but be amazed at how our playing together has been a balm to me. The child is his father’s teacher, or so the saying goes, and every day HH does something to remind me to pay attention to what he has to say, and yes, to play.

Stories of Ourselves

HH and I have a bedtime routine.
First, he takes his bath, which always includes a strong play component involving the two characters we play. We inhabit these characters at least once or twice a day, usually in the morning before breakfast and then during bath time. On weekends, we might slip in another session.
He is “Mack”; a builder, policeman, Mayor of our small town, train engineer, restauranteur, pilot, knight-errant and singer-songwriter and I am “Hop Sing” his brother and side-kick. Following our evening round-up of whatever bad guys may have made the regrettable choice to visit his bath tub, we brush our teeth and head off to bed where I read him a story or two. I love that time of day, when he’s all clean and sleepy and I’m settled in beside him reading.
A while back, not wanting this magic time to be quite over, but not having the eye power to read another book, I initiated a routine where I turn off his lights, tuck him in snuggly and tell him a story. I ask him if there is anything special he wants me to talk about or if he has a question. Sometimes he’ll ask me about the stars or God or what it was like when I was a little boy, but more often than not he will ask me to tell him a story about when he was a little boy.
Last night he asked me to tell him a story he had never heard before, he wanted a story from when he was a “Little, little, little boy.” I had to rack my brain. I’ve told him all the “big” stories, such as when we saw the black bear and all about the day he was born and a dozen or so other tales from his childhood, and I was drawing a blank. So I asked him if he remembered visiting the firehouse just down the road from our cabin in the Catskills of upstate New York. The volunteer fire department in our area has an old fire truck from the late 1950’s that they used to keep in the pasture across the road from the fire house. They had a little sign hanging from it asking for donations to restore the old engine but over the years nothing has been done until finally last summer they towed the truck out of the pasture and parked it beside the fire house where it will probably rust away peacefully.
He loved that old truck and used to prop himself behind the steering wheel each evening after dinner and wouldn’t leave until the street light in front of the fire house came on, a warning to us that we had about thirty minutes to get back to our cabin before the darkness set in. There are no street lights in our neck of the woods and the nights are very dark indeed.
When he said no, I was floored. We must have traipsed up to that old fire truck a hundred times during the first two summers after we took the cabin. Almost every summer night after dinner I would load him in the stroller, he with his red, plastic fire hat wobbling on his head and his dirty brown bear clutched firmly in his hands. How could he have already forgotten such an important part of his life? I asked him a few more questions about the recent past (recent to me at least) and got the same response.
I had two reactions. First, I was struck by how differently our memories worked. He could remember last summer, or at least a few highlights from it, but little or nothing from the preceding summers. “You don’t remember the fire truck?” I asked him. “No Papa, you’re old and I’m little. You remember things but I don’t.” he replied. All those shared experiences that seemed so meaningful to me at the time were gone – from his memory at least.
My second reaction was relief. Now I had a whole store of experiences to draw from for our nightly talks. Events that I assumed would be familiar to him (and therefore not the stuff of stories he had never heard) had in fact disappeared.
Another thing occurred to me as well. How much of our memory of early childhood is the product of our conscious experience of events and how much is a product of the recounting of these events by our parents, the creation of memories, the shared experience of the story of ourselves?

HH had his audition

Yesterday morning HH got up as usual, a little slowly, dragging his raggedy bear behind him as he made his way into the kitchen, where he usually finds me, pecking away at the computer. “You need to be gentle with me today Papa” he said. When I asked him why, he didn’t have an answer but I was able to determine that it had something to do with kindergarten (what doesn’t?) and it seems he had some kind of run-in with one of the boys in his class. However, I think there was something else weighing on his mind.
For the last few weeks he’s been rehearsing a song. HH wants to attend the Domsingschule here in Cologne. From among its students come the boys and girls who sing in the choir at the Dom Cathedral. One of the boys in our neighborhood attended the school and one of HH’s kindergarten friends was admitted last year. HH loves to sing – as our neighbors with attest. He also likes to play the piano, beat on drums, wail on his harmonica and generally make a joyous noise during most of his waking hours.
The Domsingschule is a private school and part of the admission process is a two-part interview. Part one consists of a musical audition, part two consists of a math and language skills evaluation. I have no way of knowing which holds more weight but I suspect that the musical part of the evaluation goes a long way toward determining which children are admitted. Mama and I were a bit nervous about this whole process – HH doesn’t do well with “musts” and is inclined to clam up or shut down when faced with an option that isn’t of his own choosing. I don’t have any problem with that, I think it’s a good thing that he has a strong sense of what he likes and dislikes. Nevertheless, making a decision about which primary school to attend is a big deal – one that has long-term implications.
This wasn’t our first experience with school interviews. Earlier we had taken HH to another school in the area for a meeting with the principal. We introduced ourselves, chatted for a few minutes then left the room while HH and the principal had a little chat. We came back 15 minute later to find the two of them sitting quietly together, HH working his way through a package of Gummi Bears and the principal looking over some papers on her desk. When we asked how the meeting had gone the principal smiled and informed us that HH was a charming little boy but he had no desire to answer any questions or otherwise participate in the evaluation. So we bundled ourselves up, thanked the principal for her time and left.
On the way out we walked through the playground, the same path we had taken on our way in. HH stopped for a moment and watched the children interacting on the playground then tugged at my hand to move on. Later I asked him how things had gone in his meeting with the principal. “I don’t want to go to school there,” he told me. I didn’t press the point but I think he must have seen something or sensed something on that playground that didn’t suit him. He had made up his mind during that short walk through the playground and into the principal’s office, that this wasn’t the place for him. Now that I look back on it, I recall some of our earlier visits to the Domsingschule, HH sitting on my lap in the waiting area, watching the children as they passed by, looking at the teachers, soaking it all in. I could hear the children singing from the waiting room, I expect HH could hear them too.
Yesterday HH put on his white dress shirt, something he very rarely does, submitted to having his hair combed and his face washed without a struggle and generally made himself ready for the day. We had tried to find a balance between rehearsing the song he was going to sing and at the same time not piling up too much pressure on the little guy. But he knew something was up and that it was important and I think that was why he felt the need for a particularly “gentle” morning.
The meeting with the Choir Master of the Dom Choir was impressive. He’s a smart, gentle man who has obviously done this many, many times before. He was able to make HH comfortable in his first few questions and soon the two of them were over at the piano singing and discerning notes and rhythms. HH sang his prepared song and then he was asked to sing it a note higher, then a note higher, then a note higher. It was a friendly game-like session but this man was really testing the full range of HH’s musical predisposition and Mama and I knew just what was going on. She looked at me more than once with her eyes wide open and her mouth squinched up. HH, however, was in his element and at the end of the day, the Choir Master was all smiles and so was HH.
I don’t know how HH will do on the next part of his evaluation, he will either embrace of reject it – it’s out of my hands once I’ve done the flash cards and played and coached our way through the alphabet a few more times.
Deciding which school HH will attend isn’t something we’ve left entirely to his choosing. It was our decision after all about which schools were even up for consideration. After that initial selection, it was up to HH to decide. We can prep him, help him, and press his nice white shirt, but when he sits in that chair across the desk from his questioners, all we can do is wait it out. He’s on his own at that point and can’t turn to Mama or Papa for the answer.
This is all a part of the great letting go. Thankfully it’s a slow process, and you generally have a pretty good idea of when the big steps are about to take place – not always – but usually. When I say that “thankfully” the process of letting go is a slow one, I mean that days like yesterday are rare; they don’t come every day or every year. Yesterday was a long time coming and I am thankful I was there to witness it.

Mysteries at Christmas

HH lost his first tooth. It fell out during lunch this weekend and he didn’t blink an eye. “Now I’m a big boy,” he said. And that was it; he went back to eating his pasta and didn’t give it much more thought. At least he didn’t talk about it.

There have been other things on his mind lately, so maybe it’s understandable that the loss of a tooth didn’t make it to the top of the list of things he wanted to talk about. It’s nearing Christmas and he’s having some trouble sorting out the various characters that inhabit the “spirit” landscape here in Germany. Mama and I were away over the recent St. Nicholas weekend, which he spent with his Aunt and Uncle in a nearby town. St. Nicholas found him there however and when he woke on the morning of December 6th, his shoes were filled with candy.

At his Aunt’s house, the “Christkind” makes an appearance on Christmas day bringing toys to good girls and boys, but in Cologne, where we live, the “Weihnachtsmann” is the carrier of the goodies, at least that’s how his Mama tried to explain it to him.

His Aunt told him about Christkind (the Christ child) who will be visiting them on Christmas day and he began wondering why baby Jesus wasn’t going to be in Cologne. That’s a tough one. His mother explained that Christkind would be visiting the children in the countryside and Santa Claus would be visiting the children in the city. To make matters even more complicated, since he lives with an American Papa, it’s Santa Claus who will make his way to his door (we don’t have a fireplace.)

There won’t be many more Christmas seasons where the issue of Santa Claus is as prominent as it is this year. Already one little boy in his kindergarten has been saying that Santa is dead – just a fairy tale. HH came home with that question a few weeks ago and I wiggled around it, cursing the older brother or sister who had ruined it for HH’s classmate and nearly ruined it for HH as well. Maybe it is a bit dishonest to foster the notion of Santa, but there is so little magic in the world that I could not imagine denying him this one experience.

But sorting out the various Yuletide characters isn’t the thing that’s keeping him awake at night; it seems he’s trying to understand the role of the baby Jesus in all of this. HH wants to see Jesus. “He’s invisible,” his mother told him. “What if I worked in the church?” HH countered. “Could I see him if I worked in the church?” His mother explained to him that nobody could actually see Jesus, that he was invisible and that struck HH as intolerably unfair.

His bedroom window looks out onto the stained glass of a Neo-Romanesque church that sits within a stone’s throw of our apartment. It’s no wonder that the baby Jesus is often on his mind and somehow the mixture of Christmas and Jesus have brought him to the topic of death. When people die, why they die, how they die – all of it. Last week he asked, “Can rich people buy a new body when they get old?” That was a stunner! He doesn’t watch the news (we don’t have TV). He doesn’t read the newspaper or scan the Internet. Where did the idea of a full-body transplant originate? It may be completely normal for a five-year-old to ponder these things but I wouldn’t know that – HH is my first and only five-year-old son so everything is new – for the both of us. The idea that Jesus died but still lives may be the sticking point, I’ll have to ask him about that some day or perhaps I’ll just wait for him to bring it up again. I expect this discussion has just begun.

On returning home

I have been gone a long time – two months in New York working on a new project – some of it in our cabin in the Catskill mountains and some if it in Manhattan, but all of it away from home here in Cologne. I’ve been back almost a week now and I’m beginning to feel adjusted, although I still get up in the middle of the night and wander into the kitchen, and take naps in the middle of the afternoon. My clock is off. However, the thing that is taking the most time to get sorted out is how grown-up His Holiness has become.

Two months, eight weeks, not that long really but in that time his voice has changed, the corduroy trousers we bought this summer are already too small, he’s also outgrown his shoes and it isn’t just his body that has grown, it’s the little man inside who has changed, in ways I find hard to accept. Monday morning the two of us are sitting in the kitchen and he tells me he wants some cereal. Before I can get up, he’s already over at the bread safe pulling out the box of corn flakes, into the fridge for the milk and opening the cutlery drawer for a spoon. Down he plops it all on the table where he builds his breakfast, steady hands on the milk carton, none of the slopping, dripping and spilling that would have characterized his preparations just a few weeks ago. He dresses himself now, although he still has a little trouble with socks, and that includes selecting his clothes and zipping up his jacket in the morning before going off to kindergarten. Even I have trouble with that testy zipper!

However, it wasn’t his dexterity with zippers and breakfast cereals that had me scratching my head, it was his new-found voice, a voice that is a note or two higher following his enrollment in a signing class, and a voice that is far better able to speak its mind than it was when I left for America in early September.

A bit if background is in order. When there is something I want him to do, that he might not otherwise be disposed to doing, I make him a deal. “You eat some of those green things on your plate and you can have that pudding we bought this afternoon” or, “If you brush your teeth right now we will play Airport for an extra 15 minutes before you go to bed.” I’ve found this to be a very effective strategy in the past and started right back in with it on my return. Well, yesterday he announced from the living room floor that he doesn’t like my deals because any more because I was getting far more of what I wanted and he was not getting enough of what he wanted. He repeated that assertion at the dinner table when confronted with a plate of steamed broccoli. Broccoli used to be one of his favorite veggies – eight weeks ago – but no longer. He’s off broccoli and on to spinach: How was I to know? Later Mama informed me that he had made a few shifts in his food preferences during my absence, broccoli was one of the casualties, so were green beans and hamburgers. Last night he told me he didn’t want to eat any more meat at all, except crispy chicken and German sausages. Things were quite different around our little home while Papa was away and HH took clearly the opportunity to assert his culinary predilections, his sartorial independence and voice in general. Eight weeks, it seems, is a very long time in the life of a recently five year old boy.

I had assumed it would take some time for me to weave my way back into his life, but I could not have imagined how different that life would be from the one I left behind.

HH and the seahorse

Every evening after he finishes dinner HH calls to tell me about his day, about what he had for dinner, about how he ate his vegetables and last night, about how Mama was learning to cook, “pretty good” he said, with an emphasis on the pretty.

My current assignment finds me away from home for a spell and before I left, HH and I made a deal that we would speak each day on the phone before he went to bed. He’s been very conscientious about it and I’m happy about that. Happy is a meager word to express how I feel about our daily connections – relieved, euphoric, sad – all of these emotions pass through me during and after one of our talks. Yesterday when I picked up the phone I realized I was nearly shouting into the phone I was so happy to hear his voice. I had stepped out onto the front porch of the cabin and could actually hear my own voice reverberating through the woods that surrounded me. No doubt every creature within a half-mile or so could have heard me hollering into the receiver, so I quieted down just a bit as I sat in the squeaky old beach chair I have sitting outside the door and settled in to hear all about his day.

He’d taken his swimming lesson earlier in the day and was proud to report that he had navigated the shallow end of the pool on his seahorse – a swimming noodle of some sort – on his own. I haven’t met his seahorse yet so I could only imagine what he must have looked like but I was very proud of him and I told him so. He’s determined to learn how to swim and wants to surprise the other children at the lake next year. We’ve already made a plan to kayak across the lake to the small beach where the children swim under the watchful eyes of George the lifeguard. He then plans to go straight into the water and swim to the ropes that define the swimming area. He’s been taking swimming lesson at the lake each summer since he was about three but it wasn’t until this year that he finally found the courage to put his head under water. I’m not inclined to pressure him into learning to swim, although I have encouraged him. I’m not one of those fathers who throw their child into the deep water and assume some vestigial response will guide them to shore safely. I’ve taken a slow approach to it and it seems to have worked. He wanted to take swimming classes this winter and as long as he’s the one in charge I expect he’ll do just fine.

He’s at kindergarten now and I’m up too early, listening to the rain and missing my son. I look forward to coming home and catching up on lost time, hearing all about his adventures and accomplishments, meeting his seahorse and thanking him for keeping HH afloat while Papa was away.

Good time days …

Summer is here, HH is nearly five years old and I am writing this from our cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The days and weeks leading up to our departure from Cologne were filled with anticipation. Each morning recently HH would wake with the same question: “Are we going to Smallwood today Papa?” Finally the big day arrived and he was packed and washed and ready to go long before I was. He was terrific on the flight. The only snag was his jogging in the aisles of the aircraft a few hours into the journey. He was a little stiff and most of the other passengers were sleeping so I didn’t think it would do any harm if he stretched his muscles a bit. So there he was, navigating the narrow aisle, big smile on his face, running back and forth through the cabin careful not to jostle his fellow travelers. But I guess someone complained because the flight attendant came to me and said HH would have to take his seat for the duration of the flight. I thought it was a good idea – I still do – I think we should all get a little exercise during those long transatlantic flights.

Once here HH went through what has become something of a standard routine. He reminds me of a cat who has just arrived in a new home. He goes all through the place checking everything out, sniffing for any change from last year and finally he brings every toy he can find into the living room and creates a mine field of sorts for Papa who must tip-toe around it all on my way from the front porch to the kitchen. Yesterday we started planting the garden. This was a big event and HH brought out all his tools from the basement to get the job done right. There were wagons and bikes and various other toys, the gardening function of which are still a mystery to me. But he was over-the-top excited and kept repeating this one phrase all through the day. “This is a good-time day Papa.” He stands there wearing his Yankees baseball cap, his hip cocked to one side and one hand resting on his waist and announces this or that accomplishment or revelation and at the end of whatever it is he has to say comes his pronouncement, “This is a good-time day.” I haven’t asked him exactly what he means by this because I have a pretty good idea of what he’s thinking. I feel the same way. These are the good-time days – they don’t get much better than this. I can’t imagine anything more rewarding than seeing his smile or hearing him laugh out loud or focus all his considerable energy to some task. He told me yesterday that he wanted to live in the cabin forever. I explained to him that it got very, very cold here in the winter and that there was not much to do out here in the woods when the cold weather set in and all the snowbirds went back home to warmer or more urban locations. He may or may not have accepted my explanation and I expect I’ll hear this request again in the coming days. He loves it here – he can be as loud as he wants, get as dirty as he wants, eat as many bagels and crème cheese as he wants and generally have a great time. What’s not to love?

In a few days the lake will open for the season and HH will meet the other children who summer here, children he has come to know over the last four years, whose pictures he looks at on Papa’s computer during the long, cold, German winter. I wonder how that will play out. More good-time days? I expect so.

This morning thinking ...

There’s a little man who smiles at me

Laughs and cries and dines with me

Who waits and begs to play with me

And never seems to tire

Of hearing stories true or fairy

Of everything imaginary

But now and then

I’ll tell him something

Of me before he found his way here

And crinkling up his nose a bit

Because he somehow can’t believe it

Asks, “Papa was there life before me?”

“No”, I answer, “nothing really.”

April 17, 2008

Changes

They are coming in faster now. Where once there were gentle lobs now the questions come firing across the net with a speed that has me spinning. HH is going through another growth spurt, a mental one, in which his awareness of the world around him is expanding rapidly. The curious thing, however, is that his emerging consciousness is coupled with an imagination that is still quite fantastical, where the living and the dead inhabit the same space, where the real and the imagined carry equal weight and where delight and fear grapple with each other for dominance.

A few days ago HH and I were walking to kindergarten. We had both risen early that day, made a pot of oatmeal with raisins and gotten dressed with plenty of time to spare for a leisurely walk through the park on our way to school. More often it’s the case that we just make it out of the house in time for him to get to school and for me to arrive at my German classes before the bells ring in our respective classrooms. But that day our pace was slow and we walked together holding hands and taking in the sights, the dog walkers and neighbors and other children and parents doing just what we were doing. As we passed the swing-set, between two huge trees, a large patch of sky opened above us and HH looked up and said,” Papa, you know the world is a ball, but we don’t know it, because we can’t see far enough. And we are spinning too, but we don’t know that either, because everything is spinning.” I tried not to act too shocked at what he had said, I was shocked, but I didn’t want to make it seem like he was saying something odd or that I was surprised that he understood this fundamental cosmic truth. So I kept walking, and with as measured a voice as I could muster, I asked him how he came to know these things about the earth. He replied, “Opa Heinrich told me.” I didn’t press the subject any further and we made our way to school, kissed each other goodbye, and I set off for my German lessons.

For the rest of the day and for the days that followed I’ve tried to figure out how these two thoughts happened to coalesce into his revelation about the universe: the shape and movement of the earth and his long deceased Opa. He met his grandfather only once, when he was six months old. It will remain a mystery to me because I can’t imagine that any amount of questioning will ever reveal the connection.

Yesterday morning I slept late, something I rarely do, and when I finally got up HH was sitting on his stool in the kitchen waiting for breakfast, and he seemed troubled. When I asked him what was wrong he told me, “Papa, when you are on Opa and die, how will I ever get to Smallwood?” Smallwood is the tiny Hamlet in Upstate New York where we spend our vacation each summer; it’s a place he loves to visit, with a mountain lake and massive oak trees and bears – full of life and mystery. He had tears in his eyes when he asked me and I told him that once he learned to read he would be able to find Smallwood all by himself, that reading would unlock all the secrets of the world for him, and anyway, I wasn’t an Opa yet, he had to have children first before I could be an Opa, so not to worry. But he was still concerned about something so he probed a little deeper. “How will I ever find a Mama?” he asked, and then he rattled off the names of some of the little girls he knew in kindergarten as well as some of the older girls who live in the neighborhood as possible candidates. This was a more complicated question, one of the more complicated questions he has asked me to date. I told him that when he was a bit older he would meet women, and that one day, he would find someone he loved and wanted to have children with and then he could become a Papa and I would be an Opa, but that he had plenty of time to think about that. He seemed satisfied with my answer and we moved on to the more pressing concerns of what to eat for breakfast.

What goes on in that head of his? Where do these questions come from? And how do the themes connect: Life, death, children, love and the cosmos? I’ll keep returning the lobs as best I can but they are coming faster and faster every day. I hope I can keep up.

Roller coaster

He wanted to build a roller coaster

With a screw gun

And wood we’d found in the Hof

In the piazza

Outside his window

On the bench beside the flower bed

Little man with power tool

Driving the steel straight in

As straight as his small hands permitted

I am too proud of him

His power

His running to the matter of it all

Down the stairwell blasting

Through the door wide open

Into his own new world

Dreams of me …

Some mornings I wake with a thought as clear and brittle as if it had been etched in my soul by decades of remembering; from reading or reciting it, or passing it, a scratching on a rock on a well-trod path, something from the very habit of life. Then later, before the fog of sleep has cleared I’ll try to put it down, make sense of it by writing it out. But if I don’t move swiftly, if I wait and do anything at all that requires my mushy mind to work, it evaporates, and the thought that had been so clear, the one that had driven me from my bed and into the kitchen, is gone. There is however a residue, and often it is something familiar, not as sharp as the waking dream perhaps, but unmistakable nonetheless; a fear, a worry, an obsession, a hope, and it lingers like the scent of a wet dog on my skin. This morning the day has begun with something like a dream of dying, a thought that has been on my mind lately, loosing a friend not long ago and more. Last night I was holding HH in my lap while brushing his teeth, when all at once he nuzzled his head into my chest and held himself there for a beat or two, then drew a huge smile on his face and said, “Papa, sitting on your tummy is wonderful. When I was a little baby I used to have so much fun playing with you.”

After I had put him to bed I sat where I am sitting right now and wondered how much he could possibly recall about our time together “when he was a baby.” He is only four. And I also wondered how much he would recall when he was older, when I was long gone. One of the curses of being a father at fifty it that you wonder (at least I do) about how long you will be with your child, how much time there will be to build memories, whether you will be remembered at all for the things that really took place or if the talk of you will be some mix of mostly fiction, colored with a dusting of fact from snapshots and home movies. In my experience, remembering your dreams (or much of anything else for that matter) is an exercise in creative writing, from the germ of the actual dream I fill in the blanks of the parts I’ve forgotten by the time I’ve fired up the keyboard and thrown down my first cup of coffee. Something like that; half-fiction, half-fact, a dreamy stew of the imagination, is what I imagine will be his memory of me.

HH on Holiday

The apartment is remarkably quiet this morning.

Normally at about this time I’d be looking over my shoulder from my perch here in the kitchen, expecting HH to come padding down the hall with “baby” in tow, looking for Papa and a dry pair of pants. That’s our normal morning routine and even though I know he’s spending the weekend with his beloved Aunt Doris, I nevertheless find myself turning my head toward the door when I hear the floor creak or the baby next-door wail. His absence from the space fills it.

Late yesterday afternoon he called to check in with us, this is a rare thing for HH because he isn’t a phone guy – he normally refuses to speak to his relatives when they call or to anyone else for that matter, he’s just not into small talk. But yesterday he had a message to deliver that was important enough for him to ask his Aunt to place a call. I was taking a nap – something I would likely not have been able to do if he was in residence – and he left instructions that I was to call him back. When I got him on the phone he came right to the point. He reminded me that he had spent two nights with his relatives and that he would be coming home in the morning, then he said goodbye and handed the phone to his Aunt – that’s it – short and sweet. I asked Doris to put him back on the line pretending that I needed a little clarification; otherwise he would have refused to speak with me. This time he gave me a little more detail, not much more, but enough make two points unmistakably clear: It was his decision to take a weekend off from the folks but that he was ready to come home and wanted to be certain we were in agreement.

As much as HH enjoys his time away, he also wanted reassurance that this separation wasn’t an open-ended deal. He’s an independent four-year-old but he’s still just a little boy and in the words of the immortal Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.”

HH and the Control Tower

Those of you who stop in regularly know that I generally write about the smaller things in life as seen from or near the POV of my four-year-old son HH. The truth is that most of the time I am either thinking about him or feeling guilty that I don’t have more time to spend with him. He always seems to be at just the age when I can’t take my eyes off him or don’t want to. The changes come so rapidly that even though I am expecting them, they catch me by surprise.

HH is now an airline pilot. He has been one for about a month now ever since I returned from my last trip to New York with a genuine Captain’s uniform, which he hasn’t taken off for more than a day or so since he got it. The sauce stains alone are enough to send a fastidious type into convulsions, but he loves it and every morning before he goes to kindergarten we play airport.

My role is the control tower – a not too subtle image there I know. I’m responsible for telling HH about the weather over the Atlantic and advising the passengers about gate changes and when to board and what the in-flight entertainment will be. I’m sort of a cross between a control tower and an airline gate agent. HH is the pilot and his new bunk bed is the aircraft. From the top bunk he can look out his window onto the park below and into the ever-gray skies of Cologne. On his aircraft children receive special attention. All children travel first class – no exceptions. The in-flight entertainment is either Benjamin Blümchen or Thomas the Train and most of the time it’s Benjamin. The meals consist of macaroni and cheese and the ride is always bumpy – because that’s the way he likes it. The bumpier the better.

HH does travel a good deal – the two of us fly back and forth to New York together at least once a year and when he first experienced turbulence in an aircraft he looked to me and I told him to look out the window at the clouds – the better to hide the terror in my eyes – and he very simply associated the bumps with the clouds and thought nothing more about it. He laughed and enjoyed it and thought it was something of a game when I took hold of his hand and didn’t let go until the plane stopped thrashing about. He’s definitely the cooler of the two of us.

This weekend however, he was a little less cool than usual and no matter how closely I might watch over him, there are times when all a parent can do it damage control. We have been playing inside a good deal recently – what with his earache and lousy weather – so this Sunday when we were invited to accompany one of his friends to the Zoo, I said yes.

I am not a fan of Zoos. I don’t like cages of any design and remain unconvinced (no matter how often my friends argue with me) that Zoos are good for anything at all except perhaps breeding some nearly extinct creatures that man has otherwise come close to extinguishing. Even then I don’t think it’s fair to have thousands of human beings parade by the tiny, smelly enclosures day in and day out.

But enough of that – we went to the Zoo and our first stop was the Aquarium, which is in the same complex. As fish tanks go it wasn’t bad. I had packed a lunch for HH and we sat down in the tropical fish room and watched the fabulously colored creatures swim about in their boxes while we ate. Then I went in search of water. Now we are in the aquarium – a place filled with children and water – but there was not one drop of fresh water available for human consumption. There was plenty of sugar-water – four or five different flavors or it and I even bought one out of frustration but HH just turned his nose up and said – “No thank you Papa.” Imagine how lousy it must have tasted if a thirsty child in a hot, humid room with a mouth full of a peanut butter and whole wheat toast refused it. That was my first indication that this place wasn’t very well thought out.

We spent another thirty minutes or so wandering around the aquarium and then strolled over the see the monkeys in the Zoo. Upon entering their quarters the stench was so foul that HH immediately turned around a walked out. I told our friends that we were leaving and they agreed that this wasn’t a particularly good Zoo day. The children couldn’t wait to get out and started running toward the front gate. Unfortunately HH’s little friend took something of a flying leap and tripped HH, who fell face first onto the sidewalk. When I got to him the blood was flowing fast. I picked him up and sat on the ground with him in my lap and started applying pressure to the wound. I only took one look at it and immediately told the other parent with me to get some help. He came back two minutes later to tell me that the Zoo had no First Aid – not a trained person or a kit or a bandage – nothing. If I hadn’t had a bleeding child in my arms I would have started hollering bloody murder – instead I told my friend to call and ambulance. Well, some minutes later we saw the ambulance speed by in the wrong direction and I said to heck with it – or words to that effect – and jumped into the first cab that passed by. He was not too happy with the bleeding aspect of things but was otherwise HH was very brave. The cab driver was terrific and took us directly to the Children’s Hospital Emergency room where HH was treated.

I can happily report that HH is recovering very well and has resumed his post on the second level of the bunk bed – piloting his aircraft back and forth across the Atlantic. And I am in the control tower, watching over things as usual, awaiting the next bump.

Copyright 2008