Hunting Tips

Traci said, "Let me have a look at your leg?"

Naomi said, "What's wrong with daddy's leg?"

I said, "I just checked it. It looks fine."

Naomi said, "What's wrong with your leg?"

Traci said, "It looks about the same as it did yesterday."

Naomi said, "Looks the same as what?"

I said, "It doesn't hurt or anything."

Naomi turned to Blaisey and said, "What did daddy do to his leg?"

Blaisey said, "I think he got a bug stuck in it."

This was the day after I came back to Athens -- I'd stayed in PA after Thanksgiving while the rest of the family returned to Ohio. I spent an extra four days out in the woods, during which time I often recalled a quote I'd read from, I think, a professional athlete of some sort, "I have been hunting on several occasions, but no deer were ever aware of it." That registers with me on every level.

Well, I think there's only actually one level.

I spent four days in the woods with my dad, and I only saw one deer, and that is largely the story of my hunting life. It was raining so hard the night before the first day of the season that we had a brief conference about when to wake up. Like many hunters, of course, we would like to have been in the woods unreasonably early but Dad suggested that we might want to sleep in for a bit, because if it's going to rain this hard, it's going to be hard to see even after sunrise. Mom said, "Yeah, with all this rain, it's not going to get light until long after it stops being dark," which is exactly what I had been thinking.

It rained all the first day and all the second day. I've never seen so many mosquitoes during the last week of November. I marked sunrise at about 4:14 both afternoons. Still, it was lovely in the woods and I got in some very long walks.

In the evening, after each hunt, we'd stop back in the clubhouse and make plans for the coming day and the rest of our lives. Though I'd only seen one tick in Pennsylvania in my entire life, some of the hunters claimed that this year they were particularly bad. So each evening, like it or not, we all shared some tick repellent. The stuff came in the little steel cannister that my great uncle used to carry his snakebite medicine in. It tasted remarkably like some of the darker whiskey one might find on the middle shelf of a local spirits shop. If the family legend is true, Great Uncle always had his snakebite medicine on him, and, if times got real tough, he'd even carry a snake.

Wednesday, the temperature dropped, and I found myself sitting in a tree stand, sitting in an enormous snowglobe about thirty feet up in the air, the wind bringing confetti-style flakes at me from all angles. I had brought Leaves of Grass with me, but couldn't take my eyes off the world. It was my first time in the woods in earnest since fall 2002, and I'd forgotten the woods, forgotten how cold an ass can get, forgotten how quiet a place can be, how calm.

Okay, I should mention this: there's these two guys out in the woods, father and son, hunting deer. They walk for a while and cross paths. The father says, "See anything?" Son says, "Found some scat, but it tasted pretty old." They split up again and meet up in a few hours. Father says, "See anything?" Son says, "More scat. It tasted pretty fresh, but I think it was from a doe." Few hours later, the father says, "See anything?" Son says, "Some scat. It tasted real close." The father says, "You know you could just smell the scat." Son says, "Are you kidding me? That stuff smells awful."
It's the first deer-hunting joke I ever made up. Loosely based on a true story. How'd I do?

Here's the true story: Dad said, "You see anything?" I said, "I don't know, does a bear shit where it eats?" He said, "I believe so." I said, "Well, then I saw a bear den."

Late into the third day, the weather broke. The sun came out. I got out of my stand. Dad and I went across the valley to climb a different hillside. Late in the day, the sunlight came horizontal over the hillside we were just on. The hillside lit up like a candlabrum. I started thinking there are no deer in these woods, which is what I believed through most of the hunting seasons of my childhood. Nor did I need to see any deer just then. The gray clatter of tree tops in a bright light breeze would have kept me in the woods for a millenium.

Still, the week before Thanksgiving, we had taken Jaswinder for his first trip through Pennsylvania. He spent two nights at the ancestral Connor household, staying up way too late, chatting with me and Dad. Dad asked him, at one point, "So what do you think of Pennsylvania?" He said, "It's exactly like Chicago, except hilly." (Years before when Dad had asked me what I thought of my first trip to Chicago, I'd said, "It's exactly like February, only it's September.") I'm still not sure what I meant.

We'd been passing through PA on our way to New Jersey to take part in a Barrow Street reading hosted by Derek Pollard in a pub next door to Derek's house -- now that's planning. The reading featured Derek Henderson, Lesley Wheeler, Jaswinder, and this guy. What a beautiful event, space, gathering. I was fantastic. Every body read from one or more of their books, except for one guy whose press had folded months before and had nothing to read but the list of 101 things about himself from his blog.

Jaswinder, or, as the kids call him, Uncle Winder, had never been across PA, and was fascinated by our landscape. Driving along I-80 heading east, he said, "What's on the other side of that hill?"

I said, "I dunno. Another hill."

"Well, I wanna see it."

I told him we'd take a different route home and see what's on the other side of the hill.

On the way back, travelling along I-76 West, he said, "Well, now I wanna see what's on the other side of that hill?"

I said, "We already saw the other side of that hill."

He said, "Yeah, but not today."

I thought about Winder as I stood there in the woods, about how it's never enough, never warm enough, never snowy enough, never rainy or dry enough, because I often do wonder what's on the other side of any given hill, wonder what's on a different radio station, what I would have eaten at a different restaurant or what I would be doing if I had finished that engineering degree. But that day in the woods, I didn't feel the need to know those things. I was happy to be tired from walking up and down steep hills, pushing aside brush and climbing over logs, pursuing little other than exactly what I was doing.

Suddenly, a bear jumped out of a brush pile right in front of me! Awesome. It clambered around up the hillside, making an awful racket. I've been away from the woods for too long . . . should I have said something to it? asked it to keep quiet? maybe cleared my throat, ahem, and showed the bear how to be reverent, silent in the woods? But I just stayed quiet and watched it climb the hillside, some times running, some times swatting tree branches just, I think, for the hell of it.

The fourth day was mostly a half day. Bright again, all day, and we walked the hillsides and didn't see much wildlife. In the evening I drove back to Athens. When I got home, we discovered, to my dismay, I had not taken enough of the tick repellent. A lesson to us all, I suppose. Be sure to drink your tick repellent, or you might end up with a bug stuck in your leg.

Unambitious Us

Some of you might have got the impression from that last post that we're a competitive family -- but that is simply not the case. We're a very generous, humble, consensus-seeking lot, who wish success for everybody.

Take, for instance, our kayaking trip this summer. Blaisey, at that point, was still having a hard time pronouncing "S" at the beginning of words when that "S" is followed by a consonant. Naomi spent a lot of time encouraging her to say her "S" words.

Naomi would say, "Where do you go every day to learn?"
Blaisey would say, "I go to cool."

"What do you put inside a turkey?"

"I put tuffing."

"What is the second major layer of the earth's atmosphere?"

"I sink it's the tratosphere."

What didn't work, however, was to tell Blaisey what word to say. One could not tell her to "Say 'spicy'." She simply wouldn't do it.

So Blaisey and Naomi were paddling down the mighty Allegheny this summer, working on their "S"s. At a certain point, Naomi tried, "Say 'strawberry'."

Blaisey would not be outwitted. "Why do you want me to say that?"

"So you can work on your words."

"I don't want to work on my words right now."

"Will you just say strawberry for me?"

"Why?"

"Because I think it's cute." The truth comes out.

"I don't care what you think." Painful, painful truth.

"Will you just please say it?"

"Say what?"

"Strawberry?"

"Why?"

Naomi thought through her options for a few paddles. "Because I forgot how to say it."

Blaisey said, "Well, how did you just say it if you forgot how." If you're at all like me, and, again, I imagine most of you are, you can only imagine a young Socrates and Plato strumming down the mighty Elpeus, butting heads with such tautologies.

Meanwhile, Traci got bored. "Oh, for heaven sakes, you two."

Naomi said, "Mom, I can't get her to say 'Strawberry'."

Traci said, "First one to say 'Strawberry' wins."

"Trawberry trawberry trawberry!"

Wait a minute. That's an awful story to illustrate how we're not competitive. Still, it's better than all the other ones I read this morning.

Family Conflict

Here is a little stretch of seredipity that occured over the weekend -- in fact, the conversation began on our way to lunch where we wrote our Christmas lists and ended on the way home. Driving home, we saw a sign for the library's monthly book sale. So we stopped in and found a discarded winning lottery ticket for a thousand dollars. Here's what happened:

On the cardrive to lunch, Traci and I were arguing about a book we'd both read recently: Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants.

She said, "I like it."

I said, "Me, too, but not as much."

It was intense, you could have cut the air with a turkey knife. Well, the electric kind, anyway -- the old fashioned ones would have just gummed the mess up. But we didn't have a turkey knife, so we had to just continue the argument with words.

I said, "Why do you like it?"

She said, "Because the writing is good and it is fun to read."

She had me. Dead to rights. The writing is solid, a pleasure to read. The story is engaging, and the narrator has a good eye for detail.

So I said, "So?" Hah, I thought, beat that!

She said, "Also, I thought it was fun to read about the circus."

"But the book isn't about the circus," I said.

She said, "It's entirely about the circus. Look at the cover," so I did (we had our copy in the car), and, in fact, there is a man wearing sequins, carrying a silver-tipped cane, and walking into a striped tent. "Plus," she said, "all the elephant stuff."

True, I told her, there is the elephant act and the horse act and the guy with the silver-tipped cane, but the book is a love story. It's about Jacob and Marlena. It's about the tribulations of marrying someone you don't know and then falling in love with someone you're not married to. But it is not about the circus. "Richard Schmitt's The Aerialist," I said, "now that book's about the circus." In the midst of a description of a show, he writes:

"The act defies the laws of human ability. It is puzzling how they can do these things. A skipping rope segment seemss frivolous and playful, mocks the ten meters between playground and ground, then he trips, falls flat onto the wire. it is a moment that stops band and breath. he catches the wire with both hands. Swings under. The rope falls and the shocking thing, even if you suspect the trip was contrived, the thing that makes you jump in your seat, is the thud the rope makes hitting the ground. You're pretty sure he did not mean to drop that rope, and you feel it hit from across the ring, and feel the hairs rise on the back of your neck. If a rope hits with such force . . ." (The Aerialist 212)

We did not have a copy of that book with us, she just had to take my word for it. "Water for Elephants doesn't even mention the tightrope until the final thirty pages of the book."

"Still," she said, "it's a very good love story with lots of suspense."

"Yes, very suspenseful, but the suspense is all based on a lie." This isn't any kind of spoiler, because it's the opening scene:

"My eyes swept the tent, desperate to find Marlena. . . . I opened my eyes again and scanned the menagerie, frantic to find her. How hard can it be to find a girl and an elephant, for Christ's sake? // When I caught sight of her pink sequins, I nearly cried out in relief--maybe I did. I don't remember. . . . // She reached for something. A giraffe passed between us--its long neck bobbing gracefully even in panic--and when it was gone I saw that she'd picked up an iron stake. She held it loosely, resting its end on the hard dirt. She looked at me again, bemused. Then her gaze shifted to the back of his bare head. . . . // She lifted the stake high in the air and brought it down, splitting his head like a watermelon." (Water for Elephants 3-4)

(My version is abridged, but you can read the prologue at Amazon: here.

If you haven't read it, this might be a spoiler: despite the fact that the prologue has Marlena killing somebody, despite the fact that I spent the next three hundred pages trying to figure how Marlena was going to turn into a killer, Marlena doesn't kill anybody. The book begins en media res -- it begins with the climactic scene of the book and takes us back and ahead in time very skillfully and pleasurably. It really is a great read, but, when we get back to the climactic scene, it is not Marlena who kills the guy. "The narrator begins the book with a lie," I tell Traci, "and I cannot forgive him for that. I cannot accept the fact that this narrator changes his story just to build suspense. I will never be okay with this."

Traci said, "I'm alright with it." Yes, she had a good point.

I said, "I guess I am, too. It's a good book. I like it. I just wish we had a copy of The Aerialist."

We left it at that and we ate our very delicious lunch, while writing our Christmas lists, and -- and I have to stress this -- we did not get kicked out of the restaurant, so, ha!, Sam's wish comes true early. On the way home, we saw the sign for the monthly library book sale and decided to stop in. Blaisey alone bought 18 books: as she piled them in front of me, I said, "You want all those books?"

She said, "They will help me learn to read. You do want me to learn to read, don't you?"

Naomi found a dozen and said, "Guess we'll have to build a bookshelf. I've never read twelve new books all at once."

I said, "Why don't you just donate them back to the library when you're done?"

She said, "What am I gonna do until next weekend?"
We're getting the lumber today.

Traci and I got another handful, mostly novels, including the metaphorical lottery ticket for a thousand bucks: we found a beautiful copy of Richard Schmitt's The Aerialist! Serendipity smiled on us again.

And we're all living happily ever after.

Clothes Make the Man Or Whatever

While sorting laundry, Sam and Zac couldn't figure whose jeans they held. Sam said, "Well, they must be Naomi's. They're not long enough to be a full-grown person."

Zac responded, "Are you kidding? Look at the waist, you could fit five Naomi's in there."

"Ah," they concluded simultaneously, "must be Dad's."

What are you boys trying to say, anyway?

Couched Update

Blaisey's Hierarchy of Needs


After submitting her final grades for a very trying quarter, Traci spent a day on the couch reading a best seller. Feeling a great deal of guilt for taking a vacation day, she turned to Blaisey for permission to continue. A four-year old is always a great source of vindication, by the way. "Do you think it's a problem," Traci asked Blaisey, "that all I've done today is sit on this couch?"



Blaisey, tilted her head to the side contemplatively and sagely responded, "Uhm. Do you have to eat or poop?"



Traci considered the question and said, "No."



Blaisey said, "Then you're okay."



So, alright, I admit it: this is a pretty good life.

National Novel Writing Month and Me

What you’ve heard is true: November is national novel writing month. This is a tradition that is as old as time itself – eleven years. The official website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) claims the first Nanowrimo was held in 1999. Yes, I thought time would be older as well. Who knew?

Still, this reminds me of the first time the kids ever came to Pennsylvania. Summer 2004. traci and I had been married for a few months, and we were driving down over the hill to visit Maga and Pappap. Zac was eleven, Sam was eight, and Naomi was four.

Sam said, “My friend had to have his index removed.”

I said, “His index?”

Sam said, “Yes.”

Naomi said, “Did it hurt?”

Sam said, “I didn’t feel a thing.”

Naomi said, “What’s an index?”

Zac said, “I think he means appendix.”

Sam said, “Yes, appendix.”

Naomi said, “What’s an appendix?”

Zac said, “Nobody knows.”

Naomi said, “Why do we have one if we don’t know what they are?”

Zac said, “Sometimes organs that were once useful lose their necessity as the body evolves in order to adapt to our environment.”

Sam said, “Basically, we grew out of it: like tonsils.”

Naomi said, “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. Like back in the nineties.”

This conversation is noteworthy to me, because it marks the first time I realized that my kids think of me not only as a different generation, but also as a primitive stage of the evolutionary cycle. All said, it’s not an awful feeling, and it does make me appreciate how difficult it was for my parents to adjust to losing their tails.

Meanwhile, back at National Novel Writing Month: traci and I have talked for years about taking part in this tradition. Each year, we’ve opted out. This year, we decided that since we’ve never been busier in our whole lives, we might as well try to crank out a 50,000 word work of fiction. (We are doing this unofficially.) That’s approximately 1,666 words a day.

In response to your first question: Is that a lot of words? Well, for instance, The Declaration of Independence has about 1,300 words. And that took fifty-six people like a month and a half to write. So, yes, I’d say 1,666 a day is a considerable amount.

In response to your second question: Will I be in your novel? No, you will not. Rather, I’m attempting a fantasy novel I’m tentatively calling The Epic Asskicking Saga of Princess Badass. It’s terrible. Perhaps the worst thing I’ve ever written. traci is writing an awesome novel, which she will tell you all about at a later date. You are not in that novel either.

But maybe you’ll be in the sequels. Meanwhile, we are both a little bit behind schedule, but optimistic. As neither of us teaches on Fridays, we have vowed to write our asses off on those days. I’ll leave you with that compelling image. Wish us luck.

Why We're Such Awesome Parents, Who Rock

Hi all,

In response to your first question, "Jackson, where have you been?", let me say this: when the baby gets the twenty-four hour flu, daddy gets to have the flu for the whole week.

In response to question 2a, "Jackson, does it hurt when you drill through the board into the finger holding the board?", I have to say, "Yes. Yes it does hurt."

In repsonse to question 2b, "Jackson, does it matter which finger?", I have to tell you people, there are some things you need to find out for yourself.

Meanwhile. Now, I know it's not son-appreciation week, but our boys are still okay I suppose. For instance, after we got groceries today, Zac and Sam ran up two flights of stairs to hug traci and thank her for buying a big round box of oats and a big flat brown bag of brown sugar.

"Your kids are great," we hear. "I wish my kids were more like your kids," folks say. Nobody ever really wants to know how we do it, though. Well, I'll tell you anyway. Here's our secret: bore them into submission. Every time they take off a sock and you think it might hit the floor instead of the hamper, explain the ways in which the Grand Canyon was formed by the gentle wheedling away of rock by sand and water and sun doing their things, and that a sock is never just a sock so much as an indication of a greater detritus of the soul, something heinous about society that hurts us in our hearts -- you see, sure, it's a sock today, but tomorrow you might not fold my shirt right or you might leave my towel where I threw it in the corner. Before you know it, the whole house is a shambles. The plains are a canyon. Pangea is all over the flipping place. So just please please pick up the sock.

Trust me, your kids will be great too. And you won't have to inflame that old tennis elbow with all the same-old, same-old spankings.

The girls are great, too. Naomi is memorizing "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. It's lovely to listen to, "Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore," you know, but when what you really want to do is watch Mad Men, well, the children will still be talented and gifted tomorrow, but Don Draper will only be popular for as long as people tell him to be. "While I nodded, nearly napping . . ." she said. "Why are you doing that?" asked traci. Naomi said, "suddenly their came a tapping." I said, "You know, some folks argue that the universe began with someone gently tapping," and she sprinted off to bed.

Blaisey is Itchy the Cat today. She had been Fluffy the Cat for the longest time. The other day she was Princess the Cat Who Would Like Daddy to Get Her Some Water Meow. Before that she was Bitey the Mean Cat and I was Steely the Scared Dog. Oh, the ever-changing self. In the midst of all these feline incarnations, Blaisey did find time to be sick last week. I lay beside her in bed reading while she drifted in and out of sleep. One moment, she woke to tell me, "Dinosaurs eat leaves." Another she said, "Some chipmunks like to climb trees." Some time later she woke and said, "Other chipmunks like to drink water." I read about twenty pages of a really good book and she said, "Apples that are green are pears."

When I caught the bug proper, I was most likely to simply say, "I think I'm gonna puke." Or "I think I puked." Or some variation on the theme.

On that note, I'll try to keep you all up to date more frequently on the events of our family. In the meantime, I'll ask the questions this time, "If apples that are green are pears, what's an orange if it's not orange?" And "If you're a chipmunk who doesn't like to climb trees or drink water, what kind of life is that anyway?"

Fancy Drink

As national Jackson Appreciation Weekend winds down, traci asked me if she could get me anything from the kitchen. I asked her if she could get me a beer in one of our fancy glasses.

I don't know -- they just sometimes taste better this way.

The Renovator

I’ve been away from the blog this week, as I have been busy pretending to work on the house and grade my students’ papers while secretly reading The Great Book of Amber. Yesterday, in fact, when I was supposed to respond to student quizzes, I asked them all if they’d got the all the right answers. Some said, “Yes.” For those who said, “No,” I said, “Would you get all the right answers now if I gave you the same quiz?” They said, “Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes.” So I marked them all down for A’s and drove to the hardware store parking lot to pretend to shop while I secretly read a fantasy novel.

Before we begin, I have a morality tale from earlier in the week:

Have you ever been stung by a wasp whilst spraying for mosquitoes?
Me too, which begs the question: who is the real monster here?
It’s the wasps. Trust me, that’s the moral.


Anyway, what’s wrong with me? Well, it probably all has to do with my plumbing. Plumbing is a delicate art that, if I understand correctly, was invented 8,000 years ago in Egypt, perfected 2,600 years ago in Rome, and introduced to Western Pennsylvania in the late 1970’s.

A lot of one’s personality can be determined by answers to fundamental questions about plumbing. For instance:

When there’s a problem with the plumbing, do you:
A: Call a professional?
B: Call for Sam to bring you a pair of socks and a roll of duct tape?

One’s answer, I believe, speaks volumes.

So yesterday, when the problems arose, Sam showed up with the duct tape and said, “I couldn’t find any socks. What about the one you have on.” That’s my boy. Problem solved.

Sometimes the kids ask me, “How did you learn so much about building stuff?”

Well, just from paying attention mostly. Also, I spent some time doing various forms of construction when I was supposed to be studying for my Intro to Biology final exam. But at the heart of everything I know about stuff getting built is Pappap. For instance, I remember his vivid instructions about plumbing. When I was very young, he told me, “There are three things you need to know about plumbing. Hot water goes on the left. Cold on the right. And shit don’t run uphill.”

Clearly I was destined for renovating.

Some people like to call it “home improvement,” but, really, would anybody call this improvement?

I think not. Renovating, rather, from the root word “novate,” meaning: screw up real bad. I think. I hope not to be redundant here in quoting the great plumber and writer Ray Carver, who said, “We all do better in the future.”


Meanwhile, Blaisey borrowed Zac’s guitar this morning and wrote three songs. Song 1: “All the Penguins Go to School.” Song 2: “All the Other Animals Go to School, But Not the Penguins.” Song 3: “The Animals Don’t Go to School, But Sissy and Blaisey Go to School.” Each of the songs has similar motifs and rhythms, a lot of humming in the middle of the lines, and several words that I’m not familiar with. Each song also contains the lyrics, “But you and me will never die, hmmm hmm hmmm hmm I like pie.” Needless to say, if Isaac Brock gets a hold of this talent, Blaisey certainly be a Glacial Pace artist any day now.

For the record, did anybody hear me ask for cpvc rubber cement in my coffee this morning? No. You didn’t. Which again, is sort of beside the point as it leaves me wondering: if the cpvc rubber cement applicator is in my coffee mug, what’s holding all the plumbing together? The answer, I believe, is clear: we’ll never know.

Cup Half Something

In response to your questions about distinctions between optimism and pesimism:

On the one hand, I spent three hours this morning / afternoon installing one particularly tricky piece of drywall. Granted there was some plumbing and some wiring involved. But still.

On the other hand, I got to listen to We Were Already Dead before the Ship Even Sank and The Moon and Antartica (twice) today, and all I had to do was hang one crumby sheet of drywall.

Everything said, I've had worse days. How was yours?

Surviving Wet Shoes

How to Learn to Love Teaching in Wet Shoes
by Jackson Connor


Step 1: Make sure to put the spaghetti sauce near the hatchback in a plastic bag so it will just roll right out.

Step 2: When it falls, stand there – do NOT try to get out of the way or try to catch it under any circumstances – just sort of watch it roll and listen to it explode.

Step 3: Look really stupid for a little while, because let’s face it.

Step 4: Get the hose.

Step 5: You know what: the shoes are simply not going to dry over the next few hours, so suck it up. Slosh into the classroom. When your students moosh their faces all up like you’re an idiot, act like they’re the idiots who don’t know the pleasures of moderately damp shoes. When all else fails, think of it like this: you’re kids love stories that end in with you standing there at a slight disadvantage, but somehow coming out on top – that oughtta get you through the day.

Post Script: if you resubtitle the post “How to Learn to Love Working a Twelve Hour Shift at the Steel Mill with Boots Full of Very Hot Coffee from Sheetz,” everything remains the same. Except “Step 4” which now reads, “Hop around on one foot for a long time, trying to decide whether you’re madder about the lost coffee or the moist boot.”

Meanwhile, happy Labor Day everyone.

Beachtrip 2008 (a rerun)

I'm double-dipping into the old, failed blog with this post -- it's the story of our beach trip from two years ago. If it meets popular acclaim, perhaps I'll write the update of this year's beach, river, or raccoon trip. To it:


This summer, there was some dissention in the family as to whether we should go to the water park just south of Greensboro or to the ocean (the Atlantic Ocean), which is way off to the right of us I’m told. Since there have been water parks in all the other states we’ve lived in, but very few oceans, we opted for the latter.

On the way to the beach, we played our modified family version of 21 Questions, which would more accurately be called Infinite Questions. Naomi started. I said, “Is it a mineral?”

Naomi said, “I don’t know.”

Sam said, “Is it a place?”

Naomi said, “Sort of."

Zac said, “Is it a person?”

Naomi said, “Yes.”

I said, “Is the person in this car?”

Naomi said, “Yes.”

traci said, “Is the person Blaisey?”

Naomi said, “Yes, good job, Mom.”

traci’s turn took us through a series of questions in which we determined that the answer wasn’t blue, green, a person, a rock, a giraffe, the direction East, the cat, the Previa, Dad, or a turtle. We asked, "Are you sure it’s not the cat?"

"Yes."

We said, "But what about a really BIG rock?, have you thought about making the answer: Pepsi, what about crackers, Cracker Jacks, Jack Sparrow, an unlaiden Sparrow, I think it’s a swallow, no it’s a sparrow, technically it could be either since neither could carry a coconut, are you sure it’s not the color blue?, I mean like a gigantic rock, like bigger than the moon?"

We were, you all can imagine, just about stumped.

Naomi said, “I know, I know. Can you eat it?”

traci said, “Yes.”

Naomi said, “Are you sure it’s not blue?”

traci said, “Yes.”

Naomi said, “Grapes.”

traci said, “No.”

Naomi said, “Macaroni and Cheese.”

traci said, “Yes. Excellent.”

Nailed it. Naomi said since she had already gone, I could have her turn, which is good, because as is my way in all things, I’d been spending their turns preparing for my turn. We had recently watched the spoof Meet the Spartans, which makes fun of the movie 300, which was based on the graphic novel by the same name. I kept the rest of the family easily at bay through the mineral, animal, etcetera part of the questions. Finally, they found my scent with traci’s, “Is it an idea?”

I said, “Yes.”

It took them a while longer to lock down the fact that it was a sentence, but once that happened, they made quick work of me. traci said, “A sentence? That’s not an idea. It’s probably a line from a stupid movie.”

I said, “Yes.”

Sam said, “Is it, ‘Come let us talk by the giant pit of death.’?”

I said, “Yes. Good job, Sam.”

And it was Sam’s turn.

Sam thought for a few minutes, and he said, “Okay, I got one. It’s a good one. But it’s way too hard to guess. So I’ll just tell you. It’s Nothingness.”

Zac said, “That was going to be my first guess.”

Sam said, “Okay, it’s your turn.”

Zac said, “Got one.”

traci said, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

Zac said, “You know, Mom, that’s a relative question. A breadbox, after all, could be as big as the ocean.”

Naomi said, “Is it the ocean?”

Zac said, “Yes. gg.” (gg is video game player, or “gamer,” lingo for “Good Game.” traci and I hold five English degrees between the two of us, and neither of us can explain to the kids why they shouldn’t use such shorthand in their speaking or writing, so we lol when Zac ggs us and move on.)

Zac pointed out that we had all already gone once, except for Desi who doesn’t have language, and except for Leah. He said, “I guess it’s Leah’s turn.” Now, this trip was in the middle of July, and she hasn’t gone yet, but we’re expecting her to bust out a really good one any minute now. She’s already had a long time to think about it.

It’s a four-hour trip to the beach, and the Atlantic Ocean was much as I had left it nineteen years before (my only other trip to the Atlantic to date) when I had taken my family to Myrtle Beach for some sort of Engineering conference, except that this time I couldn’t stop thinking about ee cummings’s characters Maggie and Minnie and Molly and May:



maggie and milly and molly and may

By e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea



The poem doesn’t have any relevance to what I’m writing, nor does it add a layer to the letter, nor does it inform our reading of this text. It’s just what I think about while I’m at the beach these days. I hadn’t known of the characters when I was twelve, and otherwise, I jumped into the breakers, trying to beat the ocean at its own game. I jumped sideways, and head on, and dove through the waves, and rolled with the big ones, and I’m certain, if I had only had a little more time, I would have won – the same eternal struggle and conclusion I had drawn when I was younger. On the other hand, I hear that the ocean is very much like an Atari game that just seems to go on and on forever.

And that seems equally likely and unlikely to me.

We put on sunblock. We ran in small circles. We ate sandwiches and chips – I’ve always thought it ironic to eat SANDwiches at the beach. We chased Leah, who was chasing Desi, around the sand. We pretended to build a sand castle, but got distracted by the way the waves kept piling up on themselves and piling up and piling up, but not making anything noticeably bigger.

Then we drove home, listening to Modest Mouse’s album The Moon and Antarctica. "And we're never gonna find another ocean on the planet, given that our blood is just like the Atlantic, and that's how the world began, and that's how the world will end." All told, the beach was a fine decision.

The day after our trip, I made mention of the fact that when we left for the ocean, I had been concerned about Leah, who hadn’t had a bowel movement the evening before, but after a short time in the ocean, she was regular – in fact, one could say, extra-regular – again. traci put a checkmark on the chalkboard beside “Things Daddy Should Keep to Himself.” And I pondered the possibility that the salt water had loosened her bowels up and that maybe it, the ocean, was good for all of us in ways that we don’t immediately recognize.

Naomi, who had been washing her breakfast dishes, said, “Well, the ocean does make shit happen.”

Yes. Little one. I suppose it does. But we’ll talk more about that another time. Right now, we have to compile our shopping lists – school supplies – for tomorrow, and hope that there will be something interesting left to learn when we start fourth, seventh, and tenth grades next week.

I suggest you all do the same. Take care, y’all, and we’ll keep you up to date on N.C.



Afterward:

That was two years ago, and we've all gotten much taller or stronger or smarter or more flexible, and we have done many things in the interim, but, if our trip to this summer's (2010) beach trip tells us anything, the ocean is still pretty much the same size and relative shape. "The universe is shaped excactly like the earth -- if you go straight long enough . . ."

Finding Hamlet

For the past week, Zac has been searching around the house, the car, the rock gym, downtown G-boro, the Enmity Shopping Center, the grocery store, several restaurants, the high school, his friends’ houses, his enemies’ houses, some houses he’d never been to but was always curious about, looking for Hamlet. He opened drawers, unfolded laundry, unmade beds, sucked the marrow from the bones of this old house. He scoured parking lots, dusted railroad tracks, scrubbed courtyards with a toothbrush.

We said, “What’s with all the cleaning?”

He said, “I guess I’ve overwrought the metaphor.”

He had. And still, the Dane was nowhere to be found. “Have you seen Hamlet?” he would say. “I’m looking for Hamlet.” “I should never have left Hamlet alone.” Don’t we know this by now, one should never leave Hamlet alone. We were, of course, distraught. They say if we had twelve monkeys with twelve flashlights, we might have been able to find Hamlet. But that was little consolation and very confusing.

For all of you who have been concerned, I found Hamlet and all of his words words words underneath the blue chair in the family room. We should have known.

The Thumb Holder

Last night, as I was walking away from tucking in the girls, Blaisey said, “Once upon a time, there was a dinosaur.” And it was like the oral-story version of 1,000,000 years B.C, and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t look away. Luckily, Naomi was very tired, so she said, “Blaisey, maybe you could tell the story about the sissy who was too tired to stay awake for a story and the other sissy who loved her very much, so she didn’t tell a story.” So I chuckled and blew them both kisses and said, “Goodnight.”


I turned off the light and listened to Blaisey say, “Once upon a time, there was a sissy who was very tired and couldn’t stay awake . . .” My job here was done. I moved on.

As it turned out, Naomi really couldn’t stay awake. She drifted off. Moments later, Blaisey appeared at our door and said, “I’m hungry.” I said, “It’s very late. What do you want to eat?” She said, “A story.” I said, “I don’t have time to make a story. How about if I carry you to bed and lie down beside you.” She said, “Okay.”

Naomi was asleep, so Blaisey and I agreed to be very very quiet. We agreed to close our eyes. We agreed that I would lie on the floor beside her bed, and she would hold my thumb so I wouldn’t fall off the floor. Naomi did not budge. I stayed as still as a pantomime miming a rock. Blaisey did yoga or some sort of martial art.

I said, “Are you okay, Blaisey?”

She snored a little.

I started to stand. Blaisey said, “Where are you going?”

I said, “To bed.”

She said, “You said you would sleep beside me for a little while.”

I said, “I did.”

She said, “Not a little while enough.”

I lay back down, her hand wrapped tight around my thumb.

Naomi slept peacefully. I lay there biding my time. Blaisey snored while she did some sort of Civil War reenactment. At one point, her arms and legs, well, scattered about the bed, her breathing tame, I began to move towards the stairs. She said, “Daddy, you said you would sleep beside me for a while.”

I said, “Yes, but I’m tired.”

She said, “You can sleep here.”

“But I need to sleep beside mommy.”

“You can bring her up here.”

“But she’s asleep in our own bed.”

“You can bring it up here.”

“But our bed’s heavy.”

“You’re very strong.”

She had a point. I said, “How about if I just lie here a little while longer?”

“Okay.”

She held my thumb. I made lesson plans. I wrote future plans. I redrafted the constitution: it went like this: “Just be nice. And let everyone be nice to you.” I wondered why sweat-wicking socks don’t work for me. I thought about how I always (always) overcook spaghetti. I wondered why I don’t just make coffee the night before, so I don’t have to do it first thing while I wake up. Blaisey snored and did little backwards summersaults.

Eventually – just like the first scene from the first Indiana Jones movie – I moved part of her blankey in the place my thumb used to be, and sneaked off into the night.

Blaisey said, “Where are you going?”

I said, “I can’t sleep here tonight.”

She said, “I allow you.”

I said, “But then Mommy will be alone.”

She said, “She has all your t-shirts.” (Long story.)

I walked to the toy trunk and brought her a penguin. (We call it a “piggy” in our family . . . another long story.) I said, “Here, buddy. Every time you squeeze this, I’ll know how much you love me.”

She said, “It might hurt.”

I said, “Well, then, just squeeze the piggy’s thumb.”

She squeezed the piggy’s thumb. I said, “I love you very much, buddy.”

She said, “I know, daddy. I love you very much, too.”

The moral of the story is this: I don’t want much out of life, in fact just three things. 1.) A good I.P.A. each night – very hoppy, a touch of citrus, very bitter (bitter enough to make me wonder why I like I.P.A.s. 2.) Equality for all people in all ways period. And. 3.) I wish that each night somebody would want to hold onto my thumb for longer than I want anybody to hold onto my thumb – it’s probably the best thing in the world.

I realize that’s a lot to ask, but it’s a big world, and today seems like an appropriate time to ask for such things, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed, my arms folded, and my yin curled infinitely around my yang.





Post Script: if anybody knows where I can get a grant or a fellowship for one or several or all of my kids to hold my thumb each night, please tell me. I’d be eternally grateful, and would reciprocate by holding your thumb at a business meeting or while you call a credit card company or whatever some days.

Queen Itinerary

When I got back from a long run this morning, Naomi had made breakfast in bed for traci – eggs, toast, milk – and had left this note beside her plate:

Itinerary Queen

Breakfast
Walk
Movie hour
Lunch
Hawaiian time
dancing
free hour
Painting
get dressed
party

My favorite part of the list: "get dressed" comes, apparently, right around dusk. That’s my kind of life.

Running Update

Towards the end of last school year, after a rather long run, Blaisey said to me, “Daddy, you’re tootie.” I explained to her that sometimes when I run, my G.I. system gets to working and I get a touch of the gas. She said, “Oh,” and kept watching Ironman cartoons. A few weeks later on the way home from her ABC school, we stopped into the convenience store, and she said, “Why are we stopping here, Daddy?” I told her we were getting some gas. She said, “Are we going for a run?” No, little turtle, not this time.

Last night, Desi stayed right beside me for a twenty-five minute run. When I got done, I said to traci, “Why is it that I’m sweating like crazy, and Desi’s not even breathing hard?” She said, “I don’t know. What setting was the treadmill on?” But I couldn’t remember, so we just chalked it up as another mystery of the universe.

Butternut Squash

It's an ancient family story, and one I've heard so many times, as Uncle Dewey would say, that I'm actually starting to believe I was there for it. When I was four, five, six, we were visiting Aunt Jan at her school. Jan had a goat -- Guinevere, if I recall -- and, of course, I wanted nothing to do with it. Pappap told me I might oughtta pet her, that she's very friendly and likes attention. Nuh-uh, are you crazy?

Pappap said, "Why don't you want to pet her?"

I said, "Why would I want to pet her?"

And, according to our family custom, we just kind of stared dumbly at each other for a while.

As dusk settled in, he said to me, "Well. What if somebody asked you if you've ever petted a goat?"

I said, "Dunno."

He said, "Well, this way, you'll be able to say that you have."

I don't remember if I felt like he had me cornered or if I just stumbled over a rock and put my hand on Guinevere, but I did end up petting her that day. She and I got along quite well for many years to come.

About the time I entered high school, Pappap tried to conjole me into cutting the big yard down at the camp with a reel mower. He said, "Well. What if . . ."

I said, "Dad, nobody's ever asked me to pet a goat yet, and they're not likely to care how I tend the yard."

Still and all, I kind of wish I had cut the grass with a reel mower, and I'm not even sure why. I told Pappap that once, and asked him if he knew why. He said he didn't. Proving once again, that Pappap's wisdom is sometimes so deep even he can't see past it.

I mention all this in order to say this: sometimes, the experience has to be sought out, other times, it's just there. For instance, after tonight, if anybody asks me if I've ever burnt a steamed vegetable, I can honestly say, "Yes, in fact, I have." traci and the kids and I will dine tonight on a slightly charred butternut squash. Here's to new experiences.

An Atlas, Some Vikrell, and a Premium Beer

So, yes, it’s true, traci and I and various numbers of our children drove 3,000 miles over the past few weeks, wishing at every turn that we had an atlas. “We always have an atlas,” we told each other. “Where might it have gone?” we asked. But it was nowhere to be found. Until, that is, we pulled into our own driveway in N.C. and looked in the glovebox for house keys. Figures.

Meanwhile, during the 500 mile stretch from Maga and Pappap’s camp to our own home, we stopped into the Store Whose Name Should Not Be Mentioned and tried to buy an atlas. You know how the store is – enormous and blinding – but I walked the quarter mile back to the automotive department. They had three maps of Pittsburgh and one of Canada. No atlas. Still, I asked the man behind the counter if they sold atlases. He said, “You mean like a book of maps?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Oughtta be in with the books.” After I looked through the quarter-acre book section, I asked the woman at the service desk if she had a book of maps. She said, “Like an atlas?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Oughtta be in automotive.”

Now, here’s the thing. We all know that the Store Whose Name Should Not Be Mentioned started using computers in 19 freaking 68, and I’m not saying I’m super-tech-savvy, but in those past forty-two years shouldn’t someone have taught her how to type “atlas” in the where-it-is-in-the-store box on the computer?

It’s been like that this summer. Earlier, we went to our favorite home improvement store looking for a special order shower basin. Between the two of us, we’ve done a fair amount of building. We’ve done a great deal of research into supplies. As far as amateurs go, we know our stuff. Still, traci pointed at a picture in the catalog and said, “This one says it’s made out of Vikrell. What’s that?” The man answered, “Vikrell.” traci said, “Yes, but what is it? Will it scratch? Is it like porcelain or like fiberglass? Is it heavy? Is it dense? Is it synthetic or natural? Will it dent or rust or what?” The man said, “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s a kind of material.” The three of us stared at each other for a few seconds. Then we walked away and bought our shower basin from our second favorite home improvement store.

At the beer distributor, I asked, “What’s the difference between this brand’s lager and it’s premium lager?” The salesperson said, “One’s premium, one ain’t.”

A teacher once told me, “In order to be a good teacher, you don’t have to know all the answers, you just have to know where to find the answers.” And I’ve found that to be true. But I’ve also found that to be true of working in the steel mill and as a hoddie and as a janitor. I long for a time when people understood their jobs, when, maybe, they cared a little more. I don’t know if such a time exists. I’m probably being nostalgic for a myth. I’m probably longing for a moment which only exists in nostalgia. Might as well pile melodrama on nostalgia and close with some words of Nick Carraway: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

My Boys

The first time we tried to teach Sam to run the circular saw, I showed him how to keep the guide level, plumb, and square; how to use the guide marks along the cut line; how to hold your tongue just out of the corner of your mouth in order to look supercool, smooth, and tough all the while. At which point, Sam said, “Why is all that electrical tape on the cord of the saw?”

I said, “Well, bud, Pappap sometimes gets ahead of him self and ends up sawing the cords off his tools.” Luckily, as we all know, Pappap is an electrician.

Sam said, “Oh.” So Pappap showed him how to use the speed square and a tape measure, how to check a two-by for warp and such, how to set the depth of the blade, how to stand with one’s hand on one’s chin just such that one looks contemplative even if on the inside one is thinking, now just where in the hell did I put my but one can’t remember the name of that thing one’s thinking about. And Sam said, “Why are there all those marks in the saw horse?”

Pappap said, “Well, bud, sometimes your old man is so focused on the cut that he doesn’t think about what’s on the other side of it.”

Sam stood there for a while, testing the weight of the saw in his hand, and set is smoothly on the work bench. He said, “Uhm, maybe I’ll just wait a while and teach myself how to run the circular saw.”

. . .

So anyway, it’s apparently “son appreciation week” or something like that. I know, I’d never heard of it either. Still, I suppose I support it – somebody oughtta appreciate the little rascals. By little, of course, I mean Zac is 6’5.” Sam, on the other hand, is only one inch taller than I.

Here’s to you, boys, I say. You sure are something. Daring. Kind. Vicious. Get your asses to work, I said. So they did. While I sat in my plush folding chair drinking rum and whatever, they did this:

Okay, boys, I appreciate it, but can you at least be a little tough about it?

Once upon a time, this was a weightbearing wall. I said, “Boys, put two headers in thar.” They said, “How?” I said, “Figure it out.” So they did. And I appreciate that. The day before that I had them build this arch:















I said, "How do you boys feel about it?" Zac said, "Great." Sam felt and looked ambiguous. The guy in the middle just sort of shows up sometimes and eats my barbecue potato chips.

And I appreciate that also. Today, I’m going to appreciate the hell out of the closet they’re going to build. Tomorrow: plumbing, I really appreciate that. Way to go boys.

Air Sharks Revisited

I think of the air sharks sometimes today and wonder where they have gone. What do they do in the summer when there are no little girls to chase to school? Will they return in the fall? Perhaps they’re migratory. Perhaps they’re gone forever. I think, in the end, they are a misunderstood species, and I hope someday we will find a way to live in harmony with them the way we have with other mysterious creatures like hermit crabs. And poodles.

As we all know, we first spotted them towards the end of Early March on one of those chilly mornings when it was just darn tough to make it to the car.
Suddenly, Naomi spotted a dorsal fin upon the deck, circling. She described it to Blaisey, and the two burst forth into the bare wild morning and leapt into the waiting car, adrift in the driveway.

I hopped in and started the engine. “What happened?” I said.

Leah said, “The sharks chased us.”

Naomi said, “All the way to the car.”

I cautiously backed furiously out of the driveway and onto the road, the sharks nipping at my taillights, chasing us all the way to school.

For instance: one jumped off the overpass where Wendover Ave crosses Holden, trying to land on the car, but it missed and landed on the road. We almost ran one over. Another hid in a tree, but we drove by it really fast. Some of them waited on rooftops for us to drive by, and I said, “How do they get on the roof in the first place.”

Naomi told me. “See,” she said, “they swim up there, they’re air sharks.”

Luckily sharks are afraid of schools, so we were safe when we arrived at the parking lot. On the other hand, Blaisey did see one going down the sliding board at the playground.

. . .

The next day, Naomi caught the bus to school, leaving Blaisey and me to hustle to the car by ourselves. With the help of Blaisey’s shark-proof boots, once again we made it to school unscathed. Which is more than we can say for the rest of the world. During the drive, she actually saw an air shark in somebody’s house. The living room for goodness sake.

This made us sad for the people who lived in the house, because Blaisey and I agreed your grocery bill would have to be enormous to feed nature’s perfect make-believe killing machine. I mean, do you have any idea how much Hamburger Helper it takes to sustain one of those things?

A lot.

Though, you’re right, Tuna Helper might be the meal of choice. Still.

. . . .

The next day, Blaisey asked me to tie her running shoes very tight so she could run away from the air sharks. Nonetheless, one of the sharks tried to get in the car with us, which made Blaisey mad, because she didn't want the air shark “to come to school to eat my friend.”

If I think about it, this incident explains why she bit the little girl on the slide yesterday – even when they’re not trying to eat you, air sharks are bad influences. Role models? No, they are not role models.

. . . .

About a week later, after we dropped Naomi at school, we drove past the giant rocking chair in front of a big brick building where a great big bunny had been holding an egg for the past two weeks. This morning the bunny was gone.

You guessed it – air sharks. Blaisey was more surprised than sad, because “I thought them only ate little fishies.” No, my dear, air sharks will dine on any critter, even Easter Bunny.

. . . .

Towards the final days of March, Blaisey decided she would from now on walk to the car alone, so I would be safe from the air sharks.

I said, "But what about you?"

She said, "I be okay."

I said, "What if the air sharks come after you?"

She said, "Then I step on them. Like this {*step*} {*step*}.

It feels good to have badass daughters.