For Her Poop to Bear Its Glassy Green Fruit

She sprinted at me crying.

"Daddy! Daddy! I swallowed a toy!"

At first, I had no idea what to do. Her crying registered, but the part about the toy hadn't yet.

Crap, I thought.

My youngest Bryce had been at home with me after I picked her up from preschool while the Mama completed her final Kidpower workshop day. The Mama had been gone during the day for the past five days overlapping the weekend, and although I had childcare help on the school days, I didn't do half bad with the Daddy daycare overall.

When Bryce ran at me crying, I was halfway through a work call via my Bluetooth earpiece and cell phone and pacing around the kitchen.

Methodically my thoughts of what I should do next rolled into the industrial complex of my brain like ball bearings in the Mouse Trap game. They halted as they hit one another, stopped by my reaction center's closed door.

"Daddy! I swallowed a toy!"

When she reached me, she wrapped her arms around my waist -- that's when my internal door opened and the little silver balls rang my action bell.

"Hold on," I told Meghan and Cyndy, the TalentCulture friends and collaborators I was on the phone with. "I have a situation here; my youngest swallowed something she shouldn't have and I need to deal with it."

I put myself on mute. I remember thinking, Why don't you just hang up the phone?

I grabbed Bryce's face and pointed it upwards to mine. "Bryce, what did you swallow?"

"A little toy," she answered.

"What toy?"

Raising my voice only made Bryce cry more, so I dialed it back. "Bryce, honey, you need to tell me what you swallowed."

"It's over there." She pointed to a broad array of toys strewn all over the living room floor.

"C'mon, please show me what it looked like."

She wasn't choking, so that was a good thing. I prayed that, whatever it was, it was small enough without sharp edges. I also realized it could've been one of a kind without a match for her to show me. Her crying had quieted but I wasn't convinced she could articulate what the object was.

She took me right over to the spillage of her toy jewels she loved to play with and pointed at them.

"It was one of those?"

"Yes."

Crap.

If it was one of cut plastic jewels, then a few of them had pointed ends -- potential dangers to her small throat and esophagus.

"Bryce, this is really important. Do you see one like the one you swallowed?"

That's when she picked up the small round green glass jewel. It was like a squashed marble, about the diameter of a dime and a couple centimeters thick. And it was very smooth. No sharp edges.

Thank God.

"It was like this one."

"Bryce, how did you swallow it?"

I already knew the answer holding the object in my hand. Bryce showed me how she had put it in her mouth and sucked on it like it was a piece of hard candy.

"Bryce, you have to throw up so we can get it out of your stomach."

"Why Daddy?"

"Because it might make you sick and the sooner we get it out the better."

"Okay."

I shuttled Bryce into the downstairs bathroom and lifted the toilet seat.

"Come here, Bryce. Open your mouth."

She complied. I realized the moment I was doing it that maybe it wasn't the best idea, but all I could think about was getting it out of her.

"Okay, Daddy. I need to throw up. I feel sick."

I slowly pushed my forefinger into her mouth. I hit the back of her throat -- she gagged.

"Kevin, what do you think?"

Somebody asked me a question through my earpiece. I was still on the phone. Bryce gagged again then grabbed my wrist.

"Daddy, I don't want to do this. I don't want to throw up."

She's not choking and she's not in pain, at least not the kind caused by Daddy's reactionary angst.

"I love you, Bryce. Let's go back into the living room and I'll call the doctor."

I wrapped up my call (finally) and did an online search for kids swallowing toys:

...as long as the child isn't choking or getting sick...
blah blah blah
...and the object has no sharp edges...
blah blah blah
...or toxic if made from lead or other heavy metals...
blah blah blah
...the object should pass within 5-7 days...

Then I called our doctor's office. I vaguely remembered that there was an advice nurse I could speak with, but when I reached the receptionist, she said that service was only available after 5:30 PM.

Crap.

All this less than two hours before I was supposed to leave for a conference. She did suggest that I look on the back of our health care benefits card because they should be an advice nurse number on it to call. Sure enough there was. I called and talked with a very nice nursed named Marsha. Marsha asked me a series of questions to ensure Bryce wouldn't need immediate medical attention.

Was your daughter choking?
Was your daughter having difficulty swallowing or stomach pain?
How big was the object?
What was it's shape?
Did it have any sharp edges?
Was it made from lead or another toxic material?
How long ago had she swallowed it?

"Do not attempt to induce vomiting. That could lead to further complications like aspirating the liquid and/or the object that could lead to suffocation," Marsha informed me.

Wow.

"Got it. A little late for that one, but the good news is that my attempt to get her to throw up failed."

"That's all right. Now, get her to drink lots of fluids and watch her closely for the next few hours."

Marsha ended by explaining that the object should pass in Bryce's stool within seven days, but that we'd have to keep checking for it in the stool to confirm it actually passed. If not, we should take her in to get an X-ray to ensure there's not a problem. I thanked her and hung up. While I was on the call with the advice nurse, our babysitter had showed up, so now that I was off I explained to her what had happened and for her to watch Bryce closely while I went to pick up Beatrice from school.

At school, I asked the mothers of three of Bea's classmates if any of their children had ever swallowed anything like what Bryce did.

They all nodded and one of them smiled and said, "She'll poop it out. No worries."

I had to leave for my conference prior to the Mama getting home from her workshop, but explained everything to her on the phone before I left.

"She's seems fine for now and you'll be home in less than an hour."

"Thank you, Sweetie. So, this means I'll have to check her poop for the jewel?" the Mama asked.

"Yes. Sorry."

"Ugh."

"Tell that kid to quit eating things that aren't food," I said.

"I know, right?"

The Mama's had the daily poop checking pleasure, but the jewel hasn't yet passed. I've offered to help since I've been back from my conference (where I shared this story in its entirety halfway through my presentation), and while she appreciates it, the medical gloves she has are too small for my hands. Fortunately we've still got a few more days before we have to take Bryce to the doctor, a few more days for her poop to bear its glassy green fruit.

A Jukebox of Our Sweeter Past

“Upside down
Boy, you turn me
Inside out
And round and round…”

—Diana Ross, Upside Down

And just like that, I had my first kiss. Plus,

built-in bully protection.

Before that though, walking home from pre-first (the grade between kindergarten and first grade back in my younger days) was like walking home along the wrong side of the tracks. Tracks that represented the only way I was allowed to walk home from school. The bully's name was Ronnie, and he threw rocks and dirt clods at me from atop his fence as I ran past.

This was a different time of course, the time of unregulated free range kids. My sister and I both were walking home and/or riding bikes home from school since we were six years old. The Mama did too growing up. For my sister and I early on, home to school and back was about a mile round trip.

I used to think I was in kindergarten when this all went down, but I was actually six when this happened, and that put me in pre-first. My mom thought me too young and shy and frail in kindergarten (which I was, being very shy and riddled with allergies and asthma), so instead of holding me back another year, she had pre-first as an option for me.

Every day the terror of walking home led to the flying of lethal objects. Ronnie didn't aim directly at me, otherwise I would've been taken out early on, but his point was to bully and scare me, which he did.

Until Judy. Judy who was sweet and cute (at least cute in the way a six year old thinks about it) and actually asked me if we could walk home together (her family lived three doors down from mine). I was thrilled of course, but worried about Ronnie, unsure if he had bullied her as well to date, or would start because of me.

Then it happened. Right there on the corner before the Ronnie gauntlet homeward one day. I asked her to kiss me.

Correction. I begged her to kiss me. I don't remember why exactly, but maybe it would've been protection of some kind.

She frowned, then smiled and said, "Okay."

We kissed. I remember it vividly, like an old favorite pop song, lyrically sweet and upbeat without the adult complexity in the rearview or periphery. After that, with her by my side, Ronnie had a invisibly imposed restraining order placed on him -- the rock throwing stopped. He even stopped calling me names. Of course I clung to her like dryer lint.

But now I'm a dad of two young girls, the oldest of whom is in first grade. Beatrice now has her own first grade admirer, a classmate of hers who is young and shy like I was. He's also very clingy and possessive, indicative of the male immaturity gene that activates full force throughout most of youth and early adulthood (and sometimes beyond). And she towers over him, like most girls do early on in the growing years. Beatrice likes this attention, but again, this isn't adolescence. It's the simpler side of childhood. Thank you Lord.

They are only seven years old, mind you. They are friends and this friendship is reciprocal. Together they have a lots of fun with imaginative play including the "becoming a dog" formula in the living years of science article.

But then there's this: he recently kissed her on the playground. Multiple kids witnessed it and immediately told the playground monitor and then their teacher.

The first kiss is innocent enough, but because the Mama and I have lived all of this before in our youth, we do worry about what happens next, year after year. So we did have renewed boundary talks with Bea and her teacher, focusing on the Kidpower strategies (the global nonprofit leader in personal safety and violence prevention education, of which the Mama is an instructor for). This means empowering both our girls to develop the awareness of when something's not comfortable and then literally creating a figurative fence and/or wall and saying aloud:

"Stop! I do not want to play this game."

Because no means no. It's not oversimplifying either; it's a critical empowerment practice for all girls and boys. Putting safety first among many other strategies is the very embodiment of Kidpower’s core principle:

The safety and healthy self-esteem of a child are more important than anyone’s embarrassment, inconvenience, or offense.

Amen. Thankfully we're still in the sweet and innocent years with the girls, and while we're still vigilant and teaching them these safety skills, we recognize that growing up will happen.

Bea's classmate admirer just had a bowling birthday party. It warmed my heart to watch both Bea and Bryce be kids with him and all the other kids. These are the years when the Mama and I get to again experience the silly jokes, the friendly rough-housing, the spinning in chairs, the chasing, the laughter, the high-fives and quick hugs, all the innocence and more.

There once was a little boy who bowled backward between his legs to impress a little girl, and the little girl saw and liked and clapped, and then matched him in kind; all these new childhood memories a jukebox of our sweeter past.

The Years of Living Science

“It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
She blinded me with science
And failed me in biology…”

—Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science

"Look at what Bryce did, Daddy," the Mama said.

We had just had the under-the-stairs closet remodeled with shelves, cubbies and hooks, so I figured it had something to do with that. The closet had been a hiding place of sorts for the girls, but it was always so full of stuff, making it difficult for the girls to really enjoy the rite of passage hideaway.

I peeked in the closet and there was Bryce kneeling on the floor with a flashlight lighting up whatever it was she had set up.

"It's her bug lab," the Mama answered before I could ask.

"Ah, your bug lab, Bryce. Very nice."

"Daddy, Daddy -- I have to tell you something," Bryce said.

"Yes?"

"This is my bug lab where I do science. You want to see it?"

"Yes, I see it. Pretty cool, Bryce. Science!"

When the girls do something science related, I always post it proudly and declare, "Science!" This being a reference to the 1982 Thomas Dolby song referenced above, when the crazy psychiatrist shouts it out throughout the song.

But that's not really what the song's about, the literal science things. No, Thomas used science as a metaphor for attraction and love. It's a campy video, complete with the "home of deranged scientists," all men of course. It was never supposed to be a supportive message about women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

My apologies to my girls, although my intention is always supportive when it comes to them learning and expanding their hearts and minds, especially in the world of STEM. This past Christmas we got them fun experiment gifts -- a slime kit and a volcano kit -- both of which they've already indulged in gladly. The novelty of the robot dog and dinosaur gifts have already worn off, but the microscope kit for Bryce was a huge hit. She keeps exclaiming over and over again, "Let's do science!" And Beatrice is an artist and math fan who's now entering her school's science fair this year with a classmate (which I got to be a judge for last year). She's even cracked the physics formula of becoming a dog: kids + dog food + dog hair = dogs.

Right on.

So when's the part where they're discouraged to continue to expand their hearts and minds through STEM? When's the part where they're only seen as lovely useless objects of biology and nothing more?

Because it's coming, statistically speaking. And that's quite disheartening.

Thankfully there are kids'  books like Going Places, where a strong lead female character is highly creative and inventive, and shows like Odd Squad on PBS Kids (one of my favorites actually), an X-Files for kids, where gender diversity and all diversity in STEM is celebrated, and where two of the lead characters are girls (and there are many more in the show).

But at what point will their teachers stop picking Bea and Bryce to lead class projects and/or teams? Right now they have very inclusive and supportive teachers, women of course, who celebrate all the girl and boy strengths (just as the Mama and I do and thankfully many other responsible parents as well). But when will that stop? Middle school? High school? College? All of the above?

And at what point will employers overlook them for their male counterparts (because someday they may have children or whatever the reason)? At what point does the hostility and the sexual harassment start because of their interest in technology and science (or anything for that matter)? According to a recent survey, 60 percent of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances. I have failed myself in my distant professional past, but haven't tolerated it since.

I read an article is the Santa Cruz Sentinel this last week about the film Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, which I wasn't aware of but now definitely want to see. The article highlighted these documentary facts:

The documentary by award-winning director Robin Hauser Reynolds, released in April, reports sobering disparities in the industry. At Apple, only 20 percent of employees are women. At Google, it’s 17 percent. And at Twitter, it’s just 10 percent. Of the 1.4 million computing-related job openings the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts by 2020, American women will fill less than 3 percent, or about one for every nine American men, according to the film.

When do the years of living science stop for our girls? We hope never, unless it's their choice, and even then we hope their sense of mindful fairness and imaginative wonder will never cease, and that it will continuously flow downhill like glowing magma, clearing the thorny landscape below of misogyny, harassment and discrimination for generations to come.

The Only Chasm Between Us Now Is Sleep

“Somewhere in a lonely hotel room
There's a guy starting to realize
That eternal fate has turn it's back on him.
It's 2 A.M.”

—Golden Earring, Twilight Zone

It's 2 A.M. on day two. Delirium rocks in my arms. She's only about eight months old, but she wakes and cries incessantly about every two hours, and has been off and on for the past four months.

She quiets down and I think I'm okay to lay her back down in her crib, the one that's been in our room shortly after being born in our room, but she cries yet again. I resume my march, cutting a groove in the carpet under my feet. It's like I'm marching back and forth through mud and grass in the soupy darkness. Faint yellow light from the streetlamps behind our house seeps in through the blackout shades, casting just enough of it upon her pinched, wailing face.

Back and forth, back and forth. Then some sleep. Then back and forth, back and forth. Then a little more sleep. I was a wreck. There's a point when experiencing sleep deprivation, even after a day or two, where a darkness settles on the soul like radioactive ash. Basic decision-making becomes compromised. Moodiness increases dramatically. I simply felt like reheated shit.

And you want to break things. Any things. Three days earlier, the Mama had been up for weeks on end with Bryce, and although I helped get up with her some of the time, and to feed her when I could with a bottle of breast milk or formula, Bryce didn't take very well to it compared to Beatrice, and the disrupted sleep-cycle continued.

Yes, we were all in the same bedroom together -- me, the Mama and Bryce -- but the Mama is the one who got up nearly every single night. This was early in 2011, when Bryce was still an infant and not sleeping at all.

Finally the Mama developed a Jack Torrance aura (the crazy father from Stephen King's The Shining), one that was all red aglow spilling freely from eyes. She simply glared indirectly at me and said:

"I'm sleeping in the garage guest room for a few nights. You have to take care of her."

And then she was gone, and I was in the bedroom alone with the crying Bryce. Every two hours at night for a few days.

You really do go a little (or a lot) batshit crazy when you're up with your lovely offspring; you almost want to eat your young. The sleeping or lack thereof is a spectrum as well -- sometimes the newborns and toddlers sleep pretty well (Beatrice) overall, and sometimes they do not (Bryce). Either way you're up with them, trying to figure out how to deal with them, and how to cope with your primitive fight-or-flight response when sleep deprived while doing your best to stand erect as a responsible parent. And it can create chasms between the parents, chasms that impact communication and intimacy. That was something we weren't going to let happen no matter what.

Nearly a year later there was another bout of sleepless Bryce nights, and ever since there have been those nights when one of the girls gets sick or has a nightmare and comes in to wake us up. Usually the Mama first, until she lovingly convinces them after a few times in a row that I love you, Sweetie, but Mommy needs to sleep, so please wake up Daddy if you have a bad dream.

You know, those kind of supportive, double-edged messages of love. But when we're woken up over and over and one of us has to get up -- usually the Mama -- then a little bit of our souls slip away. It doesn't mean we don't love our daughters any less. Quite the contrary: we love them even more when they're scared or sad and will do whatever we have to do to quell their fears.

That said, there's also the added pleasure of a loving couple sleeping together in the same beds for 18 years, where every detail of each other's sleeping habits are sacred knowledge. Biblical even. Knowledge kept in our Ark of the Marriage Convenant along with our vows, the love poems and notes, the wham bams and all in betweens, the passing gas, the snoring, the pulling sheets off the other, the getting up from bed like aftershocks from a major earthquake because of having to pee or having a belly ache or getting up with the girls -- and so much more.

Six years ago the Mama wanted us to get twin beds. In the same room and technically pushed together, but still, two separate beds. So we could both sleep better. I balked at the idea. I was even a little offended. This is what it's come to? Soulmates trapped in sleep hell and relegated to twin beds? To never touch again! No way, not over my gassy not-quite-dead old body!

The benefits of regular sleep and the now of every beat and breath have overwhelmed my fear of distance and the twin-bed chasm. Better health, mood, better sex. Yes, that last part. And so much more. So now we have two wonderfully sound twin beds, pushed together within one inch, and dressed as though we were one. Two nights in we've never slept better.

The only chasm between us now is sleep. And that we are thankful for.

The Now of Every Beat and Breath

“Winding like an ancient river,

The time is now again.

Hope is like an ancient river;

The time is now again.”

—Rush, Ceiling Unlimited

There were 42 episodes last year. Not the 52 I had originally planned -- one per week -- but that's because of other priorities that took precedent. Like work travel. And vacations. And family time.

There was no other cast except me. No production team except me. Only one camera to capture one single image per show. On location at Natural Bridges State Beach. One mile walked up to Natural Bridges, two miles running on the beach, one mile walk/run back home.

The show's premise was (and still is) to complete an empowering weekly anchor workout, one that still presents me with the challenge of running (at least on the beach) since my knee surgery in 2014, while listening to my music of choice and let my mind do what it will. Mindfulness. Hopeful daydreaming. Problem solving. Introspection. Forward thinking. Reminiscing. The simple bliss of enjoying every beat and breath.

One little victory at a time. Linked and looped together into perpetual resolutions of what I want to be. Of what I can be. Of what I can actually control and of what is beyond me. 

The silly part of this idea was to imagine that my weekly beach runs are a show of sorts. A social media show of my anchor moments shared on Instagram and other channels like this one from the New Year:

This week on #HappyNewYear Beach Run. #BigDaddyPower

But always with the same all temporal yet transitory anchors in the background: the sky, the sea, the natural rock bridge (the only one left at Natural Bridges State Beach), and the beach itself. And sometimes me (because we are also transitory). Really more to remind me of that particular moment of being and doing and taking care of me so I can be there and take care of my family. 

In between the beach run is a whole lot of messy life, only some of which I can personally impact. So I tend well to myself, and then to my family, and then to others, because most of the messy will always be beyond my control (some of which I'll never want to touch anyway). I've been praying/meditating for three minutes a day now for over a week, blotting out everything except me, my breath and the greater I. While not wholly transformative, at least not yet, the incremental resetting is emotionally refreshing and is giving me new focus. Amen.

The rest of living well was summed up nicely for me in this short NPR article: The prescription is simple: Get enough sleep. Move around. Eat well. Interact with others.

The time is always now again -- the now of every beat and breath and being completely well in. It ain't easy, but it's certainly worth my family's while.

Happy New Year, Kids.