It's Your Birthday, Baby, So Let's Dance

Sometimes spontaneity sputters and burns with the white hot flame of a mindfully present love.

And those can be the best of times.

It's not a indictment on what doesn't happen day after day in a long-term relationship, complete with kids. The Mama and I love each other no matter what and through it all -- whatever "no matter what" and "it all" bring. The girls are our world and we wouldn't have it any other way.

The "romance" may not be as regular as in olden days before children (which was years in the making), but there is romance, alive and well, usually semi-scheduled but always enjoyable. (You big kids with kids know what I mean.)

And then there's the spontaneity, so precious and memorable that even the seemingly simplest of actions light up the memory centers of head and heart.

We took the Mama's mom out for her birthday a few weeks ago just before Valentine's Day, and one of the first stops we made was at a local winery. In the middle of our tasting, a mixed gender barbershop quartet appeared and entertained all us tasters with some classic a capella. Then they fired up some sweet 1950's doo-wop and that's what sparked the white flame.

The Mama called me out from the bar and we danced a little swing and a little traditional hustle, at least the moves we remember from our dance lessons years ago.

But remember them we did. Dancing with her in that moment was delightful, just as it was the day I married her, when we actually made up our own dance, years before the lessons.

Who says that an old married couple with kids can't cut a rug? We don't, and neither do our girls. We've got a colorful disco ball in the living that we light up for B-hive dance parties, birthdays and other special family occasions.

It's your birthday, Baby, so let's dance.

"I wanna with rock you, yeah, all night..."

B a blasting cap

The youngest always tend to get the short end of the stick, but my youngest is actually the short stick of dynamite with a blasting cap on top -- with a capital B.

There is so much truth to how you coddle your first compared to the kids that come after. It's not that you don't love the second, third or fourth (that goodness we only have the second), you're just less apprehensive, more relaxed and tired (which aren't the same thing, mind you) with the second than the first; you're raising exponentially and metaphorically a gaggle of children, not only two. You spent so much energy trying to figure out what the hell to do with the first one without screwing them up too much, that with the second you think, "Oh, do I really need to put the frayed electrical wires away?"

Plus, there's the whole thing about the rest of life and work and providing for family and maybe taking care of other family (as we did the past few years with my parents)...

Yep, you usually lighten up with the second, coddle them a little less, not necessarily ignore them, but you definitely allow them more freedom than the first (and write less about them than the first -- sigh). And then while all of that is going on (or less of stuff going on), there's the doubled efforts of the second wanting to be more like the first.

Our youngest, Bryce, is just under two years younger than the elder B, Beatrice. Seemingly she's been scrambling to keep up with Bea every since she was born, upstairs. Bold, brazen, bossy and as sweet as apple pie laced with jalapeno and served with a wedge of lemon -- Bryce is my barrel of monkeys with dynamite and blasting caps. Bea is the politer Curious George of the two.

Another big difference, which says a lot about their personalities, is that while Bea still refuses to each much meat except for tuna and fish sticks, Bryce is a carnivore. Not a lot if any red meat yet, but pork, chicken and fish are all yum in the tum for Bryce.

Good to know that at the end of the world, Bryce could turn out to be our little hunter, while Bea will help with gathering.

Every time we take the girls outdoors to explore, romp and play, Bryce is the fearless investigator. Actually, she's fearless everywhere, but what's even more interesting is that there's a reciprocal big sister scrambling to be like Bryce, injecting a little of the bold, brazen and bossy Bryce into Bea's more reserved bloodstream. It's fascinating really how different they are and how much they complement one another.

Trust me, if you're ever feeling like the short end of the stick, B a blasting cap.

Ka-boom.

Being Back Here

I couldn't get the song out of my head once it started. It was 2:30 in the morning, last night, the night before my Mom's last memorial, which was earlier today. (That's what strung out feels like, kids. We were up for hours last night...)

The song was Still Fighting It, a bittersweet reflection on growing up and having children of your own, by Ben Folds.

"It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you'd feel the same things...
Everybody knows
It hurts to grow up
And everybody does
It's so weird to be back here
Let me tell you what
The years go on and
We're still fighting it,
we're still fighting it..."

Because at that moment, while I watched the Mama (my wife) hold and try to console an inconsolable stuffy Bryce (my youngest daughter), and Beatrice (my oldest) and me laid awake unable to sleep, I thought of my Mom and all the times she consoled and took care of me and my sister growing up, much of it without help with we were young children.

It's so weird to be back here...

Whether it be a cold, or the flu, or chicken pox, or allergies, or asthma -- Mom always took care of us and did everything she could to make it all better. Always.

Even the time I nearly ate an entire bottle of orange flavored baby aspirin and our family doctor at the time told Mom to make me throw it all up. Now that was a joyous memory. If you've tried to convince a young child to throw up for their own good, you know what I'm talking about. So no, I never did throw up that time, but fortunately it all worked out and all that yummy aspirin didn't affect me adversely.

I watched the Mama hold Bryce and remembered Mom and those are/were the memories that live now and forever in the tidal pools of my heart, a universe within universe within universe without forgetting once the "sunny days and rain" shared amid torrent and still water like glass.

Two weeks ago we said goodbye in Oregon, leaving Mom and Dad forever in the bay where they loved and lived in the end, where their souls reach to heaven...and today we said goodbye with local family and friends in Visalia where we grew up and where it all started for us, another tide rushing in to scatter memories from pool to vibrant pool...

Thank you for always being there, Mom. We were there for you as much as we could be in the end.

We love you.

The Smile Game

It's the Smile Game. An engaging, fun activity where Beatrice explores her ever-expanding universe of family, friends, teachers and other adult figures of varying degrees.

Bea starts the process:

"Let's make...[insert name here]!"

Then I continue:

"Is [name] a boy or a girl?"

"A girl!"

"Okay, now what about her face..."

We continue on, making the new "virtual" person in Bea's social network, adding their nose, hair style, eye style, eye color, hair color, clothing color, body size and shape, glasses and/or freckles -- and last but certainly not least, the smile.

And it's always the same smile. A simple, sweet line curved up at the ends. Everyone smiles in Bea's world. We should all be so inclined. Yes, it's toddler naivete, but she doesn't know the difference.

Again, we should all be so inclined.

Forget that it's a first-generation Nintendo Wii where you can make the different people that end up appearing in the different games you can play. To Bea, it's the Smile Game where familiar faces bring comfort to a still very new person in this big friggin' sometimes sad and scary world. A world where you can lose both parents in only four months.

On a lighter note, baseball may be a few months away, but we can play with family and friends everyday.

"Daddy, let's play baseball!"

"You got it, Bea. Batter up," I say, smiling.

We hold our protest signs on high

Gun control may or may not be one of the answers in the U.S. to curb violence and violent deaths, but globally, impulse control certainly is.

In fact, a big misconception is that we're so much more violent today than our ancestors were yesterday. Media exploitation aside, the data actually shows rates of violence and violent death have declined over the past few thousand years, and our ability to empathize, curb our violent impulses and value human life has never been higher. Steven Pinker does an amazing job of explaining this all in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The rates of violence today really are lower than they've ever been.

Even those experts who don't necessarily agree with all the violence-declining theories Pinker postulates in his book do agree that statistically speaking we've gotten less violent as a species, not more violent. And the increase of impulse control and how we value human life is a big part of that.

Until it's not and control is again lost in horrific examples where we regress quite rapidly, the latest in the news makes it seem like there's a crazy on every corner ready to kill us and our children.

But it was the news I saw posted from my friends at The Pixel Project about the gang-rape in New Delhi of a 23-year-old medical student, and her eventual death from her injuries, that really stopped me cold. Of course I immediately thought of my own two young daughters and the fact that they could be 23-year-old medical students someday and that even with the overall decline in violence, violence against women is still a worldwide scourge.

Many women's rights advocates say that rapes, sex crimes and violent deaths go unreported in many parts of the world, even in the U.S. And for those reported, nearly 1.3 million women and about 835,000 men are assaulted by their partner every year in the United States.

We're not talking random rape here like in the recent India example. According to a National Women’s Study that sampled a total of 4,008 women, 13 percent of all adult women become rape victims during their lifetime. About 9 percent of the female victims were raped by their husbands or ex-husbands, nearly 10 percent were raped by their boyfriends or ex-boyfriends. Additionally, 11 percent of the female victims were raped by their fathers or stepfathers, and 16 percent were raped by other relatives.

The outrage in India has sparked protests and a cry for justice, but it also needs to be a cry for self-control and an even greater value of human life, for those we know and those we don't.

The picture of protesting Indian schoolchildren holding up declarative signs moves me to write yet again about putting an end to violence against women and intimate partner violence for both women and men, to renew my investment in 2013 in generating empathy, increasing impulse control from the day we're born, and elevating a little higher, however incremental, our value of one another, our children and our children's children.

Do Not Touch Me, My Dress Is Not A Yes

Indeed it is not. The Mama and I and our girls concur and we hold our signs on high.

All in on Christmas, a winner every time

"But you don't have to be an angel

To sing harmony.

You don't have to be a child

To love the mystery.

And you don't have to be a wise man

On bended knee.

The heart of this Christmas is in you and me." --Amy Grant

She's insanely excited about the numbers. The next day's number to be precise, once she empties the pocket of today's of course, full of two Hershey's kisses and a tiny ornament and/or another tiny holiday knick-knack like Santa and reindeer erasers the Mama and Nonna picked up at the dollar store.

It's the first thing Bea does when she wakes up and comes downstairs: she bounds immediately over the Advent calendar than Nana made for us a few years ago (my mom), announces the date and thrusts her hand into its pocket to loot its bounty.

Right after that: "Mommy, I want to look at 23." 

"That's not until tomorrow, Sweetie. You'll have to wait."

"Okay."

And then Bea brings a chocolate kiss over to Bryce.

"Here you go, Bryce."

Bryce nods and says, "Yum, yum."

And then I ask, "How many days left until Christmas, Beatrice?"

Bea runs back over to the calendar and starts counting.

"One, two, three..."

And then Bryce calls out, "Beatrice! More choc-lat!"

They're both all in on every number. It's brilliant to watch. When you're 2+ and 4+, you don't know how else to be; all in on one number at a time is the preferred Christmas toddler roulette gamble. Spin, baby, spin. A winner every time.

Although, there's always tomorrow, right?

"Mommy, I want to look at 23." 

Last weekend we took the girls to see Santa and they were both thrilled to bits. They sat happily on his lap and Beatrice told him what she wanted while Bryce babbled away in kind. They got yummy candy canes and when we left and walked past a store window with a classic holiday train running along a track around a tree, they stood mesmerized in front of the window and our hearts filled with childlike joy watching them.

*sigh*

Back to this weekend. "Beatrice, what did you tell Santa you wanted?"

"A castle," she says proudly, and then, "Daddy, I want to look at 23."

"Tomorrow, my sweet Bea. Tomorrow." 

And then she's off to count the remaining days...

I remember writing a silly poem in my late teens about my anticipatory glee of Christmas each year, and how I knew when I was 102, I'd still be thrilled to bits on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

And that's never been more true now that we have children. In fact, I can't even imagine not having children excited for Christmas (and nearly every day), even though at one time weren't going to have any (and no, we don't disparage those who don't).

Maybe that's why I knew I'd be thrilled to bits at Christmas at 102, to continually live life through the "all in" gamblers, and so my heart aches for the families who lost their children tragically this month in Newton, CT, and our prayers for healing go out to the entire community.

May their anticipatory glee keep the universe lit forever.

Heaven's Addendum

Their heaven wraps around the finger lake at sunrise
like a gold band forged now and forever.
I walk and cry and laugh and run along the paths,
Draw beauty of sky, trees, debris and water
deep into my lungs' tendrils that feed my heart.
I stop to pay homage to Kinkade and Sparks,
tempered (of course) by Hopper, Folds and Peart,
Bly and Kerouac, and Stein and Thompson Walker of late.
I thank God for my parents, for their love and suffering
when their bodies finally slowed to sudden stops
only four months and a day apart after a millennium.
Heartache leaves permanent scars of pleasure and pain,
but I thank God for my parents and their heaven,
for it will be there for me every morning I rise
promising more than until death do us part,
an eternal promise for my wife and us all.