Merry Halloween to you, my good sirs

We struggle a little bit with Halloween in our house. Really, we struggle with most holidays. And by "we" I mean me. I'm not the sort of person who likes big productions, decorations, groups of people, or expectations to act a part. I don't really get excited about costumes (although I admit I'd like to dress my kid up as a Jawa), and I kinda hate getting my picture taken. Perhaps it's the introvert in me. Perhaps it's the contrarian in me. And yeah, I'm a lot of fun at parties.

My wife told me I probably shouldn't include the "bastards" bit in this comic, that I might alienate sensitive readers (along with all her relatives). And if you read my blog much, you know I tend to lean way further towards the sappy than the snarky. But when it comes to the almost universal social expectation that I should love a holiday or tradition, the curmudgeon in me tends to come out full force. If it's any consolation, I promise not to defile Christmas. Not too much, anyway.

Halloween isn't all bad. I mean, after you take away all the dumb commercial stuff, I can definitely appreciate a holiday that celebrates being a little creepy. And if you're the proud parent of a creepy kid, it resonates all the more.

We're still going trick-or-treating this year. I do make a few sacrifices for the happiness of my three-year-old. Last year, my daughter was a pirate, which was mildly fun and subversive:

This year, she wants to be a princess. Here's her actual request, I kid you not: "I want to be a Princess trapped by a Pirate." Sigh. I'm okay with that. Really. As long as she never stops wanting to play in the dirt and build rocket ships, she can be my little princess.

Be safe out there, kids. And be nice to all the little monsters, and pirates, and princesses.

Late nights, broken teeth

The mountains are calling and I must go

A little over a month ago we moved from Orange County to a mountain cabin in the Los Padres National Forest. This is what we wake up to in the morning:

We knew that things would be different. We now have to drive nearly an hour to get to an affordable grocery store. We've already had near-freezing weather, snow is on the way, and we've exchanged palm trees for pine trees. We literally live on the side of a mountain, and we're still figuring out exactly what that means. While we were moving in, Lindsay got a little education from a conversation with our neighbor:

Neighbor: Do you have any cats? Do you want one? 

Lindsay: ? 

Neighbor: I found a feral cat, and I've been feeding him and nursing him back to health. 

Lindsay: Well, actually we’re kind of allergic to cats.

Neighbor: We’ve also got raccoons here. You like raccoons? 

Lindsay: They're alright . . . 

Neighbor: There’s a whole shed full of ‘em across the street. I feed them too. See? There’s one on my porch right now. They’re real friendly. 

Lindsay: Oh, wow. Okay. 

Neighbor: How do you feel about bears? 

Lindsay: Real ones? The big kind? 

Neighbor: Yeah, they get big. This guy finds a mother bear with cubs, and he takes out a pistol and shoots her. Idiot! Anyway, those cubs were living under your porch for a while. 

Lindsay: Our porch? 

Neighbor: Yup. Animal control said to just let nature take its course, but . . . 

Lindsay: You fed them? 

Neighbor: Yup. 

So, gotta watch out for those critters. I'm waiting for the day Addison wanders in with a moose on a leash.

We were a little worried about how well Addison would transition to a new place. When you're three, your house and your routines are your whole world (heck, they're still my whole world). And for the first day or two, she had a tough time. She missed her Grammy and Gramps. One night, she sobbed for 45 minutes, saying that she "just does not have any friends here!" and "there are not so many people here!" And recently, Addison told us that "sometimes when I'm playing by myself in my room, I pretend I have no friends and am very, very lonely."

Still, it wasn't but a few days before she was wandering around at the playground holding some random kid's hand, instructing her "husband" to dance with her like Beauty and the Beast. 

And she's excited by neighbors she can interact with. While we construct make-shift play equipment in the backyard, she has conversations with our elderly neighbors, who tend a garden and always pop something off a plant for Addison to put in her mouth. She loves their cherry tomatoes. 

With a little coaching, Addison wrote them a thank-you note, on which she drew tomatoes and a space ship. I couldn't find her for about thirty seconds, and then I heard something outside. She was standing at the fence between our lots, shouting at their house:

Addison: "Neighbors! HEY! NEIGHBORS! I HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU! HEEEEEYYYYY! COME OUT HERE! COME! OUT! RIGHT! NOW!"

We're still working on what it means to be "neighborly," though I can't fault her enthusiasm.

The adventurous streak is strong in this one. She gets that more from her mother than from me. I love her boldness, her confidence, her inquisitiveness, even if it sometimes catches me off-guard. But I can understand that there's nothing quite like exploring a brand new place, especially when that new place is filled with rocks, lakes, mountains, and all manner of furry critters.

In the end, Addison has transitioned to our new life even better than I imagined she would. Every day that she snatches up her staff and asks to walk to the park or the library, I'm inspired by her excitement for a new quest. When she requests some time to go out back and dig a hole, I'm gratified by her eagerness to go out under the pines and get her hands dirty. When we step outside to search the clear night sky for the brightest, luckiest star, I'm reminded that she's an adventurer, and that to her, the magic of the world vastly outweighs the anxieties. She's a brave kid, and it's gonna stretch me to keep up with her.

Texting

On falling down

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” 

                                                      ― Martin Luther King Jr.

If there's one concept I wish I could teach my daughter, it would be this. The Universe seems inexorably to succumb to decay. But in each of us is a creative power that trumps the destructive forces that surround us, if only we will have the will to use it. From the ruins of tragedy may be built soaring towers of transcendence. 

Thunderpants, sprinkler, baby potato, Sprinkling love

A million splashes

Our new place is a short walk to a park with a fishing pond. As we walk along the road to the pond, Addison and I fill our pockets with little flat stones. Skipping stones is a new skill that Addison is keen to learn. As I skip a rock, she counts the splashes: "One . . . two . . . threefourfivesix!" And when she tosses her own rock like a shot-putter hurling a cannonball, she waits for the single massive splash and shouts, "Whoa! A MILLION splashes!"

We go to the pond almost every day. I scan the ground for likely candidates as we walk. My heart skips a beat when I pick up a really quality skipping rock, something with a comfortable heft and a nice place to curl my finger around it. The kind of skipping rock that's so beautifully formed, so perfect for its purpose, that you save it for last and then don't want to use it after all. Because in the end, the very best skipping rock is the one that skips the farthest and then sinks into the depths, beyond recovery. Such great potential paired with the heartbreak of such a singular moment, a brief triumph that can never be repeated.

As I watched my daughter bend down to pick up stones in the dirt shoulder of the road, I considered her little self. So perfectly formed. And her hand fits so perfectly in mine. I kind of just want to keep her in my pocket and never let her go.

But really (I have to keep telling myself this), raising a kid is like having a perfect skipping stone that's MAGIC. You throw it out, and it skips incredibly, beautifully across the surface. And then it comes BACK. It always comes back. So long as you've treasured it, cradled it in the palm of your hand, loved it with all you have. So long as you pause a moment before launch, breathless, preparing yourself mentally for all that will come. If your throw is true and pure, imbued with the experience of many past successes and many hours of practice. If you've earned the stone's love, it comes back.

And then, one day, the stone will learn that it can throw itself. All those times when you launched it out there with your heart in your throat -- they were all for this purpose. So that someday, even when you're not there, the stone will keep throwing itself out there, and keep skipping gracefully, magnificently across the surface, and never sink to the bottom.

"Whoa! A MILLION splashes!"