Why do they make wars?

Rowan: "Poppa, why do the make wars?"

Poppa: (pause) "That's a great question Row."

Rowan: "I don't like wars because people get killed."

Poppa: (pause) "Yes."

Rowan: "Why do they do that?"

Poppa: "You know when you and Khona want the same hippo stuffy."

Rowan: "Yess."

Poppa: "That's why."

Rowan: "What are other reasons?"

Poppa: "Well, sometimes, people fight over bigger things, like houses."

Rowan: "Can't they just get married?"

Poppa: (pause) "Yes."

Rowan: "What else?"

Poppa: "Sometimes, it's over bigger things like rivers or lakes."

Rowan: "Can't they just get in the same boat, and get along?"

Poppa: (pause) "Yes."

Rowan: "There are other ways to do it then wars. Right Poppa?"

Poppa: "Yes, Row. Yes there are."

What is School for Poppa?

Rowan started Kindergarten last week.

"That was super fun Dad," she said after her first day. "I loved playing with all the kids."

As I was walking her to the doors this morning, she looked up at me and said, "What is School for Poppa?"

(Pause) "What a great question," I replied. And then I did what any great parent does who doesn't know the answer.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know," she says. "I can't figure that out."

"Well," I said, "maybe you could find out the answer today at school. Try asking your teacher."

When I picked her up this afternoon, and we went for a little hike on the way home, I checked in if she'd remembered the question.

"Yes Dad. Why do we go to school? That's the question."

"Great. And what did you find out?"

"Nothing." she says.

"Did you ask your teacher?" I say.

"Oh yes. She doesn't know." (Pause)
Rowan looks up at me. "She REALLY doesn't know Dad. Really."

"Well, what do you think?" I said.

"I think we should stop talking about this and look for frogs."

Nail polish & Santa's Village

I like putting numbers in boxes. I love doing taxes. And reading instruction manuals at bed-time. In grade 11, I spent many of my Saturdays hand painting one inch tiles on a pop art piece I was doing for class. It grounded me. Gave me a sense of control. Order. And it was these skills that landed me the job of painting Mary-Kate's toe nails before the wedding near Santa's Village. A Muskoka wedding, up north. With three kids, a wedding up north demands some creative childcare solutions. And you can only leave the kids in a McDonald's playland for so long. So, despite Rowan's vote to stay in a motel and watch movies all day, Mary-Kate found Santa's Village on the map, just around the corner from the wedding. "Santa's Village?" I said, "In the summer?" "It's only open in the summer," said Mary-Kate. And so begins the adventure. Santa's Village is the perfect film setting for a CSI episode, or the Mentalist: elves and reindeer walking around, Santa's hat the frame for all signs. Mrs. Claus has a bakery of course, and all the rides are Santa themed -- reindeer leading the roller coaster, Santa's toy-shop bouncy castle. We even saw Santa one day walking by. "You didn't stop and look both ways young lady." Santa just told Mary-Kate that she didn't cross the train tracks safely. That was the only interaction we had with Santa. It was the end of the day. He was tired. The best part of Santa's Village is Ricky. Ricky looks a lot like Santa Claus, but has been miscast as the driver of Santa's River Boat. This boat is like a jet ski for 50 people. And Ricky has been driving it 20 times a day every summer for 30 years. 30 years! Every day! Ricky loves his job, and man, does he do it well. Playing Chipmunks, and The Chicken Dance up and down the Muskoka River. "How's the fishing!!!?" he yells to some local cottagers. They smile and look away. Ricky drives a school bus in the winter. "Half way through the school year, I really miss this boat."

Now, Santa's Village also has a campground across the road where we had set up our tents. A large white pine trailer park for dedicated Santa's Village repeat elves. It was in this dusty campsite where I was very carefully painting Mary-Kate's toes with neon orange-red nail polish. Oh, girls, you've got to get a picture of this. So Rowan & Sikhona smash open the camera case, and each put a camera around their necks. Sikhona figures out how to press the silver button to take a picture. And just starts taking them. On motor-drive, she's taking pictures, close-ups really, of various things, wrists, sky, trees, ground, oh, we're in that one. I'm carefully painting. Staying within the lines, trying to layer the polish not too thick, avoiding streaks. Rowan has the other camera right up close. Nails, painted. Hands, knees, other body parts. "You might want to back up a little girls. Get a wide shot. The whole scene. And poof! A cloud of wood ash billows up around Sikhona as she falls backward into the fire pit, holding the camera, looking just fine really. Picks herself up, dusts off, and keeps pressing that silver button. I finally finish my work of art. We send the girls off to Santa's Village with Megan and all our towels, and Mary-Kate and I get our wedding digs on in the campground washrooms. Open-style I would call them. The women's washroom is closed for cleaning, so Mary-Kate just bursts in anyway, and says to the man, "I'm going to a wedding. I have to get ready. Just keep doing whatever you're doing." He leaves. She sets all her stuff up in one stall, and then discovers there's no hot water, so she jumps from stall to stall trying to shave her legs. I have no soap, so I keep leaving my shower with a t-shirt wrapped around my waist to pump soap from the sinks. The doors are wide open, and I do my best not to moon the kids across the road on Santa's reindeer. We do make it to the wedding with no evidence of our roles as extras on a CSI episode, other then Mary-Kate's beautiful Santa red toes.

The year I got my smell back

I was feeling sad the other night. Melancholy. Not depressed sad. A sadness of memory. Grounded. Connected. As if empathy was calling out. I'm here. Emotion as portal. Mary-Kate said, "Do you remember when I first met you? You said you were jealous of my emotion, my ability to feel things." I was dead. Like a stone. Moving around. A living carcass. Not able to sense. I remember the first moment I knew I had lost my sense of smell. A high school student was complaining of the smell of manure from the farmer's fields. "It's not that bad," I said. And then other kids mentioned the intensity. I smelt nothing. Our own reality seems like the truth at the time. As it is our truth. Our way of being in the world. And everyone else must be experiencing the same thing. What is not-my-reality? What is it to smell? To feel. I remember what an orgasm used to feel like. And then it died. The feeling lost. The pipes working, flowing, moving. No feeling. Dead. And I relied on my eyes. I experienced the world through my eyes, as if they could feel. I could project what it was like to feel through the picture of my world. But there was no feeling. It was a guess. A guess from what it felt like. From the fading memory of emotion. As if I was watching my life on TV. Experiencing it visually. I thought I wasn't capable of feeling anymore. Age. Work. Stress. Responsibility. It was all necessary to survive. So my body was sacrificed. A side effect of living as a successful adult. A working adult. Someone who takes care of himself. Pays the bills. I searched for ways to crack open my body. Yoga. Get in there. Hockey. Unlock that portal. I must be inside there. Meditation. I must be. Beer. Feeling something. Am I there? And then we had River. And I had space. Space to be. To open. To take things in. To absorb. To de-toxify. De-layer. And very slowly, I started to emerge, come into focus. And I could smell. River's diaper. I can smell it. I can smell it. Hallelujah. And cilantro. Oh, cilantro. And I could feel. Sadness. Yay sadness. Not dead. I am sad. Yes. Oh, yes. And orgasm. It's back. Returned. Uncovered. Nostalgic. A complexity to it. A nuance. Not just one feeling. But a mix of layers, of variation, subtle and strong. And it's a fucking roller coaster, this feeling thing, but damn, it's nice to be on the ride.