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.

I'm Feeling Lucky

Have you ever clicked the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Google? You type in something to search in the Google text box, and below the search are two options: "Google Search" or "I'm Feeling Lucky". I've never tried it. I always picked "Google Search". For years, I had it in the back of my mind that some day, I would try that Lucky thing out. I'd take a risk. Whoah. But never have.

I finally got up the courage to go for it. I was feeling lucky, and I wanted to know where that damn button took me. Problem is, you can't click it anymore. Try it. Type something into Google, and try to click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Aha! Search results automatically brought up. How efficient. I waited too long! Turns out the Lucky button cost Google $110 million a year in lost ad revenue because it took people directly to the top search site. No ads. But the button is still there. Why does Google keep it, if you can't actually choose it? It makes them seem human. Whimsical. Fun. Less corporate. Less multi-billion dollar. Less bland.

We live in a world of knowns. We can find the answer. To anything. It's all there. No need to feel lucky. You just type in the question and the answer pops up. Instantly. No need to think really. No need to recall. To question without the answer. Just to question. Have you ever been in a situation where a question comes up that nobody knows the answer to, and there's no internet? No way to Google the answer. And everybody stands there looking at each other, like, well, maybe we just talk about what could be the answer. The possibilities. The unknowns.

And when you can't Google. Or choose not to. Savour it. Relish in the not-knowing. Explore it. Embrace it. Dive in like a kid in those balls in a McDonald's PlayLand. And have fun in that space: the wilderness of not-knowing, of discovering something by actually talking to other people who also don't know. And see what happens. Maybe you'll get lucky.

10 o'clock tonight

Rowan watched our Italian neighbour kill two chickens tonight. I was walking to the back of our garden holding two red hens upside down by their legs, when Rowan asked, "where are you going with those?" "I'm taking them to Nona. They're old and ready to die. She's going to kill them. Do you want to come?" "Yes!" "Are you sure?" "Yes." Nona held each hen's body like a baker holds a soft dough before it's kneaded, gently twisting the hen's head, like folding a cloth napkin ... "Rowan, are you sure?" "Yes, Dad." Nona slowly twisted, held, twisted, held, one more turn, then a slow pull with a slight bend, and crack, neck broken. And then the wings started flapping, and kept going for what seemed like a very long time. "Are you sure she's dead Nona?" "Oh, yes. Feel here." "I trust you," I said.

I thought it was time I learned how to kill a chicken. A skill. A connection to death. A re-skilling. Rowan said, "Good thing it wasn't the chicks. Good thing." And went on her merry way. As if it was just part of life. Part of what needed to be done. We hide from death. Package it away. Clean it up. Dress it. As if we're not part of it. We don't talk about it as if that will make it go away. Prevent it from happening. Like talking about it will cause it. And we hide it from our children. As if they can't handle it. Can't cope. And yet, they don't make the same meaning as us. They get that it happens. That it's an ending. And that something else comes from it. Instead of avoiding it, what if we were to confront it? Admit it's certainty. And relish in the power that awareness gives us in this moment. Being alive.

I came across an obituary last week. Life summed up in a column. A short story. Who was this person? How did they die? Who loved them? And this person I knew. Went to school together. Same age. Born the same year. Had two young kids. He was me. Is me. At 43. How does this happen. 43. The end of our play. Like the film reel jumping its spools at the movies and melting down. Lights go on. And you're sitting there with a half-eaten bag of stale popcorn, and massive watered down coke. Waiting. Looking around squinty eyed as if the projectionist is going to thread the film back on. Get it going again. What if it doesn't. What if that's it. It just ends. Half way through. That's part of my ending story. I'm half way through. 42 years. At least another 42 to go. Half way! Imagine all the stuff that's happened in my life to this point. And I'm half way. Double it. And it just gets better. This play. Better and better. Not easier. But more layers. More depth. More moments of weaving our web. More chances to connect. To build. Home. Relationships. Builders we are. Weavers.

I imagine we all have an image, a sense of what our own death will look like. Probably haven't really realized that we do. It just runs in the background. Plane crash. Old age. Alone. Surrounded. We have a story of our own end. And it guides us. Without us knowing. Our ending story. The end of our play on this earthly stage. For this life. We turn into something else. Or do we? There is a Buddhist exercise where you pretend you are going to die at 10 o-clock tonight. And you live your day as if it is your last. Every moment. Every interaction. Every pause, eye contact, conversation, walk by the river, bite of scrambled eggs. Every moment is your last. And you savour it. Each one. As it is your only one. And then you savour the next moment. And the next. Until you go to sleep. And 10 o'clock arrives. And then you wake up the next day, and smile. And begin again.

Biting the apple

I have not put away the laundry for 6 months. I take it off the line. I take it out of the dryer. And I pile it. Higher. And higher it goes. Until it is teetering. Waiting. To be put away. At first, I thought the block was not knowing where everything went. "Just guess," says Mary. "Guess!?" But what if I put Sikhona's dress in Rowan's drawer!? "Just guess." And so I did. I tried that. Guessing. And it worked. Cut through. The wanting things to be in their rightful boxes. Getting it right. Because then I am a good person. A good sorter. Organizer. House wife. A good house wife. House wife? And then I realized, I don't put the laundry away because it tells me who I am. If I put those clothes away, I am house wife. And who am I if I am not teacher. Who am I? Who are we? I am my job. I am in charge. I am the buildings and fields, and students, joy, stress, laughter, busyness, sadness. Without those things, I am left with a space. And then I am clothes sorter, dish doer, diaper changer, baby-giggler, uppy puppy daughter carrier, breakfast maker, more dish doer, dinner maker, more dish doer, dirty clothes collector, washing machine stuffer, diaper changer, toy picker-upper, tornado chaser, wet clothes hanger-upper and taker-downer. But not sorter. It is putting away that somehow stamps me as stay-at-home. And I am resistant. Thirty five years of school. 80% of my life in school. And then Not. Then I am Dad. I am house-dad. Vinegar and baking soda are my weapons. And I love it. Absolutely love it. And yet, "I am not that." I am the breadwinner. I am the guy who goes away and "works" and comes home. I am all those things that surround me. And yet, I am not. I am none of those things outside. They are reflections. I am the space in between. The source. To create. Who I am. Who I can be. Who I will be. And now I sort. I put the clothes away. I know where they go. And I'm good at it, god damn it. A good clothes puter-awayer. This circus act. We are jugglers. Crazy circus performers on unicycles on a tightrope over Niagara Falls, with 8 bowling pins, 4 knives, a hatchet, 1 apple, and 12 wet diapers. And I revel in it. Especially choosing the right time to bite.

Growing Little Artists (or Black Hawk Down)

There is a space in time parents create to get things done. It's usually about 3 minutes. It's that time when the kids seem fine. They're taking care of themselves. Oh, how loving they're being with each other, I'm sure I can go upstairs and use the washroom. I'm sure I'll hear if anything changes.

I've actually learned that silence is the first sign of creative expression.

The first major "incident" in the 3-minute gap was early in my days as a stay-at-home-dad. Everything seemed under control. Baby sleeping, girls gently playing. I can send that email! The gap begins... Just enough time for both daughters to create their own stealth hair salon, in the same room! I turned around to notice a large beautiful pile of blond hair, next to a large beautiful pile of red hair on the kids' breakfast table. And two wide eyed kids looking up, each holding a pair of scissors, smiling. "Look Poppa, I layered Khona's hair just like Andrew does." As a parent, I've learned that this moment requires a certain kind of response: stopping, pausing, smiling, and then taking a picture.

I've begun to document this gap, or really the effect of the gap, that end of that moment in time between kids being totally fine, to complete Lord of the Flies. Just today, there were three of us looking after three kids. Pretty good: one to one ratio. Suddenly I can hear "Driipppy... Driipppy... Driipppy" being chanted from the deck like "Piiggy...Piiggy", and I look out to find Sanoah & Sikhona putting little sister Nella through a frosh week water hazing. Nella is performing a self-defense downward dog, and madly trying to crawl away from the island.

The other night, Mary-Kate left Rowan & Sikhona in the basement to go upstairs and hang the laundry: the gap begins. When she returned, she found them standing naked in plastic Ikea drawers completely covered in blue paint, beginning to hand paint anything they could touch stretching out from their perch ... floor, walls, shelves ... "Miiike, I neeeed hellllp !!!" I grabbed the camera. A Smurf like bath ensued with much scraping of skin and crying.

Last week, in the heat, the girls somehow got into the fine art of peeing in various places and containers. One evening, we discovered Rowan and Sikhona each squatting over their own ice cube tray, saying "I did it! I did it! I got it in." "No, I got more..." OK girls, nice work, I notice you're developing a skill. How about we work on the Olympic sport of peeing in a potty.

Recently, before bed one night, we left both girls to burn off some energy by doing some Playmobile, jumping on the bed, running around. Oh, they're so good at entertaining themselves. Mary-Kate and I slumped downstairs in the couch, each enjoying a brief wine respite. As we enjoyed the quiet moment, we looked at each other, and realized it really was awfully quiet. When we went back upstairs, we peeked around the corner to discover both girls squatting on their own bed, peeing. We both stood there, hands on our hips, jaws dropped, as they then began to jump over their pee marks, saying, "Hey, mine looks like an H". "Look at me. I jumped right over it!"We looked at each other with total exasperation, open mouthed, pointing, as if miming to each other "what the f--- do we ... ?" So we just turned and left, walked back downstairs and drank our wine. Ah, the joys of parenting when the helicopter crashes in the ocean.

I later went back upstairs to check on the carnage. Rowan had passed out on the floor of the laundry room, and Sikhona was standing, arms out, in front of a fan, with thumbs up, and a smile, as if everything's all good up here Poppa. And everything was for these beautiful little provocative artists. Everything was.

Residue

One minute.
Of simplicity.
Typing.
Kids typing.
Type writer.
What is that?
That thing that captures letters, words as we tap them, hit them, ink into paper, touching, feeling the keys, hearing the tick, click, jam, one letter is off, imperfect, human, can't be corrected, easily, there is no undo. No delete. Ideas spill out, and the words are there, physically there. Jam. Pull the wire arms back, and hit, tap, click, connection with physical, the touch, language, not digital, made up, on a screen, a shadow of itself, pretending it is there. As we are, pretending, there is us underneath. We are all typewriters, real, physical, human, imprfect. What are we typing in this world? What is our story? What are is our residual? The thing that's left behind when we are no longer here.  In memory. Our residue. Ink on a page. Stories of who we were. That is all that we have.

Sex in a Jar

The call came in at 5pm. I answered the phone, "Are you ovulating?" "Yes!", she said, "we'll be there at 9. Put it in a dry, glass jar." Got it. "We're on honey." And so it begins. The letter came 5 months ago, asking so beautifully if I would have another baby, not with Mary-Kate, but as a donor to a wonderful lesbian couple. Close friends, but not too close. Connected, yet not. Similar communities, but not overlapped. I was honoured, touched, moved. A privilege. Indeed. To be asked to offer something so personal, so powerful, life-giving, and yet, so easy. Easy? Is it really? What do we hold close. Give away. Hold on to. Let go. What is us. Not us. Me. Not me. We pass on our genes. Is that us? A part of us. And why not give it away. To honour. To cherish. To love. To give joy. Passion. Sadness. Grief. Pride. All of it. Why not give it away. And so we did. I say we, as Mary-Kate and I made a decision in that moment. That we would offer this together. We would make this together. This would connect us. We would be a donation team. And what a great reason to have sex! The lesbians have called. We need to do the thing honey. Put the kids to bed. They're here at 9. They arrived at 8. Kids eating snack. And screaming. The phone ringing, a deep, slow voice on the answering machine. A friend in the kitchen talking about baby chicks. The dog barking. The door opens. "Hello!" Ah, the tranquility. "We lost your phone #, so here we are! We'll be at our friends' around the corner, waiting for the call." Got it. Launch the kids to bed routine. Teeth. Last pee. Jumping on bed. Read books. Jumping on bed. Last last pee. Stack of books on bed for each kid. And sleep. And duty calls. So the jar. This dry glass jar. Apparently, any drops of water in the jar confuse the sperm. Water them down. Slow them. And we do not want to slow these sperm. They've got a long journey ahead. "So the jar is supposed to be at body temperature when doing the passover," I say. "You can't put your stuff into a cold jar, and then warm it up. It's got to be AT body temperature," says Mary-Kate. OK, so I tuck the jar under my arm, and we go to it. But I can't really use my left arm. So I'm falling, kind of, squeezing the jar. Keeping it warm. Like those penguins in the movie with their eggs. Falling again. Then the jar squeezes out. We laugh. Jar goes back into the pit. And we get to the moment. The moment where we got to get the stuff into the damn jar. And it's a small jar. So there's all these angles, and pointing things, pushing, and whoah this, whoah that. And bingo, sperm is in the dry jar. Tuck it directly under the armpit, and make the call. "Donation is ready. Go team." So, we gather our clothing, and walk downstairs, and they're at the door. Fast. Yes. Well this part is very important. The armpit passover. We open the door. There's that awkward, funny air in the space. Pause. "Well, here it is." And we pass the jar from armpit to armpit. We say good luck with the turkey basting part! I was joking, but she calls back, "yes, it's actually called the turkey basting!" We close the door. And smile. Mission accomplished. Self passed on. Selves passed on. Life given over. We'll see if those little critters can swim.