Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
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Speech Delay
Twenty-seven months, with a speech delay, my son has not started calling me dad. But he acknowledges me anyhow. For instance, lately, when he wakes upset at 3am, I am often the one he reaches out to in the pre-dawn dark. Most of the time, a soft pat on the back and some reassuring words would suffice to comfort him, but earlier this week he was so distraught, for reasons we will never know, that I took him from his bed and held him sitting in a recliner. Curled in my lap, his face burrowed against my chest, he quickly drifted off again, maybe soothed like he was as an infant by the steadfast heartbeat next to his ear, a pulse whose regular cadence contrasts with all the rapid, sporadic changes he has experienced in his short life – development a source of excitement and also, by virtue of it being unpredictable, fear and frustration for children as well as parents. Grateful that he was calm and resting, glad to be his chosen refuge, I was distracted from my consternation at how he lacks verbal expressiveness. His relaxed form, the gentle heave of his body with each sleeping breath, his small hand beside mine: these were enough to ease my mind for a while.
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Bison
The framed photograph of a bull bison hangs above a roll-top desk where our son in his high chair can see it while he eats: tonight, hamburger mixed with puréed pears. He waves at it, chewing a spoonful of meat, this image captured with a hunter’s eye. The beast in profile stands on a dirt path before a range of pine-forested hills, a radio tower’s needle-thin spur barely visible on a distant ridge civilization’s only suggestion. One day we will tell our son about food – explain to him the source of much protein, though sparing many pertinent details: blood and manure in a copious flow powering agriculture’s massive wheel, how a cow sometimes resists being milked and will buck her hind legs or trample you. No, those we want him to learn on his own when he is old enough to handle it – ready to make his own choices, perhaps different from those we made on his behalf.
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Little Valkyrie
When my sister was a baby dad would fly her around the house singing “Ride of the Valkyries”. His voice operatic, he swooped her low so she bombed us with drool and we laughed, smiling up at her, little steward of Valhalla.
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Kitchen Sink Soirée
The top of the dish soap bottle drips unused suds, like melting wax down the side of a tall candle placed beside a grand piano at a salon soirée, the sink an instrument for performance every evening after dinner.
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Egret in the Spillway
Along the edge of Fair Oaks Park runs a spillway that has become a stream with its own habitat: a snowy egret wades hip-deep seeking fish or amphibians, its curved neck like a hunter’s arm poised with a spear at the ready.
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Easter Tradition
A tradition we had growing up was a couple weekends before Easter, dad would cut down a tall lilac branch from one of the shrubs in our yard and put it in the Christmas tree stand. Only starting to bud when he brought it into the house, we hung the bough with dozens of eggs decorated and saved over the years, having readied them for preservation by piercing their shells with a cake tester and blowing out the albumen and yolk. Some of the eggs became marbleized from being wrapped in onion skin and cheesecloth, then boiled until the plant dye stained the shell. Under the skylight in our dining room, as Easter approached, the lilac branch sprouted leaves and went into bloom.
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The Path Ahead
Guidance for the Path Ahead There is no guarantee of safe passage. Security is a flimsy veneer, a fiction we agree to less each day, that papers over the brambles and wolves. In times like these when thorns outnumber fruit and as night falls the pack starts to close in, do not forsake your wits at survival – your expertise at this is unsurpassed. The path ahead will vanish in the brush. You will be stalked by hunters with bloodlust. Places to hide are rare, allies are scarce. By dawn, your companions will betray you. But despair is a lie, do not heed it. We all meet our end eventually. Consider your least hazardous options. Pursue them with vigor. Relish your choice, though it is limited, though the outcome is not ordained, to continue forward in spite of impediment, regardless of how danger lurks beside every step.
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Catch and Release
It started with a black widow who crawled out of a rolled-up rug when we moved in with each other. We both felt sad that I killed it. Though we agreed it posed a threat, we shared remorse at its demise. No more vanquishing arachnids. Each who scampers across the floor, scrambles up from wall to ceiling or dangles from the shower head shall be caught within a juice glass, confined by a piece of junk mail and gently transported outdoors to live someplace else, not with us. For example, the wolf spiders we find inside our apartment will never meet a grisly end. Our policy of ahimsa has released many to the yard – they roam free, wild as their namesake hunting by the light of the moon. I like to think their predation keeps insects out of our dwelling. Orb weavers we liberated to the hedge beside the driveway trap house flies before they enter. Jumpers on the back patio prevent ants from coming indoors. And at this point I should mention that our code of nonviolence does not cover hornets. In fact, a mud dauber building her nest on our front porch as I write this will return from forage to learn her modest home has been destroyed. By my hand, each time she rebuilt, I crushed the tube she made from dirt – not because she preys on spiders nor due to fear of being stung, but since more aggressive species will seek shelter in her abode after she has moved on from it. Doing this gives me no pleasure. I hope she will be discouraged enough to lay her eggs elsewhere. Besides, she is not to blame, a casualty of our bias against hostile yellowjackets whose nature precludes tolerance.
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Ode to Dolce the Cat
for Josh She lapped at a teacup filled with warm milk while her companion sipped a White Russian. Together they applied their minds all night to the nature of subatomic spin – which is not well understood, much like a cat. Nina Simone on the record player, the hours past midnight unwound toward dawn when at last - her beside him the whole time - he put the final touch on his thesis closing with a dedication to her. This sentiment lives on for posterity to honor how her presence comforted: she was steadfast, though rarely underfoot, and as is the nature of most felines her affectionate nuzzles were most welcome but never to be taken for granted.
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Seeing at Night
Some things are best observed with peripheral sight – a star at dusk whose light has just emerged; sidelong we can perceive in a darkened bedroom that a child asleep in their crib still breathes.
From the Firefly Galaxy 