Locked (HOL 67)

House of Laughter 67

It was a typical Friday night. Frozen pizzas with cheap beer and wine was to be followed by a screening of Star Trek 4 (Wow I really have changed a lot since middle school!). I returned from Food Lion with my Tombstones and Miller High Life Lite (I wasn’t kidding), and I could tell something was amiss. Isaac came to the door and greeted me with a enthusiastic “Daddy’s Home!” Nancy was out on the back deck (second floor) looking through the glass with a look of controlled panic on her face.

While I was out, Nancy decided to sit out on the deck and read. Isaac thought this would be a good time to practice his door closing and locking skills. You guessed it. Nancy was locked out on the second story deck with every other door in the house open. She could only helplessly stare as Isaac ran through the house by himself.

Thankfully she didn’t go with her first idea of trying to climb down the supports of the deck.

At daycare on Friday, Isaac’s teacher asked what he was going to do this weekend. His reply, “I’m going to see tigers in cages at the science center.”

Nancy is also proud that the “tumbling” teacher at day care was surprised at Isaac’s highly developed sense of balance. I find this as no surprise considering his genetic predisposition to natural athletic ability.

Isaac has also started saying strings of numbers and letters in order. His favorite books right now are “Hand Hand Fingers Thumb”, “Roller Coaster”, “Where the Wild Things are”. He has a few sentences memorized of each book that he will “read” to me when they come up.

On Monday nights we play Ultimate Frisbee at Lake Daniel Park with a bunch of friends. Anytime we drive anywhere near the park, Isaac yells “Play Frisbee too! See Aiden!” (Isaac’s buddy). Last Monday night, one of Isaac’s favorite babysitters, Caroline, got hit in the face with a Frisbee pretty hard. The whole ride home we hear the mantra “Caroline sad…Caroline got pushed…Caroline sad…Caroline got pushed”. He was very concerned until he saw that she was okay on Wednesday night.

We cleaned up our old house this morning for an open house tomorrow (Sunday, September 30 2-4 p.m. 2206 Hathaway Dr. if anyone you know is looking for a house.) It was weird walking around the empty house. I was a little nostalgic, but I realized that it wasn’t the building making me sentimental, but the memories I had created with the woman and little boy who were outside planting flowers (it was the neighbor and her kid….boy do I miss them.)


Strength and Honor

Big Matt

Naughty Batman (HOL 66)

House of Laughter 66

Since we returned to Greensboro and the school year started, Isaac has moved up to the two year old room at his daycare. Every morning when I drop him off, I try and sit for a few minutes and play with him. We play in the corner with the puppet collection. I make the alligator puppet snap at Isaac or drink from his juice cup. The other kids thought this was hysterical and have started offering their sippy cups to the alligator puppet now as well.

Last week, when the other kids in Isaac’s class saw us walk in, one little girl immediately ran over and grabbed the alligator puppet and brought it to me.

Through out my life, I’ve had different nicknames people have called me. I’ve been called, “Big Matt”, “Cravey Train”, “That Big Guy with Puerto Rican Skin”, “Spam”, “Defendant”, “Spatula Guy”, “Uncle Matt”, “Daddy”. (Yes there is another unfortunate camp nickname which has been deliberately left off of the list.) The newest identity I have is “Isaac’s Daddy”. That’s what the other kid’s in Isaac’s class call me.

It’s the first time that who I am is defined by who he is instead of Isaac being known as my son. I’m not jealous, I’m excited. I realize that this is just the start of him creating his own place in the world, and I’m sure I will be surprised at how fast he does it, and the impact he makes on his world.

On our last doctor visit, the pediatrician told us that there is no such thing as “Terrible Twos”. “Two year olds are just exploring the boundaries of what they can get away with.”, the doctor explained. He gave us a checklist if things Isaac should be able to do. We had noticed most of the behaviors, but there was one I had never seen. “Child ‘plays mommy or daddy’ with dolls”.

Isaac mostly plays with cars, puzzles, and construction toys. I think if he were to tuck his motorcycle in at night I would worry. The closest we had ever seen to a nurturing behavior was when he pushes a shopping cart full of Matchbox cars around the house.

Last week, our minister’s wife Ann gave Isaac a couple of cars and toys that hers sons had played with (which had been handed down from our friend Andrew). The action figures were in the back seat of my truck when I picked Isaac up from Nancy’s school Thursday (I may have been playing with the Wampa, Boba Fett, and Lando…I don’t remember). As I’m driving home, Isaac is sternly talking to one of the toys, and puts him in a crevice in the arm rest. I asked Isaac, “What’s going on?”.

“Batman is in time out”

“Why”

“Batman bit me”

Thankfully, Batman got out of time out before we got home. I had to change Isaac quickly since we were going back out to dinner. While I was getting the changing table ready, Isaac said “Batman needs a new diaper”.

I put Batman on the table, cleaned him up with a wipe, and pretended to put a clean diaper on him. This satisfied Isaac. Later that evening, Isaac was feeding Batman Bowtie pasta from his dinner plate.

I guess we can check the “nurturing behavior” box next time we go to the doctors.

Strength and Honor,

Isaac’s Daddy

Where was I? (HOL 65)

House of Laughter 65

The rest of the week was pretty laid back. We visited the alligator farm in St. Augustine. My mom wasn’t particularly fond of the feeding show where they threw frozen white lab rats the size of footballs into the pond, and the gators would catch them in mid air.

One of the main reasons we met at the beach was to scatter my grandmother’s ashes in the ocean. After much deliberation about renting a boat vs. smuggling the container onto an afternoon tourist cruise (we assume the other tourists would not have approved.) We decided to take the remains down to the ocean ourselves.

The container was about the size of a garbage can lid, and felt like it was made from a thick paper. The top was decorated with colorful flowers. As we understood it, you just had to release the container into the ocean and within a few minutes it would dissolve completely.

We walked down the shore. The stretch of beach we were staying on had particularly rough currents and it was high tide. The kids were all excited to be down on the beach after dinner. Eli and Lily both peed on a sand dune. I was trying not to cry, keep an eye on Isaac, and to figure out what I was feeling. It wasn’t fresh grief. It wasn’t even a release. The container did not contain who Mimi was any more than one of her old scarves or wigs. Before Dad put the container in the water, I read a poem I wrote. I had to yell over the crashing waves and read quickly because the kids were ready to play.

The young woman lassos the wind and
It pulls her small boat along the New England coast

Every moment of her day was bound to the sea
The morning swim,
The impromptu regatta with her cousins,
Splashing and flirting with the boys on the shore

The sea will soon douse the sun’s light, but the young woman will savor
Every moment riding the wind

Confined only by the Horizon

In the distance on the shore, two figures call out.

Helene an Paul wave to her.

The Father has called them all home.

When I finished, my dad waded out with the awkward package. He wanted to get past the wave breaks, but one knocked him over, and the package drifted back toward shore. My dad tried to push the container back out, but it has already started to fall apart.

Pieces of the colorful flowers washed up on the shore. A large plastic bag pokes out of the rapidly disintegrating disk. I imagine trying to go out and snare the bag and cut it open. I become irritated at the imagined scene of the funeral director assuring my parents that it would all dissolve only to accidentally leave the Ziploc bag in. My irritation was unfounded….within two minutes everything vanished completely.

We let the kids play and dig in the sand for a few more minutes before we all went back to the condo. I had worried about that moment for a long time. I wanted it to be special and genuine. It was at the same time awkward, funny, sad, celebratory, and Holy.

I miss her.

Strength and Honor,

Big Matt

P.S. More to come soon

The Triumphant Return (HOL 63)

House of Laughter 64

On the local N.P.R. station this afternoon, the announcer interviewed an author who had recently visited Winston Salem. She had written a collection of humorous essays about being from the South, and had spoke at a book festival. The journalist asked how her book came to be and her response fascinated me.

She was a housewife in Alabama and started writing a monthly newsletter to a few of her friends. The newsletter had a few humorous essays from a Southern angle. Eventually their friends asked to be included and then their friends and so on. After five years she had several thousand people subscribing to her newsletter. She never set out to publish a magazine. She went to a publisher and told them, there are several thousand people who are ready to buy my book if you publish it, so they did.

That story is why I am writing tonight. She never set out to write a book, she just wrote because she enjoyed it, and it connected her to people. I hadn’t written lately because our lives have been so hectic and I am generally a pretty lazy guy. However if I ever want to be able to go and tell stories of homespun wisdom to a paying crowd in Winston Salem on a publisher’s dime I need to get cracking.

We still have two houses. It turns out, now is not a good time to sell a house. Thankfully I am only reminded of this every time I turn on the radio, look at TV, or read a newspaper. I only mention it, because if you want to buy our old house, just let me know.

Isaac is now officially two. He and Nancy traveled for about three weeks this summer to Virginia and Florida. I met them down in St. Augustine for a week with my parents, and my sister’s family. Isaac really liked having his cousins around. He and Eli and Lily would ride together in the wagon to the pool every morning, and play with play doh and color in the afternoon.

Nancy, Isaac and I went to Animal Kingdom and EPCOT one day while we were down there. Normally this would be a nightmare, due to the heat, crowds, and price, but my cousin gave us a couple of tickets, and Nancy and I decided all we had to do was have a good time. If that meant watching flamingos all day, that was fine.

Isaac was a big fan of the train ride to Conservation Station. I too enjoyed Conservation Station, but mostly because Pocahontas was there (I loved that movie. It’s not that she was portrayed by an attractive young actress in a fake buckskin dress.)

The big hit of the day though was the Finding Nemo puppet show, and it almost didn’t happen at all. There was a huge line outside of the theater, but we got in it just as the theater opened. Isaac was tired and fell asleep on my shoulder. We had about a 20 minute wait in a dark air conditioned theater which would have been great if I didn’t trip and fall on the way in.

Since I was holding Isaac, I held him up and caught my other arm on the guard rail. This woke Isaac up and he was not happy. We finally calmed him down, but my arm was bruised and my leg scraped up. (I also fell onto an Arkansas Razorback fan who was pretty understanding.)

The show started, and it turned out we had some of the best seats in the whole theater. Dory the fish made her entrance right in front of us.. Acrobats ran through the theater with fish kites on poles that darted and circled overhead. Isaac was mesmerized by the whole thing.

Continued soon.

Strength and Honor

Big Matt