brothers

“Watch this,” my wife says as dinner winds up.

Our younger son is repeating “Deh, deh” and making the signs for down and please.  His brother, just two years older, steps over, scooches back the high chair, and works at the belt clips.  Some fidgeting ensues, to which he comically reassures, “Not yet, just a minute.”  Amazingly it works: the little one stills, watching his brother’s progress with a patient, bemused smile.  These roles – rehearsed, I presume, over that day’s breakfast and lunch – are played eagerly.

When the belt does fall loose the younger boy tilts, torso careening forward.  His arms wrap around his brother’s neck; big brother grabs him tight around the chest.  Their faces mash into each other’s shirts, making me wonder how the older boy can see as his spine arches back to drag his brother’s girth from the seat.  Eighteen months of boy is a serious load for a three-and-a-half-year-old.  Other children lift my younger son, but they’re five, six.  Three and a half is still little – little and determined.

* * *

Flash.  I am on Isla de Cabras, Puerto Rico.  Grass, waves, gangly coconut trees.  I’m fifteen. 

have i seen Jesus?

“Daddy, have I seen Jesus?”

The question emerges from the back seat darkness.  It’s late, way past bedtime.  One son, sixteen months, already is conked on the trip home from Grannie’s.  The radio’s off, and after several minutes of highway hum I realize my other son, three and a half years, hasn’t been chasing his brother to Neverland after all.  He’s ruminating.

For years he’s heard about Jesus; suddenly it occurs to him he’s never actually met the Fellow.  Recently he’s been asking all his acquaintances if they know each other.  Has Grannie met Kylie?  Has Kylie met Sam?  Has Sam met Aunt Kate?  He’s discovering that the kaleidoscope of faces and names in his life isn’t a radial wheel, himself at center — it’s a webwork of possible cross-connection.  Some people he hasn’t met, like his mother’s mother’s mother, or his aunt’s boss’s wife.  Still, they’re not mentioned often.  Somehow there’s a person out there everyone else has met, and he hasn’t.

the vine

Sixty feet high, the concrete cylinder had been built into the side of a small mountain ridge.  Up the front rose a convenient set of metal rungs.

Of course we climbed them.  There wasn’t even a fence.  Not that a fence could have kept a group of bored middle school Army brats from the only adrenaline-pumping obstacle on base.  It was our Mount Everest.

The water tower snuggled into the ridge’s embrace, the rocky slope wrapping up and around toward the back.  Between tower and ridge gaped a trench ten feet wide.  This afforded an unusual experience: climb the rungs, cross the top, and ogle low-growing ferns and tree trunks just there, mere feet away … with a vertical abyss in between.

we are the ones

They’re pleasant folks, the ones you meet on hiking trails. My wife and I know this from years of small talk with strangers in national parks. The outdoors tends to air people out, freshen them up. Either that, or hikers are the salt of the earth.

Imagine our astonishment, then, when we entered a gift shop at Big Bend National Park and heard venom. “He’s so bleeping stupid,” someone was cursing. “What a dumb-bleep. I can’t believe our country is run by such a bleeping dumb-bleep.”

Scowling, a couple in their mid-thirties glared at the cable TV mounted near the postcards. On the screen, President Bush was addressing the nation. They were too loud to listen. I snuck a peek at their faces: creased, hostile. The combined image — lone face speaking calmly to others who hissed vulgarities — reminded me of the Two Minutes Hate scene from Orwell’s 1984.

Only a leader as incompetent and destructive as Bush could interrupt the tranquil environs of a national park to elicit such incivility. Right?

an american educates his countrymen

Shut up. I know my rights:

I. You will maintain gainful employment to pay for my health care and unemployment.

II. You will spend more than you earn in order to keep my economy strong.

III. You will bail me out of the bad investments I make.

IV. You will rebuild my home again and again so I can continue living in an area prone to natural disaster.

V. You will evacuate your home for a price I decide is fair so I can use your land to make money.

landslide cometh

It’s coming. Less than ten days. Democrats will sweep the White House and both Houses of Congress in overwhelming numbers — that’s settled. The only question left is what it will cost me.

I’m not asking for anything. I don’t want government to give me more money, or better health care, or a break on my mortgage. Not that I’m wealthy — I’m a public school teacher raising a family of four on a single income. We get by, even in these times, on creativity and thrift.

That’s what worries me. I’m not asking for anything, and I’ve been around long enough to know: when you’re not the one asking, you end up the one giving.

reactions may vary

This isn’t how I’d want to hear it.

A pass out of class, summoned mysteriously to the media center.

Corralled toward tables with dozens of classmates, whispering, searching each others’ eyes for a clue.

In their upright clothes, adults — administrators, counselors, absolute strangers — stand around the perimeter, somber yet chummy: the public school system crisis team in full force, assembled and ready.

Waiting for “everyone” (whoever that is) to arrive, wondering at the common thread between us all.

Then the cleared throat, the single sheet of plain white photocopy stock, the authoritative recital:

epiphany

Noon, the kitchen lights off.  He sits in the dim blue air chewing orange slices, talking about his new bicycle helmet, thumping his palms on the table and bounce-kicking in the garish plastic booster he’s too old for but still enjoys. He’s backlit, the box window tracing his shape in a gentle blue that nestles in his curls. Rattling off lines from bedtime books, his round eyes look to mine for approval. At two and a half he’s shed the last signs of the toddler — he is all boy. He asks for more chocolate milk, shoulders in their rugby shirt squared to face me, neck lifted, anticipating. Yesterday’s hike shows in the sun splashed across his cheeks. He’s no copy of me: chestnut hair is lighter than mine, not as tangled; forehead wider, bolder; eyes Egyptian-pinched. But as he holds his cup with head tilted, awaiting my answer, it occurs to me, watching this little person as I finish the dishes in the sink: if I had the power to custom-craft a child, I would make him exactly like this. Curious, rambunctious, sincere. A bit ruddy, a bit tender. And absolutely perfect.

vestigial proof

How ludicrously they dangled up there — two little wires suspending them beneath the spine, about midway between ribs and tail. Grayish-white, cylindrical; small batons frozen in midair.

Leg bones. In a whale.

I remember gaping at the overhead skeleton as my fourth grade class filed through the Smithsonian. I wondered if whales even knew they had those bones. Could they feel them? I marveled at the vastness of time, the relentless march that expelled fish onto land and drew them back again as mammals.

It almost seemed too incredible — but there they were, leg remnants in a whale, plain as day. Two hundred million years could do anything. (They could even draw a whale out of a deer the size of a fox!)

evolutionary psychology — it’s all in your mind

It’s everywhere these days. Whether the topic is economics or romance, politics or sports, articles often refer to studies that explain why we do what we do from an evolutionary perspective.

Since survival of the fittest shaped our minds as well as our bodies, the research strategy is to determine how any (and every!) behavior contributed to gene propagation. According to the Center for Evolutionary Psychology (CEP), such findings prove evolution’s importance:

[C]onsideration of how humans evolved can inform various subfields of neuroscience and psychology. The very idea that humans evolved has come under legal siege in the U.S. during the last several years. It is important to continue to demonstrate that humans no less than other species show significant evidence of being the organized product of natural selection —- and in subtle, unexpected ways not easily explained by blank-slate learning or “intelligent design”. (source)

Sadly, despite so hefty a claim of importance, evolutionary psychology makes presumptions that lead to hasty conclusions, neglecting to investigate fully the reasons for our behavior.

it’s not easy

In the middle of naptime he screams. One knee is twisted between two crib rails; pain and entrapment drive him to panic. Must’ve been playing instead of sleeping.

As my wife disentangles him, she gets a whiff of another stealth activity. Corroborating evidence surrounds him: smear across his chest, clawmarks on his sheet, makeup applied to the face of his stuffed cow. What arrived in his diaper is now everywhere.

I am summoned. Together we adults impress upon our child the seriousness of this infraction. Do not play with poopy. Do not even touch it. We strip him of his clothes, make a pile of blankets, sheets and Mr. Cow.

snow rebellion

Fluffy, quiet, all afternoon the flakes fell gently. He’d wanted to walk among them, to breathe in the world’s white transfiguration. By the time I organized myself, however, he’d already moved on.

“I want to play trains,” he intoned.

“Come on, it’s snow!” I coaxed. “Let’s get your boots on. We’ll have a great time.”

Cornered, his eyes sunk, lower lip retracted. “I want to play trains.”

through his eyes

I wish I could see life through my son’s eyes.

In his infancy we placed him on a colorful playmat with overhead toys. I shoved my face inside to feel what it was like.

I’ve positioned my head at his level in the carseat to figure out how much he sees as we drive (more than I expected). I’ve checked the view of a ceiling fan from the floor below (a steady circular motion, not the swoop-swoop-swooping oval from adult height). I’ve crouched to look straight up into the lighted mobile above his swing (brighter, more colorful than apparent from anywhere but the seat).

I’ve even used the excuse of “retrieving my son” to crawl through the multi-storied jungle gym at Chick-Fil-A (hey, they didn’t have those things when I grew up).

the year i smelled like milk

I ate camel’s paw and sea slug. Police detained me twice. I took part, unwittingly, in a romantic farewell on a train platform. A crowd nearly trampled me on a bus. I barfed my brains out and thanked God for it.

The year I taught in China definitely had its moments. People seem to enjoy those stories almost as much as I enjoy telling them.

So in honor of 2008, Beijing’s Olympic year, I’m posting my experiences online.

The Year I Smelled Like Milk:
Stories from Beijing

I began drafting pieces for this blog over a year ago and (between work and family) have been revising since then. Total weight in words: over 50,000 — an online book, really. One post will appear every weekday beginning today. The full run should finish in May — well in time for the Olympics.

Future generations will remember 2008 as China’s year. I hope you enjoy these offbeat memoirs from my experiences there.

woe is me, cries the creationist

“Woe, woe is me,” cries the creationst! “O, vexed the life that spurns reason!”

Once upon a time I let creationist questions get the better of me. Ever since my life has been hardship and suffering.

I can’t maintain a career because employers keep letting me go. They don’t believe entropy makes heat disperse throughout the whole patty, so it isn’t necessary to flip the burgers. Imagine how much labor could be saved!

My marriage is in shambles. My wife keeps threatening to leave unless I give her reasons for everything. Reasons, schmeasons. “Because I said so” is good enough for the kids, why isn’t it good enough for her?