“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.  My family comes here occasionally to picnic and snorkel.  Nothing’s remarkable about the place except El Cañuelo, an abandoned fortress from colonial times.  Sheer stone walls rise twenty feet to a parapet along its square perimeter.  Strangely, there’s no entrance – the soldiers must have used a removable ladder.  The forbidding walls fascinate my brother and me.  Our parents try to distract us, but the fortress is a magnet; on every visit we make determined, and very futile, attempts to scale it.  One corner, beneath the single turret, is punctured, jagged, as if someone has tried knocking out handholds with a hammer – but the highest of these still is too low to put us within reach of the top.

In a few weeks the Army will transfer our family to New Jersey.

On this, our final visit, I discover that a few months’ growth have conspired with last-chance determination to grant me a parting gift: fingertips curled around the parapet’s lip.  I’m a skinny nerd with just a few square centimeters of grip, but somehow I heave myself up anyway, flipflops slapping at the slick stone beneath me, chest and stomach scraping against the turret window.  My ascent is embarrassing, frantic, and utterly sweet.

Carousing along the parapet, arms flapping with abandon, I flaunt my victory at my brother, still on the grass below, eyes squinting into the bright sky to watch.  “There’s rusted bars!” I shout down to him.  “And crumbled rooms!  Whoa, it looks like a prison.  I wonder if there are any bones!”  With each verbal report I glance back.  My parents have rushed over, expressions fixed in disbelief, and my little brother …

I’ve never seen my little brother’s eyes so hungry.

With two years’ less length of arm, he hasn’t got a chance.  But his eyes tug out my compassion, so I urge him back to the ragged corner to coach him up.  He tries, again and again.  It’s not even close.  Curiosity claws at me; I tell him I’ll come back, then take a few minutes to explore the innards of the fort.  When I return he’s still fastened to the stone, daring himself into a suicidal upward leap.

There’s no use reaching for him.  His outstretched hand is really down there, below the level of my feet and under the parapet’s lip.  I don’t have any way to anchor myself.  Besides, one hundred forty pounds of high school sophomore isn’t enough to haul up one hundred twenty pounds of eighth grader – not at that pitch, not without good footing.

But I reach down anyway, suspending head and chest beneath my waist, one hand grabbing at the turret’s broad opening, knees widened against the stone as I stretch out my fingers, tilt even further, stretch – and reach him.

* * *

Looking back now, our grip should have failed.  It was humid; exerting and scared as we were, our palms must have been sweaty.  I don’t even know why he trusted me.  I wouldn’t have.  I remember thinking, even as we attempted the maneuver – my brother’s feet kicking against the stone, pushing out his waist to clear the lip – I remember thinking how insane he was to trust me.  Failure was more than sure, and threatened to rip either him or both of us down the twenty-foot jagged corner.  “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” I kept intoning, in part to spur myself as he fought there, suspended in midair, no longer any possibility of backing down, no way out but up.

It shouldn’t have worked.

And it did.

After years of defeat, dragging myself up into El Cañuelo felt miraculous.  But that hardly compared to the pride beaming in our eyes as my brother and I stood, side by side, in our own Spanish fortress.  We had conquered it together.

* * *

Kitchen again.  The high chair cleared, my older son plants his brother’s feet on the hardwood floor.  The maneuver is accomplished. Considering that most physical contact between them results in the younger one crying, it is no small feat.

They extract from one another’s embrace, eyes locked in mutual appreciation.  “What do you say?” asks big brother.  His counterpart responds, “Theck-o.”

I applaud; my wife does a silly congratulatory dance.  Briefly they look to us, taking in our approval, and then return to reappraising each other.  They’re discovering a new dynamic between them, an unexpected way to negotiate their coexistence, and possibilities are opening.

Two roles; one victory.

Brothers.

“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.

Has my son seen Jesus?  No is the easy answer, but too negative, too closed.  In books?  That’s not what he’s getting at.  Briefly I consider that Jesus may have appeared to him personally; sometimes he utters things so spiritually uncanny my wife and I suspect God deals with him directly.  Had he met Jesus in the flesh, though, he’d probably remember.

Enough deliberating — I need to respond.  “Not yet,” I say.  “But you will one day, when you go to heaven.”

“I’m going to heaven?”

My chuckle is bittersweet.  He’s heard of heaven, sure, but it hasn’t occurred to him that he would ever go there because we don’t expose him to death.  How to tell a three-and-a-half-year-old that this bursting promise of life will end?  That one day his body will fall silent and cold?  He may be too young; it may be my wife and I are sheltering him.  Either way, I’m not about to deliver the bad news now, not on a highway in the dark with him strapped in the back seat where I can’t hold him.  This is the boy who, learning his ears might pop on an airplane, screamed fifteen minutes and clamped both hands on the sides of his head the remainder of the flight.  And that was just ears.

“Yes, you’re going to heaven,” I confirm.  “When you grow up and are very, very old, you will go to be in heaven with Jesus.”  Oversimplified, yes, but the day for caveats will come soon enough.

It’s quiet a while.  Since he lacks the cultural baggage of clouds and harps and pearly gates, I wonder at the images heaven is conjuring in his head.  I shift lanes, preparing to exit.

Then his little voice again: “Will you be there?”

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.

Imagine the tingles, staring down from the exact precipice.  Smooth concrete wall plummeting beneath your flip flops.  The craggy, tree-rooted gash of the ridge, deceptively close.  And between: the scale-model leaves and stones of the distant chasm floor.

A flying Indiana Jones-style leap might have succeeded in reaching safe ground ten feet away.  None of us were crazy enough for that — we aimed at a stunt more manageable.

If you look at an aerial photo, you’ll notice foliage covering the top right of the water tower.  I’m glad this detail shows up in Google Maps, because I remember it most.

Ten feet was no obstacle for a branch.  The trees that rose from the ridge spread arms above and toward us.  And since this was Puerto Rico, their branches were wrapped in vines.

One column of vines, thick as a telephone pole, descended the entire sixty feet.

These vines weren’t far.  Midway between tower and ridge.  A mere five feeet.

Stand up, if you will; lean forward as far as you can.  You can almost reach five feet before your weight tilts.

Now imagine my brother and our circle of boys taking turns perched at the edge, stretching bones and ligaments forward, forward, vines dangling just beyond our fingertips.

Whoever dared the descent would be a Hero Forever.  It didn’t require even a jump, really — just a committed lean, then a lot of shimmying. The vines would support our weight: they were the thickest we’d ever seen, and we swung on vines as a semi-profession.

After a bout of egging each other on (and wincing at each other’s attempts) we’d clamber back down the rungs.  Next time.  About every six months, a little bigger, a little bolder, we’d return to dare each other all over again.

No one ever did it.

To this day, if I mentally position myself at that peak, I get the same spine jeebies.  The height’s only part of it.  Occasionally at the tops of buildings or cliffs I feel an utterly irrational impulse to jump — to cast myself over the brink.  Something about the sheer possibility of doing so inspires in me a small, and insane, degree of desire.  I could jump.  Just a little jump.  Like so.  What would it feel like?  Imagination edges into reality and my legs wither; I back away, less apprehensive of the fall, perhaps, than of my own will.

When I visualize that water tower and the vine, what unnerves me most is a thirteen-year-old heart that would lean, lean … weight tilting past balance … almost there …

(Inspired by the Blogorrhea post Nightmare.)

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?

Actually, that wasn’t Orwell’s point (1984’s villain wasn’t the face on the screen). Nor was it my impression.

Instead I wondered how a person could, at a moment’s stimulus, turn her visage so ugly.

* * * * *

Worst President Ever.

So the bumper stickers say — as if those drivers could name even half of America’s presidents, much less compare their accomplishments. I’ll admit I can’t. But then, I’m not the one making unqualified absolutist assertions.

Few would suggest Bush’s presidency has left America better off. I acknowledge this readily, even though I voted for him both times. Much remains to be said regarding his failures (and, perhaps, his handful of successes). Since we have no shortage of voices critical of Bush, I don’t see a need to add my own.

I’m more interested in the failures of the rest of us.

You would think anyone who insists on Bush’s mental inferiority would spurn the third grade logic behind a label such as Worst President Ever. True, it started with a survey of historians asked to rank US Presidents, but it was quickly popularized by Rolling Stone into a political strategy. If you don’t like something, call it Worst Ever! Thus a little Googling reveals McCain has set several records: Worst Speech Ever, Worst Political Ad Ever, Worst Gaffe Ever. Within hours of her selection, Sarah Palin was named Worst Vice-Presidential Pick in US History.

The problem with Worst labels is that they’re absolute. Burying the needle at one end of the evaluative scale leaves little room for nuance or analysis. If something is Worst, what more is there to understand?

Bush is a terrorist. Bush is Hitler. Again, absolutist. Compelling arguments may be made comparing Bush’s methods to those of Nazis and terrorists, but real differences do exist. As long as those differences are collapsed in absolute equations, we fail to account for the full reality of our situation. Is every motivation behind our policies immoral? Is our every method illegal?

“Whatever you do, don’t be like Bush” is vapid. Does Bush brush his teeth?

* * * * *

Michael Moore wondered where his country went. I wonder what happened to my people.

“The world is laughing at us.” “What will the world think of us?” Somehow we’ve developed a craving for attention. Are we so spineless as to cower at the world’s disapproval?

Granted: our global reputation influences the effectiveness of our foreign policies. Granted: we should evaluate ourselves against other nations and emulate their best practices. But statements about how the world views us aren’t phrased in those terms. The expressed concern is over reputation for reputation’s sake, as if our ability to walk down any street in Berlin or Buenos Aires or Bombay without passers-by thinking ill of us is of utmost importance.

The name of this game is Popularity, and it’s best left in high school. Americans were never very popular; now we’re less so. Big deal. Our real concern should be setting a course that is right and good — and let the world regard us as it may.

We rarely think anymore, we Americans. No, worse than that: we drown out thought.

Protesters disrupt meetings, speeches, bellowing and snarling in faces. Defending democracy by shouting down your opposition? It’s oxymoronic. Since when do we fear others stating their case?

New Orleans floods: build it back! Wall Street tanks: bail it out! Humans cloned for stem cells: fund it now! Anyone who pauses to reflect on the wisdom of these plans is denounced as an utter moron. Since when are we so quick to act we forego the time to consider?

We criticize Bush for allowing 9/11 to happen, then criticize every new security measure intended to prevent another 9/11. We bemoan every budget cut, then bemoan our skyrocketing national debt. We complain about escalating violence in Iraq, then complain about American troops sent to quell it. We grow loud when our economy dives, then hush when it recovers. Has our logic lost that much consistency?

* * * * *

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Delivered by Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, this line was originally a parody, satirizing how Bush might dismiss the results of a poll. That liberals have embraced it as a literal mantra is ironic considering that Colbert’s joke hinged on the absurdity of injecting politics into the very nature of existence.

No, they’re convinced of it: reality is liberal. Conservatives live in fantasy.  Thus political correctness runs amok, permitting the existence of no view but one, no manner of acting or thinking but one. Is such egotism any different from Bush’s unilateralism?

We can’t be comfortable pretending a single political party has all the answers. One-party nations — Syria, China, Cuba, North Korea — aren’t exactly pleasant places to live. Their leaders tend to be hard of hearing, brushing over stubborn facts that don’t fit into their agendas. Weak ideas pass unchallenged; groupthink reigns. This is precisely what Colbert’s satire of Bush warned against, yet it seems to be our destination.

The ineffectiveness of single-party rule is clear enough in the last two presidencies. Clinton’s one-party government lasted just two years before Republicans retook Congress.  Bush’s one-party government lasted longer, but it too caved in.

We need two parties. In fact two aren’t enough — our two-party system tends to yield simplistic, take-it-or-leave-it choices. Better three parties, or four, or five. Dissent safeguards against the lazy excesses of unchallenged leaders. Dissent sharpens, teaches, prompts us to shore up our weaknesses.

So disagree, protest, condemn with vigor!  Just stop wishing political adversaries into oblivion. Both parties possess wisdom. Each serves as a necessary check on the other. If we are to progress as a nation, we must welcome the questions and viewpoints of those who oppose us.

Anything less is fear.

* * * * *

We are the ones we’ve always dreaded. Ugly Americans. Ugly in the way we treat those in other nations, uglier still in the way we treat our fellow countrymen.

Some would suggest our incivilities and brainlessness will subside once we have a president who inspires our best, but that’s too easy.

Bush did much to merit our disdain, but he couldn’t contort our features and screech our voices. That was us. Our Two Minutes Hates have become Twenty-Four Hour Spites, so regular, so relentless that our faces have stuck that way. After our long indulgence in brute shallowness, it’s doubtful any regime change will calm us into measured thought.

Ask Obama. He tried — and failed. The same day Sarah Palin announced the teenage pregnancy of her daughter Bristol, Obama commanded his supporters to restrain themselves.  Far from relenting, they gleefully branded the 17-year-old with a Scarlet A and paraded her before the world.

Setting a well-groomed cat in a den of skunks doesn’t make the skunks smell better.  If a presidential nominee can’t elevate our discourse during the campaign season, when supporters hang on his every word, how much less effective will he be seated in our national bullseye for contempt?

“Is America ready for a president with a brain?” asks one Obama slogan.

The answer seems to be no.

* * * * *

It would be easy enough for conservatives to employ the Democrat Playbook against Obama:

• Juxtapose Obama’s face with chimpanzee faces with the same expressions.
• Collect Obamisms — Obama’s every slip of the tongue, quoted out of context and in print, where it will look even more ridiculous.
• Declare Obama mentally unfit for office as a result of his greatest obstacle: racial adversity. (Liberals claim McCain’s greatest obstacle, his years as a POW, render him mentally unfit.)
• Argue that Obama’s daughters are not his own. (Liberals argued Palin’s fifth child, Trig, was actually a coverup, the illegitimate son of her daughter Bristol.)

Turnabout is, after all, fair play.

The odd thing about Turnabout, though, is that it never ends. The past few years of liberal mudslinging were, in part, retaliation for conservative mudslinging aimed at Bill Clinton. Further retaliation will only perpetuate the cycle — a sort of mental version of Middle East violence, a moronic race to the muckraking bottom.

Enough.

It must stop.

We’re human beings, not animalistic clans. If we aren’t level-headed in our pursuit of progress, we’re not pursuing progress at all. Sad little nations favor political agendas over fairness and truth.

“Change will not come,” Obama has warned, “if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

True enough. No president, no matter how eloquent or inspiring, can elevate our dignity.

We are the ones who need to change.

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.

VI. Your children will be required to pass perpetual multiple choice tests in order to keep my property value high.

VII. You will end the war on drugs so I can incapacitate myself until I am a drooling ward of the state.

VIII. You will affirm and defend every sexual preference I develop, no matter how unusual.

IX. You will pay to clone and destroy human beings in the hope of finding a cure for any ailment that may afflict me.

X. You have no recourse when I steal your identity and sell your personal information.

XI. You have no recourse when I raise your taxes.

XII. You will pay for my lifelong room, board, health care, education, entertainment and legal services after I murder your loved ones.

XIII. You will listen to news sources slanted only with my viewpoint.

XIV. You will defend the free speech of everyone who agrees with my views, and drown out the voice of anyone who questions them.

XV. If you disagree with me in any way, you are the Worst Person Ever, Hitler and Osama bin Laden combined.

God bless America!