Cracked Window

At the Portland Farmers Market, roasting chilies perfume every cool breath. Autumn has thinned the crowds but not the produce. Along with poblanos, I buy what may be the year’s last peaches, several varieties of apples, shiitake mushrooms, and more.

The once-ubiquitous volunteers registering people to vote are nowhere to be seen beneath the canopy of blue sky and elms. A sign perhaps that the presidential race is over, except for the vile death rattle from the McCain-Palin attack machine.

People look happy to be here, more so than usual. And why not? We’re surrounded by nature’s bounty on a classic fall day. But I sense something else, something more uplifting, even with the economy gone to hell.

Thirteen years ago, a mountain lion looked at me. I still see clearly its long sleek body, two hundred yards away on a bare hilltop.

Suzame and I were hiking at Point Reyes National Seashore in California and had reached the highest point, Mt. Wittenberg. At first I thought the mountain lion was a big dog, but the tail and graceful gait said otherwise. It stopped and stared at us, and I began to consider our options if it headed toward us. After a very long minute, the beast padded away.

What will the boy remember of yesterday? Years hence, is Atticus, my son of three, doomed to never recall his first day at the new edge of his known world, the Pacific Coast?

As I watched him run toward and away from tiny advancing and retreating waves, I realized how fleeting the moment probably was. Not just his memory of what he did but the pure delight of not caring about anything else. Neither the event or the feeling might ever return.

Oh, the travails of parenthood. How do father and mother anticipate this scenario: Atticus, newly turned three, begins crying. We find him wearing on his head a rigid cardboard can, his Lincoln Logs container.

“Why are you crying, son?” I ask. “It’s stuck!” he wails.

We can’t budge it. Suzame pries out his ears and holds his head while I tug, gingerly, several times. His feet start to lift off the ground. We move him to a bed. Same results.

We contemplate cutting off the can. Too dangerous. What about rubbing cooking oil around the lip or soaking it with a sponge? Then I reconsider cutting. With scissors I poke a hole near the bottom, far from his head, work in a finger, and manage to tear the cardboard. Atticus’ whimpering turns to laughter.

A memory is born.

Atticus Bales Tong, three days shy of three years old, doesn’t know the meaning of the word gun. Suzame and I didn’t set out to deprive him of this knowledge, though it’s no doubt a dividend of allowing scant TV viewing — and only since he turned two.

I learned this today when I handed him a garden hose. The hose has a squeeze-handle nozzle. I said, “Here’s your gun.” And he didn’t know what I meant. And this is a boy with a remarkable vocabulary, including some Spanish, French, and Cantonese.

Sometimes ignorance is a state of grace. How long can it last?

“You just changed the course of my son’s life,” I tell Phil Bondy.

Phil’s a young guy pounding away on a full drum set at the corner of Northeast Alberta and 13th in Portland. Atticus, who turns three in less than two weeks, is enthralled.

The occasion is Last Thursday, the once-a-month event when the stores and galleries on Alberta stay open late, artisans and vendors hawk their stuff on the sidewalk, and a festive atmosphere envelops everyone.

This morning at breakfast, my little boy Atticus freaked out when a big fly buzzed on a window near him. It seemed like an overreaction for someone who dug worms and fed them to the goldfish in our little pond before he could walk. (Easy for me to judge.) Maybe this stunning photo will make him less afraid. Or more:

I wish I could say I captured the image among our Portland rose bushes. Instead I’ll say “keep up the great work” to Robin Gage in Atlanta, a photographer friend of my daughter Erin. Robin proves once again that the world we typically perceive isn’t what it seems. Check out more of Robin’s rose gallery on her blog.