Leave it to a child to ask an existential question that reverberates louder than the Pacific surf:
Will there still be waves if everybody’s dead?
Atticus, in the midst of his first beach vacation, received a truthful answer — and a question. Why did you wonder such a thing? Silence, except the sound of waves arriving and retreating.
Our son Atticus, now 4, watched part of Finding Nemo tonight. The story’s setting was relevant given the roaring surf outside our rented vacation house on the Oregon coast. Judging from his reaction to the dramatic scenes (shielding his eyes with a blanket and whimpering occasionally), we’ve overly sheltered him from TV and other insidious forms of pop culture.
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I would have stopped there if I had been a few decades younger and still reckless and easily thrilled by mega-fireworks. It was one of three stores on the Nez Perce Reservation in tiny Lapwai, Idaho, competing to sell the really good stuff for the Fourth of July. I passed it ten times during a research trip in late June.
A fire bug as a kid, I thought of the business tonight as we lit the most demure fireworks for little Atticus, who looked on in wonder, hands clasped over sensitive ears. Maybe one day I’ll take him to Lapwai and we’ll stock up at the place that wins my award for best business name ever: Pyro Paradise.
Seeing the world through the eyes of four year olds must be like looking through a peephole. This narrow, constrained view also bestows them with blissful ignorance. Take as evidence an exchange today involving our little boy and his friend:
NPR, soundtrack of our life, blares in the kitchen. Michael Jackson’s name is mentioned, again. The friend asks how he died. “A heart attack,” my wife says. The friend thinks about this, then states with authority that “a dog attacked him, then a cat.”
Now comes the blissful part. Our son, Atticus, says, “Who’s Michael Jackson?”
I pass the bathroom door. Our soon-to-be four year old, Atticus, is seated naked on the toilet. His mother is next to him. Atticus is holding her iPhone, which is playing a YouTube video of Sesame Street, a technique for scaring off the constipation spirits.
Surely no one forecast such a scene more than a half-century ago when, at the same age, I needed to relax on the toilet. But what if I would have requested similar attention from my mother (or father), two people never inclined to assist in my bodily discharges post-potty training?
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I swear it’s true: Dog Boy, aka son Atticus, asked to enter a dog carrier. (Please, no calls to the child abuse hotline.) His mother consented (arrest her, not me). Photographic proof here:
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Cracked Window celebrated its one-year anniversary today without fanfare. That’s because I stayed away from the keyboard and enjoyed the outdoors on a beautiful spring day in Portland. It was my first nothing-but-shorts-and-tee-shirt day of 2009.
Random projects, including installing two trellises on the fence two years after I bought them, were too much to resist. My little boy delighted in helping me squeeze the trigger on the power drill and marking holes for screws. Little things go a long way.
I invited Atticus to join me by asking if he “wanted to make some trouble,” an innocent enough expression. But he repeated it throughout the day, at one point telling his grandmother: “Daddy and me made some trouble today.”
And after 294 blog posts, that’s what I plan to do more of on Cracked Window.
