Standing there in our apartment, looking like a million bucks. Mommy taking photographs of him from every angle.

First day of school and there are premonitions of frost in the morning air. But overhead, an endless, vividly blue sky, sunlight touching everything.

Jones is goofing up the street with his friend Vivian. Cracking her up by doing funny walks. Vivian, beautiful in her new dress, giggling and smiling. Her hair like Kurt Cobain, her eyes mischief. They’re having so much fun. Jones stops dead on the street, throws his body into wild spasms, “I’m a man getting electrocuted with blood on his hand!” he shouts. And then he stops. “Hi friend!” he calls out to a stranger drifting past on a skateboard.

And all of us parents are nested around them, shuffling up the street, snapping photographs like paparazzi.

And when we turn the corner, Rachelle says to him, “Look Jones, there’s your new school!” Right before him is a playing field glowing green and gold. It’s like a dream, a prize, and when I look at it, into Jones’s future, I can hear music playing in my head. Sweet Thing by Van Morrison. And it is here on this field where Jones will inhabit some of his most perfect memories.

He shouts, “Yay!” at the sight of it.

Jones. His oversized yellow backpack. His determined, happy walk into the world. This boy. So fresh. So genuinely excited. The way he lives inside and outside of us at the same time. And as we’re saying goodbye to him, he just charges into the school. He doesn’t look back. He jumps in.

And we are left standing on the sidewalk with all the other parents. Young mothers hiding tears behind sunglasses. Flowers swaying as the wind moves through a bush. Everyone smiling, everybody a little melancholy. A ladybug glistens in the sun on a bright, yellow fire hydrant. Such a small, astonishingly beautiful thing. Each one of us passing such miracles as we walk slowly home, each one feeling a little different now, humbled, and so very, very, absurdly lucky to get to be a part of it all.

It’s an honour to become a part of this esteemed franchise, and although I may be a little bit older than some of my teammates, Magic Mike expects to make an impact with his hustle, grit and smarts. And if I need to be a father figure to some of the team’s emerging, young organizational depth, so be it. Magic Mike is a born leader. I know where all the good steak houses are. I know where to get a safe tattoo at 4:00 am. And, goddam it, I know what a fair price for a prostitute– regardless of where the sex worker might be on the gender spectrum– is. Magic Mike can help this team grow up, and Magic Mike can help this team win. I will be making no further statements today so that I can best concentrate on preparing myself, Magic Mike, for the big game tonight. Oh, and please visit my website to purchase merchandise:

The leaves on the trees beneath us sway gently, the hills beyond them somehow resembling the past more than the future. And all around us the night pours in, as if it is one thing and not many. Impenetrable and complete, with or without us.

The light flickers again and somebody makes a joke about a spirit trying to contact us and everybody laughs but still, there is something brittle in the laughter. Everything is softening at this hour and it’s easy enough to imagine a soul loosening itself from the body. People start to tell stories of the supernatural. Tales of coincidence and premonition. Angels and ghosts. Messages in dreams. All these encounters and intuitions unresolved. And when the last story had been told, we sit quietly, goose-fleshed and knowing nothing. All so small beneath the night and the just-glimpsed shooting star above, a luminous proof sent to us from distances and realms unknown.

Everything is heavy and still, but on occasion a gust of wind brings the scent of water. From the lake, from the sky, from places unimaginable. This water that will soon rain down upon the entire steaming city. This water from which we are nourished, from which we are comprised, from which we were born. How old is it? Is it forever?

Jones hands me a stick.

, you know, the spot where you see www.michaelmurray.ca and type in “ Men can” followed by a space, the autofill will provide you with these five suggestions:

Men can get pregnant
Men can have babies
Men can have babies now
Men can have periods
Men can cook

The crowd outside the stadium in TO is wild! Can you hear the cheering?

I could not hear it, but I could hear the occasional whoop coming through the open window as people made their way up or down the street.

Sitting in the dark, listening, it felt like a blackout had washed the city free. Everyone was experiencing the same thing. Everyone was happily displaced, vibrant.

In the wake of the victory some of the broadcasters have been anointing the Raptors Canada’s team, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The Raptors are Toronto’s team, reflecting a sensibility in league, sport and composition that is unique to the city. The players in the NBA, much more partners than faceless subordinates, are a revolution unto themselves. And in Toronto where the culture wars seems to burn so much brighter and hotter that the ROC, the Raptors embodied not just the demographic of the city they worked in, but the aspirations of the people who lived there, too.

For awhile now, particularly amongst people younger than me, the Raptors have served as connective tissue, the casual language spoken at parties and bars. This is not your father’s corporate sports team. This is something else. It’s youth, it’s velocity, it’s progress. The Leafs and Jays were institutional legacies passed on from bygone eras, but the Raptors were not, they were the living present of the city.

And last night there was such joy and hope. People were experiencing things they would never experience again. Their lives were being written, histories formed. They were young and beautiful and united, and the world was changing not just before them, but from within them, and everything was cresting, limitless and glowing.

He looks at me from beneath the big, bulging sweater he’s wearing.
Frowning.
His brow furrowed.

showing Elizabeth Warren donning a Trump mask and then engaging in sexual acts with a man who was also wearing a Trump mask, after Amy Klobuchar’s last name was discovered to have roots within the Russian sphere of influence, and after it was revealed that Kamala Harris hates animals, particularly cuddly ones, the ranks of women running for the Democratic nominee for President have been substantially reduced. With electability being the key concern, all white, middle-aged men are currently being considered. I, who have American citizenship, am one of these men. At the urging of my inner circle and after much prayer, I have decided to run for the Democratic nomination for President.

The shouts and instructions of the players echo behind me, the language familiar but impenetrable. So many voices, so many people out on this day. A middle-aged man in a suit sits blowing soap bubbles. They drift away from him, rising above the pedestrians on the sidewalk beneath. Given breath, they hover there for a moment, an impossible glistening, before popping and vanishing into sky. It’s a beautiful spring day and people, optimistic after the long winter, are out in the sun. It’s a kind of parade, really, and every one of theses people is the star of their own movie, an unknowable plot churning within that’s just waiting to be realized.

It feels light, daddy!

And this is how all his days begins. Everything light. Innocent and unencumbered, he arrives happily into the day, the world immediately swirling all around him. He drops a leaf into a flower pot filled with rain water and marvels as it vanishes and then reappears, bobbing on the surface.

He rubs his body against the prickly, green of a hedge, calls to a cat watching from across the street. The moss on the trees we pass, like something of the night lingering into day, and Jones trailing his hand over it.