We are standing in front of our apartment on a hot and humid morning, and it is the first time in over a week I have been well enough to take him to daycare. We welcome this return, although we do not speak it. It lives in our eyes, in the way we look at one another. Everything once again in the right place. A bird chirps brightly from above and I ask Jones what it said.
“First he said hello to me then he said hello to you.”
We wave back, and as we walk up the street Jones tells me his dream from the night.
“I was a baby and I lived in Mommy’s hair.”
It is a beautiful image, and I feel like a light has just entered into my body. Jones happy and striking poses on the sidewalk, and then a crack of thunder above and around us, big drops of rain falling slow then fast. We hurry for shelter, finding some on the porch of a large, old house. The house with the raspberry bush. The house where the owners used to invite us in and give us things from their garden, before they moved away and the property became so mysteriously and beautifully overgrown.
Sheltered, we feel like we’re in a turret or a cave. All is brick and stone and dark cement. The rain is harder now and it’s exciting, cathartic. Everybody on the street soaking wet, everybody feeling vulnerable, yet freer than they’ve felt in a long time–all relieved to have the order and artifice of their day washed from them. And Jones begins to sing and dance. A scene from Singing in the Rain. His smile is big and silly and true, and the rain pours off the sloped roof above us like a waterfall– the fortune, the miracle to be alive within this baptismal moment.
The Flash is seated outside on a small chair beneath the shade of a tree. All around him toddlers sit crosslegged while the supervisor directs their questions to The Flash.
Q: Is it true you eat a dozen raw eggs for breakfast?
F: No, The Flash likes red candies and ice cream. I have a belt, too. It is supposed to go here, but I forgot it today. It’s made of lightning.
Q: What is The Flash’s favourite fish?
F: The Flash likes red fish and green fish and then he mixes them with rice and they are all fish.
(The Flash then runs around the tree while the children shout.)
Q: Why is your costume red?
F: It is made of lava and if you touch it you get electrocuted! (The Flash demonstrates being electrocuted)
Q: Who is the worst villain?
F: Lizard man. He hisses so you have to throw him in the lake and then he sinks and the sharks eat him and we all go swimming because now the sharks are friendly. They were just hungry.
Q: What did you dream about last night?
F: Spiders. They were crawling on the boat and then they turned into flowers and raspberries and I was happy.
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.
“Here daddy, this is your stick and this is mine. We will drag them through the rocks!”
We drag the sticks along the sidewalk. Jones is a shark, I am a laser beam. Earlier he was an astronaut robot dancing to Toots and the Maytals. He is a shape shifter. A shaman. A spirit guide constantly forming and reforming, announcing himself to the world in all his various guises.
A young Asian woman attired in perfectly executed variations of pink passes by. Focused on the phone before her, she does not see us. A ghost floating through the humid day. As real as a cloud. Jones drops his stick and runs into some bushes. He is drawn to every green thing. All the branches, all the leaves, all the flowers, all the replicating versions living within–everything different, everything the same. And he rummages for a minute before emerging with three tiny snail shells cupped in his hands. His eyes so blue, so big.
He knows this is a miracle.
“This one is the daddy, this one is mommy and this one is Jonesy.
Something happens to the weather and it begins to spit and we are beneath a tree, the sound of water drops falling on the leaves above.
The day is fuel.
It could reveal anything
Everything is possible.
Outside there is wet, heavy air. Raindrops tremble like mysterious candies on the leaves all around us. Jones is in his Spiderman costume.
We head up the street toward daycare and the beeping of a truck backing up awakens Jones’s spider-sense. He tells me it is the sound of somebody being electrocuted and that he needs to protect them, and so he runs off through all that is damp and green, to a fire hydrant where furious motions take place and an electrocution is narrowly averted.
And then Spiderman and I arrive at the back playground of the daycare, and the children flock to the superhero. They surround him. They’re cheering, jumping up and down– their perfect faces now seeming even a little more perfect. The daycare worker asks Jones to take his mask off and so he does.
I’m Peter Parker now!
And then he begins to run around the yard, again and again. So alive, so happy in this opportunity to be of this world. And each time he passes he gives me a high-five, and all the other children, now a part of this running, spinning, ring of joy, too, are also giving me high-fives. And if this is not a blessing, I cannot imagine what one might be.
Everything so very light and beautiful, as if the morning itself were lifting free of the earth and floating into dream.
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.
Look daddy, this tree has hair!
And then a robin pecking at the wet earth before us. I tell Jones it’s a good sign, that it’s spring and everything is waking up. Jones wants us to take tiny steps, like the robin, and so we do. On our tiptoes, we stutter-step along. The bird then takes flight and Jones pursues him, running ahead and flapping his arms like a bird, and it seems probable that he, too, will break loose from gravity and take to the sky, a vivid bolt of lighting illuminating all beneath.
Jones and I are standing on the sidewalk and I am asking him about his dream from the previous night.
What was it about, Jones?
Santa.
What was he doing?
He was bringing presents.
Did you get to open any?
Yes! There were chocolate eggs, and inside of them was apple juice!
This is what a child not yet four dreams of. Miracles of pleasure. This boy, wearing rain gear that looks like a yellow hazmat suit. Wearing hockey pants and helmet, a pair of astronaut gloves.
He is still magic. He can do anything, everything before him still unbroken and emerging. The world and all beyond it, a field of potential just waiting to be ignited. It’s as if his vitality commands it, as if life must bend toward him.
A skunk emerges from some shrubbery, it’s long claws exploring something on a patch of green.
Jones is fascinated by this creature. He kneels down, gets smaller, tries to become the animal.
I tell Jones of the skunk’s superpower.
Tell him that every living thing has a superpower. But Jones was born with this knowledge. He wants to know other things.
Daddy, what happens to orange pop when it grows up?
I don’t know, what do you think?
I think it lives in the sky and becomes the sun all around.
In this world, everything always turning into light.
Each day just waiting to be written.
My hand on the knob of the front door. Jone’s body pushing against it, his legs restless, twitching, like a bull waiting to be released. I open the door and the world is cool and bright and thin, and the first thing Jones sees is an abandoned door lying face down on the ground. He is lifting it, like Hercules, “Come, Daddy, Come!!”
We enter into worlds unseen. Down cobwebbed staircases by candlelight we travel with Superman, a friendly werewolf and sticks. Spiders join us in the forest beyond the waters. And then we are back before our house, slamming the door down on the zombie armies in their moaning pursuit. I catch my breath, look up the street toward daycare. Right at eye level, not three inches away from my face, two sparrows rocket by. One after the other. Like two kids chasing one another on bikes. When was the last time you had that feeling? To be traveling at full and effortless velocity, your body stretched to the perfection of its desire, of its necessity? And Jones, glowing beneath me, now identifying the chalk faces on a brick wall—this world always unfolding in the smallest, most beautiful ways.
And today, some 40 years later, Jones and I are walking on the sidewalk between snowbanks on our way to daycare. But Jones is an adventurer, he needs more life than that, so I help him up to the mountains. We’re holding hands as he balances on the changing topography, and he could not be happier. “I’m taller than you, daddy!”, he shouts. The sun is behind us, our long shadows cast before us like a path. Jones the long one, mine the short. He looks at me, smiling, “Daddy, are you happy?” A question of such unexpected beauty. My radiant beast, so vividly alive, caring whether his father is happy or not. I tell him that I am very happy, that I could not be happier, in fact, and Jones says, “I’m happy, too!” And so we continue, both stronger now. The sunlight bouncing off the thin membranes of ice covering the branches in the trees above us. Everything imperishable.
The morning is all freezing rain.
I have to wear a big blue poncho over my oxygen concentrator so that the moisture doesn’t damage the machine, and the tiny ice pellets coming into contact with it sound like kernels of corn popping, like flames crackling. Jones and I are happy enough. The rain, neither liquid nor solid at this point, is sparking freshly off our faces, it’s chemistry in the process of revision as it tumbles from one form to another.
Ted, who works for our landlord, is outside. He seems ancient, like he was born from the earth rather than flesh. His exterior more bark than skin. And he is reaching into a bucket of salt and bare-handing it onto the sidewalks. Like he’s feeding chicken. Like he’s scattering seeds. Up and down the street he wanders.
Jones and I make our way slowly and carefully toward daycare. Jones stopping for every fallen thing.
Jones climbing every mound of snow. Jones stomping every plate of ice. Before us are men shovelling the snow and slush from their part of the sidewalk. Maybe four or five of them stretching up the street. Each one feeling useful and alive in the elements, each one happy to have a weight to carry. A need to fill. Each one smiles and waves as we pass. My oxygen concentrator venting beneath the poncho so that it billows at regular intervals, pulsing– puffing out and then receding, again and again. Jones small and wild beside me, we’re anime characters now, passing through the ghost clouds of the day and into the great and mysterious universe waiting beyond our sight.
]]>Our son Jones loves to dance. It’s his thing. You can see the joy in his eyes. They shine, lit from some spot deep within. Each morning he jumps up on our bed and dances for us, and it is no small thing. It’s beautiful and unpredictable and so ecstatically rendered that it feels like being blessed by a higher order of being. It’s a good way to start the morning.
Both with sticks, Jones and I walk quietly to daycare. Both of us lucky. Somewhere in our bones we know this unspoken thing. Big, slow snowflakes drift like dandelion puffs around us. A delivery van stops across the street. Bollywood music blaring. Just blaring. Jones has never been quite so astonished. It is a miracle, and he looks at me like we’re both witnessing a miracle. He’s glowing. The snow increases, squalls for a moment. It’s the gentlest invasion of white, as if silent, weightless birds are schooling around us, as if the world fundamentally changed before our eye. Jones points, “There are so many of them, daddy!” The Bollywood music is still pouring out of the van and Jones begins to dance. In his puffy jacket. His rain boots. His ridiculous hat. His glowing face. A woman with heavy snow flakes, glistening and then melting into her dark hair, smiles as she walks her dog through us.
All these things coming together.
This day being made, this day being blessed.
]]>