A cold morning.
The wind down the empty street invigorating, almost inspiring– a reminder that we are of this world, and not the other. Such deep in the bones gratitude in these moments. The day still brand new, still a kind of wilderness. A field of potential stretching endlessly before us. Jones sucks on a green lollipop. His favourite colour on account of the Hulk, the creature his three year old body most yearns for, and above us the sky is changing. The clouds tumbling. The blue of the sky often indistinguishable from the overcast grey, and all around us the stripped trees and withered vegetation. Jones wants to know where all the leaves have gone, and as I am explaining he sees a tree in a yard that’s been decorated for Christmas. He points and shouts, describing the colours and shapes like the miracles they are. And as we look up and through the tree, a cloudbank rolls away from the sun and for a moment we are struck blind by the radiance, and for the rest of our journey ghost lights flicker before us like answered prayers.
]]>There is a task before you.
What do you desire from this task?
Describe what happens.
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I am about to take Jones to daycare.
I want something magical to happen.
I want us to see a UFO or a burning bush, I want an owl to suddenly appear before us, it’s wings spread in revelation.
There is very light snow covering the patches of grass lining the sidewalks. The grass, still green, pokes through it–a kind of stubble. Jones thinks he sees a dragon in a window so we pause to get a better look. We are blocking the sidewalk and I sense a person coming up behind us. I shuffle to the left and mumble an apology. A college-aged woman stops and smiles, stands before us. She is beautiful in the morning. Long autumn hair. She could have stepped out of a magazine. Or a forest. She is smiling, waiting, waiting to help, I realize. I tell her we’re okay and she says something charming and warm, and then vanishes like some spirit in a dream. All the lives she will pass through. And coming toward us is a young man, a student. He is running, loping easily down the street just as natural and easy as a cloud drifting in the sky. I know him. He is the son of a man I went to university with 30 years ago. Suddenly the past opens up on the street, and I am back at McGill with his father, his dad running toward me with a baseball after collecting an errant throw. And then as his son waves at us I am summoned back, watching as he runs beyond us and into his future.
I am an excellent father and husband.
A true family leader.
As such, I often find it necessary to call Family Councils so that my wife Rachelle, and our three year-old son, Jones,
can discuss important issues as they arise. These are the minutes from a recent Council:
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Michael: Okay, Council #37 is now in order. I know that Jones has a matter that’s been troubling him. Jones, would you like to take Thor’s Hammer from daddy so that you might air your grievances?
Jones: NO!!! I WANT CAPTAIN AMERICA’S SHIELD!!
Michael: We’ve talked about this Jones, you wave Captain America’s shield when you want to be acknowledged by the Daddy Moderator, and you hold Thor’s Hammer when you have the floor. It’s sometimes hard to keep straight in your head, but it’s very important.
Rachelle: Why? Why is it important?
Michael: You see Jones, Mommy just forgot to wave Captain America’s shield to signal that she wished to speak, so the Daddy Moderator has no choice but to OWWW! Jesus Christ Rachelle! That thing hurts! You do know I’m on blood thinners, right? You know that’s going to bruise. It’s not just against protocol to throw the shield, it’s medically unsafe!
Jones: NO TALK DADDY!! JONES TALK!!
Michael: I cede Thor’s Hammer to Jones.
Rachelle: Jonesy, what’s the matter?
Jones: I want to break a chair.
Rachelle: Because of something daddy did?
Jones: Yes. Daddy did it.
Rachelle: What did daddy do?
Jones: I’M GREEN HULK!
Michael: (Waving Captain America’s shield ) Jones? Jones? Can daddy please have Thor’s Hammer so he can speak?
Jones: NO! YOU LIZARD MAN NOW, DADDY!
Michael: Ha, see?! He wants to break a chair because he’s green Hulk, not because I did anything wrong!
Rachelle: Oh, really? Jones, is green Hulk mad because daddy is always finishing Jones’ dinosaur puzzles?
Jones: Yes!
Michael: You know, I put our Family Council protocols in place for a reason. Without strict adherence to shield/hammer regulation the chain of evidence falls apart! And Rachelle, you should know better than to ask leading questions of a child!!
Jones: GREEN HULK SMASH DADDY WITH CHAIR!
Michael: No! Put that down! I’m not kidding, Jones. Put. It. Down.
Jones: You Lizard Man, daddy, green Hulk smash you face!!
Rachelle: Oh my, green Hulk is so strong, I think Lizard Man had best do exactly what you say and let Jones work on his puzzles on his own, and at his own pace!
Michael: Lizard Man is sorry to have finished your puzzle.
Rachelle: Lizard Man has OCD. He has it bad.
Michael: No. Lizard Man does not. He just thinks that if you start something, it is your obligation to finish it.
Rachelle: Lizard Man thinks no such thing. Lizard Man has seen about five minutes of every show on Netflix, before abandoning them. Lizard Man started driving lessons, but never took a driver’s test, and he’s been on page 36 of The Angel Effect for what? Four months now? Six months? Years, maybe? Lizard man is a liar! It’s his evil super power, green Hulk! You must smash the lies!!
Michael: This Family Council is now adjourned!!
]]>The heat sat upon everything.
Oppressive and exhausting, it slowly disabled the day’s options. You couldn’t go outside. You couldn’t get comfortable. You couldn’t even think straight, and every time you moved it was as if this thing, this heavy, unseen entity, was wrapping itself just a little more tightly around you.
It was a long weekend and most of the people in Toronto seemed to have vacated the city for cottages. As Rachelle, Jones and I drove through the city to the Ontario Science Centre, we passed empty streetcars on empty roads, and on very rare occasion a person—always appearing slightly dazed, as if they’d just forgotten where they were going. There was a distinctly post-apocalyptic vibe in the still, dirty air, and it all felt as much a dream as not.
The Science Centre was very crowded, though, and it was filled with people just like us, people looking for a place that was open to the public, air-conditioned and entertaining for young children. We were all lucky, all of us there, lucky to have such a place available to us, lucky to be able to use it, and lucky beyond the known margins, too, lucky in ways none of us could even imagine.
But still, it wasn’t easy. It was crowded and loud, even chaotic, and Jones was so excited that he ran in crazed and unpredictable zigzags, and after a few hours we felt like cats chasing the red dot of a laser pointer. And as it approached noon, the children, all exhausted and hungry now, began to throw tantrums. It was like artillery going off, like fireworks.
One child would explode into tears, another one would kick a juice box out of a parent’s hand, and another would just flop face first on the floor and begin kicking his feet, screaming. And so it went, a spreading contagion that was simultaneously hilarious and crushing.
We managed to slither and bounce through it all to find a passage that led to descending escalators. There must have been two or three of them, each one travelling deeper and deeper down and through the wooded ravine the Science Centre was built into.
It was like being submerged in a forest, and the air became cooler and lighter as we descended, and when we stepped off into the refreshing, muted light of a wide open museum space, we were transformed.
About fifty feet in front of us rotating light projections were being cast onto the floor from the ceiling. Ladybugs. Stars. Race Cars. Mysterious fish. Geometric patters. All the children dancing beneath and within this light, and everything was beautiful and quiet and astonishing, like we had just been led to an illuminated cave full of dolphins at play in the purest waters.
It’s the hottest night of the year, and everything feels slower and more specific—the motorcycle whirring by, the exhaust from the bus, the distant shouts. Even movement feels weighted, as if gravity had been altered and natural time suspended, all of us now caught living in the space between an ending and a beginning.
In front of St. Joseph’s, broken men in hospital gowns are smoking cigarettes from their wheelchairs. I recently spent a long, uncertain time in hospital, and walking through this scattering of solitary men, all staring off at some internal horizon, I felt the need to stop.
Curtis, who was undergoing dialysis, had both legs amputated at the knee, was missing several fingers and teeth and was covered in tattoos. He didn’t mind being in hospital, he told me, because there were always people around and it was nice to have company. When I told him my wife and I were about to have a baby, his eyes got child-like and wide, “Oh, God has blessed you, sir, God has blessed you!”
We chatted for a bit, and as I was taking my leave it felt like we had both survived the same plane crash, but only one was able to walk away from the wreckage. After shaking his hand, and feeling like something almost holy had taken place, I walked into the hospital and later, at 4:40 in the morning on August the 18th, Rachelle gave birth to our son, Jones.
Rachelle was so strong. When the labour took hold and then seized her, she gritted her teeth, and then face a bright red, she pushed like a viking while k.d. lang played in the background. We thought this was going to go on and on for hours, as did the entire team who had anticipated a slow delivery, but suddenly Jones, whom I had been traveling 49 years to meet, appeared.
Neither Rachelle nor I saw him immediately. The presiding nurse, her face a sudden astonishment of joy, shouted, “Look down, look down!” And so we did, and there he was, glowing and perfect, seemingly illuminating all the faces now staring at him. For us, it was as if Jones was emitting a light that existed beyond sight, something so powerful and clarifying that with his first exhalation all the heavy, gritty air of the city, of the world and our lives, was cleared away.
The next day we all left the hospital– Jones, feeling the sun for the very first time as we carried him to the car in the Moses Basket a friend made for him. We passed through the smoking men who sat smouldering in the heat like rubble, but Curtis wasn’t amongst them, and so we continued without pause, taking Jones home. Home, an idea and memory that the boy and then the man, will forever be circling. And right this second this home is taking form, his mother rocking him in her arms, his father and dog watching from the sofa, a perfect and imperishable moment that one day Jones will close his eyes to summon.
(Photo courtesy of Donna Lypchuck)
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