Our son Jones is almost two and a half years old, and he is positively electrified by the creatures.

The idea of them are the current that runs through his body. His sun and moon. His east and west. They are spinning and shining and thumping and roaring through his days, they are everything he wants his universe to be. And so, on a cold morning in the disorienting limbo between Christmas and New Year’s, we took him to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Standing there as we entered, Jones twisting in his jacket to get free from my grip and and run to the “BIG DINOSAUR!”, I was hoping that my son might grow to love museums. I imagined him retreating into them over the course of his life the way he might a lake, emerging nourished and restored after each encounter. Sanctuaries of rich, wide spaces and cool tile. All the marvels of history respectfully arrayed before him, and always, he would have the sense of being somewhere else, a place just outside of time, and of being suspended right before a great mystery that was both his life and not his life.

And then he spun free and ran out into the great hall.

He was just so excited.

He tore from one wonder to the next, identifying each one as best he could. It was astounding to watch. He was a fever. A pinball. A waterfall. A million monkeys typing. I swear to you that he was glowing, he really was.

Watching, I wondered why our children, all so innocent and vulnerable, were attracted to the creatures we consider the most terrible and dangerous? Why run into the jaws of a dinosaur? Why the darkness? And all of the parents there, each one smiling through whatever weight it was their burden to carry, were likely pondering some variant of the same question as they watched their miracles of light streak so beautifully through the museum.

He has a piece of gauze over his left eye and sits there wordlessly, his face giving nothing away. His mother looks so warm and concerned, so ready to help. She keeps looking over at him, searching for ways to make him feel better, but he offers no clues as to what she might be able to do. There is such yearning in her eyes–she wants to climb into him and fill him with strength, she wants to absorb all of his pain, she wants to take him to that lake he loved as a child and watch him return to being her limitless and beautiful boy.

Everybody in the waiting room appears weary and drained of confidence on this day. A man of about 60, somebody who looked like he had lived well and confidently in his body for decades, groans when he shifts his weight and tries to cross his legs. As if avoiding one another, even ourselves, all eyes drift to the TV set where a news station, crammed with all manner of banners and crawls, is on. So much news, so many things of the world competing for our attention. And along the bottom of the screen, as random as a dream fragment, “ Prince Harry regrets not talking more to Prince William about his mother’s death.” And suddenly I’m traveling in time and back on Elgin Street in Ottawa 20 years ago. There were perhaps ten of us, huddled together on the sidewalk watching a TV through a window, all staring at a shot of a crumpled, black car in the middle of a tunnel.

Some people were crying, and I remember thinking that was a display of sentiment, and that we couldn’t possibly feel sincere emotion for celebrities who had been so one-dimensionally assembled for our consumption.

And I was wrong in the ways that only a young, single man could be, I was so very, very wrong.

A dead calm.

Existing just outside of time, lives hang suspended there as people wait to discover the toll they must pay to continue their passage.

Sitting across from me an older, Indian woman reclined in her chair, drifting. Beautiful in sleep, her third eye combed unknown realms before she returned to her mortal body and woke into the hospital lights, tired and disappointed.

A man, his eyes closed, breathed carefully while listening to his iPhone. He was so concentrated, so brittle and alone, and his lips moved almost imperceptibly as he repeated the words he was listening to.

An incantation.

A mantra.

A prayer.

And as if in response, a tired nurse coming off shift– her jacket already on– approached him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder. His eyes flashed open in alarm, and she smiled, asking if there was anything she could do for him. He quickly, reflexively, shook his head no, but she stayed, and growing more beautiful by the word, she spoke with him until something inside the man softly dissolved and the rigidity passed from his body.

Later, a cab pulled up at one of the hospital’s entranceways and a man on oxygen support and his wife got out of the car. They were excited, moving quickly, as if on a game show or late for their vacation cruise of a lifetime. I got inside the car they just left and the cabbie was a happy and talkative. He told me that the guy who just got out, after years of waiting, after countless false starts and failed matches, had just received the phone call that he was going to get a lung transplant and to come in NOW! The man, the driver said, was going to be able to breath again, he was going to be able to go to the family cottage and once again, just like when he was a boy, go swimming in the lake at night.

And as we pulled away from the hospital we passed by a couple of petite Asian women in vividly coloured bubble jackets waiting at the crosswalk. Smiling, they leaned in toward the traffic, swaying slightly, like brightly-lit balloons just about to lift off into the sky.

I recently won a kitten and have brought it into my household. It is my wish that it will bring hope into our lives. How should I treat it so that it does not run off to live with some of our other competitors in life?

With respect,

Sergei

Sergei:

It is good that you have written me with this question for my love of kittens is of global renown. My love for them is like a thunder that rolls across the steppes. My passion for kittens is the same as the passion a Cossack feels for battle! Truly, my ardor is without boundaries.

Personally, I have six surviving kittens and I am proud to say that they are all a part of the powerful Putin clan. My strongest connection is with Polkan. He is such a character! Sometimes he walks over my keyboard when I am busy writing a new law against the homosexuals! I tell you, if some bureaucrat were to do that, my response would be swift and without ambiguity, but I have no rage toward the cute, little face of my Polkan!

To make sure your kitten does not stray to a more appealing environment, you must pick it up, kiss it’s neck repeatedly then set it in your lap so it has a feeling of security, as you would a woman. You must be positive that it understands that you are not a predator! If the animal wishes to break free from you, you should let it, for you do not want it to feel trapped and fearful that it is to be executed for a crime! However, you must swiftly return to it, employing the same strategy (also, add treat) that you first initiated. You must repeat until your subject has been subdued.

Pet Corner:

I have been thinking about getting a Siberian Husky as I am looking for a loyal guard dog. Thoughts?

Gratefully,

Pavel

Pavel:

Ah, the Siberian Husky! It is as if their piercing eyes can penetrate deep into your soul and see your most secret desires and ambitions. I understand why you would feel such a burning attraction to them.

Evgeni had eyes like a Siberian Husky—as blue and vivid as lake Baikal. It was like he and I were carved from the same block of heterosexual man, and sometimes it was hard to know where where Evgeni ended and Vlad began. Our glorious days training together at secret KGB locations, were so curious and tense and beautiful, that sometimes we lost ourselves to our fitness regimes, and glistening with sweat, we would spar with one another– rough and tender– again and again, deep into the caressing night.

However, just like Evgeni, the Siberian Husky, is not a one-man dog. The breed is not fearful of strangers but will go to them, even seek them out in the dark corners of the city, and then one day you may happen upon your beautiful dog with another man, and you will feel nothing but rage, shame and horror, and then your KGB training will kick in and you will eliminate the problem before you. There will be more blood than you ever thought possible, but you will clean it up, and from that point forward you will bury deep, deep inside, all the hurt, pain and confusion, and you will become a new, different man, a man who hates even the disgusting thought of tenderly practicing martial arts with another man! And so I caution you, the Siberian Husky presents as many risks as it does rewards.