“I’m fancy,” Jones announces.
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.
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.
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.
A true family leader.
As such, I often find it necessary to call family meetings so that my wife Rachelle, and our nearly three year-old son, Jones, can discuss important issues as they arise. These are the minutes from a recent meeting:
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Michael: Okay, Meeting #36 is now in order. On Friday we’ve been invited to Claire’s for dinner. However, it’s not a simple matter. There are options, so please listen carefully. We can go in the afternoon, with Jones, and have a swim then an early dinner, getting back in time for Jones’ bedtime, or we can go over later, without Jones, and have an adult meal. Concerns? Preferences? Please speak freely, this is a safe space.
Rachelle: Do you know where the corkscrew is?
Michael: Since when did we start buying wine that needed a corkscrew?
Jones: I WANT TO WATCH THE SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: Jones, we are having a family meeting right now. You can watch a video later.
Jones: NO!!!
Rachelle: Found it! It was in your desk drawer. Amidst several corks.
Michael: Well, that’s odd.
Rachelle: Not if you’re a secret drinker, it’s not.
Michael: That’s a pretty big glass you’re pouring yourself.
Jones: SCARY SKULLS!! SCARY SKULLS! SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: No Jones! We’re having a meeting here, and there will be no videos until we’ve come to a decision about dinner on Friday! Also, you get stigmata from watching too many videos. It’s very bad for your eyes, and you want to be able to see everything, just like the Falcon that soars in the sky above, right?
Jones: WANT TO SEE SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: Sweet Jesus child, okay, okay, okay.
Rachelle: The optometrist said that by feeding him an excessive diet of videos in order to avoid responsible parenting and gain his approval you were putting him at risk for astigmatism, not stigmata. Stigmata is the spontaneous manifestation of marks on the body that correspond to Jesus’ crucifixion wounds,
while astigmatism is an eye problem.
Michael: Are you sure?
Rachelle: Yes.
Michael: Patricia Arquette. She was in a movie called Stigmata, wasn’t she? Now I remember! She was a hot hair dresser in that one.
Rachelle: Yes.
Michael: Remember the bath scene? She was having a bath and then some invisible demon seizes her and she’s trashing about like mad, kicking and flailing her arms, yet somehow, somehow you still don’t see anything? So unrealistic.
Rachelle: Yes, I thought the exact same thing. Stigmata, a movie about a sex bomb with demonic possession, was unrealistic because you never got to see the lead actress entirely naked.
Michael: Okay, let’s get back on track here. We have to figure out how we’re going to approach Friday.
Jones: Can I have strawberries, mommy? I want strawberries.
Rachelle: After dinner, sweetie.
Michael: What is for dinner anyway?
Rachelle: It was your turn to get it.
Michael: Oh. Right. Yeah, I was going to make a special rice and carrot thing in the Instant Pot.
Rachelle: We will all look forward to it, and by the way, I spoke with Claire and we’re going to go over around three, have a swim and a light snack, and then return home in time for Jones’ bedtime at 7:30.
Michael: Oh.
Michael: All in favour?
Michael: Okay, motion passes.
Michael: I think I read somewhere that the Instant Pot was dangerous, like a bomb, so maybe we can have Swiss Chalet instead. They’re offering crispy chicken as a featured item now. The Family Pak comes with pickles and dinner rolls. It’s a pretty solid deal.
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