Michael isn’t much of a reader yet.

Years ago, his mom and I held out high hopes. At the age of two he knew all of his letters and their sounds, and was spelling out words he saw: EXIT, STOP, OFF, WALK, etc. We assumed he was going be reading Dostoevsky and Joyce in no time.

But despite my efforts, reading to him on a daily basis and providing him a substantial library of early reader books, Michael hasn’t willingly ventured into the realm of reading.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Trying to cajole him into reading his books is like trying to get the cat to take a bath. He drags his feet hard enough to carve grooves in the floorboards.

And he likes TV. Way too much. He is skilled – nay, he is a virtuoso – at wearing down parental will, such that an otherwise sensible and firmly resolved parent can quickly be reduced to a slathering, gnashing primate capable only of acting upon the basest instincts of survival, such as biting and clawing his or her way through the couch cushions in order to find the remote and tune in Nick Jr. or Sprout to quell the dreaded, unending whine of “mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy?”

This is a fact of which I am very much not proud.

His mom and I have decided we owe it to him to be better than this. So last night, when Michael requested TV time, his mom told him that he must first read two simple books.

This triggered his response of whining, begging, pleading and tantrum-ing as we had expected it would. But his mom stood her ground, and with each outburst she added another book to the total, which made it up to five before he gave in.

She sat down with him and opened up the first book he’d selected, which was a SpongeBob phonics book. This one highlighted the long “I” sound, and explored use of the silent “e”. And as we have done with every attempt at helping him read, we insisted that he sound out the words.

To him, this was some form of excruciating torture. I watched from the kitchen as he twisted and squirmed and nearly hyperventilated trying to compile the sounds that comprise the word “him”. He struggled. He stammered. He whined, wiggled, wobbled and tore at his clothes as his mom slowly and painfully urged him to sound out each letter and then string those sounds together into the one word.

“I don’t remember what the word is!” he protested repeatedly.

“There’s no need to remember. Just sound it out,” his mom said repeatedly.

From the kitchen I witnessed this embroilment as his mom fought valiantly to prod him into figuring out the sounds himself and as he strained to do anything to get out of doing so.

From time to time she’d say “I think maybe your daddy had better help you with this, instead of me.” This is a phrase she pulls out whenever she wants to shock Michael into proper behavior. It usually works.

I couldn’t help but think that maybe she wanted a bit of a break herself.

“Okay,” I said. “Here I come.”

“Nooooooo!” protested Michael, from the floor.

“Yup. I’m going to read with you, and mommy is going to finish making dinner.”

My wife looked up at me with pleading, defeated eyes. I smiled and held out my hand. She ascended from the couch with the grateful expression of a soul redeemed, plucked from the seventh circle of The Inferno.

“All right, sport. Sit up here,” I said.

He didn’t move. I reached down and drew his boneless body into my lap and molded him into an upright position. “Come on. Sit up straight. We’re going to get through this.”

I was determined that we would make it through without fighting. I would give him space, I would give him leeway, I would give him latitude. I would not press, I would not become impatient, I would assist him and help him see that he can do this.

I was determined.

“All right, now. Let’s look at the page. What’s Plankton doing here?”

He relaxed immediately and described what Plankton was doing.

“And what’s SpongeBob holding?”

“A magnifying glass,” he said. “And these are cans of lima beans,” he offered, brightening.

“Right! How did you know they were lima beans?”

“It says so.” He pointed out the words.

“Well that’s great. Okay, since you know this, let’s read the words. Ready? Here we go. What’s this word?”

“I don’t know…”

“Okay, what’s this letter?”

“Y”

“And what sound does it make?”

“Yuh”

“Right. What’s the next letter?”

And so it went. Letter by letter, millimeter by millimeter, we went through each letter of each word, very slowly but no less surely covering each word and then repeating each sentence to reinforce. He became more confident with each word. The sounds and the comprehension came easier to him with each page, all the way up to the last one. Slowly and surely.

In all that time I’d spent with Michael, my wife completed dinner, dessert, an amuse bouche, mastered the five mother sauces, knitted two sweaters and built a replica of the Eiffel Tower from toothpicks. Okay, so I exaggerate. It was only a model of Sutter’s Fort.

But in this time, while he grew in his ability to read, I had grown in my patience. He and I both had our victories.

Tom yawns and he sets the last button on his jammies. He stretches and climbs aboard the Sleepytime Express, ready for a good night’s trip through Slumbertown.

CRASH!

The wall transforms into a six-year-old boy.

“Mommy? I’m all sweaty!” Michael cries as his mom and I reluctantly haul ourselves out of bed and into active service.

It had been such a nice trip. Maybe tonight we’ll make it through.

In all fairness, it was sister S’s alarm clock that woke him up. I have yet to understand why she’d have it set to go off then. But there’s precedent, so it doesn’t surprise me much.

Yesterday Michael, his mom and I drove up a short way into Washington to retrieve sister S, who’d spent a week with her dad.

Her first grand announcement as we pulled back onto the freeway headed for home:

“I’m a vegan now!”

“Good luck with that,” I replied.

See, this is a girl who only recently has maintained that she will one day be owning a combined Hot Topic / Taco Bell store. She loves steak, chicken and ice cream. She never met a piece of bacon that she didn’t like. The thought of her going one day without consuming an animal product in some form or another is by all rights absurd.

On the trip back, we prodded a little bit for more on the how, why, when and what of it.

“Who got you interested in being a vegan?”

“Mr. Sparklepants.” (Note: this is not his actual name. However, the name we were given is not any more believable.)

“And how old is Mr. Sparklepants?”

“He’s in seventh grade.”

A sterling credential if ever there was one.

“And is he a dietician?”

“No, but he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well, you can get all your Omega 3s and protein by eating walnuts.”

“Okay…”

“So that’s what I’ll do.”

“Just walnuts?”

“And Ramen.”

Sounds to me like she has the plan all worked out. She explained it to us with such confidence, we figure she must have notes:

“Where are you going to get your calcium?” her mom asked, after a brief pause.

“And your vitamin B?” I asked, immediately afterward.

“And your vitamin D?” her mom asked before I’d finished my question.

“I don’t know… I’ll figure it out.”

This is where we let it drop. My wife and I know when to step up for battle and when to stand down.

While we certainly support lofty goals and noble causes such as protecting animal rights, it is our job as parents to ensure that our children understand every aspect of what they’re getting themselves in to. Knowing sister S, we’re pretty sure she’s missing quite a big chunk of the picture. She latched onto one facet of the vegan lifestyle and a couple of tips and figures she’s ready to run with it.

I give it a week.

No time for great prose, witty observations of everyday life or lofty ponderings.

But stuff has happened and I need to make the updates.

We’re having our house painted. We’re pretty sure it’s been the same color for the last fifteen years, but we can only confirm seven of them, the ones we’ve actually spent living in it.

It’s pretty bad off; the south side of the house has been shedding paint flakes for quite a while. It hardly took the contractors any time at all to scrape it off: the peeling paint was surely happy to be put out of its misery. They’re priming it right now and will start taping off and spraying tomorrow. It’s going from a drab, confused blue-grey to a much richer, solid deep blue. One that commands attention and respect. Given the non-committal olive-golden-grey-green sorts of house colors in the neighborhood, ours will most definitely stand out.

Michael’s pretty excited about the whole process. I’ve only had to rescue the contractors from his shrill interrogations twenty or thirty times. They’re good natured about it, though, answering his questions as best they can. And considering the standard obliqueness of his sentence structure, they did really well. I informed him, though, that they need to concentrate on their work and that he needed to stay inside.

I tried to work from home yesterday, hoping somehow he had advanced enough in maturity to keep himself occupied for long stretches of time while I pounded on my laptop keyboard in the other room.

Not so much. I don’t think I’d heard the phrase “Mommy… I mean, Daddy…” so many times in my entire career as a parent as I did yesterday.

Partly I stayed home in order to provide a proper send-off for my mom, who packed up and drove back down the road to Sacramento. And I didn’t want to put poor Mikey in the day care that he doesn’t like (“The School With The Little Door”).

While I did get some critical and important items completed, I could have been a whole lot more productive if I wasn’t fetching fish sticks, orange juice, letter fries and ketchup, and if I wasn’t getting up every twenty minutes to help free him from some virtual internet tidepool he’d become trapped in while playing his computer games. I tried to explain that if he’d make an effort to LEARN TO READ, he probably could avoid a lot of headaches.

The real clincher came just before I called it a day. At loose ends, for the seven hundredth time that day, he decided to surprise his daddy with a “gift”. He placed a soda can, from which he’d taken maybe three sips, into a medium-sized cardboard box and closed the flaps. “Daddy! I have a surprise for you!” he called as he picked up the box and began jogging toward me. He checked his motion in mid-stride and looked down. From his sudden change in stride I could tell something wasn’t right. “Oh, great…” he says, as brown liquid seeped from the corners of the box.

It was here that I finally noticed what he was doing, and the reality of the bits of imagery that had snuck into my vision’s periphery finally connected with my parental sensibilities.

Needless to say, when I saw just how much of a mess 12 ounces of caramel-colored carbonated soda can make when they’re distributed from within the confines of a cardboard box, I was not pleased.

I informed him that he was done, and needed to consider his behavior from the sanctum of his own bedroom. In not so many words.

Swimming lessons were not much better. He did well in his practice, showing great progress in his ability to do various strokes and to push off from the wall. But despite my admonishments he repeatedly splashed his classmates when the teacher wasn’t looking.

Bedtime came early yesterday.

School will be starting soon. He can’t wait, and I can’t say I’m not just a little bit excited for it myself.

My mom is visiting.

We couldn’t wait for her to arrive.

In fact, we arranged to construct a Mother-In-Law’s quarters on the grounds just for her.

I even sprang for some spider spray. G’nite, mom!












(In all seriousness… the tent was my mom’s idea. She’s wacky like that. You never know what she’s going to bring with her.)

(We’re on our way to church camp. Michael is excited.)

Michael: “Daddy? Why is the road blocked over there? What are those cones? They’re working on those rocks, aren’t they? There are a lot of rocks. They’ll break your tires if you drove over them whoa! That’s a twirly sprinkler! Have you ever seen a twirly sprinkler like that? I bet you haven’t. Can we get a twirly sprinkler? It’s a bingo because it’s yellow and SLUG BUG! I saw a slug bug just now because it’s rounded and blue. Or I guess it’s a Koala because it’s white and blue. When you see white and blue slug bugs they’re Koalas because they’re white and blue. How many more minutes until we get there, daddy? Are you driving the right way? I’m in orange starfish today because you told me. Are they having a party? What’s my snack today BOY THERE ARE A LOT OF CARS! Look at all the people. Oh, I don’t think we can park… you’re a good driver because you drove right between the cars. There’s a place to park and WATCH OUT for those kids, oh that was close. Are you parking here? That’s good. You’re doing a good job.”

(Daddy parks, and after opening doors unbuckles Michael and helps him to the ground.)

Daddy: “This way, sport.”

Michael: “I can’t wait to see what we’re doing. Are we doing a craft today? Is that my snack, because it doesn’t have soy or cow milk? You know what’s cow milk? It’s from cows and it’s got dairy. We have to walk a long way. My hair is okay now, isn’t it? Are we doing a craft today? I’m shy so I’m not going to walk next to you. Can I hit the button to open the door daddy? Do we go in here?”

(We enter the building)

Michael: “Hmmm… I think we need to go upstairs because that sign is orange and I’m an orange starfish and that sign is pointing upstairs. Is that where my classroom is, daddy? Where my usual classroom is? Are you going to the big people church or not? There are a lot of kids here. Are they having a party over there? Look at all those balloons! And what’s that parrot and those paper things?”

(The teacher approaches, and smiles at Michael.)

Teacher: “Why hello! Are you all ready for church camp? And what’s your name?”

Michael: “”

(Daddy waits for a moment)

Daddy: “It’s Michael.”

Teacher: “Michael! Well, we have your name tag right here. Are you excited for today, Michael?”

Michael: “”

Daddy: “He is. I just think he used up all of his words on the way over.”

Rare is the time when Michael is caught speechless. But it does give one’s ears a chance to relax for a bit.

Michael has a lot of little characteristic behaviors that tend to belie his actual age.

One of them is his construction of imponderable phrases:

“How come the ice cream trucks are all the time?” (translation: “I’ve seen over four ice cream trucks pass today. That seems excessive.”)

or

“I need to save my laughs, because I’ll want to laugh later.” (translation: “This was fun, but I’d like to move on to another activity.”)

or

“Oh no! Now I smell the peanut butter again. I’m going to have to sleep with my socks on!” (translation: “Alas, my malodorous feet! I should like a shower.”)*

Today, though, we saw a vast improvement in Michael’s ability to communicate clearly. This milestone concerns his manner of directing attention to an object he sees.

In times past he would simply point (or not) and say “What’s that?” and when met with a probing question would only repeat, with greater emphasis, the word “THAT!” which brought naught but frustration to all parties as we tried to cajole him into giving more specifics about the “that” he was pointing to, such as color, shape, direction, distance, etc. We would usually end up irritated and grumpy, and Michael would slap his forehead in aggravation. Often times he would do this in the car, pointing at something from the back seat while we in the front seat had no hope of seeing where he was looking or where he was pointing.

This morning came the breakthrough.

Michael, from the back seat: “Daddy? What’s that yellow light?” (aha! Use of color and descriptor!)

Daddy: “Yellow light? What yellow light?”

Michael: “THAT one!” (whoops – pointing outside daddy’s field of vision)

Daddy: “I can’t see what you’re pointing at. Give me more information.”

Michael, showing remarkable patience: “It’s on the light pole, to the left, on the bottom.” (Wow! A triple, giving two directions and an anchor point.)

Daddy, seeing the light: “Oh, that. It’s a blinking yellow for drivers going the other way…”

And on it went. He was satisfied, I was happy that we actually got through one of these without yelling or crying.

It may not seem like much… but when you’re parenting, you have to celebrate the small victories.

* Please note that this is an actual sentence Michael uttered, not a phrase constructed from whole cloth intending to prove a point via hyperbole. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Ah, summer. Those sweltering, lazy days of respite from the rigors and anxiety of the school year. Summers in Carmichael were like that: days filled with nothing but time and opportunity.

Right in our own neighborhood we had loads of opportunity. For just up the street and around the corner civilization ceased and a vast, unexplored prairie began.

An empty field. Spreading out over one hundred and fifty thousand square yards, it sat entirely unmarred save for one gas station on a far corner.

This field was the setting for many a summer’s adventures.

Legends were born of its crossing. I remember bigger kids coming back to our street along dusty, foot-worn paths telling tales of conquest and exploit. It was a world of unknowns, a land of endless opportunity filled with thistles, dirt clods, rocks, killdeer nests, snakes, bottle caps, soda can ring tabs and countless other treasures.

From my earliest memories I had heard of the glories that awaited those who could make the distance: a grocery store where candy and slurpies could be purchased in air conditioned splendor, a gas station with a soda machine and free air to fill up your bike tires, a small diner that served charbroiled burgers and French fries, a frog-filled pond surrounded by trees, and other more apocryphal tales of the “Heere Be Tygers” variety, like the tale of the cranky old lady living in the woods nearby who had a shotgun loaded with rock salt.

It was a magical place.

There was an unwritten law amongst the neighborhood kids that traversing this expanse must be done barefoot. During the summer, unless in dire need, shoes were not to be worn. My oldest brother took his code of conduct from Mark Twain’s chronicles of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and enforced this barefoot rule despotically. Any and all who wore shoes during the summer were shunned. And if you were unfortunate enough to be caught wearing “Dude Shoes” (that is, dress shoes, such as those worn for church-going), you were openly derided.

Shoeless summers presented a unique challenge to those wishing to make the journey across the field. Because to get to it, you first had to cross the Glass Road.

This was a short stretch of roadway, no longer than 60 feet, that was entirely covered in broken glass. It began just past the driveways of the two houses on the corner and followed a short curve into the field. If there was asphalt beneath all that glass, I never saw it. The shards were of all shades and thicknesses, and were layered as deep as you dared try to feel down with your fingers. It stretched the full width of the two-lane road and covered it right on into the field where it was swallowed up with soil and weeds.

How the glass road came to be remains a mystery to me. Some had suggested that the children of the earliest residents of the neighborhood smashed bottles there so often that it became a normal, natural feature. Others said it was all that was left of the lumberyard that existed in the field while the neighborhood was being constructed.

But whatever its origin, the glass road was a fixture in my early life, a hard fact, an inevitable impediment, a very real demarcation separating the courageous from the cowardly. So it goes without saying that I walked that road barefoot more than a few times, to prove my worth to my brothers and friends.

While the night belonged to the bigger kids, the mornings were mine. This was the time when I would often find my next older brother readying himself for a field expedition. He’d invite me to go with him, and we would walk up the street and into the field (wearing shoes) to look for killdeer eggs, bottle caps or other treasures. One time my brother found a few glass tiles, such as those used for making mosaic table tops. He returned to the same spot the next day with a broken hoe, and began digging. He’d struck a vein rich with tiles, which he saved in a bucket. Over the course of the next few years, he filled that bucket with tiles, beads and other wealth.

We only realized how truly fortunate we were to have that field to explore when it was taken away.

At some point signs and stakes began to appear, followed by men with bulldozers. The inescapable claw of property development had arrived. Trenches were dug, forms were laid and pipes installed as plans for a new retail complex were realized.

We made the best of it, playing on the massive dirt mound they’d left as though it were a volcano, and running through the trenches like Theseus pursuing the Minotaur through the labyrinth.

Along with the erasure of most of the field came the destruction of the glass road. In what seemed a single day, where once the glass road had been lay a beautiful new road, straight and complete, creating a connection from our street to the main highway.

The developers built duplexes on one side of this road, and office buildings on the other side. Soon came apartments, a movie theater and a convalescent hospital.

By the time I’d reached my fourteenth birthday, there wasn’t a trace of our wonderful field. The dirt, the weeds, the paths, the possibilities: all gone.

Now, I couldn’t complain about the closeness of the grocery store, movie theater and doughnut shop. My friends and I had some great days just hanging around at the department store and drug store there, and some fantastic evenings at the carnival they would set up in the parking lot each year. And I spent part of one year working as a dishwasher in the new convalescent hospital.

But I would pay big money to have just a few more sunny summer days with that field, to show my kids what fun could be had without a dime or a cell phone. While barefoot.

Next: The Back Yard and The Flowering Pine

Sunday was a heck of a day. Not sure what his deal was, but Michael was in rare form, breaking previous records of impishness-per-minute.

I was very much looking forward to my favorite part of the day, the time when I can tuck Michael in bed and basically be done with him.

Bedtime rolled around at last, and after tooth brushing and goodnight kisses, Michael made a plaintive request that his mother join us for story and prayer time. She acquiesced and rose from the comfy couch to make the trek upstairs to Michael’s room.

During these infrequent and thus highly sought-after visits, mommy’s job is to snuggle up to Michael and be a partner in his play while he “listens” to a story.

We read the story about Stone Soup. Not necessarily one of his favorites, but I like it and it gives me a chance to practice different voices. Michael played with his mom’s arm, raising and lowering it and allowing her hand to smack him in the face. He knows it annoys me that he doesn’t really listen to story time.

So I stopped reading.

“Michael, should we just be done with this? You’re not listening.”

“I am listening! Keep reading!”

“I don’t know… you’re playing and giggling and I don’t feel like you’re enjoying the story,” I said.

“No! Please don’t quit. I’ll be good,” he pleads.

I continue reading, pushing through the words quickly, hoping to reach the end before his mischievous antics reach the boil-over point.

Finally done, I put the book down and turn off the light.

“Okay, sport. Let’s get you tucked in here so I can say prayers.”

He snuggles up next to his mom, who is only too happy to remain horizontal at this point, after a grueling day of yard work under a hot sun.

Before I can begin saying prayers, though, I heave a sigh, shaking my head at Michael’s phenomenally difficult behavior during the day.

“Lord, please let this boy learn how to behave.”

In almost no time, I hear that still, small voice respond:

“He is learning. He learns every day. You teach him.”

I’m taken aback, because this isn’t what I want to hear. I want God to fix him, not chide me.

“But Lord, why must he behave this way?”

“He is who he is, and exactly who I made him to be.”

“Then please give me the patience I need to deal with him!”

“I am teaching you patience by providing you the lessons.”

“What, are you in cahoots with my wife or something? Why are you saying the same things she says?”

I hear no comment back from this, but my wife is giggling audibly now, having heard only my side of the conversation but no doubt knowing exactly what God must be saying to me.

“Is God not saying what you want to hear?” she asks me, finally.

“No! And He’s speaking with your voice.”

She reaches her palm straight up and says to the Almighty: “High five.”

Michael, holding plum between thumb and forefinger, for me to see: “Mommy and Daddy? Can I eat this?”

Mommy: “You need to wash that off first.”

Michael: “Where can I wash it?”

Daddy: “Anywhere you can find running water.”

Michael trots to the bathroom and rinses plum off under faucet, then saunters back, nibbling on the plum.

Michael standing just outside of Daddy’s focal range and pointing indeterminately at the plum: “Daddy? What’s this?”

Daddy: “The hard part in the middle?”

Michael: “Yes.”

Daddy: “That’s the pit. Don’t eat that. It’s hard like a rock, and it’s the seed inside.”

Michael, now closer, and now pointing to another part of the plum: “No, not that, this!”

Daddy: “I don’t know what you’re pointing at.”

Michael, emphatically, still pointing at same spot on plum: “THIS!”

Daddy: “It’s either the skin, the flesh or the pit. That’s about all there is to it.”

Michael ponders this for a few seconds.

Michael: “I think it’s a plum, daddy.”

Daddy: “Yes, it is.”