I stepped outside. The miserable heat was slowly losing its grip on the day as the sun inched downward toward the horizon. I watched the boys on the trampoline for a moment; laughing heartily, and all dripping wet from having just soaked one another with the hose. This was the late summer ritual. The evenings would cool just enough to make extended outdoor play tolerable, but the trampoline surface would be too hot for bare feet. The boys would spray the surface to cool it down, and each other just because. I continued on. I crumpled up the newspaper pages as I headed to the edge of the patio. Activity on the trampoline slowed a little, and the laughter began to die down. I lifted the lid off the Weber and removed the top grate. The boys fell silent. The stress of a few springs bringing the trampoline to rest was the only sound. I stuffed the newspaper in the bottom of the chimney and set it in the bowl. I turned to see them standing still with broad smiles as they watched me pour the coals into the cylinder . I reached into my pocket to retrieve the lighter, and as the smoke rose from the fire igniting the paper, one of the boys yelled out, “Barbecue!!” Read more…
One hundred eighty. That is roughly the number of days dedicated to the school year. Those days are spread out over several months, and the year-round school schedule we follow helps distribute the load across the seasons. Still, that is almost half of the year spent within the walls of a school, and outside the immediate influence and oversight of parents… I take a step back and try to think of it in terms of actual time spent. The school hours associated with those days come to about 1,170 for Jaden and Dillon; 1,260 for Logan. Even at first glance, it seems to me like a lot of hours. When I consider the time I spend away at work during those same 180 days, I figure I get to spend about 270 hours with the kids (If I don’t travel). I add another 600 hrs if I include 12 hours per day on the weekends. I’m still losing ground. Read more…
It started with Logan as curious sessions about the nighttime sky… there’s the moon… stars twinkle… planets shine. Both of us getting lost in the impossibility of counting those glimmering objects and embracing the beauty of the tapestry above us. Those were some of our earlier bonding moments. The practice gained a little formality with Jaden and Dillon. We would venture out before bed time to wave goodnight to the moon, and point out the constellations and planets we could observe from our driveway. If the moon was not visible, we would check all sides of the house to seek it out. As they got older, we would begin to speculate why the moon might not be visible on a particular night. Read more…
There was a time when I could go to the store, get what I need, and get back in the same amount of time it takes us to corral all the kids and get them in the car today. Everything was hassle free – errands, dinners out, movies, travel – I had more time in the day than I knew how to fill. I hate that time. I don’t miss a second of it. But it will be back… shortly…and it looms hauntingly in the back of my mind. Read more…
Every night, shortly after returning downstairs from our bedtime rituals with the boys (Jaden and Dillon), we hear the thunderous bumps and bangs associated with boys jumping down from bunk beds or doing somersaults into the furniture. After several trips up and down the stairs to negotiate terms of sleep, the commotion eventually dies down and they succumb to exhaustion…usually. Sometimes, as was the case a few nights ago, the boys will lay awake and talk; discussing topics ranging from constellations to trampoline maneuvers to basic philosophy. Occasionally, they will reach a stalemate and request an opinion from one of us.
I was in a muddled state of mind the other night, trying to think through a few issues and get myself ready for a business trip the next day. The commotion upstairs had died down and I figured they had gone to sleep. I was heading up to our room to pack my bag, and I was met by Jaden coming out of his room “Dad?” he asked with a very serious Jaden expression. “Does Heaven have sparkly walls?” We stood on the landing and discussed the possibility for a few 
moments, and I agreed that it made sense that the walls in Heaven could sparkle. He retreated back into his bedroom, and I carried on being preoccupied. About 20 minutes later, another call came from the bedroom. “Mom…” Jaden and Dillon came out of their room as we arrived at the bottom of the stairs. “Mom, do you assume that Heaven has sparkly walls?” Jaden asked from the top of the stairs as Dillon stood behind in the doorway (Jaden is the official spokesman for post-bedtime discussion topics). “Dillon thinks they should be cloud walls.” My half-hearted engagement in the earlier conversation was clearly obvious – they escalated to mom. Being the forgiving children they are, they did allow me to rejoin the conversation and we held court on the stairs at 10:00 having a wonderful conversation about a topic that would never have occurred to me to consider.
I sometimes forget how imaginative and intelligent children can be, and how far reaching those traits often are. Moments like these are a great reminder of that and of how much of their environment they consume and have to process internally. It is so cool that they have one another to work through these things with on a peer to peer level. Even cooler, is that they still want to share those thoughts with us. I am glad my son was not discouraged by my initial interaction with him, and I embrace this lesson to fight through my distractions in order to nurture their thirst for knowledge. Inspiration and curiosity do not always follow daylight schedules. We decided that the walls in Heaven could be sparkly and made of clouds, and that in some places one or the other. But that night, from my vantage point, they were dry-wall with light brown paint.
