parenting

My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much happened for a few months; I knew this was a long term plan.

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As my son found his feet and began to walk, he found his hands at perfect height to reach the piano. Music is very important to us, and I could not have been more delighted to see him walk over to the piano and press the keys with the tips of his fingers…

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This year’s theme seems to have been impermanence: The deaths of two people close to me, the shift from from boat-dwelling to house-dwelling, stepping into more challenging role at work, and the consuming joy in helping a child discover the world. A mantra I have found particularly useful is “Which part of this can I do?”

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They say the skies are bigger Up North. I’ve recently witnessed this natural phenomenon first-hand. It’s true. The best theory I have so far is that the sky expands, inching out and pressing down toward the horizon. Meeting abrupt and solid bedrock, it flexes and springs up, vault-like, forming a dome. As any structural engineer will tell you, this paraboloid is capable of supporting and holding back crushing weights. The arch transfers the load deep into its footing, pushing downward and outward.

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People ask me ‘how’s the boat?’. There are two easy answers to that, neither of them particularly satisfactory. The long answer involves sacrificial anodes and hinges, topcoats and oil changes, weeds and invasive species…

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