Trampoline Nights

 We don’t have central air conditioning at my house. We don’t even have a window air conditioner. And up until the end of June we didn’t even have our swamp cooler operational. With temperatures reaching 100 degrees F. we were very warm in the house. Long after the sun sets, when the temperatures starts dropping off outside, inside the temperature remained in the 90’s. In the winter this phenomenon is a blessing; in the summer, a curse. The master bedroom is on the west side of the house and catches all the afternoon heat. A few nights ago I woke up at 2 a.m. feeling like I was suffocating, my bed wet with sweat. I went and stood in the dark on the porch in my underwear and looked at the stars and let the cool night air absorb my excess body heat. Night air never felt so pleasurable. But I couldn’t stand there all night and eventually had to return to the heat of my room.

The next day it was even warmer. Rather than suffer another long night in the dead heat of my room I decided to sleep out on the trampoline in the back yard. I grabbed my pillow and a sleeping bag and tried to sneak out the back door. But trying to sneak anything in my house is like a celebrity saying something stupid and hoping no one heard.

                “What are you doing , Dad?” Story, my seven-year-old,  had caught me.

 His words alerted Glory, my nine-year-old. She came peering around the corner.  “Are you sleeping outside?” she asked.

                I was caught and denial was futile.  I nodded and they both ran to get their pillows and blankets. There were no questions asked. Dad was sleeping on the trampoline and so they would too. Sleeping on the trampoline with the kids is a natural thing to do, but it doesn’t usually lead to a great night’s sleep. The main problem is that objects with any weight tend to roll to the center of the trampoline. We won’t be asleep long before we will all be lying in a heap in the middle.

                Story is the first one outside with me. We get his blankets on the trampoline, but then he does a little dance when suddenly nature calls him. He wants the flashlight so he can go back inside to the bathroom. I direct him over to a dark corner of the yard where he can take care of business under the stars. It’s one of those great lessons a father can teach a son about how great it is to be a guy. He’s still young enough that his shorts come all the way down around his knees when he goes. I shine the flashlight on his white buns and yell, “Look, it’s a full moon!”

                “Dad!” he yells, and then giggles.

                Glory comes out a few moments later and I light the way for her with the bright beam of the LED flashlight. We got everyone arranged and then lay, only half covered, in the warm night breeze looking up at the stars. They can both recognize the big dipper and the star Betelgeuse (Beetle Juice). It isn’t long before they ask for a story and I am making up a Mr. Potato Head vs. the Potato Peeler story.  Then my seven-year-old returns the favor and starts telling me a story, but he falls asleep before he is finished. Glory and I stay awake long enough to catch a whiff of a skunk carousing somewhere upwind.

                It’s not long before I doze off and my nine-year-old is pushing on me in her sleep because I am nearly lying on both her and her brother due to the black hold affect at the center of the trampoline. I scoot as far away as I can and turn at an angle, but it doesn’t work. An hour later I am crowding in on them again.

                Sometime in the night I had to get up to relieve myself. This is where the second problem of trampoline sleeping comes in.  As I struggle out of my bag and to the edge of the trampoline the two kids start to bounce and almost catch air. Somehow they both sleep through this. They sleep bounce again as I get back in my bag.

                I awake each hour to the breeze puffing in my face or because the trampoline, although stretchy, is not soft. Also I keep sliding into my kids. I watch the Big Dipper make its rotation around the North Star. At 4 a.m. I give it up and crawl off the trampoline to go to my bed in the house. I’m hoping it will be cooler by then.  It isn’t.  The room is still hot and stifling, but at least I won’t be sliding into my kids. Before I get into bed I hear little voices coming in the back door. These aren’t middle-of-the-night voices, but awake voices talking and giggling. I learn that our stray cat had joined them on the trampoline and tried to crawl into bed with Glory. The cat smelled a little like a skunk. With the cat’s arrival and my departure they had decided to come in too. They went off to their respective rooms and I sweated the next few hours in mine until dawn. 

I finally got the stand for the swamp cooler built and with it pumping in the cool night air sleep comes a little easier. Like a character in a horror movie who is drawn to the old house on the hill even against his better judgment, for some unknowable reason I find myself wanting to try another night out on the trampoline. There must be a way I can make it work.

Holding Hands With a Stranger

      I grew up skinny. I remember as a high school senior getting measurements for a band uniform and my pant measurements were 30” x 30”. These measurements were in spite of frequent Hostess-Os binges where I would eat all six powder-sugar coated, raspberry-jelly filled donuts in a box in one sitting. I would dunk them in milk. It was so easy. Oh, how my mouth waters now.
 

     It was just a year or two after getting married that my charmed weight maintenance changed and I started gaining. Weight gain, like age, can just sneak up on a person. I think it had something to do with having children.  It is not unusual for women to gain weight as they have children. I, being the father of these children, should have been exempt from this phenomenon, but as a partner in the birth of these children I also became a partner in the weight gain. I gained about 13 pounds for each child born into my family—and we had eight children.

    What does this have to do with holding hands with a stranger? When I first noticed the troubling weight gain—I think I had two children at the time—I tried to do something about it. I was working in an office about thirteen miles away. I availed myself of public transit and took the bus to work and back. Making time for exercise is difficult and as my pants got tighter I was motivated to figure out a way to incorporate a little exercise into my current routine. The answer was quite simple.  I would get off the bus a stop or two before my home stop and walk the rest of the way. This worked very nicely as it gave me time for solitary, evening reverie before I arrived home to my small apartment, wife, and two children.

     Evening reverie is a pleasant word. It denotes calm thoughts about the current status of your life, about your family, your future plans, or general philosophical questions. Although my “reverie” often included such thoughts, my thoughts weren’t always so pleasant. I was a person who worried a lot and feared many things. I was a man who hated confrontation and avoided it at all costs. A simple argument with my wife was traumatic and verbal altercations with strangers could devastate me for days. During my walks home I would relive some of these personally traumatic events and in my mind go through things I should have said rather than being the wimp that I was. In addition to my fears I had a vivid imagination. When I heard of tragic events in the news such as mothers killing their children or of once honorable men being arrested for child sexual abuse or other depressing things I had the rather questionable ability to see from the transgressor’s point of view. How had they ended up in such a state that they could commit such dark acts? And so with all kinds of thoughts in my head I would walk home.

     One evening, an evening of happier thoughts, I got off the bus two miles before my home stop and began my walk. I don’t know if I was losing weight, but my health was improving, and I felt good. Getting off so much earlier put me at the bottom of a rather steep hill. I turned off a commercial street onto a residential street and began my trek up the steeper grade.  Ahead of me was another pedestrian—well a pedestrian with roller blades. Roller blades would normally give a person the advantage over the person without wheels, but going uphill this is not the case. As I got closer I saw this “blader” was a girl of about eleven-years-old. She had a Snickers Bar in one hand with one bite taken out of it. She was struggling against gravity as she worked her way up the sidewalk and was not having much success. She was doing the backwards snowplow in an attempt to keep from rolling backwards down the hill and into the busy cross street below. In fact it seemed she had hopes of not just stopping herself from rolling backwards, but of actually climbing up the hill. She had made some progress when I first saw her, but there was a lot more rollerblade-dancing-in-place going on than hill climbing.

    The girl was wearing long, homemade, denim cutoffs that showed off a pair of skinny knees that had seen a little sun. She had a helmet on from under which unkempt yellow hair ran down to her shoulders. This was a girl who had gone down to the corner store on a hot summer evening more because she was bored than because she was hungry.

     It took me just a moment before I caught her and passed her as I leaned a little into the hill. I had to step around a flailing arm with a melting candy bar. I could smell chocolate and peanuts. It seemed to me that she would soon be forced to take off the roller blades and carry them up the hill. She had another idea.

     “Excuse me! Mister?” It is always a little disconcerting when a stranger calls out to you. You always think they must be speaking to somebody else and pretend not to hear. But she was so close behind me, and since there was nobody else on the street in front of me, I turned around. This girl had a bright face with a couple of freckles.  There was chocolate on her lips and a smear off to the side of her mouth. She was grinning sheepishly as she continued her frantic little roller-dance. “Could I hold your hand?” She briefly reached one hand forward before throwing her arm out to the side again to catch her balance.

     Hold my hand? Is that what she had said? I was caught off guard. When does a stranger ask another stranger to hold their hand? Holding hands is reserved for lovers. It is reserved for a father and daughter. It is an intimate physical expression between those who have an emotional bond. I didn’t know this girl. There was no bond. Of course I also understood that she was asking for help, not to create a bond, but still I hesitated.

     “I’m having trouble getting up this hill,” she said. She was out of breath partly from her roller-dancing, and partly from trying to chew a chewy candy bar when she was already out of breath. She looked me in the eye hopefully, her smile maintaining.

I was struck by how plainly she stated her problem and how readily she looked with hope to a passing stranger. As a father of two young boys at the time I thought of how unwise it was of a young girl to ask to hold the hand of a strange man. I would have told her, “Smarten up, girl. If you are having trouble getting up a hill in roller blades you take them off and walk. You don’t ask for a strange man’s hand!”  Yes, if I were her parent this is something I would try to correct before it led to a tragedy someday.

     The look in her brown eyes told me that she really thought I might help her. As an adult this was something else I knew she would have to learn—that you can’t count on the help of a stranger.  I held out my hand and she grabbed it nearly falling over as she did so.

“Thanks,” she said, still breathless.

     Even now that she had my hand her roller-dance continued, but she actually made progress up the hill pulling heavily on my arm. I know my hand to her was just a trailer hitch—a tool to get her up the hill. Her hand to me was much more. My walks home were normally solitary. There were people all around me in cars, on bicycles, or walking, but I was still alone in the world in my head just as they were alone in theirs. There were no connections between us as human beings. To find myself unexpectedly holding hands with this human being, this young girl, was extraordinary to me—an unexpected connection. Once my grandfather, one whom I saw rarely, reached down and took my hand unexpectedly. We had been crossing a street and I guess he thought I needed help. Maybe it was just because he loved me. In any case it had embarrassed me because I, at eleven or twelve, felt far too old to hold hands with a grandpa. He’s gone now and I am ashamed that I took the first opportunity to remove my hand from his. Would this girl hold her grandpa’s hand as easily as she held a stranger’s? I hoped she would.

     This girl and I chatted a little on the way up the hill. She talked easily and happily about her life.  There were disjointed snippets about her little brother and his friends and how she lived with her grandmother. Her grandmother had kidney stones. I was a little worried all the way up the hill that some relative of hers would see me holding her hand, think the worst and confront me. Maybe they would call the police.  I would be arrested and registered as a sex offender. I considered telling this girl about the danger of asking for this kind of help from a stranger, but she chatted so happily and innocently that a lecture from me would confuse her and ruin the happiness.  In the end there was no confrontation or police.

     As we neared the top of the hill it wasn’t so steep and I thought she would be able to skate on her own. I loosened my grasp, but she still hung on. I didn’t know how she could be so comfortable with a stranger. I was pleased by her trust in me. At the same time it worried me that she would probably trust anyone this way. Finally I came to a cross street I had to take. She let go of my hand then and waved goodbye. I told her that she might need to take off her skates and walk next time. That was as close as I came to telling her not to hold hands with strangers.  She smiled, waved again, and then skated haltingly on her way. I never saw her again.

     When my eleven year old daughter told me she had been talking to a stranger sitting in a car outside my shop one evening I gave her a lecture. She told me he was a plain clothed policeman who was watching a man down the street. That didn’t make me feel any better and I lectured her some more. The thought of losing a child to a stranger is any parent’s nightmare. Why had this “policeman” let my daughter talk to him? Didn’t he know better than to let a young girl approach him in his car? But he didn’t harm her and he has met a very unique girl.

     It has been twenty-five years since I helped that girl up the hill. I can still remember the feel of her hand in mine. There was nothing intimate meant and no intended bond. I was just pulling her up a hill. But the memory of the feel of her hand is special to me because it was the hand of a stranger. It was the hand of innocence and trust. It was a hand that needed mine and I gave it. In giving it I was given back a remote, but very real hope that the world may be so kind and forgiving to my children. 

Of Dishes and Death

We are not very good at doing the dishes in my home. I suppose there are others with the same problem, but if you don’t have ten people in the household you don’t really have the same problem. It just takes one meal to have lots of dishes stacked on the counters. After one day there are piles of dishes. After a week the situation in the kitchen is precarious. You can be sitting in the other room and hear things in the kitchen shift and slide all by themselves. I had to dig my six-year-old son out once after a particularly nasty shift. He was just trying to get a drink of water. Okay, that would be an exaggeration—actually he could have gotten out by himself.

This “dishes” situation gets old very quickly, but the solution is a difficult one. The obvious answer is that somebody needs to do them. But who has the strength and stamina to do the dishes for ten people day after day after day? Solutions I tried were: 

1. Pay. I tried to bribe the children with money to wash the dishes, but the children quickly discovered that the amount I could afford to pay just didn’t’ make it worth it.
2. Punish. I made dish assignments with consequences, but I soon found out that there were no consequences motivating enough short of physical violence to tackle the daily mountain of dishes. I can freely admit that physical violence is not a part of my parenting style so I failed again.
3. Do the dishes myself. Out of desperation and disgust at the state of the kitchen I tried this, but there were just too many and it took too long. There was also the humiliation of my twelve-year-old bringing me a spoon back because it was “still dirty, dad.”  I tried what seem to me to be a hundred other ideas and all of them failed. I would always end up back at “just let them pile up because surely the family would tire of having to hunt for a fork and plate to wash before each meal in order to eat.” They didn’t get tired of it. Oh, they didn’t like it, but it was easier than washing a mountain of dishes each day.
4. Death. I finally hit upon a solution—it involved death. No, the solution did not involve an animal sacrifice or the death of any family members; the deathly answer was in literature—the Abhorsen series of books by Garth Nix to be exact. I could not get the kids to tackle the dish problem on their own. I could not tackle the dish problem on my own. But if I was willing to get after the dishes myself I learned that the kids were willing to  help me. I also learned that if I had a good recorded book playing during the assault on the dishes it was much easier to get the kids in the kitchen and keep them there while we did dishes together.

What is Abhorsen you may ask? In this series of books an abhorsen is the person whose job it is to keep the dead out of life. My kids were quite taken by Sabriel who, at 16, finds herself the abhorsen and in a battle against Kerrigore, a power member of the greater dead. In Lirael the kids are enthralled by this 19 year old misfit who unwillingly discovers she is Abhorsen-in-waiting. She is joined by the magical and delightful Disreputable Dog and others in a battle for the salvation of the world against the necromancer Hedge and his army of dead.

The kids are mesmerized by the story and since we only listen to it while doing dishes they are quite willing to join the work. It won’t be long before we are finished with the third book in the trilogy. What will I do then? Bring on another book, of course. There are so many wonderful books out there. I know the next one already—Ella Enchanted. They have all heard that book, but they love it. And so we will continue to slay the dirty dishes with the help of the dead . . . er, literature.

Captain of the Ship

As the head of a large household I feel I have a responsibility to younger, less experienced fathers to give them the guidance they need to be effective leaders. One of the most important things to remember as a man in today's world is that a man in his home should be like a captain aboard his ship:

1. He should be in complete control at all times. He doesn't have to be a Captain Bligh about it, but if a ship is to be kept in top shape and off the dangerous, rocky shores the captain must demand complete obedience to his ever command. Of course if he merely suggests that everyone is in bed by 9:00 with lights out at 9:30 and yet everyone still stays up until 11:00 most nights it can't be said that he isn't in complete control.
2. He should have the utmost respect from each of his crew members. Of course there will be incidents such as when his six-year-old daughter, who had heard him scream, “Shut the door!” for the millionth time this winter when she stuck her head back into the room from the freezing outside and retorted, “If you care about the door so much, why don't you marry it!” But she did say it with respect.
3. He should be treated like a god and any trivial, personal habit ought to be ignored. I can, however, overlook the fact that all my crew looks at me whenever there is a strange smell in the room even though there is no proof that they should be looking at me.
4. He must demand that they respect his personal space to keep a proper distance between the officer and the enlisted. I will tolerate standing on my feet to dance, holding onto my fingers so that they can walk up me and flip over backward, climbing onto my lap, and jumping onto my back after family prayer only for a three or four more years before I get tough.
5. It can be assumed that he does everything perfectly. This should never be questioned. When his eight-year-old son responded to his captain's “That's not too bad,” after digging a perfect hole to plant a tree with, “Yeah, but it's not too good either,” he wasn't actually finding fault.

No, any man who doesn't lay down the law with an iron hand in his own home does not deserve the sweet hugs, and kisses, and the love of his crew.