NEVER LET GO

Dear Spike:

You usually sleep in our bed on Friday nights. Sometimes on Saturdays, too. Your mother and I stay up and watch movies and you nestle right between us as Coltrane looks on from the foot of the bed, flexing his paws and, I’m sure, wondering why the hell is she in my spot?

Tonight is Monday night. You should be in your crib, in your room. And with April 15 just around the corner, your mother and I should be doing our taxes. But as your bedtime neared, this drafty old house just seemed so very cold. And, well, here you are.

You’re wearing your soft, green nightgown, the one with the little dancing bear and the shooting stars. Your hands are cocked behind your head, like a talent agent who just signed a big movie deal for his client and is about to light a fat and moderately expensive cigar to celebrate. Your feet are bare. Such pretty little feet. You’re resting on your mother’s stomach — right over the spot where you spent nine whole months, cooking away like a little pot roast until finally popping out last May, just a tad underdone.

Your mother’s reading “My Sister’s Keeper” by Jodi Picoult, who, accoridng to the photograph on the back of the book, has curly red hair and doesn’t feel the need to smile for the camera.

And I’m sitting here with my computer balanced on my knee. Tap, tap, tapping away.

Avoiding the subject. Avoiding the reason why, perhaps — no, I’m quite sure the reason why, in fact — I wanted you to come sleep with us tonight.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

They buried her today.

She was a sweet little seven year old girl. Just a bitty thing. She liked the color pink and the company of her neighbors. Her family taught her to trust the people in her communty. It takes a village, some have said.

I have said.

Hser Ner Moo wandered away from her home last Monday afternoon. Off to a friend’s home, it was assumed. By Tuesday she was dead. The man who killed her was an aquaintance of her family. The home where she died, she’d visited before. This was her village.

Back when it was merely an academic pursuit, I theorized that the measures Americans go to in order to protect their children from harm were, in fact, of greater collective detriment than the remote possibilities that harm might, in fact, be inflicted. Maybe that's still true. But tonight, all I want to do is plop a helmet on your head and safety pads on your arms and legs and teach you Kung Fu and buy you a loud whistle and get a burglar alarm for your room and tag your ear with a GPS tracking chip like they do to endangered animals.

We live right across the street from the most beautiful urban park you’ll ever see. Right across the street. There are ducks to feed and boats to ride and a carosel and a merry-go-round and the nation’s largest public aviary and tennis courts and fountains and a greenhouse and bike paths and two lovely playgrounds.

I’d always imagined that you would play there — with us nearby at first, of course, but eventually by yourself and with your friends. I imagined I would watch from the porch as your rounded the corner and disappeared. Maybe when you were seven or eight — big enough to be seen by cars and to scream loud enough for someone to hear, if need be.

But small enough to play — to learn to be independent and to handle your own conflicts with other kids. Like we used to, when I was a kid.

“I’m going to play,” I’d call over my shoulder on the way out the door.“Be back before dinner,” my mother would call back as the door slammed behind me. Most of the time, I think, she had a vague idea of where I was headed. And that was enough for her.

I’d like it to be enough for me. For you.

But how can I send you out into this village? How do I ballance my desire to help you learn about community when I don’t feel as though I truly trust our community?

So maybe not seven. Maybe not eight. Maybe not nine or 10.

Of course, tonight is a bad night to be making decisions about these things. I’m sad and hurt and heartbroken for that poor little girl’s family. The world feels like an ugly place.

And all I want to to hold you between your mother and I. Tight and close and safe.

And never let go.

Love,
dad

FOR THE SEASON

Dear Spike:

The park near our home has a strong wireless Internet connection, and so during warmer months, you and I spent a lot of time here. I’d push you around the lake with my laptop computer balanced on the cup holders on your stroller, reading and responding to my daily avalanche of e-mails while you watched the black and white geese splash land in the still water or followed the golden leaves as they tumbled from the trees.

But now it is cold. And so recently we have spent most of our days at our home. I sit at my desk and write. You play in your jungle gym and rest in your swing. When you sleep I make my phones calls. When you’re unhappy, I close my computer and play with you on the floor.

It’s a suitable arrangement. And it is better (and cheaper) than sending you to daycare every day.

But now the weekend’s storm seems to have killed our Internet connection, and the company that services the line to our home says they won’t be able to make it out until next Tuesday.

And so here we sit, in the car, in the parking lot near the greenhouse at the park. You’re resting in your safety seat in the back, I’m sitting at the wheel, looking out over the dashboard at the little old carousel. Like most things out here, it’s closed for the season.

I always thought that nostalgia only existed in decade-long increments — for childhoods long past and ball teams on which all of the players have long since retired. For a musty old church and the stale old hymns sung there. For the glamorous stars of the silver screen, long since whithered and wrinkled and retired from acting.

Today, though, I’m simply feeling nostalgic for the summer. I’m missing a time when you and I could sit together on a park bench and watch as joggers tussled with their dogs as they passed the lake and skateboarders perfected their tricks on the amphitheater steps near the old mill.

Don’t get me wrong, I do so love what winter does to this park. I love how the shadows of skeleton trees draw jagged gray lines on the snow. I love to watch sledders climb up the hill on the north end of the lake, then flop down on their sleds, rushing headfirst toward hand-built ramps of snow at the bottom of the hill.

But alas, I miss when this all was our “outside office.” And I’m looking forward to a time when it is again.

You’ll be nearly a year old by then. Perhaps you’ll be walking a bit. And soon you’ll be able to play on the swings and the slides and the sandbox. And I’ll watch from a park bench nearby, with my computer balanced on my lap and a cup of coffee on the ground by my feet.

And — who knows? — maybe I’ll grow nostalgic for the snow.

Love,
dad

HELLO 21st CENTURY

Dear Spike:

The weather began to shift, this week. Now, I have to wear a sweatshirt when I walk you in the park in the mornings. It won't be long before I have to ditch my shorts for pants and my sandals for shoes. And it won't be long, after that, that I'll have to ditch my sweatshirt for a jacket.

The seasons change quickly in Salt Lake City. Spring and fall are but fleeting thoughts — quick and colorful pauses between summer and winter.

By Halloween, it will be snowing again. And it won't stop until next May.

I don't mourn the passing of our blistering summers. I do, in fact, enjoy them more than our arctic winters but I'm usually ready for a change by this time of year. But lately, I have grown particularly sad at the thought that our visits to the park will have to be more limited once the winter comes. No longer will I be able to walk you around the pond until you sleep, then relax on a bench, writing and checking email on the free wireless internet connection as you slumber.

At some point, it's just going to get too cold for that. And I'm not sure your mother would understand if she came home from work to a hypothermic daughter.

"Matt, why is Spike blue?"

Yeah, that would be bad.

But still, it was with a bit of regret, today, that I strapped you into your car seat and drove downtown to our local Internet service provider. I know I could have done it over the phone, but I really prefer to do business face to face. I guess I'm just old fashioned in that way.

Maybe I'm old fashioned in other ways, too. We don't have a home phone. We don't have a cable TV, or even an antenna for that matter (So I'm often lacking for anything to say when folks gather 'round the water cooler at work.) And we've never had the 'net at home (there was a period, a few months back, when we were able to jump onto our neighbor's wireless signal, but I suppose they wised up to our thievery.)

I tell people we're not "wired" because we like to keep our home life simple — but really it's because I'm cheap. And because your mother is tolerant of my cheapness, bless her heart.

But with the end of my month of full-time daddydom looming and the prospect of working from home seeming ever more complicated, I've finally and lamentably entered the 21st Century.

Hello, 21st Century. Thanks for waiting up.

Next week, I'm told, our phone line will get hooked up and a wireless modem will arrive in the mail. A few dozen swearwords later, I suspect, we'll be wired. I suppose there are a few better ways to spend $44.95 a month, but probably none more practical.

I suspect we'll be raising you to value a buck. And I know we'll want you to seek as many opportunities as possible to get out of the house and enjoy your community and your world. And to the extent that it is possible, I'll encourage you to combine those two things.

But when it's warm enough — and probably when it isn't — I'm certain you'll be able to find us at the park, you in your stroller, slumbering away in a snowsuit, me at my keyboard, tapping away in my mittens.

Love,
dad