It seems like only yesterday
you taught your stuffed animals to read.
Now they are in college.
Your hair is so long
like a mermaid’s.
I borrowed your running shorts.
I’ll wash them before I give them back.
I’m glad your bed is high
with a net around it
so the boys can’t get in.
Since when do you play the banjo?
Am I the only one who would kill to live in a house like this? Think of all the pretend chores you could get done. I would probably be a creative genius today if I had grown up with a little fake washing machine to stimulate my imagination.
I want to put a Rose Petal Cottage in the living room so I can teach a certain someone how to do the dishes properly.
I’m sitting at home on a Friday night watching ABC because that’s what was on when I came home and I’m too lazy to get the remote from D because he’s on the other side of the sectional couch. Friday night TV is horrible unless you’re into news magazines and/or murders committed by the least likely suspect. But 20/20 just came on and changed my life in an episode entitled “How Young Is Too Young?” I was tuning in and out until halfway through the show, when a seven-year-old, born-again Christian boy started preaching to me out of the clear blue. He had flaxen blonde hair and was wearing a coat, tie, and shiny shoes. He stood in front of his very own church congregation and delivered a sermon about Jesus in a rich Southern accent. Later he was shown wearing a sandwich board in front of an abortion clinic, shouting “Don’t kill your baby!” at women walking in the door. The newscaster asked him if he knew how babies were made. He said no. The newscaster told him she was a Buddhist and asked if she was going to hell. The boy said “Yes, unless you get saved.” The boy said he’s been saved since he was three, when he had a crisis of conscience after he disobeyed his mother. So forget you, Saint Augustine, and your stolen pear. Forget you, Thomas Merton, and your substance abuse problem. You never had to reach maturity to absorb the life experiences and spiritual wisdom that would eventually lead you to the Christian faith. You could have just gotten your redneck fathers to brainwash you with a bunch of Tollhouse cookies and a kid’s illustrated Bible. And oh yes – I found video.
1. Website that makes the correlation between multi-vitamins and acne.
2. Website about how our contaminated water supply is making babies gay.
3. www.eatingpiewithcelebrities.com – Photoshopped pictures of me binge-eating with famous people.
Those are the only ones I have been wanting to launch for a while now. Lengthening the list would just be being facetious.
Tonight Darren and I were in charge of his two-year-old niece Harper. We took her to my parents’ house because they were throwing a dinner party there for my Wyoming brother Jack. I think Harper had a pretty great time. She ran up to my grandma who was laid up on the couch and shouted, “I have no underpants on!” She approached Drs. Murray and Morris where they were discussing the steaks on the grill and proudly declared, “Banana banana!” She ate sushi, peanut butter, rasberries, and pico de gallo. She also got fizzy water up her nose for the first time, which almost made her head explode.
Toward the end of the night Harper and I reclined on the backyard hammock to look at the stars. She heard someone speaking to my brother Brad (home visiting from med school) and she asked me about him.
“He’s going to be a doctor,” I said.
“For Halloween?” said Harper.
“No, when he grows up,” I said.
“When I’m three I’m going to be a doctor,” she said confidently. Shortly thereafter we retrieved her underpants from where they were drying on a pole made for hanging plants, and we said goodbye.
-Posing by the gazebo
-The second best date at the wedding, after the bride
-Gleefully instigating a dance fight
-What’s a wedding without a secret tree fort?
In my dream I was playing with a baby, making a fuss over her in sing-song and Motherese. She was just a few months old, cute as a button.
“I love you!” I said to the baby, overcome with maternal sentiment and delight.
“I only like you as a friend,” she said.