Star Spangled

Cherries, sparklers, wading pools, hamburgers, Springsteen, watermelon, squealing, blankets in the grass, daisies, ribbon Jello, drinks on ice, lime popsicles, baked beans, friends, family, fireworks, FRIENDSHIP PAGODA BURNS DOWN, amen.

Because We Didn't Get Him That "World's Best Dad" Mug. AGAIN.

I have this husband, and my kids have this father, and the three of us would like to take this holiday weekend to talk about him a little. Forgive our sentimentality: he makes us weepy.


Nearly every Saturday morning, he gets up with the kids and makes waffles or pancakes from scratch and scrambled eggs and warm blueberry syrup. He chats with them and does the dishes and then they watch old cartoons, and all the while I sleep for an extra hour or two. When I wake up, he's usually made French-press coffee, just the way I like it with a dash of half-and-half. He knows that this little ritual--some extra sleep, a break, a bit of time away from caring for the kids so I can be a better mother all week--means the world to me, but he never rubs it in.


Every day after work, he takes the children into the basement for an hour or two while I make dinner. He devises bizarre games--Bear Fight, Pirate Hunt, This Man Has A Binky, Toothbrush Race--and he plays the games again and again, matching their enthusiasm, making them scream. He puts on records and they do interpretive dances to classical music, robot dances to the Beastie Boys. They wrastle. As I chop onions upstairs, I listen to squeals and shouts and roars and the music throbs through the old hardwood floor, and I am sure that everything is right with the world. When they all come up to eat, they are pink and damp and exhausted, just like children (and husbands) should be before dinner.


On weekends, he is with them in the yard, imparting a love and appreciation for the things that fly and crawl and slither. Together, they wonder at the marking on a fat brown moth, or exclaim over the length of a slick nightcrawler, or cradle a tiny speckled frog in their palms. He teaches them to be gentle, gentle, GENTLE, and take care of things that are smaller, while their squeamish, nervous mother stands on the other side of a screen and says Oh! Isn't that nice! He is teaching them courage and compassion and stewardship, and doing a better job of it than I ever could.


He bathes them. He brushes teeth and combs hair. He tells bedtime stories, with a dozen voices and hands and theatrics. He tucks in. He tucks back in. He soothes them in the night when monsters come to call. He is their protector, their rock, their sure bet. He loves them ferociously, expressively, joyfully. He cares for them, and can provide their care, and he makes it look easy. He can Do It All.


He is, in short, A Good Egg. A Great Egg. A Tasty Organic, Free-Range Egg With Omega-3 On Sale With A Coupon.

I've heard people talk about growing apart after having children, or feeling jealous for the attention of their spouse, frustrated with less wife or husband to go around. But, in my experience, our children are exactly the thing that entwined us forever, that mixed us and cemented this union. These children were born to us, and then we were born unto each other, new and changed and whole for the first time. We are not perfect, far from it, but together have forged a little bit of perfection in a broken world.

In short: I have never loved him better than when he became a father, and I have never known a better father.

Happy Father's Day, Byron. We love you.*



*(But still hate beards. And camping. And kippered snacks, GAWD, the kippered snacks.)

Contents of a Post-Walk Pocket

Someday my pockets won't be filled with rocks and weeds and fungi and...

..no. No, who am I kidding: they'll probably be like that long after the kids are gone.

File Under: Things I Should Have Said To A Few Pigs Of My Own

Ellie and Jimmy were playing Tiny Little Plastic Animals, and Jimmy's pig was following Ellie's horse everywhere saying, "Hi! Hi, Mama? Hi!"

And she finally turned to his pig and said, gently but firmly in a horse falsetto, "I'll be your friend, but I can't be your mother. And we're not getting in love."

Well played, kid. Now don't forget to change the locks.

An Order Of Belly With Side Of Baby-Back Ribs

This, people, is what happens when the hose water is too delicious to resist, and you drink far more than your share of the delicious hose water, and though you have no bum or hips or body fat to speak of, you end up looking...swollen. With child. (In fact, this photo is making me physically uncomfortable and suddenly stricken with the urge to pee and complain loudly about my heartburn.)

Take heed, children: this is a Cautionary Hose Photo.

Seriously, though, is there a better part of childhood summers than THE HOSE? The giver of joy and glee and torture and comfort and thirst-quenching (though weirdly brackish) delight?



I think not, hosers. Happy Summer.

Cheap Thrills In Seattle (aka: Choosing The Miracle)

On Memorial Day weekend, my mom, Ellie, and I snuck out of town for a badly needed, completely invigorating, whirlwind girls' weekend in Seattle. Traveling with one child, one four-year-old-girl-child, is really the bee's knees.

Behold, some of the pretty (and pretty cheap) wonderment:


The head of a giraffe, a giraffe so close to my camera that he nearly bumped into the lens. (You can count his eyelashes.)


Ellie (and my friend Nora's sweet boy) feeding lettuce and carrots to the giraffe. (Only a fiver! And admission free with cheap-ass Zoo Boise pass! Gotcha, Seattle.)


A seven-buck Cuban roast sandwich from Paseo's with shredded pork and caramelized onions and pickled jalapenos and aioli and cilantro...on a roll. Messy and cheap and good and, perhaps, The One True Sandwich To Rule Them All.


Cupcakes.


OK, four cupcakes.


The kid picked pink coconut, and who can blame her, it went with the ensemble.


A bowl of ballerinas, ballerina for a quarter.


Slick kelp on smooth beach rocks at Alki Beach.


The kid's first sight, smell, breath of salt water.


Wet barnacles in improbable shades of purple, green, orange, clinging to steps.


Dragons on the light poles(!), almost more than the kid's heart could bear. (Areyoukiddingher?)


Cherry suckers from the Asian market, eaten in a pink chair.


Jellyfish.


Oh, the jellyfish. (In the aquarium that would not accept our cheap-ass Zoo Boise pass. Ya got me, Seattle!)


The unlikely, incredible (and very certainly sinister, don't tell the kid) nature of this thing. The eye!


Touching tube worms, and sea cucumber, and anenome, oh my!


A much-need weiner in a hotel lobby, on china, with fresh berries and a little china cup for the kid's tomaaahto dip. (She's fancy.)

There is something Albert Einstein said (and not the thing about Theoretical Physics, because I have a terminal case of Lack Of Understanding of Theoretical Physics), and it goes like this:


There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.


I don't know if it's even a tiny bit true, but you can guess which way I'm leaning.