No Regrets

 

Sometimes, in the Groundhog Day repetition that is parenting with a toddler, when we do the same things over and over again and one day blurs into the next, middle age comes creeping into my thoughts and I start to wish I’d done more with my past. Be it travel, or work, or wishing I had a do-over for all the dumb mistakes of my youth, I don’t have many regrets but every now and then I find myself wondering what I could have done differently. 

But those thoughts are fleeting, and as it is, I find my happiest moments are in or around my little house on my little patch of land in my little town.

The other day I was in my backyard with Bella, my two year-old daughter. We’re playing in the pallet house and she wants to do my hair. Only there are rules in place and so I have to crawl out of the house and then return so that I can knock before coming in and make a proper entrance. 

Oh, uh, right. 

I do as I'm told. This time I knock and she welcomes me inside. There’s a toy sink with actual running water wedged into a corner. I’m instructed to sit against the wall. A siren wails in the distance, somewhere outside these magical walls, as she sets her hands in the water—probably filled with mosquito larvae and who knows what else—cupping them as she carries the water to my head and splashes my hair with it.

“Beautiful,” she murmurs, wiping down the sides of my face.

“Thank you,” I say, water dripping onto my shirt, kind of looking around. She does this again, maybe four or five more times. Then uses a toy set of pliers to cut my hair. She's fully focused on her task and takes time and care to do the job right. 

“Does it really look good?” I ask, as she drops the pliers and starts to clean up. 

Bella looks up from the sink and regards me with big blue eyes. A small nod. “Definitely.”

And that’s it. I don’t need to go anywhere. I’m good here, hunched over in this make believe bug infested pallet shed hair salon, with this sweet little stylist who hands our compliments like candy.

 

Bella and the Bad Guys

My two year-old daughter is sweet and charming and a complete goofball most of the time. She bumbles around the house clad in pink, her hair in pigtails. She's a bundle of joy in her light up boots, as she rides her little tricycle up and down the street, taking everything in. It's such a fun age, watching her play in the sandbox or discover new adventures. But I’ve noticed something else about my sweet little girl.

She likes the bad guys.

Whether we’re reading books or watching cartoons, or even telling stories, she’ll make me go back to the naughty part. The other day we were reading three little pigs. You think she was worried about those silly pigs? Nope. It was all about the wolf.

It all started back around Christmas. She was watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and couldn't get enough of the Abominable Snow Monster. I'd been worried she would be afraid of the beast but instead she only wanted to watch the scenes with him in it. She loved him so much we even got her a little stuffed animal, which she cuddled and cared for as though it were a baby doll.

And then we noticed a trend...

The wolf. The Grinch. The Gruffalo. That boy sitting in the corner in Timeout. If it’s hairy or spikey, or makes terrible decisions, count her in. No matter what the situation, if she has to pick between Clark Kent and his arch enemies, she’s picking those three lunatics in black.

Maybe she likes a challenge, or enjoys the turning point in a story, but something about her giggle, they way her eyes light up when the villain gets the upper hand, it makes me wonder what kind of company she's going to keep as a teenager. 

Then again, I think it’s commendable, how my daughter sees through a monster's scaly exterior to find the good inside. These are trying times, when everyone could use a friend. So hey, if she’s willing to take on a project, help a brute find his shine, who am I to tell otherwise?

But where does it end? Measuring for curtains at the Death Star? Finding ACME discount codes for Wile E. Coyote? And back to that teenager thing. At this rate, I fully expect her to leave the house on the back of a motorcycle.

The Worst Halloween Ever

Okay *deep breath* it’s been two years, so I guess I can talk about it.

Halloween 2020. 

A cruel joke in the year of Covid. The year of Zoom. The year of virtual school, work, shopping and family gatherings. For our family, like most, it was a year of setbacks and change and continuing global crises. Of learning on the fly. The only good thing, besides daytime pajamas, was the tiny little addition we were expecting. 

Our baby girl arrived in September of that forsaken year and her seven year-old brother was thrilled for about fifteen minutes. A newborn baby is, for a seven year old boy, boring at best and annoying the rest. 

Obviously, Halloween was going to be different. With Covid running rampant, trick or treating was more or less cancelled, as were parties and gatherings and anything to do with real life living, breathing people. Still, I wanted my son to have some sort of Halloween experience.

I took him to get a costume. We ended up with this half Jawa, half grim reaper type thing that under normal circumstances I never would have bought. We bought our own bags of candy. We got pumpkins and watched movies and had a fire out back and the leaves were flying around and I was thinking, Well, maybe this won’t be so bad.

After some scrambling, we caught wind of a community farmer’s market a few miles up the road in the county. They were having some kind of costumer/candy party scheduled for around seven that morning. Yes, morning, but again, we were desperate, and so we packed up the car with the brand baby, stroller, along with our pint-sized grim reaper and decided we’d make the best out of it.

When I think of a farmer’s market, tents, fruit stands, some old guys in overalls and maybe a little country band comes to mind. Or maybe I’d been watching too many Curious George reruns. Either way, what we found was not that.

Tables scattered along a path. A few local businesses. Insurance. Realtors. It was maybe forty degrees and oh yeah, it was seven in the morning.

Out of the van, my kid ripped off his mask and surveyed the scene. I set a hand on our little jawa's shoulder as he shrugged, deflated, his little Jack o' lantern bucket empty as sea shell. 

The baby in place, we trudged on, stopping to sniff some homemade candles. And we made the best of it. My kid collected maybe four pieces of candy (although one was a cough drop), before the baby had had enough and we packed it up and headed home.

We tried. We played spooky Halloween music. We carved pumpkins at the dinner table. We even ordered pizza and planned to have a fire with a giant sack of candy. I let him fill that bucket until it spilled. I thought it was going to be okay. Not the best Halloween in history, but with enough junk food and candy and activities to get us through it. 

Then came that magical time of a fall afternoon, when the sun was slipping down and the air was cool and crisp. It was that time we'd normally be getting ready to set off for trick or treating. But we weren't, we were in the dining room, where the table was covered with newspaper and pumpkin guts and how many times can you listen to Monster Mash and Thriller when you knew that was it? It was all too forced. And then the baby started to cry. She was wailing away and Mom had to rock her and it was like something just kind of cracked. I glanced down at my son and his eyes full of tears.

And I couldn’t blame him.

Here was a seven year-old kid who’d taken everything the world could throw at him like a champ. He’d adjusted on the fly, absorbing closures and cancellations and life-changing events and readjustments by the week. The world. School. Home. His family. He hadn’t been in a classroom since March. We’d added a family member. We were always packed in the house on top of each other. Now no Halloween? It was too much.

We’d marveled at how well he’d been doing. We made jokes about how easily these kids navigated the computer. He’d come accustomed to meeting people through pixels and internet speeds. Now he’d lost Halloween. This wasn’t fair.

Hell, I was crying with him.

But now here we are again. We're ready and willing and we’ve just spent a small fortune on a Darth Vader costume. And yes, we went trick or treating last year but that 2020 Halloween will take five or six more trick or treats to get over. So bring it. Rain or shine we’re getting out and knocking on some doors.

Trick or Treat.

 

 

A Tale of Love, Loss, and Rock and Roll

 

My middle grade novel, The Thing About Dad, is out now and available everywhere. Here's the summary:

For thirteen-year-old Jack Lansford, moving from upstate New York to Virginia is a prison sentence. At least that’s what it feels like when his dad takes a job down south and asks him to “give it a year.” Moving in, Jack's misery turns to confusion when he stumbles across a box of letters to his mother that forever changes the way he sees his light-hearted dad.

As close as Jack is with his father, they never talk about Mom, or the car accident that took her life when he was only three. So Jack can’t help himself from sneaking back to the journals—pages of heartfelt confessions about the mother he never knew. School begins and Jack tries to find his place—playing drums in the basement band with his dad and the neighbors while making a few friends along the way.

Jack confides in Miranda, the girl next door with the voice of a young Aretha Franklin. But when he shows her a poem his father wrote about his Mom, she decides it’s the song they should perform at the local band jam. With that, The Wallywalkers are primed for the big time, but first Jack has to summon the courage to have the talk of all talks with his dad.

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