Category Archives: Finding Meaning

three dreams

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Sometimes getting up is hard to do.

The alarm shrills at 7 a.m., as usual. Feels like it’s still the middle of the night. So I tell myself, five minutes more. I turn on my side and instantly find a wonderfully comfortable position. One that eluded me all night, as I tossed and tossed, prey to some existential anxiety. Or maybe it was the midnight cinnamon bun.

Five minutes later, I push myself up and grab my phone. Damn! It’s 7:22! Longest five minutes in history. I step out of my room and skip and stumble as the cat runs through my legs. I throw a kick that misses. It never connects. The cat is nimble.

Noah’s room is dark. I hear him breathing heavily. Nowhere close to being awake. The cat stares at me significantly, then at Noah, then back at me.

“Sorry, fat cat, feeding you is Noah’s job.”

I head to the kitchen. I remember that yesterday, I bought freshly ground coffee. A good morning already. I put on the pot and bring the plate of muffins to the table. Something stirs in Noah’s room. I look in.

He’s doing jumping jacks and stretches and squats under the impatient gaze of the cat.

Wow! Waking up at almost 10 years old is a whole different thing.

I return to the kitchen to pour him a glass of milk. When I head back, the cat runs through me again at full speed and in full meow.

For good reason. Noah is back in bed. It’s 7:35. We have to be out the door at 8.

“Noah, are you awake?”

He doesn’t respond but I can see the hidden smile. Parents are really good at seeing what’s hidden. So I tickle his bubble butt through the blankets.

He squirms and giggles. He opens his eyes, all pleased. Good way to start a day.

“Good morning, Noah.”

“Hi dad.”

“Sleep well?”

“Oh yeah, like a dead log.”  Mangled colloquialisms are one of my kid’s specialties.

“But dad, I had like big dreams.”

So did I, but then I grew up.

The cat jumps up on his bed to within an inch of his nose. A clear request. Noah pets her lazily. Despite her hunger she closes her eyes and twists around. She ends up surfing on her head in total abandon.

“So dad, it’s like this I had a dream that like I woke up and it was like 6:01 and so I fell asleep again then I, uhm, I woke up again and it was again 6:01 and then  like it happened again and it was always the same minute. You know? Yeah. And I remember thinking, like in my dream, you know that I could live forever like this. Cool huh?”

The eternal life of a groundhog. What a destiny!

“So then I had another dream that I was walking with you and Melina and Vince and I was feeling really happy. Yeah, and you know the dream could have been, uhm, just that and it would have been great, you know?”

“No kidding.”

My hand is rubbing his back, his hand is rubbing the cat’s back. I wish some giant hand was rubbing my back.

“I love my cousins. I love you too, dad, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but my cousins like I can’t say it to them everyday, you know?”

“Sure.” Rarity seems to increase value, not just for precious metals.

“But then, dad, in the my dream? I bump my feet against something and it doesn’t hurt or anything but it’s a big box and I have to like unbury it you know?”

Unbury.

I like that. I have met the Unburied:  the already dead who just won’t let you be free. Memories of loves, dreams of being, violence never decried, wishes never granted.

“So yeah, then I open the box and it’s like an Aqua Blue Nintendo 3Ds, just like I want, and with 59 games, dad. Imagine. I was like Oh yeah! Oh yeah!”

“Oh yeah!”

“And then I was, boom, asleep again and when I woke up it was like in a dream again and it was Halloween. And I had the best costume ever. Cool night, huhn?”

“Sure was.”

“I feel great, dad.”

“Good dreams will do that to you.”

“Did you have a good night, dad?”

Busy night.

“I dreamt a lot.”

“And like, good dreams?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember anything about them.”

“Wow! That sucks!”

Forgetting your dreams. Sucks?

“Dad, I remember everything I dream.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“What?”

“Come on, Noah. It’s time for breakfast. The cat is hungry.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

burn

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Noah gets up a half hour later than usual. I’m already in the living room sipping my first café latte. He pops his head out of his room and smiles.

Widely. Gloriously.

Ouaga, the cat, has been fretting, growling and miauling. She bumped her head against my closed door as I woke at 7. Unleashed a desperate “Arrrouuunnwww” and ran to her empty dish when I went to the bathroom.

“Sorry, fat cat, go wake the little guy. It’s his job.”

I swear, she slapped her forehead before swinging her fatness over to Noah’s darkened room. I heard a newly emphatic “Arrrounwww”.

For a full half hour she ran back and forth between the living room and the boy’s room, throwing meaning looks and singing her sad feline tune.

Finally, Noah is up… and smiling. The cat is beside herself with joy and anticipation, rubbing against his legs and cooing like a pigeon on four legs.

Noah and the cat bond in the bathroom. I hear them communicating. Noah is gentle and patient. The cat rolls it’s tongue in dulcet tones.

Noah leaps out of the bathroom and bounds on the futon beside me.

“Dad, I gave her like fresh water, too.”

“Great, she’s been waiting for you like a long lost friend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, running back and forth and waiting for you to wake.”

“I love Ouaga, because, like even if she’s super hungry she lets me sleep, you know?”

Yeah, because she’s too busy banging her head against my door to wake me up, instead.

Noah settles in front of his six-berry muffin and tall glass of milk. He turns on the TV to his favorite show…Beyblade.

“Hey, Noah, it’s this morning that Subasa fights the last Beyblade battle and we find out who wins the semifinals.”

Noah throws me a perplexed look.

“Exactly.”

“I’m pumped. I hope Subasa wins. I like him, he’s been through a lot.”

“Yeah he had to … .”

He pauses, stares at his muffin, plucks out a massive blueberry which seems to have taken more steroids than Lance Armstrong. He rolls it around in his fingers before throwing it in his mouth and popping it with a loud noise.

“Uhm now that was one hell of blueberry.”

He turns to me, wide-eyed.

“Oops!”

“A heaven of a blueberry would make more sense.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t exist.”

“So make it up.”

“True.”

We go silent as the cartoon starts. Anime boys and girls with cool spiky hair and big eyes battle with spinning tops for honor and friendship.

“Dad, I’m afraid Subasa won’t win because like you know he’s had to fight the dark side.”

“But he defeated the darkness inside him, right? By accepting it and going into it rather than trying to deny it.”

Noah again throws me a look.

“Dad, you really do listen!”

“I sure do.”

We watch Subasa struggle to channel the darkness without being overwhelmed, all in extravagant cartoon style with yells and bravado.

“You know, Noah, I just realized that the core of Subasa’s struggle is the same as the protagonist in the film I’m going to shoot next month.”

“You mean Samuel Beckett?”

I nod in appreciation.

“Exactly. Wow, you really do listen?”

He turns, pleased, and does a ghetto move with slashing hands and three extended fingers.

“Burn!”

I wet my finger and touch it to his shoulder.

“Tssss.. hot.”

I pull my finger back as if scorched.

The cat has finished her gorging. She jumps on the futon and slides onto Noah’s narrow lap. She turns and twists, claws extended, until she settles down and falls instantly asleep.

“Ow,” says Noah, before scratching her between the ears.

On the TV, Subasa has turned it around and is about to win the battle and his dark side.

“It was clear that the darkness I had always struggled to keep under is, in reality, my most precious asset.” Samuel Beckett

Nina, Noah and Sam

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The sounds of things.

I’m in that unreal space between dreams and wakefulness. In my bed. In the dark. My door closed.

I hear badaboom-boom!

Two feet land on the hardwood floor, then scurry to the bathroom. I turn on my other side, get hit by a surprisingly loud blast of light slashing out from around the blinds in my window.

I don’t wake. I don’t go back to sleep. I’m submerged by yesterday’s images…clicking red high heels, a peek of a pink bra, fresh strawberries on special, changing leaves, falling leaves, Noah’s dance of anticipation, the mirror telling me I need a tan and a shave and a caress.

I drift.

A loud stream of piss as Noah sings the morning…a jazz tune about alley cats, The cat meows. Dry food tinkles into his dish. The cat roars its approval, Noah makes friendly noises…

“Yeah, Ouaga, you love your breakie, don’t you….”

I drift. Noah sings the Aristocrats, “Everybody wants to be a cat, a cat is where it’s at…”

“Hit the Road Jack” mixes in my half dream with the Alley cats. I’m strutting down a street and it becomes erotic with a look and smile and I’m naked and so is she….she?

Who is she?

My morning erection doesn’t care. I’m not sure I do. The TV turns on… Looney Toons at full volume before I hear Noah scramble for the remote.

Erotic cartoon sex tries to make sense in my alternate reality. I turn again, closer to my phone. I have no idea what time it is. But the alarm is bound to go off.

Odd. I’m serene and horny and immobile and voyaging. Today, yesterday, tomorrow are all the present moment.

I’m out of time. In space.

The cat crunches, Noah sings, a road runner beeps, Nina Simone, suddenly naked like a Liberian princess, stares at me.

“I sing to corpses…,” she smolders at me, before singing Feelings, Nothing more than feelings, feelings of love. She turns to me again in song…Help me, help me sing…

She transforms into Noah’s mother. Noah’s schizophrenic Mother, who ran out of our lives years ago. Her beautiful brown eyes, darker than Noah’s eyes, look sad. But he has her smile.

She smiles, Noah smiles, “Thank you,” they both say, though they are only one face, sort of.

I feel like nothing but it’s okay.

The cat butts it’s head against my closed door.

Noah continues his song in the living room…

Everybody wants to be a cat,
Because a cat’s the only cat
Who knows where it’s at;

I stretch and then curl in a ball, like a cat… no pain. The light is hot around my blinds. I keep my eyes closed. I see NIna Simone again, naked next to me, stretching and moving close.

“Wo-wo-wo-wo…feelings, again in my heart…”.

Her voice, the scent of cinnamon and cumin and coriander fill me. She kisses me.

The cat meows. The boy sings. The dead singer sobs. And…

…the alarm shrills.

Instantly, everything disappears into that one nose. A wake up. I turn it off. Unlike many mornings, the alarm does not lead to dread.

One sound among many. Nina and Noah and the cat and the roadrunner and the hot sunlight are like a symphony.

Everyday sounds. Everyday dreams.

The door blasts open, pushed by Noah’s butt. He farts. Loud and humid sounding. Then he closes the door and I hear him running off laughing like a pirate after rape and pillage.

Everyday is absurd. But what else have I got?

Dance First, Think later. It’s the natural order, Samuel Beckett tells me in my mind with my own voice.

Still dreaming?

Yes, Samuel, yes Nina, yes Noah, yes Noah’s mom, the loves of my life, I will dance… even if  when smells like a fart.

 

 

move on…

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“Ow, ow…..”.

I’m brushing my teeth. Noah was due to join me since we’re minutes away from running for the school bus.

“Owww…owwwww…”

I spit, rinse and head out of the bathroom. What now?

“Noah, what are you waiting for?”

He’s crumpled on the couch, grabbing his leg. He looks up at me in pain. No tears. Noah explodes into waterworks when it’s real.The dryness tells me it’s not serious.

“What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head and just grabs his leg.

Oh come on, I think!

“Noah, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“My leg,” he gasps, with great effort.

“Did you fall?”

He shakes his head.

“Did you bang it or get it caught somewhere?”

He shakes his head.

He’s not yet ten and in great shape so there’s no way something has let go in his leg.

“Get up!”

He stares. There’s no room for negotiation. He hops up on one leg.

“Where does it hurt?”

He grabs the place where the thigh connects to the rest of the body. Probably just a small twist or a cramp. I’m impatient.

In fact I have no patience.

I hate whining… I hate hearing it, I hate doing it even worse.

“Come on, if we miss the bus we’ll have to walk, so even worse for your leg. Go brush your teeth.”

He heads to the bathroom, hopping on one leg.

“Walk on it!”

“It hurts.”

“Walk on it!!”

“Okay.”

He lowers his injured left leg and puts weight on it.

“Ow, ow, ow…” Each step he takes is perfectly punctuated by a yelp. If I listen carefully there’s a tune in it.

Later, as we head for the bus, he starts hopping on one leg.

“Stop it!”

“It hurts if I like keep walking on it.”

“The pain will go away only if you keep walking on it. Use it or lose it!”

“Really?”

“That’s how muscles are.”

Leg muscles, arm muscles, heart muscles.

Pain is more often an indication that you have been underusing a faculty. When you need it, it hurts….so you try not to use it and it’ll hurt worse when you need it again.

Fall in love, suffer, fall in love again. Avoiding pain is a slow death.

As we get to the bus stop, Malcolm hi-fives him, “Noah, whazzup?”

Noah explains his pains to his bus stop buddy.

“That’s no good, man, no good at all.”

The two little men commiserate.

“Hey Malc look.”

Noah jumps to pick something off the ground. He holds up a one inch wide bottle cap. The two boys have a spontaneous reaction.

“Sweet.”

They laugh and push each other.

“Jinx. I said it first.”

“No, I did.”

“Fail.”

“No, you fail.”

“Come on let’s set up goals.”

They run around, pick up various rocks and pieces of brick to set up two goals on the sidewalk.  Malcolm kicks the cap/puck towards Noah’s goal. Noah leaps and blocks it.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m awesome.”

He positions the projectile, backs up two steps….

…yes, two steps, two legs, two feet…

.., and kicks it with violence. It whistles by the slower Malcolm.

“Oh yeah, Goal! Goal! Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh… .”

He does a victory dance, yes on two legs, two feet.

No pain.

Use it or lose it.

Must remember that today at every moment when I might be tempted to avoid the risks of living and loving in an attempt to stay alive.

Suffering is inevitable, misery is a choice.

 

 

Genes and pants

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My bedroom door moves without opening. I wake just enough to notice that there is light, but barely, creeping in from around the margins of the blinds. The door shakes some more.

A draft. A cat. No, a kid.

“Dad, My stomach hurts.”

“What time is it?”

“6:17 and 20 seconds.”

I hate digital clocks. They give you hour, minute and second, precisely. But no sense of the moment, relative to time in general.

“Come in to bed, Noah. “

“I’ll get my pillow.”

“Don’t bother, it’s less than an hour.”

He jumps into my place as I shimmy over. He settles in, pulls the blanket up to his chin. I put my hand on his belly and go very still. I’m hoping to fall back asleep to take advantage of the remaining minutes before I need to get up.

Within moments, Noah’s body becomes heavy. His whistling respiration becomes regular.

He’s asleep. My bed has once again performed the earthly miracle of healing the sick.

I slip my hand off his belly and run it up his back, to his head. I gently try to tame the eruption of cowlicks exploding at the back of his head. No success.

The power of genetics. My hair has always been the clearest exponent of my revolutionary mind. No holding it down. It reminds me that Noah is bothe me and his mother. This week she sent him a parcel from Belgium which again cost me a fortune in duties and taxes because she failed to check the right boxes on the packing slip. For once though, the clothes were the right size and in Noah’s preferred style. And there were a dozen packs of gum of assorted types.

“Wow, she really really got it right this time, huhn dad?” Noah was pleased. We sent her a picture of him wearing one the t-shirts. He wrote a note to thank her. He signed “Noah” without the habitual kisses or good wishes.

Odd. Complex.

Noah whistles an inadvertent tune as he breathes….an ode to his congested sinuses. It’s amazing how little he looks in my bed.

Lately, my bed has served mostly to sleep in, alone. Which is not it’s primary mission. I bought it as a playground …wide and long with headboard and footboard like lattice work, to hang on to.

Noah’s whistling nose goes up an octave. I hear the cat meow outside my door. Noah must have hit that particular, annoying frequency.

Time stretches. Luckily my cell phone is just out of reach, so I can’t glance at the clock. Noah sighs and moves his legs. I can feel his rabbit feet sidling up my shins to finally settle on my thighs. They burrow in and gos still.

His nose whistles a note of contentment. The cat squeals its annoyance from outside the door.

Time stretches further. Becomes liquid as I drift into a state neighbouring sleep. Suddenly, Noah rears up.

“Ahhhh…what’s that?”

Mty phone is going ‘bioup’ ‘bioup’.

“It’s the alarm, Noah.” I must have fallen asleep.

“Woooeee….that’s so horrible.”

“Grab it Noah, turn it off.”

“Eh?”

He’s lost, looks around while the ‘bioup’ bioup’ continues. I lunge over him and grab the phone. I turn off the alarm. Amazing how it’s only now 7 a.m. Feels like hours since Noah came in my bed.

The cat head-butts the door open and stares at us in reproach.

“Dad, that’s what wakes you up every day?”

“Wow, that’s why sometimes you look really terrible. That sound sucks.”

The cat calls out her loneliness or hunger or both.

“How’s your stomach.”

“Great.” He vaults off my bed.”

“I’m coming Ouaga, keep you fur on…haha, good one, hear that, dad? I said like keep your fur on, like instead of keep your uh, uh, what is it…?”

“Keep your pants on.”

“Yeah, yeah, because she has no pants. Get it?”

“Got it.”  Pants off is more fun.

 

 

B for b……. .

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“Brrrrrrrr !!”

I shake myself as we step out on the side walk.

“What’s wrong dad?”

“It’s bloody cold.” I zip up my sweater.

“No, I’m hot. Look.” He shows me his flapping sweater, open on his thin t-shirt.

“It’s my blood. I’m hot-blooded, oh yeah, hot blooded.” He launches into a pop/rap/blues rendition.

“Hot-blooded oh yeah, I’m hot because I’m hot blooded. Hot Hot, oh yeah.”

A nasty wind blows. I shiver. Boy it really blows when it blows in autumn.

Noah is shimmying towards the bus stop, singing and acting out his hotness.

“Hoooootttttttt-blooooodddeeeddddd, oh so sweet….”

Bold.

I’m more reserved, circumspect. Not because I’m an adult. I barely am.

But… because growing up to be a man I was bloodied. Not Noah. Not yet. Though he suffered the trauma of a crazy Mother running away screaming, he knows she didn’t run away from him, but rather into her own folly.

She was beautiful, to us both…of course she became a bitch to me.

As we reach the bus stop, Noah pulls out an old tennis ball and begins bouncing it against the wall.

Boys with balls.

This morning he came out of the bathroom with his butt out.

“Dad, I, uhm, I’m really growing. My underwear, like you know, they’re too small.”

He twirls them above his head.

“Throw it out, otherwise I’ll keep washing it and putting it in your drawer.”

“Okay, you know dad, maybe I should like you know start wearing boxers so that like you know I have more room.”

“More room for what?”

“Hahaha…for my bububububutt…” Which he sticks out and shakes at me. Of course it gets other things swinging.

“Not to mention…”

“Oh oh oh…I know dad, not to mention my balllsies…”.

The green tennis ball bounces off the wall and beans him in the head.

“Boom..”, I say. He chuckles.

“Badaboom, dad.”

Shit! It’s as cold as a bitch certain of her beauty.

“Dad, today is my second rehearsal at school, for the play, you know. Oh yeah…”

He puts his hand over his heart, throws his head back, closes his eyes.

“Oh, life is so beautiful.”

He belts it like a Broadway standard. He’s such a diva. He looks up at me.

“Life is beautiful, isn’t it dad?”

Shit! That’s a question? Let me see…

LIfe is a Bitch? Oops….

“Yes it is, Noah. Life is beautiful”

He doesn’t need further encouragement.

“B…bbb….bbbbbbb…bbbbbbeaaaautifulllll….oh yeah, oh yeah.”

B for beautiful,

I would spontaneously have said Bullocks… Boring… Blows… Breakable….

The bus rounds the corner and chugs towards us.

“Pick up your bag, Noah, the bus is here….”

“Wait….” He throws his head back.

“Oh so bbbbbbbbbbbbeeeeeaaaaaaaaauuuuutiffffullllll to meeeeeeeeee…..”.

He smiles at me.

“There.”

He picks up his bag. We hug and kiss and he boards the bus. He blows me a kiss as it pulls away.

Bebebebebeautiful.

 

 

 

serendipity

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“If you don’t find the head, there’s nothing you can do.”

Street corner. 8:18 a.m. The school bus is late.

“Dad?”

“Huhn?”

“In Fossil Fighters, it’s such a cool game because you can dig up like the whole body, but it’s not really a body, it’s really a skeleton because it’s a fossil, get it?”

“Yes.”

“…yeah so, it’s like this… the head is never where the uhm, the rest of the bones are, so yeah, you’ve got to….”

And on and on and on…

Last night I drank scotch while she drank Perrier. We both smoked and talked about Icarus. She was drawn to his flight towards the sun. I was in the labyrinth, with the Minotaur.

Fundamentally irreconcilable.

Today, there is a silence in my body. An acceptance. Come what will.

8:20. Still no bus.

“… so when you find the head of the dinosaur, you can activate it and yeah then you do battle, soooo coool…yeah and you can also…”

By this time I’m generally already home, preparing to head out on a day of walking, writing and occasional writhing. So the passersby are all new to me

A few moments before or after and the whole human landscape is different.

A bright red-head girl comes running out of a house, squealing. Chased by her more burnished red-headed mom.

Crazy fun.

I smile. Meters away, the mom senses my look, she turns and smiles and then resumes her pursuit. Perhaps with a little more delight than a moment earlier.

Tomorrow the school bus will be on time and the redheads will disappear from my world.

Come what will.

“…oh dad, and you know what’s really funny about the game? Yeah, when you find the head if you screw it on the wrong dinosaur it goes all gaga, and then…”

Click click click. The sound of high heels coming closer and then…

“…and then the head drives you nuts, because you can’t get away from the head, man…”

…and then a woman turns the corner at surprising speed, considering her polka dot stiletto heels. She whips her straw bleached blondness as she clicks clicks by with nary a look.

Damn! One of the highest perched sweetest asses I’ve seen in a while. And I live in a neighborhood which is the sweet-ass capital of Montréal.

“…so yeah, it’s like that, dad,” says my boy.

“Yup.”

Noah actually stops talking.

Rare.

Yesterday was a day when nothing went quite like planned. I missed a bus because I had a conversation with an acquaintance, not seen for close to a decade. We crossed paths on a street that I never walk down.

Now and then I change trajectories in my daily peregrinations, for no other reason than that.

He told me he was dying.

He smiled. His life was in order. We hugged. He’s the one who patted my back, then we went our separate ways.

Forever.

I missed my bus. I couldn’t be late. I was auditioning actors for the principal role in my film. I tapped on the window of a taxi waiting at the red light. He waved me in.

“Hello.”

“Welcome, welcome,” says the heavily accented driver. I smell the rich aromas of cumin and cinnamon in his Northern African voice. Tunisia? Morocco?

He turns to me and puts his hand on his heart.

“A thousand thanks.”

“Oh, but what for?”

“For having tapped on my window.”

“Oh!”

The light goes green. He turns and merges into traffic.Throughout the ride we talk about children, his, 18, 26, 28…mine 9 1/2.

When I reach the casting agency, I realize I screwed up. I’m an hour early. I head back out and choose a direction, through streets I know nothing about.

Come what will.

The day ended in an erotically charged conversation with a beautiful woman, for no other pleasure than the serendipitous phrases we discovered on each other’s tongues.

“Dad, dad…the bus.”

8:30. Really late!

He blows me a kiss as the bus turns the corner. I turn the other corner and automatically head home.

Suddenly, I stop.

I turn and head down an alley I never take. The long way home. I’m late so who knows what or whom I will discover.

Come what will.

 

why would I…

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I know better. In fact I know everything I need to know to do better. And yet…

“….but why? Dad? Why would I?”

“One of the reasons, dorky, is that I’m asking you. But that’s not the best reason. What do you think it is?”

He rolls his eyes. I can see him thinking to himself, “not only does he bitch at me to do something I do not feel like doing, but I even have to explain the reasons to myself, gawd.”

“I don’t know, dad.”

It’s annoying to me that I need to say the same things again. And I still need to bend in half to be at his eye level. Reminds me how small he is… dampens my growing outrage.That enrages me further.

“Think.”

“But why? Why this now, dad?”

Because it’s 8:07 pm and I’ve spent 13 hours being Mama and Papa and reasonable, appropriate and pedagogical and I’m losing it.

“It’s the last half hour before you go to bed and I dared take the TV remote to watch the opening of a show I like and you huffed and puffed because you were missing the millionth rerun of a Sponge Bob episode.”

“A million times is like impossible dad.”

He sees my eyes widen to psychopath size

“Really, Noah?”

“Dad, what you don’t understand is that I like read the uhm , reading I had to do, while I was in class.”

“And what was the required reading In English and in French?” He’s in a bilingual school.

He gets a squirrelly look.

“Euh, we had a paragraph in French and we had nothing in English because Miss Tanya was absent.”

“So you’re actually arguing with me that you’ve read enough today because you read nothing plus a paragraph?”

“Euh, yeah, I guess.”

“Go get the paragraph in question.”

“Why?”

“Remember, last week we got into a similar argument and I told you that reading without comprehending is not enough?”

His eyes are now widening…not psychopath style like me. More like a doe in the headlights. He disappears into his room.

He loves to read.Truly. But when there’s no TV, no Nintendo DS, no IPhone apps, no computer games, no Pokemon.

He comes back with a sheet of paper. I scan the paragraph. Really small and really simple, declarative stuff.

“So what’s the name of the girl that this paragraph describes?” I ask the question in French since the text is in French.

“I don’t remember.”

“Answer in French, Noah.” He does so. “Je ne me souviens pas.”

“What does this girl whose name you don’t remember love to do?”

“Uhm, she likes to sing.”

“And what else?”

“I don’t know, dad.”

“Write poetry. Aline likes to write poetry”

“Oh, yeah.”

I give him the sheet. I flash-imagine throwing it in his face while gnashing my teeth.

“So you read a whole paragraph that you half remember and nothing else and you find the spleen to argue with me when I suggest you could read.”

He says nothing but his expression is eloquent. He glances at his watch.

I lose it. I know better but I lose it anyways.

“Am I keeping you from something important?”

“It’s just that now, I like have only fifteen minutes and then I go to bed and what sucks is that I’m losing all this time.”

I’m hurtling down a wet and woolly ride hollering like a madman rushing to his end….

“… you’re losing time? Because my time is worth shit, right?”

“No, but like you go to bed at, I don’t know, midnight? So, yeah, you have like four hours to do what you want after I go to bed.”

Gotta admit, the kid has got brass. And he’s got a point. And I’m going to begin to swear uncontrollably because I’m tired and I’m angry and, above all, I’m sad.

“Listen, end of the conversation, okay? I would just like it if spontaneously you would pick up a book, now and then, and read rather than huff and puff because I dare switch TV channels.”

He nods. I give him a hug and suddenly feel like bursting into tears.

I turn off the TV. Damn thing!

He’s back from his room. He settles into the couch…and opens a book.

He starts reading. Five minutes to his bed time.

I feel like dying.

But I know better. I need to be here as long as he needs me to be here…

So, maybe I’ll get stoned or drunk or both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

jiggly twisty

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“You gotta do the jiggly to live…oh yeah, baby, do the jiggly to live, oh yeah baby..”

Noah has fused his full 137 cm frame into my ribs and is improvising a song as I redo the laces on his new sneakers. I showed him how to jiggle the laces to push them through the holes.

“…jiggly is the way to do it, jiggly to live, uh-huhn, uh-hunh…”

There were two different laces of two different colors per shoe. Yesterday he looked like an animated Christmas tree at every step. And at every step he risked tripping up on the impossibly long laces.

“So, what do you think, Noah…the lime green ones?”

One of the sets of laces is white, the other way nicer but more of a chromatic statement.

“Well, it”s like this. The white ones are like more matching, you know with the white and the blue of the school uniforms.”

“…but…”

“Dad, dad, let me finish, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but … like the lime green one, I don’t know they don’t match with anything else.”

“Tell you what, Let’s take out the white ones and patch in the green ones and you decide. We can always switch it back.”

“That’s a good plan. Let me, dad, let me. I saw how you did the jiggly, haha, so yeah. I know.”

“Sure.”

I give him the shoe and the laces. He starts weaving left and right.

“Jiggly left and jiggly right and do it fine, oh yeah, do the jiggly, do the jiggly…”.

He’s happy.

“Dad, they don’t lie flat, like they do on this one, look…”

“Just twist them and pull.”

“Oh yeah. Cool.”

He starts working and singing again. A new tune. More martial.

“Twist and jiggle, oh yeah, that’s what you do, twist and jiggle for life…oh yeah live the jiggle. twist the life oh yeah.”

He’s actually doing a very good job. Hasn’t missed a hole yet. That’s what always happens to me. I miss one and then have to start over and then I give up.

He’s persevering.

“Dad, you know how in movies and stuff, they like often have like a moral at the end, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like in Spider-man, you remember? He had to learn that his powers were like for other’s not for just his revenge like. Yeah, so you know we could do a story where the lesson like is to JIggle and Twist. Hahaha…You know the Jiggle and Twist way of life…you know…”

He starts singing again.

“,,,the jiggly way of life, oh yeah to the left and to the right and then you twist and start again… oh yeah baby , it’s a jiggly twisty life…a jiggle here and a twist there kindaaaaaa life…”

Now, he’s really singing my life. To call it my philosophy would be presumptuous. I’ve lived, moving like a crab, this way and that, scrambling but always moving… never in a straight line. Not out of conviction but because I couldn’t hold a straight line.

Incompetence breeding method.

“Look dad, I’m done one shoe.”

He holds it up for inspection.

“Perfect, kid.”

“Yeah…the Jiggly twisty way of life works, oh yeah baby, let’s do the jiggle and twist, oh yeah, oh, yeah…jiggle and twist…”

My jiggly twisty way of life, born of my impossibilities has actually provided opportunities for discovery. In fact, over the years I discovered that others, more accomplished than me, thought the same. The poet Keats, for one:

When a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Mystery and doubt and no need for quick answers… I believe it’s a wonderful position.

But my bank disagrees, my parents disagreed, and it’s no way to build a career.

“One more jiggly twist and I’m done.”

He jumps off the futon and works at lacing his shoes. Do I tell him he’s not wearing pants? He stands up and considers his handiwork.

“Perfect, so, cool. You know dad, you’re right, the hum, lime green is more like ‘whooosshh’…”

“The Jiggly Twisty strikes again.”

“Can we like go to the bus stop now. I’m like all pumped about getting to school.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“You mean in my school bag?”

“Noooo…”

“What? I don’t know.”

He looks suddenly worried.

‘Noah, look at your shoes.”

He looks down.

“Yeah?”

“Now look just above your shoes.”

“Yeah… I made an effort to like, uhm, have matching socks, Nice huhn?”

“And how come I can see your socks.”

“I don’t know.”

“Pants?”

“Huhn?”

“You’re not wearing pants.”

“Oh my god.” He slaps his head and runs off to his room. As he rummages for his pants he calls out.

“Good thing you’re there, dad.”

Yeah, I know the jiggles of the twists and the twists of the jiggles. And I know the dangers of going out without pants.

 

 

I shouldn’t care…

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“Aaaaawwwww-unh!” says Noah.

Two notes! A parental dog whistle! I fight not to howl! But Noah won’t let me off the hook so easily.

“I knew it. It sucks.”

We’re at the boards placed at the entrance of his day camp. They list the participants and their groups. He’s spotted his name in the group of 8-9 year olds which makes perfect sense considering he’s 9. But he’s been harassing me about it since last Friday. Why?

“Dad, you know that next Wednesday, yeah we go to La Ronde (Montréal’s amusement park) and what’s really cool if you’re in the older group, like the10-12′s, is that you can get together with like, I don’t know, 3 or 4 other kids and it’s like you’re on your own and you can go all day without a supervisor. Cool huhn.”

“Sure.”

“But, dad, that’s only of you’re in the 10-12 group.”

“But you’re 9.”

“Yeah, but sometimes, like they put you in the older group if there’s uhm, not enough of us.”

“Let’s wait and see.”

That was Friday. I heard the same explanation several times a day all weekend. And here we stand, Monday morning… the misery apprehended by Noah has befallen him. He has been put in the 8-9 group.

“Dad, you know what that means.”

“It means you’re nine.”

“About La Ronde dad. I’m not going to be free to run with the older kids.”

“But you’re not older.”

“I’m old enough.”

Sometimes Monday mornings with a kid are as enjoyable as a swift kick in the nuts.

“Wait ’till Wednesday. Maybe they’ll make groups that are different than these lists.”

“They never do that!”

He’s in a bitch mood.

“Last week they put you in a different group for the Wednesday activity. Remember?  You’d already done your group’s excursion, so they let you change to another. Remember?”

“That was different.”

This is one of those ‘no matter what I say it won’t work’ moments. So I say nothing more. He woke with the intention of torturing me. As soon as I stumbled out of bed at 6:50 am, the meme began.

“Dad, what group am I in this week?”

“Dunno, Noah.”

“Because, dad….”

And the story I’d already heard so often I could repeat it syllable by syllable, began anew as I went  to the bathroom, as I made coffee, as I served breakfast, as we brushed our teeth, as I packed his lunch. I made sympathetic noises, attempted distractions, suggested we wait to find out. I tried to remain civil.

Tough.

I woke from my sleep already harrowed. Uncomfortable dreams, fueled, I am sure, by a letter that I received on the eve, dropped in my mailbox by a recent mistress. She vented her injuries and resentments at my mistreatment of her. We went to bed twice. Both times, she practically exploded out of her clothes, so anxious was she to get naked and wet.

Consenting adults right? Right!

Apparently, having made her come several times in two passionate embraces made me responsible for her eternal happiness. The letter came complete with the infamous female bullshit…”all you cared about was getting me into bed.”

Euh…..yeah!?! But so did she. And that’s how all my love stories begin. And some lasted years. And one gave me a child.

So here I am, Monday morning, digesting an emotionally dependent female’s toxic dump and a 9 year-old kid’s unrelenting demands.

Noah expels air in a semi-sigh, semi-grunt of irritation. I’m fighting back the urge to jump him.

We’re in public.

“Noah, you’re going to La Ronde Wednesday with a bunch of friends. That’s awesome. Focus on that, rather than worrying about which….”

I don’t finish because he walks away waving a dismissive hand at me. I fight the urge to grab him by an ear.

We’re in public.

He registers with the animators at the entrance and heads for the staircase leading to the gym. Not a look, not a good bye, not a friendly smile. The little twit is sulking. He disappears in the stairwell.

“Noah…” Loud.

We’re in public, but now I don’t care. He comes back up and stares at me.

“You’re punishing me. Right? It’s my fault that you’re 9. I should have had you a year earlier so that now you could be 10 and go in the older group, right? This is all my fault, right?”

Parents are looking. Some, with a pinched look of reproof. Beat the hell out of them, if they dare say anything, As if this has never happened to them.

“Right, Noah?”

“No.”

“Since when do you leave without at least saying good bye? Or a hug. Or both.”

He gets the dead-fish look of a kid who knows he’s screwed up, but doesn’t want to admit it.

No response. The surrounding pinched parents are throwing me looks.

Fuck them all!!! is what I want say. Instead, I walk away.

“Forget it, Noah. See you tonight.”

Damn! What a beginning to my week. I’m barely at the starting blocks and I’m already exhausted.

As I head back up the hill, for the walk to work, I wonder if, maybe, I should care less.