Posts by Dan Szczesny
Finally, as she always does, my wife became the voice of reason, pointing out that based on some old pictures of me as a kid on Halloween, I wasn’t exactly putting on a trick-or-treating Masterclass. There are pictures of me as a magician. As Daniel Boone, of course. As Casper the Friendly Ghost. As Batman, of course.
But we do what we must as parents, so when the ladies of the house insisted we go to the ocean over Labor Day weekend, I packed the sunblock, water bottles, change of clothes and blanket and off we went.
My daughter has always leaned more toward outdoorsy pursuits, getting her hair muddy as she studies tadpoles for example. But Theatre Camp has provided a new and surprising sort of challenge. Words, and song. The fact that it’s the Little Mermaid helps, but memorization is a different sort of pursuit than, say, fishing or hiking. Putting on a half-hour theatrical show with a dozen second- and third-graders, and doing it in one week, seems to me, to be far more challenging.
He could choose, for example, to simply show us that he found a dead chipmunk. Instead, he chooses to eat it, damn the resulting upchucking that comes later. Then, once he’s realized that eating a dead chipmunk makes him sick, he could choose – based on past experience – to not eat that new dead chipmunk he found. But again, that’s asking too much. He will likely eat ALL the dead chipmunks regardless of the outcome.
That afternoon, we don’t walk into the Disco Dance, we strut in like we’re John F-ing Travolta powering down 86th Street. I toss a couple finger guns at some admiring dads who somehow, foolishly, are wearing regular clothes. Little Bean checks in with her peeps and I see her pointing in my direction, obviously showing her friends how Disco awesome her old man is. No one looks as good as us with the possible exception of Mr. O, the school gym instructor who is also subbing as the dance DJ.
It occurred to me during one of these sessions recently – me there with a nice cup of steaming coffee, dog at my feet, half a dozen kids screaming their lungs out in my backyard – that we’ve become that house.
Right, I understood what she was asking. I understood because I too, at her age, hung this stuff on my wall. She’s been devouring Amulet, a graphic novel series by Kazu Kibuishi that follows the adventures of Emily, a young girl who discovers a sentient amulet in her grandmother’s house.
We’ve reached that place in her life where Little Bean has begun to, maybe not wrestle with, but comprehend a bigger picture; a sort of foggy realization that – how do I put this diplomatically – life and humans can be unpleasant.
“Daddy…” My daughter was frozen in place, a tiny Indiana Jones unable to comprehend the wonders in front of her eyes – like those old adventure movies where the explorer stumbles into an ancient cave, stacked with gold and diamonds. “Daddy, what do we do?”
Now, it’s time to walk away from one style of writing and toward another.
“I can’t do it!” My daughter is shouting from the playground. I look up to discover her hanging nearly upside down from one of the metal spider web domes, vainly trying to right herself. But before I can leap up, two other kids come over and boost her up. Crisis averted. My services, unneeded.
I’m lying to my child. There, I said it. And it’s about something important. I don’t feel guilty about it either. Maybe I should explain.
My daughter reads while she swings, a book called “Town is by the Sea.” In the book, the young protagonist speaks to the reader about his home and his town. “It goes like this…” he says, a miner’s son, going to the store for milk, playing on the slide. In the background of his life, the sea is always shimmering, as the sea does. As the summer does. As life in the backyard does.
There’s that moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones reverts cleanly back into his archeologist-archetype and is standing at the edge of his dig site as his friends work below – completely oblivious to the fact that he’s in the midst of his enemies and is in danger.
She doesn’t wait for permission to get dirty on trips such as this anymore because she understands that getting dirty is why we’re here. In my day pack, I carry a packet of wet wipes, a towel and an extra pair of socks for both of us. My wife and I have raised our daughter to accept the natural world not as a brief interlude or vacation, not as something that is special and happens occasionally, but rather as a part of everyday living. And life can be messy. Therefore, nature is messy – and never so messy than during mud season.
