FREE TRAPPER

I don't know about your world, but in mine there is one feeling like no other: a little boy's hand in mine. That little hand with my big one surrounding it - an apricot in a warm bun. He's two and a half. It doesn't happen often - he's quite independent and fearless - but it's there when we walk down steps or cross the street to get the mail or need to clamber over a stone wall. He feels safe. I feel light and sure, useful, solid. He gives me the strength I give him.

There is an irony to all this. When I first met Jamie I kept a Charlie Russell print right there on my desk where I couldn't miss it - Free Trappers. Could not miss it. Every day. Always smack in my face. There's a fantasy for you. Stephen Foreman in buckskins on a paint pony with a leather band and an eagle feather around his long, filthy hair alone in the mountains, dependent on no one, surviving on its critters, trapping fur I'd bring to the rendezvous come spring. Oh, yeah. I'd had that fantasy for years, since I was little, actually. I used to daydream about taking a Winchester rifle to the Rockies, alone, to hunt and live for a month. Where did a Jewish kid from Baltimore get that one? Phillip Roth dreamt about shiksas. I dreamt about elk. And then I lived with them (and, by the way, also got to marry a shiksa). A herd of elk actually lived on my place in Montana, maybe 25, 30 of them. In the Fall I saw them most early mornings when they came down Ward Mountain to begin their day. It began my day as well. Like a morning prayer. One day Jamie and I were riding on a trail we had broken up Ward Mountain when I saw a cow ahead of us, and said to J it must be one of our neighbor's got out. But, whoa! Oh, man!, it was no cow but an elk, and we found ourselves in the midst of that elk herd. right there, surrounded by them. We were on four legs, so they didn't spook. We were part of them. At first. My horse, Blaze, had some cutting horse in her, spotted the huge bull, a royal bull, a seven point bull at the edge of the herd, and went for him. Uh, oh, "This could be ugly",  but the move spooked the bull and then the herd. In what seemed less than a second, and without a sound, the entire herd of 800 pound animals vanished leaving us breathless.

Irony.

That Free Trapper never had a grandson whose hand disappeared in his. He never had anybody while I have everybody: a daughter, a son, a grandson, daughter's mate, son's mate, all under our roof, a goddaughter just a jump across the creek, her mate, four horses, two goats, fifteen chickens, two dogs, two puppies, one black bear back there somewhere...Damn! Free Trapper, my ass. How has this happened to me? It snuck up. It just snuck up. I used to pride myself that I could survive in the boonies with only a knife and a match. What kind of Free Trapper ever carried a diaper bag or struggled with a car seat or held the kid down for a tetanus shot? What kind of Free Trapper ever ordered a dozen bagels from Zabar's? Cream cheese, please. What kind of Free Trapper ever ate creme broulet? It must have started when Jamie agreed to marry me only if we had an apartment in New York City, the polar opposite of Montana where no place would dare serve creme broulet which nobody could pronounce anyway. I was making Hollywood money then so carrying two places was not the problem. The commute was. Long and brutal and one day just too much. But how we got to the Catskills is not the story I want to tell. This is.

1980. NYC was hoppin'. J got us a brownstone apartment on Morton Street in the West Village. I hadn't seen it, yet, because I was still in Montana. A month or so before our wedding. Time to head back East. I'd been helping a neighbor move his wheel line, then he drove me up to the airport in Missoula. "Highway 93/Pray For Me" was the bumper sticker on his pick-up, a short bed International Harvester with the stick shift on the floor. Another bumper sticker popular at the time was, "Montana: Where Men Are Men, And Sheep Are Nervous." Another: "Keep Montana beautiful. Shoot a land developer".

I flew as is (or was): scuffed boots, modest Western work shirt, leather belt, nice buckle, silver and turquoise but modest as well, not imposing, nothing like those rodeo buckles big as cantaloupes. I took a taxi from JFK to Morton Street, or tried to. The taxi could not get through the West Village as the streets were flooded with rivers of men, thousands of men, thousands and thousands and thousands of them, every one, it seemed, dressed just like me, except their boots weren't scuffed. I'd arrived just in time for the Gay Day parade. No Free Trapper ever had that to work with.

And now?

I remember a little boy sitting in an armchair much too big for him, toddler legs sticking straight out like pencils, little feet like little loaves, still far from touching the floor, asking, "Can we please just have a quiet evening at home tonight?" Sometimes, I'm told, we remember things that never happened. That quiet evening was what never happened. The evenings around our place are not always quiet. When they aren't, uh, let's just say those times are rough. One wants every molecule of one's body to be teleported somewhere else, anywhere else, New Guinea, Guam, Devil's Island, anywhere there are no telephones and the internet is against the law. However, when they are quiet, which is most of the time, when they are quiet and everybody's doing what they do, going to the frig and turning on faucets and flushing toilets and letting out the dog and everything else you do with each minute of your day, that is what I look for. Marianne Williamson once said to me, "There is in you a place of perfect peace." However, since my soul is an early model, it has no GPS, I can't always find this place. But, there are times I do, times that, now that my feet touch the floor, I stretch out my legs and listen. 

RANDOM BLOG NOTES

Shirley is not a sheep - Montana Days

My heroes haven't always been cowboys, in fact, they rarely if ever have been, but the song is, I think, brilliant. Dreams. Why don't we achieve them? Those cowboy ways didn't work. 

The other day the fields were ripe with golden dandelions and royal purple wild violets, buttercups, too, so my grandson learned he liked butter because I held the flower under his chin. The day was warm and mild. He wore nothing but a t-shirt, so that little muffin tuchus of his turned towards the sun. He had found an old flute recorder of his father's given to him by a neighbor north of twenty years past. The grass was high. He'd run through it, up the hill towards an ancient, gnarled apple tree at the top, waving and blowing on that recorder.  Sometimes a sweet note would come out but mostly squawks and squeaks. Then he'd roll down hill - his main recent accomplishment - a pint sized satyr forever on the lookout for mischief.

How to measure a fortune? Blessed we are all under one roof.

 FREE TRAPPER - Charley Russell

That time when I could have died, when I actually saw destruction coming at me full frontal, not by illness or accident, nothing sudden and instant - this was standing on the railroad track watching the train come at you and waiting for it.

Why would I want to be grumpy n the face of that smile?

THE SQUIRREL

What comes next may even be too corny. A close friend told me so.

January 31, 2020

                                                       Dorian

Southern skies

      A perfect circle

December's Full Moon sheds sweet light  

     on virgin snow

The ground beneath us basks

     and smiles

My grandson's eyes  

     Coffee with cream in the moonlight

Warm in my son's arms     

     His head 

     Round and shining and perfect

     Puzzling the night sky

         " Up. Up."

Closer to the moon, Little Man.

Closer to the moon

Your round and perfect head 

     Glows softly

     Casts its spell

     Bewitches

     Brings dreams

1. Moss is springy
2. The brook is cold and fast 
3. The moon stays high and bright and moves a little
4. Salamanders live under rocks by the brook
7. Buttercup


"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event."

dandelions     robins = false positive
whose country is this? learn russian
Anybody notice an uptick in the sales of vodka? Or is it just my imagination that...
               1. russian immigrants speaking russian to kids and other kids
               2. russian groceries

It wasn't yet June when we began to put in firewood for the dark, long winter. Need 5 cords from September to April. Procrastinate, it only gets harder, colder, more expensive. Great deal so I ordered 4 cords knowing we can get another cord off our place plus unlimited kindling. 

Dorian gathering firewood.

Dorian in the garden with Madden and me.


only there at certain phases of the moon.


"What", you may ask?
Not now. Now, since both God and the Devil are in the details, it gets a bit tangled/which is why things tend to get tangled

What I mostly do is try to convince myself there is beauty and kindness in the human world in the face of evil. Am I beginning to sound like Anne Frank? Yes, I do believe in evil, not in the theological sense but the damage terribly bad people casually inflict on the rest of us.   casualties

I’m not talking about Michelangelo’s Pieta or Pachelbel’s Canon. I’m talking about the genome itself, right in there, a basic building block. If it exists, it’s up to me to find it. Or it was. Too late. There is a “happy” gene. It's been found. It's really there, but you've got to cultivate it. Why is happy gene so humble, so self-effacing, so silent?

Dorian’s shrieks and laughter and squeals and and and blot out the world and all its problems. Is this a time to wish for death? When everything is perfect?

Maybe that’s the generation difference - I believe happiness is possible.

Must maintain some image of magnificence in your heart.

Mary Ann Williamson once looked at me hard and declared, "There is in you a place of perfect peace". Tru dat. That place is like a Brigadoon which appears only once/century. i've been there. 

DEFINITION OF PEACE Peace is like sleeping in a five star hotel instead of on somebody's sofa.

Your open hearted goodness is your greatest asset.

UFC/Jerry Springer - cage fighting = bear baiting - WWE - mud wrestling - baseball to football - 

It is a commonplace among students of aesthetic motive that every great achievement in the arts is a kind of love letter. p.xii

What must it be like to die alone and know it, know where you are and where you are not. 15 minutes of fame on Zoom. Farewell performance.

I guess the drama king in me preferred to die with a bang not a whimper. hoped i'd die with a bang, not with a whimper.  As long  as it doesn't hurt. but thinking about that whimper now it seems like something nice. Say goodnight, Gracie. Those who have your heart gathered round, tempered, peaceful, wishing me the best.

I've never been afraid of dying, never thought about it that much, 'til now. WHY?  intensive care. on zoom. 

Disney's Night On Bald Mountain - evil erupts into the night and spreads across the earth. Right this minute I'm visualizing the plague this way.

"She called me Pandora 'cause I come with a box full of trouble". 

"Lord brought me a box of trouble I called her Pandora.

"They call me Pandora cause my box is full of trouble.

SHE/THEY CALLED ME EASY-OFF. GO ON. GUESS WHY? EASY ON/EASY OFF
SHE/THEY CALLED ME EASY-OFF. GO ON. GUESS WHY? EASY ON/EASY OFF

Nobody's sick yet though we remain vigilant.'

TREES - squirrel incident

And then there's the cosmic stupidity of heavily armed men trying to force themselves into the state house and publicly calling for the murder of elected officials.These are the streets of America, and these men are dangerous. They are zealots with a malevolent world view and a warped politic. They will fight you because hatred and anger and meth-fueled testosterone drive them, emotions driven by the malevolence of the pundits who goad them. They may be deluded, but their delusions are the delusions of true believers, and they get away with it. I cannot help but think of all the peaceful protests, from Kent State to Selma, met with brute force unleashed by the state, serious injury, death. I understand the police not wanting to tussle with these guys. Like Al Qaeda, martyrdom is a prize. Know what I say? Send in Seal Team Six and clear these "patriots" with their bellies and beards and body armor the fuck outta there.

Peace, bro'.

Years ago, my  Hollywood days, Brooke Adams, a dear family friend called to invite me to go dancing with them that night. Jamie was back in New York. I was in LA on business. Her manager was sending a car. Lots of room for me. Cool. So I got to Brooke's house, and she calls out from the living room. "In here!" I haven't told you who "them" was: Brooke Adams, Dana Delaney, and Leigh Hamilton. I walked into the living room where the three of them stood there looking as dazzling/beautiful as they could be. Dazzling. Oh, my God. My legs went. Seriously. They buckled. I lost my breath. One of them laughed. I forget which. Maybe all three. Because of Jamie, I've been around so many beautiful women, I don't think any ugly ones at all.

"Want to be happy for the rest of your life, got to make a ugly woman your wife"

COURAGE - I wonder about those who profess to have it, those who ought to have it, our John Wayne image of courage, the reality of courage. I was brought up John Wayne style, not by my parents but by osmosis from the prevailing culture. although an early memory is my Dad taking me to see "The Quiet Man". Walking home from school when I was seven, some kid punched me in the stomach. I panicked and ran...straight into the street where I was creamed by a passing car. Stuck under the wheel well. Hospital. Convalescence. No school. Lots of presents. Visits from class mates. I was a celebrity, the first kid on the block to get hit by a car. All positive stuff, right? Yeah, but nothing worked. I could not shuck the shame I felt at running away, and I swore to myself that would never happen again. Death Before Dishonor. I would eventually learn these words when I enlisted, but I certainly did not know them then, only the feeling. Never again. However, my idea of courage has been forged over a lifetime. It remains, on some level, what it was, but it has evolved to include much more. 

if you have principles then you will need courage.

Dangerous situations come in all colors, physical and mental.

Why this topic? Because I am appalled, sickened, and disgusted at the cowardice of those who profess otherwise - elected officials who checked their guts at the door. Principles? Why take the chance? They might be wrong. All my life, I have fought myself to be authentic. If I were gonna write about something, I was compelled by principle to do it. Not an easy thing to maintain, this authenticity, especially when people begin expecting things of you.

It takes fear to have courage. It takes courage to be Black.

Muhammad Ali

secret youth = immaturity

don't like to think of this a a man cave.

Dorian's eyes go wide

so i'm seeing this old office thru dorian's eyes and thereby reckoning with the fractiles my life. Where did I get this, and what does it bring to mind?

each day dorian becomes more of who he is, of dorian, the growth of a vegetable larger each morning.

His eyes go wide, proof of my theses = farm boy's pockets. One day he'll be ble to actually understand the stories that go with them.

search for stories 

Montana bar hungry horse tools all over the walls and hanging etc etc etc - is my office unconsciously modeled on that bar? ALOHA ALASKA describe taxi shop

Prefer to spend last 1/2 hour before bed in office, etc.

That phrase, "Take a bullet for him", explore it.

From Lincoln's death to 1965 = jim crow

What is worth fighting for?

Black people need courage just to get through their day. To walk out the door takes courage that a white man doesn't even consider. A stop at Starbucks on the way to work can be an ambush. Be on guard. Stay on guard. Be careful what you say and how you look. Ignore slurs. The reason racism is the worst problem we have is because we have never faced up to it. Too many people believe it stopped with the civil war. It didn't. Damn near the day of  Lincoln's murder, his VP, Andrew Johnson, took Reconstruction apart . This ushered in Jim Crow laws that stripped their new found rights and kept them in danger of their lives, "legally" consigned to squalid conditions, barred from the advantages of a being a free citizen in this country, kept from voting, kept from an education, kept out of neighborhoods, so much forbidden by law that the rest of us take for granted, don't even think about - until 1965! How long ago was that? Brought here in 1619 and unable to vote until 1965! 1965! Yesterday! Imagine being born into a world that, from your first breath, does its damndest to convince you that your life does not matter. Ask for the rights your neighbors have and the law thunders down beats you into submission. Police are a direct descendant of the slave patrols used to keep slaves and freemen under control, literally denied the right to stand still  Move it! Move it out! Wouldn't you be pissed?

What we need in this country is slavery as a required subject. Education. Tech it. No other way. We are still suffering because of it. People  are not going to get it by osmosis. It is too subtle and too complex to get it on one's own.


The camera phone is Truth.

Give me an example of systemic racism. Here's: one: Bill Barr brought a team of lawyers and assistants with him to the justice department. Not one Black person in the bunch. A dozen or more assistants, and not one Black.

Compared to John Lewis, I am nothing.

pure joy - and unbreakable perseverance

Like Michaelangelo, we find ourselves by chipping away at the form in the marble.

COURAGE - I wonder about those who profess to have it, those who ought to have it, our John Wayne image of courage, the reality of courage. I was brought up John Wayne style, not by my parents but by osmosis from the prevailing culture. although an early memory is my Dad taking me to see "The Quiet Man". Walking home from school when I was seven, some kid punched me in the stomach. I panicked and ran...straight into the street where I was creamed by a passing car. Stuck under the wheel well. Hospital. Convalescence. No school. Lots of presents. Visits from class mates. I was a celebrity, the first kid on the block to get hit by a car. All positive stuff, right? Yeah, but nothing worked. I could not shuck the shame I felt at running away, and I swore to myself that would never happen again. Death Before Dishonor. I would eventually learn these words when I enlisted, but I certainly did not know them then, only the feeling. Never again. However, my idea of courage has evolved over a lifetime, forged from everything that I ever witnessed. I'm not pretending to be any kind of example, expert or proponent, just an interested bystander..

Of this I am certain: no courage without fear. No courage without principles.

I did something really truly stupid back about 1974. The murder of Kitty Genovese was a touchstone for me. I could not imagine no one helping that woman who was screaming and screaming and being killed. Nobody moved. Not even to call the police or yell to stop. I thought it was a disgraceful display uf hman behavior. Disgusting. I carried that incident with me (explain). OK. 1974. I'm walking south on Broadway. At the cotnr of 79th and Broaway I saw a man and a woman brutally beting notherperson who was on the ground. The woman was banging the victim with the stilleto heel of her shoe. People were walking round them crossingthe street, avoidng them while the beating continued. And, oh, shit, I thought of Kitty Genoveseand felt fear because ofwhat I knew I was being driven to do. I ran to those people and puled them off the guy on the ground. And guiess wht? The guy on the ground pops up and stabs me, tries to, some scratches, blocked them. Copsright there.

It remains, on some level, what it was, but it has evolved to include much more. 

if you have principles then you will need courage.

Dangerous situations come in all colors, physical and mental.

Why this topic? Because I am appalled, sickened, and disgusted at the cowardice of those who profess otherwise - elected officials who checked their guts at the door. Principles? Why take the chance? They might be wrong. All my life, I have fought myself to be authentic. If I were gonna write about something, I was compelled by principle to do it. Not an easy thing to maintain, this authenticity, especially when people begin expecting things of you.

It takes fear to have courage. It takes courage to be Black.

Muhammad Ali

secret youth = immaturity

We discovered tossing stones off a bridge into a roiling creek. The same mud puddle that was there yesterday was here today, so, of course, we had to jump up and down in it. He's discovering Spring in all its mud and slush...............ain't  pretty picture but an exciting titillating one...predictably unpredictable...spring=the world is really moving along........you can see it now where for months you couldn't...living things two inches underground under snow...if you thought about it, you knew what was happening, but most of the time it seemed frozen and still. Nothing seems to change... House bound. Always with a flashlight close at hand for when the power goes out. My thoughts turned to what I want to plant this year

Dandelions and wild violets like gold doubloons spilled from a treasure chest.

True Story About A Squirrel

 Ten years old. Still innocent. Certainly naive. We moved from the house in which I grew up at 3814 West Rogers Avenue to Mondawmin Avenue, a neighborhood called Windsor Hills. There was a good sized tree (or so it seemed) in the front yard of Rogers Ave. My brother and I believed there was a secret door in the tree which only we could open. Inside was a wooden horse which we took out of the tree and set on the lawn, then spent the rest of the day hammering precious jewels into its wooden hide. When I was little we were surrounded by woods. When we left the neighborhood our old house was surrounded by single family, brick, row houses, hundreds of them, one of them, the Spradbrows', a gentile family, that invited us in to see their dazzling Christmas tree, and whose daughter, Shirley, was our babysitter. One time Shirley fell asleep and my parents had to take off the front door to get in. Where they got the tools I don't know because I never saw my father with a tool in his hand -  a newspaper, a crab mallet, a can of Gunther beer, a pencil, yes, but never a hammer or screwdriver.

Mondawmin Avenue was a little more open plus we had a lengthy back yard that ended in the woods. The yard was bordered along both sides with hedges, so there was a lot of privacy. There was also a dirt embankment down there which took a pounding from all the rocks we tossed at it as grenades and bombs in our war games. Our yard had been cleared all the way down, but there was a single tree. I don't know why the developer left it, but there it stood. I can't say what kind but it was substantial, maybe, oak, but that's a guess, an educated guess because a lot of squirrels scampered around that tree, and I could see a squirrel's nest near the top. Acorns would have sealed it for me, but it was not their time of year. Many times I found myself at that tree and just sat down. 

On this particular day, as I walked by the tree, there was an inordinate amount of chattering and scampering, up, down, around. Something was going on. Chatter. Jump. Scratch. Hang on. From this distance it seems to me they were circling the trunk over and over. I watched for awhile trying to figure this out when, just for the hell of it, I began making the chattering sound myself. Damn if one squirrel didn't stop mid trunk and stare in my direction, at me, I was sure. I froze. I stared back. It chattered. I chattered. We chattered back and forth as it slowly descended the tree and inched across the grass in my direction. I don't know what I said, but, whatever it was, that squirrel obviously liked my point of view. It sniffed my sneaker then crawled up my pant leg and settled on my shoulder. Settled on my shoulder! 

And sat there for a very long time before it scampered down my leg and back to the tree. The thing is, I could never do this again. For weeks I chattered my heart out, hoping, expecting...Nothing ever again. Even now when I spot a squirrel I begin to chatter like it's a second language, and, sometimes, sometimes the squirrel to which I'm talking stops and gives me a look, but then quickly decides it has better things to do. As do I.

Boxing 101 Plus - corrected copy

 CORRECTED COPY  -  sorry, folks

One of the sureties of my life on this earth is that I will never be welterweight champion of the world. I wasn't very good at it, but there you go. One of the proudest days of my life is the day I finally "got" the hook off the jab. 

I liked hanging out in gyms where members were there for survival not style. Gleason's. The Wild Card. The Left Hook. Kronk's in Detroit where Tommy Hearns trained, Fifth Street in Miami where Muhammad Ali learned to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.  I didn't know any LA gyms, yet, so my first month in LA I joined the Beverly Hills Health Club. I was new out there so what did I know? Two things I remember: flabby guys sitting in white steam cabinets with their heads sticking out smoking cigars, and Sid Caesar asked me to spot him on a bench press. His own weight. Pretty good. Then I discovered the Left Hook and the Wild Card, where the pros go, and things got serious.

I cannot imagine any other athlete with the conditioning of a boxer. You see more six packs in a boxing gym than you do at the local bodega. Shadow box with yourself in front of a mirror for three minutes then see how you feel. These guys train for thirty-six, but it's not merely physical conditioning that gets them through. Ring IQ is what does it: the ability to continually assess what you're up against, calculate the opponent's timing, check his foot work and balance, change your angles, exploit openings, stuff your fear - you box; you don't fight.

Jews and fists? The Yiddishe Kopf a thing of the past? Shtetls and Dybbuks were their types of games. Seriously. Shtetls and Dybbuks. That's what they were called in those eastern European villages. But, Jews and Fists? Boxing  may not have been in shtetl DNA, but then there were the likes of Benny Leonard,  Maxie Rosenblum, Battling Levinsky, Abe Goldstein, Max Baer, Jewish guys with noses that looked like California and fists that turned the other cheek. 

When we first began to date Jamie was stunned when she found out I did this thing. ""Why would anybody do this? ", she wondered? "I don't do it for the money,"I said, almost apologetically. "Then why do it at all?" she shot back. I enjoyed being in the ring. I wasn't there to hurt anybody. I simply liked the challenge. refining as many defensive maneuvers as possible to avoid getting hit. Not so different from my revelation in the Marines that I really didn't want to hurt anybody. So why do these things, you ask? You tell me. I still don't know, and it's getting late. Now that I know for certain that the welterweight belt is out of reach, I can sleep.

AFTER THE FALL - #3 - Uh, Huh

 There's been another Fall. Is this a wake-up call? Maybe so. It was Fall #3.  Fall #2 was not so much a game changer but close enough to qualify for a seat on the bench.  Fall #3 counts as an engraved invitation to the legion of octogenarians.  Join up? Hell! You're a member already, champ, like it or not. No bumps. No bruises. No blood. Nothing mortal. The only wounds being existential. And Ego.

And the knowledge that I was once someone else, the result being I had to find a different way. The old ways are no longer working.  I've been floundering around for too long with feelings I'd rather not have. It's spring, and there were times I didn't want to be here. 

Change is a a pain in the ass. So what? A good friend, now gone, once told me "It's a good life if you don't weaken." If something is that important, do what y'gotta do to get it. There is something that important to me, something that important, yes.  

When I awoke this morning about six a.m. a mild Spring rain was falling.Who walks in the rain on purpose? Gene Kelly did it, but gimme another name. And he got paid a lot of money to do it. I thought  of my grandson - normally one of my first thoughts of the morning - and how my son and daughter always take him out to play when the weather is right. i.e, not raining, not too hot, not too....you name it...not too...I could feel the darkness beginning to seep into my morning thoughts, and I did not want it there. I wanted it somewhere else. Gone. "You are not going to monkey wrench my day, sucker!"  So, as soon as I heard my grandson scurrying around, I told his father to dress him for the rain, and out we walked. Past Goat Hill. Up our mountain.  Rain in our faces. The two of us, not looking for puddles but to feel what it must be like to be a tree or a flower or a little animal taking cover under a leaf. We smelled the air, and, even though drops went up our noses, it stayed clean and sweet as only new morning air and no other can. We checked out a cherry tree I planted last week, one that's supposed to bear first season. As Jamie's grandmother said,"Paper never refuses ink", so I'm jollying it along on a daily basis to keep its spirit up. My plan is to keep Dorian jollying with me. Last year I planted an oak tree for his first birthday. It's now taller than he is and sprouting. Taller even than me. He knows it as "Dorian's Acorn Tree". 

"Dorian, listen." 

I wanted him to hear the different sounds rain drops make depending on where they fall: the plop of a drop on a crisp maple leaf; the drip off the needles of the spruce; the deep sound when it bounces off the mountain laurel; the hiss it makes dancing on water; the way birds don't fly or sing; when animals stay in  bed. After a while, tired of the botany lesson, he found the most perfect puddle of all time. With every stomp my day became a little lighter, a little more doable, ready for whatcha got. I've learned that grief has no bottom. I don't know that I'm ready for it.