Daddy, come help me fix it....

There should have been a picture. Winn and my legs poking out from underneath. Us hammering away on the broken pieces.

I was lying in bed on vacation and Winn was busy playing on the bedroom floor. He had migrated beneath the cot that Emi had been sleeping in. Every now and again, he would roll out from under the cot, grab another toy and head back under. Me? I was playing sudoku on my phone.

After a while, he called to me. "Daddy, come help me fix it." I set my phone aside and moved to the edge of the bed and watched his feet poking out from under the cot. Again, there was a call. "Daddy, come help me fix it."

So I rolled off the bed, laid my sore bones down on the floor and wiggled beneath the cot. He was busy hammering away with a puzzle piece on a spring on the side of the cot. There was a pile of toys next to him. His cuddle blanket. He was intent on fixing the spring.

He handed me a puzzle piece. "Here's a screw driver. Help me fix it." I looked up at the green canvas of the cot and saw it transform into the under belly of my Land Rover. I saw the various greasy pieces he was working on. And I helped him pry, hammer and screw all the broken pieces. 

As our vacation progressed, he would often call me to help come fix the broken pieces. Every time I obliged. Every time, I saw that plain cot transform into a magnificent machine needing attention.

I saw his world and, for just a moment, I got to play with him. Work with him. And revel in the joy of his young eyes and creative mind.

Guns

Growing up, our parents were fairly reticent when it came to letting us play with toy guns. The upside/downside of being born to hippie parents (Mom resembles this comment...Dad probably resents it). We were allowed squirt guns and a handful of cap guns and I have a memory of Dad cutting a toy gun out of a piece of wood with a jig saw but that was pretty much it. BB guns were out of the question. I bought a slingshot that was confiscated on parental grounds. Anything that looked real was out of the question.

Fast forward to high school...

I started dating Hope our junior year. There is a story I like to tell about our first official date.

I arrived at her house in my silver diesel Rabbit. I knocked on the door to the mud room and heard Skip bellow out, "C'mon in." His voice dwarfed the noise made by what sounded like a very vicious and angry dog. I opened the door and stepped into the mudroom and then knocked on the next door which led to a small passageway between the kitchen and the living room. Again came a bellow, "C'mon in." This, again, over the noise of what sounded to be a dog well past the foaming at the mouth stage.

I cracked the door and was met first by an Aussie Shepherd with teeth bared. He did not like me. He never liked me.... After I assessed his posture and decided it was only a 50/50 chance he wouldn't bite me, I stepped past and was met with the sight of the entire Winslow family sitting in the living room watching a black and white cowboys and Indians movie. I did not have time to ascertain whether it was the movie that was black and white or the television as the entire family had a veritable arsenal in their hands. And they were dry firing at the tv.

I was now in fight or flight mode. These were the people my parents had warned me about. These were the things I was not supposed to do. The first thought that passed through my mind was whether or not I could make it back out to the Rabbit, light up the glow plugs, fire up the engine and be well down the road before one of said guns was loaded and trained on me. Keep in mind that a diesel Rabbit posted a 0-60 acceleration time of  something like 18 seconds. With a tailwind. Down a hill. A very steep, steep hill that more resembles a cliff. With a bobsled crew pushing from the back.

I decided that I likely would not survive past warming up the glow plugs. Which, yes, means I decided to fight.

Skip was sitting in an arm chair across the room. Hope and Barb bookended Sam and Steve on a crowded couch. Skip boomed out, "Make room on the couch for Seth, boys." The two boys pushed further toward their mother leaving me a sliver to sit between them and Hope. I stepped into the living room while dragging a dog that had latched itself on to my Achilles tendon.

I sank into the sofa next to Hope. The dog moved from my flank to directly in front of me. Ears back. Eyes on only me. Growling. Skip looked over and announced, "We are shooting the bad guys." He then leaned back and lifted a leg, a' la someone about to fart, reached under the seat cushion and pulled out a beautiful silver plated, pearl handled revolver. He checked it. Spun it in his hand like a cowboy so the handle faced me and asked, "Do you know how to make sure it is safe?"

I shook my head no.

Skip proceeded to show me how to clear each chamber, handed to me, watched me as I cleared the weapon and, satisfied, said, "Now shoot the bad guys!".

I aimed somewhere in the vicinity of the television, cocked the hammer, closed my eyes and slowly squeezed the trigger, fully expecting a massive explosion, a rapid retreat to my car, the search for enough spare change to somehow pay for a tv that just exploded because of something I screwed up.

"Click"

I opened my eyes. The television was still in one piece. Everyone else was merrily firing away at the tv. No one had noticed the hippie child on the couch afraid of dry firing a gun. I had not wet my pants in public. The dog was still staring at me with burning eyes. I had passed my first test.

Oh the ways in which I am going to screw with Emiko's first date....

Freedom

I had to run an errand for work this morning. As I was being shuttled to the Ford dealership to pick up our F-550, we stopped to pick up a breakfast burrito at a nice little breakfast shack (trailer really).

As I stood in the rain waiting for my burrito, I heard peals of laughter and children's voices coming from behind me. I turned to watch the kiddos riding their tiny bikes in circles in the church parking lot across the street. Laughing in the rain. I stood there grinning as it took me back.

Remember when we were growing up and your bike was a symbol of freedom for you? You could ride where ever you wanted to, it was faster than walking and you did not have to get a parent to drive you? I remember riding to the store, to school, to our friends down the road, to the stream and to the bog. Riding, even in just the driveway, was freedom.

And so I stood and watched these kids exercising their freedom in their world and I had a sudden epiphany. I still ride my bike, I still grin and laugh while pedaling, I still look to stretch the bounds of my personal freedom on two wheels.

I just ride in bigger circles.

Validation and vindication

Hope returned from Maine with the baby book my mother kept for me (along with a scrapbook...yikes, we aren't even going to talk about THAT here). Enclosed in the baby book, along with the standard familial anecdotes and firsts was a copy of what I believe was entitled "The Mukai Sentinel".

All you Main-ahs out there will likely recognize the loose affiliation with our other locally esteemed tome of journalistic excellence. One of my Mother's attempts to guide my education and likely keep me out of her hair for more than five minutes was to have me publish a weekly family newsletter. I was able to write, edit and publish all pieces of my opus on our Apple IIc. What a magnificent machine. When completed and if memory serves, we would mail each set of letters out to our extended family in New York, Jersey and points to our north (well, west really).

An early form of a blog, perhaps? Thanks and kudos to my Mom!

In other news....

My baby book also noted that I never wanted to wake up in the morning. Not only as a baby but into childhood. And that I was grumpiest in the first moments following my exit from slumber.

All still true!

I need to research further if I had trouble falling asleep at night. Which may explain why I am writing this somewhere past midnight. With that note, I retire.