We were sitting in the Santa Cruz Diner. The neighborhood began to pop fireworks and fizzers into the purple dusk. We were about to pay the bill and drive through boardwalk traffic to a fireworks show that didn’t really exist. We discovered that the best seats in Santa Cruz might have been on the beach, choking on camp smoke and trying to keep Chas out of the fire. Therefore the car, as it turned out, was the best seat. It was simply one of those fourths that we decided not to plan. In other words, it was a time for us to be lame.
The day itself was much more gratifying: an afternoon spent on a warm secluded beach about a half hour north of Santa Cruz.

Seti is drinking freshly prepared chicken broth. He is eating rice and chop biscuits, stewed chicken meat, skillet parsnips and poached eggs. After each meal, he lets me hoist him gently out the back door and rest him next to his favorite boxwood, to pee. When I return him to his bed, he proudly growls like a fiercely independent old man as I lay him atop his heap of blankets. He will sometimes leave his wicker bed in our bedroom and hobble into the living room to endure the loud music the guys are recording, or accompany me to smell the paint fumes in the room I am painting. We have a temporary bed at the ready in each room, and he treats each as his favorite, so long as we are nearby. Rebuilding leg bones, after all, is a family collaboration.

We spend a lot of time in and out of the house. The screen door flaps a lot during the day, the windows are always open, the gates rattle back and forth on their hinges.

Since our lot isn’t entirely fenced in, and since we live on a fairly busy road (with the school across the street and with Spring’s arrival and the landscaping trucks convoying in and out of the neighborhood’s enclave) I spend a ton of energy herding children and dog about the commons, keeping everyone away from the street.

Today, however, I was chatting it up in the backyard with Alis when we both tensed to the sound of screetching brakes and heard that most awful sound which sometimes follows: the loud THUD of a broken something. And as that awful sound echoed in my frozen moment, another sound reoriented me, which was the visceral, unmistakable yelping of our beloved dog, Seti.

It didn’t immediately register, the disgust I now feel at the person who accelerated and drove away down our road, leaving his or her immorality on the pavement. Initially, my brain took footnotes: Driver has continued driving down road. Sounds like a truck, possibly a white 4×4. I’ve seen a hundred of those today. Seti looks allright. His hindquarters, something is wrong with his hind legs, etc. But I’m sitting in my bed now, looking over at our lucky dog who escaped death once more (twice this year he has been hit by a car) and who is sleeping soundly through his trauma. I’m wondering how a person can be so selfish. What did they think I’d do? All I would have liked was an apology, an acknowledgement.
People can be so disappointing.

He is okay tonight, asleep in his cardboard box atop a discarded king-sized comforter. If I crouch beside him, his pupils function, taking in my expression and gestures. He sits motionless, licking his lips occasionally, his way of acknowledging my sympathy. And then he’ll lay his head back down. I run my hands along his back, searching for a growl or grimace, but nothing. Just a few cuts on his feet, black tiremarks on his beefy hindquarters, ten intact toes. A short, tucked-under tail. I worry about internal bleeding, embolism. But otherwise, I think he’s okay.

Mean, mean hit and run driver. Have fun with your bad karma.

Ford, taking a break from gardening to gel in the treehouse.

I think one of my greatests ambitions is to make my kids good stewards of our tiny planet. Partly out of pleasure, partly out of guilt, it’s something I prioritize with as much earnesty as good manners and hygeine. And even though we may be shortcoming in the latter two areas, the kids amaze me in their ability to identify sycamores and scrub jays when they see that pretty bark or hear that raspy sqwawk. After all, we’re leaving quite a legacy for them, both good and bad. Because the natural beauty of this world never stops astonishing me in new ways and because it’s tragic the way humans seem to awkwardly fuddle along, tracking mud all over the place.

My dad, like many children of his generation, spent nearly all of his youth in sunlight and mystery of the outdoors. From raising alligators in his family’s bathtub to bringing sugar gliders to school in his shirt pocket, he built an affinity for wildlife and a responsibility to protect it. Nowadays, at his home in Houston, you can stop by the house and find him digging for worms in the backyard with the neighbors’ children, or building birdhouses, teaching them how to cast in the driveway. I want to be like that always.

And it seems that this generation needs it more than ever, the freedom to roam and appreciate nature and all the therapy it has to offer. Not so much through sheltered nature camps so much as providing them with idle time outside to fiddle fart with blades of grass and fallen honeycomb. But it’s all good. The more the better, right? A book comes to mind, something on the bestseller list last year, by Richard Louv: have you read Last Child in the Woods, saving Our Children from nature-Deficit Disorder?” If you haven’t, go check it out.

In my library at home I have a few favorite that I want to mention, on this subject of sharing nature with children. Here they are, please check these out as well. I wish I had a scanner to help you peek inside the covers. Doesn’t that sound…naughty.

Nature with Children of All Ages is a book I picked up at a thrift store once and fell in love with. It’s divided into broad sections based on habitat or phylum (for example, birds or ponds, streams, swamps and other watery places. In each chapter, there are activities for children designed to awaken their senses, to build contextual knowledge about the world around them, by seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching (and sometimes tasting). Learning bird songs. How to collect animals tracks. Phosphorescence. Drool. Drool. More drool. I love this book so much, this little precursor to didactic biology, where kids sometimes get lost in the tedium of taxonomy.

The second book I dig is A Seasonal Guide to the Natural Year and we currently are using the Northern California edition, although they also have editions for every other major region in North America. This essential reference tells you where to go and when to view natural events in your region or state (and sometimes in areas nearby), divided month-by-month, mentioning when nature is putting on her best shows. It helps when you just don’t know where to focus your explorations (I have that problem); when you would just as soon go tide pooling as you would go traipsing through the woods looking for mushrooms. Oh, the dilemmas I face on a daily basis.

Another book I use, mostly for handwork and “homeschooling” is Earthways, by Carolyn Petrash. This book includes seasonal environmental activites for little ones, like natural egg dying, dish garden-growing, pressed flower cards. More on the Waldorf side, this book also encourages suggestions for bringing nature indoors (through the nature table) and includes lessons that invite children to think about their dependence on the earth through, for example, making butter or taking stalks of wheat and turning it into bread. Great ways to enhance their natural curiosity. Thumbs up.

So, put your finger on nature’s pulse and get that kid outside. And have FUN! I hope these suggestions help. And feel free to mention any of your favorite books in the comments section; I’m always looking for more inspiration.

I was messing with CSS. It was 4 in the morning.
This is what happened.
Maybe it’ll get fixed Monday,
so I won’t have to keep hitting the return key,
fearing the words will run into that invisible hole
in the right margin.

It’s been a long week at home alone with the children.

Each day is a greater test of patience, a chance for me to grow deaf ears and tougher skin to the temper tantrums. But my plan isn’t working, and instead of becoming more proficient, certain buttons have actualy shorted out. Chas, for example, is standing in the sun, with too-long hair and wet clothes, cradling a dried-up, dead earthworm. He is pretending it is his baby. And I could care less about that than the way it makes me feel, which is not disgust but a mixture of wonder and pride. How can he be charmed by a dead, dried-up earthworm? My son will surely have no difficulty accepting any child in his life. The world needs men like this.

Meanwhile, I am meditating on my second sweaty bottle of beer. It is still chilled, fifteen minutes from the corner store, and it tastes like college and irresponsibillity and forgiveness. Normally I would wait until 5pm for aperitif, but Damon will pull into the driveway within the next two hours and, with the mericful afternoon, dappled in sunshine (it is only 90 degrees outside right now) and the shaded, inflatable pool, I see no other option but to begin the evening right now. This is as far down in the lawn chair I can sit without falling flat off. And now, the boys are digging in the muddy grass, looking for more worms.

God willing, they will find live ones to care for.

Mama Says Om

Me & the boys; Surfside, TX

Go, go, go.
Scribble it down on a torn napkin.
Sleep tonight, Weave tomorrow.
Don’t forget.