"Hello, I'd like to report a parenting problem."

I yelled at a kid today and I'm not proud of it. Sure, he's bigger than my son but how much bigger than him am I? He's a bit of a bully and I bullied him good in what feels like a hollow victory. What did he do? He took my son's bike and when my son asked for it back (five times) he acted as if he couldn't hear my son who was jogging alongside of him.

Deep emotions from my childhood welled up, a neighborhood boy very much like this one who did what he pleased b/c he was bigger than me. I yelled his name to stop him in his tracks and told him (in a very loud voice) that when someone asks for something back that is theirs, you give it back to them, plain and simple.

It had the desired effect, but it kind of threw my son off, hearing me yell like that. My wife heard and was not comfortable with what I'd done. It's not easy being a parent: rational, calm, measured in words and wise in actions. Maybe kids like that are around to teach us patience and force us to find solutions to problems that do not involve violence, verbal or otherwise. I'm still learning.


***

The Skeleton Remains

***************
The mirror sits as it always does, cold, flat, indifferent, impossibly shiny. He looks intently at the reflection there, absent-mindedly drawn to the dark round hole of his left nostril. It looks blacker than the right one, a portal of some sort, a cave, a tunnel, whatever, and the longer he stares, the bigger it grows.

Once its dark diameter has reached the size of his face, he grabs the skin folds on either side and in one quick motion pulls it back over his head, like the hood of a sweatshirt, revealing his skull underneath. Its toothy grin confronts him as he rotates his head slowly, taking it in from different angles.

“This is what I’ll leave behind one day, a cicada shell on a tree,” or so his thoughts go. The image seems natural to him, removing some of the horror.  A blink of his eyes and things return as they were: a slow march to the grave with decisions to be made about how that time should best be spent.

***************

The Laundromat

1976, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

I remember the laundromat that my mother used to take me to when I was a child.

It sat on the north side of the town square sandwiched between two other businesses: a little girl dress shop called "Sugar and Spice" and a Realtor's office, if memory serves. The front of the laundromat looked like a giant multi-glass-paned garage door that could open up its entirety to the outside when raised. The ceiling was almost two stories high which made for a massive cube of space ringed by dryers. Washing machines occupied the center with at least two large folding tables. Scattered about were wheeled metal laundry baskets, each with a suspended bar for hangers.

The drone of the dryers and wumping of the washers made it a very noisy place. The smell of laundry detergent and an oppressive heat surrounded you, but it was something peculiar, different from home.

I loved getting the change from my mother to put in the detergent dispensing machine, hearing the clink of the falling quarters, three in a row, and then getting a firm grip on the rounded handle and pulling back with a hard tug until it stopped and a small brightly colored box of detergent thudded into the tray. Further satisfaction came from releasing it quickly so that it returned with a loud metallic clack. These little boxes were like toys and once they were emptied they could be used to play basketball with the laundry baskets as well as kicked, whacked, or thrown.

At night the well lit interior threw bucketfuls of light out onto the darkened square creating elongated shadows of the swings and slide situated across the street on the square proper. Red and yellow points of light from circling cars winked like fireflies.

I remember my mother always wearing a dress, beehive hairdo, no make up, and a bit of a scowl on her face. I was always testing her limits, making it difficult for her to relax or just be able to do what she needed to do with a minimal amount of hassle. My older sister was there too, maybe nine to my seven, as well as my younger sister who was just a toddler. Those two were manageable, compliant to some degree, the older looking out for the younger.

I, on the other hand, was trying to climb into carts or disappear into dryer holes. If my mother had her back turned for too long while folding clothes, I was outside seeing how far I could get down the sidewalk before being ordered back and scolded.  I've seen that scowl on my wife's face, trying to deal with our sometimes unruly and rambunctious son.  I'm sure that scowl has been on my face, seen in my son's expression like a mirror, his nose scrunched up in anger.

Almost forty years later and with a seven year old son of my own, I am just now able to feel the full weight of sympathy for this mother of three laundering our clothes in a small Midwestern town on a hot summer's night.

Three Blind Mice

Muir Woods, a photo by []Aaroneous Monk[] on Flickr.

The slightly-edited story below is one I wrote when I was a college student in the early '90s. The idea for it came from a story one of my professors told us about his experience in standing before a panel of academics when he was defending his doctoral thesis. The tone of his experience transferred itself into the characters as described below. Revisiting this story so many years later, I find it striking how true to my subsequent experience it has been, though my understanding of things now is very different from then. It is like this story suggested a trajectory that my thoughts were eventually to follow.
______________________________


Three Blind Mice
(have you ever seen such a thing in your life?)


Being a young twenty something is not unlike being lost in a foreign land only to discover it is the place you were born.

College had presented me with a paradox by broadening my horizons while at the same time trapping me in a water-filled globe of unreality. With a shake of my head, philosophies and world-views would swirl around like bits of artificial snow in my mind. I believed that I had to have all of the "big questions", and assorted smaller ones, answered in order to successfully move on with my life. There was never a sense I'd read enough books or taken enough of the right classes. For the first time in my life I felt utterly lost and set adrift. Disappearing into the rear distance was the security of home and looking ahead there was only open water with no land in sight. Who knew what sharks plied these waters. How does one navigate by the stars? Accompanied by these thoughts, I entered a forest.

***

Almost immediately I felt some of the caffeine fueled angst begin to abate under the canopy of leaves. This reprieve did not last long as I eventually became aware of a change, something subtle, but making me feel uneasy and unsure of myself once again. A quick survey of the area turned up nothing unusual which only proved to intensify my confusion. Thinking that it was just the effects of weariness I rubbed my eyes. With my eyes closed my ears picked up the incongruity immediately. The routine sounds of the forest had completely ceased, an unnatural stillness, dead quiet.

A headwind caught me unawares and sent shivers up my spine. It carried with it noises that were strangely inexplicable. Tinkling sounds, like tiny metallic wind chimes, were accompanied by murmurings and intermittent shouts. Apprehensive, but also curious, I continued moving towards the source.

This brought me to within sight of a clearing from where the sounds appeared to originate. Creeping along in a clandestine manner, I found concealment behind a tree near its edge. The grass was a sickly hue beneath me diffusing into a dead grayness inside the circle of trees. The noises were distinct now and sounded very much like an argument in progress. I cautiously peeked around the tree and took in a sight most unforgettably bizarre.

In the center of the clearing there were three immense books, like paper-made pillars of varying height, but all much taller than I. Upon each sat an old man in grey-black tasseled robes faded with time and the elements. Arcane academic badges hung from their chests and jingled in the wind. They were caught up in some disagreement and were not aware of my presence. This gave me the courage to move in a bit closer to observe them in better proximity. From this greater vantage point I was startled to discover that they were all quite blind.

***

The old scholar in the middle sat perched upon the tallest book and looked to be the eldest of the three. His eyes moved about as he talked but fixed on nothing. The light playing off them produced an unnatural glint betraying their true nature, glass globes in place of eyeballs. To his right sat the frumpled figure of scholar number two, a dowdy character to be sure. His white hair was a wild and tangled mess. Two blackholes-for-eyes were split by a crooked nose. A piece of hay hung from one of the holes out of which a little mouse would periodically poke its nose to sniff the air and then quickly retreat. Even more unnerving was to see it scamper over the bridge of his nose from time to time, socket to socket. The third scholar was much more agreeable to me than the other two. A cravat encircled his head covering his eyes. He did not look quite so ancient as his fellows and his demeanor was much less severe.

I listened to their discourse without understanding. The argument seemed to be of an esoteric nature that I failed to grasp. My sympathy was with my cravated friend who apparently was at odds with the other two. The old man of the mouse-house head had been going on for a time and had reached some conclusion to which the elder nodded his head in agreement. The youngest, to whom it had been directed, gave a demur reply that sent number two into paroxysms of rage.

With a movement that belied his age the agitated man jumped up, secured his robes about his waist, and scrambled down the side of his book, head first. Like a mad squirrel he rifled through several pages, upside-down, finally stopping to share what he thought he had found there. At these frightfully peculiar acrobatics I let slip a giggle that so startled the inverted scholar that he almost lost hold of the book's edge. Finding a secure seat once more on top he and the others "looked" my way.

***

"Who's there?!" demanded the eldest, his glass eyes trained on a spot somewhere in front and to the right of me. "Well, out with it child. I heard your giggling just now!"

"Be gracious. He's just a boy", said the youngest. I hadn't noticed it before, but the cravat did not cover his right eye completely. Within its folds I could see a clouded orb peering out purposefully. "Where have you come from young one?"

"F-from the meadowlands beyond this forest glade," I stammered.

"What?!" cried Number Two. "What nonsense is he spouting about a forest and glade? What are such things but child's tales? Where is your book, boy? So small it could fit in your back pocket I wouldn't doubt." What he was saying was terribly confusing so I answered what I thought I had been asked. I began to describe the meadows and their flowing grasses like waves in the wind, of the trees like...

"Enough, enough," said the eldest with a peremptory wave of his hand. "I tire of your childish prattle." Hearing my brief description seemed to exhaust him somehow.

The youngest smiled at me and spoke meekly, "Yes, I've seen forms of what you describe, but such detail? Your imagination is commendable in this descriptive fiction. As you study and grow older you will see more of the truth." The other two harumphed at this and chided him for his eccentric equivocations.

At this point, frustrated and a little angry myself, I challenged them to come down from those terrific tomes and confirm, themselves, what I had described. "Come down, come down, he says," mocked the dowdy scholar. "Can he command the view we have from up here? I think not, the little ground-hugging mole." The eldest joined in the game of scolding me while the youngest simply looked down at his robe and picked at loose threads. Feeling saddened, especially for my slightly-sighted friend, I left them behind in the clearing as I had found them, arguing.

***

My mood lightened as I distanced myself from that circle of dead grass. Fresh air once more filled my lungs and cleared my head. The birds singing over head lifted my spirits and set me down a path different from the one I'd been on.