Chris is doing some TA stuff, she lectures with 5 sections from the Intro to Communications class. She’s liking it, which is handy because she’d like to be a full time academic one day… hating class would be a bit of a drag on that. 

Anyway, as if to provide an example of their current subject matter Lucas asked a question the other day. 

A bit of context: Twang Town is a really good guitar (base/uke/etc) store here in Dunedin and Hyam who owns it is a really interesting character. He has a illuminated sign in his window to tell you if he’s open or not.

So we were walking by and Lucas asked “Why is the ‘Open’ sign red and the ‘Closed’ green? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Our boy. Already criticizing other’s designs.

 A guitar was the only thing he actually asked for at Christmas, so we got one from Twang Town here in town (the owner is a perfectionist, he actually refused to sell one 3/4 guitar he got in because they didn’t meet his standards) and signed him up to take lessons. 

When he pays attention he is actually coming along nicely. 

The down side of this is the first song that everyone learns is Smoke On The Water (the title of this post refers to the tabs of the song as played on the E string). I hate Deep Purple. So I have to be enthusiastic about him learning, all the while wanting to die as he plays this bloody song. 

I can’t wait till he learns another song.

So about two weeks ago Lucas started making rhythmic sounds with his mouth.

I asked him what he was doing and he looked up at me, and said, with a great deal of incredulity “Daddy, those are my beats. I have lots of new beats.”

He’s not going to be giving Biz Markie a run for his money any time soon, but it’s fun none the less.

But first, at breakfast today Lucas asks “Mama, what’s the French word for snotz?”.. sadly I was laughing to hard to hear the answer.

So we’re getting some baby stuff ready to send to my sister in England (0 to 6 month clothing mostly) and we were talking about how to best send it and how much it would cost.

Lucas listened to the whole conversation and then asked “why don’t you just throw it into the computer and send it to her like that?”

So today was Lucas’ first trip to the Dentist. We’d gotten him ready for the whole thing by telling him about it.

Christine told him that the Dentist would tickle his teeth.

I told him that there would be a big camera to take pictures of his teeth.

That was kind of it.

We left out some steps.

Like the whole “don’t chew on the films for the XRAY” thing or the “stay still means really still” thing… or the tipping chair or…

It went really well… but we both have to work on our task analysis skills.

Most importantly he had no cavities and the tooth that got bashed in when he went face first into the coffee table is perfectly fine.

I never knew my maternal grandmother, she died way before I was born. She was a Scottish immigrant to Canada and brought with her many traditions from the old country.

One of them was shortbread at Christmas. Not the fancy English shortbread cookies, or fancy things that were jammed out of a cookie gun or some crap like that. No. Shortbread, thick slabs baked in a baking pan. The average piece being about an inch or so squared. It’s shortbread that you have a few pieces of with over tea or whiskey or Eggnog. It’s muscular shortbread.

My grandmother taught my mother to make the shortbread and my sister and I were taught by Bev. The only instructions were hand written by my grandmother on a index card that was nearly translucent with years of handling by buttery hands. The temperature was listed as “Moderate oven”. After years of experiments we’ve hit on 300 degrees. At some point Bev rewrote the recipe on another index card. It to is now nearly translucent.

Now that Bev is dead as well, the shortbread is now one of the connections that’s left between she and I.

Today I was making two more batches for gifts and Lucas wanted to help. So the circle remains unbroken because I started to show him how to make it. He’s still too little to knead the dough (taking it from crumbly to nearly like playdoh is tough sledding, even when you cheat like I do and soften the butter in the microwave) but he helped measure.

It will be years before the recipe is like a muscle memory, but it’s a start.

When Lucas was about a year and a half he and I went for a walk… we went along Pine and to St. Laurent… near the corner there is a bank and a biggish tree. That’s where some of the local squeegee punk homeless kids gather. They pan handle, they wash car windows, that summer they slept there as well.

Normally my interaction with them is limited to giving them some food/changes or a polite no or smile (I’m not some great humanitarian, I just try and remember that they are someone’s kid and a human).

Anyway on this walk one of the guys looked at Lucas and I and said “cute kid” and I replied with some sort of joking flip comment (as is my want) like “we like him” or “we love him” or “yes he is”. He looked me in the eye and said “Do you love him?” I said “yes I do”.

What he said next is what will stay with me forever. He said “You love him forever, and tell him, no matter what, or he’ll wind up fucked up like me.”

I was taken aback and, frankly, speechless (those of you who know me know what a rare deal this is) so I nodded and said yes.

What I later realized I should have said, what has become my private little mantra (well not so much anymore), is this “I’ll love him as long as I draw breath.”

What Father’s Day is really about isn’t the tools, isn’t the Bar BQ, or the breakfast (though the French toast was fucking awesome), it isn’t really about having a kid (ny moron can make someone pregnant). It’s about the relationship, it’s about being a Father, about being there, about caring and teaching and hugging and doing all that stuff that’s hard but right.

(non-parents are excused from the following post)

LUCAS JUST HAD HIS FIRST REAL POOP IN THE TOILET!

Crap in water never looked so good.

So I taught Lucas this:

and now he thinks there’s some big guy named Bad Karma running around stealing and breaking people’s bikes.

Trying to explain the concept of karma to a 3 year old is some seriously tough sledding.