The Master Chief says good-night

My father - the "Master Chief" for those of you longtime readers - is in his late eighties and has been slowly fading into the sort of twilight lands that we often wander into late in our lives. Forgetful, querulous, diffused...all the early signs of a mind that is dwindling towards that last goodnight.

But he was, as he has always been, physically sound. So it was a bit of a shock to get a phone call from my sister - who of the two of us is the geographically close one - last week informing me that my father was in the local hospital have suffered some sort of brain trauma, and the medical tests had revealed that the insult was bleeding inside his head, a sort of stroke, if you will.

He had lost much of his coherence and almost all of his intellectual function. Over the past weekend into Monday he appeared weak but physically healthier than mentally; the medical opinion was that whatever had happened inside his head had suddenly moved him into the "late stage" of Alzheimer's Syndrome. Monday he was moved into the Alzheimer/hospice care wing of the place where he and my mother now live out the ends of their lives. I and my sister were preparing for a part of our lives that now included the body but not the mind or soul of the man who was our father.

But Nature or my father, who was ever a masterful man, intended otherwise. My sister called again last evening to tell me that my father had fallen yet further into the wilderlands of brain death. He was lingering now like a cat in a doorway, motionless, at the very furthest borderlands of death. My sister called this morning to inform me that our father is still sleeping if you consider the consciousless twilight at the edge of life "sleep".

But the blades of the scissors are very near his thread. The hospice nurse told her "Hours. Days. But not weeks."

So I'm taking the wretched day-long cross country flight this afternoon not knowing whether I will arrive before he departs.

But in a very real sense he has already gone on ahead of me. The shell that breathes in the bed in the anonymous room in the industrial warehouse for the old is not my father, not the man who raised me or stood beside me through my childhood and young adulthood and manhood, who helped me become who I am and what I am.

That man is already gone. What remains for me is to honor the bargain that we all make, parent and child, father and son, mother and daughter, from the moment we begin our lives together; that we as parents will bring our children into the world and we as children will see our parents out of it.

Catullus said it better than I ever can, and so I will depart and leave him speak for me:

"Traveling through many lands and over many seas I have come, brother, for these wretched funeral rites, to give you the last dues of the dead and to speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes."

Big soccer fun

I took my 8-year old daughter to the Portland Thorns women's professional match this past Sunday.

Here's her match report:

“Well, soccer is so much more fun when you’re there! On TV it’s really boring, but when you go there there’s so much to do. I liked the singing, and the colors were pretty (she was talking about the Pride Week tifo I've shown below that the Rose City Riveters unveiled before the match). I liked watching the people run away when the rain came. And the C'mon, Guy (Khao Man Gai) chicken wings were really super tasty, and riding the MAX train was fun. And I want to go back again, because it was really fun and nice.”

“What did you think about the game, sweetie?”

“Well, I didn’t really care much about that. It was OK, I guess.”

I let her know that I thought the game was much more than OK (and it was, a solid 2-nil win for the home team...) and she conceded with the casual carelessness my kid uses when she gives in to me over something that matters to her not a whit. It didn't matter, really. In the words (between mouthfuls of cotton candy) of Stumptown’s youngest soccer reporter: “That was really fun!”

It was a very sweet day. The Girl was her usual cheerful, bubbly self and she loved everything; she loved the train, and the people, and the food, and the colorful tifo that I helped construct, and just being with her Daddy. I looked down at her glossy head and she skipped alongside me back to the truck to drive home and wondered how I had been so lucky to find this sweet and loving little person.

No disrespect to the players, but I think I have the real Pride of Portland sleeping in the little bed in the shed-roofed room at the back of my house.

Out of the gloaming

When I was twelve my father and I used to go out back behind the big house in Chicago and throw the baseball back and forth, me with my "Ernie Banks" model first-baseman's glove and my pop with his 1940's style "giant puffy Mickey Mouse hand" mitt.

We would throw the ball until the light began to fade, in those long summer evenings, enjoying the small conversations, and good stretch of arm muscles, and the pop of the ball into the glove.

But the light would fade, and I would begin to lose track of the ball in the gloaming, until one evening the inevitable happened and the grimy gray ball sailed over my mitt and popped me square in the face.

My father came over to see why I was lying around not throwing the ball, checked me out to ensure I wasn't really hurt, and then picked up the ball and his son with the other hand and remarked, as we headed indoors to find my mother and a baggie of ice:

"Next time just make sure you keep your glove up."

That was good advice and I've kept my glove up ever since, Pop, thanks. Happy Father's Day.

Sons of David

My father's day gift from the boy was a headshot.

We joined his pal Arthur and his dad down at the laser-tag place in Milwaukie for video games and light-beam battles. Good times. The most fun was our third and last match; nobody else wanted to play, so it was Red versus Blue, sons against fathers. Here are the electronic warriors practicing the "circular firing squad" maneuver:

The boys fought hard, but the old men kicked their young asses. Age and craft did in fact overcome youth and energy.

Wait, wait, young men; your days will come. For now the old hands are still masters of the craft.

Padrino

"Father's Day"C'mon, really?

For all that this silly day is some sort of ridiculous scam, I have to say we had a pretty nice weekend. Saturday was rainy, so we went to our beloved Rose City Gymnastics for the open gym. The littles love the heck out of this place and so do we; they jump, balance, flip, and tumble, and we help where we can and applaud when we should. It's a terrific way to spend a drizzly Saturday, and for ten bucks it's quality fun!From there we went to our Powell's Books (with a stop at L'Arcs D'Or for the Boy, who luuurves him some Mickey D's fries. I hate to admit it, but I like 'em myself in all their greasy, salty goodness. No joy on my Chilton's Guide, tho, so it was home for a quick stop and then out to meet our friends Meghan and Will at the Saraveza "Bottle Shop and Pasty Tavern", and, sure enough, they had a bloody incredible selection of beers in the bottle, and the beef pasty was hot, rich, and good.From there we parted company, me for home with the kiddos, Mojo to the Expo Center to watch some kick-ass Portland Roller Derby sport. Little man's well-loved after-school-care teacher was there, skating under her nom-du-derby of Kickassidy, and tho Mojo said she did, indeed, kick ass it wasn't enough for her team to handle the Break-neck Betties, this year's Rose City Rollers champs.I stayed in with the kiddos; Peep played his "World of Tanks" MMO game, while Missy and I watched "My Little Pony". Yes.

I admit it, all right?

OK?

I fucking like "My Little Pony".

For one thing, the little buggers are hilarious. Here's Rarity (the "fashion-girly" pony) finding her own way of dealing with her captors, the nefarious Diamond Dogs. Oh, and extra points for the gratuitous David Bowie reference, by the way:The people responsible for the new "My Little Pony" clearly have no intention of playing it straight. So nearly every episode we watched - and that girl loves her some ponies, so we watched a LOT - had some sort of little sting in its tail, whether it was the defeat of the Diamond Dogs through power whining, or the utterly unhinged antics of Pinkie Pie, who is some sort of holy fool of a pony, a Loki and a Coyote of all things four-footed and cute. She's at her best when she sings or when she gets excited - she rockets around like a hamster huffing nitrous oxide. She's a freaking riot.See what I mean?

Anyway, we had fun, and so did Mojo.

This morning I got a Father's Day present from the kiddos, and Mojo cooked a yummy breakfast, and then I went to do my own Father's Day good deed for our friend Christine and her oldest son. He's fifteen and starting to get bit by the automobile bug. So we took Stinky the Honda Civic down there, did the brakes (a fun, easy sort of wrenching to start with) and then went for a stick-shift lesson on his quiet street. Young man did well, and we all had fun; Mojo and Christine chatting, E and I wrenching, Peep and his pal the Poet playing Xbox, and Missy cavorting in the floor-jack box and doing art projects.

After another quick trip home I went downtown with my friends Brent and Julie for dinner and the Timbers-Red Bulls match. Good food, exciting match (tho we should have made 3-1 stand up instead of letting the bastards escape with a point...) and then home to bed.So. Maybe this whole Father's Day nonsense isn't so bad after all.

As Pinkie Pie herself would say; ya gotta care.

Stories for my daughter

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crownèd sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store.
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am sufficed
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee.
This wish I have; then ten times happy me!

(Sonnet 37; Wm. Shakespeare)

Pater Familias

Just so you know...

It's Sunday, Father's Day, at 8:04 am., and I've been sitting at the computer with my little girl in my lap since about 7:45. She points to the screen every time we see a photo of Mojo and lisps "Ma ma" and has been asking for a drink ("Wa wa") since about 7:59. My little guy bounced down about two minutes ago as we were downloading photos to ask to go to Starbucks, where we'll be off to in about a dime.

And I won't even go into the cat yack, which was my very first Father's Day present. Frikken cats...

Apropos of the day, I still remember being about ten asking MY father why, since there was a Father's Day and a Mother's Day why there was no Kid's Day.

"Every day is Kid's Day." he replied, probably pretty grimly, since I was pestering him while he was trying to do something householderish.

Anyway. To all Fathers and all Kids - and especially to the newest Father I know of (that'd be "J" of J&I, whose new son XX is probably biting him this very minute - they're love bites, Dad!) - everywhere: may you all live long enough to be friends with your Dad, and Dads, to be friends with your kids. Because as fun as they are, the crux of the biscuit is raising these little folks to be good people, people you'd want to be friends with.Happy Father's Day.