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Colleen decided it was time to start potty training Julia. Juju has expressed an interest, but lacked the focus to follow through.

That’s not entirely fair; Julia is two years old. A two year old lacks certain requisite personal qualities to succeed: an attention span, fine motor skills, and the realization that not everyone smells of piss.

I digress.

Initial forays were met with frustration, the liberal use of toilet paper, jaundiced socks, and little more. This time was different.

Colleen pressed the Potty Watch into service. For the uninitiated the Potty Watch is an egg timer that you strap to your toddler. Its purpose is to remind the trainee that it is time to void, regardless of whether one needs to or not. It is the pattern of behavior that we are concerned with here, not actual urges. The theory yields results, tangible results. The lesson comes at a price.

The Potty Watch emits a grating, woefully off key selection from the toddler canon. Somehow, against all reasonable logic and odds, it works. I continue to be amazed at the progress she makes with (and without) the watch. Her sense of pride and ownership are palpable. Julia completes the job at hand, looks into the abyss, and exclaims:

I magic.

My great grandmother, May, could feel the weather. My great grandfather, Steve, could read the clouds. I can feel a thousand things but their depth of feeling and connection to their surroundings has confounded me.
Our perception of the world around us, of time, is a curiosity. My own sense of time has changed fundamentally over the years: I mean to describe a part of it here.

Many find calendars indespensible: it meters our commerce, vocations, and leisure. It fixes memory to the head of a pin.

I loathe it.

I believe the observed New Year of the Gregorian calendar is artificial; this synthetic construct has served only to disrupt our circadian rhythms. It confuses and disrupts what was once the domain of nature. Did my forebears suffer the same nagging sensation of imbalance?

My alternative is not revolutionary or unique, though my ritual may be. Necessity forces me to follow convention, however, I privately observe my own calendar. My year ends with the terminus of fall — a natural time for one to reflect. It is a time of harvest, of plenty: an opportunity to survey the labors of the spring and summer and take measure of what has been done. It is this harvest of memory that I treasure above all fall rituals. It is a time to gather what I have sown and draw it close to sustain me during the long winter.

Memories grow distant and long, just as the shadows, in fall. It is in these memories that I meditate and take communion with my past.

I believe that life is an adventure.

I believe that no matter how routine or mundane or trivial a day may seem, there is always something to be gleaned from it.

My wife loves to take pictures, and this passion provides an avenue for realization. We purchased a new camera a few months ago and the moments she has captured are simply magic. The routine, the mundane, the trivial: I see them with new eyes — hers. It can be hard to describe what someone brings to your life, particularly when their contribution is vast (as hers is). These photographs serve to document, in myriad ways, the adventure and wonder that surrounds us.

Life is an adventure — because she is in it.

For this, I am most thankful.

My oldest daughter, Grace, hoarded spare change for the last year. I would find her squirreling away money, gathering it in her tiny fists and depositing into a pink plastic pig. Her focus was singular — when asked what she was saving for the answer was consistent: The Minnesota Great-Together. The State Fair is colloquially known as The Great Minnesota Get Together; Grace, in her pidgin toddler speak, truncated it.

Time is cruel: anticipation draws out the seconds — they slacken as the shadows do in late August. Time is particularly cruel to toddlers, and their parents, as a sensible explanation for it is elusive. “The Fair is nearly here”, we would tell her, “a few weeks longer, Gracie”. She waited. Patiently.

The Fair did come. It was magical.

She spent with care and measured restraint. She enjoyed the sights, sounds, smells, food, and the rides. The stories that come from her three visits this season still bring a smile; on difficult days I can close my eyes and take myself back there: to her wonder and her smile and her laugh.

Approximately 365 days after my last post I have returned. Life continues to challenge, confound, surprise: we celebrated the birth of our second child this year (another girl); I took a new job; I have failed to properly maintain personal relationships; I have aged another year.

For my thirty-first year I have a series of resolutions:

Make my family the priority
Keep in regular contact with my friends (both near and far)
Post regularly
Write a decent short story
Write five good poems
Write five bad poems
Purchase flowers for my wife no less than 12 times
Visit my brother
Take my wife out on no less than 12 dates
Take my daughters out on no less than 12 dates
Enjoy the company of my parents regularly
Write a compelling web application in Ruby on Rails
Organize the IT Guild into a formidable collection of personalities and talent
Finish no less than eight novels
Attain Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Attain VMWare Certification
Volunteer my time to a charitable organization
Teach my children how to be kind and generous
Create five original recipes and share them with the world
Exercise regularly

Surely some of these are trite, however, I feel it best to note them all. I cannot avoid what I can see — these are the things I shall do this year.

ad multos annos!

Today I turn thirty.

I weep for my youth.
I weep for my hair.
I weep for my pride.
I digress.

Thirty is not a substantial drama; thirty is a milestone. It is a milestone which I identify, acknowledge, and ignore. I focus on the following during this time of struggle and inevitable reality:

I have a wonderful wife.
I have a wonderful daughter.
I have a wonderful life.

The aforementioned realities are static not transitory. I live a most charmed and blessed life.

My daughter is a wonder.
I arrived late at the fair; a thick and sticky evening, the daylight clung to us all as did the sweet scent of fried food. I was late.
My wife and daughter had already spent the better part of the day at the fair enjoying the sights and sounds and smells; my task was to find them in midst of this Great Minnesota Get Together. I found them west of the Education Building, in the Kidway. One must understand the nature of the Kidway — it is a miniature version of the Midway with all of the colour and intrigue and toothless Carnies.

Grace devoured it; she flitted from attraction to attraction with nary a care for her mother or I. She was curious about these mechanical curiosities — just as she was with the John Deere equipment displayed on Machinery Hill. She was curious about it all: the people, food, and folly. The fair was an enormous, technicolor, undulating dream — she was its avatar. Instead of a sword she carried an ear of corn. Instead of a crown she wore a pink paper hat in the shape of pig’s ears. She thoroughly enjoyed the day and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her, my champion.

I have learned to live with loss; I suppose we all do at some point in our lives. Today marks six years since my brother Chris passed away.

Loss defines.

I remarked to friends and family in the days after he was gone that everything mattered more. Each choice, each action, each in-action: each would be measured against a more perfect ideal and each would require meaning. After six years I have realized this pursuit is fruitless — I cannot find meaning and purpose where there is not any. I cannot make reason from unreasonable circumstances. I can not make possible the impossible. What his loss has taught me, though, is that I can learn to love and accept and prioritize.

I have made my peace, imperfect as it is, with his loss. I have found meaning in those empty and vagabond days after he left. I learned that I can love for an eternity without condition or possession: that I can love an idea, a memory.

I vowed to teach my children about their Uncle — their Uncle Chris. I talk to my daughter Grace about him each night and she now says his name: Unka Kiss. For now, this is enough.

I miss our shared history. I miss my sounding board. I miss my brother.

With all that I miss, I still have love.

As parents we fill many roles: jester, counselor, disciplinarian, teacher, student. I know children mirror what they see and hear, however, this one has me boggled. I have decided that I am boring. My daughter finds me utterly useless at times and resorts to slapping, biting, and walking away as her attention atrophies. I sing and dance and make a fuss — She could care less. In an effort to keep her entertained we resolved to purchase discrete pieces of high cinema: Shrek was our selection this month. In desperate moments we have purchased Barney, Sesame Street, and Disney — we thought that our friends at Pixar would serve us well. Grace talks. She speaks in short burts, hiccups of speech and single syllable words punctuated by ooohhhs and aaahhhs that make sense to her mother and I. She puts together primitive sentences. We fancy her as bright, gifted. We are proud parents. She is capable of making the “Sh” sound but lacks the “r”. One could imagine her uttering “Shek” or “Shk” or something benign. It would seem that the Grace of God has smiled fondly upon me and laughed: my daughter pronounces “Shreck” as “Cock”. Yep . . . cock. She is proud; she is proud of her new word and the confidence that it brings. She finds it necessary to exclaim it to everyone we see. She says it at terribly inconvenient times: church, family gatherings, stores, walking in public. She will look at you sweetly and say, “I want cock!”. It is precise, clear, and unmistakable. We are mortified. So which am I: jester, counselor, disciplinarian, teacher, or student? I am blessed.

We accumulate things — it seems to be a secondary vocation for Americans. I am guilty of retaining things with little purpose, small sentimental items that I promise to someday give appropriate deference. My wife lost her uncle Mike shortly after her grandmother passed. These consecutive losses weigh on the family, each impressing their own terrible weight upon each who loved them. Mike lived in a cold-water, single room flat in Saint Paul and it was the responsibility of my wife’s siblings and their spouses to help empty his apartment. Clearing the detritus accumulated in a lifetime is a formidable task. In surveying his space I found myself asking why far too often: why would one retain an object like this? What meaning could it have had? I searched for answers as we packed his belongings away. I found scraps of paper squirreled away with wisdom and insight scrawled upon them. Mike suffered schizophrenia — his prose was spare, precise, and biting. His choice of language was curious and engaging. I was distracted from the business at hand — searching for details of a hidden man. I connected with his writing, read it closely and deeply. I searched for meaning, purpose to his endeavors. As the time passed that day I began to understand that I would never really know this man, this enigma. He eluded me. Mike is a wonder. He earned accolades and merits and favor, yet what was most important to him was the love and approval of his family. In considering the dense body of work he left behind it is clear that this was his priority — it defined him. In the end this was his lesson to me.