SneezingCow.com

Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

Posts Tagged ‘parent’

Motivational Shrieker

“You can’t WISH it to happen, you have to MAKE it happen.” Me, to my five-year-old, on the subject of getting your socks on. Finally those old Tony Robbins cassettes are paying off.

Baby Daddy

She’s five years old now, and headed for kindergarten. This photo was taken shortly after the home birth I described in Coop. She loved to sleep like this. And that’s what I’ll tell social services when they call.

Tall Versus Small

The five-year old this morning: “Big people can’t judge little people.” She offered this not as a tantrum-fueled retort but rather as a thoughtful observation, so I just said “Hmm…” and shelved the Life is Filled With Certain Disappointments speech for later.

Dancing With My Daughter

In honor(?) of the recent heat, an excerpt from the new book (due out August 21, but happily available for pre-order right here):

The heat is still oppressive, and Jane asks me to fill her wading pool. “How about if we go swimming in Cotter Creek?” I ask. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she says, one pogo per exclamation point. I retrieve the scythe from the oat stubble, hang it from the granary rafters, and we head for the house to change into our swimming suits.

We have access to the creek through the property of some friends a short drive down the road. They’re not home, and all is quiet as we park the car and I unbuckle Jane from her seat. We make our way around behind the house and down a footpath through the trees and into a patch of canary grass taller than my head. Forcing my way through the grass toward the gurgling sound of the creek, I find a spot where a log projects out over a sandbar and we step into the shallows. “Huh, huh, huh!” Jane says at the first cold shock of the water on her feet, but she acclimates quickly, stomping and splashing. The creek is barely ten feet wide, but the current is swift and the sand bar drops off darkly, so I grip her hand at all times. “Let’s dance and twirl, Dad!” she says, and I know from our many living room ballet sessions that what she really wants me to do is sweep her in wide circles so her feet skim in and out of the water. Then I wade off into a belly-deep hole and swish her back and forth while she giggles and giggles. Then we slosh back up to the sandbar and dance, she rising on her tippy-toes and fanning her fingers, me stomping around white-leggedly.

We take a break then, sitting side by side on the log. The stream is deeply canopied here, the scorching day shut out, the air mud-cool. Jane leans in tight and shivers against me, elbows tucked to the sides of her belly, wrists crossed over her chest, teeth chattering. Now the mosquitoes show, whining around our ears and settling on our bare shoulders, where I feel the first itchy-sweet bite. But she doesn’t want to go just yet. She just wants to sit there huddled next to her old dad, and I can’t find it in me to budge. The love I feel is nearly overcoming, and as always in these moments the joy is crowded by a breathless realization of how fleeting this moment is, a desperate desire to burn it deep in some crease of the brain so that you might call upon it even as you let go this world.

It is no good to overthink these things and I am spared the sentimental whirlpool when I feel a hard lump between my butt and the log and realize it is my cell phone. “Rattafrat!” I say, managing to maintain a G-rating.

Jane straightens. “What, Daddy?”

“I got my cell phone wet!”

She shakes her head with her eyebrows raised. “Well that’s a problem.”

The skeeters are really digging in now. I wrap Jane tight in a towel and carry her up the path. When we reach the yard, she asks me to put her down. When her feet touch the ground she runs up the lawn and around the house toward the car, and in a beautiful bit of mangled syntax, hollers back over her shoulder, “I will win you, Daddy! I will win you!”

Visiting Tom c. 2012, HarperCollins Publishing

Infestation of Cute

Infestation of CuteHad a companion in the office this morning. She’s taking a nap now, but left some of her friends behind. I am told that among this herd are Aurora Dawn, MoonPlanet, DaisyPink and some other names I didn’t catch but go good with purple braided tails and over-sized blue eyes. I look over at that chair, and it’s like I popped mushrooms.

Missing from photo: StarBottom the purple bear, she’s helping with the nap.

 

A Little Taste of the Book

My next book (no title yet, earliest it will be out is August 2012) is much more focused on a man named Tom than it is on me or my family. But anyone who read Truck knows I have a soft spot for pickup trucks and girls, so here’s an excerpt from the current draft in which I am accompanied by my then 3-year-old, who is resolutely sucking her thumb as we hammer down the backroads:

Jane and I are on our way to visit Tom Hartwig. He’s going to cut and bend some steel for me. Normally the truck would be rolling on blacktop, but crews are resurfacing and reshaping the curves along this stretch of county road, so they have chomped and removed the asphalt. Gravel rattles in the wheel wells, and a whorl of dust spins from beneath the back bumper to drift in our wake. It’s good to drive a dirt road, especially in a pickup truck. You get a whole different feel coming up through the wheel. There’s a little give, a little float to the curves. You feel like maybe life is more liveable when everything doesn’t have to be all double-yellow perfect. Given time and good spirits in the company of a child I believe you should converse with that child, but right now Jane’s thumb is well-planted and furthermore I can cultivate in her worse habits than the love of watching farm fields slide past an open truck window to the tune of yesteryear’s country music legends, so I punch the radio button and dial up Moose Country 106.7. I do my best to raise my children right, but some lessons are best imparted by ladies, specifically among them Patsy, Tammy, Loretta, and even – especially – Dolly.

Ongoing Education of Dad

(All scenes starring one … umm … independently-predisposed very-nearly four-year-old.)

1. A quote, as Mom leaves the driveway on an errand and very-nearly four-year-old is wailing and flailing: “But Mom makes me happier than you do!”

2. A lesson, precipitated by a particularly snappy comeback delivered by the very-nearly four-year-old whilst the family was motoring: If you decide to make good on the ol’ “Don’t make me pull over!” threat, do be sure that after you make your dramatic move to the shoulder of the road but before you leap out and attempt to even-more-dramatically sweep the side door open, that you hit the the master unlock button. When you yank on that handle and it’s locked, the whole production really loses some steam, plus there the whole issue of the dislocated shoulder.

3. Finally, if, as the waiter at the Indian restaurant delivers a basket of piping hot naan bread, the very-nearly four-year-old jumps up and down clapping her hands in joy and says, “Yaaayyy! LEFSE!“ well then, you know somewhere Mrs. Carlson is smiling.