Be sure to click through and hover to read the notes. He was very specific in his design.

'...When they stop the children are instantly scrambling over the tailgate.

Hannah gets out. "Listen! I want you both to mind now, and be good."

"We will," Margaret says.

"Mattie, did you hear me?"

"Yes."

Her warnings to Mattie always leave her with the impression that she has just spoken to a squirrel. She will take care of him when he needs it, which he will.'

And before I read the next sentence, I turned to Ian, nestled in the crook of my arm, and asked, 'What do you think it was? What's the world's oldest living thing?'

He squinted and thought for only a moment. 'A tree?'

I'd asked the question assuming that he'd been following the book, following the words. 'Tree' is an easy one, and apparently my assumption had been correct. Except, for some reason, I asked, 'Why?'

'Because they keep growing.'

We'd talked, ever so briefly, about plants during a walk on Saturday. How they keep growing. Ian made the point that some plants can't grow [upward], so they use other things to grow, like telephone poles.

And in those few seconds, Ian had reasoned that because plants keep growing, and because trees are the biggest plants, they must be the world's oldest living thing.

I didn't speak, didn't know how to respond. I felt like Creb, in awe when he realizes that Ayla can count higher than ten. There I was, banging rocks together to hear the pretty noise, while Ian was using them to build a house.

I felt wonderfully surpassed. Laughing and coughing, waving the cloud of dust from my face as I watch my son race into the distance and pause, waiting for me to follow.

On the other hand, we're readers. We make weekly trips to the library. Ian has his own library card. I'm fairly sure the librarians are plotting to ambush me in Non-Fiction if I request just one more book by Alastair Reynolds.

We don't have cable and don't watch a lot of movies. Ian and I occasionally bond around Guitar Hero or Mario Kart. Last week we played Duck Hunt.

If this kid doesn't start reading, what the heck is he going to do around here?

I've been busy at work lately, and the other day worked off my frustration by putting my son in a head-lock. He returned the favor by putting my nose in his eye. It wasn't an accidental poke in the pupil or schnoz in the sclera. He put his hands to my face, and gently but firmly pulled me toward him until my nose was resting in the corner of his eye. Again and again and again.

Strange.

And as my fingers played along his ribs and under his armpits, I asked Kelly, 'Wanna go out for I-C-E C-R-E-A-M?'

Mid-squeal, Ian raised his head. 'Ice cream?'

Stink. Er.

'Mommy, do you want green tea?'

'Do you have any iced tea?'

'No. But I can make it for you!' Another cup joined the ranks.

'Daddy, do you want some green tea? Or iced tea? It doesn't cost anything!'

'Wow, you're serving free tea?'

'Well,' he shrugged, 'sometimes I have to charge something because my lawyer says so.' I tried the green tea.

Later, Ian's bubbles thinning, I tried the iced tea. 'This is pretty good. Do you have any iced green tea?'

'Not today, but I'll make some for you tomorrow.'

'How much will it cost?'

'It's free!'

'I thought you said your lawyer told you to charge something for it.'

He smiled and proclaimed, 'He died!'

And I'm passing the savings on to you!

Suddenly, with an over-zealous flourish, the tip of the pencil strayed from bulletin to Proverbs and a small, gray arc ran through verses four, five, and six. He gasped and his hand froze. His eyes were trembling as he looked at me with fear, horrified at his desecration.

God isn't much for lightning bolts, but Ian wouldn't have been surprised.

I managed not to laugh. I whispered into his ear, 'It's okay, honey. You didn't do it on purpose.'

He retreated to Kelly's side. He shook his head and whispered, 'It's the Word of God.'

I explained that the Word of God is more than a book, and is stronger than a pencil. That he didn't write through the Word, only across a page.

He didn't buy it, and buried himself further into Mommy's arms.

As the sun sets on the gulf, tiny mollusks no bigger than a fingernail line the shore. They rise from the sand with each passing wave, popping to the surface in large groups to feed. They pebble the beach, turning the shoreline into a shifting cobbled path.

Just as quickly they bury themselves, hiding from sandpipers and the pounding of waterlogged feet. They shimmy and slip beneath the sand like dolphin fins beneath the waves. I don't know how they do it, but I explained to Ian that they probably vibrate too quickly to see, shifting the grains of sand around them like a blanket.

Ian would constantly fall behind. He looked for shells and fish, watched sand fleas dart between his toes and scatter from his footprints. He squatted with his hands on his knees and kept his face inches from the water, which told us just how far he'd come in his battle with the ocean.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw him kneeling, his fingers digging in the sand. He ran toward us, heralded by the patter of his feet on the wet sand and holding something between his thumb and forefinger. He waved his hand in the air.

'Daddy, I think this one's dead,' and showed me the small, closed shell he'd found. 'It doesn't...it won't...,' and he squatted and wiggled his bottom, an impromptu Chicken Dance in the waves of Madeira Beach, '...do that! Like that!'

He tossed the shell into the sea and ran back to his interrupted search, bookmarked by eroding footprints.

The cats are chasing each other or he's misplaced a book or I've dropped something. Those silly cats, my silly self, that silly Daddy. He gives his head a slight shake and lifts his hands. It's a laugh that says, 'Whaddaya gonna do?'

Ian turned five years old on Friday.

Yesterday, at the park, I asked him if he wanted to play at the playground or explore more of the park. 'We can do whatever you want, Daddy.'

At breakfast, Kelly sighed and shook her head over too many pancakes. 'Whew. I'm slowing down.' Ian paused with his fork and replied, 'Not I.'

He rubs my back when I have a headache and scratches it while we're watching TV. He takes deep breaths and levels his voice when he's angry, and tells me that I'm his favorite Daddy. 'But, kiddo, I'm you're only Daddy.' But, he tells me, I'm not the only Daddy he knows, that Sam and Olivia and his other friends have Daddies.

And that, of all of them, I'm his favorite.

Sprinkled throughout the garden are forty 'larger-than-life mosaic sculptures' adorned with glass beads, pebbles, mirrored fragments, and ceramic tiles. All are beautiful, and kids are welcome to climb on, up, and through some of them:

'Fantastic animals fill Niki's work. She felt the part of her that stayed a child was the artist, and loved to see children playing on her sculptures.'

Read more about Niki's work →

In my opinion, the centerpiece of this exhibition is the six-ton, fifteen-foot tall La Cabeza, a grinning skull covered in golden tiles with teeth as big as your head.

There's something wonderful about seeing your son grinning from inside a grinning skull. In a way that's neither psychotic nor morbid.

 

Depending upon the perceived level of annoyance and/or inconvenience, his whining covers the spectrum from a dejected 'Aww!' to a piercing, face-crumpling, foot-stomping cry that sometimes makes me thankful we don't own a gun.

As a father, I'm supposed to be patient and understanding. I'm expected to remember that he's only four or that he's missed his nap or had a long day. An expanding list of variables meant to temper my response to his behavior.

Which is a wonderful theory, and has helped me learn (some) patience. But sometimes the kid is wrong.

Last week Ian was in the car, holding a balloon and complaining that it was round. Or something. (When I get a flu shot I don't notice what's in the syringe.) He was whining, clutching the balloon and making that awful, squeaky sound.

Kelly said from the side of her mouth, 'Wouldn't it be great if the balloon popped?'

This morning Ian moved quietly into avant-garde and wrote his name above a sad face he'd drawn on his dry-erase board. He held it in front of his chest and looked at me, pleadingly, saying nothing, before lowering his head. A lost puppy who needs a loving home.

I kissed his cheek, opened the door, and walked into the rain.