America's — and The Boy's — game

All of a sudden, The Boy is into baseball. He walks around the house swinging at imaginary pitches, rises early on game days.

We've never been huge baseball fans in our house (despite my wife's attempts to anchor our appreciation of the sport). But however mysterious, it's fun to watch him love the game, especially before all the knowing comes in. He gets to have moments like this:

I may have slowed things down a bit and added a little soundtrack (thank you, Aaron Copeland), but it does feel just like this.

Even Q is slowly coming around, I think.

Q turns 5

NOTE: Sweetest thing not pictured above.

Today Q, our little one (who's never really seemed all that little), turns 5. We will celebrate her in a week or so with a house full of her friends, and therefore with madness. She sleeps now, after a day of wishes, and we wonder what the next year means for and to her.

I'm sure she'll let us know.

Happy birthday, Q. We love you.

Montage

Happy New Year, New Decade, Valentine's Day, Lunar New Year,* and President's Day Eve.** I hope this finds you all well. It's been a little while.

New Year thoughts are things that I get around to eventually. Perhaps I wanted to dip a toe into the fresh year — wait for two New Year's to arrive — before easing into it. The water over here seems fine, and I suppose it's time to get wet.

Going forward usually triggers looking back. Networks love to soften their shows the days up to the ball dropping in Times Square with a string of tape capturing the highlights of the year (a major celebrity death, a shot of soldiers and an explosion, an unknown birth). My wife and I love montages,*** too, so here's a little one from me to you.

First, the blog: Looking over the past year of posts, here are the ones I don't mind recommending:

• "Lessons" (January 29)
• "Bye, 2008, Finally" (January 15)
• "I Lic school" (March 23)
• "Q at 4" (April 22)
• "Who's your favorite princess?" (May 7)
• "Tour and duty" (June 1)
• "The Boy is 6" (June 25)
• "Birthday break" (July 23)
• "The end of a summer that never really was" (September 1)
• "Saints and thanks" (November 22)
• "Believing" (December 24)

Here are a few of my favorite 2009/Year of the Water Buffalo things:

• The photos my wife takes. Most of the headers and pics that appear on this site come from her, such as:

Many of the best she takes flout my No Faces Rule, which means you'll just have to trust me. And then there's:

• The sound of my son reading.
• Q, excited, the day of her gymnastic lessons, and how hard she works to be better.

There is more than this, of course; we always forget more than we remember. But the more I thought about it, about what I found myself drawn to in the year that's just passed, I lingered not on moments but on changes. My son reads now, and he will more or less forever; the world is now a named place for him. Q has found what passion and strength can do for her, and in so doing has found an exemplar of self-perfection that will remain with her long after she's stepped down from the beam and let loose of the bar. And my lovely wife will (among a vast many other things) continue to see us for us better than we can on our own.

But perhaps the change I've enjoyed most of all is the one that can't last. The job and career shifts I've had this year have given me two full days a week with Q and The Boy. I've hatched schemes with dolls and made cookies in the afternoon. I've built LEGO ships and lobbed balls when I would have been dead on the train. Eventually, however, there will be new and more work (there already is), more school, more after school.

This I will take as a moment and remember it just as it is.

Happy New Everything, all.

_______________________

*And DO NOT CALL IT CHINESE NEW YEAR. We will correct you—in school, at work, even in the elevator.

**Okay, so that's not a real thing. But you do have to admit that these few days is quite the convergence of holidays.

***Perhaps it was all of those 80's films during our formative years. Kids these days are, I think, undernourished montage-wise. Have they seen this? HAVE THEY?

Believing

We spent the day touring our own city, first adoring the skaters etching Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library, then up Fifth Ave. past the Saks windows to Rockefeller Center and the giant tree and still more skaters. The cold overtook the kids, and we headed east towards Grand Central, a snack, and the subway home.

On the way, just across Fifth, my lovely wife suggested we warm and rest ourselves for just a moment in St. Patrick's Cathedral. We haven't gone to church all that much, and Q and The Boy found themselves awed by the space, just like they're supposed to. (Q said, "I wonder who could touch the ceiling!") We picked a pew, and watched hundreds of people flow in and out. "They have books here," The Boy said. Q had just made a stained-glass-type artwork in school, and she was particularly drawn to the windows. "The windows are beautiful," I whispered to her. "They tell stories" — stories that I don't remember probably as well as I should.

Q and The Boy sleep now; we finish wrapping the last of their gifts. I don't think I believe much in divinities any more, and perhaps never did. I do, though, believe in belief. Watching those lighting candles in transepts for the loved or carting boxes under the constellations in Grand Central or the kids struggling to wait for a myth, I see what believing can do. For me, that is the greater wonder.

Happy Holidays, all.

Saints and thanks

October came to the door costumed and asking for candy, and it seems that I wasn't all that ready. School started, and Q and The Boy held our hands across the streets and rode on our shoulders to their new classrooms. Then we started to make those trips in long sleeves, then jackets, and then the classrooms weren't new. We've even unhangered the heavy coats a few times, left little of our faces for the wind to bother. I went back to work, part-time, here in the city, started over if not upward. And there were lessons in tennis and gymnastics and ballet and chess (which I'll no doubt have something to say about all of that at some point). We gained an hour. Somehow I lost a month.

Much happened, of course. We planned and re-planned costumes: Q went as the witch Kiki from the Miyazaki movie Kiki's Delivery Service, and she was a ringer for the role. The Boy, after no small amount of anguish, settled upon a traditional skeleton with a mask scary enough to make him lift it at the first mirror — just to check, I suppose, that he was still flesh under that menacing bone. The old costumes — like the old fears — usually prove the best. I'd say he made all those inevitable Jedis jealous.

We also fetched pumpkins and cut heads, and the day we did it rained cold. We first went out to a nearby restaurant to meet some old friends in town for the morning, and my lovely wife stayed and caught up while the kids and I went to a local market. We looked over the pumpkins while under our umbrellas. Q and The Boy each went with squat and round, while I picked an especially thick-stemmed one. The thirty pounds of pumpkin didn't go home easily, but we made it.

We've always loved Halloween, as most kids and parents do, and fall in New York tends to remind us why we put up with this city. But October is a tough month now, one I found myself wanting to let lie unwrapped in the bottom of my trick bag. I like to pretend, and I don't mind the company of ghosts. But sometimes it's enough to work the carving knife, to clear seeds and pulp, to make room for a candle.

With October behind us, here's to the month of saints and the week of thanks.