Maddox has been sick pretty much all week. He's had that ugly cough for a while, and a runny nose; and then, a few days ago, blood seeping out of his ear. Not much fever, though, so I wasn't particularly worried. As I write that, I realize that you might wonder exactly what sort of secretions could actually pique my parental concern, if ear-blood (ear-blood!) isn't up to the task. You might wonder also whether to characterize me simply as "optimistic," or whether a better word would be "negligent" or "nuts." But we're getting off topic here. Besides, Quincy's here, and she decided to take him to a doctor, just to make sure.
Doctors are like bakeries here, in that there are several of them, but never all open for business at once. We've been told that they – bakeries and doctors alike – maintain some sort of strategically staggered schedule to ensure the greatest possible coverage of the public need for fresh bread and occasional health care. Still, it's a bit of a crap-shoot predicting exactly which one might be open on any particular day or time. As you might imagine, I was happy to let Quincy take charge the situation, since she's so much more sensible than I about things like this (see ear-blood, above). Anyway, Maddox is fine. He's taking some antibiotics and he spent a few days at home.
Jasper was home from school on Wednesday too. Not because she was sick, but because there's never any school on Wednesdays here. So while Maddox fell asleep after lunch (listening, for a change, to something other than Neil Young; he's been especially into Neil's jammin' electric early work with Crazy Horse – Down by the River, Cowgirl in the Sand, that kind of stuff), Jasper and I went for a walk to the waterfall.
It's a shockingly lovely waterfall – higher and louder and more impressive than I'd expected – and it's just a short walk through the forest at the edge of town.
Before we reached the waterfall though, we prowled through the overgrown remains of a ruined building (a long-abandoned mill maybe) that appeared suddenly in the middle of the woods across the stream. We first had to traverse a slippery tree-branch that had fortuitously fallen across the torrent, and then scramble through the thorny underbrush. And then the crumbling walls of the ruins themselves loomed above us like something you'd expect to find in a Cambodian jungle somewhere, like something out of Apocalypse Now or Tomb Raider, perhaps, only without any Marlon Brando or Angelina Jolie to liven things up. Although maybe this is a good time to mention that, actually, if we'd gone for a longer walk through these same woods, we might've substantially increased our odds of running into Angelina Jolie for real. Turns out that she and her pretty-boy husband rent a wine chateau in the neighboring village. It's the same chateau in which Pink Floyd, many years ago, recorded part of The Wall.
Unlike me, Jasper wasn't pondering pop-cultural references or over-wrought rock-operas about metaphorical walls. She was focused entirely on the real-life crumbling rocky walls in front of us – walls covered in wrist-thick vines that offered an irresistible temptation to climb. So she and I spent a good long time prowling through the derelict structure with its roof long gone and a thicket of trees grown up inside and an uneven earthy floor that gave way, in several places, to crevasses plunging down to a dark and mysterious cellar deep below.
I was reminded of those times when I was Jasper's age and my brother Eric and I roamed the wooded hills of Vermont. There was nothing more thrilling than the discovery, deep within the forest, of some junk-pile of old tin cans and wagon parts overgrown with wild blackberries, or some ancient automobile with a birch tree grown up where its engine used to be. Or that time when I was 11 and we were living in Pakistan. It was the Islamic Summit of 1974, and emirs and prime ministers from all over the Muslim world were in Lahore and security was super-tight, and a friend and I spent a day wandering past police lines and military barricades, peering with a homemade periscope into compounds patrolled by men with machine guns. It's the sort of thing I'd never do as a grown-up. But kids, you know, always think that they can get away with anything.
Okay, I admit it: As much as I want to encourage my own kids to experience the unmatched excitement of exploration, that wasn't the only reason that Jasper and I were skulking around these ruins. I was indulging my own inner Indiana Jones as well.
I also saw it also as an opportunity to demonstrate that, even though Maddox's ear-blood barely registers on my parental radar screen, I can sometimes be a responsible dad. Like last year when I showed Jasper how to use a magnifying glass to start a fire. "Responsible?" you scoff. "Isn't that just Mark being an incurable pyromaniac?" No. Hear me out. Sure, I'm a bit of a firebug. But all kids are too. So it's not a bad thing to offer a little grown-up instruction on how to indulge those dangerous tendencies in a semi-safe manner. On Wednesday, for instance, I made a point to tell Jasper that no matter how much fun it was to do what we were doing, it's the sort of thing that's best not to do alone.
"Imagine if these vines broke and I fell," I said. "Or imagine if this floor gave way suddenly, plunging me down into that dark pit below. I'm be a lot better off with you here to help me out."
"Yeah," she said. "And you should probably always carry a cell phone too."
Smart-alecky kid. Me carry a cell phone? I'm certainly open to serious suggestions, but come on! A cell phone? Really? That's just nuts.
Doctors are like bakeries here, in that there are several of them, but never all open for business at once. We've been told that they – bakeries and doctors alike – maintain some sort of strategically staggered schedule to ensure the greatest possible coverage of the public need for fresh bread and occasional health care. Still, it's a bit of a crap-shoot predicting exactly which one might be open on any particular day or time. As you might imagine, I was happy to let Quincy take charge the situation, since she's so much more sensible than I about things like this (see ear-blood, above). Anyway, Maddox is fine. He's taking some antibiotics and he spent a few days at home.
Jasper was home from school on Wednesday too. Not because she was sick, but because there's never any school on Wednesdays here. So while Maddox fell asleep after lunch (listening, for a change, to something other than Neil Young; he's been especially into Neil's jammin' electric early work with Crazy Horse – Down by the River, Cowgirl in the Sand, that kind of stuff), Jasper and I went for a walk to the waterfall.
It's a shockingly lovely waterfall – higher and louder and more impressive than I'd expected – and it's just a short walk through the forest at the edge of town.
Before we reached the waterfall though, we prowled through the overgrown remains of a ruined building (a long-abandoned mill maybe) that appeared suddenly in the middle of the woods across the stream. We first had to traverse a slippery tree-branch that had fortuitously fallen across the torrent, and then scramble through the thorny underbrush. And then the crumbling walls of the ruins themselves loomed above us like something you'd expect to find in a Cambodian jungle somewhere, like something out of Apocalypse Now or Tomb Raider, perhaps, only without any Marlon Brando or Angelina Jolie to liven things up. Although maybe this is a good time to mention that, actually, if we'd gone for a longer walk through these same woods, we might've substantially increased our odds of running into Angelina Jolie for real. Turns out that she and her pretty-boy husband rent a wine chateau in the neighboring village. It's the same chateau in which Pink Floyd, many years ago, recorded part of The Wall.
Unlike me, Jasper wasn't pondering pop-cultural references or over-wrought rock-operas about metaphorical walls. She was focused entirely on the real-life crumbling rocky walls in front of us – walls covered in wrist-thick vines that offered an irresistible temptation to climb. So she and I spent a good long time prowling through the derelict structure with its roof long gone and a thicket of trees grown up inside and an uneven earthy floor that gave way, in several places, to crevasses plunging down to a dark and mysterious cellar deep below.
I was reminded of those times when I was Jasper's age and my brother Eric and I roamed the wooded hills of Vermont. There was nothing more thrilling than the discovery, deep within the forest, of some junk-pile of old tin cans and wagon parts overgrown with wild blackberries, or some ancient automobile with a birch tree grown up where its engine used to be. Or that time when I was 11 and we were living in Pakistan. It was the Islamic Summit of 1974, and emirs and prime ministers from all over the Muslim world were in Lahore and security was super-tight, and a friend and I spent a day wandering past police lines and military barricades, peering with a homemade periscope into compounds patrolled by men with machine guns. It's the sort of thing I'd never do as a grown-up. But kids, you know, always think that they can get away with anything.
Okay, I admit it: As much as I want to encourage my own kids to experience the unmatched excitement of exploration, that wasn't the only reason that Jasper and I were skulking around these ruins. I was indulging my own inner Indiana Jones as well.
I also saw it also as an opportunity to demonstrate that, even though Maddox's ear-blood barely registers on my parental radar screen, I can sometimes be a responsible dad. Like last year when I showed Jasper how to use a magnifying glass to start a fire. "Responsible?" you scoff. "Isn't that just Mark being an incurable pyromaniac?" No. Hear me out. Sure, I'm a bit of a firebug. But all kids are too. So it's not a bad thing to offer a little grown-up instruction on how to indulge those dangerous tendencies in a semi-safe manner. On Wednesday, for instance, I made a point to tell Jasper that no matter how much fun it was to do what we were doing, it's the sort of thing that's best not to do alone.
"Imagine if these vines broke and I fell," I said. "Or imagine if this floor gave way suddenly, plunging me down into that dark pit below. I'm be a lot better off with you here to help me out."
"Yeah," she said. "And you should probably always carry a cell phone too."
Smart-alecky kid. Me carry a cell phone? I'm certainly open to serious suggestions, but come on! A cell phone? Really? That's just nuts.
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