Playing airplane at the park

Do you remember playing "airplane" at the park in Lancaster, Calif.? At the park off of Avenue K, we'd sometimes pretend to be airplanes, holding our arms out at our sides like wings and trying to remain balanced as we walked the curb around the wood chip pit surrounding the climbing rocks.

It was a great exercise for your young body because you learned how to keep your balance.

To make it even more fun, we had to avoid "crashing" into each other! But you didn't want to blink or you might "fall off" the curb into the wood pit!

Of course, sometimes you liked to crash into me just for fun!

Remember going on the swings?

One of my fondest memories of us together is when being able to push you on a swing when we went to parks. Oddly enough, for me it was very relaxing and seeing you have so much fun brought great pleasure to me.

Often you'd pretend you were a fighter pilot or were one of the Rebel pilots trying to shoot down the Death Star. You'd be making all kinds of fire and explosion noises and talking in your mic to the other pilots. I didn't mind it a bit - I did the same thing when I was a little boy!

A fun ritual we always had when you wanted to get down from the swings was that I'd pretend to try to catch your legs but would miss and say "Too high!" Then I'd pretend try to catch your legs again but would miss and say "Too low!" Then I'd connect with your legs but not grip them so you'd slip right through. Finally, as you were now going slow enough, I'd actually grab your legs but pretend that you were dragging me as you swung back, and go "Oh no! I'm going to go airborne!" You always had a big smile on your face and would laugh as I did that.

Your sand toys through the years

As I promote my new book, which contains a poem set at Ventura Pier, I began to think of all of our great visits to that beach and the sand toys you had. You're always in my thoughts, it seems, no matter what I'm doing.

Your first sand toys weren't meant for the beach at all but for the big sand pits at the local playgrounds. The Santa Clarita park near where we lived when you were a year old had a great sand pit to play in around a huge castle-like play equipment. most of the other other parks had good sand pits, too, though of varying quality.

We mostly took our sand toys to the beach, though - lots of shovels, buckets, and a few plastic trucks that we could build roads for. There also was this great colorful toy that you could dump sand into and it would go through a funnel turning a wheel below it.

The picture on this page shows you in March 2012 at Ventura city beach with the Ventura Pier in the background. These were the last sand toys I purchased for you. I had forgot to bring our sand toys because I'd been moving stuff to our new condo, so we stopped at Target and picked up these!

Journal entry from 2009 about carrying you

Today, a journal entry from my autumn 2009 journal, about you becoming too big to be carried.

Yesterday I carried you during the entire Seaside Highland Festival, an act on my part that demonstrates a continued obsession with the pasing of days (Sounds like a great title for a book, doesn't it - "The Passing of Days"?).

On one hand, carrying you was simply a practical matter - you;re getting much too large for the stroller, and unbuckling you from it each time you want to walk or see something is burdensome. But my real motivation is carrying all 30 pounds of you was to savor these last few weeks while I still can. There is something powerfully comforting in having your body tucked against my side, in having your arm wrapped about my shoulder.

You enjoy being carried, of course, likely because you're able to see better when your eyes are at the same level as mine, but I believe you also find being close to me comforting as well. I suppose, practically speaking, that walking all that way is burdensome for you, so that is motivation as well. But even when in a stroller you want tobe held and carried at times, even if you have na unobstructed view before you.

I must admit thanks to all of this carrying, my arms have never been so thick and well-toned since the last time I regularly worked out years ago. But even an athlete must take a break or his workout will backfire. Such pain is nothing, though, compared to what I felt today: At the park, you walked to the playground and then back to the Keep all by yourelf - a bittersweet moment of pride for me as a father... (Oct. 12, 2009)