Outside my window
a varied thrush, dressed
for upland migration,
beckons. I step onto the porch,
hear a spotted towhee as it shuffles the ground;
note movement in the red stem dogwood—
someone with white eye streak, but not
a nuthatch. Now a strange
warbling from those cedars—
a traveler, not yet
revealed.

I have learned many things in varied realms from my daughter.  Of course, she serves as my tech advisor and is the webmistress of this blog.  She is, by some reckonings, a “cultural creative/early adapter.”  If the Zeitgeist has waves, Ariel somehow manages to surf the big forward curl.  I’d long noticed and forgiven her tendency to plug into Internet ethers several times each hour.  After all, it could be very useful (see Reality Check under 2007 archives).  But I wasn’t surprised when she decided the time had come to sign off a night a week.  Instantly the press picked up on this (she’s well connected to media), and once again she landed precisely in the cultural pocket.  

I was, myself, clicking away, mind off in virtual gabfests,  when the above mentioned thrush said Hey!

Ariel and her husband, Dre, and I were backpacking in Teannaway River country last summer, just east of the Cascade crest. It was pouring on the Washington coast, and this was our dependably drier fallback location. We were climbing an old favorite of mine, the ridge above Bean Creek Basin, when the lovely stickseed, not yet identified, waved hello.

I found one of the guilty pleasures of fatherhood to be, for a time, considered by my daughter as omniscient, a virtual living Wikipedia. This can (and should) be true only for a while. All too soon, and with any luck at all, the scale tips. My daughter the culture maven, has come to know a great deal about a great deal. She is also genetically disposed to be a truly accomplished bullshitter, which makes her even more formidable. So now our word play is sometimes like a good game of chess with a respected opponent, but more often is simply an appreciative tasting of words like sips of good wines.

(No. 60 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

It’s odd, being single at my age. Full of all kinds of learnings, thanks to the insights of age. But there are those times like the one described here. Meanwhile, I am a slow adapter to technology. My daughter, like so many her age and younger, is a relatively early adapter. So, when her message showed up, I was delighted but clueless.

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

Upon reflection, we were totally ready for Ariel to join us at this unexpected moment. The entire week-long cross country backpacking trip was filled with magical portents of the gift that had arrived. There was the amazing encounter with a mountain goat, both of us stark naked. There were prophetic dreams. On and on. “Bistort” (the American Bistort, nicknamed the “bottlebrush flower”) became the future Ariel’s en utero name.

We promised to take Ariel into this country when she turned 18–and, in 1993, the three of us did just that.

Ariel, a year and a half old,
wrapped in lambskin
she calls Fuzzy,
speaks out loud to no one,

The clouds are the mountain’s
Fuzzy.

(No. 88 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Mt. Townsend is the closest of the Olympics peaks from my home on Bainbridge Island. I still climb it a time or two a year. One long ago summer day (in 1976), my wife, still-new daughter and I, and a friend/hired hand took a rare break from the log home building project on which we were largely focused. Daughter Ariel (now the webmaster of this site) still fit into her Snugli pack. Her baby care lambskin, then the hottest thing on the hip baby market (but now carrying warnings of SIDS risk if used before the baby can perform the Cobra asana), was our assurance that Air would be fine. I still have a last few square inches of that old lambskin in a file drawer.

I’ve never forgotten Ariel’s striking metaphor, probably an early indicator of the writer she turned out to be.

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

One night, when it was time,
we placed Air’s homemade
super kiss bookmark at
chapter’s end.

She climbed up to her bed
built over drawers and low closet.
A guardian angel looked down
from the low ceiling,
and glow-in-the-dark stars absorbed light
for their upcoming performance.

I nestled my face in her neck, breathed her scent,
nibbled a kiss good night.
Now she would announce
her last observations on the day.

My teacher says we have to be careful
about grownups. Lots of times that
even means grownups in our family.

Our eyes met.
The dark grew close.
Yes, Ariel, that’s right. But you can
trust me to care for you all the days
of your life.

Twenty years later,
Ariel can’t remember this exchange.

And that is how one night
she and I saved
our world for
good.

This poem, about a significant event that happened with my daughter twenty years ago, speaks for itself, I think. I’d been meaning to write it for a long time. Finally, along came an event that prompted me to do so. I was asked to read at the local library as part of an event (organized by my friend, Neil Baker) honoring the work of William Stafford. Pick a favorite Stafford poem and one of my own, was the request. “Tucking in Ariel” is my selection. Here (of my many favorites) is my Stafford selection:

With Kit, Age 7, At The Beach

We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

“How far could you swim, Daddy,
in such a storm?”
“As far as was needed,” I said,
and as I talked, I swam.

Damn. William Stafford. Robert Bly once said this is one of the greatest poems about parenting ever written. And Michael Meade wrote of it, “The child needs to hear an emotional truth spoken…how far does my father’s heart reach out into the world?…Her question pulls him into the wave-torn sea. In that moment he knows the answer in his heart: As far as was needed. The blessing is partly in the father’s capacity to hear the real question, partly in the heart-willingness of the answer.”

At meadow’s edge my infant daughter
sturdily answers the woodland voice,
La-a-a-a-ahh; alaah!
Again and again.

Soundless tears stream,
my constricting fears
of fatherhood
released.

(Number 4 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

I confess that thirty-two years of living and nine months of preparation did not sufficiently ready me for fatherhood. Fatherhood presented major challenges, even more than that of building a log home by hand, which was (for an academic) an experience of barely controlled terror. But love had wit to win as experiences such as the one portrayed here began to soften my fears. It took a while, for I’ve always been a slow learner of the big lessons. But the log home still stands tall, and the daughter even taller.

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

This place is more alive
than I’d known!

Years later, I can still feel the combination of being a watchful parent, while at the same time absorbing the sense of utter mystery present in childrens’ fantastical explorations of “good and evil.”

The bike trail meanders
through jugglers and rollerbladers,
musicians and hustlers.
Drainage canals host gulls that laugh,
and flowers bloom among the beach grasses.
Pumping my rented fat tire bike,
I watch my daughter ride ahead.
Taking a deep breath of the
sunshine-and-smiles breeze,
I let my shoulders fall.

Relaxed.

(No. 40 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)