Havana's Christmas Roots

wrote this for Ilyana and Havana

It was Christmas Day 1997 and I was driving a luxury Lincoln Sedan through the dense fog of the Central Valley in rural California. I neared my face to the windshield as if it would help my eyes better penetrate the wall of greyness that hid everything but the road.

Two tall palm trees. Two tall palm trees. I kept looking down to check the scribbled directions I’d been given. Seeing the pair of palm trees, I veered off the country road and onto a fenced property. The sandy dirt under my tires, bumpily I pulled up to the disheveled old farm house. Seeing my lights approach, the family had come out to greet me.

It was a trip with some uncertainty hanging over it. I had met Karen a couple of times before, but I'd decided to come to Fresno to ask her out. To ask out the woman who would some day be the mother of our children.

In many a sense, there are no beginnings to things. Just as there are no ends. But this is the closest to the beginning of Havana’s history. A child’s history is a shared history and this is where that shared history begins.

Fourteen years ago Havana was just a city in Cuba. Nothing more. Karen and I had not shared a room on a remote Greek island. We'd not been up all night at the ER. We'd not cooked or cleaned house together. We'd not held hands. We had met and we had flirted.

I knew all three of Karen’s sisters before I’d even met Karen. I was close friends with her younger sister's husband, Pierre. Pierre and I had conspired to get me invited to the Harper family gathering at Christmas in Fresno.

I’d met Karen at a couple of times at house parties hosted by her older sister, Ann Marie. On the last occasion, we’d managed to hang out long enough that I felt drawn to get to know Karen better.

I had prepped for this trip. Pierre was in on the plan, his wife Monica, perhaps less enthusiastically. I was not shy in sharing my intention to ask Karen out, and if word leaked to her directly, all the better. I hired a large black Lincoln Continental: big enough for all four Harper sisters, and Pierre and I, to go bar-hopping as one group.

While in line for drinks I shared my plans with Karen's other sister Paula, with whom I am closest today, and she said she'd let the other sisters give Karen and I some time together. Finally late in the evening in a dingy night club somewhere in Fresno's Tower District, we found ourselves alone at last. Sitting closely to speak above the music at a small table, the intimacy of the moment was just right.

I looked at Karen. She was very attractive, politically conscious, insightful, and smarter than me.

So I took the leap. Past small talk, past opines and joking and nonsense and innuendos. I asked Karen out on a date. A real date.

Well, not exactly. I shaped the question in the most general way possible, asking her instead, to let me know what my chances were of receiving a positive response if I were to ask her out. That broad approach left me room for a fairly dignified retreat. But that wasn’t necessary.

Driving back to the bay area that weekend, I cranked up the radio, opened the windows wide and watched the fog rise and fade away, stepping aside for the warmth of the late morning sun.

The three-legged feline the girls want us to adopt for Xmas

After a 2-day trial period we handed back our young kitten to its original owner for the holiday weekend. On Monday we decide if we want to keep this cat that generally pulls itself around by its front legs. It was probably in a car accident, it's one hind leg so badly shattered it was amputated. It's other back leg is only partly able.
On Christmas day one of the girls presents will include a wrapped photograph of the wee feline with the words: yes, we can.

BIrthday Pinatas 2007-2011

Occupying Havana

It’s not the same old suspects. It’s not a bunch of tired lefties. It’s the new movement. It has its own energy, its own songs, its own language. And unlike protests of the past it has captured Havana’s imagination.

Now instead of her dragging us away from the protest, it’s us dragging her away.

The large encampment at Oscar Grant Plaza below Oakland’s ornate City Hall was like some kind of earthy, disheveled Disney Land for her. We’d walk through the scores of tents, over the wooden sidewalk to the mass kitchen, the library, the tech center, the supply center, the girls were in awe. “It’s like a whole village” Havana remarked as she longingly stared at the youth busy about their days in Occupy Oakland.

Havana has undoubtedly been politicized by her school being closed. While 5-year old Ilyana who had only just begun Kindergarten to hear her school was closing and is somewhat disoriented by the process, Havana is fighting mad.

On the day after the School Board announced its final decision to ignore parents, children and teachers and close 5 Oakland schools, Karen sat the girls down at breakfast to let them know we’d lost this fight. Havana who had doodled through the previous nights Board meeting, did not miss a thing. During the evening she had even asked me for the names of Board members.

On that next morning when Karen had sat the girls down for the bad news, Havana bounced up in her chair. “Well we need to have a flier for school today! A flier with all the pictures of the School Board on it. With boos next to the ones that voted to close our schools and yays next to the others,” she paused and then emphasized, “I need the flier to give out at recess.”

Bloody hell. . . .

Bloody hell.

Karen told me this story over cell phone while I was pounding nails at work at 7am. I was initially shocked and then I felt so happy, that it felt like something big rising in my chest that I couldn’t control.

And then yesterday the girls and I put on our Maxwell Park Elementary t-shirts, while their mom worked, and we marched with Occupy to another school on the closure hit-list. About 3-5,000 people marched by five big billion-dollar banks where we announced each banks’ profits and tax evasion numbers. It made the School District’s savings from closing schools look like pocket change.

About 10 of us collected hundreds of petition signatures for the Recall of the 5 School Board members. They’d voted to close schools so that the rich can stay tax-free and our wars can be fully funded.

Towards the end of the march Havana wanted to be at the front and wee Ily was so tired I had to put her up on my shoulders.

At Lakeview Elementary where thousands amassed, I spoke on the back of the Occupy truck with 3 other good comrades: two parents from Lakeview and Mike from Santa Fe.

I spoke about how our school had been a foundation of our neighborhood for 85 years and how many kids are the 3rd generation to go to our great school. I talked of the wrong direction the country is heading in, the need to kick out all those politicians that put money before people and the need to end the dictatorship that big business holds over this country.


I concluded by talking about the emotional impact of school closures. “What do we tell our children when they walk past the schools they were evicted from and see kids in the playground from the new charter-private school there. Or they see private businesses on our school ground?

“More than 80% of Maxwell Park children are eligible for free or subsidized lunch. Our students have had hard lives and now they’re being evicted. Will this make Oakland more safe and less dangerous? This has got to end.”

After we got in the car, Havana insisted we drive downtown to see the confrontation as several thousand people marched back downtown to takeover an empty city lot. There were a hundred cops waiting for them. As we got stuck in traffic by the march, the girls got out of their car seats, opened their windows and gave “v” signs to the passing marchers.

A PG&E truck was pulled up beside us; the driver got out and took pictures of the march on his cell phone. We chatted and then he summed up the current movement, “You know, all I can say is . . . it’s about time this happened. It’s about time.”

Havana and Ily’s generation will either be a part of tearing down what's rotten in this world or building the new world. A world where equality and diversity are cherished and where the 99% become the 100%.

Soccer, Evolution and Season's End

Evolutionarily, parenting has one simple goal. Our job, as parents, is perpetuation. Or put more simply: our job is to raise parents. And the strangest part of this process that has been going on at least two million years is that when you’re doing it you don’t realize you are.

Inversely, nothing brings us back to our own childhoods like becoming a parent. Our past can stand at our window, like Banquo’s ghost, pointing fingers at our errors. And we know we’ve erred when we do those things we hated about our own childhoods. Those things we thought we’d never repeat.

I’d never planned on being a soccer dad. On passing on the obsession of soccer. But, the door was left ajar and now I am perpetuating my mild obsession. And sadly, this week ends Havana’s first season of soccer.

Tonight, instead of our last practice before our last game on Saturday, the 14 girls of the Super-Strikers team are to watch-and-learn from a televised British Premier League game at the coach’s house.

Tonight is the crossing of two paths. It’s a small cultural convergence. British soccer, my own roots and the pick up and drop off sport of children, American soccer.

I admit, I like the game. I like the shape of the ball. I like watching it move. I get almost as much satisfaction watching 22 people I’ve never met play with this ball as I do from playing with it myself. Yet my own evolution towards the sport was somewhat rocky.

Like most things forced on me at school, I rejected soccer for many years.

The notion of going out onto a freezing soggy field in the middle of winter and swapping your long pants and long sleeves for short ones made little sense to me. At my school, the soccer field grew longer the longer winter was with us. Its potholes were filled with ice, its flat spots rose glacially up into small hills and traversing the length of the field even without a ball was an endeavor.

Twenty unhappy boys, heads lowered, would march onto the pitch. The teacher would yell, blow his whistle and resume yelling. Then twenty young boys with mud plastered up and down their legs and matted in their hair, heads bowed, would leave the battle field.

This ritual did not enthuse me for the game.

And yet soccer did eventually ignite something in me.

At 16, I started full-time work and had the money to enter the world of grownups. Specifically, I could now enter through the mythical door to the cultural epicenter of British life: the local pub. A year or two later, the 20-odd pubs in my area of West London were my life’s main reference points.

We’d meet at the pub, cram into cars and make the weekly pilgrimage to Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea stadium. We donned our colors, sported our self-inked tattoos and joined the 50,000 other young men that pressed themselves into the stadium stands. We sang, we chanted, we jumped so high that the concrete stands seemed to shake. I entered the world of men, as I knew it to be.

And we occasionally went to Away matches that involved both increased cost and increased risk. I was once on a train intercepted by rival fans. Thud! A brick bounced off the plexi-glass window of the train car. We all hit the deck, wild-west style. And then, more thuds, this went on for about a minute, which I calculated at the train’s speed meant an assault by the rival fans over a distance of a quarter mile. These lads were well organized. And the Chelsea train had not yet gotten into the rival town's station!

My baptism of soccer could not contrast greater with Havana’s.

On Saturday afternoons I get my camping chair and we head out to watch Havana and the local Under 10s league. The language of the supporters is more cautious and more clean, and there are no anthems sung by parents. There is even very little mud, with games sometimes canceled on the rumor of rain. And yet for many of these girls this is the place where they will find themselves. Where they will test themselves and where they will be challenged. It’s a safe environment for young girls to experience physical conflict.

No-one would question that the winding roads that led Havana and I to soccer have been different. But then our childhoods have been remarkably different too.

What I honestly do not know is if hers is a better childhood than my own. But then, in a sense, that is for her to judge and not I.

Our Day at the Oakland General Strike

Seven weeks ago the lives of 900 Oakland children and their parents were seriously disrupted. Five Oakland elementary schools were being considered for closure. After a dozen meetings in half as many weeks, the School Board ended its period of so-called consultation. For hours upon hours, parents, children and teachers expressed their love for their schools. And up on the stage, the School Board simply sat there checking their watches.

Subsequently we have heard that many concrete plans were in place to close the schools a long time before the final vote of the Board.

It’s in this background that a thousand young people, parents and teachers marched on the School Board on the day of November 2nd, 2011, the historic Oakland General strike initiated by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Two of the 900 students that will be kicked out of their schools this year are Havana and Ilyana, our daughters. One is in 3rd grade and one a Kindergartener. We kept them home from school on the day of the strike. Their mom, the following day, handed in a note at the school office. It read “Havana and Ilyana were absent yesterday, as the closure of their school made them sick.”

At 9.30ish on the day of the strike, friends, parents and kids began arriving at our house to make picket signs for the day. About 20 of us were scattered around the front room busily using sharpies on our pink poster boards. “Kids are the 99%” was one, “Keep our schools open” was another. Being mostly younger kids there was a fair amount of animation used to get their message out. Later on BART I noticed one parent “x” out a crown on a princess, with a sly smile to the other parents as she did it.

Our ragtag group entered the quad at Laney community college where a couple of hundred students were listening to speakers and rappers. There was plenty of music to keep our kids totally in awe. It’s funny, but Occupy just makes a good fit with kids. It’s just not shaped like the boring protests of past. A parent arrived from another elementary school on the closure list, Lakeview, with news that they’d shut down their school altogether. Wow! Only 20 kids were on site out of 300 children. It was solid.

More feeder marches of dozens and sometimes hundreds entered into our rally site and in less than an hour we were heading off with a huge head of steam to the School Board. The plan for the action at the School District building was for a couple of parents to hand in an Eviction notice to the elected School Board members that’d voted to close our schools. They’d evicted 900 young children from their schools, now we were putting them on notice that their time in office is going to be over.

We sent three runners ahead of the march to let the District’s smooth-talking spokesperson know we were coming and for him to come down and meet us. A secretary sent the three young people up to his office, but they lost their way in the hallways. The sight of one of our people in a hoodie wandering the offices of the District set off a small panic, “we’re being occupied!” Our people explained to their people, that, well, that wasn’t totally true. The District’s PR guy headed downstairs.

A thousand people were coming up the street, with banners, signs and an incredible loud energy. The press mounted the steps to get their best shots in. And we took a bullhorn and read out our eviction notice: for evicting our 900 children, for doing this dirty work for the 1%, you are hereby given notice: we will evict you from office. Our children’s future’s will not be cut!

A harried and anxious School Official stood in the background as the Eviction Notice was read out. We handed him the symbolic Notice. He looked somewhat shocked, but not nearly as pained as our parents have felt over the past seven weeks.

I looked over the crowd of mostly high school students, union workers and people that just care. Every color of humanity was there. And then in a creative curve I personally hadn’t anticipated, one kid yelled, “You’ve been served! You’ve been served!” And within seconds everyone was chanting to the School Board, “You’ve been served! You’ve been served!” And I looked out from the steps of the School Board at the crowd and thought, this is my Oakland. This is why I love this city.

And our huge convulsive energy of a thousand people, with more than a thousand reasons to be there, headed out down the street to join the epicenter of Occupy Oakland at Oscar Grant Plaza. In our wake we left behind a stunned Education official and a couple of sweating School Board cops and a group of journalists busily scribbling down what they’d just witnessed.

They had just witnessed the future. And I thought of Havana and Ilyana and how upset they are about Maxwell Park school being closed. And on this day I saw their excitement and shared their feeling of power. And more than ever before I understood that we will have a future because the youth of today will turn this world upside down.

Two new front teeth: thru 50 daily photos

Click above to see video

Birthday Witches for our new 8 year-old

Havana found her self in a photo in the San Francisco Chronicle this week. With family and a large throng of Oaklanders, she’d protested the possible closure of the girls’ elementary school at the School Board. Her mom was even on TV.

This week also, the Super Srikers lost 2-0 against the Angry Birds in U10 girls’ soccer. Additionally we went to our first drive-in movie, Friday night. And this is how Havana crammed her last days as a 7-year old.

On Sunday we hosted our smallest ever birthday party.

This was Havana’s response to her parents 80+ peopled birthday parties, with huge homemade piñatas and puppet shows and games and microphones and magic. We had more friends and kids backstage working the puppet show at the last party we hosted than attended Sunday’s party. This was Havana’s choice: an intimate party of close friends.

Her parents were not happy with hosting a small party. Every call we got over the weekend we had to explain, “Oh yeah Havana decided on a small party this year.” We kept the curtains closed and the 9 kids inside or in the backyard. Our previous policy was far simpler.

We always have a huge home-made piñata precipiced off the front of the house: we’ve had pigs, fish, rats, hedgehogs, even the Children Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Our largest was a 6-foot long pink pig that almost pulled up the house off its foundations. There's no hiding this kind of party, hence all kids in the neighborhood were welcomed.

Our home-made puppet shows started a couple of years ago and added a new dimension to the parties. We also added a PA system more recently because of the size of crowds. Things were bigger, more complex, crazier and the kids loved it.

But Havana said, No. She wanted a quiet day of playing board games. Mmmmm. “Well, that’s not exactly what kids expect at a party. Do you want a cake?” “Yes.” “Do you want games?” “Yes.” “A puppet show?” “Yes,” Havana replied emphatically. Havana had voiced the key character in the last puppet show and was extremely excited before, during and after the performance.

“It’s a lot of work to put together a puppet show, girl, and we can’t pull in all our friends if they’re not invited to the party.”

This whole thing’s been coming a while. Last year Havana rebelled by demanding a store-bought piñata. So we compromised with one store-bought Mexican giraffe and one home-made large grey rat. At the last moment Havana decided she’d grown too attached to her giraffe and so it won a stay of execution. And today, the large yellow paper-tattered giraffe is up in the attic and the head of the rat, which miraculously survived the beating its body took, has been mounted on a piece of pinewood and is up in our front room.

For about 3 years the girls’ cakes have been made by our roomie Laura whose skills have increasingly excelled. Ilyana’s last party, a hedgehog-themed event had both little spikey hedgehog cupcakes and a massive spiked one.

For her 8th birthday Havana wanted a witch-based party. Despite the intimacy of the numbers, our other roomie Arya organized a guess-the-witch treasure hunt in and around the pink playhouse. We had pass the black cat and pass the witches hat. We had a spell-driven game of animal charades, and everyone made and decorated a witch’s hat for themselves. Our buddy, the mad scientist, Pierre, brought dry ice for the cauldron, and we ate severed finger hot dogs.

At the end of the Witch party, Karen and I sat, exhausted on the sofa, reflecting. Havana was happy. Ily too. And the kids had a good time. And our clean-up was a pushover.

We showered the girls. Havana painted her entire face green sometime after the sun came up. As the day wore on her various additional makeups merged and faded. By 6pm she looked like a zombie and maybe felt like one too.

However, our parental gem for the day was long in the past. This was Havana jumping into bed with us 12 hours earlier, snuggling inbetween the two of us, and loudly whispering, "I just wanted to let you guys know that I appreciate every little thing you've done for me since I was a baby."

Through thick and thin, our daughters could not have made us any happier.











. . . . . . . The giraffe doubled as a reindeer that Christmas.

Stepping Out from behind the shadow

Each new life transition that Havana steps up to, she does so no longer simply for herself but for her younger sister too.

Her little sister follows her like a happy shadow.

They walk together through life, hand in hand, and generally only fight when Havana wants to go off and do her own thing.

Havana will be 8 on Sunday. She can spell, she can read and she can articulate herself very well. Her sister until recently was the listener, the observer and the absorber.

Then last month came Kindergarten. It was as if Ily had been impatiently lingering in the wings. As if she was waiting for her new definition of ‘big girl’ to be bestowed on her from without.

She now goes to Maxwell Park Elementary with her 3rd-Grade big sis. After starting at her new school, Ilyana changed. Overnight, it seemed, she began to have something important to say at the dinner table. Every night. The half-joking grunting that is taylor-made to both annoy and draw-in her parents, gave way to more fullness and specificity in her sentences. It was as if the shoes of her life began to feel that they fit better.

Chasing, picking up and generally irritating our cats has fallen down the list of at-home pleasures for Ilyana. It’s still on the list of course. So now the cats are happier too.

As Havana reads stories to Ilyana, Ily can now poke a finger of recognition at a word now; here and there. She still yearns to copy, but she wants to do things her way too.

In a way, the 3 of us: Karen, Havana and I, have also been waiting for Ily to join us. And now she is no longer the family's ever-present but often silent partner. We’re now 4, in a way that we were not before. And it’s not as if we all wanted Ily to change. We loved her as she was.

Consistent with encouraging Ily’s small explosion of development, I think we’re all unconsciously avoiding the “c” word. Ily is still as cute as a button, but we don’t want her to stay cute, we want her to be her own cute, her bigger, smarter, confident cute. Barring an immaculate conception, Ily will always be the youngest in our family. That place is hers. But now she’s let us all know that she may have a small frame, but she wants to be seen shoulder to shoulder.

She is now a big girl. And we’re all happier for it.

She has taken her first steps out of Havana’s shadow. She has seen that life can exists outside of it. She also knows that Havana will always be there for her, in hard times and through joy. And when she wants to nestle under her sister’s arm that place will always be reserved for her.

Children in Film: Kes

Cornering the urine-stinking stairwell at full pace, we would race out of our building and across the road, over a fence and were out into the fields and trees that edged the public housing block where I grew up. It was on this abandoned land that we built forts of branches and tall grass and where teens and pre-teens together learnt about collective play, nettles that sting, bullying big kids and all things not under the nose of an adult. We routinely played until it was too dark to run. Our pocket of wilderness was bordered by our housing estate, the canal and a used tire stock yard, yet it was always big enough to loose yourself in.

Havana, here in Oakland today, cannot walk to any countryside, nor does she routinely take off with other kids to play hundreds of yards from her home.

In Ken Loach's 1969 film, Kes, the main character lives in a mining town, a knot of urban poverty deep in the South Yorkshire countryside. Kes tells Billy Casper's story. Billy is fourteen and will be done with school in a few short weeks. His older brother, with whom he shares a small bed, is already working in the local coal pit, a fate Billy is resisting. The tenderness of Billy’s story is his relationship with the young Kestrel he has taken from its nest and trained by a falconry book he stole from a local town store.

Yesterday Havana and I watched Kes. All my conscious life I have been watching the authentic story telling of working class life, in its full depth and humor, as told by director and socialist, Ken Loach. While the British Film Institute rates Kes as the 7^th best movie of the twentieth century, it was only this year that Kes has become available in the US on DVD. In many ways I have been waiting to see this film for 20 years.

The joy of Kes, for me, was not just in the insights of the the rich content of the film but moreso in sharing the movie with Havana.

Havana took in the emotional roller coaster of this boy's life: his abusive older brother, his torn clothes that set him apart from the other working class kids, the brutality of the teachers and the great love and respect he had for his Kestrel. Kes is rich in truth; in the complicatedness of truth.

Education, in Kes, as it has always been for the poor, consists of a series of cold facts to be swallowed whole and inseparable from the series of punishments for those unwilling or unable to consume the facts.

In one memorable scene a young boy is sent to the principal’s office with a message from his teacher. The hurried principal herds the boy into his office alongside the boys awaiting a caning, mistaking the kid's pleas with the empty excuses that preempt harsh punishments. At one point in the nerve wrecking two minutes of lecturing before their punishment, the boys almost break out into hysterical collective giggling at one of the more bizarre aspects of the principal’s rant, before offering out both hands to be whipped. Later, when Billy has a quiet moment with a fairly decent teacher, the teacher laughs at the story of the messenger boy being mistakenly caned and Billy explains, “but the boy was really crying.” Again Billy brings us back to reality: the world from the view of the small, the abused, those not in power.

Havana loved the scenes where Billy is in an open field alone with Kes, his bird. Billy's glove would be held high and the Kestrel sweeping to and fro would dance around the air above him. But as the story unfolds, Billy's tenuous joy is endangered. Havana asked me why the one decent teacher in the movie, who had described Billy's falconry as one of the most wonderful things he'd ever seen, had not been there to help out Billy. That's how life often is, I replied.

Kes mirrors the beautiful tenderness and sensitivity of children and their ability to survive the harsh realities of poverty and the hostility of the adult world.

Oakland from the eyes of 7-year olds

Havana's classmates wrote poems describing their view of Oakland while Havana was away this month. Below are four that were among a number that were posted on the wall outside Havana's Classroom.

My own favorite line is by Lucy, "Oakland is lovely, filthy, thick, violent and wonderful." These kids are just fantastic.

Sweet Oakland by Juan

Oakland is red Walgreen signs;

The taste of hotdogs with ketchup;

Dogs howling, neighbors fighting and people screaming;

Oakland is me and my family going to the movies;

Oakland is my house;

Oakland is killing, stealing and robbing

Oakland is sweet and Oakland is king

All About the World by Patricia

Oakland is purple houses and green trees;

The taste of salad and fruit salad;

Gun shots, wolves howling and chickens;

Oakland is going to the movie theatres with my family;

Oakland is hometown buffet;

Oakland is murdering, dying, stealing;

Oakland is peaceful, lovely, Bright, Beautiful and nice.

Oakland is Dancing by Eduardo

Oakland is orange houses;

The taste of hotdogs with ketchup and mustard;

Dogs howling, gunshots and neighbors fighting;

Oakland is the train museum with my whole family;

Oakland is going to the bowling alley with my godmother;

Oakland is dying, dancing, killing

Oakland is lovely.

What’s your Favorite by Lucy

Oakland is white and green, blue sky day and dark purple ducks

The taste of vanilla and ice cream;

Oakland is birds singing at night, fire crackers, dogs howling,

People jogging, neighbors fighting;

Oakland is going to the movies at bay fair;

Oakland is brookdale park;

Oakland is boxing, dreaming, praying

Oakland is lovely, filthy, thick, violent and wonderful

Wild Horses and the Mother I did not know

(right) A picture I was given this week of my mother aged 17

Next week my mother would be 81. This past week my brothers and I traveled to west Wales at the headlands above Swan Lake Bay to a lone, white-washed farmhouse where my mother was born. On those green cliff tops we scattered her ashes.

My cousin, who also grew up on that windswept farm, joined us. She shared a story with us from my mother's childhood that has forever changed how I think of my mother.

My mum had four boys. She was forced to give up her first child from her first marriage when she married my father, with whom she had three more children. Both of my mum's marriages ended in divorce. She would tell us that she never regretted not having a lasting romantic love in her life. “I have you boys” she would always say.

I have always defined my mother by her role in raising us. She struggled to protect us from the outside world and to prepare us to function in it. But she had more hurdles than most. With no car, 3 part-time jobs and 3 children to raise, life was complicated. She kept a roof over our heads although we were sometimes hungry. I specifically remember as a child, complaining when all we had to eat was bread, not understanding how painful that must have been for her to hear. This is the mother I knew, that I have perhaps retrospectively idolized.

Twice my mother fled the farm where she was born. Both times she was pregnant and left to marry. Had she stayed, her brothers would have inherited the farm and she would have been forced to be their servant. Urban poverty was the price of freedom for my mother.

As I stood there on that Pembrokeshire hilltop overlooking the sea, absorbing the roar of waves and being pummeled by the ocean wind I could feel the power of nature that my mother grew up with. We were to scatter mum’s ashes at a place where mum would’ve been able to see both the farm where she was lovingly raised and the ocean where she learnt to swim.

It was here that my cousin told me the thing I’d never known of my mother. As a teenager, my mum would come home from school, do her chores and rush off to ride her horse across the cliff tops. More than that, she became known throughout the area as a “girl” who understood horses. People from all over the area would bring their horses to Eastmoor farm.

They would hand the reigns of a young horse that could not be trained to my mum. They would probably go into the farmhouse and have a mug of tea with my grandparents. My mum, June, would take the wild horse across the fields and over the bumpy headlands along the coast. A couple of hours later she would return to everyone waiting, and as my cousin had heard it, she would dismount the horse she’d broken-in and simply say, “There. It’s all done.”

This is a story of my mother that I never imagined, but one consistent with the mother I knew: someone who had a deep bond with nature, someone who was strong and powerful, and someone who could not simply follow the rules set down for her. I now think of the choices she faced, and the life and the skills that she was forced to leave behind her. And when I think of mum now I no longer remember her the same way. I think of the place where we scattered her ashes and her youthfully galloping over those wind-ridden headlands.

The Day the Cat Stood Still, as told to Havana and Ilyana

Having tucked them in and kissed them goodnight, I turned out the light in the girl’s room.
Sitting atop a chair in the kitchen was Milou, our family’s long-haired black cat.

It really was no surprise to me when he asked for a ride to our local coffee shop. He was familiar with all penguins, monkeys, the lion and the other animals that spent their whole days at the café: socializing and on the odd occasion ordering some food or drinks. And Milou was also familiar with the half-mile hike that entailed getting there. Sure, he has two more legs than us, but they are somewhat shorter.

So we agreed to head out together in my truck. As I put the key in the door, we exchanged glances over who was going to drive. This evening Milou deferred: so I took the wheel. With the two of us buckled in, we headed down Walnut Street, making small talk, like one does.

Craning his neck to see out the window, Milou reminded me that a stop sign meant you’re supposed to come to a full stop. He mentioned it without eye contact, casually but with authority. After another small criticism of my driving, I asked if he knew anyone else who doesn’t have a driving license that like to teach Drivers’ Ed.

Milou apologized. I asked him why he was so nervous. He’d not left the house in months. Perhaps he’d gotten agoraphobia. “Nope” he responded.

Lately he’d been fighting a lot with Kitten, our other cat, but Milou denied that this was making him anxious. “Well, what is it?” I persisted. “You’ll see” he said.

As we stepped into the café, it was as if all the animals had been waiting for Milou. Paws went up, and a long receiving line of high fives greeted Milou. “Hey!” Milou said to a squirrel with his wee paw up as high as he could reach. It wasn’t like Milou knew half the critters he was greeting, but this was him, all-walking-around-on-his-hind-legs, acting bold. A distant relative of the same day-time cat who grumbles every time he’s picked up and carried around by the four-year old.

We settled down at a table with our drinks: coffee and a large cup of milk. As Milou drank his coffee, he explained how it helped keep the shine on his coat. I've kept a fairly long list of things I do not like about Milou, and his vanity was near the top. But then, he was family. Unlike my children, Milou was not likely to grow, emotionally. We are into the 14th year of our relationship and he is just as completely dependent on me now as the first day I picked up that small ball of fur that he once was.

“So what’s going on mate?” I enquired. He slid his coffee mug aside and edged up to me. “You see that grey short-hair in the corner?” I turned and saw a cat sitting in the corner by themself. “That’s my date!” I looked at Milou and my scrunched-up face asked, “Whaaat?”

“Hold on; I gave you a ride here for you to go on a date?” was my first question, followed quickly by, “Hey you don’t think I’m sticking around to give you a ride home, do you?” Which was followed by, “why aren’t you going over to say hi to her?”

Milou’s chest deflated, “ I’m nervous dude, this is my first date in years!” He stood there frozen. He stood up on the chair, his front paws perched against the table, like a small furry statue. Perhaps somewhere in the world there is such a statue.

Then he broke out of his empty stare. “Well, and to answer your other question” he continued, “for your information, cat dates are not long affairs.” Mmmm. I may have stepped over the boundary of polite conversation when I asked if a cat date is the same as two cats making a kitten. I can still see the look of disgust and contempt on that whiskered face. Hoping to bridge the awkward-gap I’d just dug, I asked where Milou’d met her.

Milou reached into his fur and pulled out some kind of smart phone. “What is that?” I asked. Milou looked down, “Oh, it’s a cell phone”
“No, no, no. I mean, you have a pocket in there” I pointed. “It’s a coat, it comes with pockets” Milou replied, then tapped his touch screen with a single extended claw.

He leaned over to me, “Check this out: Kittencupid.com. It’s a pretty popular site. It shows everything you’d want in a partner, but of course with cats the likes and dislikes, they’re pretty much identical on everyone’s profile. Location is the main thing I look at. It’s true, the site is probably a front run by Purina. You can chat online and if you mention dinner or lunch, a pop-up comes up advertising Purina’s new line of canned food. Well, if you can get past the corporate stuff, sometimes you can meet someone special.”

“Oh and on your other question,” Milou stated, “Cat dates are pretty much taking a whiff of the other party’s behind. She sniffs you, you sniff her and if it’s all roses, so to speak, then we’re on for a second date.”

For a minute, I got cynical and showed my age, “Why do you have to go online, on a computer to find a date? What’s wrong with the neighborhood cats?”

“Well, that’s okay for you guys, but with cats its different. Dating in your neighborhood, well, there’s a lot of baggage with that. Everybody’s about territory. You lift a leg, you mark and you don’t want anyone to invade that space. Online dating removes those issues.”

We sat there quietly mired in the pleasant absurdity of it all. I was trying to get my head around the whole idea of online dating, Milou was trying to get his furry head around his current online date.

Eventually he bit the bullet. And like he’d promised, the whole thing was over in a flash.

“Well, how did it go?” I asked, as we dumped our cups in the trash, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “We’re on!” he said as he rubbed his front paws together with a typically cat-like subdued glee.

As we crossed the threshold into our family home, Milou plopped back down onto all fours and went into the girls’ room and got up on their bed and curled up.

And tomorrow, I will tell the girls this story, and one daughter will be wide-eyed with mouth gaping and the other will act like I’m making this story up. Well surely, it’s too absurd to be untrue.

Slowing the tide: a Thanksgiving swim

Some moments resonate with us for years, and some years pass us like a moment, with their fleeting details lost.

As parents, our weekends arrive tightly book-ended and, however we try, our days-off cannot resist the momentum created by our days-on. We plan ahead our family moments only to rush up to them, to have them and move onto the next.

We once waited weeks for prints of family photos. Then one day. And now an instant seems too long. It sometimes feels like we’re rushing today’s moments so as our future moments can come better into focus. And years that are lost, get lost faster. And the blur keeps moving onwards.

A four-year old on my shoulders was once held in arms. A seven-year old was once so much like the four-year old. Or was she?

And then there are moments that come up on us and stay, repeating and resonating. Moments that follow us, lingering and brooding and easily triggered. Moments that pull us backwards and by doing so, slow our tide. On the day after Thanksgiving we had such a moment.

As both a luxury and cheap vacation we rented a night at a local Hotel with an “outdoor pool.” Those two words aroused a kind of highly acute state of madness in our daughters. And that was before we had even got in the car.

Once up to their waists, the water appeared to contain some strange substance that entered directly into their blood and nervous systems and created some uncontrollable happiness. They bobbed around yelling and laughing, uncontainably. They became a single giggling loop of energy passing its flow back and forth in some kind of mad closed circuit.

After a time I broke free from my parental role of giving rides and playing shark and I swam a length underwater. As I surfaced I could see the wake of steam that followed me as the cold morning air churned with the warmth of the pool.

The girls stood agape as they noticed a quiet rain begining to fall. We watched the rain lose its hesitancy and fall fuller and more evenly. The girls lost themselves watching the rain bounce and dance on the surface of the water. The cloud cover pulled a veil over us, darkening the morning and the downpour fell more forcefully on us.

For a moment we held our breaths and listened and absorbed the moment. Each silent drop of rain combined with a thousand of their sisters to bury us in its noise. It was there. It was then. We had our long single moment.

And now and then our silence in the rain visits me. It slows my pace as it stretches out its hand to pull me back from the irresistable forward pull of the future.

A nine year-old's Tale

The image of a seemingly unending, tree-lined road that leads from a cemetery to a large stately home repeated itself for many years in my dreams.

When I was nine my brothers and I were driven up that long straight lane to the country mansion that was to be our new home, where the only grownups were social workers. It was a home for children with no parents or parents the state considered unable to cope.

We were sent to Denham Court in the summer of 1970. I returned home in 1972.

At that time the home's regime was in transition. It was moving from a Dickensian-style orphanage, where children were uniformed, regimented and subject to corporal punishment, to a more liberal institution for the children of the poor.

There was lots of normality at Denham Court: we played hide and seek and tag, got into small bruisers and like all children we resisted chores. We just did it without parents, and in large numbers. We traipsed in line to brush teeth and we fell asleep in dorms that slept eight kids, all of us in our large metal-framed beds.

Where my own kids may be given a two-minute time-out on the hallway bench for punishment, in a large children’s home things were notched up a bit. For a nine year-old to walk into a room where a hundred potatoes needed peeling was just a bit overwhelming. I remember my plea of inexperience falling on deaf ears.

We didn’t suffer cruelty or abuse. Or perhaps I’ve buried that. But being removed from your mother at nine was trauma enough for an entire lifetime, a scar that would never fully heal.

Today, I live in a world where so many of us parent so carefully and conscientiously that we can forget the incredible resilience of children. Despite the awful fate of that nine year old, what resonates with me more is that we survived.

At Denham Court, the older kids introduced me to music. From then on, music was never background noise but assumed a bigger dimension in my world. I discovered lyrics there also, which in turn nourished my love of language.

Last night our youngest, Ilyana had her first night without a pull-up. We could tell the issue of transitioning away from pull-ups at night was affecting the mood of our four year old. I was taken back to my first nights at Denham Court where bed-wetting was common. We all slept on thin cotton sheets that sat atop a thick rubber sheet. Getting into that bed in the winter was somewhat akin to getting into an ice-cold bath.

We returned home to my mother in 1972. Now, a parent myself, I feel both the grief felt by my own mom, and a deep sadness for that nine year old boy. And when as an adult I fret about the anxieties my daughters are processing of their own, my own past helps me maintain a sense of proportion.

Ironically Denham Court is now a venue rented for wedding receptions, and so today that long tree-lined road that leads to it resonates differently in other people’s dreams.

One Year after Havana's cousin's death

It has now been a year since Havana's 24-year old cousin Autumn, my niece, died. She struggled with cancer for more than half her life. She and her parents never had to think about health insurance as she grew up in a country with free healthcare.

She was a worker at a clothes store, who would not get health insurance in this country,but more than that she was an example of the strength of the human spirit. She was also a product of the enormous solidarity that surrounded her. Her friend set up a Facebook account after Autumn's death to send messages for her family. Within two days over 400 friends joined it.

I never would have dreamed that one day I would be Autumn's pallbearer. It's an unbearable thought.

I wrote this to Autumn the day I found out she had died. . . . .


Autumn. I did not get the chance to say goodbye to you.

The last time I spoke to you was on Christmas Day. Sian held the phone while you were throwing up, but you still came to the phone to talk. That was you Autumn.

You had a life of enormous adversity and struggle. But you were never alone. Every hardship that came your way was met with an equal force of love from your family, and then your friends.

You have left me, as your uncle, with many good memories and many good feelings that will remain strong in my heart for as long as I live. You quietly made your mark on me, as you did on so many.

You pushed us all further than we thought we could go.

I remember Florida in 1996.Your impish smile that subtley lifted from one side of your face that pressured me into going on an insane fairground ride that I should never have agreed to. They shackled up David and yourself and me for our 200-foot freefall and then you and your Dad let me in on your private joke: that we were going to be dropping headfirst. That’s right. Headfirst. 200 feet. I vividly remember the silence on the first 2 seconds of the drop when my heart just about stopped. And by 5 seconds we were all screaming and laughing. You were enjoying the adrenalin rush, I was simply relieved that I was still alive. Only you could have got me to commit to such madness.

Many of the bedtime stories that I tell my own small girls are modeled on those I first made up 20 years ago when you were a wee one. I always tossed aside your children’s books in favor of a story about Bugs Bunny coming home drunk from the pub or something more ridiculous. Your reactions and your sisters’ helped me figure out how to communicate with kids, lessons my own kids benefit from today. And I think part of your personality was the big, cartoon-like, goofy jokester. That makes me smile right now.

As I remember it, you were both a regular kid and a very unique one. While almost every kid can sense a TV is turned on from a hundred yards and are irresistibly drawn towards it, that wasn’t you. You had absolutely no interest in television. At an early age you told me that you could not understand why people would center their lives around a box in their living rooms. That was you.

You were drawn to travel, to things new. Your quiet demeanor was probably routinely misinterpreted as boredom. It seemed to me that you loved to listen, absorbing the world and new experiences. You were always up for trying out something new. Well, except in the world of food, where you insisted on the most boring and simple dishes. You were quite militantly opposed to trying new food.

Visiting you once a year I watched you grow by annual episode. With your two sisters, we’d head out somewhere together on the train and catch up with what’s going on in your lives. What you hated. What you loved. What irritated you. What was new and what was getting old.

It seems like your sickness was always there, tugging at your strength and resilience and constantly testing your patience, of which you had more than the rest of us put together. You didn’t like being treated differently for being sick, but people who knew that you were, were unable to not treat you differently. It became a part of you and how you dealt with the world, as much as how everyone around you dealt with you.

Alongside your sickness was the guilt of feeling that you were slowing down those around you. You may have slowed those around you, but you helped everyone around you become stronger and better for it. You enriched our lives.

Your family built a fort around you. A strong wall of love impenetrable from the outside but one that you could step over whenever you wanted. You were encouraged to go forward. Get a job. Go to Uni. Drive your mini. Travel. But you always had a warm place to come home to.

You were never alone. Mum and Dad and Sian and Tuesday were always there for you. All day, all night, every moment. You could not have asked for a more loving, more giving family. And in the end, isn't that all we really need. It was, in part, your family that helped make you the loving and giving person you were Autumn.

I have cried for you in short spurts a dozen times these past days, but the loss for your Mum and Dad and Sian and Tuesday is unimaginable. You were their rock and they were yours.

I am also glad you had the National Health System and more paid family leave should be what we demand next. Free healthcare and time to be with those that are sick.

If I could talk to you now, Autumn. I would thank you for what you gave to us all. For your uniqueness. For your frankness and honesty. Your toughness and fragility wrapped as one. Your big heart. Your quirkyness. Your crazy sense of humor and at the same time the infectious calm you had about you.

You did slow down those around you. And in this ugly, money-grabbing world, you were refreshingly different. Your life improved the world. Thank you, Autumn.