Can you see the dragon? Yeah, me either. But… my son can. He’s just shot it.
My son wants a gun.
No, he corrects me, he needs a gun.
“Why?” I ask.
“To kill a dragon,” he says to me, matter of fact and followed by a look of ‘boy, are you stupid or what.’
“What dragon?” I ask.
“The dragon outside my window,” he says, with another look of ‘boy, are you an idiot or what.’
I look out the window of his bedroom while he sits up in bed. I look out into the courtyard and the green garden, with a large rosebush. There’s no dragon. I start to worry. Why can’t I see it? I stare harder. But nothing. Nothing at all. No dragon, no childhood visions of fire-breathing beasts. Nothing at all. I start to worry that my imagination is running low and my age is taking away my childhood visions of “The Lord of the Rings.” I don’t see a thing but a courtyard, three chairs, a table and plants. I look and look for the dragon, any sign at all, and time passes and nothing happens. [continue reading…]
Blight.
I once read about a surfer in Central California who would only surf spots he could reach by bike. I liked the idea. It mustn’t have been easy. His conviction limited him to spots he could pedal to, while his brother and friends drove up the coast. And they would come home by car with tales of excellent surf at points and reefs further north and out of reach for the man and his bike. He must have seethed. But the idea really sunk in with me.
I still like the idea of only going to where you can reach by bike. I’m not much of a practitioner, really, because I don’t own a bike here in Argentina, where I live. And I drive to the beach. But what I don’t do is drive on the beach. That’s out of order. That’s not cool. But you wouldn’t guess that here in Pinamar, where driving on the beach is the craze. It gets so bad at the height of summer in Carilo, a ritzier beach to the south of Pinamar, that the beach turns into a 10-lane highway like 9 de Julio, the main thoroughfare in Buenos Aires. It’s chaos. [continue reading…]
My six-year-old son faces huge challenges in handwriting. He’s not letting that hold him back.
I am a writer. It is how I make my living. My son is lagging in writing. He is almost six years old and still hasn’t learned how to read or write. He has autism and verbal dyspraxia and problems with his fine motor skills. Gripping a pencil and writing is like lifting a three hundred pound dumbbell. Hard and strenuous. But he’s not letting that hold him back. He said to me yesterday, “I want to learn to read and write.”
Today he made a champ of an effort writing his name, which is almost all there.
It’s better than all the writing I do all day.
