superhero in training

A boy needs a cape. Yes, sheets, towels and oversized shirts tied haphazardly around the neck will do in a pinch, but there’s something about a cape – a real cape – that adds a certain magic to everything a boy endeavours to do. Just the act of running across the lawn, fabric streaming behind him, takes on the aura of a pressing mission. Washing dishes seems more akin to saving the day. Practicing the piano is downright heroic.

I’ve just discovered a new cape crusader called Ellie Bellie Kids, who makes kids capes for the very purpose of engaging and inspiring the imagination of children. It doesn’t get better than that – unless the cape is free, bestowed, one could argue, on the superhero in training. To enter for the chance of winning said cape, as I have done, become a member of their Facebook page (http://tinyurl.com/c9rfnr), write a blog update, twitter or FB update of your own, and keep your fingers crossed.

My own mini superhero, not quite two years of age, isn’t waiting for his cape before exercising his superhero powers, launching himself off furniture and jungle gyms, leaping over pillows, toys and prostrate parents in a single bound, and honing his Spidy abilities by scaling the sides of playground slides (or attempting to, anyway). Think of what he’ll accomplish with a cape to encourage him!

i might not be big but i'm small

One of my favourite Canadian authors is a radio personality called Stuart McLean. He has a show on CBC Radio One, Sundays at noon, called The Vinyl Cafe, where he reads stories about the characters he writes about - Dave (owner of the Vinyl Cafe record shop) and his wife, Morley, their two kids, and friends and neighbours. It's not high literature, but he has a gi-normous following in this country because of his signature style, and the way he weaves his stories together using large doses of hilarity and sentimentality.

His show also includes live music by Canadian musicians, observations from the towns and cities he travels to on his tours, and a Story Exchange. The latter is a submission he reads from one of his listeners. As he says each week in the lead-up to the reading, "They have to be true stories and they have to be short… after that it’s up to you."

Well, after Stuart's last appearance in Kelowna, last fall, I decided to submit a story to the story exchange. Just today I heard back from his producer, saying they love it and want to read it at a recorded concert May 1.

Now, it's not like I've won the jack prize or anything (they will send me his latest book, which I already have, as thanks), but I am quite elated. You see, Stuart has a very stylized way of reading and, once you have heard him you can never not read one of his stories without hearing his voice. And I can hardly wait to hear him read my words. Just a small coup, I know, but it made my cloudy day.

Anyway, I do go on. Here is the story he will read May 1 (don't yet know the air date):

The afternoon of August 1, 1993, couldn’t have been a better day for a Beach Boys concert. The temperature was hovering around 40 C and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. My sister, Kelly, and I jumped into her little white MGB, top down, of course, and drove across Kelowna to an area now known as The Bluff - a large clearing on Kelowna’s Westside.

It was an important summer, and not just because of the concert. It was the summer that the two of us really became sisters, friends even, rather than one another’s nemesis. I was 22, home for the summer from college, and she was almost 20, finished high school and about to be married.

Neither of us were very big Beach Boys fans, though we knew most of their music from TV commercials and movie soundtracks. Of course that didn’t matter as much as the fact that a big name band was finally coming to Kelowna and we had scored the tickets off the radio. Adventure beckoned and we were eager to follow.

We got there early and staked out a prime piece of property near the front of the stage. With no shade falling our way, we soon grew uncomfortably hot. My alabaster skin soon took on a pinkish hue. My sister, who burns much less easily, kept spritzing herself with a spray bottle of water she brought, to keep herself cool and work on her tan while we waited for the show to begin.

With about 15 minutes to go before the opening act would take the stage, I heard a tantalizing sound. It was the sound of little bells ringing on the front of a Dickie-Dee bicycle.

I headed over and ordered a giant, colourful Spacesicle. I waited until I got back to our blanket before tearing off the thin, protective wrapping. Fresh from the freezer, blue, red and white.

My mouth wrapped eagerly around it. But instead of gliding smoothly, as it should, between my lips and over my tongue, it stuck fast, sealing the circumference of my mouth.

My first reaction was horror, which soon gave way to a twinge of panic. I had heard about kids who lick metal pipes in the dead of winter and rip off half their tongue, but this was different. It wasn’t winter, and the instrument of my torture was a supposedly innocuous Popsicle.

As frightened as I was, I was even more embarrassed. The seal was tight, all the way around, and the Spacesicle was not small, which made things a tad uncomfortable. Knowing it would have to eventually melt, I tried to remain inconspicuous and concentrate on salivating to melt the dry ice. When that didn’t work, I grabbed Kelly’s spritzer and began spraying around and round my mouth. When Kelly noticed, her eyes grew wide and, instead of doing something useful like blocking the view from the people all around, she started to laugh. Hard. That got the attention of our neighbours, a group of older ladies given to hysteria, who began to panic and shriek at Kelly that she needed to rush me to the First-Aid Station. I wanted to disappear.

We got up and walked away, her laughing and me salivating and spritzing like a mad thing. Eventually, my top lip came free, enabling me to finally breath through my mouth, to further encourage defrosting. It finally came free just in time for the music to start.

It was a good concert, aside from the freezer burn and chapped, peeling lips. But I can never hear the Beach Boys, even today, without remembering the day I froze my lips to a giant Spacesicle.

too grown-up

I remember, as a child, never growing tired of playing. I could wake up in the morning and play all day and be sorry when the day was over because there was still more playing to do.

Often, it involved toys (most commonly Barbie dolls), although it could also be other kinds of play, like tag or house or just hanging out on the swing set or my bike. Having a brother and a sister and a neighbourhood full of kids, there was usually no shortage of people to play with – but when I had to fly solo that was fine, too. As long as I was playing, then all was right with the world.

I also remember hearing this story from a friend (you know who you are): apparently, as a child, said friend wanted to play, one day, with her mother. But when she asked, her mother told her that she couldn’t play because she had forgotten how to. I think my friend’s reaction was bewilderment, but at the time she told me the story, she admitted that she had come to understand because, as an adult, she, too, had forgotten how to play.

Being somewhat delayed in my maturity, even as an adult, it surprised me that someone could forget how to play. We might stop playing because of more pressing obligations and a waning interest, but forget? Wouldn’t that be like forgetting how to ride a bike or write your name?

But now, in my late 30s, I think I’m finally starting to get it.

I was thinking about this today as I dragged Oliver, kicking and screaming, out of the playground and toward home. We had been there for over an hour – OVER AN HOUR! He had exhausted (or so I thought) the swings, the slide, the ladder that takes you up to the next level, the steering wheels you can find here and there, and the ramp that wraps around to meet itself in a vaguely circular formation that can be run around and around and around and, yes, around. From my perspective, there was nothing left to do but head home.

Wrong.

Since the sun came out and the snow melted away, my son has turned into Outside Boy. Any chance – or even perceived chance – to be not inside, he’s all over that. It doesn’t matter if it’s a playground full of kids or our miniscule backyard, where he’s content to rip up handfuls of grass to fill his dump truck (or more fun still, my potted lavender).

I’m trying to understand. Really, I am. But somewhere along the way I got waylaid with the pressures of work, bills to pay and expectations to “act your age.” Somewhere, between deadlines, I suppose, I, too, forgot how to play. And now, when I should be enjoying a carefree afternoon in the playground with my son, I’m thinking about how I should get home and work on a story or do some research or clean or shop for groceries or something, anything besides wasting my time following a 23-month-old around a jungle gym.

It’s not like I didn’t plan for this. The opportunity to take part in such activities is precisely why I chose to stay at home. I wanted to be the one to do these things with him, and not give that privilege to someone else – especially a virtual stranger. But I guess after years of demanding deadlines and adrenaline producing focus, I’m still adjusting to the idea of freedom to do what I (we) want when I (Oliver) want(s) it. In fact, the less work I take on, the more pressure I feel to do it.

But now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps I’ll start to come around. It is, I admit, a struggle, but I want to make the effort to re-open my eyes to at least some of the living that I managed to discard in my journey through adulthood – simple pleasures, such as puddle jumping or the taste of a fresh peach or the worldly wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh. The feel of new, spring grass, the excitement of seeing a puppy dog in the park – these things tweak the senses, and increase the pleasure of living in a world that can be, let’s face it, dull and depressing when you really think about it.

I certainly don’t want to deny my son these pleasures simply because I lost my own joie de vivre.

Or maybe I just misplaced it for a while. And maybe, if I work hard at not working so hard at things, I will remember, once again, how to play.