Charis Brice: dancer, whiner, fisher, baller.

Perfect playlist

Our little dog Lilou sleeps where she wants at night.  Much to our chagrin her choice rarely includes our bed.  We did our best to raise her to be needy and deeply dependent on us, and we failed. 

Arnaud and I frequently find ourselves sitting on the ground, speaking in voices befitting a scene of hysteria or drug-use, competing for most animated, non-words spoken in 60 seconds.  We act like assholes when we talk to our dog.  We adore her, and she most certainly adores us, but her love does not require her to sleep in our bed, and Arnaud and I have had to talk ourselves down from some dark places as a result.  "Why does she not sleep with us?"  Arnaud asked me one night.  He had sweet talked Lilou into our bed with his French and tummy-tickles (exactly the same way he had seduced me) and had clearly had high hopes - but the moment we switched off the light we heard the inevitable, "PLOOP... ticka-tack, ticka-tack, ticka-tack," as she jumped off our bed and walked to the couch for the night.  Arnaud cried silently for a moment and then began soothing his sadness with logic, a balm used by the French only slightly less frequently than denial, "She is probably not very tired yet.... and I am GLAD she does not sleep with us... there is no room... what a great dog."  

It has been snowing all day - cold, quiet, insistent snow, covering up all the trash on the roads and turning my breath to clouds and Lilou's shit to stark, steaming magic.  

When I told Arnaud over the phone that I lost the pregnancy he was quiet for a moment and then said, "I am so glad, Pookie. I am glad because it is almost sure that it would have been the second Hitler and destroyed the world."  I cry-laughed and agreed, thank GOD we were miscarrying.  The man surprises me every time by somehow finding the perfect way into shine light into my shattered self.  Refracted light is the only light I trust, and it happens to be his specialty.  I have never loved him more. 

Lilou has slept with us all week. With her face of an ewok and body of a rabbit-soft, floppy, bony chicken, and she has entered our bed with a vengeance, wanting not just to sleep with us but also to imprint her body onto ours while doing so.  She finds me subconsciously in her sleep : when I scoot, she scoots, when I move, she moves, finding me and pressing her tiny little bony body against mine.   She can feel our loss, maybe even smell it, and has decided that Arnaud and I need more than her customary turn-down service this week; she has decided that we need to be watched over carefully throughout the long nights, at least for the moment.  

When I am feeling sad I inevitably go towards the music of my youth. I think this says good things about my youth.  Or maybe sad things.  Unfortunately for the people in my world this music includes DC talk, Jars of Clay, Michael W Smith... you get the jist.  I beat Arnaud home from work the other day and I was prepping dinner while listening to Love Song for a Savior.  Singing every word, knowing every note in my bones.  Loving it.  When Arnaud came into the kitchen I told him, "this song is about Jesus."  He got a big smile on his face and tickled me, "OOhhhhhhh! JESUS!  Do you miss Jesus a little bit? Do you? Just a little bit? YES you do, YOU MISS JESUS A LITTLE BIT, POOKIE!"  He spoke to me not unlike we speak to Lilou on the floor, and I giggled and denied like a flirtatious school girl.  He gets me.  

 

He gets me because he knows that I miss Jesus in the same way I miss being seven years old : with a distant fondness, a day long ago that I loved but that has now passed.  I do not want to be seven again, I do not wish to relive my life.  I am here, now, in these current days, and as hope leaks from my body it is not Jesus that brings me comfort, it is the Hitler joke, the little bony dog, the light refracted a thousand times against the cracks of my 36 years.  The songs I used to sing for Jesus I now sing because I have a voice.   And sometimes it feels the same.           

I have often told Arnaud that the only reason I would ever leave him is if he became religious.  He always responds that the only reason he would leave me is if I became a man.  This agreement seems reasonable to us, at this point at least.  But if by some strange alignment of the stars we become a trans, religious couple,  I have the perfect playlist.  

 

                

 

 

 

Le baton

Last night in the of the middle of the night I awoke to find Arnaud sitting up in bed beside me. His shoulders and head were slumped forward in that perfectly poor posture evidenced by seated sleepers everywhere.  It was clear to me that he was a bit stuck, and although he continued to sleep soundly he seemed unsure of his next move.  What IS one to do after sitting up in bed, asleep? It appears in this family we do not have the answer.

I reached my hand up to Arnaud's big, sleeping shoulder and guided him, with barely a touch, back down to the position generally thought to be more conducive to sleeping.  With both of us again horizontal I turned over and went back to sleep.

These moments are when life makes sense : when touch happens and when touch matters, when life is REAL.  The man sleeping beside me forgot how to sleep for a moment - and my touch helped him to remember. 

I forget how to do the most basic things.  I forget how to eat well and how to be kind.  I forget how to relax, to feel pleasure, to give pleasure, to wait, to be patient, to remember, to dream, to sleep, to stretch, to breath deeply, to really listen. I forget to risk, to hope, to dance, to be proud, to create, to play.   

None of these things happen on a screen, and yet a screen is where I seem to wait, and wait...

I want them all to go away - every vacant place where I wilt, waiting for life to happen instead living it.  Life is becoming a spectator sport, and the lives I am watching instead of living my own do not touch me or matter to me,  and yet in watching them all I forget to live, somehow content to blindly observe in this screen-filled void.  

Writing used to feel like magic.  It was a way my heart and mind and body could finally figure out what the hell was going on for them (they often felt a bit out of my control... "really Charis?" says everyone from my past in faux surprise) : and quite often there was a lot going on (to put it mildly).   So as my desire to write changes, meaning that it no longer feels like my alternative to burning down buildings or murdering assholes, does this mean I now have less to say?  Maybe.  I certainly have different things to say.  
But I think for some time now saying things has become tedious and distracting to me, often just another version of life as spectator sport.  
I read one-thousand perspectives yet am left feeling hollow and without perspective.     Words are everywhere I look, and yet they distract from life rather than deepen it.  Words as information have grown deeply tiresome to me.  I feel myself rejecting the idea that I must absorb so much new information each day, especially when, again, the inundation distracts me from real life and in the end does not touch me or mean anything to me.  

 

I always wanted to be different and interesting. My worst nightmare was to be boring, so I made sure I was not (or so I thought). Funny thing : a lot of people were going through the same thing. The vast majority of (American) people I know even remotely close to my age have felt/are feeling the same sensations of desperation to be special - a generation of people needing to be unique, a generation of the specialist, most specialer snowflakes of all.  Of course the fallacy of this idea is obvious: everyone IS unique, and therefore everyone is interesting.  Whether or not they are interesting to you is one thing - but that's just perspective.  I have friends in Europe who find my descriptions of conservative, mid-west families to be MIND-blowingly interesting.

I text with my friend Rae on a nearly hourly basis. It will definitely be Rae who notices my absence and alerts the authorities should I ever be abducted (you see? I am chosen and special even in my foreshadowing).  Rae and I have been friends for years, and yesterday I confessed to her that I simply do not give a flying fuck anymore about being famous or accomplished.  It has never been an obsession of mine to be famous - but in the back engines of my doings - the wood being burned, the things being dreamed, the risks being taken - there were always hopes of something great, of seeing a giant shooting star across the sky that would happen if I only worked hard enough.  Maybe it could have been reality.  Maybe I missed the opportunity to be a great ballerina - to write a best-selling novel - to be rich and famous - but my confession is that I no longer care.  
I feel apathy towards even the potential of greatness, and while I realize this may seem depressing, it feels to me more like a bowl of homemade chicken soup.  In fact making a really good soup seems like a much better investment of my time and guarantor of my happiness than being smart, or right, or fit, or liked, or famous, or current, or stylish, or connected. Delicious soup wins.

 

I take our scrappy little dog to the park almost every morning. Bois de la Cambre is the beautiful park close to our home in Brussels and includes rolling hills, a lake, running paths, wildlife and forests stretching in two directions. Lilou goes off-leash as soon as we arrive, and immediately begins the task of looking for the perfect stick, or "baton," in French. I speak with Lilou as I speak with everyone, with a tedious mix of French and English thereby creating an unhelpful dialect that leaves everyone confused regardless of their mother tongue.

Some mornings we run around the lake together and on others we walk, but every morning we spend a good half hour playing fetch. "Ah non, c'est enorme ça... choisisses un autre... that one's good... ALLEZ! VVWOOOOOSH! Ramenez!!! GOOD girl."

One thing I have discovered about myself this year : I am unable to throw le baton without making sound effects.  No baton has ever left my hand without believing itself to be starring in a feature film - "WHOOSH" "FFFFYYYEEEEW"  Also of unfortunate note, onomatopoeias change with language.  A duck says "quack" in English, but in French they in fact say "coin."  I am not sure what a flying baton says in either language.

Lilou runs like Rafael Nadal during fetch.  She goes after that baton every time as if it was the last baton on earth, and she runs it back to me as if wolves were on her tail.  On and on we go - I throw it away, she brings it back.  The rhythm of this ritual reminds me of fly fishing.  Every cast is different, every cast is the same.  The fly touches the water.  The stick hits the ground and bounces.

The rhythm does not deaden your senses as you might think - it heightens and centers them simultaneously - every thought is on this moment - every muscle knows it's function.

And this is life.  Not defining your worldview or delineating your religious or political affiliation or being famous or cultured or well educated or having the best job or the best looking lover or 10,000 followers or the cutest kids or the funniest tweet or the most intellectual outrage or the most unique idea or the most defined abs or the most money or the best clothes or the most homemade furniture or healthiest diet or best hobbies or the most eclectic taste in music or the most countries visited or being the most devout christian/yogi/democrat/republican.  

None of it matters.  None of it matters to me.   

 

Picking up your knife to cut an onion at dinner time.  Throwing back your head and laughing at the diarrea story your brother tells.  Walking in after a long day and seeing a giant mess, just where you left it.   Staring at the ceiling as you remember your dreams from the night before - wondering if they will fade or stay.  Passing eight hours fishing on a lake with your Dad and catching nothing.  Watching someone do something truly kind.  Feeling anxiety squeeze your neck as you try to sleep.  Watching the shadows appear on the walls as the sun arrives after weeks of darkness.  Seeing your partner's shoes beside the door.  Missing the people you love who are not with you, and wishing they were.  Wrapping yourself in a quilt your Mama made for you.  Sitting on your couch with a deep, good sigh and knowing you will not get up for hours.   Doing the dishes.  Using the dishes.   Folding the laundry.   Wearing the laundry.  Letting a song take you over and over again.  Feeling that deep exhaustion at the end of a long day.  Pulling the earth behind you as you run.   Seeing yourself so clearly in your baby brother that it's hard to breath.  Growing inside jokes with your friends like a garden.  Dreaming of your next trip.  Laying back in a hot, hot bath.  Listening to the endless chatter on the bus.  Rubbing your body with lotion.  Brushing your teeth.  Having a baby.  Losing a baby.  Feeling the morning kiss of your dog. 

These moments are real : moments when I remember what I already knew and yet forget so easily : that I am alive and that my life is now.  

We cannot bottle or passively observe these moments on a screen : we have to forget them and then remember them every day on our own, over and over again.  

Picking something up, throwing it, watching it come back.
Every cast is different, every cast is the same. 

The fly hits the water. The knife cuts the onion. The dreams fade away. The sun warms the room. The baby cries. 

Tracking happiness can easily lead to potty talk

One of my favorite stories from the first year of knowing Arnaud was when he and my youngest brother Collin first spent some time together.  Collin had flown to Seattle from Southeast Texas to visit me and to check out this strange new man-boy with whom I had fallen madly in love.  Collin was 15 years old at the time, and Arnaud the ripe young age of 23.  

 

What transpired between them is so clear in my memory that it is as though I watched it happen.  I can imagine perfectly the rough, thickly accented English of Arnaud as he asked Collin question after question (unending questions are a normal response of Arnaud to stress/social encounters -- he once asked my Mom from the backseat of a car the age of each of my adult cousins one by one... I have 13 cousins), and I can imagine Collin perfectly accommodating the potentally awkward interactions, both of them deeply kind, truly patient, and accommodating nearly to a fault.  

 

Arnaud had recently downloaded an application that attempted to determine statistics about the cause of personal happiness.  The application determined these statistics by asking questions about the user's level of happiness and activities thoughtout different moments of the day.  After a week or two of answering these questions, the user would be able to see a graph of when they were most/least happy and what factors had contributed.  It was an application that was made for Arnaud and his engineering mind and private emotions.  Arnaud would that told that application anything; it was fascinating to him that something like happiness could be tracked.  He set the application to "most frequent" and spoke with it often.  Here's the story:  

 

During their afternoon together Arnaud introduced my brother to his new application.  He explained the purpose and suggested that Collin also download it, as it had already been helpful to Arnaud.  

 

Collin might have been interested ("Ooohhh, how neat!" he probably said, regardless), except that because of Arnaud's thick, French accent the word "happiness" sounded almost exactly like "uh...penis".  The "h" sound is silent in French, and it is a sound that is often left out of English words pronounced by native French speakers.  The result is a little gap, an almost "uhh" sound - as if the speaker is trying to remember the right word and then, once remembering, saying it very clearly.  For example the word "happiness" sounds like, "uuhhh... PENIS."  The effect is profoundly French, as if he is stoking his chin and thinking, "What is this word, this thing, uhh, mmm, uuhhh, PENIS, oui, c'est ça."  

 

Now imagine Arnaud's afternoon of describing his new application to my brother.  "OH yes, this helps me to discover more and more about my uhhhhh... PENIS.  I must record many, many details about my uh, PENIS, because then I will know about it even more.  When is my, uuhh, PENIS good?  When is it bad?  When is my uhh... PENIS the MOST strong?  What time of day is it difficult to feel my uhh... PENIS? It's cool, yes?  Interesting, yes? When is it hard for you to feel uhh... PENIS?"  

On and on and on the descriptions and questions must have gone, descriptions most certainly given in great details, and most certainly listened to by Collin with growing horror but perfect politeness and feigned interest. Questions most certainly asked in complete sincerity and without humor by Arnaud and answered by Collin with shoulder shrugs and phrases like "HMm, never really thought about it before I guess."  

 

I imagine the subject changing during the afternoon, to my brother's relief, only to be interrupted a few minutes later by the alarm on Arnaud's phone, again bringing the attention back to his genitals.  "Oh yes, my uh... PENIS is VERY good right now because I am spending time with you Collin," he might have said.  "I always have a lot of uh, PENIS when I drink coffee, do you, Collin?"  I can hear Collin's uncomfortable laugh as he wondered if all Europeans were indeed perverts.  This went on for the entire afternoon until I joined them, at which point I saw what was happening (or "uh... PENNing") and laughed until I cried... as did poor Collin.  

 

For me it was another confirmation that my, uh... PENIS grows immensely when I am with Arnaud, and that I am incredibly lucky to have a brother who would walk around Seattle for an afternoon with a man he knew I loved, trying with all his might to understand why this man was so obsessed with tracking his penis and asking him about his own penis, and who on earth created an app for that.  

On hot yoga, being a mermaid in the next 2-4 years, and not naming any future baby "Tristan"

I am currently about one or two years away from being fluent in French.
Or maybe 6 months or 6 years.
Basically my French is growing at approximately the same rate as my hair : a speed best described by the word, seriously? 

I foresee that the day I officially become a mermaid (the day my hair covers my breasts) and the day I award myself the title "fluent in French" will fall on approximately the same day.  I also predict these two events will beget a very good, very strange party.

I have found a fantastic method for surviving both the slow trek towards fluency and the "Winter" in Belgium (meaning September - May, which is  similar to Seattle, except about 10 degrees colder and 10 shades darker with a less glorious summer by far) - this method is hot yoga.  I know, I know -- the proverbial "American eyes" are hereby commencing their wild rolling.  I know what you are thinking: white-person, upper-class, control-freak snobbery disguised as enlightenment.  I know.  I'm from Seattle, after all, and am thereby quite proficient in judgmentalism (please note: I am losing my English).  However I am currently stuffing my face with saucisson sec (salami), drinking my third beer (beer) and wearing the same jeans I have worn for approximately 87 consecutive days.  I also found a very large rubber-band in my pho soup the other day and proceeded to eat the entire bowl, virtually undisturbed.  I tell you these things in hopes that I change your perception of me enough to enable you to keep reading about hot yoga.  And also so you continue to like me.  Or not.  (No but really, please like me).  

The reasons I love hot yoga are all distinctly sexual, as are the reasons for my love of most things.

Imagine this scenario: a beautiful, dark room, heated to 102 degrees and slightly humid, causing you to sweat almost immediately upon entering.  Super hot already, right? 

You exist for the session on a mat exactly the size of your body - your own space - and yet you are surrounded by dozens of other sweating, panting individuals.  They are with you but do not need you. They will be happy or not, regardless of what you do.  They are not your concern and you are not theirs.  You are nearly nude, and regret even the paltry clothes you have on because of the glorious, counterfeit, Texas heat.  The class begins.  You are told what to do and when, and you obey.
You hear, "Right leg up," and up goes your leg.

I had forgotten the efficient seduction of simplicity.  I decide nothing and I risk nothing: I just am.  It is a similar sensation in my body and mind to sitting under the stars and knowing viscerally that I am insignificant, tiny, nothing.  These thoughts are a cool breeze on the swollen, pulsing wound of narcissism : of having spent spent my childhood and 60,000$ of education learning that I am everything : my insignificance is a tremendous relief.  "Left leg up."

Moments when I am not required to design (or to believe the illusion that I can design) the trajectory of my life are a kindness.  As my sweet man would say with his inimitable lips and lisp, "SO good... so good." 

Living life as an expat/immigrant means having tremendous weights tied to your body.  These weights both inhibit and exaggerate your movements, making you sometimes paralyzed, other times awkward.  Any movement you carry out causes these weights to swing - the repercussion of their momentum causes a virtual heaving, like being thrown off balance after hurling but not releasing a bowling ball. 

These weights launch you into a trajectory that would normally feel excessive, even ridiculous.  From the outside perspective the behaviors and decisions and failures of someone living life as an expat must look very strange indeed.  One failed social encounter can birth a gigantic, screaming baby of self-loathing that would normally take months of repeated failures to even conceive.

In addition to causing excessive, bizarre repercussions of movement, these weights make movement more difficult.  I have found paralysis almost my default in living here  - not that I am not running, working, etc - but in everything that I do I am less seen, less heard, and somehow the space I occupy in my world is less real.  When I visit the USA I have the profound and immediate sense that though it is quite simply no longer my home, it is there that I take up space, similar to waking from a dream or changing from a gas to a solid state.  

I know that much of my experience is language based, and comes from living here.  I am not visiting.  We bought a house; we live here.  My partner is not American.  I am not on a 3 or 5 year contract for work.  His family does not live in the USA.  If we have a baby the name Tristan will sound like I am naming my baby "sadness" because "triste" is "sad" in French.  I am not saying that living in a different country is less or more difficult if you are with an American or if you are only here for a few years or for the experience of living abroad - I am saying it is different.  


The people I know who live here, who have lives and jobs and babies and futures here, who can't understand their in-laws unless they learn a different language, those are the people in whom I have been able to see my reflection.  Those are the people who have understood what kindness is in a very different way than the people who are adventuring.   

It feels strange to say, "I am living abroad." What the hell does that mean? It sounds like I am on a trip in the early 1900's -- like what I am doing is temporary -- like it is a phase or a time that will pass when I finally "come home" after learning to paint at Downton Abbey or writing a book about being an expat.

Is it fun living here?  Absolutely.  Is it more fun than when I lived in Seattle?  Absolutely not.  Is it less fun?  No.  Is it more lonely?  Yes.  Is the food better here?  No.  Are some things better here?  Yes.   And on and on and on.  
It is different.  And part of the difference is feeling those weights hanging from my body : they are less now than when I first moved here, but they add weight to every decision, every silence, every failure, every success, every joy -- they cause me to feel less like myself and more like a frenetic mess of insecurity, a vapor, entirely dependent on whatever way the wind blows.

Living here has also quieted many places I have known in myself to be perpetually humming with anxiety. Which place do I prefer to live?  I don't.  I live here. 

My hair is getting longer and my French is getting better.  I may understand the words of my interlocutor, but I remain unable to intuit the nuance/melody of her words.  Where is the humor? What is the accent?  What is she really saying?  

Nuance has become my best friend and my worst enemy. 

Body language takes you to a point, and then you find yourself standing on the edge of an abyss trying to jump over and over and over, waiting for the moment when gravity finally works for you.  

Learning a language is agonizing.  

Knowing a language fluently feels like nothing, like an absence of a pain or effort instantly taken for granted.  W e don't feel gravity even as it holds everything in the universe together.  You jump into the air and then you come back, thanks gravity. 

We are advised constantly in our lives to notice the small things, to connect, to make eye contact, to lift our eyes from our phones as we go through normal life.  "Look at the sky!  Look at the person beside you!"  But living here has meant trying to catch my breath because all I can do is notice the small things; if I am not concentrating with every muscle in my brain on every stimulus swirling and careening past, I might miss the ONE intended for me. If I am not straining desperately to understand the words of the person speaking, I will most likely miss their meaning entirely, despite how open I may be.  

The nuance of so many things is lost entirely to me, and this is one of the most grievous losses of living here.  In my own language I feel highly adept in the world of nuance.  I might even say gifted, or maybe just addicted.  But living abroad (ie: having tea with the girls from Little Women) I have the sensation daily that I must maintain hyper-vigilance in order to understand even the most basic of messages, messages that feel more like mathematics, 1+1=2.   "I will change your address but I need you to come back next week," hooray, I understood and communicated, but I am still missing the nuance, the tone, the music.  And the daily loss of hearing and enjoying this music is exhausting and devestating and boring.  And lonely.  

It's the edges of moments that really let us in to someone else's world - the cracks and texture around what we say. 

The other night as I going home from class I watched an interaction between a bus driver and a woman he let into the bus at a spot where there was no bus stop.  She knocked desperately, he let her in (he was being nice).  She entered the bus, paid, and went to sit down.  As she turned to walk back the bus driver said, "Merci n'existe pas?"  (literally, "thanks, it doesn't exist?" / "You're not going to say thank you?")  He said it in an innocuous tone, and I guarantee I never would have felt his nuance if I had not understood his words.   She did not understand his invitation/confrontation, and shrugged her shoulders, smiled and sat down.  He rolled his eyes and drove like a maniac for the next few minutes.   I saw it all and understood it all, and I was on a high for the next few hours.   I was on a high because I had not been trying to understand - I just did.  I had an emotional reaction to the situation before even realizing I had done the "math."  It was gravity.    

Now imagine the hot room, a voice telling you what to do and when, and the pure joy of obeying and knowing the only nuance in the room is in your muscles.   So hot.  In so many ways.  

 

 

The Tiny, Flying Wolf : revisited

*NOTE*  -- I wrote the following in 2006.  I now live in a different country and do life with a different partner, a man who reflects love, adventure and gentleness to me daily; I am no longer afraid for my marriage.  My sister and I spoke this morning (she made me laugh) and my brother is sober and shining the light of his smile everywhere he goes, somehow selling something full of goodness after all the shit he's been sold.  


Can the wolf fly?  I am here to tell you, yes.    

 

_________________________________________________________________

I think the fact that most people get married and have children proves that most people are undeniably and irreversibly mad.  Push through the smiles and happy stories of any person’s childhood and you will find a mess.  You will find out that their parents are insane, their siblings dysfunctional and their heritage stiff and strange at best, dark and psychotic at worst.  And yet what do most people do? They get married, and they have kids.  They perpetuate and encourage this madness called family... they just don’t learn.  Isn’t the definition of insanity something like: “to do something exactly the same way a thousand times and to hope for different results on the 1001^st time.”  We are all mad. 

As I sat in the waiting room for my glorious back-cracking this morning I could not help but notice a small boy who was also waiting.  He was probably about seven years old, and was very beautiful.  It soon became apparent that he was different than most seven year old boys.  Maybe autism, maybe something else... it was hard to pin down, but some rhythm in his little self made his every word and movement somehow stand out in the room – he was different.  

He sat across the room from his Mom and yelled out, 
“Can I take off my coat Mom?”

“Yes, you can take off your coat.” 

“Mom, can I put it on the floor Mom?”

“No sweetie, put it on the chair next to you."

“Mom, where do I live on this map, Mom? Where does Darcy live on this map, Mom?”

Every thought in his head was instantly transformed into a question, and his mother’s answers stayed the course; her words were neither self conscious nor impatient - the pace between them familiar.  

As their endless cycle continued across the waiting room a woman entered the building with a baby on her hip and a dog on a leash – the boy was ecstatic.  

“MOM, Mom look... can I hold the baby Mom? Is that a baby Mom?”

“Ask permission first honey – you can look but don’t touch.”  

Hesitation was impossible; he quickly addressed the new mother. 
“Is that a baby?” 

She responded in a twinkly voice with light and fluffy pride as if she had just magically arrived by bubble, “Haha, why yes it is.”  

“Can I kiss it?” 
Her light and fluffy shrank a bit.
“Oh...well, he’s a little sick so let’s just look at him.”  

With that the boy stood up out of his chair and began to flail his arms around and with nearly violent animation he yelled on the top of his lungs, 

“HELLO??!!! HI THERE! HI BABY!!! HI!!!!!!!!”

The baby looked stunned and confused, and the boy was delighted by this response. 

The baby could only hold his attention for so long - he soon ceased his dramatic baby greeting and shifted his attention to the dog.  

“Is that a dog?” 

“Yes.” 

“Is he a wolf?” 

“No.” 

“He is a really pretty wolf... can he jump? JUMP BOY!”  and with that he whisked his arms to the sky in invitation to the small wolf.  The dog owner maturely intervened, “Well he can jump, but let’s not get him to jump while we’re inside...”
The boy complied.  
As the adults began to converse and laugh at a level higher than his intellect and his body, I watched as he continued to look at the tiny wolf - and then suddenly his face changed; it looked like he had just seen Santa Claus.  His eyes snapped wide and wonder filled his face... he again looked up to the owner of the tiny, jumping wolf and asked with blatant and urgent interruption, 

“Can he fly? Can he FLY??”  

The question hung in the air for a moment. 

Other adults looked at each other knowingly... their looks said “Poor crazy boy... how embarrassing.” The owner nervously laughed and said loudly so that all would know she was handling the situation appropriately, “No, he can’t fly; dogs can’t fly.”  
His face fell, but only for a moment.  His wonder was not so easily deflated. “Hell, she was wrong about the wolf thing, she's probably wrong about the flying thing... I bet she’s never even asked the wolf if he can fly” he seemed to be thinking.  And if the wolf couldn’t fly, maybe the baby could.  

I was stunned by his question and by his lack of self-consciousness; he was stunning.  I felt impatience and anger for the people who thought he was crazy – for the piece of me that thought he was crazy.  His hope was so clear in that moment that I almost couldn’t look at him – I almost had to just write him off as crazy.  Dogs OR wolves flying... ludicrous... scandelous.  

I miss my sister.  We haven’t talked for almost nine months.  I miss her most when something hilarious happens to me – I can laugh with my sister like no one else.  

I am angry for my brother.  I want to make the world a better place for him – a place that doesn’t try with all it’s might to make hope and goodness seem like shams sold by a cheap salesman.  I hate not being a better salesman than the world.  

I am afraid for my marriage.  I am tired of feeling the definition of insanity every day as I look at my reflection in the mirror of my husband's eyes – why do I always think tomorrow will be different? Why can I feel so much in my dreams and so little in my waking life?  Maybe it will be different tomorrow.  Maybe it won’t be.  

I am growing more and more cynical towards our country and its leaders.  Why is it that no matter what goodness and strength humanity intrinsically has been given, it is inevitably the greed and corruption and violence that take the trophy?  Government and leadership seem more like a mockery each time a ‘good’ man falls, and they just keep falling.  

I wish I was a crazy seven year old again.  
I want to look at my sister and my brother and my husband and my country like I just saw Santa Claus.  I want to gaze into the vast canyon of silence and anger and hopelessness and lift up my eyes and ask, with the answer already written in wonder on my face, “Can it fly?  Can it FLY?”

Maybe madness and hope are very close cousins.  Maybe they are even lovers. 

Maybe they are both.  

Scandelous.