Over the weekend we hiked East Lake Creek trail so Max could finish his Wolf badge. We mapped it as we walked. We found cool stuff to learn about and do. We hid from a group of 5 men, just next to us on the trail, so we could learn how animals might be doing the same when we walked by.

Today was the total solar eclipse and Max’s first night in the Littleton house. He’s been here before but never slept here.

He watched the eclipse with Karolina in the Territories. I lamented that I didn’t get him glasses to watch it: the eclipse when I was a 9-year-old was inspiring and fostered a love of astronomy.

Max:”Do you speak the language of death?” [deaf]

Max: “Are you going to meet your scientist tomorrow?”

Karolina: “My scientist?”

Max: “Yeah, Evan”

Karolina: “Oh, you mean my professor.”

From Karolina: “I told Max that his name was pulled in a lottery and that he got a spot at a school where you only can get in if your name get pulled. He said to me this morning, “Forget VMS, I want to go to the special school!!”

yes it is in the car- no he didn’t call it a cd. Said it’s music but didn’t know how to call it otherwise.

Max found a cassette tape with Karolina in Vail/Edwards; I was in Denver. “He said it’s music but didn’t know how to call it otherwise.”

More from Karolina:

Today he asked me:” Do you know deaf?”
He was asking me if I know sign language.

In the bathtub he said to me :” Aki is so babystyle! He always says that he swings his peepee left and than right”

Who is Travis Tritt? Sounds like a country singer. I checked wikipedia; yep, he’s a country singer.

I finished my second day of work at S&P Global, and came home to the empty, lonely house. I avoided it as long as I could, but had to get back for more work.

I miss my family.

The other day, Max and I were playing Legos. He had a one-eyed guy and asked me what that was called. I had to think for a moment, and study the figure because I didn’t notice the single eye. He then pointed to his eye, I think. So I remembered the The Odyssey that I’ve read to him

“Cyclops, he’s called cyclops.”

Max repeated:

“Slyclops”

And a new villain is born.

I had it 40 years and it didn’t break. Max dropped it and it broke. I felt so bad I was going to cry.

“You should tell the police she had a boyfriend.” (concerning my ex-wife’s boyfriend)

Oma’s favorite dish at Cheesecake Factory is Steak Efina instead of Steak Diana.

In Minecraft “Employees Only. Information Point” is what I typed, but he meant to say exclamation point.

Max got his braces 2 days ago. Orange.

In the morning, shortly after waking up…

Max: “What’s the queen of Egypt?”

Aki: “Cleopatra.”

Max: “I had a dream. I found Cleopatra’s necklace. Cause it was like in, ah, the Anubis statue. And it was cursed so i didn’t put it on. And then you were there too. And then this other boy wanted it. We fighted. And then — don’t write that Aki — I killed him.”

Aki: “You killed him?”

Max: “I didn’t kill him on purpose.”

Aki: “You killed him for the necklace.”

Max: “Yes”

Aki: “He was a bad kid?”

Max: “Yes. He father was there, too.”

Aki: “So it was 2 kids with their fathers.”

Max: “OK, yeah that’s the end. It was pretty quick.”

Then a moment later…

“Did they find Cleopatra’s necklace?”  [he means in real life]

Aki: “I don’t know. Want me to look it up?”

We look it up and find the picture above. He says that kind of looks like it.

Last night, we saw Despicable Me 3 at the Riverwalk theater: Lucas, Max, Karolina, and me. A couple of nights before, we saw Back to the Future — Max’s first drive-in movie. Max sat on the roof of Darren’s car.

Summer night movies!

Yesterday, a mama bear almost broke into the house. Karolina and I were working together in my office. She went downstairs to get paper and heard a scratching from our bedroom. Upon entering the room, she saw a bear’s head through the window. They stared at each other and then the bear ran away.

She had 3 cubs.

About four days earlier, a bear had eaten all of the birdseed from our birdfeeders. Maybe is was the same one? That time, she left paw prints on the side of the house. This time, the screen was ripped and there were claws marks in the aspen tree holding up the bird feeders (no bird food in them, though).

How do I give life meaning? Not “What is the meaning of life” but how to create meaning? Why am I still asking this question at 47? I already know the answer and have known it for some years now. It is through connections and relationships, like the synapses between neurons, not the neurons themselves. The neurons are just nodes that can be replaced, although replacing one with many synapses or one with strong synpases is difficult and painful and sometimes just not possible (Adamcik, Cohen, Berman, Kelly, Mishniewicz, Owens, Schaier, Jung, Appel. Appel. Of course, Appel. Trobman, Glassman, Harrison). I know this but don’t want it to be so, and that is why I still search for another way. I want to be Crusoe on his island. Then I remember that even Crusoe had Man Friday and an invisible synapse between.

How do I not stop time but savor each moment and then, at its sweetest or most bitter, record it so I can relive it. I remember learning about God’s Book of Life, wherein all moments of all lives are recorded and God, in his wooden throne among the clouds, pages through the Book during times of judgement. Can I have a copy of my chapter?

I have memories of my mother, but they are sparse and impressionistic. And at her end, I wanted her to die because there would be sympathy for me. It is selfish and evil. It is a jet engine drowning the other sounds of her memory. Already two weeks ago feels like 20 years as I am deluged by the consciousness of the moment and the impending fatalism of the forthcoming. I need my chapter.

I watch little Max growing up and each breath he takes kills me. Again and again. It’s not murder and it’s not suicide but it’s the natural order. It’s not a transfer of my life to his; there is no zero-sum, yet he grows and I diminish. It’s painless but perhaps the saddest thing I’ve known, perhaps even more than my mother’s death. But I wouldn’t know because I can’t remember that pain. I need my chapter.

On the bright side, I have no regrets so far. Our synapse is like a steel cable, and I am present more than any other father I’ve ever known.

I need my chapter, but I don’t always want it and sometimes I fear it. What if my present and future cease as I spend the rest of my days reliving the past, until I got to the point in the chapter where I’m just reading and re-reading, ad infinitum, like the reflection of a mirror in a mirror.

Back to work. Somehow.

We got back from Europe a few days ago.

Yesterday, Max came home from Cordi Camp with a cup of dirt and three worms. Karolina said he’d been playing in the dirt and the worms when she picked him up. I told him we have to put the worms back. “Why?”, he asked. Always why.

Last night, during dinner (Austrian dumplings for dessert!), Max’s foot fell asleep. I told him what it meant and why he must move, that a man who ignored that had paralysis in that limb for the rest of his life.

“When I go to sleep, is my whole body like that?”‘

It took me a moment to understand what he meant. Then I laughed at the beauty of it. Who thinks like that? I’m so programmed that I didn’t even understand him at first.

So I explained that “my XXX fell asleep” is a figure of speech, and how my mother sometimes called it pins-and-needles instead.