There and Back Again

One of the great things about spring is taking my nineteen-month-old son (henceforward known as the Dude) outside to play. Since he last saw green grass on the ground, he has learned the finer points of walking, running and chasing anything he hasn’t seen before. And since he’s little that means just about everything.

Today I took the Dude out for a walk to the neighborhood park. I had his stroller all packed up with a bottle filled with milk and one filled with water, a Yankee cap, suntan lotion, and a Nerf football just in case he wanted to work on throwing spirals. I was ready for battle.

The walk started off well. We had good energy. We were focused.

About a hundred yards in, the Dude decided he was done with the stroller and wanted to walk. So we held hands (or really his hand holding my index finger) and he zigzagged down the sidewalk, while I dragged the now-useless stroller behind me. The park and its bounty of slides and swings would soon be ours.

Then we met a neighbor who lives ten houses away. He had his two-year old twins tethered to his waist as they pulled in opposite directions. The Dude and I practiced his hard–won new skill of waving “Hi” at the neighbor kids. Before we knew it, we were exploring all the wonders in the neighbor’s backyard: trees with dangerously mysterious berries, peat gravel perfect for throwing, patio steps that needed to be stepped on, and of course, dirt.

The Dude looked up at me as if to say, “Dad, why haven’t you told me about dirt before? We should get some of this for the living room!”

By the time we waived goodbye to our new friends, the Dude’s physical energy was draining fast. As was my mental energy from trying to stop the Dude from eating any of the weird berries or poking his eye out with the cool stick he found on the ground.

We walked a little longer down the sidewalk, but the distance left to travel to reach the park felt insurmountable. With the Dude’s interest in the stroller long past, and his little legs giving out on him, he had no choice… and the Dude wants me to reiterate that he had NO CHOICE… but to throw his arms up to the sky in the international little kid language that translates roughly to “Carry me.”

So I carried him home. And the Dude is heavy. He is a thirty-five pound medicine ball.

The walk home was long. The walk home was hard. Tears were shed. And they were all mine.

I have been working on a novel entitled, “The Dunce Caps” for a good while now. The first 150 pages were like the first 150 yards of my walk with the Dude. We had the bright idea, we had the passion, we had the tools, and most importantly we had an endgame in mind. When you leave the house your goal isn’t the necessarily to reach the park, it is to eventually find your way back home just like in “The Hobbit”. The necessary goal for a novelist is to type “The End”.

But while you’re out, you get sidetracked, you meet fascinating new characters, explore new locations, and you take a different direction then the one you had all plotted out. Then you get tired and the end seems farther away then when you started.

Looking at the bottom of the page in my “Dunce Caps” file, I see I'm on page 150 and have written 28,550 words. That’s a little under halfway … I think.

So, I’m going to track my progress on the book in this blog, with hopes that I can find my way home.