Worldview / Detroit in Four Years

1/ I used to walk for hours with Cass in his stroller. That and the glass-strewn sidewalks helped me justify the ridiculously expensive stroller. It wasn't really a jogging stroller, but it had shocks, so I used it as one from time to time anyway. One day, I was jogging downtown, over by the Book Cadillac and someone yelled at me across the street: "Mam, are you OK?" He assumed I was running from someone.

2/ When Cass was two and a half, I took him to the Neighborhood Club park in Grosse Pointe. I thought the biggest surprise would be all the other children draped across the playground equipment, but instead, when we left, he asked "Where's all the trash?"

3/ When Ollie was an infant, the three of us would take morning drives through the city just to get out of the house. Ollie would nap, and Cass and I would explore neighborhoods, driving down once-regal residential blocks and into downtown, seeking out the Ren Cen and the Guardian. A favorite route was through Brush Park, past the stadium, the old mansions. He'd ask about the crumbling, burned-out buildings, and say things like "One day, my dad and I are going to fix those broken buildings. We're going to bring our hammers over here and fix them all!"

4/ A couple days ago, we were coming home from the rare all-morning suburban outing -- ice skate shopping, wild game butcher, lunch, meeting friends -- and as we pulled off the freeway ramp into our neighborhood, Cass let forth this angry little burst:

"Mom, our world is a mess."

"What do you mean?"

"People put their litter everywhere. The cars are messy. The houses are falling down. The buildings are broken. And one day, there won't even be baseball, because they keep tearing down our stadiums!"

Friday Night's Alright

Joy and Pane (coulnd't help myself)

They could have watched the bees (and looked for the elusive queen) for hours. Days. The only thing that dragged them away was the promise of spotting a woodpecker outside (which we did see!).

Brothers Don't Shake Hands

One day I'm sure they won't look at each other across the dinner table, but right now, they love each other so much.

So The Night Sky Went On

 

 When Cass sits down to draw or color, it's not really about the piece of art--it's all about the story. The entire process--every little twist of marker tip--represents a dramatic plot turn. He narrates the entire thing. In the past, I've tried whipping out the video camera, but he usually just clams up or gets off track, either too shy or too interested in showing off to remain lost and passionate about his story. I'm not sure why it took me so long to think of this, but the other day, I decided to start transcribing his narrative mid-stream, word for word, on a piece of scrap paper. He noticed, but didn't seem distracted by my frantic scribbling. Unfortunately, my flash of brilliance struck after the first half of the story had already unfolded (which was even better than that last half), but I'm just tickled to have any of it. 

"...and these are the locks, so no one can get out. The car is sinking in the sea, and there's a cave, so it can't get out. This blue line is the deepest part of the sea where no fish or creatures of the sea can possibly live--only that fish that lights up when other fish are around, the angler fish. This is the sparkling blue sea with all the beautiful colors. The red fish are tuna. Look at all this tuna fish. [takes break to dance around the table, twirling marker above his head] All hte tuna spread for hours and it never stopped. There were a lot of angler fishes, but more tuna. Almost everywhere you went, there was tuna. So... the night sky went on and all through the sea, only angler fish were stirring. Not even a clown fish was stirring! Mom, look at all this tuna fish! But the tuna always stop when there's an angler fish. They wrap around it, that's what they do. So the night sky went on and on. It never stopped. It kept looking for angler fish wherever it went. And the tuna spread throughout the land, and made the tuna companies some great tuna. (I don't even think I'm going to take a nap, this is so long!) The car sunk. After I'm done with all my tuna, I'm going to draw a shark. See all these points--those are dragons. So the night sky went on. It went on, the night sky. It went on so fast, it could never stop. They night sky went on. These are my shark teeth. They are humongous. They're bigger than real sharks teeth."