Is This Mike On?

Her day is so calendared that her headaches have to ask for an appointment. I’ve been so motionless at times, my kids have hung their coats on me by mistake.

The middle daughter is above all this, operating her iTouch somewhere else in the house. Not many words are spoken because we’re all staring at some screen, lost inside the virtual world.

She’s chirping at me again.

You’ve got to be nicer, she tells me. I don’t want to be nicer this early in the morning. It goes against my nature.

Then the question came.

“Dad, how do the northern lights get their color?”

At my house, I look the other way when my son flings cotton swabs in the general vicinity of the garbage can. At your house, I carefully monitor the bathroom every 15 minutes for anything out of place.

We didn’t climb a mountain together. Or work in a soup kitchen side by side.

We didn’t share an in-depth conversation or kick up some fall leaves during a long walk.

“Shut your mouths,” she said loudly, as she leaned in close to their faces.

That didn’t work.

This is supposed to be an easy trip to the dentist. Just 30 minutes of cleaning and nothing more. Thanks for playing, guys. See you in six months.

Then the dentist starts looking at my teeth.

I can tell you about why I always say the wrong things (global warming) and why they made Norbit. (It seemed a better option that waterboarding at the time.)

It was my wife’s journal, and they were going through it page by page, reading about old boyfriends, crushes, goals and other chapters in her life.