BODY PARTS-Chapter 5

The Invertebrate

She’s outside, nice night, early spring but warm enough to cavort, or sit and watch, which is what I’m doing. I’m observing and writing. I feel that first inkling of spring, the spring that gives one lift, and it is heartening. The tax returns are in the mail, and the very first, if slightly stunted daffodils, are rearing their baffled heads.
I’m not as fit as my kids. He’s ollieing on his skateboard and she’s screaming with joy, screeching with delight as she puts everything into hurling a rubber ball at her older brother and then running away. If you know my writing you know I will not allow it to stay in such a warm place. The story must turn cold or sour before I’ll let you eat it. I’m not rejecting the sentimental though I may appear to do so in no uncertain terms. More I am compelled to turn this simple delight into a surreal jaunt through the unknown lands. I have to complicate things, take them that one step further, peel back the skin to reveal that hidden thing—perhaps a deeper delight that rarely gets a look in. Maybe there will be nothing there but more blue sky or that which I’d already imagined. Usually though something surprising happens.
My mason’s arm continues to hurt all these months later, and the chronic pain in my back has returned. My plan to run today was demolished by relentless, frustrating calls with credit card companies, and computer specialists, and ISP providers living in New Delhi, most of them polite to a default, and most of them unable to solve my problems, and really, in the end, that is all I want them to do. I was pushy and took no pushing back. I took the high road and stood my ground. In the end I got results. The therapy came through but at a cost. Exhausted I tinkle the ice in my glass and wince as my daughter lets out another ear piercing scream. My spine aches but not as bad. The whisky helps and I’m reminded that I do at least have a spine. Standing up, at the end of the day, requires some major sitting down. I eat a pretzel and gulp my drink. This is all so real. The story resists taking a magical turn. I’m meant to be in the here and now. It occurs to me that the here and now is a very scary place but I'm not permitted to leave, not yet. What if he accidentally rolls over her tiny little digits? What if he slips and smashes his helmet-less head? I hear myself saying for the umpteenth time: “Oh, do be careful!” What if she gets him really mad? Unlikely. He has remarkable patience. What if she falls from her pogo stick?
She cracks her cranium. We head to ER. They stitch her up. We are destroyed as parents all over again.
She swings her head and gives me a magical smile. He looks at me intently: “It’s physics,” he says as he jumps up in the air with his board. He’s so smart. Pride arrives which gives my spine cause to smart again.
He dissected frogs today—they smelt their insides and the classroom went “Oooooh! Groooossss!” He is working on vertebrates all this week and loving it. He should take me in tomorrow. I’m free. I could be the next classroom specimen. I’m big enough they could all gather round and still see what they were doing. Give me the right drugs and I could tell them what parts they are finding, I could give them the anatomy lesson. Naturally my son would be embarrassed. “Yes, it is my dad.”
They lay me next to the bunsen burners and remove my shoes. They take out their scalpels and ponder: What does a dad look like under all that skin and cloth? Does he really have a spine?”