'I know what my heart is for,' she said

Last winter, my wife was doing a workout video, and firstborn Brielle was joining in the fun.

Observing, Ashlyn asked, "Is there an exercise that makes you stay awake?"

Me: Actually, all kinds of exercise make you feel more awake because they make your heart beat faster and your blood flow all through your body.

Ashlyn:  I know what my heart is for.

Me: You do? What, Ashie?

Ashlyn: To wake me up.

(pause) 

Ashlyn: My heartbeat is like a lightning storm inside my body. Boom, boom, flash, boom!

I love my accidental Haiku poet, and I raise my Thanksgiving glass to her wisdom: To hearts that wake us up. To the inner electrical storms that beat life through arteries to hands and to world. To "boom, boom, flash, boom!"--and to whatever that lightning illuminates in you.

'I'm the president's boss,' she sang

Last spring, Brielle came to me with sad news....

Brielle: I have sad news. Sidney is sick. And she is the one who always plans our games.

Me: I'm sorry she is sick. I guess you get to take a turn leading the games.

Brielle: Actually, Mia planned the games today.

Me: Brielle, you know what I like about you? You know how to lead AND follow. Like when you're with your sisters, you lead and plan the games. But when you're with your friends, you know how to follow and let them lead them. That is really good, because everyone has to lead sometimes and follow other times. At my work, I lead with my students, but I have to follow other people.

Brielle: Like the principal!

Me: Yep, and lots of other people too. (School counselors have LOTS of bosses.)

Brielle: Who does the principal follow? I know...God!

Me: Yeah, but she has to follow other people too. There is a man who is the boss of all the principals in the whole district. His name is Dr. Delgado.

Brielle: Oh, I thought you were going to say the president. Because he is the principal's boss too.

Me: Hey Brie, even the president has to follow sometimes.

Brielle and Ashlyn: Whoa!

Me: The president has other presidents and kings who are leaders in other countries, and he is not the boss of them. And actually, we are his boss, because we choose which president we want.

Brielle: (to the tune of the Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya song used to flaunt one's invulnerability to another's threat of dominance) I'm the president's bo-oss! I'm the president's bo-oss!

Me: Verdad, niñita.

So here's to democracy, folks. Love our leaders or leave 'em, we are blessed to be bosses of presidents.

Happy Presidents Day!

"How did the war start?" she asked

We were listening to their favorite Pandora station two nights ago. Based on "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, it plays hours of Disney movie tunes, leading to spontaneous rounds of "Name That Movie." (You should try it sometime.)


Tonight it played "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" from The Sound of Music. (Yes, that was a Disney flick.) Over mac and cheese, edamame, weinies and greens, Ashlyn steered the conversation to the way the Von Trapp family had to run so they didn't have to fight in the army. We talked about how it wasn't just any army, but the Nazi army, the surface of whose evil I only scratched the surface with my description. Still, I think their main beef with Hitler's boys was that the Von Trapp kids would not get to see their Daddy while he was away fighting.


"That's like Ricky's dad," said Ashlyn. And next thing we know, we're talking about a friend whose Daddy is overseas in the U.S. Army.


Cognitive dissonance hung in the room: Nazis bad. Fighting bad. Children missing soldier daddies bad. At time same time, our soldiers good, our friend's daddy good. Fighting good?


And then, the question from Brielle: "Daddy, how did the war start?"


Deep inhalation, a proud thrill at such a big-girl question, and a sigh out. Resignation. This Daddy's answer would be so, so incomplete.


"Wow, that is a long story, girlies." My knowledge of Afghanistan's long history is limited to what I've picked up reading Khaled Hosseini's books, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. (Great, sad and beautiful both.) Cursory though that is, it was still too much information.


So, I told them the 9-11 story. World Trade Center. Pentagon. United 93. Al-Qaeda. Their friends, the Taliban.


The horror of it contorted Brielle's face as she listened, especially when she learned that the hijackers did their work as an act of obedience to their idea of God, with a belief that it would take them straight to heaven.


Somewhere in the narrative between September 11 and Afghanistan, Ashlyn realized I was telling too small a story.

"No, Daddy, how did ALL the wars start?" she interrupted.


I told her that the answer was more story than we had time to tell before bedtime.


Which sounded a little better than, "I don't know."


I could have related a story as primal as Lucifer's bid for godhood, or as recent as my last angry outburst at them. Or any story of creatures lusting for dominance that their Creator never gave them. But I didn't.


Whether from ignorance or prudence or cowardice or a desire to hallow a worthy question with a season of silence before daring to answer, I left my inquiring daughters' minds inquiring.


Maybe I missed a teachable moment.


But what would you have told them?

'My laughing is my prayer,' she said

 Getting ready for bed is anything but silent, except for Ashlyn, who usually knocks out to the lullaby of Brielle's expressed irritation that Melía is being so hyper (hyperactivity noise eclipsed only by that of Brielle's expressed irritation).

But this night, Ashlyn had the giggles. And we were trying to pray.

When it came her turn to say words to the Almighty, she laughed instead, and said, "Amen."

"My laughing is my prayer," she observed.

Indeed. And maybe a better one than most.

As Meister Eckhart, 14th-century German mystic and theologian, said, "God created out of the laughter of the Trinity."

Of the truth of this proposition, Ashlyn is awfully good evidence.

'Pretty much just talking,' she said

Brielle wanted to read her Bible tonight. Cool.

Being who she is, she wanted to start right--from Genesis 1:1. So we read the story of Creation--at least the first story, the one about the six days. God says, "Let there be light...and it happened. And it was good." Day 2, God pronounces that there should be air to separate waters below from waters above (and thankfully she didn't ask what that means). It happens again, and it's good again. Day 3, God speaks and dry land, plants, trees and their respective yummy fruits all happen, all good. Day 4, and God talks a moon, a sun and the rest of the stars into existing. Day 5, God's mouth opens again, and now we've got seas and skies teeming with life, blessed with the command to reproduce. Day 6, a few more words from God, and the land is full of creatures wild, tame and creepy-crawly.

And then He makes human beings.

He can quit while He's ahead and save Himself eons of headaches. But never one to leave well enough alone, He goes ahead and makes us anyway. But not just any way--in His image, after His likeness. Brielle and I took a few stabs at what that might mean before getting to Day 7, when God creates...

Nothing.

It's my favorite anticlimax. After lighting a universe, molding a planet, populating its liquid, solid and gaseous spaces, and topping it off by fearfully and wonderfully making two mini-Me's, God's grand finale is stillness. Silence. Rest. Pretty much the kind of day He might have had before all the creating began, except with more company.

It's holy. It's good. Very good.

"Do you think God was tired after all that work, Bubby Brie?" I asked.

"Um, 'all that work' was pretty much just talking," my firstborn replied, patient with my denseness yet figuring I should have known better. "And I don't get tired from talking unless I talk and talk for like a whole day without stopping."

I don't think she would get tired of talking even in that case, truth be told.

And God probably didn't either. But the reminder that a work so humongous can happen with such relative ease when Creator God speaks is Sabbath-rest to this tired, laboring Daddy soul.

'God knows a lot of stuff, but...' she said

Elbow-to-elbow in the Sentra today, questions floated forward, a merciful diversion to savor before the inevitable backseat brawl.

"Daddy, do animals go to heaven?" asked Ashyln.

"I don't know, Ashie. A lot of people think so. The Bible doesn't talk about that at all." My real hunch is that whatever is on the other side will bear little resemblance to what we know here. I suspect that we will live as we never imagined possible, more ourselves and less all about ourselves than ever. And in the midst of that mind-blowing aliveness, the presence or absence of pets will be the least of our worries, if we have any worries at all.

"Hannah's daddy says no," Melía offered. More chutzpah than I've got, that Hannah's daddy, I thought, wondering if my waffling over the pet cemetery question was more about tact or timidity.

"But he doesn't know," said Brielle. She attacked the unsubstantiated rumor as eagerly as I slap scary chain emails with Snopes-linked replies-to-all.

"God knows," Ashlyn said.

"That's right, Ashie-lu," said I.

"God knows a lot of stuff, but he doesn't want to put it all in the Bible."

No joke, Ashie.

Somewhere in late childhood I came to realize that God was bigger than my little brand of Christianity, that all that could be said of the Divine was far more than any single denomination could articulate. Sometime later it became clear that God was bigger than Christianity itself. How could anyone see a Gandhi or a Dalai Lama and say such a soul was godless? Even more recent has been my acceptance that not even a tome as remarkable as the Bible can be the final word on a Being who ignites and inhabits universes.

OK, so maybe I'm a little bit slow.

Certainly, much slower than Ashie.

"How many days...?" she asked

After weeks of asking, "How many days till Christmas?" and cheering at decibel levels inversely proportional to my answer, my children finally got to enjoy the coveted day.

Halfway through her dissemination of stocking goodies throughout the living room, Ashlyn had already posed the logical next question: "Daddy, how many days till Easter?"

So much for kids being all about the now.

I didn't know the answer at the time, but now I do. Curiously, on Christmas Day this year, it was an even one hundred. And in case your kid asks you the same thing, here's your answer: http://daysuntil.com/Easter/index.html.

Happy holidays! And happy waiting till the next one.

'I'm wearing my birthday suit because...' she said

One morning this Christmas break, I huddled under the covers in our snow-covered home as Ashlyn pranced and bounced around the bedroom in nothing but her princess panties.

"That's my Ashie Nunga-Punga," I said. "Aren't you freezing, Ashie-Loca?"

"I'm wearing my birthday suit because it's going to be Jesus' birthday!" she explained, cheesy grin smeared across her face.

How's that for a WWJD moment?

I spend a lot of December wondering how much of our Christmas chaos might make the Birthday Boy roll over in His manger or grave--if He were still in either.

But this nunga punga thing? I think He'd kind of like it.

For a morning, a day, a season, or more if we dare, maybe He'd rather have us dance in the buff, out from under all the crusty layers we thought could hide what we thought needed hiding. Maybe He'd dig that more than all the other stuff we've come up with to honor His incarnation. Maybe when it comes to hiding the real thing, less really is more.

Maybe my barely prancing Ashie-Loca is on to something.

So happy birthday, Jesus. Here's to naked celebration that lasts even longer than your birthday party.

'Six years,' she said

Tonight on the ride home from Thanksgiving, all girlies were asleep except Melía. (This is as traditional as today's turkey.)

Winding up the mountain, we were talking about how different kids spend different amounts of time in Kindergarten, depending on how ready their parents and teachers think kids are for 1st grade. "Some kids do one year of Kindergarten and some do two, Melía. How many years do you want to be in Kindergarten?" I said.

Part of me wants to normalize redoing Kinder if necessary. The twins are on the young side, after all. Another part of me says this to lay down the gauntlet and see them go for their studies as ardently as they go for playing dress-up.

"But bwown-ups choose that."

"That's right," I told her. "Good remembering. " I had made a point of saying that this decision is not up to the 5-year-old. "But if it were your choice, how many years would you want to be in Kindergarten?"

"Do you know how many years I would want to be in Kindergarten?" she asked, making sure I still understood the question.

"How many, Melía?" I asked. I'd have put my money on "one." What kid isn't eager to be as grown up as possible as early as possible?

"Six years!" she said, exuberant. ("Tens of thousands of dollars' worth!" my Daddy-ears heard, despondent.)

But sticker shock aside, here's giving thanks for one great Kindergarten and for at least one girl who's not in a frantic hurry to grow up.

At least not today.

'I will remember it again later,' she said

“While you’re sleeping, don’t forget how much I love you, Melía,” I told her.

(She hears this many nights, along with other valuable admonitions, such as, “Don’t eat yellow snow, Melía.” Some things just bear repeating.)

“I will not forget, Daddy.”

“Oh, good.”

“But if I do forget, that’s OK. Because I will remember it again later.”

This rings in my heart like an eschatological prophecy of a time of trouble. She won’t forget, she assures me. But growing daughters and flawed fathers being who we are, it won’t be long before she will.

What will get in the way of the love? I wonder. Curfew? Homework? Careless words? Wardrobe? Other men? All of the above?

But my little prophetess assures me that the time of trouble will outlast neither my love nor her knowledge of it.

Lord, when she does forget, please remind me that it’s OK. We do that. We lose sight of what we've been standing on. Things loom larger than people for a minute. Ego pounds impatiently at the front door, and Love slips out the back.

But it is OK. Later, she will remember again.

'Daddy, do you love the kitten?' she asked

Since around last Christmas, we’ve been planning on getting kittens. We delayed in part because we need another needy little being in our home like Jaws needs another swimming lesson. But since the girls are getting slightly less likely to torture, and even more slightly likely to actually care for such a critter, we finally took the plunge this summer.

So Pepper "Loveball" Bennie, sneezy orphan Siamese kitten, moved from the San Bernardino City Animal Shelter to the San Bernardino Mountains, a move up in the world both in the mile of elevation she gained and in the tonnage of love she now bears. She joins my wife and me as one of the few who know the joy and the torment of living with our three daughters.

It’s hard to know whether it is ignorance or ignoring of the signs of feline displeasure that leads kids to love a cat in ways that push the limits of the animal’s endurance. Melía holds her for durations that would try even a dog’s patience. Eager to enrich the kitty’s life with adventure on the day she arrived, Ashlyn tried throwing her for distance. Brielle still pleads not-guilty for holding her captive in the treasure chest all day yesterday while we were at the fair.

We always hurt the ones we love, don’t they say?

Maybe a week after we got Pepper, Melía asked me this:

“Daddy, do you love the kitten?”

Let me defend myself before I tell you how I answered. I’m really clear that “love” is this holiest of words that has been profaned by overuse. Call me a snob or an idealist or whatever you must. But for me, true love is a sacred act of will that I define something like M. Scott Peck does in The Road Less Traveled: “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Love is God.

And if I teach my kids anything about anything, I want it to be This.

So I'm all cautious about my answer, which, I was certain, had the heinous power to distort her idea of love for eternity.

"Not as much as I love you, my Melía," I hedged, circumspect as all get-out.

"What?" she asked, appalled at how the soul of any sentient being could be anything but filled with love for her kitten. "Why don't you love our kitten, Daddy?"

"Well, it's just...." I was tempted to bust out my arsenal of words that mean love but don't mean Love, words like cathexis and affinity and like a whole bunch. But I was smart enough not to. "I do love the kitty. But it's a different kind of love than how I love you. A much smaller, much less important kind of love than I love you with, Melía, because I love you so MUCH."

Was that a sign of relief I saw on her face? "You do love our kitten, Daddy. But a diffwent kind of love."

Relieved? Yes, I think she was.

But still a little worried about my soul.

'It hurts my heart when it's not fair,' she said

Someone had gotten more of something than someone else, and Brielle did not like it. Not one bit. She wailed her way down the hall into the great room.

"It's OK, Brielle," I said, ever trying to turn down the volume on the girly drama in my home.

But the volume went up instead. (You'd think I'd have learned by now.) She deflected my poo-pooing response to her protests with fresh vocal vigor.

I winced and waited for the swell to roll past. When it did, she unveiled the why of her righteous indignation:

"It's not fair. And it hurts my heart when it's not fair!"

I loved her more than ever.

As a kid, the closest I came to going postal on my teachers was when they answered a complaint about unfairness with the truism, "LIFE isn't fair." Great. Just be in bed with the injustice, I would have told them if I'd had the words. Be part of the problem. Resign yourself.

Idiot.

I still feel that way. And though I have the words now, I also have the discretion or fear or prudence or whatever you want to call it to bite my tongue and simply resent the speaker. Too often, I choose cool contempt for the person over hot attack of the problem.

As an adult, I've learned more about the shades of justice. I've learned that equity is different from equality. For everyone to get the chance they deserve, some need more help. And when they don't get it, I still get angry.

Life is not fair; my teachers were right. But is the good-kid thing to do about it to shut up and take it?

Or to scream?

Brielle, may your heart never stop breaking when it senses injustice. Like you did just now, may you have the words--and the courage--to assault it wherever it lingers.

God knows you have the voice.

'It's OK, Daddy. It was an accident,' she said

I cupped my hand under Brielle's face, pouring out apologies nearly as fast as her chin spilled blood. The drops were splashing now as they plopped into the swelling red pool in my hand, which sloshed as we cried our way across the sand toward the lifeguard tower.

We'd just been killing time on the beach, pausing our walk for some gymnastics while we waited for Melía to catch up. The somersaults went great, and led naturally into the headstands. I spotted Ashlyn's feet for her headstand, then spotted Brielle for hers. And when I did mine, helpful girl that she is, Brielle spotted me.

I didn't get the memo.

So that when my heel kicked up, Brielle's chin was waiting to greet it. I heard a sharp snap as the foot bone connected to the chin bone, separated by way too little soft tissue, and pounded her teeth together. It was a scary enough sound that the scream that followed it gave me a measure of relief.

At least she was OK enough to scream.

We walked across the sand, Brielle wailing, her Daddy wailing louder but without sound, sober sister Ashlyn in tow.

I wonder now, why was I making such a point of catching the blood? All those blood-borne pathogens trainings? Or a helpless father doing the only thing he could think of to feel slightly less helpless at that moment. Catch blood, and apologize ad nauseam.

"I'm so sorry, Brielle. I am so sorry. I didn't know you were back there. I'm so, so sorry. I was not careful enough. I should've looked back before I did my headstand. I'm sorry, sweet Brielle."

Through her sobs came this gift:

"It's OK, Daddy. It was an accident."

And it is OK. Now, at least. An hour in the ER, 3 stitches, a pop-sickle and a DQ ice cream cone later, she was sewed up and feeling little pain. Yes, the water slide plans for the next day were off, and I'd found another way to sabotage swimming lessons. But mostly, she was fine.

Me? I'm still a little traumatized. I hate it when, after quantities of energy, bribery, coercion and scare tactics spent on stopping my children from hurting themselves, I hurt them myself. And then all I can do is catch blood and say I'm sorry.

But in the trauma, I'm thanking God for lifeguards and doctors who can do more than that. For wives who watch shots and stitches go into their brave daughters' gaping lacerations--and still love me. I'm thanking Him for popsicles and DQ that bridge trauma to treats, and for healing--of chins and hearts.

And I'm thanking God for little girls who forgive faulty fathers even while the wound is still dripping.

'Everyone is a baby,' she said

This morning over Cheerios, Brielle was estimating God's age.

"He's a hundred," she said.

"Even older than that, sweet Brie," said I.

"Yeah, He's a thousand."

"Even older than that. Infinity."

"Yeah, He's infinity, 'cause that's the number that you can't count to."

Also at issue this morning, on the other end of the spectrum, was how old we are. I must have started it when I said, "Ashlyn, you're my sweet, good Ashie-baby."

"But I'm not a baby for real life," Ashlyn countered.

"No, you are a big girl. But you are still my baby."

Ashlyn's eyes widened. "Actually, everyone is a baby."

"Everyone?"

"Yeah! Everyone is a baby. Even you are a baby. Because we are all little--kind of little--and only God is big."

A big thought for a little Ashie-baby. One this Daddy-baby needs to remember.

'Daddy is lying again,' she must have said

Last summer, the girls took their first professional swimming lessons. They LOVED swimming lessons.

This spring, my folks gave them all the birthday gift of another round of lessons, complete with leads printed from the Net on where they could take them. I've been planning on setting it up since school got out in early June.

But first I had to clean out the closet (which was at one time an office) where the printouts had buried themselves since being gifted. That occupied the first four days.

Once found, I set them out to call the next day. They sat out not quite long enough for me to call, but long enough for six small hands to disappear them into the rubble.

The next next day, I extracted my leads from among the piles of sorted stuff I'd removed from my blindingly sparkly clean closet (which has renewed its ancient claim to officedom), and from the piles of spent drawing paper to which my little swimmers had helped themselves.

That done, I found myself on Friday, July 3, when USA celebrated the foreshock of its 233rd birthday, and no one was in business.

No worries. Sunday night, I planned for them to start Monday after work. I built it up, had Mommy send the bathing suits with them to childcare, mentioned it at random times just to get a huge "Yay!!" out of them.

I called from work the next day and got the dirt on the lessons. I had the date wrong.

Darn. They'd have to start the next week. This would not go over well.

When I picked them up, the news was greeted with cries and screams, barely mitigated by my consolation offer to take them to the creek to swim on our own. I explained that I'd messed up on the date and that it was too late to start lessons this week. I was sorry, but we'd do it next week (i.e. "a million years from now").

Another week of planning and hoping--the girls anticipating the highlight of their summer education, me exploiting their anticipation to gain compliance and mood lifts when needed.

Yesterday was the big day. I had the times, I knew this was the session start date, and I'd get them there at 2 o'clock--opening time--so I could sign them up for the best time slot.

It's just that they were having so much fun that morning pretending to be pets inside those Tupperware storage bins. And I was having so much fun figuring out online if I could save money by cutting my home phone line. It was 2 now, past lunch time and they were asking for Rice Krispies in bowls just like pets eat their food.

That would be fast.

But somehow it was not fast, and when we got down the mountain to the pool at 4:29, the swim class coordinator tried to be nice as she explained that we had a snowflake's chance in a hot place of snagging a spot in the 4:30 class, the last of the day.

At 4:40, the girls were still in the bathroom helping each other put on their bathing suits. Normally I'd be itching for them to finish the job and get the hot-place out here to start the lesson. But yesterday, I considered letting them play at changing for half an hour (an easy amount of time to kill with such a task) and then telling them they were so slow they'd missed the lesson.

But I didn't.

Instead, I muffled the self-loathing tantrum that was going on in my head, told them the truth, and apologized. Again.

"We'll start tomorrow, girlies." They didn't even cry this time. And that was worse, because it gave me mental space to imagine what they must have been saying:

Daddy is lying again.

Another plan thwarted. Another promise broken. Another hope dashed. Another doubt planted.

They stood there, sweet and stoic, as I signed the paperwork and forked over the cash for lessons that really, truly would start tomorrow (i.e. "sometime slightly sooner than a million years from now, but at 5 p.m., still way too far away from today"). I knew it was for real this time. But the doubt in the air squeezed my throat tight.

I compensated with the increasingly lame creek idea, throwing in an ice cream cone this time. No protests. No complaints.

But no delight either.

Today, I had an afternoon meeting. My wife took them to swim lessons. She drove 40 minutes from work up the mountain where a friend was watching them, hussled them into the car and down the mountain, out of the car, across the parking lot and into the bathroom to change. They were in the pool for their 3:30 lesson at 3:31.

When I saw them afterward, they were bubbling with stories about what they'd done in class.

"Daddy, I floated on my back--withOUT any help!"

"Daddy, I jumped in by myself!"

"Daddy, I put my head under the water!"

After celebrating with them for a few minutes, Ashlyn added another boast. "And Daddy, we made it on TIME to swimming lessons today!"

"That's awesome, Ashlyn." Finally, someone had gotten these sweet little fish to the pond. Go Mommy.

"Um, Daddy, I have an idea." Ashlyn was bright-eyed. "After today, Mommy should drive us to swimming lessons."

'What does love mean?" she asked

Melía tells us she loves us a lot. Scores of times each day.

And at least as often, we tell her that we love her.

We quite enjoy it, although it might get kind of nauseating after awhile if you were here listening.

"I-love-you-so-much-you-are-so-cute, pweety pie," she'll say to me, rapid-fire. Kisses--wet, wonderful and splattered all over my face--come with the deal.

"I love you so much, my mini-Melía. You are my wonderful, sweet, beautiful princess daughter."

"I love you so much, Bo-Bo." (Bo-Bo? Don't ask me.)

This kind of dance goes on throughout the day, from the first hello in the morning, to the final good-night in the evening. (And on to the five or six loving good-nights she manages after that, before we stop responding.)

But one day, in the midst of one of these syrupy sweet conversations, she asked,

"Daddy, what does 'love' mean?"

I know now that I answered way too quickly, considering that this may be the most important question in the universe. The fact that I don't even remember my answer shows how profanely hasty I was to field this holy inquiry.

But I must have said something like, "Love is sharing, and being nice and good to people, helping them, even when they are not nice to us." (Accurate, but so blasé. I should have spent days pondering it, like I'm still doing with the "When will God rest again?" question.)

What I do remember is her response: "Oh, that's fun!"

I buy that.

Is love easy? Rarely.

But when we manage to pull it off, is it fun? Absolutely, my mini-Melía.

'Is God resting today?' she said

Driving down the mountain toward Vacation Bible School one afternoon, Ashlyn asked,

"Is God resting today?"

"Wow. That's a great question, Ashie-love. Um, Jesus says in the Bible that God is always working--listening to us, helping us, taking care of us. God doesn't really get to rest. He works every day."

"But He did rest one day!" Ashlyn cried. She must have thought I'd forgotten.

It should be said that infant Ashlyn was our angel baby, because she actually did the only two things babies really need to do: eat and sleep. She is still rather adept at this pair of simple pleasures.

She relishes her grub with commentary worthy of the top foodie magazines (at least the ones read by preschoolers). The first time she ate kiwifuit, at age two-and-change, she said, "Yum! Kiwi tastes like canteloupe and grapes." (And it does. I'd never thought of it, but I couldn't beat that description now.)

And even though she precedes them with tormented screaming and insanity, Ashlyn is our one child who still does naps. We've long known known that her crescendo of ferocity is just the storm beform the calm. Just this week, she confessed to her appalled sisters, "I do like naps."

Ashlyn plays hard, eats well, sings loud, fights strong. And she rests.

Was she looking for divine company now on this late afernoon, Someone as passionate, alive, brilliant and busy as she, Who also knows when it's time to stop?

"Yes, Ashie, you are right. The Bible also says He rested for a whole day when he was done making everything."

Exonerated, but no more satisfied than I with the paradox in the air, she paused. "Daddy, when is He going to rest again?"

Delighted, I laughed aloud.

"Daddy! When is He going to rest again?" She was urgent now, demanding to be taken seriously. And I was taking her seriously. It was just such a beautiful question that my joy at being related to her and the depth to which she had stumped me only knew how to come out as a giddy giggle.

"I don't know, Ashlyn. I'm just laughing because that is a very good question. It is such a good question that I think I will think about it for many days before I try to answer it. That is one of the best and hardest questions I have ever heard in my whole life. I'm very proud of you for asking it."

When will God rest again?

When we stop screwing up? When life stops giving us owies? When the human experiment is finally over and we're living out its happy ending in Paradise? Or will keeping Paradise Paradise take more God-work than ever with us on board, like a parent trying to keep the house tidy with a herd of small children on the loose?

Lord, you're the God of rest. You know--the One with the easy yoke and light burden. The One who made it a rule for us to chill every seventh day. (Great idea, BTW.)

You're the God of rest. But when will you get any Yourself?

Ashlyn and I want to know.

'Swats only teach me to hit other people,' she said

It's been months since the conversation occurred, so I may not get it just right. But a quote I heard on the radio scooted it back onto my mental front burner after many moons of simmering.

Brielle was reprimanding me for my use of corporal punishment.

"You hit me!" she accused.

"No, I did not 'hit' you. I swatted you."

This is the term Rachelle and I settled on years ago for when we...uh...when we hit our children. The distinction is important, mind you, for several reasons.

1. Our swats are always open-handed. Hits, not necessarily.

2. Swats are dealt in cold blood, strategically. Hits tend to be crimes of passion.

3. While both are intended to manipulate behavior, the girls' hitting usually seeks selfish gain while ideally, we parents swat with disinterested, didactic motives. (I said "ideally.")

If that last one was the hardest for you to swallow, you've got five-year-old company. Brielle didn't buy it either.

I told her, "Hitting is when you want to hurt your sister because you're mad at her. Swatting is when I want to teach you because I love you."

"No, swats don't teach me ANYTHING! They only teach me to hit other people and be mean to them."

I don't recall how the rest of the dialog went. I only remember wondering if she'd been reading some anti-spanking parenting books--and wondering at what a point she had. When I swat, am I helping the child extinguish an antisocial behavior, or does she merely internalize my example of violence for dealing with others?

I don't know.

Pacifist though I am, I have not yet sworn off swats. I gave one to each of the twins just before kissing them goodnight in the wake of this lovely exchange between them:

"You're stupid."

"You're stupid."

"You aren't my friend."

"You aren't my friend."

"You aren't my stister."

"You aren't my stister." (sic)

I swatted and lectured both of them on what a special, precious gift they had in each other and how out of a hundred babies only one gets to have a twin and how they would be friends and sisters forever and how it was NOT okay to say such mean things. They cried pitiably for three minutes, their smarting skin either competing with my speech for their attention or underlining its urgency.

Then they buried me--and shortly thereafter each other--in hugs and kisses.

It was just the way a good spanking should go.

Little as I enjoy dishing it out, I think physical punishment is underrated. It has a primal zing that can shake us out of our false self to realize that moral failures actually cause pain, that ethical lapses lead to suffering. There is an immediacy, a relevance to a swat that talks and time-outs can't touch.

That said, the quote I heard came from an NPR source's commentary on the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on detainees in Guantánamo, and how they've been around for hundreds of years. One interviewee was convinced that the torture-like techniques have survived through time because they are so effective. A dissenter said this:

"These techniques have survived because it's easier to hit a person than outsmart them."

Touché.

Underrated and inevitable though corporal punishment may be, and even though I swat, not hit, I'm here confessing that in disciplining my angel combatants, I've been caving too often to what is easy to do. The rod is as old as time and as natural as sneezing, and to a degree it works.

But thanks to this interview, I'm going to work harder than ever on doing less swatting--and more outsmarting.

'I wonder how God puts the baby inside,' she said

Thursday I talked Brielle into snagging a Del Taco strawberry shake to share. (This delicacy beats anything Starbucks sells and for well under three bucks.)

It didn't take excessive persuasion. But healthy girl that she is, she was helping me justify the purchase as we pulled out of the drive-through.

"Daddy, this strawberry shake is good for you--a little bit good for you."

"Well, yeah, it does have some good things in it, like protein, and calcium, and a little bit of vitamin C and fiber from the strawberries." (OK, so it is a VERY little bit of these latter--but part of the beauty of this shake truly is how many real frozen strawberries they blend in. You really must try one.)

"I know," she said.

She does, too. We often talk nutrients--and lack thereof.

"But it also has a lot of---"

"Sugar," Brielle finished my hackneyed critique for me. "Yeah." A wistful sigh.

"It has a lot of fat too," said I.

"A lot of people like to be skinny," mused Brielle.

A brief fear that our nutritional conversations had begun warping her body image poked its nose into my chest. "Yeah, they do, Brielle." I clung to matter-of-fact-ness.

She took the topic elsewhere, mercifully. "Pregnant ladies are fat and skinny."

"Verdad, niñita."

"They're skinny on top and they're fat in the middle. Because they have a baby inside their tummy."

I breathed a couple gentle laughs.

"I wonder how God puts the baby inside their tummy." (So much for merciful topic changes.)

"You wonder what?" I asked, feeling suddenly desperate.

"I know God puts the baby in their tummy, but I wonder how He does that."

I considered going there, but decided quickly that I lacked the time and preparation to do so competently. (OK, and I lacked the guts too. But honestly, if holding a cell phone to one's ear is illegal while driving, shouldn't having "the talk" with a 5-year-old be too?)

"That's pretty crazy, huh? We'll have to go to the library and get a book about that."

---

So...any great book ideas, dear friends? Seriously.

'I love you more than you do,' she said

Melia is incredibly lovey dubby these days. She regresses into paroxysms of delight when I get home from anywhere. Before bed lately, she has been telling me, "I love you more than you do, Daddy."

I knew this was a good thing the first time I heard it, whatever she meant by it. At first I guessed she was saying that her love for me was greater than my love for myself.

True enough, I thought. Maybe her intuitive little heart had sensed my bent for self-loathing and wanted to tell me she saw a more lovable soul here than I saw in myself.

But only a few nights ago did I figure out what she was really trying to articulate.

"I love you more than you love me," Melia said.

I laughed and argued back, "You are very sweet, but I don't think so, because I love you soooo much!"

"I know, but I love you MORE than you love me." She was sticking to her guns.

And it cracked me up. "I don't know, my Melia...."

"Don't laugh, Daddy. I'm serious."

This only made me more giggly, but she was adamant now. "Don't laugh at me, Daddy! I'm serious!"

Finally, I shut up and let her love me.