In case you were wondering

You dance; they danced

Cleo, Mom told me that you went to dance class yesterday, and did really well. Nice job! I wish I had been there to see it, but maybe I can take you when we get back to Baltimore. Meanwhile, I'm very happy that I'll get to see you in three days. And I've been looking for pictures of dancers here in Venice. Today, I was in a cemetery, and I saw the tomb of a man who ran a very important ballet company: one of the best in the world. He wasn't a dancer himself, but he directed the ballet dancers: and look at the sculptures of shoes on his tomb!

The sun has been shining here almost every day, and yesterday I went to the beach, to see if it's something we might do together. Yes, indeed: the sand looks good for castling, and the water is not cold at all. Bring a swimsuit, okay? And we can take the ferry to the beach, and maybe get some ice cream afterwards. So, you have three days to decide what flavor you'd like to try first...

Q: and wedding dresses? A: and wedding dresses.

Cleo, I suppose that you may have wondered if there are good, long dresses in Venice. Yes, there are! In fact, lots of people come here to get married, and have their pictures taken in special places around the city. This morning, as I was walking to my boat, I saw this bride posing for her photographer in the gentle early sun. Maybe we can look for some brides with really long dresses when you get here!

But of course there are other fun things to see and hear, as well. Today I learned that the first storybook of Pinocchio was made here - and that we can see the tools that were used to make it. Also, occasionally the men who row the gondolas will sing, or will ask a friend to sing. You can sometimes here them coming down a canal, before you even see them. Or, if you're lucky, they might row right past you, when you're not even expecting it. Here's a picture I took (in a reflection, in a sculpture) that might show you what I mean:

Anyway, I hope that you had a fun trip to Washington, and that you're enjoying your time with Omi and Papa.

From here to there

Cleo! It's taken us four years, but perhaps we're now at a point where we can use this blog as a means of actually communicating, rather than as a more limited platform for my comments. So, perhaps you can get Mom to read this to you:

I miss you. I hope that camp, so far, is fun. Do you think that Max ever goes to camp? He would be a silly camper. Anyway, I'm in Venice, and so far it's a lot of fun. The city is built on many islands, and you can take boats from one island to another. I took the picture above last night, when I was riding back to the main island. Can you find the seagull in the picture? I love you, and I will see you in 8 days; meanwhile, please be nice to Mom and take good care of her. And, by the way, if you want to write anything to me, you can use the comment box, below! Love, Dad.

Without her; through her

First, a deep, sincere thanks to all of you who helped to make Cleo's fourth birthday so rich and generous. On Sunday, we gathered with friends as a summer storm took shape outside, and enjoyed pizza, a lively game of pass-the-parcel, and a rainbow comprised of cupcakes; yesterday, Cleo opened a package full of new clothes for her various dolls; and this morning, she awoke to a range of colorful cards and strawberries with powdered sugar - and, I gather, there's still more to come this evening.

But I can only surmise, because I'm now sitting at the Starbucks in Dulles, about to check in for a flight to Venice, and thus playing the part of the absent dad on the road. In fact, I'll be cast in that role for the next ten days, as L. and her parents tend to Cleo and life in B'more, while I work with a MICA study abroad course. of course, given that the destination's Venice, I'm not asking for sympathy. But, regardless, I can already feel myself missing her little footfalls, and her enthusiastic proclamations - which have recently concerned, most frequently, Rapunzel, but have also encompassed the habits of slugs and Cleo's allegedly remarkable height. I miss, too, the alternative to those proclamations: that is, her occasionally openly modest queries. 'Dad' she has said several times since our visit to Gettysburg, 'tell me about the war.' And remembering that reminds me, too, that we've actually spent a lot of good time together of late: from afternoons at the swimming pool to muddy efforts at gardening (or garden-inflected efforts at muddening?), June's been good to us.

But perhaps the best pallative to missing her occurred a few minutes ago, when I was scrolling through my phone's stored images, looking for the above photo. To my surprise, there were more than 200 photos on file: a fact that seemed inexplicable, until I remembered that I'd given her the phone for a few minutes while driving home on a recent afternoon. In those minutes - 6? 8? - she'd managed to shoot a whole suite of images: views of the world outside; studies of her legs; blurred abstractions. And then, too, this rather lovely composition:

And so suddenly, as I finish my latte and ready to approach the gate, I'm not quite alone. Even as I set out to see a part of the world without her, for the next week, I learn to see the world through her.

(Mis)recognitions

With Cleo's school closed down for a 5-day Memorial Day weekend, it was time for a dad-and-daughter trip - or, better still, a dad-and-dad-and-daughter-and-daughter trip, as my old friend Geremy agreed to brig his 3-year-old, Harper, up to Gettysburg for a reunion, some time in a hotel, and maybe a sliver of Civil War history. And all went well: indeed, in our roughly four hours in the pool, we never did see another guest, so the girls could splash and shriek all they wanted, and the local pub carried both Smithwick's and crayons, keeping each voting bloc content.

Along the way, though, Geremy and I were repeatedly struck by how people seemed to see us: not as two high school friends who now happen to be fathers, but rather, it seemed, as a nuclear family. In some cases, this reaction was only implied: visible in brief double takes, or long glances. But it was certainly explicit at the Visitor's Center, where the ranger handed us one brochure, and then responded to our request for another with the warmly worded but firm insistence that they only give one per family. Suddenly, we weren't merely dads out with the kids; we were also, apparently, emblems of an emergent landscape in American family life.

But Cleo, it turned out, didn't simply have two dads; she also had an aging dad. Later on Monday, after saying goodbye to Geremy and Harper, we stopped at the Berkeley Springs McDonald's, for a cup of coffee and an ice water (and, all right, a strawberry banana smoothie). Nothing very special, in other words - until I heard the cashier repeat my order: one smoothie, one water, and one senior coffee. Confused (and, frankly, still in need of coffee), I mumbled a yes, only to learn that she'd taken me for 55 or older, and thus charged me a mere 59 cents for the cuppa joe.

So, my friends, I'm hear to tell you that I have been, in rapid succession, a 42-year-old married to L., a gay dad interested in the Civil War, and an aging senior who buys smoothies for his granddaughter. And none of it was, frankly, that bad.

But as I was being consistently mis-recognized, Cleo was doing some spot-on recognizing. About a week ago, I taught her the first verse of one of the most summery pop songs you'll hear this year: Cruise, with Nelly working alongside Florida Georgia Line. It gets a bit earthier, eventually, but the opening line strikes me as worth hearing: "Baby, you a song, You make me wanna roll my windows down And cruise." It's a song of motion, of love, of enthusiasm: of everything that I was feeling on my little jaunt with Cleo. And so it touched me when the song happened to come on in the hotel lobby, as Geremy read a book to the assembled girls - and when Cleo sang her brief accompaniment.

Baby, you a song. And I, by your side, a senior, a daddy, a partner: regardless, my windows are down.

Playtime

With a long weekend - a really long weekend, given that Cleo's school year ended at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, and that summer camp doesn't begin until Thursday - we've had a chance to get our summer on, in full form. A pre-Memorial day swim in the pool? Check. A morning watching the dragon boats and pirate ship on the Inner Harbor? L. took care of that, yesterday morning. In fact, L. even took for her an inaugural scooter ride, on a sharp Hot Wheels razor scooter lent by a friend, on the flat paved planes of Cross Keys.

But of course a 3-year-old doesn't really need an entirely structured environment in order to generate some spontaneous summer fun. Above, you can see Cleo taking advantage of the space between bench and fence (of the gap, as Rauschenberg once said, between art and life) in order to do some impromptu climbing. And then, too, there's the lilting little song about swinging that she had improvised while rocking back in forth on the Meadowood bucket swings, just a few minutes before:

If you could pump
Then you can try it
But if you don't want to
Then that's fine, too.

Want to swim? You can try it. But if you don't want to, a bench is fine, too.