Endings and Continuations

I'm not one for end of the year ruminations, recriminations or reclamations. Libations, yes. Those other 'ations', not so much. Generally a navel-gazing waste of time, in my view.

That being said, it's 11 pm on New Year's Eve, and I'm all alone. Not in a sad, woe is me way, but L has gone out to a fancy Beverly Hills party with a friend, and I'm here as the little one sleeps. Earlier in the evening we had my best friend and his family over for sumptuous steaks, and stage-diving by two four-year old boys into a mound of pillows. A nice, low-key way to end the year for the parenting set. Granted, L isn't officially part of that set, but she was game nonetheless. That's exactly why I wanted her to go out though; so she could get some enjoyment of the social set, while I wile away at home, thinking of her.

And thinking of her just leads to my end of the year thoughts. Which, as I said, tend not to be verbose or self-involved. Needless to say, it's been an amazing year in so many respects, and the experiences and milestones are indelibly imprinted in my mind, and elsewhere. But simply...

I'm grateful and hopeful, and believe that life is good.

Happy New Year.

Wine in the Mexican Countryside

There's a rooster crowing in the Mexican countryside. Centered atop a hill within a nearly barren valley, twenty miles from the coast, rests La Villa Del Valle, a romantic retreat opened 5 years ago by two charming British ex-pats. The husband, Phil, is a conassuieur of social behavior and wine, so it would only have made sense that he discover a way to disappear from the regular world and start a winery, which serves as the backbone for this exquisite bed & breakfast.

L had heard of Del Valle from a Daily Candy email, probably 4 years ago, and kept it tucked away in her email box, a hovering dream waiting to come to life. It's not an inexpensive place to go, so it remained a semi-distant wish, until some money dropped into our laps in the form of a movie-gambling game run by my best friend and I, which I happened to win for the first time in 14 years. When I won in September, it was the easiest decision in the world to use the ill-gotten spoils to come here.

With my son on a vacation of his own, the perfect opportunity presented itself in the days before Christmas. Family is coming for the holiday, which meant no hectic airport travel, and the right time for such an escape. As for the escape itself, La Villa del Valle is just north of Escanada, which is itself about 70 minutes south of Tijuana. American fears of murder and death south of the border are greatly exaggerated, as long as you don't come down here as a cocaine trafficking mule. And, tempting though it was to make some pick-ups for some dudes on Hollywood and Vine, we're just a normal young couple. Who got our car searched by the Mexican military anyway. The 19 year old soldiers were friendly and unthreatening, however.

Turning off the 1 just before Escanada, you drive up Hwy 3, turning off onto a jagged dirt road amidst a long stretch of highway construction (good to see that Mexico has the funds for major roadwork). The car bounces along past a few modest homes, farms and dried wineries (December is not prime wine season), and you start to wonder where this place is. The beautiful scripted signs keep you pointed in the right direction, however, at each and every fork. An elegant invitation beckoning you further into the countryside.

Then it appears: a yellow stone home of significant size perched atop a small peak in the valley, ringed by semi-distant, verdant mountains. Turning past the gate, you drive up to the house, which looks like something out of Italy, with its huge stone archways and a giant wooden front door that is never locked. Friendly family dogs welcome you, quietly eager to show you the way. They quickly become your friends and guides to the exteriors of the property.

Inside, Alejandro, the home's manager, warmly welcomes you and gives you a tour of this sumptuous yet eternally tasteful country paradise. What most strikes you is how every detail was so carefully considered, from the tiles on the stairway to the fact that there are no locks on the bedroom doors. It is just that type of place - you are welcomed into the Gregory's home, and you treat it as such. L comments frequently that, were she to have this kind of money and opportunity, this is exactly how she would style something. She points out the amazing use of depth and space, as the Gregorys fill every room with art and objects at different levels, from the hanging metal lamps, which have a Morrocan/Spanish feel, to the frequent mirrors and stunning artwork. The first night we ballparked the decorating of this home at a massive amount of money, though perhaps with the endless Mexican artisans in Baja California, that number was much lower.

Settling into our beautiful, warm room, we look out over the valley from our balcony, and the question of the weekend sets in: what do you do with yourself when there is nothing to do? This is a wonderful question to ask, which I never allow myself to ponder, so this is a vaguely discomforting notion to me. But it's a wonderful habit to get into, and we threw ourselves into that amusing challenge with gusto. There's a cocktail hour at 5:30, where Alejandro brings wine made here to the guests, along with an organic botana (snack). It turned out to be a remarkable carmelized onion mixture within a chard leaf. A short while later, we had the recommended first night dinner at the house. This is a one-night affair, because it's a pretty pricey meal, charming though it was. It's a four course meal, where the first two courses were probably the best, especially the creativity of the ostrich spring roll. The entree and dessert were a little underwhelming, though one understands why the house chef is described as "visionary" - everything we ate was unexpected and original. Just not sure that all of it "worked".

After dinner, we retire to our room to drink more wine, talk about futures, people's attitudes towards marriage, and how our own opinion of those rituals have changed over the years. The Gregorys wines - especially their cab - are phenomenal, but at $25 a bottle, wasn't what we were going to spend the whole weekend drinking. We popped open our own, and had a wonderful evening.

After a wonderfully authentic and spicy breakfast, Saturday was spent lounging around, going to the gorgeously crafted pool to relax, read magazines and books, and do absolutely nothing. We wandered the estate, finding a stone labyrinth. When you first hear there's a labyrinth, you think hedges and getting lost. Instead, it's a deceptively simple circle of 6 inch high stones that you follow around to the center. There are no wrong turns, and you kind of wonder why you're walking around like a semi-homeless person following the path. But the longer you do it (it takes around 5 minutes), the more you realize this is a manifestation of creative energy that comes from living away from it all - the less time you spend on your self-imposed "to-do" list, the more time you have for free thinking. Reaching the center of the labyrinth, only 15 feet from the exterior edge, it doesn't seem pointless, but rather, serene.

We drive for an early dinner, hoping to make it back for cocktail hour, but the directions we're given to some restaurant with the word oranges in the name is deceptively complicated because of the heavy road construction. We eventually grow a bit worried and turn off onto a winery road to check out La Casa de Dona Lupe, thinking it's a restautant. It is, to the extent they make pizza to go (take THAT Domino's!), but more specifically, it is a shop of organic jams, jellies and aromatherapy products. And old Dona Lupe, a 75 year old woman, sits behind the counter, bagging your purchases, while her beautiful daughter, mid-forties, shows off how smooth her skin is from the products we're buying. They give us more exact directions, and we find the restaurant, where few speak English, but the food is good. More wine back at the del Valle, but watching "Coraline" on my computer is waylaid by other interests...

Sunday we head to Ensenada after L and I have a game of bocce ball. The shopping district is quiet, and we can't find much that really interests us, sadly. It's a somewhat underwhelming town, but when we get munchy, we stop for margaritas and nachos, and to watch the first quarter of the Packer game. Heading back to Del Valle, we pick up an early dinner of Mediterranean lamb, and then make cocktail hour, where we sit with the Gregorys and some friends of theirs, talking for a couple of hours over multiple glasses of wine. That Phil keeps pouring demonstrates that they enjoy our company, and we're not unwanted in their gorgeous living room after the close of the traditional cocktail hour. We eat our dinner and cheese-filled apple pie in bed, before retiring early from a evening of heavy wine consumption and rapturously sensual delights.

We don't want to go home, though we must. We'll head back via Tecate, and prepare for the rest of the holiday week, along with the arrival home of my little guy, who I can't wait to have a visit from Santa. Provided no one else dies this week (the weekend was cast under a shadow by the news of two deaths leading into the weekend, one quite impactful and important to our lives), it should hopefully be a wonderful holiday.

Levels Rising

2009 has featured a tremendous capacity for dealing with stress. It's amazing how being happy, being in love, and feeling hopeful and optimistic can leave you with strong reserves to deal with stress. It's been a great year in that regard.

That being said, the last couple of weeks have left me a little more frazzled than I would prefer. It's all work related, not lifestyle focused. We just tacked on a major element to our new work endeavor, which comes directly from my old department, while demanding that we set up entire new operations on our end. It's a big, crucial initiative that I'm currently carrying on my shoulders, and I spend my nights dreaming of spreadsheets, and my mornings waking up with my first thoughts about what work-related things I should be doing that very moment. Brushing my teeth I'm game-planning my agenda, and by the time I have my coffee, I'm already three steps ahead of what I should be doing.

All of this is theoretically great in terms of experience and career, but the plan is to be hiring someone to take on many of these duties I'm pitch-hitting for. That plan was set in motion, aspiring to make the process smooth and easy in terms of a resource, but due to something as mundane and insidious as company politics, it got blown to smithereens. Lots of people ended up doing things in a far less than optimal way, and my agenda gets compromised badly as a result of it, and who knows if there will be later political fall-out. A really unfortunate circumstance that's ultimately going to cost my company a fantastic employee, and me the ability to keep the ship moving forward smoothly and quickly. While I've felt like a superstar at times this year, this was something that I felt I could deliver, and I failed. That's a bummer.

So I've felt more than my share of work-stress for the past few weeks, and I feel badly that I've burdened L. with it. She doesn't deserve it, and though I don't feel that I've been a bad guy at all, she knows that I'm preoccupied, and not as focused on us as I'd like to be. So that's a shame, and I don't want it to be that way. It makes me realize that I'm not perfect when it comes to coping with stress, but then again, what does that mean: to be perfect when it comes to stress? Isn't the very nature of that to upset the psychological apple cart and not be able to be perfect? I still think that I'm generally better than most in that regard, but I'm not sure what all the coping strategies and mechanisms are, from person to person.

And, on top of that, my wonderful L. is in some far away place called Fresno tonight. Fresno. The word itself sounds like abandoned drive-ins and Chinese restaurants called Oriental Palace. But I hope that she's having relaxing family time with her father, and that moments like these help build a stronger bridge between them, which may not have been consistently stable and strong through much of her life. It's good that she's doing it, and me being away from her for a night isn't much of a price to pay for that.

Where The Wild Things Are Waking Up

It's been a surprisingly good year for movies, despite the general debasement of the American movie-going culture. Between "Up", "The Hurt Locker", "District 9" and Zach Galifanakis' penis, it's been a pretty solid year overall. I mean, who doesn't want a fair dose of Galifanakis' member?(Actually, it wasn't, but whatever).

From the first moment that I heard the Arcade Fire-backed teaser for "Where the Wild Things Are", I was hooked. Desperate to see that movie, knowing that a children's film directed by Spike Jonze couldn't possibly resemble a children's film. Year-long rumors of production troubles and threats of taking the movie out of the director's hands did little to dissuade this notion.

Turns out that it definitely wasn't a children's film. As Jonze insisted, he wasn't interested in making a kids' movie, but rather, "a movie about childhood". He succeeded unlike anything I could've possibly imagined. I have read Sendak's classic dozens of times with Z, and we know it word for word, but I'll admit that I don't hold any undue reverence for the book. It's great, no question, but I never had a "oh god, they can't possibly make a movie of that" reaction. After all, it has the general guts for a movie - the book simply doesn't have a middle. But it has motivation, a beginning and an end. The rest was up to the filmmakers.

Jonze is a filmmaker I generally admire, though haven't loved. "Malcovich" was immensely clever and fun, but "Adaptation" made me frustrated and angry with its navel-gazing obsessions to self-obsessed artists. So I didn't walk in with reverence towards these uber-hipster filmmakers, and spent much of the last few weeks wondering whether or not I could take Z to see it. But that Arcade Fire song... god, it works wondrously in a trailer.

"Wake Up" is nowhere to be found in the movie, but the underlying message of the trade-offs that we make between childhood and adulthood infuses the soul of the film. The confusion that children feel, living in a world of adults and not feeling understood - and not understanding themselves - is something that carries into adulthood, and the characters of the "Wild Things". They are, on the surface, meant to mirror Max's lack of emotional control and understanding, but their very adult voices and relationships gives the subtle sensation that, no matter the age, we don't conquer these feelings and find answers to these questions.

In this way, "Where the Wild Things Are" is really the "Synecdoche, New York" of 2009. The feelings of alienation and confusion, the inability to put a finger on where you fit in, and who loves you, and whether or not those insecurities can and should be trusted... they're endemic to being 9 years old, but it doesn't leave when you're 20, or 30 or probably 60.

Not only is the song amazing, but the lyrics show there's no question they chose it for a clear, definable reason:

Somethin’ filled up
my heart with nothin’,
someone told me not to cry.

But now that I’m older,
my heart’s colder,
and I can see that it’s a lie.

Children wake up,
hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust.

If the children don’t grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We’re just a million little god’s causin rain storms turnin’ every good thing to rust.

The song is an admission that children understand there are complexities to life that they don't necessarily understand, but they know they're there. Just keeping those emotions buried deep does nothing but allows them to cope in a conventionally pre-defined way, but not to really live; eventually you fear that holding them down is what leads to emotionless drones later in life. While Max may not handle this emotions in the way that he necessarily should (he's definitely "wild" in a way that's too dangerous by half), at least he's acknowledging them. And the depiction of how those emotions bubble and surface in "Where the Wild Things Are" is brilliant, haunting and meaningful. Seeing them in Max is one thing, but then seeing them reflected in Max's face as other characters (namely Carol) grapple with them, is truly beautiful and heartbreaking.

And I still don't know if I should let Z see it. But I know that I'll want to have conversations with him about it for years to come. Especially about how the fact that, even as you get older, the confusion, the insecurity and all those other painful feelings don't necessarily go away. No one has it fully figured out.

Fall is here... for the moment

A brisk wind blows through Los Angeles on a Sunday afternoon. The first weekend of October. The first one in LA that actually feels like fall. It's my favorite season, and one that Southern California doesn't feel with the full bloom and force as in other parts of the country. So it's a momentary pleasure, as next weekend may be 85 degrees, or the following one may forget autumn entirely and settle into the blandness of 65 degrees. Not that one should really complain, because three months later it will still be... 65 degrees, while it's 20 degrees where I come from.

Speaking of where I come from, I was able to breathe in the coming fall back in Wisconsin with L. Empty country roads and Door County farmhouses while on a gorgeous, picturesque tour of my home state. We ate pure Wisconsin cheese, savored the joys of Leinie's Red, and sat beside beautiful Lake Mendota, appreciating life back in Madison, the most perfect place in the world when the weather matches its charms.

All of it makes me so appreciative of this time of year, which creeps up so slowly and disappears so fast. Even back in Wisconsin, they're probably now having the most stunning weekends of the year, replete with the smell of fallen leaves on the lawn, but in a month the Midwest will be concerned with weather-stripping and ballooning heating bills. Here in Los Angeles, Halloween will pass, and we'll ponder the holidays, which will erupt without the benefit of the further changing of seasons. Yeah, we'll put on our thin, Fall coats, but it's really not the same.

I guess that neither way is ideal, but the connecting thread between the two is unavoidable change. These are brief, momentary periods that need to be savored and cherished, because tomorrow they will be gone. At least as far as the weather goes.

But for me, I'm going to appreciate every minute of it, from the pumpkins on the kitchen table, to the football season unfolding in 16 weeks, to what promises to be a comically fun time at Knotts Scary Farm tonight, to that stiff wind that somehow both chills and warms, to the lovely, wonderful woman that I get to spend my time with, who only gets more beautiful with each passing day. Yes, Fall is a time to be cherished.

Too Busy Having a Wonderful Time

There's been nothing going on in the blog for awhile. I actually have to spend some of my blogging time jotting down witticisms for work, which isn't really the favorite part about my job, because it's writing about things I don't give much of a shit about - fashion, style and the latest trends of shoes. Which isn't to say I don't love my job - I do. But I would never be confused with someone who spends their free time reading Vogue.

All that aside, there really just hasn't been a lot of time to blog, because life has just been too wonderful. I'm too busy having a fantastic time to be sitting around writing about it (which, I think can be considered a perfect microcosm for blogging in general: if you're spending all your time in front of a computer jotting commentary or navel-gazing - and you're not getting paid for it, there's some serious re-examination needed in your life).

That said, last night I attended another amazing concert with L. Our fourth in the last two months, from Death Cab for Cutie to Tears for Fears to a side-splitting show by Patton Oswalt and Louis C.K. that left my stomach hurting for the next day from laughter. We have U2 coming up in October.

This one was a longtime favorite: Hall & Oates. Playing at the gorgeous, though acoustically-challenged Nokia Live in downtown LA. This is probably my sixth or seventh show of theirs over the years, a fact that I long ago stopped apologizing for, but Daryl was in amazing vocal/performance form, while John still looks a little too swarthy and gruff without the 'ol stash.

L couldn't give two craps about H&O, but she's an astounding sport about pretty much everything, and she's a huge music lover, so she was delighted to go. But not only did she find it entertaining and fun from the nostalgia/semi-kitsch factor, she genuinely loved the show, and discovered perhaps for the first time what a captivating, amazing performer Daryl Hall is (which, for people who have stuck with H&O all these years, is a primary motivator). She also has an "out" to have sex with him, given the opportunity. He is a sexy, sexy man. John Oates... not so much.

And she pointed out that "No Can Do (I Can't Go For That)" was probably written about anal sex. A very interesting observation. Judge for yourself.

We'll see if there's more time for scribbling in the coming month. But if I keep having such a remarkable time every day... well, don't blame me.

New Kinds of Scary

Life has been good to me this year. New professional challenges, and the wonders of L. Zach has done an amazing job of developing this year - intellectually, emotionally, behaviorally, developing a pretty solid baseball swing. I'm beyond proud of him.

That being said, sometimes life is still incredibly scary. My ex still doesn't have her shit together, with life throwing curveballs at her faster than she can swing the bat. Maybe she never learned how to hit a sinking curveball. Then again, I don't think I know how to hit one either... sometimes I feel like I just fake it.

And my own life sometimes scares me. Things with L are so incredibly wonderful that it feels like the stakes have been raised to a certain degree. I don't want to lose her, ever, and I want to do everything right. I want to be the perfect man. And that's impossible. No one is perfect. This past weekend, I demonstrated how I'm not the perfect man, and it ruined a potentially lovely day. We fixed things, and in fact got back on track better than ever, but it's intimidating. How do I continue to measure up? To be better than normal and everyday, when ultimately, life is normal and everyday?

I suppose that it's inevitable that my insecurities would always be just under the surface, even though L is amazing... or perhaps exactly because of that fact.

Playing to the Back Row

I'm a creative person, but I don't flex those muscles on a daily basis. I do enough to keep me satiated, and frankly, my life is too complicated and busy to frequently feel the driving desire to be some sort of artiste.

For the past six months, I've been relatively creative in the workplace, as we've been building a new website for the past five months. It's been professionally satisfying, and this week led up to the public debut of our new URL. The CEO asked that we plan an event at our quarterly all-company meeting in its honor, and we ended up deciding on a "behind the scenes" farce video of the making of the new site.

Somehow, I found myself offering to write the script, knowing that too many cooks in the kitchen would lead to paralysis, and we had less than a week. A 7 page script was churned out that day, followed by rallying the entire team for two-days of shooting between meetings. Everyone felt silly and there was some initial skepticism, but people started to loosen up, and once the footage hit iMovie, I hit my stride.

If I would've considered other avenues in Hollywood beyond writing, I would've been an editor. I have a nice sense of rhythm, and screenwriting is its own form of editing. I used to cut on film, and though I spent a number of seasons in reality TV show editing rooms giving instructions and feedback, I was always in the producer's chair behind the editor and not behind the controls, clicking the buttons. My actual digital editing was limited to a few clip packages I threw together for awards shows over the years. But I certainly don't know the (better) technology like Avid to any real degree, and when it came to the user-friendly, for the masses iMovie, I didn't even know how to trim a shot four days ago.

Needless to say, iMovie is very user friendly, even with its somewhat limited toolbox, and it perfectly suited my needs. What was intended to be short, single shot scenes became multi-angle, cutaway-rich, audio-varied little vignettes. Not all of the scenes are good, but they generally click and shimmy, delivering the laugh lines I intended, and numerous ones that I didn't. Part of the fun became editing around the amateur actors. Not that I'm any kind of a pro, but storytelling was at one time my job, whereas none of these people wanted to be behind a camera.

By the end of the week, showing rough cuts to the team was garnering big laughs, excitement, and buy in for the final scenes. So I worked even harder on it. I put in a minimum of 2o-25 hours of editing for a seven minute piece, and the big debut was at an all-company meeting of 250+ people. And... it played. There was consistent energy in the room, chuckles and titters, and a number of scenes that got all-out belly laughs. The CEO loved it, and wanted it on YouTube, even though it playfully tweaks the execs rather than glamorizes them.

A creative itch was scratched, and I had an actual audience. An audience that liked and appreciated it. It was a good moment. One of those Mozart Moments.

This isn't to say that I'm spending my time dying to be endlessly creative, writing scripts, all that kind of stuff... but it was nice for a few days.

And, most importantly, the new site is pretty damn cool.

What kind of parent do you want to be?

I was sitting at the pool, having a rare moment of quiet and solitude. Reading a book about marketing on a Sunday afternoon after a short, relaxing swim.

Two thirty-something guys in wife-beaters with jellyroll bellies stroll up to the pool with a pudgy 6 year old. The boy stares into the deep end of the pool when Mr. Pork-Pie Hat and picks him up from behind and just tosses him into the 8-foot-deep end of the pool. The boy is clearly in the early stages of learning to swim, and struggles to keep his head above water, gulping down glassfuls. Porker #2 casually jumps into the pool, grabs the flailing boy and drags him to the side, where the boy grabs onto the ladder for dear life. Sobs and water spitting out of his mouth.

Mr. Pork-Pie says, "You wanna hang out with the big boys, you gotta swim in the deep end!"

"I don't want to be in the deep part. I'm not ready!" The boy stands there, sobbing, as Pork-Pie takes a picture to "send to your momma", talking about how he's going to turn the kid into a real man. The boy slinks over to the hot tub, as Pork-Pie emails the picture. "That's where the little girls hang out. You a little sissy girl?". The boy doesn't respond, as Pork-Pie takes a swig of his Coors Light.

And so I sit there, considering the divide between developing confidence in our children and getting them ready for the world. Looking at this little boy, fear in his eyes, and not meeting the eyes of these two men, what is he being prepared for in life? He's being taught that uncertainty and trepidation is akin to femininity and worthlessness, and that he shouldn't trust his instincts. This strikes me as the kind of behavior that turns boys aggressive, seeking to compensate for their own fears that they aren't meant to acknowledge.

I think about Zach's fear of swimming, and the little baby steps he makes in this regard, and how he'll climb to the top of a mountain if you let him. He'll run up to a total stranger running an outdoor theater to ask what the name of the next play is. He is aware of his limitations, and deeply cognizant of what he can do. Maybe I wish he could do it all - or would do it all - tapping into that seemingly limitless power the boy has. But I also have to remind myself that he's figuring it all out, and shoving him into the deep end isn't going to make him ready for the world any faster.

I feel that I generally respect this, and am aware of these subtleties, and it's distressing to watching parenting that seems wholly unconcerned with such "sissy" matters.

The Rock Wall

It's not often that a parent feels like they've really got it nailed. That they said the right thing, did the right thing... all those things that are important to create a next generation that's more evolved, more competent than we feel. 

Not that I feel like a fuck up as a parent. On the contrary, I think I'm doing a decent enough job, but it's so easy to hold the mistakes you make against yourself. The times you lose your temper, that you don't put enough effort into storytime, that you express just a little more dissatisfaction than is necessary. These moments add up, and part of parenting is grappling with the question: is it adding up more for your child... or for you?

I'd like to think it's the latter, but you don't know. Because, if it is the latter, maybe moments like today won't make the impact on Z that they had on me.

We had an evening at the park. Me, Z and L. It gives me no end of pleasure just how much Z wants to spend time with L, although there's no question, that brings up certain concerns as well. How much attraction is too much? How much intimacy? What should that relationship be like? As it plays out, it's absolutely wonderful, but I just want to be cognizant that both of them - all of us - are treading in previously uncharted waters (for us, at least). 

Z was climbing a rock wall. Not the typical park rock wall for kids, with its plastic hand and foot-holds, blazing like neon signs for where to step. Rather, this newly designed park (ironically, it's always been known to Z as "New Park") installed a faux-rock climbing wall. With gritty hand-holds and grooves, which really force children to figure things out on their own. 

Z failed to figure it out the first time, getting halfway up before calling plaintively to be helped down. A while later, he climbed to the top, but then realized that was quite a predicament - the pride of accomplishment was replaced by the fear of the unknown. Dad needed to scale his way to the top and one-arm Z down to another father. Crisis averted.

But, Z being Z, the first thing he did was climb right back up. This time, when he got to the top, I warned him not to crab-walk to the same place he got stuck last time. So he didn't. He made it halfway down the other side of the wall, my pride surging, until I needed to lift him off the remaining section. 

But, Z being Z, he wasn't done. Another trip to the top, and this time the allure of the crab-walk was too much for him to resist, even though I specifically told him this would end badly, and that I wasn't going to rescue him. I muttered to L that I knew where this was going, and I wasn't sure what the parenting response should be.

He did it anyway. And, predictably, he got caught exactly where I said he would. His eyes welled with tears, and he asked me to get him down. I told Z that this is exactly what I warned him of, and I couldn't help him. He looked right at me and said, "But you're a hero". If that isn't a moment that both swells and crushes your parenting instincts, I don't know what is. 

So I told him that I couldn't help him. He got himself into this mess, and he had to figure out how to get himself out of it. I helped point out areas that would be easier for him to cope with. He carefully - and oh-so-dangerously - shifted his body weight around, and skittered down an edge that he could easily fall off, but which led him to a slightly lower outpost... only 8 feet high, rather than 10. It was one of those scary parent moments, but one that I knew I couldn't rescue him from (unless things got legitimately dangerous for him), because all I'd be doing is proving that he can call on me for anything... even when he is the one who screwed up. Instead, I was trying to teach him that when you screw up (even in such a self-consciously belligerent way as he had just proven), it's often all on you to figure out how to solve the problem. 

And he did. He made it to the 8 foot outcropping, and... Z being Z, jumped off into the sand.  A perfect landing, incidentally. When he landed, he was clearly proud of himself, but I quickly got down on one knee and said, "Z, tell me... who was the real hero?. He beamed, and said, "I was", and ran off, excited just to be a kid.

The moment probably passed for him, unremarkable and forgotten. For me, it might be a moment that I'll treasure for the rest of my life.