Arrival. The Sudden Departure. The Leftovers.

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The name "Megan" means "pearl."

Which is an anagram for "leapr."

Endgame: "Splat"

Isn't it something?

When my son was in preschool daycare, he figured out one day how to unlock the gate on the fence that surrounded the area where all the kids played when outside. His opening of the gate resulted in a free for all: a flood of giggling, shrieking children pouring out into the parking lot. The adults apparently had a heck of time corralling them and herding them back inside. 

This was and is my son's nature. He is a smart, determined liberator, bent on helpful, healing and salvific mischief. 

Iktomi is a trickster spider-god of the Lakota people. My son minored in Native American Studies.

The freeing of the toddlers was a bit like the animals spilling out of the ark after the flood in Genesis, I suppose.

And also like a story I heard once that grossed me out. A woman got bitten by a spider in some exotic location, and over time developed a sore or boil at the bite spot. It grew and grew and then one day, it started to move, as if something was inside it.

She went to see a doctor, and when they lanced The Thing, a whole bunch of tiny spiders came scurrying out.

The mother spider had laid its eggs inside of her skin.

Ich.

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Heaven to me was storytime when my kids were young and shared a room. I would lie down in between their beds and tell a story, usually the same one, a long Scooby Doo story I made up. It morphed and changed over time, very slowly. Then we would play a game I made up called Nostrildamus. One player "picked a nostril," one of the six nostrils in the room, and the other two had to guess, alternating guesses. For each nostril that remained when the correct nostril was guessed, the player making that selection got a point and became the picker the next time around. If no one guessed the correct nostril, the player who picked got six points and got to pick again. The game was, of course, played on the honor system. The room would be dark. Moonlight through a skylight. Eventually, one of them would become unresponsive because they fell asleep. Sometimes it was me, after a long day.

 Like I said, that is my definition of heaven. 

If when I die I just get to relive all of those nights in that room doing that, over and over, forever, that's fine with me. It would never get old. 

There was so much pure love in that room, man.

And it was every night. It was extremely rare for us to miss this time together. It was the most important commitment for me to fulfill, every day.

Which was easy, because it made me the happiest I have ever been.

Not having a dad myself, or many moments like this with adults in my life as a child, had something to do with that, I suppose. Both how important it was for me and how much I loved it.