The Nugget

I haven’t told you about our youngest, have I?

I know I blogged about the day of her birth, but that was just over a year ago. 

We call her the nugget. I can’t explain why, but I can tell you that she is more nugget than I am Mark. What I mean is that her personality cannot be better expressed with any other name.

It may have originated when we first heard her Kiai . The oder kids are in karate and know how to belt it out. And when we called the nugget’s name she provided a resounding and remarkable “Aiye.” There’s just no going back from moments like that. 

We developed a stage wrestler name—the frozen nugget.

I’m fond of introducing her as if she were a stage wrestler. Instead of Stone Cold Steve Austin, she’s The Frozen Nugget. She enters rooms with a hulky swagger, her hands pressed down, the weight of her head learning forward, sending her into an adorable stumble. The big kids like my announcer voice. “Folks, preheat your ovens, it’s time for the—fro—zen—nug—geeeeeeeeeeeet!”

Of our three children, the nugget has been the most observant. She follows her siblings anywhere they go. Her favorite past time is walking backwards, and she lives to eat. By existing, she has made lemonade out of one sour year. 

As 2020 limps to the finish line, tragic events of the year are both resolving and evolving. 

The city I live in declared my friend’s birthday a municipal holiday. I spent every day with him in the three months before he took his own life. 

To celebrate his holiday, I did what would make him the most happy: bought donuts and slurpees. 

I learned how to ride a motorcycle so I can care for my son’s Harley. His grandpa passed in February and left my 8-year-old a vintage Harley softail. My first ride was bittersweet. Who cries on a Harley? Kip’s music was still loaded and all I could think about was how he would have relished chewing me out for stalling it. Just once, guys. Relax. It’s a real sticky clutch, people. 

Then there’s this. According to reports, and making some huge assumptions, my job will be returning to a more normal status this spring, after a year of reinventing how I teach using technology. 

A new chapter is opening in life. 

And I think it is going to be a good one. 

Even my kids are turning the pages. 

It seems like yesterday that my older daughter rocketed me into the fourth dimension. Now she’s learning the ukulele as I learn the piano so we can ring in the Christmas cheer. 

“Just keep practicing,” I tell her.

“Right, because rockstars practice like until they’re way grown up. Yeah,” she says. She maintains a knowing air even in moments of utter doubt. 

“Even rockstars need to keep practicing.”

“Right, because to be a rockstar means you practice so much that, like, you never need to practice again, yeah.”

“Honey. The practice never stops. That’s why you need to find something that you love doing—so you want to practice it forever.”

“Right, because practicing forever is like the best way to be a rockstar because you’ll never need to practice again, yeah.”

We’re working on the idea of enjoying the process. But she’s got a four-chord progression down, and she can nearly keep time. 

My son can now read every word (or close to it) that I’ve written on this blog, which is alarming. He has parlayed his love of stories into a voracious appetite for reading books. 

We recently read together this old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea that I read when I was 12. I had to rely on him to fill me in on what happened in the last chapter each night. My mind at the end of the day is a plate of scrambled eggs. 

He loved the character of Ned Land, Verne’s Canadian harpooner who had a voracious appetite and crude sensor of humor. At the end of any scene involving Captain Nemo, he’d ask, “Why does he hate the land so much?” which made for a fun last chapter reveal. 

And then there’s the nugget. 

She’s the one that brings me back to the shame of an undeserving sinner. 

“How come we have it so good?” I’ve asked my wife in a year filled with traumatic death. 

Rather than reason that answer in weights and measures, my plan is to stay penitent. Keep giving thanks to the Lord who has given me everything worth having in life. Keep in gratitude for all I have rather than in want for all I don’t. Keep sharing thanks to my wife for raising our remarkable children. Keep asking for help. For forgiveness. Keep asking for the wisdom to forgive. Keep praying. Praying to change the things I can, and to wear whatever’s left like a loose garment.  Praying for the wisdom to know that actions teach and words matter. That principles are not lost if we live by them. That reality is objective. That morals aren’t relative. That the earth is grounded. That anything of worth ends in God. 

She calls me dada. She calls my wife mama. She calls her sister ama and her brother baba. She loves this silly book about a baby learning to use the potty. Music puts her in a trance. When she has a fever, she becomes the most powerful and precious and fragile item in the universe. She was born so that we could face death and hardship. If you clap your hands, she’ll clap too. She knows what she wants and how to let you know it. As a result of a pandemic, we’ve spent more time with her in her first year than our other two children combined. She’s the reason that — more than ever in my long chronicle of mundane miracles — I cannot wait to come home every day. 

She’s the nugget.