Fathers Day 2010

    When the kids were small, for shits and giggles, I’d pick them up by their ears. I’d look at them and say, “I’m going to pick you up by your ears,” and then reach down, with my palms facing their little heads, I'd then wrap my fingers around their ears and press my hands together, to squeeze them in a gentle vice type action -- and then I'd lift them up in the air a foot or two -- just enough to say I had.

    Allison knew from the start, and from an inner instinct she was born with, that the trick was to grab my forearms with her hands and to hold on tightly as I lifted -- to allow the grunting and flourishing that I was acting out to steal the show, while safely playing the straight girl, and to allow my dramatic showman's flow of personality to distract. I love her because she was in on the joke from birth – and she always will be.

    Kayla never knew it was a trick. She thought I could make the magic real and that everything I dreamed of could actually happen. She never grabbed my arms and never flinched away. She also never went too high, though sometimes I’d get her a foot or two off the earth before I knew what I was doing was impossible. She never got the joke, and I love the fact that she never thinks that there was one.