Kira: Uh-oh… Peter?

Pete: Yeah?

Kira: She’s got a big poop.

Pete: Uh-oh… you’d better change it, then get started on your homework!

Kira: You think I should do that?

Pete: Yeah, cause you discovered it.

Kira: But, Peter?

Pete: Yeah?

Kira: Sometimes, I think she’s at her happiest when she has a big poop in her pants.

Pete: I hope to God you’re not suggesting we leave it in there.

Kira: I guess not.

Seriously, the hardest day I’ve had leaving the house since Sophie was born. This was the first day I left her all day with Jackie, our summer-sitter. Jackie is a sweatheart, no doubt about it, and I couldn’t imagine leaving her with anyone else right now, but she’s suddenly having some awful separation anxiety and has a nasty case of crocodile tears to go with it. I leave the house and you’d think the Titanic was dragging her under one last time — arms flailing and face contorted — the single saddest face ever made.

There was a time when she was into walking around, picking things up, putting them down, then walking some more. That has changed and put quite a damper on our shoe-wearing, tv-watching, and cooking. Now, she walks around, picks things up, walks around some more, then puts them down. Note the difference — it’s small, but critical — insomuch as we can no longer find one of two shoes, tv remotes, or cooking utensils. Most of the time, they end up in the large planter in the corner, covered in dirt.

Kira started school today. She’s doing really well, keeping her wits about her with all she has going on, but I have to admit, I’m looking forward to her being a full-time student. This is something we’ve been working toward for years — and the sooner she starts, the sooner she’s a speech pathologist. Her summer clinic teachers happen to be some of our best friends from church. It’s amusing to see them gearing up for summer, trying to put on the “professorial aire,” looking tough, even though they’re about the softest, funniest people we know. It’s gonna be a long summer.

Every now and again, I look down at Sophie and she’s got this special look on her face: like she’s trying to hold something back, and spit something out all at once. Tonight, she had that look. Usually, when I see it, I sweep in and with one finger do a pass of her mouth. It’s typically something like catfood or dirt. While it sounds strange to those without children, I can live with catfood or dirt in her mouth. I’ve grown accustomed to them both. Thus, the rift that grows between those with small children, and those without.

Tonight, on the first finger-sweep, I pulled from her mouth one crushed, red-and-black wing. Panicked, I did another finger-sweep and pulled forth the mutilated remains of a ladybug. That’s new.

So, I gave her a big drink of water and thanked goodness that bugs are full of protein.

When I was a kid, and I’d do something stupid (which happened a lot), my parents and I would always resolve it the same way: I’d break down and apologize for [insert stupid thing], mom and dad would chide me for [insert stupid thing], and we’d all share a joke and a hug. Then they’d say something I never understood. They’d tell me how much they loved me and that there was no way for me to understand what they were feeling until I had a child of my own. Of course, I was 13 or 14 then and the idea of having a child of my own was pretty creepy, much as was the idea that my parents didn’t know how they “felt” about me. 

Well, now I’m old. I’m 30. I have a child. And, finally, I get it. Sophie’s adorable, and I love her to pieces, but that’s not it, that’s not what my parents were talking about when I was 13 or 14. When I look at that little girl, there’s something deep inside me that hurts, aches, tickles. It’s a visceral, quite physical reaction to something very clearly spiritual. 

Sitting in a restaurant today, watching a little boy only slightly older than Sophie, playing with his mom. He was climbing all over her — and there was quite a bit to climb. He was having a grand time, but it was nothing compared to what was in her eyes. Just sitting there, like she’d been struck by magnificent lightning, wrapping him up in her arms and holding him tightly. She and I shared a look just then, and I knew everything. 

Then my stomach started to hurt again, and I had to call home. 

Parenting is a blast.

I’ve got a friend who comes up with a new business idea every time he walks into a Starbucks. Every time he walks out, it’s gone; he’s just outside another Starbucks, a lonely programmer with a latte in a cardboard sleeve, Ray-Bans low on his nose, wondering where the hell he parked. I spend a lot of time at Starbucks with my laptop, drinking Venti (that’s the big one) iced chai tea lattes with the other would-be writers with their laptops and big lattes. I shouldn’t say that: I don’t know for sure whether or not the others are real writers. The fact is the ones I’ve been watching appear to spend too much time talking on their cell phones and smoking their cigs till they’ve filled the ashtrays to get any writing done. They do caress their touchpads longingly while they’re talking. I suppose they could be poets. Come to think of it, I’ve never known any poets who weren’t chatty drug addicts.

For me, the allure of Starbucks is more than just the aura of the Seattle writer scene (though I’m in Portland, Oregon). Life is complicated. Why shouldn’t we strive to place ourselves into worlds that give us a reprieve from the one we’re in? I know I’m not alone when I say I find comfort in Starbucks green and tan. And while we’re on the subject of color, which came first to the rainy city: green and tan or The Great Barista?

There’s the teen scene at the ‘Bucks, especially in the new summer, when they’re fresh from their first years away to college, imbibing too much caffeine for their only slight post-teen bones, discussing the merits of a liberal arts v engineering degree in the post-grad school debt years before they’ve even declared their majors. The group I’m looking at now has the international flair to boot: two East Indian girls, an Asian guy, and a Jew. It’s the Indian girls that have the attitudes; one went to Brown, the one with the ponytail went to Bowdoin. The two gents went to schools further down the alphabet, and it showed, mostly in the absence of alliteration in their speech. Every time the girls opened their mouths, the gents’ chairs seemed to grow a little more, or were they shrinking in them? Anyhow, these were boys I could get to know. No matter where their argument ended up, I was fairly confident that the Bowdoin-ite would end up peddling tarot hands for pennies in Chinatown. They all do. They and the kids from Hopkins.

I love their smiles. The minute the great elixir touches their wiry little mouths, their faces twist into a single giant squint of delight. The one with the ponytail bobs when she laughs as she almost sings the lament of no Starbucks in the woods of her family’s farm.

There’s a guy sitting at the next table who’s out of work. I don’t know him. I haven’t seen him here before, probably because he can’t afford to come here as often as I can. He’s in a fine silk tie, perhaps the same one he wore yesterday and the day before. Crisp white shirt with cuffs and grey pants of some sort of worsted wool, shoes freshly wiped of their closet dust. It looks like he’s waiting for someone, but that’s a ruse. He’s sitting alone after a long day of hunting, drinking his tall fruit ice concoction. He’s got a beautiful leather folio of napa grain I think, and there are telltale snippets of newsprint, job clippings, poking from between its folds.

He’s looking at two girls in line. They’re in tie-dye shirts and short shorts, the new low-hip kind, six inches from crotch to snap, belly bared to all. Their hemp purses hang low and happy, pregnant with the week’s spending money and a few packs of pilfered hose. They’re picking up their Ventis from the big counter, big lattes like mine, and he’s lamenting them and their high school freedom and the allowance that gives them the gall to order the big drinks right there in front of him. He could sure use a big drink, a big fruity, icy one. They buy theirs so easily, while his cost just $2.80, plus a little piece of dignity.

There’s another chica in the corner table outside and she’s determinedly filling out an application. She’s not the only one, mind you, to dream of working in this caffeinated temple. She’s not the only one at all: she’s the next one. She’s heard the tales of the tips and the benes and the trips to the rainy Mecca for training. She’s seen the false blond idols behind the counter and heard their banter and damn it, she’ll have a piece of that. She’s donned her shortest skirt and highest platform sandals and practiced walking around her kitchen at home in them, grinding fresh beans in her mother’s new Krupps. When she’s finished handing it to the cute bald boy behind the counter, she buys a coffee and returns to her perch outside. Her legs are crossed, her calf tattoo blazing in the sun, and she lights a celebratory cigarette to help her ponder this accomplishment. As a rule, I don’t like talking to the help. There has to be a waiver in here somewhere; she is only as good as hired, which has to get me off the hook.

I said, “You think you stand a shot?”

“Oh, yes.” Awfully coy. She said it without looking at me. I think she was staring at the dumpster across the parking lot. It appears she has the same opinion of Starbucks writers that I do.

“Why Starbucks?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Free coffee.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Easy. Like crowd surfing.”

Free coffee and crowd surfing. That’s all I get from her. Free coffee and a look at her calf tattoo: “RJW.” There’s bound to be a statistic out there that compares the weight of one’s perception of their self-worth and how it grows the closer they come to a Starbucks. I know I feel like I’m more powerful with the Venti, though it’s just a drop in the ocean.

My wife had to teach me how to make coffee at home. I was 28 years old. There’s dogged shame and wondrous pride all wrapped up in that, knowing at once that I’ve been able to outsource that part of my life to such an able partner as the ‘Bucks. Still, I was 28 years old if I was a day and for that, I am ashamed indeed. I remember I went out that weekend to Starbucks for the comfort factor and bought the most expensive of their branded brewing machines. It’s the most exquisitely clean appliance on my counter to this very day.

The economy’s a bear out there in the big world, and it’s all played out with ironic fidelity in this microcosm, all to the soundtrack of Handel’s “Watermusic” with a daring hip-hop beat. Come hell or high water, Starbucks throbs on; gentry spending to the gills for that next, last coffee that will hopefully hold them over on the long walk to their cars. There’s a drive-thru Starbucks not far from here, but really, what good is a Starbucks run if you’re not seen drinking it?