Birds and Fish, and Dadas

hats off to Taegan Maclean!

One Word was the first Substack I joined as a paid subscriber. Taegan Maclean writes, and now films lovely essays that are about, well, One Word. He does one a month, which makes sense, because he puts so much into each edition.

Dada

I just watched one he calls “Dada”. You can click on the box above to go there.

We learn this was his toddler daughter’s first word, and it initially meant “bird”, rather than father. This is the starting point for a seemingly meandering journey that moves, existentially, from new life, to death, back to new life, and lands in a heart space where we keep our best intentions and our awareness of mortality.

Taegan’s essay made me think of a piece I included in my mystery The Book of Answers as part of a dream sequence, in chapter 39. Those who are reading by installment aren’t there yet. (Perhaps a few of those who’ve bought the book have got that far.)

I include that excerpt below. I thought I’d send it as a Note to Taegan, but decided to share it more widely.

I am, in my way, swimming in that same heart space with fish, that Taegan flew to with birds. The story within this little story moment, about a father and a toddler daughter, and her little betta fish, is true, and came straight out of life with my oldest child.

I was aware of breathing through 7 cycles before I slipped into the misty swamp of a dream.

I sat across from Carrie in a booth at the Piano Box, a bistro we’d found off Magazine Street, in the Lower Garden District. They had a concert recording of Go to the Mardi Gras playing in the background. Professor Longhair.

I smelled coffee laced with chicory, and Cajun spices wafting out from the kitchen. They were frying catfish.

 I said, “Do you remember Bluey?”

“Hope’s betta fish? You were so broken up when it died,” Carrie said. “We never even knew if it was a boy or a girl.”

I said, “I thought we’d be having the ‘everything and everybody dies’ conversation, and I didn’t think she was ready.”

We’d gone to New Orleans for our honeymoon, but in this dream, Carrie sported a sea-blue bandana over her post-chemo peach-fuzz baldness. The bandana was printed with little creatures that made me think of goldfish crackers.

Carrie said, “I don’t think her being ready was the problem, sweetie.”

I raised a waterglass to my mouth. It was spotted with condensation that left my palm wet and cool.

“It would have been a kind of ending,” I said.

“An ending?”

“Do you remember? We talked about this.”

Carrie said, “The bubble?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think that before Hope knew, she lived in a beautiful bubble. There was just now. It felt like every moment with her was forever. No worries about what came before or what would need to happen next.”

Our booth and most of the restaurant’s furnishings had been hand-crafted from panels salvaged from old pianos. We loved this repurposing of the richly stained and varnished wood.

Carrie said, “Like she lived outside of time?”

“More like, she was in the only time that mattered.”

In the dream, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the blue bandana was gone. Carrie’s thick brown hair was back, shining and luxuriant as it had been the first time I saw her, singing a solo during an Advent service at Saint Mungo’s.

“Tom,” she asked, “Do you think that’s the way it was for it was for her?”

I said “I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Your bubble sounds like a dream,” Carrie said. “It’s a beautiful thought. A timeless, always kind of place.”

“Until she learned the truth, that we don’t actually live that way.”

Carrie said, “No we don’t live that way. Time does pass, and people die. But…”

I’ll stop the excerpt there. I don’t think it’s a spoiler for those who have not read that far, but like I said, many readers aren’t there yet.