02: Us

The kid possessed a boundless imagination, which was fueled by his ever expanding curiosity about the universe, as seen through the eyes of a precocious nine year old. This made Xander a natural adventurer, an explorer of the physical realm, creator of mythical creatures, and imagineer of magical worlds that he could talk about endlessly, in such minute detail, that if in the heat of the conversation, peppered by Xander’s rapid-fire questions, descriptive imaginary, and choose your own adventure style twists, you momentarily forgot that you’d been swept out of reality into an imaginary realm, it would be understandable. When you're so engaged, who’s to say you didn’t fleetingly transverse to this other dimension? I want to believe.

What’s important to know about Xander, is that he would often find wondrous elements in the ordinary. This made him an honorary wizard of sorts, someone who could infuse magic into the mundane. Which I suppose, when we were doing our, just the two of us thing, made me the ranger. Taking on our journey, scouting the path on our expeditions, the both of us observers of the environment around us, in the material world. Most of the time, this meant we’d find joy in the little things. When we were driving, we’d often play the cloud art game. One Saturday morning, on our way to the farmer’s market, I pointed out a cloud to Xander and I said…

Cloud games: Axolotl or Chinese dragon — what do you see?

“See that? The long and twisty one. You can see a tail to the left and small claws and a big head to the right. Don’t you think that looks like…”

“An axolotl!” Xander said.

“What? No. It’s a Chinese dragon, hence its long, twistiness,” I said.

“Twisty like an an axolotl. And actually, it would be a lot-lot-lot-lot-lot-lot longer and twistier if it were a Chinese dragon,” Xander said.

“So it’s not perfect, but look at its head, those are spikes or I should say, dragon horns,” I said.

“Nope. Those are its feathery gills. And also, its head is round. Don’t you agree its skull would be longer and pointier if it were a dragon?” Xander said.

“So you’re saying there are no cute dragons?” I said.

“Dad! That’s ridiculous. Of course there are cute dragons, like Cinder and Saffire”, Xander mimicked the dragons, looking at me wide-eyed with his dark brown eyes, “with their big golden-black eyes, but the cloud looks like a cute axolotl. Look again, do you see it!”

I looked at the clouds again and it was as if the axolotl, right then, had slyly revealed itself to me, streaking across the sky, dwarfing the jet plane that was heading straight toward it.

“I see it. Only, I’m pretty sure that plane’s in danger,” I said.

“What?”

“I think the axolotl is going to swallow it. Oh no! Turn away plane!”I said.

“Turn away!” Xander said.

“Oh no-no-no…!’

…and then Xander chimed in…

“…no-no-no-no!”

We were yelling in unison now and...

“Oh no! The cloud axolotl swallowed the plane whole. So sad.”

We tried to remain solemn but it’s hard not to smile at a feigned tragedy of ridiculous proportions.

“Actually, maybe it’s not just an axolotl, I think it’s maybe both our creation. ” Xander said, “A hybrid, like Indominus-Rex.”

In the Jurassic World cinematic universe, Indominus-Rex is a genetically concocted apex predator, that fuses the hulking size and strength of a T-Rex, with the superior intelligence and longer arms of a velociraptor. So deadly.

“An axolotl-dragon,” Xander said.

“That’s cool!”

“Yup. It’s my new mythical creature. I named him “Moonlight Starborn. He is amazing.”

Moonlight Starborn, the Axolotl Dragon. He is amazing.

“How did you come up with that name, little guy?”

“Hmm,” Xander said, his eyes gazed up to the left, as if trying to recall the answer, and then he shrugged.

“I think I just liked it. Plus, it feels like it is his name. Is that a silly reason to name him?” Xander said.

“No, it makes sense. You’re doing something because it feels right. That’s what you call gut instinct,” I said.

“A gut instinct?”

“Yes, like you feel it in your belly.”

I dart my right hand off the steering wheel toward him, fingers wiggling toward his belly in tickle mode. Only Xander is in the back seat and out of reach. Still he squirms away, arms protecting his belly. He giggles anyway.

Daddy.”

“Yes little guy.”

“Do you think anyone invented an axolotl-dragon yet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Me neither. When we get home, can you draw Moonlight Starboard for me?”

“For sure. Do you want to draw with me?”

I asked because Xander took to drawing, like an Influencer to Tik-Tok. He had a shoebox chock full of hundreds of crayons of every color, an unopened box of sixty-four crayons with a built in sharpener, a half used up box of skin tone crayons mixed in with two blue and two red crayons, worn down waxy stubs of many colors without wrappers. But his prize possession was a silver briefcase he got for his 9th birthday. The briefcase was lined with three fold out rows of 48 pencil, 144 pencils in total. Xander maintained this meticulously, never allowing more than two pencils out of the case at a time — and he would draw every day.

Xander would sit at the wood folding table in our home office, sometimes with me, sometimes alone and churn out picture after picture of everything from a Harry Potter inspired hippogriff, to an adorable red panda, to a beached and cracked open pirate ship, that a couple of adventurers are trying to sneak into, to retrieve its treasure. Even though it is guarded by skeleton pirates, a random zombie, and an undead, left armed-claw handed, pirate king. He made me draw the pirate king and then he colored in his tattered black and brown pirate boots and jacket, gray claw and yellow-green eyes. And so I thought Xander would want to draw with me and he said…

“I do but later. I need to write down Moonlight’s powers before I forget.”

“Like what?”

“An axolotl dragon can fly without wings, of course,” said Xander.

“Of course.”

“And change colors from blue to pink and to blend in, so it’s kind of invisible.”

“Like a chameleon,” I said.

“Yes! But better because it uses axolotl magic to make it blend even better.”

“I didn’t know axolotls had magic.”

“Only the mythical ones do, Xander said.”

“Does it breathe fire like a red dragon?”

“No but it breathes sound blasts that are invisible and can knock enemies off their feet and even shatter boulders!”

“Ooh… like a powerful sonic wave,” I said.

“Yes like that. Also it is very strong, with a powerful tail that it can swoosh and it can whistle and hum happy songs to befriend other creatures. Can you remember that?”

“No but you’re going to write it down right?”

“I am, but also I’m telling you so that you’ll remember, Xander said.”

“Okay, I’ll try to remember.”

“Oh! What if I gave it the power to glitch, so it can pop out of the way when it’s being attacked.”

“Very cool, like Black and Blue Spider-Man,” I said.

Black & Blue Spider-Man (aka Wesley Walker)

Black and Blue Spider-Man (aka Wesley Walker) is Xander’s own creation. We made our own action figure, painting a regular Spider-Man doll black and metallic blue in a shade meticulously crafted by his sister Sofia, who took care to mix just the right amount of metallic silver paint with royal blue.

“Yes, like Black and Blue Spider-Man,” Xander said quickly, because he was on a roll, talking a mile a minute and he kept going…

“Only maybe Moonlight Starborn is special, even for an axolotl-dragon. His most secret power is that it can sometimes open portals to travel to other dimensions. Not all the time but maybe when the moon is blue or orange or purple or heart red or a full moon. Do you have any ideas daddy?”

“I don’t know, that’s a lot of powers. Maybe when the Moonlight Starlight…”

“Starborn”

“Sorry, Starborn, learned to sing secret mystical songs, he can use them to find travel portals too. That way they can travel around the world too. Not just to other dimensions.”

“That’s a good idea!”

“Thanks little guy.”

“And maybe that’s why Starlight can’t travel to other dimensions when we first meet him, because he hasn’t found the lost mystical book he needs to unlock this power yet,” Xander said.

“Wow. That sounds really exciting!” I said.

“It is. I really, really, want to write them,” Xander said.

“We will.”

“And when we’re done with that story, we can start a new one! I have so many ideas, you want to hear them?”

We arrived at the Farmer’s market and I parked the car.

“I do but we’re here, so you want to tell me later?” I said.

“Okay. Daddy, can we get strawberries and carrots?”

“The orange ones?”

“Orange and purple. Plus one sweet corn tamale and what else…?”

“Peaches too?”

“Yes and for breakfast maybe some chocolate croissants from Mr. Baker.”

“Maybe.”

“And hummus and pita chips.”

“Thai Chili is so good.”

“That’s too spicy but you can eat. I like…”

“Let’s try some samples and decide. Come on, let’s go.”

*****

We are fresh strawberries. Fresh burst of red strawberries. Ripe turning riper in the bowl. — Fresh Strawberries, by Franz Ferdinand

We’d always buy the best three-pack of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that we could find. The vendors would let us choose our three-pack, mix and matching individual baskets at our request. Xander meticulously scanned the baskets looking past the ones with strawberries that were too white and green, too many that were little, or a couple that were old and shriveled or just one that he saw a fly land on, “Eww!” The baskets he would choose were filled with strawberries that had ripened to a bold red, with most of the berries medium or larger in size. His eyes would light up when we found one that was, “super-giant!” His goal was to make sure there there were at least four super-giant strawberries across the two packs. That way he could eat one and share the three others with Sofia and his mom and me. The blueberries were left to me. As they were usually good sized, like small marbles, I just made sure to pick ones that didn’t look squished. Like father like son, I avoided any baskets I saw a fly land on too, because I agreed with the eww. Never mind that we could wash them, should wash them, regardless of the fly.

A surprise necklace for mom, for Mother's Day.

Sometimes Xander would convince me to buy a random gift or trinket. Amongst the items we’ve acquired were a bouquet of flowers for mom (this was a recurring purchase) a sparkly blue crystal, Christmas mugs stuffed with candy, stickers and packets of hot chocolate, and a “beautiful necklace” featuring a faux emerald birthstone and a silver chain, to surprise mom with on Mother’s Day. And this was well and good. But we were adventurers and as such, some days were destined to be more than ordinary. When the ideas were flowing and the conditions were ripe, we would fully immerse ourselves into a heightened reality — our own mythical realm. We could reimagine any day, as epic.

***