“What are you looking at?”

“That black fish!”

There is an aquarium behind me. A handful of colourful fish weave through the artificial world. They say fish are soothing.

“He keeps chasing the yellow fish around. He’s being a jerk.”

“Maybe they’re playing a game. How do you know it’s not fun?”

“See there he goes again. It’s not a game. Look at the yellow fish. He’s thinking, ‘Why won’t that guy leave me alone!’ ”

I feel obligated to point out that we are not characters in Finding Nemo. “I don’t think that fish is thinking anything.”

“He’s doing it again! What an asshole!”

I love that she thinks one fish is being mean to another fish, and is getting genuinely upset about it. I tell her so. Although let’s remember our priorities, it’s date night. So, I add, “Now quit worrying about the fucking fish and pay attention to me.”

It’s like purchasing real estate. There are meetings, appointments, paperwork, legal documents, itemized invoices, and professionals of all sorts to guide you through the many intricacies. The process of adopting a baby is a business transaction. It’s difficult to connect it with the idea of a real child.

Not everything different is bad. Our “Home Study” was not the terrible experience I was dreading. The woman who conducted it was nice, and she asked some thought provoking questions. Questions that created discussions my wife and I wouldn’t have otherwise had, and that was a good thing. Taking a ‘baby care” class is also mandatory. Again, not looking forward to that. I expected “How not to kill a baby 101″. But, it was a time well spent. The nurse who ran the class was a good teacher, and I did pick up a skill, I can wrap a baby burrito now.

The class provided me a great deal of reassurance. We were the only one of the eight couples taking it that were adopting. I know this because the nurse had us introduce ourselves, say when we were expecting, and let her know what our experiences with babies is. The guy next to me says, “We are due in six weeks. I’ve never even held a baby.” Dude. And his wife, the woman with the infant knocking on her insides to get out, said she had “a little more experience, but not really”. Dude.

I feel good about this. I have three younger sisters. I started babysitting when I was young enough that my mom got me to read by paying me with comic books. When I was 16, a relative offered me the chance to live in the city if I could look after her two young sons during the week. A little money and not living with your parents all summer was a good deal, so I was a nanny for a baby and a two year old. I hate to brag, but I don’t remember it being that tough of a job. I feel good about this.

Still, it’s difficult to connect lawyers, paperwork, and a class with a plastic baby, to the idea of a real one. Having one in your hands will probably do it. It’s nice to think that living with a pregnancy would better prepare you, but I’m not sure that’s true. Maybe it wouldn’t hit you until you had it in your hands. Maybe it’s not that different from fatherhood, by any other method.

“Did you just threaten to give me a karate chop to my wind pipe?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re going to argue with me that you’re a little butch.”

It took me a week, but I won that argument. Although any ground I gained, I lost when I told her my love increased for her twelve to thirteen percent.

Do you ever forget to put the sheets back on the bed until right before bed time? I hate that. You’re all geared up to climb in to a comfy bed and let the days troubles ease away, and the naked bed mocks you.

That’s what happened. We forgot to make the bed. The sheets were upstairs in a pile, and I was dreading that one last chore. I bitched about it as I trudged up the stairs to our room. But when I walked in and saw that she had made the bed without a word as a nice surprise, I looked at her and said, “My love for you just increased twelve to thirteen percent.” She wasn’t impressed.

I argued that she should be. Increasing our love, grown over our 9 year history, in one instant, 12 to 13 percent, is impressive. I mean, she didn’t give me a kidney, she just made the bed. I figured I had been pretty generous. She’s an accountant, she appreciates numbers, she saw my point. Still, I was getting in a habit of digging myself into holes. So when I brought up the blue cheese I was already in trouble.

We were hanging out, and I said I loved her, and she asked, “How much?” Yes, dorky, and sickly sweet, but we were by ourselves, and this is a game we like to play. Don’t judge. I try to stay away from the standards, I try stretch a bit, and this time I said, “I’d give up blue cheese for you.”

“Blue cheese! You’d give up mold for me! Nice.”

“But blue cheese is so awesome.”

She wasn’t buying it. The word “mold” was used repeatedly. It seemed to me she was concentrating on the wrong details. The point was that I loved blue cheese and I offered to give it up for her.

“But blue cheese! Moldy stinky cheese! Why not chocolate?! If you asked me, I’d say chocolate.”

Well now we were just arguing the relative merits of different foods. It’s the sincerity of the offer that makes a difference. And when I made it, my offer was genuine, hers was not. When pressed she admitted her giving up chocolate was unlikely.

“See, that’s the difference. I meant it.”

“So you’re going to give up blue cheese for me? To prove you love me?”

“Well not now. You’ve ruined it.”

The process has many steps. One of the first is a meeting with the woman who is completing our home study; the stamp of approval to proceed. She gave us a questionnaire to do. Family history, upbringing, that sort of thing. I flipped through it, and the first question I came upon was “How do you typically react when you have a disagreement?” It was a “check as many as apply” question. Lots of options. One of them was,

• Sometimes punch and break things

Who would check that box? It would have to be someone that not only does punch and break things when they disagree with their partner, with whom they are adopting a child, but also, they maintain an unwavering adherence to “honesty is the best policy”. I would think that question identifies a narrow margin of the population.

I showed my wife, “See baby. I told you. We’re golden.” I think we’re doing fine. She’s afraid of not getting picked. I don’t get that. I’ve told her, “I don’t get that. We’re awesome. We’ll totally get picked.”

“Seriously! Seriously? What the fuck’r you doing?”

“You looked so cute.” She finds my confused morning look and awry hair boyish and endearing. “It’s a good picture. It shows why I love you.” At least the camera was pointed at my face, that’s something.

I was a 35 year old Engineer and computer programmer, with no experience that would recommend me to the job of acrobat, but enthusiasm counters almost anything. I became a professional circus performer.

I just phoned up a circus company. I said, “A lady you know from Edmonton said I should call you when I moved to Vancouver. I liked her circus class. Um, she said I should call you?” I was nervous about this. They said, “See you Monday night.” So after work I went, and I trained with them for about about two years.

I tried many things. The first one I loved, was standing on the end of the Teeterboard when two people jumped off a tower on to the other end. The result was a rocket ride three or four storeys into the air.

The teeterboard pushes you up with an impressive force. When you first learn, you simply stand as stiff as the board you are on. As you progress you learn how to make a tiny jump, only a small bend of your knees, and then you straighten in time with the jumpers from the tower. The smallest of efforts, properly timed, are magnified by the springy board and give you extra height. However, if you are out of alignment, or your timing is off, the board will drive your feet upwards so hard that your knees buckle, and you will do what is refered to as a buck-a-roo. I only ever did one buck-a-roo, it was enough to end my career as a Teeterboard artist.

Every Wednesday we did Teeterboard. I did it for, probably eight evenings. For the first six I wore a safety harness, in my mind, it was part of the ride. The seventh night the harness came off at the end of practice. I did a couple landings without thinking about that too much, the evening ended with success. On the eighth night, I lost it, a bit, and that was enough.

As the feet of the two tower jumpers began to descend, my concentration drifted, and when I found it again, that board was driving my feet straight into my ass. The next day it felt like I had done a couple hundred deep knee bends. I was thrown, ass over tea kettle, limbs flailing, in a small awkward arc that had me landing on my head. My spotters guided me to the ground safely, but it changed my perspective. This fabulous fun would never replace my income, and was an irretrievably stupid risk for a man who made his living using the contents of his skull.

So, I mostly praticed two person hand to hand acrobatics, which I was much better at anyway. My partner and I worked on tricks, or moves, tie enough of those together successfully, you end up with a performance.

In this trick. My partner and I face each other two strides apart. I’m crouching slightly, my elbows are locked and my hands are laced between my knees. She walks forward, places her hands on my shoulders, steps one foot into the cradle of my palms, and as she drives her body up I straighten, lifting her foot. On the way up, she pirouettes as I separate my hands, I catch her other foot as she completes the spin, she locks every muscle in her body, I catch her momentum, and we end with her standing in my hands at shoulder level. Simple.

We couldn’t get it. Night after night I thought, “I’ll never be strong enough, she’s too heavy, I’m old, my back hurts, this whole thing is ridiculous! But we are so close!” I didn’t think I’d be able to do it.

Unlocking the secrets of an acrobatics move was fun, and something entirely unique, or it was for me. You have to find a language to express a physical movement that alludes description. It becomes this nebulous thing. You know it’s wrong, but you can’t find the words to say why. Actually, I never knew, I was terrible at knowing what was wrong, but they did.

Two members of our group were helping us practice. They were also boy / girl hand to hand actobats. They were strong and talented performers who had mastered this trick, and went on to circus fame. On this day however, they were trying to help my partner and I figure out the problem.

The girl training us tried it with me a couple of times. The two of us couldn’t do it either, so there was no doubt the source of the problem, it was me. She stepped back and said, “I don’t know. I can’t push. He’s gooshy.”

My partner is French. Her English is excellent, but this lost her, so she wrinkled her forehead and asked, “What is gooshy?”

“I don’t know. I go to stand, and he’s not there, his hands aren’t solid. I can’t push. He’s gooshy.”

Now she got it. “Yes! You’re gooshy!” she said, and threw her hand at me in exasperation. They watch me now. As she steps into my hands I drop them a fraction. I was readying myself to lift an enormous weight, except she wasn’t, she was tiny, but I was trying to do all the work. When she began to push I fell out below her, so I had to catch her first, which worked against both of us, and felt impossible.

As I crouched down ready to try again I muttered my new mantra, “No gooshy, no gooshy, no gooshy.” And I moved against her foot as soon as I felt it. Fluid power, like an arc on graph paper, up over my head, spin, and she’s standing in my hands. Beautiful. Simple.

It’s the beginning of February. Usually I’m thinking uncharitable thoughts about the people crowding the exercise equipment. Just give up on your stupid New Year’s Resolution already. New leaf time.

Yoga, tennis, walking, rock climbing, swimming, rowing, boxing, biking, dancing, bowling, running, stretching, or maybe the flying trapeze. Find something you can enjoy. You’re body is a depreciating asset, but there is unfound power and grace in it yet. There is poetry in motion.

I was paid for one circus performance. It was the hardest won money of my life. I’m proud of it.

Thank you:

• Peter and Nino, founders of The Underground Circus, who trained me.
• Jeff and Kelsey, featured performers in their second Cirque du Soliel show, who discovered what made me gooshy.
• Marie-eve, actress, acrobat, stunt woman, and yoga teacher who trusted me to balance her in the air, when she probably shouldn’t have.
• The family I met at the Underground Circus.

My apologies:

To you, for that being so much like liner notes, from a teen heartbreak album.

I met really nice people right off the start. Two Frenchmen in my hostel room introduced themselves, and insisted I come to dinner with them. They had heard of a place just down the block. They pronounced my name with this lifting French accent that was inviting. “Come on Dirk. You must come Dirk. What else? Come on Dirk. We know of a place.” They were great.

So were the rest of the people I met hanging around with them. They were all great people, who spoke French. Tourists from France, or Eastern Canada. The Spanish employees at tourist hubs, like train stations, spoke French as their second language. I don’t have a second language, so I can certainly not fault them for failing to have a third, but it was isolating, and somehow exhausting to be on the edge of understanding for hours at a time.

I followed them to a couple of clubs. Lots of beautiful people and alcoves with strange lighting and modern lounging furniture. Huge haute sterile affairs, lonely places, or so they’ve always felt to me.

I tried to shake my funk with a walk up one of the main plaza streets, a tourist hot spot. Beautiful buildings along a wide tree lined pedestrian area. The space was lovely, the experience was not. Every thirty paces stood a guy blowing a whistle making this rhythmic rolling high pitched sound; a rave kid nightmare. I never did come to understand if they were selling the whistles themselves, or using that as an attraction to sell you something else, although I couldn’t imagine either approach being successful.

The sound chased me from all directions as I weaved through the crowded alley of trinket vendors and buskers. Street performers can be amazing, but these were all modified versions of the “The Statue”, which many of them did well, very imaginative costumes. Still, no magicians, jugglers, singers, musicians, dancers, or acrobats. Just crowds, commerce, “The Statue”, and the whistle sound track. At night this area is patrolled by surprisingly unattractive, yet very aggressive prostitutes. It was all bringing me down, man.

The culmination of the street was a huge square with a fountain at it’s centre, surrounded by stone figures. The sculptures were built to the scale of divinity, set on podiums, so you have to look up to see their beautiful looming feet. The buildings, everything, it all started to feel that way. Like it was built to impress the peasant or the invading army; magnificent and imposing.

I had to resort to an English pub. World Cup was on. I scribbled in my book, met a guy, his bachelor party, and a nice fellow from the Netherlands who worked on a ship that repaired local beaches by moving sand from the bottom of the ocean. The bartender spoke enough English that she qualified as the only resident of Spain I managed to have a conversation with. She was pretty, which was nice, although she recommended the pizza, which was horrible. Not a total loss, the evening was not very Spanish, but it got me back on the upswing.

Still, I had written Barcelona off. I just needed to kill the morning and then it was off to the airport to meet my girl. I undertook one of my aimless wanderings and it led me through this park; it was amazing. The massive fountain built into a sloping hill was beautiful and inviting. Kids splashed in it and small groups wandered the surrounding path which invited you to view it from different angles. And, all the interesting people in the city were here!

I joined those lounging in the sunny grass; couples and kids and families. A few guitars and frisbees, jugglers, some tight rope walkers practicing in the trees, yoga, a guy manipulating glass spheres, hula hoops, and two young men struggling with a hand to hand stunt. Hey! I know that one, but the language barrier kept me from telling them. Men threaded their way though the crowds quietly offering cold cheap beer they sold out of plastic grocery bags. It was my sort of place, the antithesis of the touristy plaza. So I lingered, and came around to think that maybe Barcelona and I had a future together after all.

When I arrived in the city, on my way in from the airport, every time I stepped off a train the next train was right there, it was a journey of green lights. It was the experience I used to time my trip back to pick up my girl, which was filled with red lights. I was late, but just a little.

Wait, what! Terminal 2, there’s a Terminal 2! Fuck. How do I get there!? Another train! Fuck. And so, I am running, sweaty, stressed out, and an hour late, when I see her, looking worried, exhausted, and so tiny with her backpack on.

She sees me, and bursts into tears. When we pull back from our embrace I say, “I love you. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” It’s nothing personal, it was just timing, and my heart was somewhere else. It wasn’t you Barcelona, it was me.

I filled the pot with water, turned it on low, and went for a shower. Afterward, wrapped in a towel, I found it bubbling, scraped at the bottom, and splashed a quantity of boiling black crusty water at my navel. She found me, naked and yelping, tracing a single piece of ice, pinched between my fingers, over my stomach.

Some lessons, you learn the hard way.

I don’t have time to write anything. I don’t have time to do anything really, but I miss the writing, so I thought I’d try something novel, I’m just firing this off in one go. Usually I’m an obsessive editor, so I’m nervous. The three non-relatives that read this might notice a minor difference. Anyway, onward.

I underestimated the workload. Partly that was my inexperience, but also we’ve turned out to be ridiculously popular. I’ve had line-ups at the door for lunch and dinner every night since week one. That’s fabulous, I dare not complain about such a positive response, but wow it’s difficult to catch my breath. It’s like the tide, it keeps coming no matter what you do. I find myself lingering in a booth while wiping the tables because it’s the only time I sit in the sixteen hours I spend in the place. “Dirk, may I?” That’s how we train people to start a request. It’s polite, and lets you know something is being asked of you. I hear it about 50 times a day.

This lady came in the other day. She sells cosmetics and wanted to leave me with some gift box I could use as a prize for my staff. I had a girl waiting in a booth for an interview because I desperately needed more staff to keep up with the volume, I hadn’t had time to place a liquor order and we were out of a bunch of stuff, the computer system was frozen, I had to fire a couple people who I very much liked, but weren’t working out, one of my servers called in sick, another girl was at the front door with her resume in hand, and the lunch rush had just started. The lady at the door started to talk about Mary Kay, and I’m afraid I may have giggled a bit. I tried to explain the reality of the situation and told her she needed to come back if she wanted to speak to me. She’s the only  person I’ve sent away.

I need to develop a thicker skin. We’ve put a few thousand people through this place already, and most of them have left with smiles on their faces, but no one puts more effort into being heard than someone with a complaint, and let me tell you, people can get grumpy when they are hungry. There is no doubt that we’ve screwed up royally, and I’ve definitely not handled all of those situations in the best way, but it’s still been surprising to me how easy it is to release venom. It’s not like I walk back into the kitchen and say, “We have a code 13 people. I saw a dude walk in, and I don’t like the look of him. Lets make sure all the tables around him get their food first, and then mess up his order. This is your top priority team!” I mean, I get it, your fries are cold, that sucks, and it was definitely our fault, but lets try excercise a little perspective, it was not a personal attack.

Most people are great though. They are thankful, patient, forgiving of mistakes, appreciative of any effort to correct them, and they love the place, mostly. Like I said, lots of smiles, it’s nice, I like the customers, mostly.

The staff are my favourite part. They are quirky, vibrant, passionate, funny, talented, enthusiastic, smart, and ambitious. Yet they are also nervous, self conscious, unsure young screw-ups trying to figure out their place in the world. It’s a fun mix. I feel paternal.

I’m exhausted, but I’m enjoying it. I’ve got what I wanted: a fun new challenge. And, it comes with a burgeoning dysfunctional family I’m in love with already.

That thing on the left there that says I try to publish one thing a week, well, the reality of my life right now makes that a lie, yet I have no time to change it. Your best bet is to click on that subscribe by email button in the top left, then the three of you don’t have to check back here to see if I post stuff.