Where Is Your One Hundred Foot Long, Shimmering, White, Gleaming, Metal Something?

Flamingo, in the heart of the Everglades, is 38 miles past the ranger station that welcomes natives and tourists alike to the National Park. There is a bait and tackle shop with sandwiches, ice, and souvenirs on the spit of land–emphasis on the word “spit”–that juts out into Biscayne Bay. Hardly a garden spot to begin with, Flamingo has never recovered from when Hurricane Andrew smacked it back into the Pleistocene 20-something years ago. Most folks fill up their gas tanks and head out into the bay in their motor boats but there are canoe rentals as well.

A two-hour paddle can bring a father and son to a point pretty squarely in the proverbial middle of nowhere. The nearest city is back the way we came: past the snickers bars and bottled water, up the 38 miles to the ranger station, through Homestead, and back to “town” such as it is. Noticing that the tepid water was now down to about 18 inches, “town” was the direction in which I was most interested because–stop me if I mentioned this before–there was nothing where we were and significantly more nothing in every direction. Getting stuck in the muck under the brackish water wasn’t an option because in the Everglades stuck is stuck. Waiting for the tide to come in is what’s happening because getting out and walking isn’t. Everglades muck isn’t quicksand, but it’ll do.

So I had almost convinced my son to agree to turn the canoe around when, maybe a half mile to the north, on a spot where the land hit the water, we spotted an impossibly long, possibly metal, glimmering, shiny, white something. It was hard to tell, squinting into the sun, but whatever it was seemed to be about 100 feet long.

“What’s that?” my son asked.

Having dodged questions of this type–“Why is the sky blue?” “How much do hippopotamus ears weigh?”–for some years, I felt confident in responding, “Beats the heck outa me.” And then after a pause for thoughtful reflection I added, “It can’t be a space ship.”

My son lifted his paddle out of the bay and listened to the water lapping against the side of the canoe. “Well, if it’s not a space ship, what is it?” We continued to stare cross-eyed into the distance. “Let’s go see.”

As ideas go, “Let’s go see” is right up there with “Let’s invade Poland.” Maybe it looks good on paper, but there isn’t–lacking air support–any practical way to go about it. “You can’t get there from here” is nowhere more true than in a foot and a half of water. But my son was already out of the canoe and dragging it and me out of the bay onto what could charitably called “land”.

Or trying to.

Because he was immediately ensconced in muck up to his ankles.

He took a step, or tried to, and lost his sandal in the muck. (Neither one of us had brought running shoes as we had not planning on doing much jogging in the canoe.) Quickly determining that returning to my house with a muck-covered son would be easier to explain to my wife than coming home without the boy at all, I followed. And was immediately knee deep in muck. Our every labored step now produced exactly the kind of slurping and squishing noise the existence of which polite people are assiduously trained to ignore.

It took us ten minutes to crawl a hundred yards. But we could make out the shimmering, white, gleaming metal something much more clearly now.

It was definitely not a space ship.

Another ten minutes and another hundred yards closer and stuck in the muck up to our hips, it occurred to me that, should an eight-foot alligator happen to wander by, we would look like yummy people-kabobs at a reptile bar mitzvah. We would be unable to defend ourselves–alligators are notoriously undeterred by rubber footwear–and would be chomped. Our lower halves would be left undisturbed under the muck, a silent warning should anyone else in subsequent generations brave this desolate, mucky place.

I kept the notion of eight-foot reptiles wearing yarmulkes to myself, but did suggest turning back.

“But what do you think it is, Dad?” My son replied. “And we’ve come this far.”

I could not argue. We were now over an hour on the clock and a quarter mile through the muck from the canoe. The shimmering, white, gleaming metal something was getting bigger in our vision. Clearly, it was more than a hundred yards wide, pure white, maybe two-feet high. But what it was we still couldn’t guess. It couldn’t be man-made. There were no men here to make it; there had never been men here, and there never would be men here. We were in muck-ville. No one had ever lived or would ever live here. Clearly, an advertisement for Burma-Shave was out of the question. We were not looking at an abandoned bill board nor did a rocket ship seem any more plausible.

Our situation seemed like a bad riddle: “What’s a hundred yards wide, pure white, and glimmers on top of the muck?”

So we kept crawling laboriously on all fours so as not to sink irretrievably into the mud and looking into the horizon. About a quarter mile from the shimmering, white, gleaming metal something, we were able to discern that there was a strip of brown on the hundred yard wide strip of shining incandescent white. The brown stripe was now distinguishable from the background of stumpy mangrove trees that littered the murky swamp.

At a hundred yards away, we stopped again. The crawling, tedious to begin with, having now crossed to border into unpleasant. Impossibly, the shimmering, white, gleaming metal something appeared to be vibrating. In the middle of the expansive swamp, where there could not possibly be life, there was life. And then the shimmering, white, gleaming metal something came apart, separating into a thousand component pieces as white pelicans took off at the same instant exploding up into the horizon in every direction.

Which brings me–“finally” you might say–to my point about parenting for my newsletter this week: You have to be in it to win it.

The concept of “quality time” is, in my judgment, complete and utter bullshit. Parenting is about “real time.” You can’t go up to someone whom you hardly know and talk about relationships, reproductive biology, and physical intimacy. A stranger in the street isn’t interested in your values, ethics, and insights into how to live a good life. Why would your children value these aspects of who you are unless you have laid a foundation for communication by spending some no-agenda time together?

Here’s the question: What is YOUR shimmering, white, gleaming metal something? You don’t have to go out with your kids into the muck 38 miles past the ranger station. In fact, come to think of it, I’m not sure I recommend any activity that potentially sets you up as reptile stew. Your shimmering, white, gleaming metal something can be found closer to home: in your garden, in your kitchen as you refine your recipe for cranberry muffins, in the wood shop in your basement building a rocking chair, or in your garage repairing a motorcycle. Where ever you hang out with your kids will do. Of course, I would argue that your shimmering, white, gleaming metal something is probably not going to be found in a clothing store in the mall or on a glowing screen, but I don’t pretend to know everything.

Here’s some gentle, directed advice: this weekend, put down the glowing rectangles and forget about homework. Instead, just take the kids somewhere and do something.

You never know what you might find glimmering on the horizon.