Setting: Moderately messy playroom.

Children seem to be distracted from play due to the presence of their father.

The father is focused on his work— a block sculpture— and appears to take little notice of the children.

Because he did not play with blocks enough as a child, he has trouble getting them to balance.

Fortunately, that does not deter him.

Determined to make up for lost time, he begins again each time they fall.

Finally we have it: a French-man with a full belly.

Egg, orange, peach, banana. Toast, fish, strawberry, apple.

The children return to their play.

Today’s snowflake—

Akiva and I have been having fun playing with geometric wooden pattern blocks together.

He says we need more.

There was an argument. I bricked up the doorway and told them they would need to solve their own problems. Immediately, the problem was solved, but the bricks remained. Now when they argue inside, I say, “I can take down the wall or you can solve the problem yourself.” For now, they like the wall.

I enjoy my key-hole view of a place reserved exclusively for children.

“I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up.

Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones.

For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!”

— Edgar Allen Poe, The Cask of Amantillado