I say, "How high?"

"Jump, Baby. Jump."

Feet flat on the floor you bend and straighten your knees. Bend and straighten. You smile and bend and straighten your knees again. Your enthusiasm is unmistakable and your motions are accurate but your musculature is underdeveloped.

Not to worry. Your muscles will develop. Keep your laugh going and eventually you will beat this gravity thing and lift yourself off a planet spinning at 1,038 miles per hour for the sole purpose of keeping you grounded and your spine compressed.

Your dad is about to get laid off. It is still six months away, but the executives (the guys who park in spots called "Reserved" and who ride in corporate jets) have made the date known. This is when most people feel like the Earth is spinning so fast that they will involuntarily hit escape velocity and fly off the surface. But your dad skips certain "stages of grief" when it comes to white-collar misfortune. He goes straight from denial to -- skip anger, skip bargaining, skip depression -- to acceptance.

But not everyone at your dad's work is so lucky. The amount of personal tragedy stacked upon personal tragedy starts to sound like a rendition of This Little Piggy.

This laid-off daddy had a mild heart attack
This laid-off daddy started beating his dog
This laid-off daddy left his girlfriend with three children
This laid-off daddy went off his meds and killed himself
And this little CEO went, "Wee! Wee! Wee!" all the way to the bank

Perhaps your dad did not completely skip the anger stage. Unless the above observations are indeed still a part of acceptance. But your dad is doing okay. He is teaching you how to pray. And when your mom and dad pray over your food, they are praying for the means to keep food on the table.

But it is finally time for your dad to make a career change. To write and to write for real. All he has to do is keep laughing and bend his knees and jump. Just jump.

A dirty room

"I'm going to look up the sign for 'clean' right now," your mom said.

"You said that last time you were going to look up 'clean,'" your dad joked.

Your mom left your room and didn't return until she'd watched a YouTube video on how to sign 'clean' in American Sign Language. Coming back, she sat Indian style on the rug in the middle of your floor (the rug being a red and orange and green quilt sewn by your Aunt Melinda).

"'Clean' is this," your mom said, and she slid the palms of her hands flatly together once. "Same as 'nice.'" If you do it twice -- your mom demonstrated -- it's 'clean up.'"

"And 'dirty,'" your mom continued, "goes like this." She put her hand under her chin, palm down, and wiggled her fingers. She mischievously grinned and darted her eyes to the right. Your mom loves that sign, since it is nearly identical, yet completely unrelated, to an "ugly face" she would do with her brother when she was a kid.

You turned around from your Yamaha portable keyboard in time to watch your dad imitate the "dirty" sign.

Something went wrong. You didn't like the sign. You squared your lower lip, your eyes welled into pools, and you reached for your mom. In your mom's arms you continued to wail, but your eyes also searched the floor of your room, over the quilt-rug, to the base of the room heater, over to the feet of your crib, to the bottom of your low-crouching chair, and back to the quilt-rug.

You were startled by the "dirty" face your dad had made, but once he'd stopped, you'd kept looking around the room for the face that startled you. It was gone.