We'd go hiking up Caballo the hard way - up through Rendija. It was fifteen miles one way because of road closures. We'd often see our friends the Boy Scouts coming down the other looking chipper - because they'd break trail (this trail, in fact) and do it the pussy way.

I used to feel left out because my father was adamant that his son would have nothing to do with "those paramilitary Nazis." Then I found out that the Scouts were pussies and it didn't suck so hard.

"You were always such a happy baby," my father said, upon me showing him a picture I found in my dead grandparents' stash. He looked wistful. It wasn't until I dug through the rest of the photos - in the process of going through my parents' slides of my first five or six years, I watched the progression. By the time I was two I was a haunted-eyed little kid whose back was always to the camera, unless I was cornered like a wounded animal. There are legitimately no photos of me between the ages of eight and about sixth grade. To date, my proudest accomplishment is how bubbly and joyful my own kid is. She's irrepressible. She wakes up happy, she goes to bed happy, and in the middle she's almost entirely happy. I watch her and wonder at exactly what kind of terrible fucking parent you have to be to kill that so thoroughly.

I don't know what to do about it either. But I know it affects me so much more to see it happen to someone else than it did to know it happened to me.