April 1, 2011 - 2 years

I spent the 2nd anniversary of mom's passing at the WonderCon, a San Francisco comic book convention that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.

My companion at this multi-nerdinal event was O, a few months shy of 4 years old.

O's daycare was closed Thursday and Friday so his parents asked if I would like to hang out with him. We spent most of Thursday at the Oakland Zoo, but Friday was my chance to introduce him to the cheerful, colorful and wacky spectacle that is WonderCon.

We warmed up for an hour by reading books in the children's alcove at the Mechanics Institute Library, the oldest library on the West Coast. The library is housed in a nifty 100-year old building on Post Street. From there we walked to the Moscone Center for the opening of the 3-day event.

O keeps up a constant chatter if not instructed to observe societal rules of quiet. He does not demand attention during most of his monologue, it mostly consists of whatever he's currently thinking about and has little to do with his external environment, though he's not oblivious to it.

He's a sensitive kid, but he'll try to get a rise out of you when he's in a teasing mood. His latest attempts to bait me involve beginning each conversational gambit with, "Hey, KooKoo - (fill in the blank)" said with a big grin. I can tease back, but the unstated rule is that I have to equal the *amount* of ribbing. For example, an acceptable response is "Hey, CoCo - " while an unacceptable response, i.e. one that amuses me but not him, is "Yes, PooPoo?"

He can get creative trying to assert control too, as when we were amidst herds of nerds and I wanted him to stay close to me, he loudly called out "Hey, why are you pulling on my arm?"

I do not get easily embarrassed by children, as evidenced by my lack of embarrassment at my own behavior, so I replied cheerily at an equal unnecessarily loud volume, "I need to pick some food out of my teeth and I don't have a toothpick."

The satisfying result was a double win; he was confused into silence, and a path was suddenly cleared around us.

We wandered for hours between the Exhibit Hall and the rooms housing the San Francisco International Children's Film Festival. Since he has always been slow to warm up to new faces, he was not about to have his picture taken with any of the assorted superheroes, science fiction, fantasy and manga characters milling about and posing in comic book cover stances. He also has a monk-like asceticism which seems to be immune to wanting. Not for a moment was he tempted by any of the thousands of toys, books, stuffed things, gadgets, miniatures, dragons, swords, posters, pictures, jewelry, and comic and film memorabilia displayed.

Or perhaps he's more like a tiny risk-averse bureaucrat for whom it's easier to say "No" to everything rather than be overwhelmed by the decision-making process and potentially making more work for oneself.

At any rate, it's really easy to spend time with a child who says "No" to himself before you have to. My own nieces and nephew were never greedy children, but they would certainly have taken me up on the offer to get *one* treat. The girls would have spent all day picking their one treat out.

O loved watching the films. He was entranced and more engaged than I realized. He would have stayed until his legs atrophied. I had to make him take breaks and walk around. He had no interest in going to the playground at nearby Yerba Buena Gardens or riding the Carousel. I foresee a future of art house theaters and bushels of popcorn as he watched everything but had definite favorites and those tended to be the higher quality works.

We had a blast. It was about as good a way to observe mom's death as I could conjure. Full of whimsy, fantasy, and the excited noises of happy people reveling in their passions.

Ordinarily, mom would never enter my mind during an event like this. There were few things that mom didn't understand and even fewer things that she made no attempt to understand. Science fiction was one of those rarities. The couple times I tried to explain why I loved reading sci-fi she expressed, well, something close to outrage at its existence.

The only intersection between WonderCon and mom was the anniversary of her death. I smiled several times during the day at the thought of mom as unwilling passenger in my memory banks, forced to endure a whole day's worth of speculative fiction and universes that ignored our own physics and natural laws.

Somehow, perhaps *because* she was a sci-fi refusenik, this difficult day was not so painful. Sorrow over missing mom can blindside me but it's usually rooted in happy memories of things experienced with her. Her complete lack of interest in a large chunk of my formative and adult reading life and entertainment choices, as well as my imagination has, ironically, left me with a fairly large Neutral Zone.

There were many more familiar child-centric activities I could have shared with O on a gorgeously warm Friday in the Bay Area. The WonderCon was a bit of a risk because of the location, the crowds and sensory overload, but it worked out really well as a shared experience.

I didn't consciously choose to spend the 2nd anniversary of mom's passing in a place where missing her presence would be pain-free and even tinged with humor, but she did choose to depart on April Fool's Day.

No fooling, Mom, you had a wonderful time with me and O at WonderCon.