My daughter Jessica came to town last week to hang out in Phoenix. During these visits, she often picks up a number of books from us from the titles we thought she might appreciate. In the first few days she read and finished “Arbitrary Stupid Goal” by Tamara Shopsin which Caroline and I have not read yet; it’s in our stack of needing to read next to our front door. That stack represents the books destined to be read in the car while Caroline is a passenger acting as our audiobook reader. Currently, she and I are making our way through a 600-page tome titled “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century” by Barbara W. Tuchman that we picked up at Beach Books in Seaside, Oregon, back in November. After Jessica plowed through her first book she picked up “Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes” by Daniel Everett.

Last summer Caroline had seen that an exhibition about Teotihuacan was opening at the Phoenix Art Museum in October and that they were running a special to become a member of the Museum. While I called and ordered the membership back then, it took us until this past Friday and having my daughter in town for us to finally take advantage of our status. On Friday after the Museum closed we attended a behind-the-scenes tour of the exhibit for 35 guests, all either new or freshly renewed members. It was an interesting look at the logistics of the years of preparation, coordination, and teamwork that goes on to host such an event. The three of us were wowed, to say the least. Matter of fact we’d planned a return visit for the next day at 1:00 p.m. for a docent-led tour on a number of pieces in the exhibit.

That next day, January 12th, was a special day for Caroline and me because it was our 25th wedding anniversary. Not ones for celebration beyond our casual everyday amazement flowing through our lives we went into the day without much fanfare. Leaving the museum after our tour the night before we stopped at the door to speak with a young man named Mark who was quite knowledgeable about all things pre-Columbian Mexico and after piquing our interests even further about the Teotihuacan period he made a restaurant recommendation that proved too busy for us last night, but this afternoon it was quiet enough to warrant a stop. Joyride Taco House is a hipster joint that was almost too hipsterish for us boring people whose moments preening in the sun have come and gone. Food was great, but the pretentiousness and Tinder photo shoots were a bit over the top.

Sunday drew us into the Heard Museum where an exhibit titled, “Yua: Henri Matisse and the Inner Arctic Spirit” was on display. The backstory is about how the masks of the Yup’ik people of western Alaska influenced the later work of Henri Matisse. At that time Inuit dance masks were becoming collector items all over the world so that this exhibition saw many masks that originally were meant to be part of an ensemble, but had been dispersed all over the globe, become reunited with their kin for the first time in many years. By sheer coincidence, we found a book titled “Kabloona” (an Inuit term for white people) on display here which also currently resides in our aforementioned “books to be read” pile on our kitchen counter. Caroline had ordered it just the other week because she had run into it in audiobook form and liked it so much she thought I might enjoy it as well. It turns out that Matisse found it of influence to his own Eskimo studies.

On Monday, as on the previous days since her arrival, Jessica and I spent a good part of the day in yet another coffee shop chatting and occasionally she’d get a small amount of reading done. Mostly though we talked. How is it we had so much to talk about? Like most people do at least a few times during the course of their lives she’s in one of those phases where she is pondering the direction her life needs to take. To say my daughter has been difficult, belligerent even, prior to the past six months would not be an understatement. Many things we’ve talked about have been spoken of before but more often than not she recoiled on those prior occasions interpreting them mostly as attacks. I’m certain that this is nothing new to most parents, but I don’t have a lot of experience in doing the fathering thing.

Tomorrow Jessica will head back to San Diego and my thought of driving out with her for a week is being scuttled, as I hope she’ll think heavily on her situation and most everything we could discuss has been said.