Month: July 2015

Hell Found Me at the County Fair

County FairSaturday we found ourselves, all of us, lost amidst the deep weeds of toddlerhood.

We were leaving the county fair. It was hot, crowded, noisy and uncomfortable. This was the setting as I did my own performance piece re-enacting every episode of cops ever. The big one was melting while the little one was overdone and riding his big brother’s coat tails. All the mistakes that can be made were. We were unprepared for the crowds, the food, the animals and the heat. Naps were skipped and bad behavior was mollified with treats. In hindsight any parent of any ability could have predicted the outcome. We could have predicted it. But we chose instead to barrel through because that is what you do with toddlers. If you waited for optimal conditions you’d be frozen in place, TV blaring, hiding from your kids. Forever.

Instead we took them to the fair where hell found us. It’s not the fault of the fair. Its not the fault of the heat and it’s not the fault of the various vendors and tricksters hanging their sweet booty, in the form of plush Spiderman dolls or blow up Spongebob’s to attract the hearts and minds of the worlds most brutal and successful class of negotiators, toddlers. Actually it’s totally the vendors fault. And of course the toddler’s fault. Everything is their fault. It isn’t their responsibility to do anything other then what they do, but lets not kid ourselves, we’re all grown ups here, it’s ALWAYS the toddlers fault. That’s okay, they can hardly be blamed for it.

Back to our story…

As I sit on the vacuum packed, stifling, Twinkie-shaped, sardine can of a school bus with with all manner of humanity, waiting on the edge of my seat to see if one of us will crack, scream and dive out the window as the bus tries to weave it’s way through the throngs of fair goers oblivious to those of us on the bus and our plight, toward the traffic that it will have to navigate before getting us to our abandoned vehicles in a vast empty field 3 miles away, I felt relief that at least we were nearly done with this trial. I believe that life tests you and it looked like we were going to make it out of this one having passed this test and learned a lesson.

The bus eventually picked up speed as we traveled away from the fairgrounds. A breeze moved the still hot air and we all let our shoulders down a bit. Even the enjoyable parts of such a day, for parents, are challenging. An example? The Butterfly’s. Going into the netted area, filled with flowers and butterfly’s was something like magic. Until you try to control a 4 year old and a 2 year old that don’t really get it. We were given small, foam style paint brushes upon entering and were told they were dipped in nectar to attract the butterflies, which the 4 year old could eventually do. I turned for a second to look and marvel at how he had managed to procure a butterfly for his very own enjoyment. Being four and having the attention span of a gnat and needing the validation of constant achievement at video-game speed he was bored nearly immediately, which was fine, I still had to look after the 2 year old. Where the hell did he go! Ah. There he.. wait. Teddy, no! He had started brandishing his brush like a weapon and was trying to in fact ‘squish’ the butterflies. Thankfully he is not as coordinated as he thinks he is and no butterflies were harmed in the making of this disaster. In the future, even later that day, this was the memory we isolated and highlighted as the ‘magic’ part of our trip to the fair.

As I slowly drove the air conditioned car I had a few moments of serenity on my way back to the fairground to pick up my wife and kids. A thought snick into my mind. I could probably get away with sneaking off for a bit. Have a beer, catch an inning or two of the Mets game. Why not. What would they care if they got to stay at the fair for a few more minutes? Kids love fairs!

Having arranged with Karen to have the boys across the street from the gate through which we entered the fair I knew it was not to be. They were waiting and I had what they needed. A car, some screens (I don’t care what you think about this, keep it to yourself, talk behind my back, just don’t think I care about your data and research) and a ride back to the grandparents house.

I’m afraid that my abilities as a writer will fail me as I try to describe what it was I returned to. The fairgrounds are in a rural area and the lawns of the residents of the modest homes in surrounding the grounds are  filled to bursting with cars that paid a bit extra for the convenience. These folks who paid $10 to be able to leave immediately, when free parking was right down the street, people I called suckers not 3 hours ago, are the smartest people. Ever. As we crowded our car onto the edge of one such lawn, across from the parked police car, lights aglow for apparently no reason other then to be prepared, my family came into sight. The full blast of a Volvo AC unit with the windows up can completely cancel out the sounds of what was perhaps the busiest moment of the busiest day of the county fair, megaphones ablaze, kids screaming from death defying rides and all manner of annoying, ice cream truck style circus music blasting from the concourse that is perhaps as much as 25 feet to my left. What it can’t obscure is the wailing and screaming of my four year old son, retreating to the maze of automobiles behind him, blood curdling screams that would cause me, you and any other decent person to stop and watch to be sure that he is not in mortal danger.

He is not, but it’s not so evident. You see, I’m angry now. Again, it’s unfair, not his responsibility and still entirely his fault that I’m now on a warpath. He’s a big four year old and his brother is squirmy. Being outnumbered and overburdened by the necessary and unnecessary items that accompany a mom of toddlers from a fair, my wife was not able to fully gather him in his state and it was a full blown disaster unfolding. I kid you not, everyone stopped, as if this were a real episode of cops, and watched as I stormed, cheeks ablaze in frustration and fed-uppedness as I marched directly at the boy and restrained him physically. This was a situation in which diplomatic methods could not be employed, not yet at least. We were in the midst of a full blown rebellion. What was needed was a police state, removal by force and I was the brute squad.

Here I was, a stranger in a strange land, looking to all the world like the type of father I was, but not the type I reported to be. I prefer to be the benevolent dictator, allowing my boys to think they have choices. ‘do you want to brush first or read a story first?’ that kind of thing. But when the moment is upon us, when hell is staring me down at the county fair all artifice is lost. This is a regime that must occasionally use the full force of it’s bestowed powers and put down all threats. Today that threat came from within and I’m terrified to think what the surrounding masses thought of our little performance. Surely they saw my anger, his frustration, our failures and must have come to the same conclusions I’ve often come to when seeing others in this or other, similar situations.

Within five minutes, a seemingly short time until you’ve spent it confined in a station wagon with two screaming, not shouting, SCREAMING toddlers, we were able to diffuse the situation using the wisdom of our elders who always have spoils ready for their grandkids visits.

‘Okay, Charlie. I guess I should call Grandma and tell her to put away the cupcakes and ice cream. Cancel the pancake dinner. Charlie doesn’t want it.’ I said in my best toddler-whistle falsetto.

Deep breaths. Wiped tears.

‘No. I want cupcakes.’

‘You do?’ I asked.

‘Yeah’

‘Okay, I’ll tell Grandma, as long as your a good boy and say you’re sorry to mommy.’ Still falsetto.

‘I’m sorry, mommy. Yeah!’ he shouted, and got the attention of the other.

‘Cupcakes!’ They yelled in unison.

Perfect

Girls weren’t so perfect when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I went through the yearbook and put stars next to the girls I crushed on and even wrote ‘mint’ next to the two Kelly’s, both two years older then me and friends with my brothers. They were more then perfect in my eyes. They were better looking and just as unattainable as the starlets on the screen. They were fantasies that I lived and breathed with. Perfect, beyond perfect, in my eyes. But nothing like they are today.

Little Weirdo

Boys too, but it’s different I think. The perfect of today is pristine, calculated and ultimately sad. On the bright side, these bright, emotional and soulful people dressing up like plastics, yearning and striving to out perfect the next girl in line are unable to outrun their humanity and as a result, if they are able to learn to love and respect themselves they will find something that developed in the sadness, in the yearning, in the very straw that broke their backs and set in motion their will and determination to be seen as perfect, beautiful and flawless. It’s the same drive we had as children, a thing society forgets about teens, they are children. Its falling off of perfect that makes you human.

When I was about 27 years old or so I learned that if I kept telling myself that I was gross and awful it motivated me to eat only pears, and I mean only pears, for a whole summer while working out harder and harder and working round the clock at a camp for individuals with great needs for support. I ultimately lost about 60 pounds. I’ve lost the photos because whatever perverse pride I took when I was living like that was offset by disgust at the lollipop-head that I saw in those pictures. When people would ask, ‘How’d you do it?’ my response was always a simple joke that diffused any further probing. It had the added benefit of being not at all a joke in the ‘its not true’ sense, though I was able to laugh it off that way.

‘It’s easy.’ I’d say. ‘The trick is to just hate yourself. It’s a great motivator at the gym and the only way to get a six-pack.’ Genetics are funny and I’ve had personal friends that couldn’t avoid the six-packification of the midsection, but for me this wasn’t the case. To have a six pack I had to feel I didn’t deserve food. I had to punish myself daily with workouts that were painful. Worst part, it felt freaking great physically. Being long and lean when you are naturally stocky is buzzingly awesome. It feels good in your organs and your bones. It feels terrible in terms of your human relationships, but inside your own vessel, just freaking awesome. It creates its own momentum until it doesn’t. The same way drinking and gorging myself on crap and alcohol as a 19 year old had reinforcing factors on the way to gaining the the freshman 80. That’s not a typo. I went from 185 upon entering college, to 265 upon returning after my freshman year.

Nobody ever thinks about, or even thinks to think about the underlying emotional issues that might be affecting a male, a young male at that, who chooses to maintain a slide for so long that they are simply begging to be noticed. Truth is I’m an outlier to some degree. Don’t get me wrong. There are a gazillion outliers like me, men who react this way to some external stimulus. In my case my best guess is that I was trying to find a sense of control on the one side of the coin and on the other I was engaged in avoiding all responsibility. But this came mostly from within. I didn’t have to deal with what it seems like young women have to confront on their journey through the minefield that is the process of going from girl to woman. It’s a transition that is confusing enough without the terrifying landscape they seem to confront.

The act of becoming is fraught with self doubt, harsh self-criticism, misunderstanding and missteps. It always has been. But in this new day when we are constantly exposed and constantly watching everything and everyone, I fear we’ve come to a place that is harder to navigate. I can’t for the life of me think of a more terrifying thing then being a 14 year old girl in this world where every flaw, every natural and beautiful imperfection is multiplied a million times by the microscope of ever present marketers deeply invested in exacerbating every insecurity of every fragile adolescent for the purposes of selling a thousand cures. The devils have even discovered that they can get these girls to do their work for them by training them through constant and ever present shaming images and ideas that result in a culture of competition that tricks sisters into believing that sisterhood is not a support but a competition to be won or lost. In every interaction. It’s a brutal world they’ve created and feed constantly in order to sell product. It’s an evil landscape that they have no choice but to navigate and there is virtually no path through that can’t be obscured and camouflaged by the game makers constantly scanning the landscape to ensure that no passage be readily available to their prey.

These young girls are trained, constantly, on the strive to an unreachable perfection. Its unreachable ever. In fact the message they are responding to, the one that so convinces them that they cannot rest until perfection is obtained is a lie. Any perfection found on this path is just another vantage point from where you are taught to look further down the road, where even greater perfection lies. Keeping you always underwhelmed, overworked, too perfect and further and further from acceptance and happiness.

It’s hard enough to find without the game being rigged against you.

5 Common Courtesies to Ditch with Toddlers

Ever notice how animalistic we become as parents. Right from the start. In fact we tend to mirror the journey of our children from completely helpless disasters through all the necessary stages of socialization and refinement. Well, in the process we must teach our children the expectations of society, the rules of the road and how to be a decent and kind person. All of those things it turns out are the finishing touches. Now, for us, with two toddlers, many of the rules we’ve always lived by are less then useless.

See my post on the topic at Sammiches & Psych Meds, where I’m now officially part of the team. Tanks so much, everyone!

So Much To Look Forward To

2015-06-13 21.40.59Our boys are very simply, magnificent. They are cherubic angels sprinkled with fairy dust sent to bring joy to a cruel and unforgiving world. This I believe. They are also 4 and 2 years old, respectively. So between bursts of sunlight and sparkles they can really be a challenge.

The emotional stability of my boys is reasonably questioned. The boundless energy they display is matched only by the sheer vigor of their mood swings. Laughter is only seconds from tears and vice-versa. It has a way of keeping you on your toes at first. But like all creatures we adapt. After a short time it becomes little more then white noise. Our ears and brains develop a filter that allows in the noises that mean something real is wrong and block the rest of the calamitous cacophony often arising around the corner. If it didn’t we’d surely go mad!

When you combine this with fair doses of competition for attention, stubbornness, the logistical requirements of properly caring for people that are proud pants-poopers and the ever encroaching hospitalization for exhaustion that my wife and I have a bag prepped for, we haven’t done much adventuring in these early years. Figuring it out day to day has been a good deal of adventure in and of itself.

We marvel at families that travel regularly with small children. We are prone to bouts of shell-shock after particularly bad car trips in excess of 2 hours. Flight? Are you kidding me! Forget the obvious excuse reason we don’t do this, we have a kid with anaphylactic food allergies, we could give a good list of 10 other reasons why it would be too much just to get to the plane. Forget the extreme likelihood that the two year old would escape and open a door in flight. We don’t know how these people find the money! Kids are freaking crazy expensive. We do fine, but we can’t be messing around blowing hundreds of dollars on travel that will surely end with a plane full of people being sucked out mid-flight because I can’t catch the little one. He’s squirmy. And determined. No thank you.

That said there are signs indicating that our families self-imposed period of semi-quarantined early childhood might be transitioning. It’s thrilling to think that soon we might be able to schedule a few trips, get our kids out and about now that some sense of stability and regular sleep patterns is just around the corner.

I’m excited to think of taking them to baseball games and camping. I’m looking forward to seeing them off to school, real school, not the daycare we’ve been calling school for years. I’m excited to think that seeing relatives far away will be more frequent if not exactly as frequent as we’d like. Real vacations might be upon us again in the not too distant future and it’s exciting. We’ve even made the loosest of plans to take them to our favorite vacation spot in the Adirondacks this year and to go and stay a night or two with their cousins and have some fun family time at the end of the summer.

I spend a fair amount of time these days soaking in the end of the little one’s phase, but their really is so much to look forward to. I have very warm feelings about this time when we all became a family. Everything from finding out we’d have Charlie, to moving to New Jersey, to buying our home and welcoming Teddy into it, through becoming fully able and capable caregivers, a journey that is equal parts depleting and replenishing. Still I find myself here looking forward to all that’s yet to come.

2015-06-22 12.02.30The family trips will be exciting and tiring and full of memories. The many successes and failures that we will be able to guide them through and the ones they will have to navigate on their own. The days I plan to keep them home and have adventures when I can connect with them naturally and excitedly. The teen years of anger and testosterone when frustration and exuberance are met with verve and curiosity. I can’t wait to take pictures of them before dances and have surprising conversations that reveal how much more is there then a parent often can see. I can’t wait for them to fall in love. I’m even looking forward to the heartbreak and pain, knowing it will tear me up as well. I can’t wait to see what sparks their imagination and motivates them simply out of interest, a need to do something. I want to know who these kids are going to be when they become adults and I want to see every step I can in the process. For those steps they have to take on their own I look forward to hearing about it years later when it’s all from a part of life that might have been really hard to live through but is looked back on with fondness for all its dynamic growth and tumult.

All of it that I sometimes don’t want to let go of, all of it that I fear before it’s arrival, all of it will make my boys who they are going to be and I’m so happy to be here to see it, to help, to worry. to laugh and to marvel.