Uncategorized – Page 11 – developing dad

Our New World

I remember with great fondness, even a touch of longing, the Saturdays we had before we had kids. They started late in the morning. From this vantage point, as parents of a toddler and a four year old who is a part time toddler, the time we started on weekends was decidedly not late morning. In fact now it would be decidedly midday.

We didn’t need to plan like we do now. The coffee maker was not prepped the night before. In fact it was such a carefree and wondrous time that we might not even have carved out space in our brains to know whether or not we even had coffee to brew. What care we. We lived in a city, the city, New York, and there was always every version of coffee just outside the door. When your only burden is two large coffees to shake the cobwebs off of last night you really don’t care about the four flights of stairs. Why would you.

We’d cook large breakfasts. Maybe we’d fill the large bowl, the deep one that didn’t fit in with the set, with cherries. They show up early in spring. Always a surprise. We’d leave the bowl on the counter until the day made its lazy way to the living room and they’d come with us, half eaten with pits sinking step by step to the bottom of the bowl with each cherry taken. Sometimes they made it to the evening out on the coffee table. They’d be left there as we left for coffee and strolled, never knowing we wouldn’t be back until late in the evening, after the last song Dirty Mac and the Bumper Crop Boys would play at the bar we’d never been to, that we strolled into to drink and conversate. It was no day to be strict with language, we would ‘converse’ at work, but over pints of Frambois/Guinness with our new favorite band we’d never hear from again, we definitely were conversatin’.

Saturdays took different turns to magical outcomes. They were all of a piece, these years when we could capture magic. Boring Saturdays that would border on the mundane often wandered and found something approaching bliss. Sometimes we found ourselves afloat in it. Other times we knew we both wanted something specific. We’d have our coffees, our breakfasts, perhaps an exercise and we knew we had to go get it. Head where we knew it lived. One of us would say, ‘You know what I’d really like to do?’ and without fail the other would guess correctly, ‘Go to New World?’

We lived in the impossibly eclectic and diverse borough of Queens, in the vibrant Astoria neighborhood. Our food options were frankly limitless. But for us the place was always New World. A two and a half hour drive up into the Catskills to a pretty, rural, though easily accessible stretch of road between the picturesque towns of Woodstock and Saugerties. In our case ‘easily accessible’ was relative. I had a car for the summer months that was rented for me by my employer. Other times, and this is certainly crazy, we would find the cheapest local rental place and rent the car for the day. Yep. These are the decisions you can make before kids. Pretty fabulous, right.

We loved New World. The food was fabulous. Slow food, done right and creatively. It was a safe place for us to try new things as there was nothing they offered that wasn’t delicious. It was high end food in a shorts and t-shirt establishment. Gourmet kitchen in an old mountain farmhouse. It’s just great.

The other part of those days that lives now in my mind was the glorious absurdity and extravagant indulgence, the wide eyed romanticism of us taking the day to travel for a decadent meal and time together. We’d have every course offered, bread and white bean dip, blackened string beans with remoulade and then we’d get appetizers. Drinks and meals and desserts and coffees, even an espresso. All in cargo’s and your favorite T-shirt, put on fresh so as not to be crass.

When we had a pain that felt truly life altering we drove there to wallow and tear up and hold hands and celebrate what we still had. When we wondered if we should change this wonderful life by having kids, those days of absurdity served a purpose. We’d debate, taking turns taking either side. It was on one of those rides that we agreed that the argument that took the day was that having, at least trying for a family was an opportunity to experience an essential and fundamental aspect of being human and with the little time we had left we owed it to ourselves to try. It was on these rides that we nervously considered being mom and dad while escaping New York for a piece of magic and Seitan Steak and a Mother’s Milk. It was on these rides that we solidified what was our reality.

When it came time to plan a wedding I was unfortunately not up to the task. I was foolish as many men without the responsibility of family by their mid 30’s can be. I resisted and made difficult for my bride some of the things that should have not even been issues, instead causing her additional challenges asking for compromise when I was truthfully insisting we do certain things my way. By far the thing I regret the most was nixing the photographer. Because despite all of the challenges I may have caused for us in the lead up, the day was amazing. The greatest day of our lives to that point. The easiest part of the planning was where to get married. New World.

We haven’t been in years. Not since before the kids. Our new world, the one of diapers and cuddles and bedtimes and family life is magical and amazing and is one I shudder to think we considered not discovering. But from time to time I can’t help remembering the magic we could make all on our own. The magic we could make for ourselves and for each other.

The Lodge Part Two; Faking It

I have a good deal of respect for the fraud I was at that time. My bravado and false courage was believable. I was 22, driving a 15 seat van from deep in the Catskills down to Union Square where I would pick up families that included at least one member who was diagnosed with an intellectual and/or developmental disability. Pick up was at 5pm on Fridays in the middle of Manhattan. I was the host and the boss. The looks I got. I ignored them, but they were evident. I would drive families that had never met before through the dark and snow to a camp in the mountains that was so remote that the road turned to dirt about a quarter mile out. No houses or light emanating from anything but the vehicle. It had all been arranged by a finely tuned, though still almost totally pen and paper bureaucracy that I had a good deal of responsibility for. They were startled and perhaps a tad frightened by me.

‘You’re Joe MEDLER?’ They’d ask. ‘This Joe Medler?’ They would hold the letter, sometimes pulled from the envelope with my handwriting on it, looking very official, with the logo for AHRC of NYC across the top and a list of board officers and members cascading down the left hand side and point to my name under my signature.

‘Yep. You’re in the right place. Is this Daquan, then? Hey man. Are you excited to head up to the mountains? We’ve got so much fun stuff planned for you.’ I’d say, moving right past the doubts of these now very worried people and instead engaging the kids. I had at least the accidental wisdom of engaging thoughtfully with kids without patronizing them. Usually at least.

Thank god I didn’t recognize the doubt they must have been feeling. I mistook it for something I wanted to help change. It motivated me to be brave and bold and try honestly to change the world. Had I any of the wisdom I’ve gained since becoming a parent, wisdom that often is cloaked in fear and worry, I’d have known they were judging my youth and inexperience. I’d say they were right to have made such a judgment in general, but to this day, and I suspect for the rest of my life, this is the place and the job I was most perfectly suited to. Which isn’t to say this piece of the job was my strongest suit, but this place was the place that fit most perfectly with my emerging sense of right, wrong, fun, learning, priorities. It perfectly reflected my sensibilities. Harriman Lodge. Its my home, the one in my heart and it will always be to some degree.

I arrived at the place from across the state a summer or two ago. I don’t remember the timeline that well anymore. I was driven by my dad as it was the tail end of childhood and the leaping off point for my whole life. My confidence may have had little foundation, but it had good bones. I was a person taught to do what I believe even when it’s hard, especially when others aren’t. I had not yet applied these teachings, but somehow just being here, jumping in with two feet to a new and strange world and becoming a native felt like a stance. Taking the concerns of a person with disabilities as seriously as they took them, feeling like you were literally providing and caring for people that must have had innumerable amounts of ‘no’ and inadvertent and quite intentional discrimination heaped on them over a lifetime that often included severed family relations, neglect and institutional abuse felt world changing. It felt like I was making their lives better and as a result I was finally important. I was important for taking the care of and showing respect for people that needed help to have their voices heard. I was alongside the most wildly diverse assemblage I’ve ever been a part of, young people from all over the globe looking for a unique way to grow up while having fun and being the change they wanted to see in the world. It turned out that the people that were in our charge had a far greater impact on our lives those summers then we EVER could have had on theirs.

That first year was the moment I’ll always think of as my time of discovering the world and inventing myself. Leaping on opportunity and working 7 days a week, up to 20 hours a day, and no less then 16. Even when you were asleep in the cabin you always had one ear open in case a person that needed help was seeking it. You and 5 other counselors in a cabin of 18 guys. Then the leader of the cabin walks off the job, unable to deal with it. Then the Marine, couldn’t hack it. Finally it was me, Mike and Tony. The suburban, the urban and the Russian. And we did it. We had help, but we gave ourselves completely to our guys for more than half of the ten week summer. Ragged and bedraggled. Excitable and exhausted. It was and remains the greatest accomplishment of my professional life. I was 21, a knuckle headed post-teen finding purpose with the rest of us.

We’d all go on to have challenges and struggles. We’d resist the responsibilities of adulthood, shrink at times we should have roared and not use the springboard we were given to jump ahead in life. We’d all come back and do it again and again. I stayed 8 years, often through the long and lonely winters where I’d carry comfortably huge responsibilities only to crumble during down times that allowed me to wallow in ways I needed to in order to grow up. It was the formative experience of my life. One ONLY matched by becoming a parent.

For the first few years I identified as ‘Staff’. God that was awesome. We were weirdos and tough guys and earth mom’s in training and world explorers. Intellectuals bent on bending the world and lifelong service providers. We were on the one hand always ready to be silly and on the other hand so new at adulthood that we applied aesthetic judgment to the way we held our cigarettes. We were terribly vulnerable and horribly self-conscious and lacking the self awareness necessary to avoid embarrassment. I can look at the pictures for hours. When a new one shows up on Facebook I pray all of us will jump on and relive those times and speak of reunions. I can’t tell you how much I hope one comes to fruition. I love those people like my family. They were the people present at my coming of age story and I was present at theirs. I am of these people and I couldn’t be more proud of that.

Something strange happened over my time there. Fully integrated with the staff at 21 I started the slow move away from the group. It took a few years and a promotion or two, but before you knew it I was starting to realize that I was a lifer. I only stayed eight years, but in that time I became part of the permanent structure of the place. Before long I stopped having the bonds with the staff. The staff I’d always thought of as the ‘permanent structure’ that stayed in place as groups of ‘guests’ would come and go throughout the summer, two weeks at a time. I would be emotional when they’d leave and I’d reminisce with my fellow staff, the others left behind. You have no idea how much you bond with someone in this type of setting. How many emotions and experiences you can share in just a few days. But eventually as I got more involved in the year round operations my staff family became ‘big mama’ (Director), Big Joe (Caretaker extraordinaire of the facility) and Jessa-Lee (Year round rep for the AHRC NYC organization for the first couple years). To this day they feel like family to me. Jessa-Lee, though I haven’t seen her in ages, is still one of my very best friends. These people knew me as a pup and not only allowed me to grow up, they facilitated it. Put up with my shenanigans, the false starts and the inconsistencies and knew I was able and entrusted me. Partly because I was the only one who would do some of it, but lots of times because they had faith in me. So I had faith in me.

After that, my family became the guests themselves. My former self, my ‘staff’ self looked out to a horizon that went as long as the evening light. Perhaps into September. It was a short view. By the end I knew that I was with the guys. I was there every year, like they were. It was the staff that changed. Some returners every year, but eventually they all left. We stayed. At least until we didn’t.

There are times now when I look back and know I couldn’t do now all I did then. On the most basic level, it’s a young person’s game. The commitment, the hours, the emotionally raw feelings that come with the whole endeavor, it would be too much now. But I still wish I could do it. I still draw on it, like all of us who were lucky enough to have been there do. It provides a soulful foundation for me. Remembering the whole thing. It’s where I’d fall to if all else failed, if every imaginable tragedy were to befall me, I could always go back there and live out my days working for a roof and food. Sounds crazy I know, but it’s a real thought. It’s even a fall back plan in my mind for me and Karen. We hope to live out our days in our lovely home and have a fully realized vision for what our future will look like. But when discussing fall back plans in the event they should become necessary, the idea of camp has come up on several occasions.

I guess you have to fake it when you start. I did, at least. There wasn’t anything to draw on so you make it up. All of it. Then at some point you realize, I’ve been making it up for so long that in the process something has been made. The whole of the experience has to amount to something. It just has to. For me it amounted to me. I faked it, I made it and that made me.

I’m Not Sure What It Is. Could be viral.

I went viral. In the midst of looking up what would technically make a thing ‘viral’ in the social media sense, I was contacted by a world renowned advocate who mentioned in her message that there were several reasons why my story had gone viral. That was all I needed. She had tens of thousands of followers and was doing truly important work to make the world safer for children, so I wasn’t going to fight with her.

I highly recommend going viral. Granted, coming down is a bear, but having flown so high is a thrill. Its all of five days later now and I can give several reasons why what happened had very little to do with me. I can also tell you I haven’t stopped updating the page to see how many shares it’s received. While I can’t see the actual times the page has been viewed, knowing that it’s been shared 32,000 times since it went up 5 days ago is hugely validating. about 20,000 of those in the first 24 hours. A little over 20K actually. This and $2.00 still can’t buy me a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but its value to my sense of self is unmeasurable.

That said by the third day when the story was shared only a few thousand times, well over 100 per hour, it started to feel bad. I’ve never had a story shared more than 500 times ever. That’s in the entire lifespan of anyother story. Still, what was happening. The quantifiable love and validation was leaving. All of a sudden I felt foolish.

What the hell was I doing. The story was an incredibly personal one. It was of the scariest day of my life. A day when we thought that our little boy was going to die due to an allergic reaction. It was powerful because it’s hard to not be powerful when sharing the most personal of fearful stories. But somehow I’d gotten caught up in the thrill of having so many people think this story was so valuable that they were sharing it. They were saying mostly very flattering things about me. They were tagging friends it made them think of or who had wanted to better understand what it was like to have a child with a life threatening allergy. They were sharing it with leaders in the world of people advocating for the rights and best interests of this group of people to be protected in a way that exceeded the present woeful status quo. Those leaders actually shared it within their circles of influence. Some even reached out to me personally to thank me for sharing my families story and this was the real value.

I never articulate why I write. To some degree that’s because there is no one answer. On one level I’ve been compelled to write since I was a kid. In a loud and confusing world where I’d found a good role to play, a good disguise, it was a place to be honest, scared, angry and confused. On another level I write to discover. To discover my own thoughts and opinions and feelings. To discover new interests and areas of concern and flaws and strengths. Lately it’s been to share my inner self with the outer world to avoid the pitfalls and regrets that come with hiding one’s light. As an example for my kids. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that I ocassionally write because I love my kids and anything can happen and I want them to have a first had account of who I was and how I thought and felt in case I pass too early. Or even if I don’t and they are just curious. I want them to have some access to who I am and how much I love them. Going ‘viral’ and the responses I’ve received have added to my reasons.

I’m proud to have written something that has helped people express their experience more clearly to the people who love them. I’m delighted to have written something that many people told me brought them to tears. I’m happy to have made people feel. Perhaps I’m most happy that I wrote something that spoke to people who didn’t have the same knowledge as I did, that my piece informed them while also making an emotional impact.

I love the writing. I love doing it and I’d love to do it as a means to make a living. That is a definite goal. But as long as I am able to make an impact, be helpful, inform and express myself, I can’t see the lack of it being a source of income ever stopping me from following my curiosity and expressing myself honestly in this way. Viral was fun, if a bit overstated. Hearing that my words helped was and is overwhelmingly gratifying and all the reason I’ll ever need.

7 Ways Having a Dog Totally Prepares You for Parenthood

You skeptics. Seriously. You think that nobody without kids can understand how hard it is. That’s just crazy. Sure, having kids, caring for them and raising them is a challenge. We all empathize. But you don’t have to get so superior about it. I’ve even heard some people dismiss the attestations of pet-owners, dogs cared for since puppy-hood even, as not fully preparing one for the experience of having kids. Well, I say phooey to you. As skeptics I know what you need is evidence. Allow me to enumerate my argument.

Love – Until you’ve had a puppy, a precious baby dog, look up at you with those beautiful eyes expressing trust in you to care for her in ways that melt you, you can’t know love. Plain and simple. The full weight of love is only felt with a puppy and can’t be replicated by anything else. And as anyone who has seen a Nicholas Sparks movie adaptation knows, love is painful, guys. Seriously.
Sleep – I totally think this sleep thing that so many parents talk about is SO OVERDONE. It’s a naked and frankly embarrassing cry for attention. As a friend I try to be sure not to indulge it. It doesn’t take a lot of looking to find out that science has shown that babies sleep like 15-18 hours a day. You want to talk about sleepless nights? Yeah. Has your kid ever chased down a porcupine and had quills stuck in it’s gums? No? Well, there we have it. You don’t know sleeplessness my friend.
Worry – You parents act like the world isn’t totally designed to help you. You wring your hands over your child in daycare all day. You know what you can do? You can call. You can ask a qualified professional how your child is doing. How your child who’s been playing with friends and snacking on healthy food and being tended to at every turn, how they are as they nap peacefully. Not me. All I can do, ALL I CAN DO is worry.
Cost – Okay. I’ll grant you college. But the likelihood of that out of control scam known as higher education being fixed by the time it’s an issue for you is pretty good, so let’s not overstate it here. Meanwhile, I have an animal that can need everything from mental health therapies (don’t laugh, you have no idea how big a deal this is) and complex surgeries to prevent any number of ailments that are likely to compile and none of that is covered by any ‘family’ insurance plan. I mean seriously, if this dog isn’t family than I don’t know what family is.
Strain on Your Relationship – Do you have any idea how hard a dog is to incorporate into your life. I mean really. It’s like the hardest thing you can do. A baby, that’s a strengthening of your bond, born of your shared DNA it can’t help but bring you closer. Dogs are so SO needy. It’s like you hardly even have time to spend with your significant other. In those early days, and we’re talking easily 6 months here, I don’t think we had our ‘alone’ time as a couple more than 4 or 5 times a week. What the hell is that? Baby’s don’t do that, puppies do. Am I right!
Potty Training – I’m to understand this is unpleasant for you. Now imagine your baby naked and unable to wipe. At least unable to wipe without doing so with your carpet. I rest my case on this one.
Guilt – One word. Kennel.

I think I’ve made my point here. Don’t be so sure I’m not ready to be responsible for a human life. To raise it and care for it. To love it and set it up for success and fend off the wolves at the gate. I’ve had a puppy, so I ain’t scared!

Karma Crapped in the Tub: How My Wife Became a Poop Doula

Like riding a bike, I always presumed that pooping was one of those things that once you learned how to do it you pretty much had it down for the rest of your life. Turns out that journey is not so simple. Our four year old has apparently hit some bumps in the road. There are small, almost imperceptible changes occurring within me over time that might suggest there is the potential that this could be an issue for me as well, albeit in the distant future.

Anyway, there I was, sitting all smug up on the toilet catching up with my selected family and friends on my phone. This was my me time. I didn’t have to use the toilet, but it’s a place a parent can sit on occasion, as long as one’s spouse is there to occupy the kids, where they are given a moments reprieve. I think of it as a panic room of sorts in the hour after dinner, before bedtime. A place to go to forget about life for upwards of 3 minutes. A spa. It was here that I came across and amusing post by my younger sister. I’m paraphrasing here, but it said something like, ‘I’ll NEVER get used to cleaning poop out of the tub!’. I responded the only way I knew how. ‘Oh my god. That’s so gross!’

After a minute or two, and after a few, more kindhearted friends and family expressed empathy and understanding in the comments, it occurred to me that I might be tempting fate. In an attempt at something of a reverse jinx I went back in to the comment thread and expressed something closer to thoughtfulness. Something like, ‘Oh that so sucks. I’m so sorry. We’ve been lucky so far.’ But I was totally faking it. That sh*t doesn’t happen if your careful and stay attenti…

‘Joe! Oh no.. Joe!’ My wife shouted from upstairs.

I was on the couch enjoying my own end of night screen time alongside the big boy, the four year old, the one in the clear from the possibility of such an accident when my life took a dark turn.

‘T had an accident. In the tub!’

Oh crap.

I’m guessing that having made it this far through without this happening there are some parents that have made it all the way without dealing with this dark day. With the extracting by hand a turd that floats in parts and sinks in others like dynamited fish in a filthy pond. I remained calm on the outside because you need your children to know that although life is forever changed and we’ll never be able to truly look each other in the eye again, that they are okay and that one must be strong in the face of fear. I am a role model.

Karma was not through with us.

Believing that we’d learned all we needed to learn in order to avoid this issue in the future, we let down our guard. Somehow a few days passed without our big boy making a poop family in the potty. That’s what he calls it when it happens in phases. It’s amazing what you find cute when your kids say it. When we pointed it out to him and asked him to try he was resistent in a way that only a four year old could be. He had become afraid to poop. We coaxed. We bribed. It worked a couple of times, but it hurt and came with tears. Then he just stopped. Refused. He would have intermittent bouts of pain due to his being backed up. We couldn’t convince him with logic. We tried everything. What happens next is amongst the dumbest things I’ve ever done. I can’t believe it occurred even as I sit here and write it. It’s so dumb I’m embarrassed to say it. I decided that a good warm bath would do the trick. It did.

Our 4 year old is huge, like the size of a 7 year old. This is not an anecdote. He is the average size of a seven year old. I’ll just say that it’s possible for a backed up 4 year old, who is the size of a 7 year old to poop like a 41 year old who had a steak burrito and coffee for lunch. Through tears and the splashing of fecal infested dirty bath water we learned the power of karma and at that moment I knew it was done. Karma had made sure that I learned my lesson.

We are a modern family and my duties as a man are far more involved then men of previous generations. I am a competent and caring nurturer. Still, there are certain tasks that only a mother can perform. One of those tasks is exercised now when we note it’s been a couple of days. Our elaborate system of rewards for willing poops (chocolate, funnily enough) is pretty good. But if we let it slide the fear returns. When it does my wife becomes the guide for our boy that he needs at that moment. They will retreat to the bathroom where she will allay his fears, stick with him through his vicious rebukes and tearful apologies, always reassuring him that this is how it has worked since the dawn of time. That despite his fears, he will live through this and be so happy with the results that he’ll choose willingly to do it again! Eventually he believes her and they are one, holding hands as she provides him with the spiritual and emotional support allow his body to do what it’s made to do.

Without intending to and being motivated only by deep deep love, my wife is now a poop doula.

Mommy and Joey, XOXOXO

The most transformative moment of therapy for me didn’t happen in a therapists office, or even in therapy. It happened in a walk in closet that I’d made my writing room in the third floor walk-up in Astoria, where I lived. Truth is I was in therapy to be able to have this moment so I could move forward in my life and let go of the things I had been dragging around with me since childhood. It was in this small room, within a room, within my apartment surrounded by the thousands of written pages I’d been creating and hoarding for years in an attempt to understand who and why I was and am that I called my mother to tell her how she’d failed me.

I recounted things said without thinking that hurt. I recounted the things she said that were so confusing that I couldn’t comprehend why she would share them with me as a kid. I recounted the times I’d felt alone and unfairly judged. I told her of feelings I’d been blaming her for for decades. Literally decades. This wasn’t as long ago as I wish it were. I told her things I’d latched onto and refused to let go of for eternity. I told her about feeling like I was ignored and left to raise myself. I told her about how angry I was at her and why.

I’m pretty good with words. Not to brag, but I have a pretty good vocabulary and the ability to take thoughts and convert them into succinct and coherent and downright concise sentences that cut to the heart of what I’m trying to say. At the beginning of our conversation I told her that I called to talk about the things that were between us. About our relationship because it had occurred to me that it was our relationship that was in fact sabotaging my ability to love and to feel loved. I unloaded on her the pile of blame that I could never get past. It was fairly brutal and brutally unfair. It was mean. Anyone listening would have said so. Anyone who wasn’t my mother.

My mother is perhaps the toughest person anyone’s ever met. She has bravely stared down a life I’ll never have to. She’s been processing horrible tragedies since her youth and finding evermore reason for joy and love. She is the strongest person I know. You have to be pretty close to see this and I was afforded a front row seat that night in my closet, crying to my mother at a makeshift desk, surrounded by endless papers containing a profound misunderstanding of what turns out was my very good fortune of being born to the family I now understand to be my greatest blessing.

I hit her with every unfair punch that night. I blindsided her. She took every single one of them and apologized. For mistakes she’d made, for my pain, for misunderstandings that she couldn’t have known were still hurting me until that moment. She apologized and said she loved me even when I’d blame her for things that I now see she couldn’t have been a part of. When I called and started swinging wildly and emotionally she let her guard down and allowed me to punch away, telling me she was sorry, telling me I was brave for confronting her, telling me that I deserved better. It wasn’t a lie. She meant it. Despite giving me EVERYTHING and being blamed for things that weren’t hers to own she heard not an angry and aggressive and unfair man treating her poorly. She heard her son hurting. She heard her little boy screaming and crying that it wasn’t fair. And she took it all. To make me feel better. She let me know that it was okay to blame her, even if it wasn’t her fault, because she was mom and I would always be her boy.

I grew up fully in that moment. Seriously. I can tell you when I emotionally became fully a man and it was that night. I knew almost immediately upon expressing my pent up feelings that they had tricked me. Wisely. My feelings made me blame the one person strong enough to handle my impetuousness and bullying if I ever chose to unload it. The one person that could guide me to where I needed to go.

By the end of the conversation she was crying with me. She was telling me about her pain and letting me know I wasn’t alone. Letting me know that I would always have someone who would understand. Her. Mom. She healed me that night. The cuts that bled at ten, the ones that mean everything to a kid, I had bandaged. Being a sensitive kid at heart, naturally the bleeding continued and instead of allowing these wounds to heal, instead of cleaning them and caring form them, I just kept applying more and more bandages every time the blood seeped through. Never healing, always covering up and hoping my cuts would one day stop bleeding through. But that’s not how it works. You can’t heal that way. You can only hide. That day my mother held my hand like I was a child and promised me that even though it might hurt, she was going to tear off my bandages and clean them up so I could heal properly. So I could put down the load I’d been carrying and move on.

I emerged from that conversation a changed and healed person ready to take on the next phase of my life. It just in time as I was about to meet the woman that has since become a hero to both me and our sons. My mother gave me life, love and security and when I misplaced her gifts she dove into the hole I was drowning in and rescued me, despite my resistance.

I love you, mom. Thank you.

Leaning In to Failure

If you want to increase your amount of success, triple your rate of failure. This is how I remember and use what I tell people is one of my favorite quotes. I believe it’s one of my favorites because its one I need to hear as it speaks to a persistence and an energy, not to mention perspective, that is hard for me to maintain. I credit the quote to Thomas Edison. While it may be paraphrased and punched up over time, I believe this was a quote of his.

I was wrong. It was Thomas J. Watson who said that. In any case I’ve always imagined Mr. Watson nee Edison, sitting in his labs creating filaments out of all conceivable items for years on end assured that this would get him to where he was going. In my telling it did. In reality it did. Of course it got there with Direct Current (DC) and would have gotten there much more efficiently, not to mention like a trillion times more safely, had he gone with Nicola Tesla’s suggestion of Alternating Current (AC), but that is not the genius’s wont. He did it his way. Failing ever forward to a destination that was wrongheaded. Turns out his quote on failure was essentially that he hadn’t yet experienced any. Each filament he’d tried that failed was not a failure, but rather a success in proving it was not worth pursuing. A brilliant spin and one I suspect he believed. How else would he go on.

There is something to be learned here from both men. In Watson’s case, a less romantic sort then the more famed fellow, he took the very straight down the middle approach. His quote, ‘If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure.’ Like that. Not afraid or cowed at all at the idea of failing. He just says flat out, essentially, that failure is the road to success. To get closer to success fail more often. Being of the Midwest this type of unsentimental, practical advice resonates with me.

Edison was an inventor as it was a time that called for them and a field of endeavor that had yet to be corporatized. Essentially there was a need and he filled it. Some kid with a podcast is going to do that in some way in the future. I don’t know how yet, but when I do I’ll write about it. In any case I suspect that he’d have been an adman in the ’50’s and a pitchman in the nineties. His quote took a polar opposite approach to failure than Mr. Watson’s, rhetorically speaking, but it arrived at the same spot. Only difference? He denied failure. A thing failed, sure, but that’s not how he’s choosing to look at it. In both cases the advice is to keep trying. Each failed attempt is merely a piece of data, another step down the road to success.

I’ve been afraid of failure my whole life and have not so much avoided it as I’ve simply quit when it was an option to do so when I knew a failure would hurt too much. I salvaged some self respect by choosing failure in an attempt to control it and fail on my own terms. When I knew I wasn’t good enough at basketball, oddly enough when I made the Empire State Games team and played against guys my own age who were so superior to me that I knew, I kinda stopped caring. When math got hard in the 11th grade, I changed my goals of being a math teacher to having no goals. When I was afraid of computers (I’m old and it was a different time, don’t judge me) and was told I had to pass ‘intro to computers’, yep that was a thing for many of us matriculating in the early ’90’s, I failed it 7 times. In fact, college was too much for me so I stayed drunk and didn’t graduate until 9 years after entering when I FINALLY passed that computers course. I’ve dipped out of every relationship I could until years of therapy and the right person finally got me through that. I was so afraid of my writing ‘failing’ that I showed maybe 3 pieces of work to 3 different people over 15 years and never really spoke to them again.

How did I get past this stultifying fear you ask. I met my wife. Then I met my son Charlie and later my son Teddy. Now if you want to see a man overcome fear just take a look at how boldly I step into failure. I lean in. I have to. I have to get to the answers and there’s a clock.

Burning Questions: Nick Jr. Edition

Sometime between the age of 3 months and a year the sights and sounds of kids television become the droning background of many a parents existence. At some point it’s just inconsiderate to keep HGTV or ESPN on so we can ignore our little ones so we turn on one of a few channels providing round the clock entertainment for kids of varying ages so they can turn the tables and ignore us for a while. Turns out that they need us so much that a few minutes of being ignored quickly becomes an hour. If you feed them and powder them at some point you might even get two hours out of it. If you’ve read this far you are a parent. If you are a parent, especially one with little ones present or in your recent past, you know that a couple of hours is nothing short of 1980 Olympic Hockey team miraculous.

Before you know it you are humming maddeningly catchy theme songs in the few moments you have to yourself. Or at work, that miraculous place where you can get a coffee or take a leak without any logistical issues delaying either. What the hell. Why would I be humming the Wallykazam theme song here? The one damn place I can listen to my own music. DAMMIT!

Eventually you come to possess deep knowledge of the programs that have been forced into your brain in a clockwork orange fashion brainwashing. But at some point the 2 hour nights of sleep turn to 3 hour nights then to 4 and perhaps as much as 5. I don’t know yet. We’re still hovering around 4, but I don’t want to give up hope that this might grow. As you regain and reclaim your humanity and your bodily function returns to a place of stasis you are able to fully acclimate to your new world. Once this occurs the wine on a Saturday night comes back, some grown up shows start appearing in the Netflix recommendations and before you know it, your a grown up and a parent and you can think again. As a result, seemingly without any prompting you turn your long dormant critical and analytical brain toward this world that consumed you for so long. You have questions about what it is you’ve become an expert in. Television for babies and toddlers. The following are my questions as it relates to the programs on Nick Jr., a favorite in our house.

Max & Ruby

Where the hell are your parents?

I asked this question on my Facebook page for the blog and got more responses then I have for anything I’ve ever posted. Ever.

Also, what is the message being sent when you take the forever observant, thoughtful and prepared, if a bit bossy (though keep in mind, by all accounts she’s a little girl bunny left to raise her brother, parentless) Ruby and have her always lose in the end to the ever defiant, never attentive, positively dangerous Max, who seems to have the Midas touch?

Blaze and the Monster Machines

You named yourself, ‘Blaze’. The reference is lost on no one. How in god’s name did you get the theme song, which repeatedly punctuates the heroic actions of anthropomorphic monster trucks passed the suits at your company with the refrain of, ‘Let’s Blaze!’?

Paw Patrol

What kind of municipal budget must you have to have a single outfit for community service providing all manner of emergency first response completely staffed by dogs? I realize this is totally missing the point and a question that couldn’t be asked by the target audience, but these are the things one thinks at some point. This is my life and these are my thoughts. Seriously.

Peppa Pig

What the hell is the deal with the constant fat shaming of Daddy Pig? I should note that it’s possible this is tweaking some of my personal sensitivities as I’m coming to resemble my namesake.

The Fresh Beat Band

I loved you for 2 episodes. Now you inspire rage. No questions. Just a statement.

The Bubble Guppies

Why are you so insistent their be no logic, not even internal logic, in regard to the physics of your world? On a recent viewing there was a fire truck. You are under water! Worse, once they got to where they were going, they couldn’t figure out how to get up high until they extended the ladder, which a fish then ‘climbed’ by SWIMMING UPWARDS NEXT TO IT!! I hate you.

Oswald

You were perfect. A little slice of zen like heaven. Where did you go?

What I’ve Learned

I’ve heard that there’s no style of learning more effective than experiential learning. This stands to reason. I have some experience in this area. Here are some things I’ve thought and some things I’ve learned.

I’ve thought, ‘What a freaking nuisance. You know this is just an overprotective helicopter mom and because of her, because of these two or three nut jobs I can’t make myself a damn peanut butter sandwich without breaking building ordinances. Anywhere.’

I’ve thought, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it covered. Sure, little Billy’s mama made a stink about it, but we got one of the pizza’s with soy cheese. We’re not jerks, of course we want the kid to be safe and able to have fun.’

I’ve thought, ‘This is mom’s issue. The poor kid gets stuck at the table with all the other kids he doesn’t know and has to have a special plate of crap brought out to him with his name on it. All because mom loves the attention she gets calling 13 times a day to make sure he’s not eating anything other than what is on the stupid list.’

I’ve thought, ‘Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen?’

I’ve rolled my eyes and used air quotes when explaining that a kid in my care, but not my kid, had ‘food allergies’ and gone on to explain in coded but withering judgment of said child’s mom and her hyper anxiety.

Whether it was coincidence or not it was always the moms.

Thank god, none of these misconceptions had fatal outcomes or even critical ones.

Then experience came knocking and taught me in an afternoon how mistaken I was.

Do you remember your 9/11 story? I do. For years after that terrible day anytime you were with someone you either didn’t know before or hadn’t seen since before that day the conversation always got around to your story. Your experience of that day. Still happens, just not as much as more and more ‘adults’ are not of an age to have remembered it or you’re so familiar with everyone’s tales that you reference rather then recount them.

Well, parents of kids with anaphylactic food allergies engage in the telling and retelling of their tale whenever we find someone that gets it. Unfortunately for us and our kids, parents of kids with anaphylactic food allergies are the only ones that get it. Each of us encounter the ‘me’ from above who doesn’t get it and we know they don’t get it and it can only make us act crazier. See we have to be crazy, insane, so crazy that you’d rather just bitch about me and my hyper anxiety then have to deal with my crazy wrath if any of my seemingly bizarre and self centered requests are found to have been ignored. We’ve been granted the greatest education possible through our experiences. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Many parents have a crazy period early in their first child’s life, first week or two, when they can’t stop thinking that it’s possible that the baby will stop breathing and just die. We had this bit of experiential learning ourselves and for a 10 day period after getting the kid home one of us was awake at all hours of the day and night to make sure this didn’t happen. How we’d stop it if it did is something we never even considered. Just seemed the right thing to do. Then you realize, this is crazy, if he’s gonna give us a few minutes we need to take them. You learn these fears are baseless.

Then, a year later or so, we were having our normal lunch. Then little red pin pricks around his red and watering eyes. That’s weird. Then bright red blotches all over his face and a high whistle of air trying to get in and out. Then running to the car. Then heavy vomiting as its the only way it seems to breath. Then, no breathing and beat red. Then enormous vomiting. Here’s something. Do you know where you park at the ER if your baby of 1 year of age is red and unable to breathe, turning purple and all of you and your wife and your baby are covered in vomit as he writhes to try to loosen the vice grip of the snake he feels choking him, only its not a snake, it’s his own body choking him from the inside? Where ever the f**k you want. In our case it was at the door. The car was vomit filled, and I mean covering the windows, all of them, including the windshield. By at the door, I mean they see you and guide you right to the door. You leave your car there running, doors open.

I don’t know about you, but my experience at the ER has never failed to include a stop for at least a second of triage. Not us. They see a baby, see he’s barely holding on to his precious little life and the breaths are gone, they point and TELL you, ‘RUN!!’ and you do. Your adrenaline is flooding your body and brain and you do it. You run.

When you get there you don’t care who it is. You just need someone to save your baby’s life. They do. You calm down on the outside and panic on the inside as you help your baby calm down. Eventually he’s laughing and playing and you and your wife are trying to reflect his carefree demeanor, sneaking in conversation about what the hell could it be. You won’t get answers until you see the allergist in a few days. So you empty your kitchen. Almost all of it. Because something in there can cause that silly fear you had as new parents to be a reality. Your little love can just die. It’s knowledge you carry until there is either a cure or you die. That’s it. That’s the list of all the ways you’ll come to stop worrying. You get better at living with the knowledge, but you reorder everything. Used to have a career working in the city, but since I know from all my conversations how many people think this whole ‘food allergy thing’ is being way overblown by nervous parents, I pretty much ignore that job and rest on the laurels I’d earned and after that on the sheer audacity to just show up late, leave early or not show up at all, while trying to find something that works closer to home, since you’re told that if he goes into shock the staff at the daycare’s can’t go with him, he’ll just be taken by the ambulance, terrified, waiting hours, hopefully, until we arrive. So, I take a 20,000 pay cut and take a gig, a good gig, one I love, but a step down to be sure, to be with him for the day, feet away, always ready to run. Which you’ve done once and hope to never do again.

These experiences stick with you. Forever.

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