Category: Uncategorized

The math is simple. It takes a metric ton of everyday magic to equal an ounce of disappointment. And if you are tired of looking for the magic in the everyday it starts to disappear. it turns invisible. If you aren’t careful the equation will flip and you’ll find yourself living in a world of everyday disappointment struggling to see even an ounce of magic.

It’s a well trodden path for men and one I find myself at the precipice of, trying to avoid it. We’ve all seen men who’s faces have twisted into joylessness. Worse, after a time the mask becomes one of distaste, as if a terrible, acrid smell is coming from their own lip, unavoidable and constant. I can see how they get there from here. The reality is that if you choose to view life as linear and finite it’s heading to a destination that is lamentable. Particularly if you avoid the magic. After all the darks greatest virtue is patience.

I’m 41 years old. I’m no longer free to think of old age as something I may be able to avoid. It’s a magical thought of youth. Sure, there are many for whom it’s a more pressing matter, but the truth is that I have an understanding from this vantage point that I didn’t have as a younger man. Things I long for more than anything are gone forever and I’m going to die. I’m going to die. All of this is going to end. None of this is permanent. My time on earth, even if it’s longer than my fair share, even if it’s longer than anyone’s ever, is but a blip. It is not a thing, my conscience, that is inherent. It’s in fact fleeting and ultimately temporal. It’s true for me and for you and whether we think about it or not, we know it. In our bones we know it.

I’m gonna die and the things I didn’t recognize as wonderful in life, that I didn’t wallow in, aren’t coming back. What’s worse, I can no longer go forth in the blissful ignorance of youthful disbelief. We are funny animals that can know a thing and perceive such fault in it that we can convince ourselves that the truth doesn’t pertain to us. There comes a time when we have to process this information.

My greatest fear when confronting this reality is that I will become so angry that I’ll lose the life left in me rather than use it all up for every minute I’m afforded it. I see it in the men that have come before me. Not my father or even my lineage, but in life. It’s an old trope, the idea of the grumpy old man. In many ways its how the world would prefer for us to go, for sure. Anger is quite self reliant and needs little from the world other than reason, and the world can give anyone with anger reason. Far too many men jump on that reason and ride it comfortably to death. It’s a way to go. I’m very happy to discover it isn’t my way to go.

I’m able to hold death at bay by befriending it. It’s taken on a large role in my life since having kids. I’m less concerned by others concerns if I remind myself I’m going to die. I’m going to have to do very hard things and death is going to be a constant in my life from this point forward to be sure. Truth is death is always all around you, always was and always will be. The forces of optimism and pessimism are at war both within me and without me. But once I accept my fate and digest that death is a part of life it’s up to me to recognize which side I’m on. Truth is optimism and joy are the only right answer for me.

I happen to think this is it. If there’s such a thing as heaven I believe I’m a happy resident of it now. This place demands much of me, but it’s given far more than it’s taken. Truth is it will be up to those left to provide the memory of my life with meaning. I’m pretty happy with that arrangement. Besides, I’ve got plenty of time left to still discover who I can become. Freed of the burden of fighting against what’s to come, the curiosity is adding life to these years…

I have no special shield protecting me from getting angry in old age. It’s a face you see on so many men. twisted in thought or distaste. But there is a trick. It’s a practice not an outlook. It’s called gratitude.

I’m so incredibly thankful for all I’ve been afforded. Everything from the air I breathe to the family I was made by to the amazing time of miraculous ingenuity in which I will have spent my life. I’m thankful for the understanding and forgiveness that’s been shown to me. By the love that’s been heaped upon me and received so graciously by those I’ve been so lucky to know. I’m grateful for the confusion and the challenges that have pushed me to understand more than I otherwise would have. I’m even thankful for the tragedies that have taken place, for they have never failed to ignite compassion and love and humanity.

I’m thankful to for my life. For the memories that are mine and mine alone. I’m thankful that we are all given this gift. I’m thankful that know matter how many people come and go during my time here, no matter how many people come and go through all of time, mine will have been the one and only experience that was this one. And I’ve been given a brain and senses that can recreate so many times from my life by simply choosing to close my eyes and conjure. I’m glad that forces beneath and above my control can cause so many wonderful and warm memories of this magical life to sneak up on me and arrest me on the spot and return me to the most blissful times of my life. Times I may not have been able to appreciate as they were occurring are waiting for the right moment, for the moment when I’m ready to appreciate them. I’m thankful for the people and the feelings and the time and joy.

Today is one of those days that we all stumble forth from our cocoons, musty and rumpled from the inevitable wear that shows on our body and our souls after months held hostage indoors. The same temperatures that in a mere 6 months will require us to go searching for our bulky sweaters and jackets on this day made us desire nothing more than shorts and t-shirts and flip flops or sneakers. The sun on our skin was divine! Even I, a devoted lover of the great indoors with medical reasons to avoid the out of doors when trees are budding and flowering couldn’t resist and did some gardening this morning, an option I have at my job, which is delightful.

It was a day to ride with the windows down, and we did on our way home. We have a commute, Charlie, Teddy and I, of perhaps 25 minutes, but the speed limit never exceeds 40 miles and we are in quiet towns where cops spend a good deal of time being visible in order to encourage compliance and by now most are trained and the windows down today was perfect. The dog walkers, the kids bouncing basketballs on their ways to the courts, the commuters disembarking the trains from Gotham in their short sleeve shirts, light jackets slung over their messenger bags as they strolled at a noticeably slower pace, it was all enough to make one giddy. We even passed a park filled with kids. Filled.

On closer inspection it wasn’t just kids. It was kids and their grownups. Plenty of them. In fact it was largely kids playing with their grownups. Now I could certainly chalk this up to the newness of the spring air, and to be sure this is partly responsible. But while I’d been driving earlier in the day I’d heard a short ad for an upcoming radio program on WNYC, the public radio station out of the city. One of the topics the program was going to discuss was intro’d by a clip from an expert, a social scientist I assume, who mentioned that kids today, outside of enslaved peoples and the abuses that occurred prior to society outlawing child labor, had less freedom than any other time in history. Combine this with headlines I’m seeing of parents that allowed their 10 and 6 year olds to walk home from a community park a quarter mile being arrested and investigated by child protective services and I’m starting to sense a frankly terrifying trend.

Now I have to be realistic here. I’m raising kids in a time when all these things are the norm and I’m more protective of my kids, directly so, then I’d have ever thought. But at this point they are 2 and 4 and it’s defensible. But arresting a parent that let their 10 year old walk home from the park, that’s just nuts. Again, I read just the headline and the kid could have been the parent’s drug mule for all I know. What I do know was that at the park I was passing parents were playing with their kids to the exclusion of kids playing with kids. It was evident and obvious. Its a problem. Kids have to feel left out by other kids from time to time. They have to learn to be self reliant and they have to do so by trial and error. You don’t learn social skills necessary to navigate life by playing with your mom or dad at the park. Get out of the way parents. I suggest you bring your phone and sit in the car so you aren’t tempted to intervene when your little one is sad for a minute. Let them figure it out. It’s the least you could do. No wonder so many of us talk of how overwhelming it is. We’re not supposed to be responsible for alleviating every negative interaction or feeling. We’re supposed to be the people that help them learn to navigate those things independently and they can’t do that when we hover.

Drop your kids at the park and bring a book.

The realities of the lives of others have a funny way of intruding on the lives of even great men. Even kings.

I was engaged in my evenings toil, a chore of an hour or so, cleaning rumps and dressing small people for the evenings slumber, assisting them and singing their silly songs and reading their simple books aloud and cleaning up the castle which they had somehow managed to move into when the most dastardly realization snuck upon me. Finally, my comeuppance pounced upon me and the strangest thing happened. When it touched me it had the effect of not only making me realize I was in fact not dressed royally, but rather I was on my knees cleaning the human waste that I imagined for so long was a thing that humanity had solved. It occurred to me I had no idea the tasks that common people were engaged in just outside the castle walls. I took to my feet to look out upon my people and begin my window sill reflections for the evening when I caught site of myself in the glass, naked and dirty and appearing portly, bedraggled and downright feeble. I ran to my wardrobe to find it not manned by my trusty wardrobe man, Frostlechunk. Not knowing his organization system I struggled for coverage and found only old and ill fitting sporting attire which would have to do. Covered and reeling from the realizations of my reflections I sought my royal attire in hopes that I’d feel more myself if I were able to dress in my formals. For it was not to be. They must be out for cleaning. I’d have a word with Frostlechunk in the morning in regard to keeping me apprised of his schedule so this whole unpleasantness could be put behind us.

After catching my breath, and reclaiming my dignity I made my way to the window and lowered the wick to ensure I would not be seen. I gazed upon my kingdom. peeling the curtain back I looked down to a most startling sight. New Jersey. Or something like it, I couldn’t be sure. I had been on missions to this outpost in my missioning days and if it weren’t New Hersey, it certainly appeared to be. I could not have been more alarmed had the windows revealed to me the full light of the moon reflecting off the bed of clouds beneath me as I floated through the heavens.

This is not my beautiful house.

Suddenly, like the bleating of sheep, a piercing cry filled the air and it came from a beat up, overused, long in need of replacing monitoring system that lived on rechargeable batteries as it had lost it’s ability to take a charge years ago. I knew all this instantly and had no earthly idea why. This night simply could not have been more peculiar. I figured out the control system of the now deafening noise-making device and saw my children on the monitor crying in what looked very much like the royal quarters. I am not cold. I have a heart. I immediately called an impromptu meeting of the parliament. My adversary partner, using very basic and hard to misconstrue language made clear that I was clearly the man for the job considering she was asleep for hours and I was in fact in sporting attire. Her argument was a good one and I did the only thing I could think to do. I tried to convince her that I’d had too much of the mead that remained from our evening entertaining. To which she replied we hadn’t ‘entertained’ (and if a tone of voice could be said to pronounce the intention of quotation marks surrounding one single word, hers did) in years and there wasn’t any mead or spirits in the house.

House? Seems dismissive of such a grand visage as a floating castle in New Jersey or some similar land, but okay. I’m a king and this is not on. After searching for the mead and finding it in the servant’s quarters I made my way to see the Prince’s. By the time I arrived at their door it occurred to me that my powers were reduced to little more than occasional exercises of free will in only the most irrelevant of circumstance. For my behavior, the behavior of the entirety of our tiny aristocracy had fallen prey over time to a silent coup. Not once in memory, had my royal druthers been heeded unless they were aligned with the wishes of the Prince’s. Not to mention, as I stood at the door listening to the silence that emanated from within it became clear that this was in fact the royal apartment that they were resting pamperedly in. There’s were the wishes being heeded. They were in fact my lords and I their servant.

While not an entirely thankless job it was still an enlightenment that hit me in the chest. I sat on the steps and took in my surroundings and began to deconstruct the passage of years that had flown so fleetingly as to be hardly noticed while hard worked. I won’t say there weren’t moments on that step where I didn’t question myself for allowing such a usurpation of power to occur, but in the end, they were good boys and if the kingdom were to be in others hands I’d want it to be them. That said, for the sake of keeping the kingdom in order I decided then and there that if the people of the kingdom, if the people outside these doors were willing to look past my lack of robes and glorious regal vestments for the sake of order, it was positively my duty to walk proudly, if nakedly through life continuing the charade of my splendor, authority and firm hold on the crown so as not to encourage a rebellion at a time when the kings princes are so young and unable to fully use their powers outside these walls and outside their immediate, royal family.

So resolved I decided once again to call it a night and lie down next to my queen and fellow felled ruler having survived what I now realize was a silent siege for yet another day.

Before taking my rest I allowed sentimentality that had formed in my gut whilst thinking of the boys on the steps to overcome me and I went in to look at them. Such fine lads. They were sleeping like cherubs alongside adjoining walls, one in a simple crib, the other in a simple bed, blissfully unaware of their power. As I tucked them in pulling blankets and sheets from around them I noticed that these plush blankets were made of my former robes. A fitting and poetic end I thought. I held it to the skin of my cheek and reminisced of what it felt like to be king. It felt nice and I was happy for the boys. Then, beneath me their was a rustle and within me a rising panic.

In my mind I screamed, ‘Don’t wake up, dear prince. For the love of all that is benevolent, please, please allow me to slumber!’. I hummed gently Brahmas’ Lullabye and tiptoed slowly and mindfully from the room avoiding all the creaky floorboards and escaped my lords wrath.

It takes a village. This is true. I’ve not read the book nor have I read the wikipedia entry or even google searched the term and skimmed the results. I’ve simply heard the sentence, lived a life and come to understand this phrase. What I’ve come to gather from this is that it takes me and my wife to raise our kids and a village to teach them all the crap they can’t learn from us because we’re their parents and the psychodynamic between us blinds us to some of the realities of them and deafens them to some of the wisdom of us. In steps the village. Don’t be fooled by the name, these villages exist in urban and rural settings, are not necessarily defined geographically and are populated by those we choose to populate it with until the kids start to have the power to populate it with people they choose. What ensues is political battles about borders and what’s best for the future of our village, why some ‘immigrants’ are taking our jobs and whether or not it is smart to have such porous borders in a world so fraught with danger and conflict. Finally, the kids win, there is a transition decade or two, and we wake up to realize we live in a village of fading vitality and yearn to become a part of their village and we start to think they’d make great parents.

I’m using this space to make this humble request. If you are a good person, if my child knows and trusts you at some point in the future, if you are not a person who will EVER cross the line from petty intimidation into even minor corporal punishment and if you are a person whom we have had dinner with or sat down with for a meeting regarding our child or if you are a coach or a conductor or a director, or any position of adult authority in whatever extracurricular events that my children choose to participate in, please, for the love of god, please know that you have my permission to ca

ll my kid out when he’s being a dope, being unkind, being entitled and bratty or if you just don’t like the look on his face on a given day. Short of complete public shame as judged by me, a person that airs almost all his dirty laundry publicly, you have license to discipline as you see fit. You might balance it with praise. But that is not at all required. What is required, what I request, is that you be the adult and they be the kid, with all the ‘unfair’ imbalance that entails. If you could do me this solid, if you could be unfair, scary, harsh and ultimately harmless, I’d appreciate it.

Why you ask. Good question. Many of the learning opportunities of my youth are seemingly gone. I can’t even conceive of a parent complaining about playing time or arguing with a teacher about a grade. Are you kidding me? However, from what I can tell this is now a standard intervention that parents make on behalf of their kids. There seems to be a new type of parenthood that prevails in the villages I’m a part of. Parents will take up their children’s complaints as if they were there own. They seem to take offense when a coach, a teacher or just a concerned parent in the neighborhood corrects their kid instead of thanking them. This is an unfortunate trend.

When I was yelled at for being a dope, whether it was warranted or not, it was assumed I was in fact being a dope. Any defense I might be able to fit into the conversation was shrugged off. They were merely the defenses of a twelve year old dope. It didn’t crush my self-esteem, it didn’t make me hate my parents in the long run (perhaps in the short term, and in a mean and ugly fashion, but it only strengthened my love for them in the end) and it didn’t end up with a teacher/coach/grown-up that thought me a punching bag. Nope. It ultimately resulted, 80% of the time or so, in me understanding that I had been a dope and the way I was treated was largely my fault. The other 20% of the time I was suffering the slings and arrows of my elders for no reason and they were surrounding the offender and saying, so what? This was a good thing, too. Your 12, your a knucklehead and lets just chalk this up to the umpteen other things you weren’t caught doing. They were in no way invested in taking the tools away from an adult responsible for me simply because they made a mistake this one time. They didn’t want this person to feel like they couldn’t put me in my place simply because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Nope. How could they ever know I was safe if my adult wasn’t allowed to make presumptions and act on them. It’s a very important tool. I’d tell them what happened, they’d ask me what I did to deserve that, I’d shun any responsibility and paint myself a martyr, they’d say, well that sounds unfair the way you say it and we’d all figure it out and go about our business. Or I’d acknowledge wrongdoing, they would instruct me to apologize and outside of egregious mistakes they’d leave me to do what was right.

‘What did you do?’ was and remains the most reasonable response from a parent that’s told by a kid that they got punished, yelled at, mildly publicly embarrassed and the like. A parent that err’s on the side of their kid at all turns is erring indeed.

The truth is it does take a village. Because to learn how life is and isn’t fair you have to endure unfairness. Sometimes just because. Because someone don’t like the look of ya. Or because someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed and you came before them at the wrong moment. And in those circumstances, being well meaning adults (This does not hold for strangers or people we are suspicious of, but it does for day to day adult presences in our kids lives whom we trust) it’s to us to first determine if our child may be in any ACTUAL danger. If so, may god have mercy and all that. But if not, we must allow the adults to be the adults, in all their imperfections. If they can’t deal with a coach that prefers another kids skills to theirs how in god’s name will they deal with the real world and all the inequities waiting there to knock them down. I simply can’t provide enough of this disappointment alone. I need the help of others.

So please, for the love of all that is holy, will you please yell at my kid. Especially when he’s being inconsiderate, ungenerous, unkind, uncaring, entitled, unfair or just being a dopey kid.

Thank you.

I was inspired by reading a brilliant forty word poem by a friend, Nikki, to join a poem challenge. While I wasn’t invited to participate, I got in on a technicality since in the intro to Nikki’s beautiful poem she gave a blanket invite. Thank you for that.

Here goes, and keep in mind, I’m not at all a poet. To quote Bill Simmons, ‘I can’t sneeze properly in less than 7000 words.’

The Rules:

Write about love using only 10 lines.

Use the word love in every line.

Each line can only be four words long.

Nominate others who are up for the challenge.

Let them know about the challenge.

Title the post: Love in Ten Lines

Include a quote about love (can be your own)

You may write in any language.

My Piece:

Is love really kind?
Love is a bully

Love is not jealous
Love? Not jealous? Love?

Truthfully, is love selfless?
Love’s selfish. Definitely selfish.

Love can lack perspective
But love needn’t virtue

For love is purpose
Love is our meaning

Love Quote…

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence -Erich Fromm

There it is. I would also like to pay forward my good fortune and issue a blanket invitation to join the challenge or contest or whatever the hell it is to all who would like to give it a try.

My most honest and ugly self was in the notebooks. I filled them, both sides of the paper, handwriting so tiny that two lines of my script fit between the ruled lines on the paper. So small that the density of the books, weighed down with my anger and my hate, my self loathing and my aspirations would feel heavy to hold.

I’ve always presented well. I’m a well mannered sort. I’m a person who’s used the term ‘I’m sorry’ perhaps more than any person ever. I’m polite. I’m a door holder. I’m smart and I possess the decency that was instilled in me by my betters at an early age and I’m so happy that they did.

The me inside the notebooks was the opposite of what the world saw. I use the past tense because I’m older and time and my situation have conspired and left me rarely angry, mostly past the bitter resignation and largely living in the ‘acceptance of me for who I am’ phase of my life.

Inside those notebooks were my thoughts. I’d write them in and around the New York City I had moved to to disappear and become whoever it was I would become. I lived on St. Marks Place in Brooklyn on the top floor of a brownstone between 3rd and 4th. To the fourth was still a bit of plight at that time, but Park Slope’s sprawl has since reached my former block. To the 3rd was the Wyckoff projects. I come from a multicultural family of 9. While there are others that might have learned more from living there, I still learned a lot. It’s good for the perspective of white American men to live somewhere where they are an evident minority. Good for your understanding the daily lives of others. I worked at a group home (I am bound by my profession and my ethical adherence to correct myself and instead say, ‘community residence’, but I’ll leave group home as it is what I thought of it as at the time. Even though it was technically an ICF) on West 4th Street, park to the east and train station and the legendary West 4th Street courts (basketball) to the west. I wasn’t competetive anymore, but I remember being prideful enough at the time to insist I could have hung there. I couldn’t have, but perhaps I could’ve fooled em enough to get a run or two.

Anyway, I’d scrawl on trains and in libraries and bookstores and I’d put all my anger and all my hate at all the wrong people, into those books. I’d revile those I loved and I’d judge myself incessantly. I’d lash myself the hardest. A flagellant using tiny letters imbued with shame to properly cleanse my brain of my impurities. Or a raging rebel tipping over the towers with my pen. Whatever it was it was intense and scary and exhillerating and destroying me. I don’t really know how I got through that time sane. I’d finish each night drinking to black out. It was how I fell asleep for well over ten years. I couldn’t shut the rage without blacking out. I couldn’t silence whatever it was that lived in my head berating me without killing him nightly, drowning him. Drowning me at the same time.

I remember making an entry in the park. I don’t like writing with any distraction, but something was angering me and I needed to wrap up my well behaved, professional appearance and get somewhere quick before I exploded and that day and others it was Washington Square Park. The things I wrote were surely vile. Perhaps violent and most certainly unfair. They were honest. They were a me I had to be to get to the me I needed to become. I hated that me so much, and on some level knew that I needed to be aggreessive and out of control in my notebooks because I couldn’t be in the world. Those books contained awfulness. Awfulness I couldn’t avoid. I don’t know why and I may never know. There are still some roads to try walking down and I may find answers, but I had to be that person somewhere and thank god I had those books. I had no one else I could be that me with. I so hated that me that I’d put down my feelings and throw them out. Full books, hundreds of tiny words per page. I’d read something upon finishing from a few thousand words back and I’d recoil. I’d meticulously remove anything with my name on it or evidence of who the crazy was and throw that out at another trash can. I tried to throw away my pain and my anger.

I was so lonely. I was so in need of people I could trust. I was likely surrounded by them, but I couldn’t see it and it was so so lonely. There were times I’d try to get through a night without blacking out and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hide from me. I couldn’t get away from me and I needed to.

Friends who’ve tried to check me on the tiny details of that time, people who were there, who were completely unaware that I was having this experience. I suppose it makes sense. I’ve always played my part well. But the truth is that I assumed everyone in some way was experiencing this sad loneliness mixed with disappointment and discomfort in some way. I thought to some degree that was what it felt like to be human. Sad and lonely and human.

I’ve come a long way from those days. Largely because of the experiences of letting go of what I could, forgiving those I thought hurt me, forgiving myself and loving myself and most importantly liking myself. The last parts that made me able to feel connected I needed to do in therapy. Rather I was fortunate to speed them up a bit by having insurance that allowed me to get therapy.

Now I have my wife who is the hero of my story. She’s the only person, and others were close enough, but she was the only person that ever honestly and straightforwardly told me she was scared for me because of the drinking. Even working full time, before the kids I’d drink a six pack and a half a bottle of liquor cabinet sized liquor in an evening at home in front of the TV. It was a crutch but it was real and she cared. More importantly she said she cared and wanted me to stop. It’s not a big deal for me now. I get drunk once every couple years. And it’s a blast when it happens. There’s a day of rehydration, more like two now with age and being out of practice, but there’s no demons in those glasses.

My realest self used to hide in my notebooks and was dying from a lack of fresh air and sunlight and perspective. Now I write my story largely in real time and share it with the world unafraid. Well, if not unafraid at least unabashed. I have made real friends in facebook groups, other writers, bunker mates who are as real and as encouraging as any friends I’ve ever sat at a bar with. They encourage and plum depths. They aren’t afraid to hear and to share anything, they know that if someone is saying it, it’s real to them and needs to be listened to. We may not be ‘real life’ friends, but we pull for each other and cheer success and push each other and know that we can dare to be our real, scared, proud and vulnerable selves. That’s as real as it gets.

Writing that started as a true release of unwanted and unavoidable pain and has turned into a tool for empathy and connection. It’s transformed over time from harsh and critical to hopeful and aspirational. I’m truly a better person for having explored the depths and having passed that time. I know I’m never fully safe from anything. Tragedy and pain are real. I’m fortunate thus far and I’m thankful. Times will change and challenges will arise and when they do I’ll have a much fuller tool belt then I used to. I’ll have some love and empathy for me, which is something of far greater value then I could have ever imagined when it was lacking.

Parenthood is an expansive and truly magical experience that forces you to focus. Where your periscope was formerly up and constantly looking outward you now are forced to pull it in and train it on your new responsibilities. It requires everything you have to give and leaves you largely happy to give it, if occasionally annoyed that there isn’t more of it so you might retain a tiny piece for your own entertainment. It requires these things of you because its the most expedient way of alerting you that the life you knew, so much of it, is now a thing to remember and the life you will have is one that you can’t half-ass in the way you now realize you’d been half-assing it your whole life. The transformations leaves you with a changed perspective. A much narrower but much deeper one. You now swim in a thousand foot deep puddle that others can hop over. You are required to swim deep, find all the hidden realities and defend this puddle like it’s your life, your whole world.

Now, combine these traits with the traits of a writer. A person that is determined to express themselves, to show themselves, to be seen and to show off while often, typically being ultra sensitive to the world around them. A person that has learned through trial and failure that readers prefer their tales told with assurdness. A person already possessing a level of self-obsessed over-analysis so great that they have chosen to converse with the world, inside their head, for years on end. The combination can result in stretches of life defined by a solipsistic worldview that is practically a necessity for them to push through to the other side.

We deep sea dive in our oceanic puddles and are able to see things others would pass without noting, this is our gift. We revel in shining a light on these variations and we are so close to them we have little perspective. We are often surprised by the ways in which our experiences are reflective of others and equally surprised by the times they are singular and unique. Occasionally we see the surface of another parents puddle and assume it to be lacking in all the depth and nuance ours is, or even worse we can pass judgment on the parent as being less capable or curious about exploring their new world. I do it all the time. It’s a problem.

But today I’m taking a break from my standard, ‘this is parenthood’ form of expression in order to take a dip in some new puddles. Puddles of similarly afflicted people to see what life is like in the ocean they inhabit. For a moment I’m going to consciously stop, look around and remember that I can never be so blind as to think that my ‘this is parenthood’ understanding is a complete understanding. I have to occasionally take in the work of others and remind myself, ‘that is parenthood’ as well.

Over at the Precious Princess’s Guide to Bananaland … This piece speaks to a feeling I’d have never had the ability to really see due to my still resilient guilt complex. Kids are amazing, a point she makes rather pointedly and effectively. What else other then these little charges could possibly be worth it! I envy her voice. It’s completely uninhibited, something I’m incapable of being. Her bold and direct style is often balanced with really smart and biting humor!

The Misfits of a Mountain Mama is breaking the first rule of toddler fight club in this hysterical and hysterically accurate depiction of life with a toddler boy. This is my current situation (X2!), so perhaps I’m a perfect audience, but wow. Sounds a lot like a kid I know and love completely, while occasionally having other feelings mixed in.

Then there’s this piece over at Chock Full of Au-some. It’s a frankly terrifying little slice of life we can all relate to in one way or another, told with both humor and sentiment. Our version of this one is a tale of our first who we had no idea he had severe food allergies until we got a giant scare at just over a year old. That singular event changed the trajectory of him, our family, my career and so much more. Great observations by a great writer.

Then there’s this piece from the Punk Rock Papa himself. He’s a great dad and a great writer. This piece speaks to the true cacophony of chaos that the ‘parent-life’ is. It’s both evocative and provocative and like so much of what he writes, so well executed. Provocative is not just a decorative word choice. I actually was provoked by it, moved to argue with it and took to the internets and did so about half way through reading it. Now that’s a piece a writer can be proud of! Also, he may not be seeking out attention, but if he keeps up with what he’s doing, its going to find him.

It’s important for me to remember that when the opportunity presents itself I have to take a break from ‘THIS parenthood’  and take a dip in the rejuvenating waters of  ‘THAT Parenthood’ if only to feel instantly connected and understood, not to mention enlightened.