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It’s My Period Off!

You could say it’s a snow day, but there’s no snow.

Perhaps you could say it’s as simple as a day off, but there’s so much that doesn’t say since its a day on for the kids.

I guess the best equivalent in my life would be it’s like your hour off at camp. There’s a lot of things us camp folks like to relate from everyday normal and extraordinary life to things we experienced first at camp. It’s annoying. It’s also often completely accurate and a way for us in the know to speak in shorthand. And to be fair, while we acknowledge that the rest of you exist and deserve love and attention, affection and respect, we are primarily interested in the others in the echo chamber of camp and are little more than put out by the rest of you. We’re wizards, you’re muggles. That’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules.

Anyway, this day, this January 2nd, 2015, is my first ‘period off’ in a long time. And just like when I was a counselor, the oh so brief time that is totally and completely mine is so exciting and filled from this side, the start of my time, as boundless in it’s possibility. You see, the kids are at daycare, which opened up today, Friday as a simple matter of bureaucratic coincidence since they wouldn’t be able to justify not doing so. As a result all us thinking, sentient beings who logically took the day off today, the end of the long holiday week(s) are left with the option to have a day free of the kiddos. Isn’t that grand!

There is something grand and magical about the holiday season, something beyond any importance my time alone will ever provide. But it’s this time alone that is now the far more rare, and precious commodity. Since I work where my kids attend daycare my wife is bringing them in so I don’t have to interact with work on my day off. I’m sure we’ll have to pick them up sometime in the not too distant future, but who wants to waste these minutes thinking about that. No, this is the time for dreamers. I may have a fully cleaned kitchen by dinner tonight. Or perhaps a spare bedroom that will be usable if not fully finished as we get the chance to clear it of the debris of moving in two years ago with an infant merely weeks old and a toddler not yet two. Or maybe we’ll nap. My wife and I will be home. Alone. I’m sorry to make such a graphic and explicit statement as that, but my excitement can carry me away.

In any case, here’s to bureaucratic quirks in the calendar. I could probably do some research and find the next time a thing like this is likely to occur. But I won’t. That type of magic denying is a muggles game. Nope. I’m in it for the magic. All the magic. The magic of the holidays with your family and the magic of a day at home alone with your wife.

Alright, I’m off to do a couple push-ups, brush my teeth and shower before the lady of the house returns. I raise my coffee mug to you, parents of kids in daycare on this magical day. Carpe Diem.

Thank God I Didn’t Know what I Didn’t Know

I’m reluctant to assume I’m smarter than anyone. This is a discipline as my natural inlination is to in fact think myself smarter than almost every one. By now I’m fully trained and at little risk of making such an assumption. My natural hubris has been fully extracted. At least mostly extracted.
There is one person, though. I haven’t seen him in five years or so, but i spent a lot of time with him. Handsome devil, and fairly certain about all the wrong things. Yup. I’m talking about me. You couldn’t tell me shit I didn’t want to hear. Certainly some that deal with me on a daily basis these days would take great umbrage at my claims that I’m no longer that person. And in those idiot’s cases, they may be right. But to my point, which is a very specific one about a very expansive topic, I know I’m right. You see, what I know about parenthood now, what I know specifically about my experience as a parent is something I was sure I could estimate and get fairly close to correct from my previous perspective.
it wasn’t a COMPLETELY ridiculous assumption. Okay, it was an absolutely ridiculous assumption. But I did have a vast and fairly comprehensive set of experiences working with kids and families and have worked my whole life in caring environments. Which I came to find out was somewhat instructive in putting me in a position to know how to learn to raise kids, but in terms of letting me in on ‘what it’s like’ to have kids, it was of less than no value. That’s right, it actually put me in the hole on that front. Comfy in the hole, smug and full of confidence, unwilling to read a thing on the topic and unable to hear the cacophany of parents ahead of me in the line to get a baby opine on the nature of ~~exhaustion~~, er, parenthood.
Thank god I couldn’t hear them. Furthermore, thank god for that look on young couples faces whom we mistakenly assume would be interested in the topic of ‘what parenthood is like for me.’ For the befuddled and confused look of younger siblings and friends that think that their vast experience with the responsibilities of dog ownership has made it so their won’t really be a transition to having kids. Thank god I sat in judgment of these stupid and selfish folks with kids that couldn’t shut up about how freakin tired they always were but who were missing the whole point of this most basic and primal and profound experience we are afforded as humans. Thank god for the younger workers that can come early, stay late and be obsessed with their work, who look on you so pityingly, reassuring anyone and everyone that they’ll never let a baby change their lives that much. Thank god that we are all of these things that our circumstances allow prior to that moment. If we weren’t these things we might just have paid attention. Believed those folks that we got to at the wrong moment who couldn’t stop telling you about how hard it is. We might have assumed that the payoff can’t equal the investment. We might have chosen the only smart option and taken a pass on the whole thing. Had any of us done so we would have missed this chance to be the sun for these few early years. The chance to be with the most precious and adorable people we’ll ever know. We’d never discover the love that so transforms you as to make even the hardest and cruelest realities of life seem to fit into an overarching meaning that comforts and informs us and provides us with wisdom and understanding we would never have known otherwise. We’d never have learned the thousands of lessons our children teach us. We would never have discovered any of the music or programs or books that we’ll come across decades from now and cry instantly knowing that they are precious relics from that profound moment in time that lasted years when you discovered the meaning of your life.
Thank god I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Thank god I couldn’t be told any of it. Had I known it would have robbed me of my life’s greatest discovery.

The Metallic Box

I posted a Christmas piece that is silly and irreverant and attempts to be clever. Don’t waste your time on it. But please, read this one.. A great piece that puts it all together as it should be.. Great work, Sir…

Punk Rock Papa

For as long as I can remember I’ve always felt like an orphan on Christmas. Always at events awkwardly standing in a corner as everyone exchanged gift after gift, until someone remembered I was there and slid me some pity five dollar present they bought the day before when they remembered tag along would be there. I’m not complaining, my appreciation of the holiday has grown enormously because of that feeling. I didn’t need the Grinch to rob me of Christmas for me to find a greater understanding of what holidays are for. Holidays aren’t necessarily hard for me, I’ve built my own traditions and my own family to uphold them with.

At the age of eight I was sent to visit my brother for a summer. He had moved from California to Connecticut to live his new life with his new family. My mother sent me for the summer…

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Lawless Holidays

“They laughed at Louis Armstrong when he said he was going to the moon, and now he’s laughing at them from up there.” Chazz Michael Michaels

The world has always scoffed at truly revolutionary ideas. Even those ideas that would one day become so ingrained in the culture as to feel that they somehow evolved organically as self evident truths. Were you to venture back through time you’d find a world full of people that would sooner burn you and your worthless life at the stake than consider for one second that the earth existed in a heliocentric environment. The information was in and we wouldn’t hear of anything different.

With this in mind I ask you to please consider the possibility that what I propose here may someday have merit. That it might someday be so commonly understood and practiced as to be considered orthodoxy. Without further adieu…

I propose that we should henceforth celebrate New Years Day on December 25th and Christmas on the first Saturday after December 29th.

The first point I’ll make is that this week, which can last as long as 13 days for kids on break from school or daycare and the parents that are responsible for them is awful. It just sits there at the end of the calendar year waiting to kill your energy at the precisely when it is the coldest, darkest and most inhospitable time of the year. If the sun shows up during these days it’s sure to disappear within 9 hours or so. Then to be gone for like 15 hours. We need to utilize the tools at our disposal in a more useful and efficient fashion.

Parents for millennia have been using Santa for their own nefarious and manipulative purposes. It’s great. We’ve even created spies for our made up arbiter of naughty and nice, our petty overlord who insists on our children’s adherence to standard codes of conduct. WHY THE HELL WOULD WE SHOOT THAT LOAD ON DAY ONE!

Furthermore, lets take advantage of this week off to truly recharge. Let’s take that first night and make it New Years Eve. Keep our little human alarm clocks up until midnight if possible. You need to adjust that version of the biological clock proactively if you hope to have any chance of sleeping in past 7:00 on a regular basis on your ‘break’. Besides, putting the motivator of toys and gifts at the end will help you readjust those clocks back to regular schedules when the interminable 52nd week finally ends. As it is now the incentive is for the kid to adjust their wake up time earlier right at the start. WHY THE HELL HAVE WE STOOD FOR THIS!

Now imagine the benefits for the early adopters. How does it sound to you to miss all that last minute shopping amidst the herds of people exactly like me who see shopping on the 23rd as getting ahead of the game. We all dread all the last minute shopping not because of the thought of buying all the fun last minute stuff we know will bring all the smiles and hugs you can handle. We dread it because of all the other people who similarly have to stuff stockings and make up for their lack of organization in a harried rush through the throngs at the last minute. Compare that to the laid back pace of casually scanning clearance bins while the throngs of consumers hoard the customer service desk with their returns. Their is the potential for getting great deals on chintzy crap that is only intended to last a month or two that would have cost double the week before. Not to mention the shopping at your local grocery on the 28th. You’ll be comfortably perusing produce for your giant family feast as the rest of the world stupidly goes about preparing to destroy their sleep patterns and ruin any of the restorative benefits of their time off right before returning to the rat race. Not you, you’ll show up on the 2nd raring to go. BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD

We parents are often and by necessity bold thinkers determined to create a better world for the sake of our children. Let us not shirk our reponsibility we have. Do not allow future generations to look back and wonder why we didn’t fix this when the answer was so clear. Go forth. Make a difference.

Merry New Year! Happy Christmas!

Learning to See

At first my family was everything. Then they were my everyday. Then they were my identity. Then they were that from which I needed to break free.

I was compelled to leave and couldn’t. I was fifteen or sixteen and temperament and hormones conspired to convince me I wasn’t happy, that it was an awful place and that I MUST get out of there to become whom I was meant to be. Its a very harsh, but from what I can tell a fairly common sentiment at that age when you think you know everything. On this energy I catapulted out of the cradle of my life and found a big, amazing world and I’m so happy that I did. Had I not I would never have been able to see how wonderful a world I had been born to.

I grew up amidst the apple orchards, corn fields and rust belt industrial hubs of western New York. Brockport, New York, to be specific. It’s an area that is occasionally mistaken for belonging to the northeast, but as a matter of reality its the Midwest. Much more in common with Cleveland than with New York or Boston.

I love the place, I miss the place and I imagine I always will. It was a beautiful place to grow up, and a cold one. Not many people would think of North Jersey as more hospitable in winter, but EVERYONE from where I’m from would. In fact it gives me a palpable sense of superiority every winter when locals complain about anything more than a dusting of snow and how hard it is to drive. Please. I was born in November and took my drivers test in January in Brockport, NY amidst copious amounts of lake effect snow.

From time to time I would have the occasion to bring people back home to Brockport. Often it was folks that worked at the lodge with me while I was in college. They were usually in their early twenties like me, and often from other countries. From my perspective it was a chance to have worlds collide, friends from home hanging out with my new found friends from far and wide.

We would go to bars, drink in apartments and socialize like young people the world over do. During the days we’d look for things to do. Being me and being in my early 20’s and breaking free of my home at that time I had a generally negative view of my region of the world and a specifically negative outlook on the town I was from. Shamefully now, I was embarrassed most of my home and my family. Bringing strangers from strange lands to visit changed that for me. It gave me a fresh perspective on what was in fact the great good fortune of my charmed life.

The broad, vast, open sky and miles and miles of beautifully worked farmland was visual white noise for me by the time I left. I would warn folks of the sea-level, flat monotony of the region. It was something entirely different to them. Taking them to see Hamlin Beach on Lake Ontario, the only thing I’d ever considered a lake, and to have them point out the obvious to me, who was so used to this sight as to think it nothing, that it was in fact hardly distinguishable from an ocean and breathtaking not only in its scope but also in it’s unexpected beauty was paradigm changing.

To bring them to Niagara falls and see there mouths agape, speechless at its awesome grandeur made me reassess this thing I’d so long taken for granted. I’m from a place, not nowhere. That place is unique and vast and beautiful. It’s a thing I was certain it was not, it was gorgeous. It took looking through others gobsmacked eyes to realize what it was I’d been looking at all those years.

While my head was down lamenting the tediousness of flat topography the eyes of my friends, eyes from the world over looked up and marveled at a sky they never imagined could be so enormous and vast and filled with so many stars.

In high school all that I was embarrassed me. I was popular and a jock and not a kid that was picked on or mocked. I’ve come to find that many of the young men I grew up with who were similarly fortunate have never stopped longing for that time. I was not reveling in it and felt little more than relief that my older years turned out far better than my younger years suggested they might be.

I was uncomfortable in my role. I was certain that I needed to get away from all I was to be what I wanted to be. And this was indeed true.

Becoming an adult is an act of contrivance and one that only made sense after the job at hand was completed. An inkling snuck in at the edges of my youthful anger and self-righteousness that I was in fact from a truly special family. But I needed the fuel of thinking I had something to run from, something that would always forgive me and accept me after my return, in order to motivate me out of the local bars and past a comfortable but unchallenged existence. For me that was getting away from the ‘crazies’ that were incontrovertibly ‘my tribe’, and trying to find another tribe to call my own. And I did.

The Lodge. It was an experience that propelled me directly to where I sit in life now. It allowed space for me to be curious and envious and striving and lazy and ponderous and annoying and loved. Thank god I went.

A funny thing started to happen. As I met and learned of the private lives of eccentrics and strivers and stoners and journeyers I learned that I am just like everyone else. All the things I felt shamefulness embarrassment about were in fact precisely what made me able to relate to these free thinkers, adventurers and truly revolutionary spirits who both attended the lodge and provided stewardship to the place. I started to feel like there might be a day when I’d feel fully comfortable in my skin and harmonious with my people.

I started bringing the world to my family and was afforded the opportunity to see them through others eyes. I came to realize that I had perceived them so ungenerously.

My family is what was and remains the most amazing gift my life has provided for me. They are generous and kind and thoughtful. They are fierce and funny and incredibly smart. They keep you sharp and keep you warm and keep you laughing and with the right mix at the right time, they keep the party going, although a laid back party with smart jokes and warm smiles.

Now that I’ve seen a few things, not a ton, but some, I know their was no better place on the planet to have grown up. I’ve met some people and had some victories and some struggles and in the end I am certain my big, crazy, funny, talented and thoughtful family is the only reason I am any of the good things I may be.

There is no doubt in my mind that I was exactly where I was meant to be, exactly when I was meant to be there and I will look back for whatever time I have left with nothing but generosity and appreciation for the wonderful family I was born into.

What It Means To Be White

My son’s are 2 and 3 at the moment. Neither of them are aware of ~~Fergusonthe Eric Garner casethe horrible incidences of police violence against and apparent murder of African Americans~~ the event that has taken the lives of 9 American’s in a church praying, and for now that’s fine. I’m in a position to never have to discuss race with my kids. Both I and them are white middle class male’s in America. If we ever hope to end the constant cycle of tragedies, both of the acute variety and of the overarching sort that allows entire lives with potential that could solve many of the worlds problems to play out in despair, white dads who hope to change this have to begin to speak to our white kids, especially sons, about the truth of our lives. At present it certainly feels like the world we inhabit will offer endless opportunities to us for discussing the unusual brutality and the common inequality that we choose to explain away rather than to resolve.

Life is hard. Even for white guys with jobs. And my kids will surely be angry at times about how much they don’t have. This may blind them to what they do have. When I see this I intend to address it directly and to discuss with them the following realities as far as I see them.

Be aware that you have lived life free of being assessed negatively on sight. This is a distinct and ever present advantage you have over your counterparts of other demographic distinctions. This is the result of constant systemic disadvantages that have nothing to do with them. But over time, to have the world look at you like this, in every situation and at all times can be crushing and formative at the same time. Greet anger with empathy whenever you can.
Be conscious of the fact that your successes are not solely yours. They are the result of a thousand factors, mostly beyond your control and benefiting you in ways that may have cost someone of a different background access to the opportunities that you may think you accomplished free of bias. You are white, male, American and as a bonus, you’re in all likelihood, tall. All of these factors have helped you. A lot. And unfairly.
If the world changes for the better it may be uncomfortable for you. Don’t whine about that. You’re still likely to have systemic advantages, just, hopefully, not as many.
Be intentional about inclusiveness. Some might suggest that a meritocracy is the only fair option. In my opinion they are invested in the status quo in which they, and you, are afforded distinct advantages not easily seen by you, but evident to the many people not similarly fortunate.
Our country’s original sin of slavery created a false economic reality based on dehumanizing people, crumbling their self-worth and codifying their inequality. To this day you have housing laws, drug laws, educational funding laws and even voting laws that SEEK to continue to segregate people from the opportunities that have been protected for us. We have a long way to go to truly level the playing field. Like I said above, if things are harder for you, they should be. You have a massive Karmic debt to pay, one not of your specific making, but you are the rightful inheritor. And not just to black men or men of other backgrounds, but also to ALL women. I’m paying a piece of it now, but mostly I’m still benefiting from a world that favors me. To wit..
The world tilts toward you. Be proud of what successes your life brings. Hard work is still hard work and what you have earned you should respect. Try to create opportunities that will empower. Distribute those opportunities to people that aren’t reflections of yourself. As you would find in any distribution, some people will disappoint and some will surprise, but either way, its just right to try to repay some of the favor the world shows you.
Don’t be afraid of people who appear ‘different’ from you. Try instead to be curious. You’re likely to find they are just like you in what they want from life. They want security and friendship and to laugh and to provide and to feel good about themselves. But sometimes life is so insistent that these are not attainable (a problem you won’t have to deal with in any real way) that we can see only people’s defenses and armor and forget that they are whole beings needing of what it is we all need. Life reinforces for them in a way you can’t fully understand, that they are suspect, feared and not to be trusted or loved. This can have tragic consequences. Much more often the outcome is remarkable and beautiful and truly inspiring evidence of the human spirits ability to endure and prosper. All too often the world ignores these outcomes to fit a narrative that reinforces fear of differences, no matter how small. Don’t buy it.
Be part of the solution. I don’t know what that means yet. I hope my life will be assessed in such a way that you will be proud of the person I am. I KNOW I’m still the beneficiary of discriminatory policy. But keep looking, keep trying and never forget to be thankful for all that life has afforded you.

The debate in the media aside, for whatever tragedy of the moment we are dissecting when i get to these conversations, I hope I’m able to keep my head unburied and hope they find themselves in a world changing to meet our highest ideals. I know I’ll discuss them forthrightly and encourage them not to be too self-pitying when life is hard or unfair. Truth is however unfair it is to me or them, and we all will face cruel misfortune from time to time, the odds make it likely that they will have it good.

Slaying Demons

Something happened at the library. There were a group of rambunctious kids, loud but harmless kids, probably a year or two older then Charlie, playing and running around. The kind of kids engaged in the kind of play that, in the wrong mood, one might look at their parent and think, ‘come on, you’re making this harder for all of us.’ But we were having fun and I really wasn’t feeling that bothered.

We started doing a puzzle, as is Charlies wont at almost all hours of the day these days, and he kept looking over at them. He was clearly intrigued, but they were quite active and loud and it was considerably difficult to understand what exactly it was that they were playing. I said, ‘do you wanna go over there and play with them, buddy?’ At first it was no and back to the puzzle. But soon he’d decided yes so he marched over and announced/asked ‘Hey, can I play with you guys?’.

So innocent and vulnerable with eyes wide and fully expecting the only answer he could conceive of. The kids didn’t know how to respond, or they didn’t hear, and he just started to play despite no response. I assumed the play would take care of anything left unsaid.

Almost immediately, he stepped awkwardly back from the group, subtly, and watched for a second, brow furrowed, looking for another entry point, wanting to be a part of the fun, but not being welcome, or at least not thinking himself so.

I felt a small and subtle punch in the part of my gut where I hide my unresolved issues. I have felt that exact way my whole life.

So he walked back to me and with quivering lip said, ‘he took the toy from me.’ He wouldn’t cry, which made it even harder to watch. I suppose I could have gone over and helped ease a transition, but I’m not great at leading by example in these things. I told him I was sorry they didn’t want to play with him and he went back to the puzzle. A minute or two passed and I asked him if he’d like to try again, or maybe run around the room a bit and he would just keep his head down and say ‘no.’ It was that kind of embarrassed, teenage, barely audible, clenched teeth kind of ‘no’.

I didn’t want him to feel like he felt, but the situation insisted he feel that way. He has no idea how much I get where he’s coming from.

These are the things that break my heart because they feel like he’s breaking a little. I feel broken in this same way, so perhaps I’m a bit more attuned to this particular style of breakage. It’s a feeling he can’t do anything with. It was a feeling I could never overcome. I couldn’t cry it away, complain it away, try really hard it away, brood and aloof it away and eventually I just held it for so long I started to think I was unwanted and uninvited. I hated being around me. I carried it with me everywhere for a long time.

Carrying such a thought around for so long does funny things. It makes you see things that confirm your fears everywhere you look. No amount of signs from the world telling me I was worthy were enough to break through this negative self assessment. Later on, as an adult, no amount of sadness, drinking or risky behavior ever killed me, but I wanted it to.

A lot.

I realize that none of this is likely for Charlie. But that’s the thing with your kids. He is me. I know he may react to this with a deep misunderstanding that he can hide from everyone. It’s not likely, but I know more than any other outcome that its possible. It Killed me a little to see that lip quiver, to see him trying to hide his feelings.

But this is life. I’m familiar with my teeny tiny corner of it, a corner that was considerably brightened and made bigger when Karen and I pushed our corners together and planted our flag in our new shared corner. We’ve since made people to populate that teeny tiny corner and it shouldn’t surprise me that their perspective is similar to mine. How could it not be.

I KNOW that this is projecting feelings that are mine onto Charlie. That’s okay. Familial relationships are by definition overlapping and intertwined. I don’t own him, I’m merely raising him. I’m trying in the long run to provide him with as much as I can to make sure he becomes capable of staking out his own teeny tiny corner of life someday on his own.

To be properly prepared to do so he inevitably has to feel and process pain and rejection and disappointment. Just as he has to feel and process copious amounts of love and joy and optimism.

So this step of his toward a road I’ve traveled, on which I took some terrible wrong turns, is an opportunity for me to walk it again. This time I have the honored position of being his guide. We hold hands on this path as I shepherd him through the dark, aware of particular risks and potential bad choices. I hope to be able to protect him from the mistakes I made.

He is also guiding me to the demons that have so challenged me my whole life. Holding my hand, he is not only my charge, he is also my partner and he has given me the courage to slay them for the both of us as of late. Let’s hope I can return the favor.

Force Free Living

A friend of mine just posted to Facebook about reading to his little girl. He read her a Curious George book, in the voice of Yoda. She asked him if she could grow up to be a Jedi.

I have little boys. If they heard my Yoda they’d be inclined to think I was being silly, but have no idea I was referencing anything real. Before you say it I should note, I am a 40 year old, suburban raised, college educated man. So, for me, Yoda is real. Anyway, back to the point at hand. Not only would they not get the voice, they’d have no idea who Yoda was once I did inform them.

The force is not a thing in our home and I feel like a failure as a father. The world of parents talking to parents is an echo chamber of shared experiences (exhaustion) and collective sensitivities (how come your house is so clean and mine is a disaster area). In the end we are all in a bubble and looking for reassurance that we’re doing this thing right. We look right past our smiling healthy kids and compare ourselves, dumbly, to others in our same predicament and look for opportunities to make ourselves feel bad about what other people are getting done that we can’t. Like having a little girl within whom the force is so strong that she is asking her dad if she can be a Jedi! God, why do parents have to brag so much about how perfect their kid is when they know the force is a sore subject for so many of us.

Let me lay out for you how hard it is for us dad’s looking around and finding only Hoth, a barren snow covered wasteland in our lives filled with giggling toddlers who are an embarrassment to us when we see your gifted child, ready to take tauntaun riding lessons while ours wouldn’t recognize a stormtrooper if it stood in front of them in a T-Shirt that said, ‘I’M A STORMTROOPER’…

I Haven’t Shown Them Star Wars Yet: Don’t judge me. It’s been on and they’ve seen a few of the spaceships and whatnot. They just aren’t ready. Who are these kids capable of digesting this stuff at such young ages? There are moral complexities on Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood that are confounding to my little guys. Besides, they are yet to learn a moral code that doesn’t first and foremost support any of their native desires being met. Charlies sense of fairness results 100% of the time in him concluding that any decision that results in him getting what he wants is the very definition moral equanimity. In the case of my friend with the daughter who the force is strong in, I guess it’s true that girls mature faster than boys. See, not my fault!
There’s every chance that our kids will discover the Great War (Rebel Alliance V The Empire) on their own terms: Yes, this means that if the timing isn’t perfect their first exposure may be the awful, as yet unwatched other than a half of the first one, episodes 1-3 and they might love Jar Jar Binks. I can’t do everything. My wife and I are both fortunate to have jobs, jobs we need to make it work for us. So if a few things get by in the proper raising of our kids, I’m sure the village it takes will eventually get to them and convince them that not everything they thought when they were 5 turned out to be true. They eat their veggies and get to sleep each night, at some point, so don’t judge me if they don’t immediately understand the proper order of things. In this case 1. Empire. 2. New Hope 3. Return….. 38. Silver Spoons starring Ricky Schroeder…. 73. Small Wonder… 159. the works of Jonathan Franzen…. Dead Last: Anything made by George Lucas after the year Daddy could legally drink.
The Awesome Evilness of Storm Troopers: They are uniform, faceless, willing agents of evilness. And they are awesome. It is a conundrum that teaches one of the Yin and the Yang and the reality that they both exist in all of us. It is right to be endlessly fascinated with them and hugely judgmental of them. There’s no excuse here. In this way I’m just a failure and you are better than me.
Mimicking the Voice of Darth Vader Into a Fan Would Be Lost On Them: I’m sorry. For them to properly get the voice they’d have to see me do the voice into the fans of my youth, with metal gates over the fan propellers that I used to delightedly stick my fingers in to stop the blades. While we may be failing them in many force-related areas, that doesn’t make us negligent. In fact we make helicopter parents look like Spicoli and Mark Harmon from the beginning of Summer School got married and adopted a kid and kinda let the energy in the air raise him. No moving blades for our boys precious little fingers!
I Was a Luke Guy: Star Wars was released prior to my fourth birthday. I had no idea what cool was. So I was allowed to prance around trying to be Luke without ever being told that Han was the ‘cool’ of the crew. At that age I thought him simply a nuisance to the cause, a man without a purpose getting forever in the way of the goodly fighters on the Rebel side. I can’t blame my parents for this. I was a toddler and it would have been hell on them to try to encourage what I assume was my natural inclination to defiance, so they let it happen. I’m afraid I’d do the same thing. So maybe waiting’s the right thing. Ever think of that, smug dad teaching kids about the force?

7 Lessons Learned While Learning on the Job.. A Dad’s Notes

I’m pretty new to this endeavor. My kids are 2 and 3, both boys. My wife and I are very happy with how things are progressing, but like everyone who finds themselves in this predicament, we have found there’s an endless supply of new challenges to be conquered. At different times we could really have used a more experienced parents advice. But where to turn? Simply no one has any advice for parents! Crazy, right. Thought I’d give away freely some knowledge that I’ve managed to learn over time. Some of it was evident and obvious and surely something anyone could figure out, and some of it was only stumbled upon, accidentally, in the dark after thinking the situation hopeless. Regardless, I hope you can benefit from whatever it is I’ve learned.

1. The Great Illusion: The Dr.’s will tell you that your child needs an incredible, seemingly unattainable number of hours of sleep per day. As babies it’s like 15+ and through toddler years its still close to 12. Yet this is countered by the many parents in your life that will tell you how tired they are and how much their kid has ended sleep for them. What I found was that my kid was within range of all the targets the Dr.’s set forth but I only discovered this if I’d track the hours. Left to my intuitive reckoning on those days my baby slept 15+ hours it never felt like it. Which is inscrutable! How can someone sleep in excess of 60% of the day, yet still manage to have that sleep be at such inconvenient times for the sleep cycles of their adult? It’s baffling.

2. TV is an excellent babysitter: I’m in no way saying that you can go out to dinner or leave them unattended. I’m simply saying that set to the right programs, with ample food and liquids available and fresh diapering applied its remarkable how refreshing it can be for anywhere from 20 mins to an entire afternoon to know they are fine, fed and safe. Sure, I’d prefer they were being read to, but they will be. Later. And it will be the same six board books that you will read to them interminably. So give yourself a break, set up some Curious George or Team UmiZoomi and check your Facebook feed. You deserve it.

3. Kids will sleep wherever and whenever they choose to: So make bedtime whatever the hell you want it to be. If you want them never to feel the sting of being removed from your room then put them in their own room night one and be happy with your choice. Or put them in your bed and let nature decide when they are to leave. Use a co-sleeper or don’t. Cuddle them to bed or sing and pat their back. Let them cry it out or pick them up whenever you hear a noise or the urge hits. Whatever you wanna do, do that. Because you’re the grown up and its not only about what’s best for them in vacuum, it’s about what’s best for the collective you. In our experience getting the first one out of hour bedroom happened at 6 months or so, and he was never in the bed. For the second it went closer to a year because it was our last go around and we wanted more of it. He’s also found his way to our bed from time to time. No biggie. Both have worked, and worked is a malleable term. So have at it.

4. Children have evolved to survive our ineptitude: It is an elegant system that has come to be. They are adorably cute and perfectly designed to cause in us a worry we have never experienced before, driven mostly by love and also mostly by fear. Love of this perfect creature, flawless in every way, sure to bring great joy to a world it has been sent to brighten. Fear that this perfect specimen has been mistakenly left in your wildly inept and uninformed hands and the well being of all mankind hangs perilously in the balance. It’s crazy intense and its no time for perspective. You believe it is the end all and be all. And you need to. How else would you have the energy?

No kidding, when we brought our first home we stayed awake, one of us at all times, to watch him sleep and make sure he didn’t stop breathing. It was crazy dumb, and because we’re who we are and he was who he was, entirely unavoidable. But the reality is he was in the perfect position to survive us and our crushing stupidity. Emerging competent takes months, years even, and feeling competent still isn’t a definite, at least not for us. So it’s wonderful that as we navigate all this learning, and tolerate the incredible strain a baby has on you personally and the wear it can have on your relationship during those early years, we get to navigate it in a space that is hyper real for us, like the most intensely real moments of our lives and he won’t remember or really be affected by any of it. It’s gotten easier already. Things will get harder again, but that early time is banana’s. At least it was for us. But eventually we took a breath and realized we were doing this thing. It’s a good feeling at the end of a long series of what feel like monumental screw-ups but is really just the normal learning curve for new parents.

5. Your home won’t be fully clean and orderly for the foreseeable future: You’ll make it nice for when relatives come over. At least at first. You’ll learn how to create the illusion of neatness and order for the sake of society, but even that illusion will be difficult to reach and will ONLY be done so for guests. Again, you may be different, just want you to know that this is a real thing and if you fall into it, don’t worry. It’s just like that. For us we’re getting close to a time when we might be able to host pizza Fridays for cousins on a regular basis soon. But we’re four years in. And the sink is still full. So are the counters. I think a box of Cinnamon life lived between the fridge and the wall for over a year.

6. Dates can be had right at your kitchen table: Dating now is a frame of mind, not a set of plans and a reservation. Those opportunities to get out as grown ups come so rarely that is hard to be assured you’ll even be able to relax those shoulders on that specific night. So much of our well being is now intermingled with our kids that we can’t know when will be the right time for us to hang out like adults. The white noise and real noise of two toddler boys can really impinge on that. So if it doesn’t happen the way you hoped it would on that rare, and in our case that means one single evening in the nearly four years we’ve had kids, night that you can get dressed and go out like grown ups, don’t sweat it… wait for that time your making each other laugh during evening clean up and pounce. Break out the wine and beer, set up a space free of kid flotsam and jetsam and have at it. Dating is now a thing to be captured in the wild rather than planted and cultivated like it was before. Feeling flirty and fun and attracted to your spouse in any way, ride that wave as far as it will take you!

7. There is a new found understanding and empathy on your part for parents you might have judged before you knew: It’s true. You can’t know what it is a parent is talking about until you’ve been there. Parenting is very much like magic mushrooms this way. At least that’s what I’m told. I remember being in your shoes and having strong opinions about parenting practices and about specific parents in particular. As a camp director and behaviorist I may have been the most judgy of all. But going through it is very democratizing. It breaks you fully down, but it then rebuilds you, modifying you for what your life will be now. This has compelled me to feel for those experiencing it for the first time especially, but for all parents in general as well. It makes you root for them. You know it’s touch and go their early on for everyone. Emotions and hormones run high while sleep and patience run low. So feel for the brothers and sisters going through it. Support those looking like they’ve given up. Let them know you’ve been there. Remind them about the benefits of TV’s and Ipads, and NEVER tell them something they are happy with is WRONG. Who the f**k do you think you are? If it provides them any comfort just shut up, be happy for them and share your judgements of others with your spouse at the aforementioned kitchen table dates. Otherwise, keep that mess to yourself and put forth only love, understanding and acceptance. It’s my experience that despite many mistakes and many more to come, and short of total incompetence the likes of which are highly unlikely in anyone reading this, nothing you can do, as long as you love them and are doing the best you can, will really hurt them in the long run. Try your damnedest to identify with the mom who’s kid is going ape in the hall and being a total bratty 4 year old and know that you are them and they are you. Its an interesting thing to feel an instant connection, a deep and abiding one, with strangers who are enjoying this most primal and connective experience we are able to have as humans. I for one relish it.

Museum Pieces

The exhibit is nearing completion, though there are still a few pieces left to be completed, logged, inspected and displayed.

The exhibition is of my most productive period and will be in permanent residence in the grand hall. The room, the central hub and featured showroom, has been closed to all visitors for nearly four years. That’s how long it has taken to produce and display the items that are to be featured.

There has been a great deal of buzz generated by myself, the curator and a collaborator on this project, but the room itself has been open only those crucial to the process.

The grand hall in the museum of my life will be hosting the display, ‘Our Family, the Early Years.’ It is a permanent and evolving installation.

I’m forever curating the museum of my life. There is endless detritus that is logged once, noted and recorded for historical purposes and donated or outright given to others or placed in the cold, dark, vast warehouse of forgotten details and mementos. Of those items that I choose to display they are ordered by importance and their prestige is evident in how I choose to display them.

This room, this grandest of rooms, will feed me and fuel me through the times that lie ahead. Through times that will so devastate me that they will make me wonder what all this was for. My aim is to curate an exhibit so stunning, so perfectly designed for my audience of one, for me, that I will be so enamored of it as to be unable to wander too far from it. Over time it will hard wire my memories and the feelings that drove me to embark on such an ambitious, albeit not groundbreaking, body of work.

I will wallow in it, work in it and invest energy in keeping it pristine. All of this in the hopes that even in my feeblest state I’ll always know my way back to that room. That room filled with love and meaning and work and creativity and awe and beauty. Its the room that I intend to live in for as long as I can, until the end if possible.

I will marvel at it’s treasures and inspect those pieces that so transformed and transfixed me. When I can no longer manipulate the artifacts of my specific humanity anymore, I intend to nest in them as I did the first time around in order to feel that pride and love and warmth until I die, smiling at what was and what is.

This document is a map of sorts to a memory or two. An artists description of the work in real time to be used by me as a patron of the museum in the future. It will help me access more fully the pieces that are before me. I’m compelled to do this to make up for all those pieces I didn’t log in this way due to exhaustion and the foolish belief that the memories would be so powerful as to never drift away into the ether. Perhaps I thought them permanent in some way, a way that would make documenting it formally a waste of time. Foolish indeed and I should have known better. But, ours is not to wonder why, and so forth…

It is also for you, reader, truly it is. Knowing that you read, and that you are occasionally moved to engage with me has added immensely to my experience. It is also for my wife and our kids. A log of sorts, though I hope an artful one, capturing this time. A fools errand to be sure, and likely a fruitless and hopelessly failing attempt to capture just a piece of its essence for our collective and individual future enjoyment.

Teddy sits in my lap, every night sometime between 8 and 8:30. Bathed and brushed and comfy in his pajamas. He’s my little bedtime buddy. He’ll cry when I pick him up and momma gives him his Elmo doll. A doll too small to be his lovey, but it is what he has chosen and our many attempts to provide him with a larger, more plush and easier-to-find-in-your-sleep or in the darkness of waking at 2AM doll have been shunned. ‘Mo-mo’, as he calls him, is his guy. The rest are discarded, literally thrown overboard, if he notices them. Two dolls other than mo-mo stay in the bed, a floppy brown bunny and a standard issue bear, but they are so untouched as to be unnoticed.

The routines are a dead giveaway now and he cries and lunges for mommy when it clicks for him that it is bedtime. She is a bit more pliable in terms of keeping to the schedule in general and he thinks if he could just get me to hand him over to her, he’d be able to avoid his fate. Neither momma nor I pay any attention to this complaint anymore as it ceases by the time we get to the stairs, a walk of no more than 12-15 adult steps from anywhere on the first floor of our small and perfect little suburban home, and usually not more than 5 steps from where he’s been picked up, in the living room.

Once to the stairs we make a dramatic flourish of thrusting our hands upward, toward the second floor, a show of bravado that he and I enjoy and one that always brings a smile to his face. Thusly we proceed up the stairs, following our outstretched hands and giggling when we get to the top. The theatricality of it all is just plain silly, but if you haven’t seen him do it it’s just not altogether possible to understand how adorable it is.

He is not going to have these cheeks, these bubbly, adorable cheeks, for much longer, but for the time being anything I can do to make him smile, I will.

Once on the landing we turn left to the bedrooms. Theirs one to the right, but we loaded up all our stuff in it when we moved in and now only reference it if something is in there which needs to be extracted or if we need a place to shove things when people are coming over. It is now, and I imagine will forever be referred to by Karen and I as ‘the cottage’. We christened it when it became the place we flopped down in when we’d pushed enough crap to the sides to lay out a futon mattress and it became the place where sick parents slept, or where we’d lie during that glorious long weekend when we had managed to get them napping at the same time. Our room shared a wall with theirs and we weren’t going to risk even the possibility of being the reason they might wake up.

I plop him down and he runs into his room. Once there he looks around for a second spots the glider chair that was initially used for nursing but is now the rocking chair, and makes a break for it. I pretend to be outraged and shocked, every night, that he’s going to sit in daddy’s chair, and he struggles his way up there, climbing like a pro, sits proudly and takes in my displays of shock, both facial and audible, and laughs proudly.

I don’t know if you have access to a two year old, but if you do, spend AS MUCH TIME AS POSSIBLE watching them walk around in pajamas. It’s just awesomely cute.

I pick him up, turn on various, strategically placed little lights, turn off others, turn on a bit of white noise and proceed to work my way through his stack of books until he decides he’s done, or we finish all of them. To this point, we’ve only added and not yet removed any of his books. Little Blue Truck and Goodnight Gorilla are the musts but usually it’s all of them. I’ve dozed off while reading. I always roust quickly enough, but his weight and warmth on my lap, the dim lights and the repetitive pleasantness of the books have a mildly narcotic effect on me.

Once done I sing to him. Usually starting with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then You Are My Sunshine… I may hum from there, I may move to the Beatles. Some Blackbird, some early parts of Hey Jude, maybe some God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. I usually put him down at this time, but yesterday he made me hold him for a bit and kept bringing my hand up to his cheek, so it rested on him, fully holding his face on the outside, while the inside was pressed against my chest while he sat in my lap. If a meaning of life can be said to be a visceral feeling rather than a thought or a defined purpose, this is one of the meanings of my life.

This is one of the routines that evolve early in life that feel like they will last forever, but tend to last a few weeks to a few months before necessity forces them to change or the child simply loses interest and the routine is no longer effective. While I haven’t done a wonderful job of logging them, as I’m doing now, I hope to do more in the near future. Hopefully this is a nostalgic dad’s lament, chapter 1.

I want to go back to the old video’s and photos and jog memories and come back here and record them in detail, as much detail as possible, before they are all gone and I look at the photo’s and see my beautiful boy and remember everything he ever said, but start saying things like, ‘I don’t remember that apartment so much anymore. Was Charlie born yet when we moved in there? Was he only in the apartment for the first year or was it closer to two?’

I don’t want that fate. But it or some more addled version of that state, or some less benevolent version of it is surely approaching. Just as new and exciting and enriching phases of my kids lives are heading this way.

So rather I log my memories, in pictures and in words in hopes that those triggers will trigger in me responses that will transport me in an instant back to that dark room, in our still disheveled, not fully occupied or appointed tiny little house where I can giggle with Charlie over the silliness of him pretending to be a dog named Sonny. Where I can pretend his carrots are puppy treats, a move I’ve stolen from his mother, in a multipurpose front room with makeshift changing stations and an unused fireplace and gates blocking every exit. To the place where my little boy won’t let me take my hand from his cheek. Where he will simply find the hand if it goes missing, and place it back on his cheek as he knows that is what’s needed. He’s right, and its one of the chief pleasures of my entire existence, and I will become a silly nostalgist adrift in gauzy memories and I will lose all currency and relevancy willingly if it will help me to remember this beautiful place of messy, sloppy, crazy love where our family began.

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