1. By accepting less than ideal in both
Or
2. They don’t.
How Does a Parent of Young Kids Balance Work and Family?
Category: Uncategorized
The Lodge Part One; Getting There
Amongst the clearest and most treasured memories of my youth are the handful of roadtrips that I took with my dad, just the two of us. One that sticks out for me as particularly enjoyable was a trip to Pennsylvania where I needed to be on campus early for basketball camp check in the next day.
The day started at the Morgan Manning house for the 4th of July town picnic and fair. Its the kind of tradition I had no idea I’d come to love about the town of Brockport, NY where I grew up.
After hot dogs (Zweigel’s, the only proper hot dog) and my little brother doing the cakewalk and the barbershop quartet of high school teachers we went home, loaded the minivan and got on the road.
On this trip we were in the right mood. We were just relaxed and comfortable and conversation flowed and we talked about life and family, everything and nothing. I don’t remember the details and they weren’t important. We were relaxed, comfortable and alone. It was nice.
It was in fact the counter to my normal level of anxiety. Once when I was 5 or so I was in the bathroom while he was shaving. There were at least 8 of us, often more. As George Bluth said, watch out for hop-ons, you’re gonna have hop-ons. Anyway, with two bathrooms overcrowding was not at all unusual so for me to be peeing while he shaved was not unusual. After a moment of observation he looked over at me, face half covered in thick white foam and half smoothly shaven and said. ‘Are you breathing.’ I wasn’t. He said, ‘it’s okay. Breathe.’ So I did. I’ve always been self-conscious, still am.
We stayed in a hotel that night near the camp. It remains the one and only night I’ve ever eaten at an Arthur Treacher’s. I imagine this was true for him as well. Then we went to a movie. The only thing that lined up with our schedule that was agreeable to both of us was ‘Soapdish’.
For a couple of hours we howled with laughter. A reserved 40-something dad and his jock 15 year old son cracking up at the antics of a cast of eccentrics populating the set of a daytime soap opera. It was downright hysterical, silly and perfect. It was one of the best days of my childhood. It shouldn’t surprise me that the most meaningful and metaphorical journey of my life was a road trip with my dad in a minivan across the state when I was 20.
Side note about my dad; He’s funny. Very funny. It’s a dry sense of humor, not needy, rarely reaching out, but often reactive and precise. I can be manic in my need to get in a funny line at every opportunity, even inventing the opportunities, or sticking a laugh line in as a non sequitur just to get the attention. It comes from a funnier place for my dad. He’s okay letting tons of good enough but not perfect pitches fly past, and then boom, HYSTERICAL. I’ve tried to learn from this, and to some degree I’ve calmed down. He’s such a good editor and knows when funny is funniest. My papa was that way as well.
Fast forward to what can either be referred to as my first Junior year at college or my second sophomore year. I prefer the former, but whatever your druthers.
I, remarkably, was in a night class. I say remarkably because my academic history is littered with classes that I never intended to attend and rarely did. But this was a 3 hour, 1 credit class and I showed up. It was part of a series of single credit, single night classes that were offered in the Human Services curriculum. I’d kind of backed and failed my way into the major, but it was in line with my personal ethics of being helpful to those less fortunate so I went with it. These single night credits were taught by community based professionals in a particular field of service. This night happened to be the Executive Director of the Chemung County ARC. He was a nice if distracted guy who gave us a good history of the movement, the state of the field and the needs going forward. It was interesting and I wanted to get involved.
In the course of the evening Jodi, a less then friendly and somewhat overconfident young woman by my estimation (which was informed by little if any evidence, but firmly believed. Ah… youth) spoke of her experience the previous summer at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities.
It was a camp run by AHRC of NYC, the chapter that was the progenitor of the entire Arc movement. I decided to approach her at the break. Turned out that being male, a decent fellow and willing made me qualified for a position there! Besides, Jodi would be there and I’d at least know one face. Might even get to see another side of her. So the dye was cast and my life turned at that moment and in many ways has never turned back.
After a week or so home from school I was off to the Catskills with my dad. It was a 6 hour drive, one that I’d make several more times over the years. The ride was long and disorienting. I’d never noticed the glorious mountains that buttress and soar over the New York State Thruway as you make your way east across the state. They existed there without my notice for the many trips I’d taken across the state over the years. But when we got off and went onto the local roads it took only a few miles until we realized we were heading to a place neither of us had known existed.
Other than some summer vacations when my dad was a kid even he had never really experienced the vast mountainous region of New York that stretched from the area city-dwellers called upstate and the northerners thought of as downstate all the way up to the top of the world up at the Canadian border. It was the spine of the state and we lived in the panhandle out west.
My dad is from the New York Metropolitan area, so this vast middle, encompassing the Catskill Mts. and the Adirondacks had managed to be avoided. The long looping curves of the valley roads gave way in an instant to roads that seemed to have majestically green, steep, natural walls. It was like the mountains and there fauna were cradling the pavement that now wove a twisting and turning road that revealed which travelers were local as they bore down on the vast amount of out-of-towners there to feed the economy and reconvene with nature.
Finally, out of the hairpin at the Kaaterskill Falls trail head the roads started to stretch back to long and looping as we arrived in the higher valley.
Tannnersville is a small, humble and charming mountain town that would become my nearest ‘civilaization’ for the years ahead. The directions took us right through and up the mountain that hovered over it, all the way to the picturesque stone church at its peak and back down the other side. We took a right at the General Store/Post Office onto a beautiful, meandering river of a small country road that ended at Colgate Lake.
Rather, it didn’t end it turned to dirt and we continued through a tunnel carved through the forest, looking at each other partly worried and partly as Doc Brown looked at Marty at the end of Back to the future… Where we’re going we don’t need roads!
I can’t honestly tell you what conversations were had on this journey save one. I remember saying it and my dad has remembered it too. I told him that I had no idea what to expect. I told him that I was a little nervous but that I was thinking of it as 90 days and I can endure anything for 90 days. I’ve heard my dad proudly retell of hearing me saying that and he always follows it up by pointing out that after he left me that day he knew a change was coming for me. He was right.
I could most certainly endure what lay ahead. I had no idea that it was the start of a journey with as much learning and growing and failing and succeeding as I could stand bottled up in 5 two week sessions of sleep deprived sleep-away camp that would change my worldview, broaden my understanding of humanity, enhance my ability, grow my confidence, open my eyes to a world that was rich and vibrant and dynamic and revolutionary and introduce me to an instant community of friends and acquaintances who would create and sustain magic on a daily basis, all with the aim of righting a societal wrong and providing people with the opportunity to have the time of their lives. It would keep my otherwise antsy and unsteady and frankly dangerous life of excess in check as I discovered that when you are fully engaged in a thing, 20 hours a day is not enough. It was enough to get the work done, at least usually, just not enough of the experience.
I was enjoying all of it, the joy and the pain, the wins and the losses, the new experiences and the vulnerability I was discovering in myself and the world and I didn’t want it to ever end.
We’d drink and sing and dance and swear and smoke and hookup and breakup. During the day we’d bring people that would never have the chance otherwise to the top of the mountain, whatever that meant for them. If we couldn’t we’d not hesitate in getting to work building them their mountain, to spec, because we were delighted to be given the opportunity. We fought and created cliques, then we broke them and cross pollinated. We created a utopian society their and we thought we were the first ones to do it. I’m still convinced we were the best who ever did.
But on that car ride, a ride that was both familiar and different it turned out that dad was dropping me off at the end of a dirt road in a beautifully landscaped world that was designed to make the world a better place. It certainly did that for me. It was the home that would take it’s place next to the big blue/gray house on Clark St. It became my spiritual and literal home. When I’d leave I’d yearn to be back. When I was there, even in the cold, dark, lonely and depressing winters, I never wanted to be anywhere else. I loved her even more then. Even when it was emptied of all the people that made it what it was. It was even more beautiful to me as it sat stoically dark waiting patiently to be enlivened once again. After the departures, after the work, after our irreversibly changed lives, after the love and the struggle and the ultimate experience, the walls were my companions for months on end and I loved them as I had learned their potential.
I loved everything about that place and I still do. The Lodge was where I was able to make mistakes and miracles and to witness transformations, including my own. Where I learned to push myself and accept who I was. It was the greatest experience of my life to that point and would inform all the other wonders that were to come.
The 5 Stages of Moving to the Toddler Room
There is no overstating the grief one feels in moments like these. All we have in this world is love. We are born alone and we will die alone. I shout in the void and pray for the response that never comes.
I haven’t yet come to fully accept what is clearly to be. What we are facing is not unique, but the feelings, the inevitable sadness and loss, these, my friends, are universal.
We all have or will face something devastating. Something will make each of us heartsick, not wanting to move on from a moment we can’t acknowledge. To acknowledge it would only confirm that it really happened.
My loss, like many before, will follow a similar progression as it makes its way purposefully to a place where it can be turned to acceptance.
Today my baby, my sweet little Teddy, will be moved up to the toddler classroom in daycare. I share with you now what I have learned from the ages, and from Elisabeth Kubler Ross. I do it not for me, but to add my voice to the ages in hopes that what I experience, documented thoughtfully, may help my fellow kin in the human play in which we are all actors.
Anger Seriously? Seriously. It’s one almost 2 year old. And he’s gorgeous. So he’s a little bitey. That’s just how they play at that age. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Whatever. You’re the same person that thinks he should move up to another class. Do you even know that he’s INCAPABLE of being prepped for this and he’s gonna be confused and terrified! Jeez, play one damn game of ding-dong-ditchyourkidinaclassyouwereclearlytoldnotto with you people and you get all sensitive.
Bargaining Listen, I’m really sorry about that whole ditching the baby in your class thing. I actually couldn’t make it out before you were opening the door to find me. I was hiding with his older brother around the corner when you came out. I feel like such a fool. In my defense I was so mortified by this whole transition that I’ve been having a lot of late nights and drinking quite a bit. I honestly must not have been thinking straigh. Whatdya say, you know, for Teddy’s sake, we just give it til the New Year? Then I’ll insist he goes, even if you don’t want him to. Think about it. It really is probably the best thing for everyone.
Depression I mixed beer with milk last night and slept in the car so the kids wouldn’t wake up from the wailing. My kid is in a room all day with kids bigger then him, sleeping for the first time on a mat and not in a crib, and if he’s anything like me at this moment he’s scared, confused, gassy from milk beer, crying loudly in the back of a station wagon in his driveway.
Acceptance I don’t know why people worry about this kinda stuff. It’s not a big deal, really. You’d think they’d get used to it. I’ll be sure to give younger parents an earful when they’re acting crazy about these things, tell them to relax and jus go with it. It’s not that hard really.
Sorry, Teddy
I write here for many reasons. I write to express myself and to log the remarkable experience of life. To find beauty and its opposite. To connect and to process. To show off. To evolve. To have a canvas on which I can consciously and purposefully try to understand the meaning of what’s happening here.
One of the reasons is for my kids. Whatever happens to me and Karen I would hope that this record would be something they can look at and find out what it was like in their prehistory and understand something of who their father, the old though still plucky man they love, was before the time they became interested in asking such questions.
I’m attempting to show as much honesty as I can tolerate about my failings and shortcomings as well, in order to put indelible marks over my mistakes so I can remember them when I get frustrated with their mistakes and meanderings.
As I sit here today, 20 or so posts in, Charlie almost 4 and Teddy almost 2, I fear I’ve given short shrift to my precious baby boy, Teddy. While I experience more with Charlie as he navigates transitions none of us have seen before, this obvious fodder for exploration I’m afraid has left me with a small body of work that tilts heavily towards my feelings in the context of my precious big boy, and I want to correct, at least somewhat, this oversight.
Teddy has been, is and will always be a beautiful heart-opening gift who has irreversibly made my life fuller, more beautiful and more meaningful. What he will get from us will be different and in many ways better than what we are able to give Charlie, as Charlie has been tasked with the job of teaching us how to be parents.
With Teddy we are less afraid, more open and present. Charlie is forever encountering life from the tip of the spear and is thus pulling us forward through the experience. Teddy is teaching us to swim, afloat in each moment, trusting our abilities enough to set aside some fears and be present for every joyous second.
While we would never, at least not yet, rule anything out, by all estimations this will be our family unit. Mom, Dad and two sons. So while he may not replicate my role as middle child and we will in no way resemble my gigantic family of origin (I have taken to telling others that I call the boys, respectively, ‘first and last’) his will be the role that may get the shaft. I don’t like the language, but the many therapists I’ve known and in much of the articles I’ve read on the matter the language of saying what the middle child’s experience is are nearly universal in their use of the phrase, ‘the middle child gets the shaft.’
I’m afraid that in reviewing this body of work, to this point, I’m now in the uncomfortable position of in fact giving the shaft. I have a fear that this boy will grow up to the man he will be and his curiosity will lead him here, to his dad’s writing, and he’ll do the math and see post after post referring to Charlie and he’ll be heartsick.
I love my little Teddy, to no end. I am present and available and with him much if not more of the time than I am with Charlie. But inevitably Charlies natural role is that of explorer as he is going places none of us have been, at least not in our current capacity, and as such I’m afraid his experiences dominate much of mine and possibly our collective focus and attention.
This is starting to change. Teddy is a spark and he is now lighting up every room he enters, giving hugs and kisses if not freely then judiciously but with great accompanying fanfare. He is also becoming the bright and vibrant little boy we always knew he would be and his cute precociousness is now the dominant trait in the room.
We worry how Charlie, our playful but temperamentally more serious boy is reacting to this, but often too late to really account for it.
I don’t know what life will hold for our guys, but I certainly have a great deal of faith that they are going to be wonderful and thoughtful men. I’ve shared much of my concerns and will continue to do so in regard to Charlie and his constant, unavoidable pushing into new frontiers. My fears for Teddy are much more inline with my pent up resentments and frustrations and unmet needs then I care to think. And now that I’m the damn paterfamilias I have a great deal more understanding as to how and why I am the way I am, was treated the way I was and am able only now in hindsight to let go of so much of the anger I had at my perception of being less then perfectly attended to.
I was and am in fact evidence of what I now understand was the perfect and herculean effort my parents made and accomplished in raising six children into thoughtful, caring and competent adults. Not to mention the efforts they made at providing portions of the same for at least 3 other individuals, and if you were to poll even more passersby in my youth I know that number would grow.
I want to speak to my future children and let them know that it’s okay to be angry and to feel needing of more. I want them to know that while details are different, emotionally speaking my experience was like theirs and at the worst moments of self doubt and low self-regard, they should remember that good old dad, the dad they once idolized, once pitied, were frequently angered and frustrated by and whom I hope they eventually came to be proud of and love, as so many of us lucky ones eventually do, was once just as messed up and unsure of himself as they are at times.
In all likelihood I still will question my ability and the rightness of both my thinking and my actions. If there’s a lesson to that understanding I hope its this. Don’t be hard on yourself. Pain and mistake making and regret are the price you pay for self acceptance and joy. I don’t think anyone ever gets to a place where they can sustain feelings of contentment, so observe, acknowledge and soak up all the positive energy you can from those times when they arrive as they will sustain you at different points of your journey.
They are so different. At least at this early stage. If I had to bet on it I’d guess that Charlie will grow up to have an office in his house, if not a den and that Teddy will have something more like a media center or man-cave. At one point before having kids I might have thought I’d have a preference in this regard, but now that they are here and present I can truly say I look forward so much to having the opportunity to know both of them and feel privileged to be along for the rides that they are taking us on. I love them each as much as a person can love anything.
Its part of my journey now and this moment, though at times uncomfortable and occasionally unpleasant has left me with little doubt that this is where I’m most meant to be. These are the lives that will give mine context and purpose and meaning and I hope that I’m around long enough for them to grow up and understand this.
But if I’m not, if for some unforeseen reason they are left to the stories of others and their own investigations I hope that this place provides each of them some understanding and context about who and what I was. That if anything it shows them how very wonderful being imperfect can be. After all, it’s the gift they’ve given to me.
My Memories of September 11th and Our Friend, Darryl
28 year old men are not prone to bursting out in tears. They are not likely to well up with feelings of empathy beyond the tragedies of their immediate family. That comes later. Later, after they’ve experienced life a bit, they may well up at things as formulaic as Sunday morning ESPN special interest stories of athletes that have overcome or been overcome. But when something as tragic and confusing as the attacks on the World Trade Center occur, all of these truths are replaced by the stark reality of the fragility and preciousness of life.
I lived in Brooklyn at the time of the attacks and worked on Union Square. My apartment and my employer were pretty much equidistant from Ground Zero. I experienced the day however from New England as I was enjoying some time off after the grueling and great summers where I worked in the Catskills for about 22 hours a day at a job I loved. So the early fall, the part where the calendar knows it’s changing but the air makes up its mind each day as to what season it wants to be, was always my decompressing time. And like many other years I spent it visiting in the way young people with a little cash but not a lot do. I was visiting family. I had dinner with my sister in Boston the night of the 10th and drove about half way up to my other sisters place near Portland after that before stopping at a hotel for the night. I went for a morning jog the next day, leaving enough time for a shower before checkout.
It was a sun dappled morning as I ran beneath the slightly lighter shade of green leaves than I had all summer, the type of green that happens as the life of the leaf is either burgeoning or breaking and the world was in fact perfect. When I returned to my room I saw the first tower burning. This had to be fake. I really couldn’t believe it was real. I was fairly new to New York, but I was already familiar and this wasn’t possible. And then the second plane flew through the building and we were under attack. I would have never put it together, but all the newsmen were saying it was obvious. Until the second plane all I kept thinking was what a horrible accident. New York had a shield around it and something so terrible could never happen. It had to be an accident. It wasn’t.
I showered and I dressed and I got on the road. I cried. In the shower. In the car. Everywhere. It was compassion and confusion and concern. I had a lot of friends I knew that would be on trains, if not on the street at that time of morning on such a beautiful day. I hadn’t met her yet, but my wife was walking over the Brooklyn Bridge at the time. I tried calling everyone I knew, I think I even spoke to my roommate, Jessie, and was assured that her and her boyfriend Rob (a man that had become one of my best friends) were okay. But pretty soon I couldn’t reach anyone.
I think I had a cell phone, so I don’t know why, but outside a Dunkin Donuts I called my mother from a pay phone to let her know where I was and that I was safe. That’s what I wanted to tell her, but I heard her voice as she greeted me and I just sobbed. I couldn’t breath, forget talking. I must have cried for over a minute before choking out my name and telling her I was fine, safe. Those of you that know my mother are aware that she’s the person to call when you can’t stop crying.
I returned from my travels as soon as I could. I don’t know exactly what day it was but I’d guess it was the Friday after the Tuesday. All access to Manhattan was blocked and you were diverted around the city. Coming over the Tri-Borough, once you cleared the trussing and had an unobstructed view, it was unmistakable. Still smoldering I swear I could see the form of the buildings still. Pillars of dust that were resisting their fate.
Upon return Rob suggested that we order in and set up the table and talk. It was the best thing he could have done and to this day I’m so thankful to have friends like this, even if I barely see them anymore. He knew we all needed to talk. To try to figure it out. To laugh and make asides so as to be able to return to the topic for hours, that would become days and months. City living wasn’t like the suburban life I knew and we had to actually assemble the table in the middle of the living room and we did. We had wine, we ate well and we just shared our feelings, thoughts and defenses. I cried a bit less the next day, though it wasn’t gone. Clearly there was no work or anything else to deal with for the days and weeks ahead, so you watched news. Everywhere. And it was cathartic. And we cried as a country and I suspect as a world in many cases. It wasn’t to last, and your head knew it, but it felt very much like time ceased to exist other than to go from light to dark to light to dark.
The other shoe finally dropped when I checked my email and Mike G. let us know that our friend and teammate Darryl McKinney, had been working at Cantor-Fitzgerald in the top of the towers, above where the plane hit and had passed away. I went to the freezer, removed a bottle of vodka, grabbed a glass and sat in front of the news and cried for hours, for days.
I was not inside many of Darryl’s circles at Elmira, where we both graduated. We were both basketball team guys, but he was a committed and amazing player and I was a, well the opposite. And in a small community like the Elmira College community, you can start to think that their are wildly varied groupings, but there really weren’t. It was a school of roughly a thousand students, and probably less then 400, total that were male. And everyone lived on campus. At the time I could have told you who I knew well and who I knew only vaguely, but in hindsight it was a very intimate setting and having now lived out in the world for as long as I’d lived prior to going to college I can say that even those folks i knew in passing I knew more than I’ll ever know anyone I’ve met subsequently other than my wife and family.
My first memory of Darryl was when coach let leak that one of our new players who would be coming next year was playing pickup in the on campus gym. Being good college students the guys I was with were day drinking on a Friday. Seemed a good idea not knowing we’d be called to action. But called we were. I remember seeing him and thinking, either he shouldn’t be here or I shouldn’t. He’s too good for this team if this is him as a high schooler or I’m not nearly good enough. Turned out I was a little bit right on both accounts.
When Darryl arrived on campus it was evident. He was a uniter. Not an easy title for a young African-American man on a campus that was lily white. Wonder bread white, really. But he was. You were as likely to see him with the basketball players as you were to see him with the soccer team, or the kid in his freshman dorm that veered toward theater but who made Darryl laugh. He was a friend to everyone and when he saw you he always had a smile and usually a laugh. He certain enjoyed the mischief, we all did, but he was never EVER a guy you worried about. A lot of guys you worry about. But he was fine. Always would be. He could get hot, but at that age that just comes with the territory.
I had a couple of friends from home, hippies who studied environmental ed and outdoor recreation up in the Adirondacks who would visit from time to time to hang out and party. On more than one occasion on active and social Friday nights we’d get separated and they’d return either with Darryl and his crew for the night, or with tales of adventure on campus and in the town with Darryl. I think he was amongst the people they continued to visit after I graduated. Darryl was like that. Once he knew you, you were in. I’d guess that at that age when I didn’t have the best self-esteem or sense of who I was, he knew I was a good person and always gave me the benefit of the doubt, even if I didn’t. Wasn’t something he thought about, I suspect. He knew me and I was his friend.
There are layers of friendship, and I was most assuredly quite a few layers out. There are many people I know, some who may read this who were much closer to Darryl than I. In fact, knowing who might read this who also knew Darryl, I suspect that all of them who knew us both would have been much closer to him than I. To some degree that’s the point. To know Daryl was to love him. Because if Darryl knew you he loved you. He knew some truth intuitively that it took me longer to learn. To live in a world of love you have to give it, freely and with laughter and joy. By doing so Darryl made the way too short time he had here with the rest of us a blast.
Every year the visceral memory of those strange days suffer from erosion. But the one thing that gets me, usually the evening of the tenth, is the memory of Darryl. I used to be unable to shake the picture of him running all over the top floors looking for a way out in his final moments as he searched for the solution he believed he’d find. The heartbreaking awareness that I hope he never came to that his life was being taken away. Every year I cry, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. The world lost a true human, full of love and laughter, complexity and compassion. We are worse off for this. I, one of the lucky ones, am far better off for having known him. Rest In Peace, Darryl.
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Charlie insisted that Grandma, Koba (Grandpa), Daddy and Mommy all sit at attention at the picnic table. We were seated so we were facing him as he prowled the stage that was the landing at the top of the steps leading to the beautiful red Rockwellian shed that he thought of as Buddy the Cat’s house. He welcomed us to the show and proceeded to command our attention by acting out a story about how he lost his doggie. About how that doggie ran away and grew up to be a kitty cat, and how charlie found him by calling his name around both corners of the little house/shed/set. He informed us that his name was ‘Tree Pikwalk’ and that we all had to call for him if he were to be found. And low and behold, after we all gave it a shout, good old Tree Pikwalk, the dog that grew up to be a cat, returned home. We were then instructed by Charlie to clap for his story. When we did it was as if he were at Carnegie Hall and he’d just won the admiration of an initially doubting audience.
We were then instructed to stop. He was now the MC and he welcomed everyone to the show. Clap your hands everybody. Introducing, DADDY! He waved me up and left the stage for me to put on a ‘show’. I of course proceeded to do what the director instructed and told a story. Knowing his preferences I made it a story of childhood pets. In this case I told the origin story of our family pet, Mama Kitty, who was a housemate for almost all of my youth and how her passing at 18, an incredibly long life for a cat, lead to the occasionally odd moment when people came to our house and saw an etched stone slate that simply said, ‘Mama, 1980-1998’. It was a success and with all the generosity of a true fan my presenter and host started the applause and made sure that everyone joined him. It was grand.
I’m envious of his confidence and his constant creativity and in awe of his energy. Thanks to him and his little brother, Teddy, I’m able to somewhat approximate their joie de vivre, The two of them can knock me out physically, but the result of their presence in my life has left me with a verve and joy that I never knew before they arrived.
These attributes, confidence, creativity, energy and joy will be informed by an increasing knowledge and understanding of the feelings and needs of others around them as well as the painful realization that people will sometimes be mean even though they aren’t necessarily mean people. Hell, at some point even they will be mean and not understand why. These are all things to be expected and are key points in one’s journey to aware, conscious and thoughtful adulthood. To be able to feel confident enough to consciously put on a ‘show’ and present enough to attend to the shows of others you love because we are all human and need love and attention. To be unafraid to be wholly and truly yourself despite your fears that it will cause others to judge you. To not be afraid to be judged by those people because you are the things you are and it is okay to be them. To be so entirely comfortable in your own skin that you are able to connect with the world around you and the souls you are fortunate enough to be near in a way that shares with them your fragility and essence. These are the things I see in my son’s that I hope will survive, somehow, the onslaught that is heading their way as they head out into the world without any armor. These attributes that will hold the key to happiness when they emerge on the other side of the chasm separating childhood from adulthood. We are in the bubble now and I treasure my time here, knowing already that it is fleeting.
I just hope that I remember, when it looks its ugliest and I’m compelled to react to the behaviors I know are not reflective of the boys they were, that they are neither predictive of the men they will be. That in order for them to get through the upheaval of adolescence and early adulthood they have to travel roads that are inevitably and imperatively roads I can’t go down with them. I hope I remember that they will carry with them, despite any and all indications to the contrary, their sweet nature, their fragile and vulnerable skin and their need for love and attention. I hope they are able to hear me as I call for them while they are lost, like Tree Pikwalk who grew up to be a cat. I hope I hope I hope.
I hope beyond hope that my little dogs grow up, turn into cats and can put on a show for me of a kind I now put on for my parents, relishing in their approval and attention and no longer bashful about how important and meaningful it all is to me.
We Weren’t Ready Either
There is the light of day and the haze of interrupted sleep. These are two distinct worlds and insofar as we are able to, we keep them separate. Fights that happen in ‘the haze’ should never see the light of day. They are to be dutifully ignored, in perpetuity if possible. If an event were to occur in ‘the haze’ at a later point that closely resembled the initial argument in both substance and tone, then, and only then, can the altercation be referenced. Once past, even if the altercation has escalated, it should fall back into the category of things which must not be named. These are the rules and they are organic and they are good. These incidences are like dreams in that they should only rarely be shared outside of a therapists office and should be done so with great trepidation.
We had such an altercation last night. In complying with the rules I shall not speak to the details of the disagreement other than to say that in expressing my dissenting opinion I can see now that I presented as a lunatic. The vast majority of the overnight happenings are tended to by one parent so the other can sleep, but in this case the concern of the sleeper overwhelmed their exhaustion and a suggestion needed to be made. At the risk of disclosing too much, as I know a certain woman related to me by marriage who may wish to continue to observe the ‘gag order’ in regard to referencing said altercation, I’ll state that in this case I was the night tender and she was the concerned and restless parent. Which I say only so I can tell you that when she interrupted me to suggest that we wake our son and give him a nebulizer treatment in order to allow him to stop coughing and to rest easier I went ballistic. This was not in my plans. I had already fed the baby and taken the toddler to the potty. It was past 2AM and I had decided that I’d wait out the cough. With a beer. And a book. A nebulizer treatment does NOT fit into this equation. Yep. I’m a bit of a jackass. My frustration bordered on the maniacal. Which is to say that it was on the wrong side of said border and had a full head of steam heading to the heartland of lunacy.
A mere hour later my wife lay soundly asleep and had been so for upwards of 45 minutes. I still could not unclench my jaw. The ability to navigate these wide emotional swings and return to a normal enough place to fall asleep, even with the assistance of accrued exhaustion is unbelievable to me. I’ve grown to understand that this is an innate difference. For her part she can’t for the life of her understand why I don’t go right to sleep the second I’m allowed to. But the fact of the matter is I literally can’t. I’m using ‘literally’ literally. If I were to attempt to transition between emotions at the rate at which she can and does I’d be in a hospital bed, likely catatonic, before lunch. Women reading this may read an exaggeration to express emphasis in this statement. It’s absolutely true. I’d break. Seriously.
I’m a LUNATIC when it comes to control of the overnight environment when it’s ‘my turn’. Just irrational in the extreme. And the reality of this is that this isn’t going to change. Can’t really. Which brings me to my point. Perfect is inherently and inevitably imperfect.
When we were fretting about whether or not to have kids the conversations were focused on our shortcomings, both personally and collectively. The financial issues and the emotional issues. The idea of a change so profound seemed impossible to navigate while retaining that which made us work together. But the truth is that the change was simultaneously of a scale that was so large as to have been incomprehensible prior to it occurring and of a nature so profound that it brought with it capacities and endurance that were heretofore unknown to either of us and which allowed us to grow in a way that has made all of the prior conversation irrelevant.
In some way every butterfly parent that has been through the transformation knows something caterpillar couples couldn’t at the time. Prior to our having been transformed their assurances and warnings were meaningless, even if many of them turned out to be more true than we could ever have imagined. So now that I’m emerging fully transformed I would like to amend the standard language of the butterflies thusly…
Rather than the somewhat dismissive statement that butterflies repeat ad nauseum to caterpillars that goes ‘If you wait til your ready to have kids, you’ll never have kids’, I think I would have been more disposed to seeing some hopefulness in a message that goes like this…
Let me cut to the chase, you’re not perfect. I’m not, you’re not, no one is. So stop thinking that merely being human and imperfect is enough of a reason to not have kids if you want them. And if you’re fearing that you’re not ready, you’re ready. That level of concern will in fact put you a step ahead. And besides all your shortcomings, you’re amazingly intricate, complex and talented people who will find a capacity for love you never knew before and it’s beautiful and destructive all at once. And the things that drive you crazy about your partner now will do so even more later. But the variations between your abilities will make you cover all the bases you need to so the kids can rise up because of your exceptional ability and in spite of your inevitable flaws. And don’t worry, your kids will reveal their own flaws, and many of them will mirror yours and that’s okay, cause you know what? They’re human too and they’re NOT perfect, which is something you must keep in mind, as your heart will never believe it. Perfect people do not exist, they are lying to you, and sometimes to themselves, and they should be looked at with empathy as they are in for terrible difficulties. In fact if this unicorn of perfection exists in some cul-de-sac in some suburb know that they are the ones truly missing out on the vast array of life as they are not fully experiencing what it means to be alive. Don’t fret that you are falling short of something so bland as perfect, rather delight in your struggles and move forward knowing that the sooner you accept your human nature the sooner you can get to seeing the beauty in life. Struggle onward and seek to see clearly and withhold criticism as long as you can. The more you can accept of imperfections the richer your experience will be. Oh yeah, and don’t be dick to your wife when she asks you to do something you should do. Its not nice.
Housewarming
Mid-westerners are a fairly docile lot intent more on steadying a boat than on rocking it. They are a quiet and polite. Their pride is in their work and the ability to get on and get along. The men edge toward stoic. The women are rarely showy.
It’s home, it’s in my bones and it lives in me to this day.
State lines defined us as New York and New York is a northeastern state. That said, we had more in common with Ohio and Indiana then we did with Manhattan. By a long shot. The land and the affect of it’s inhabitants is typically flat with mild undulations that can only be noticed at distance. We were on the far reaches of the Great Lakes/Rust Belt side of the Midwest, as opposed to the expansive Heartland/Great Plains end.
This unrattled and underwhelmed temperament is exemplified by the the fire chief who rung our doorbell at 3 in the morning on a late summer night in 1979. No one answered after a reasonable wait time, so he patiently rung it again. When my older brother Mike, all of 8 years old, was the first to get the door it was without alarm or particular urgency that he asked him if his parents were home. I assume that he refrained from asking if he were the man of the house. But it strikes me that the formality crossed his mind. We like formality.
Whatever pleasantries were exchanged were accompanied by surging, roaring, 60 foot flames that were emanating from the abandoned 100 year old barn that was burning in our yard. So Mike did his duty and woke up Mom and Dad to let them know there was a fireman at the door and that the prayer house was on fire.
The prayer house.
It’s a lovely idea and one that I’ve taken the journey from embarrassed mockery to envious admiration of in the years since. In this world of stock conformity, where eccentricity was a thing to keep secret, my mother was going to have a prayer house.
This is not a thing, a prayer house. Prayer is for the church and for the dinner table and perhaps quiet moments of appreciation or desperation. But we were not only going to have one, it was going to be in a big ass barn in our front yard. This was all of a giant embarrassing piece that was accompanied by a father who subscribed to Islands magazine from the snow belt, wore Hawaiian shirts and cowboy hats and a mom that would lie in the grass on the front yard on beautiful sunny mornings, just enjoying the weather, right where anyone could see her. My father would join her and they would lay next to each other holding hands.
In hindsight its the most beautiful thing in the world to see your parents do. But I didn’t view it that way when I was young. There was a valuable lesson in this that took me too long to fully learn.
So here we were, a family of five kids (Leo wasn’t born until 5 years later) and a couple of parents in their 30’s newly moved into a house designed by my father that had and would take up all our spare resources for many years prior and many years to come, awoken in the night to see it all being threatened by soaring flames.
There was not a great deal of shouting or anything, at least not as far as I can remember. We were all moved to the car so we could back out of the driveway and move out of harms way. In a remarkable coincidence that is so fantastic as to be unbelievable, this occurred on the night of our “housewarming” party.
To now my description of the evening is based on the few and dwindling stories that we told about this night, remembered and retold by a person that was five or six years old when it all went down. If I’ve been accurate in any details of the night, that is largely coincidental as I’m quite certain I’ve maintained the story in my head by fleshing out the bones with a certain amount of myth and whimsy.
My father did in fact design our home, which he did in a weekend prior to the builder starting when he was told that the blueprints would cost something like $20,000.
My father was and is an industrial designer and he knew what he wanted so he taught himself how to design a house and create workable blueprints in a weekend. All from home, where I was the 3rd of five. This at a time when we were decades away from a functioning internet. Al Gore was beta-testing I imagine.
My father is not merely talented, he is a wizard and a sorcerer capable of feats that are not possible to mere mortals. He’s also taller than your dad. So there.
There are 3 particular memories that are mine, which is not to say they are accurate, but rather that they emerge wholly from my memory. They are weaker memories than they were 30 years ago, but before they leave me for good allow me to share them with you in chronological order.
From the family station wagon we could feel and see the giant flaming structure directly to our left as we backed down the driveway. It was rather breathtaking, and to a boy of my age it was positively amazing. I was in the back seat of the car, not the far back that looked out the rear window when you sat down, but the middle bench seat behind my father who was driving.
We backed out of the driveway until we were aligned with the fire and we halted to let one of the many companies assembled move a vehicle from our path so we could be evacuated. We sat quietly. I really do marvel at and question my memory, because in my minds eye it was a quiet car. Maybe we were stunned, or perhaps tired, but this was a time for panic most certainly. Surely somebody would be in a state? But I truly don’t remember that being an issue.
What I do remember was getting out of the driveway and my father pulling into the parking lot/basketball court across the street from our house and turning the car around so we could watch. He like I was mesmerized by the whole thing. Behind us was the park that we would look upon from our front porch for the next 35 years. It closed at dusk so it was a vast stretch of pitch-black in night time, but in the light of the flames you could see all the way to the canal, which bordered the park to the south, our street being its northernmost edge.
I suppose we were stunned but we sat there silent for a minute watching as the flames continued to roar. The loss of the building had to be emotional as my mother had already named it the prayer house, but my father was transfixed. And after a minute or so it occurred to my mother that this was what we were doing. We were sitting here watching the darn thing burn and watching the firemen struggle to contain the flames. Watching what looked to me like very bad firemen from the surrounding towns that appeared to think the fire was at our neighbors houses and not ours. I would later learn that the crews from our town (Brockport) were fighting the fire and the other crews were soaking the roofs of all our neighbors to ensure that the fire didn’t leap to other homes.
He intended to sit here until the next logical step was made evident. To this end my mother helped make the next logical step clearer to my father. Slowly I saw her turning so that her face was in perfect profile and with just an ounce of annoyance in her voice and demeanor, and I mean with just a tiny bit of knowing bewilderment she looked at my dad, the way my wife has looked at me and the way women have looked at men for all of history, and said very clearly, ‘What are you doing?’
My mother is a religious person and was a parent of small children to boot, so the standard coda to this comment from a wife to a husband clearly unaware of the others around him, ‘you horse’s ass.’ was left to be implied. I believe my father replied forthrightly and said something to the effect of ‘Just watching.’
However it was communicated at that point, it was apparently made clear that we should shove off to seek some shelter for the duration of the night.
I don’t know whether it’s a male trait or more specifically a family trait, but like my father I imagine I would have done the same thing once we were in the car. That said, we have a difficult time getting the kids into the car for daycare without voices being raised, so I can’t imagine how they did all this without expressing or causing panic in me.
My next memory is of being at our neighbors house in the middle of the night. They were the neighbors on the corner and they were a family we were more friendly with than friends with. They were lovely, they were just at a different stage.
There youngest was in middle school, at least, possibly in high school already and my parents were swimming in little kids and babies. But this was the Midwest and neighbors were there to help in a crisis with a pot of coffee and some warm blankets for the kids to sleep in.
As you might imagine we didn’t sleep too much, if at all. By now we had a sense of what was happening and how big this was. Plus we had a whole new house to take in.
I had two older brothers that I loved and feared and they knew Anne, the youngest girl in the neighbor family so it was easy for them to talk to her. But for me I just remember standing there, in my underwear, all night. Surely this isn’t what happened, but the moment of realization was a startling one for me. I knew I was supposed to wear pants in front of people. Being in your underwear in front of people was for little kids not for me. I remember thinking this. And for what may have been the first time I felt shame and embarrassment. Like seriously.
Is that shame, really, or is it just embarrassment. This is not rhetorical, there is a definitive answer. It’s just simple embarrassment for god’s sake. What the hell. Was I preternaturally self pitying and melodramatic! Was I meant to be a fifteen year old goth girl all along! Apparently so.
My final memory is of mom and dad plopping us down in the playroom to watch early morning kids television. This was over thirty years ago so it had to be Saturday morning.
Saturday mornings were the only time that TV’s were programmed for kids. That and say, 3-5pm, M-F. We sat and watched our favorite cartoons, the smurfs and super-friends and the whole Hanna-Barbara lineup while munching on cereal that they prepared for us. It felt good. I was back in pants of a sort and we were back in front of the TV and safe and happy and the fire was not going to take our house.
All of it is a warm memory. One that contained all the resolution of a finished story. It was a memory only a child could make. I remember bringing my bowl into the kitchen, or more likely I left my bowl right where it was, on the floor waiting to be broken or at least tripped over, and was only going to scan the fridge for more food during a commercial. While I was in there I could see my parents through the window, heads trained at the ground, purposeful, searching the burnt out rubble on a grey morning. Searching for what, I have no idea.
And that’s it. That’s the memory I have of that event. One that highlights some definitely inaccurate information.
In fact allow me to list for you the parts of the story that are accurate. We had a barn. It was scheduled to be set up as a prayer house. It burned down. If it wasn’t the exact night of our housewarming, it was very close to it. We left our house. We went to our neighbors.
The rest is just what I’ve filled in. Some of it may reflect accuracy, much of it surely doesn’t. It’s almost totally subjective and about something that happened 35 years ago, to a six year old.
Another piece of potentially inaccurate information… I’m pretty sure it was arson and that the fire was set by (and this is the part that could be fabricated from whole cloth) a pyrophiliac who watched and whatever else, from the park across the street. This is precisely the type of detail that is 100% believable, but also so scandalous that it would make sense that we were left to surmise it from stolen info spread amongst the kids that would never be addressed. It has taken on a permanence that even evidence of it being false would hardly keep me from telling the story that way, even to myself.
So there it is. The story of a housewarming gone terribly awry, ruined by a pyrophiliac with a sense of irony. Genuine, definition irony. Like all stories, its one that has a perspective. Like any oral history, its one that would vary from person to person, with some facts tying it together.
Stories live and breath and evolve over time. I love that about stories. In the end this story has no terrible outcomes. The prayer house still came to be but it was in the backyard and built to order. Everyone was safe and there was nothing of too much value that was lost. But it is instructive to me that you never know the tails your tales will grow.
If I’m the one telling the story its a story that is of a small boy comforted by his parents, embarrassed by his bedtime attire and returned to a changed but same place that he would call home for the next 30 years.
Which is insane, really. Because in the midst of that tale, the much greater story is of the couple of thirty somethings who had a 100 foot, 5 alarm fire in there front yard, almost immediately after moving in, set by a person with some serious issues while they and there 5 kids were sleeping. It could have ended in tragedy but for the heroic efforts of many brave men who left their own stories and their own families sleeping to save ours.
My parents, supported by our community, protected us from everything, even fear, and provided a sense of security to us all. I hope I never have to find out if I’m able to live up to their standard. I wonder how I would do.
Blood on the Tracks; The Art and the Artist
It’s a very specific kind of artisitc genius. An expression that is so beautifully and specifically drawn that despite it recounting events and experiences that are not yours it still resonates. It resonates because you are human. It resonates because you have the capacity for empathy. It resonates because an artist is bravely standing before you in some stage of undress, vulnerable and eloquent.
Beautiful and broken.
The young artist has yet to live a life worthy of his already prodigious talents. He is however yearning to say something worth listening to and he is intelligent and skilled if not yet refined or experienced. As a result he highlights inequality and shines a light on the stupidity of those who rule him and makes art that resonates. If his talent is up to par it is worth hearing and worth heeding. If his talent is truly generational other artists might recognize it first. If his talent is epochal he writes of the hard rain that’s gonna fall. He inspires and enlightens his and all subsequent generations and shows the world how to think about a thing differently than it had before. He has used his considerable capacity to conceive of a new thought, disseminated it effectively and artistically and is hailed as an icon as he has entered the zeitgeist and knocked it sideways through words and music and as a result you imbue in him a certain level of intimate access to what you believe is your soul.
This is as it should be. For you this initial impact is the imperative as it allows you to shift paradigms. His spark will start a cultural inferno and alter the lives of millions whom he has taught to think.
But to him, to this prodigious and frustrated talent, unable to scratch an itch that is ever present, an itch to truly connect, he knows that this was an effective trick of sorts. Sincere at it’s time, but wholly inadequate now. He hasn’t done yet what he must. Couldn’t have, really. He hadn’t had anything personal and universal to say. Until he fell in love. Then out of love. Then nearly lost it all. And was left broken. As we all will be eventually. Brokenness is universal. Thoughts are debated and should be. He never intended his thoughts to be gospel, but a surprising number of people treated them as such. And to his surprise he spent a long time hacking away, admittedly at a startlingly high level of artistic accomplishment, but not without leaving clues that he thought it all a bit of a farce. Then he found love. True and intimate love that he thought he could sustain. Maybe he even thought it would sustain him.
But now that this love had experienced its entire life cycle, a thing he thought would last the rest of his life, he’s now broken. Not ‘broken down’ in some general way, but actually broken. Very specifically and in a way where he now needs to go to the tools he has fostered all these years to work out his feelings on the matter. He has to take his heart to the study and to the studio and write and perform ‘Blood on the Tracks.’
In my estimation it is his most personal (and at least the equal) of his most accomplished works and it could make even an early twenties, middle class white male like myself truly feel the spectrum of emotions that awaited me once time did her thing to me. Those songs introduced me to the nuances of both the human condition and the beauty in our frailty. It’s a remarkable piece of work that has never failed to move me. It can provoke every emotion a man can feel in a romantic relationship and reveals those he wishes he could. It reveals and instructs me as to my own emotional capacity for intimacy and my own limits in terms of truly connecting.
Its a piece of expressive art that is almost as old as I am and I’ve been listening to it for half my life. It’s the expression of feelings I never knew how to identify and in each phase of my life it has presented to me a deeper and more meaningful part of what it means to be human in a very detailed and specific and beautiful way.
It’s not the bombs thrown by a precocious talent, fueled by righteous anger. Rather it’s the earnest and sincere expression of a man who has, is and will struggle. A man who knows that its all worth it for the exquisite though fleeting bliss that life can give you and the swift inevitability with which it takes it away. It’s melancholic and joyous and angry and curious. Its concentrated humanity.
Roar. Regret. Try not to repeat.
Toddlers are fighting an uphill battle with their baby selves. As babies they were in 100% need of love and attention at literally all hours of the day. We adults are not equipped, even in those fortunate situations in which there are two of them able to commit to this endeavor round the clock, to easily add this level of work to our lives. As a result nature has made it so we are compelled, through obsessive love and fear, to push through levels of exhaustion far exceeding our experience. An exhaustion that can become just achingly painful. This challenge is met by a force so epic, that has been refined through natural selection to be as powerful as concentrated love. They compel us to scrap all our plans and commit full bore to the job that will see us through to the light no matter how far away it may be with true and profound cuteness. Not just garden variety, either, but a specific blend made just for his parents that plays on every subconscious bias to ensure that we will protect him viciously from the wolves.
And we do. We do everything in our power to ensure this childs safety. At critical intervals where the weight of the task is more than one believes they can stand we are given smiles and tears and laughter and warmth in measured doses to refill our tanks, to power us on past the silly moments we thought we’d never pass. Before you know it that blip in their lives, the part they’ll never remember and the part you’ll never fully forget but will forever edit for perfection, baby world as I call it, is over. And the parent isn’t even aware that it has passed.
The parent still sees the beauty and joy this one can bring. They will see it forever, even when its just an aura, they will know. But for the toddler it’s an impossible thing to overcome. But make no mistake, overcome it they must. For they cannot remain helpless forever. It’s time to see what’s behind the couch and up the stairs and in the potty and on the street. And in order to get the chance to find these things they must create some space for themselves. Some area, even in parents eyesight, to taste independence. So they use natures repellent. Toddler behavior.
Toddlers are legendarily misunderstood this way. They are compelled, and should be. No, they MUST BE. Compelled to poke you and prod you. Pull you and push you. Anything they can do, for as long as necessary to piss you off. and with all the redundancy of love that fuels the baby world it is a high bar that they must clear. But they will. Maybe not when their just getting their legs or when they find their voice. But someday they will finally push you so far that there will be no choice. And like those moms in Target you used to judge so harshly, who you now wish to hug for hours, you will snap. If you’re lucky it’s in the home. But there’s no guarantee. It can, and does, happen anywhere and eventually, everywhere.
I can’t speak to the maternal experience, but as a dad, we’re practically and effectively screwed by the incongruent progress of society and human evolution. For milenia (COMPLETELY MADE UP) us men have been bred to lessen emotions of warmth, and strengthen emotions of rage. It’s really only in the last 500 years or so that that’s started to change. And really in my father’s lifetime when men routinely became involved in any aspect of their children’s emotional well being, other than providing the home and the food to allow for it. Crucial jobs, providing protection from the elements and assuring readily available sustenance. So crucial in fact that it was the essential function of men within the family. But then farming and food and prefabbed homes and suburbia all conspired with some friends to make these tasks far FAR less dangerous and time consuming.
So we men all of a sudden have been domesticated. But we are not yet like the dogs that were once wolves. I’m more dog than my forebears and my sons will be moreso then me, but we are not yet bred to the new societal norm. Nope. We are animals fueled by love, certainly, but also by anger and frustration and discomfort. We are diligent workers at being social, but we do not come natural to it. We have as much instinct still to roam the land looking for danger and food as we do to hug and hold and be held. But we have no outlet for this drive. Until Jr. starts to discover his inner beast.
Then, at least with my boys, we collide. Me and my fading but still evident pile of testosterone and him and his budding desire to get in a fight with me. I can be had. And he provokes brilliantly. And….. boom goes the dynamite. I explode and he recoils, recognizing that daddy is scary. It’s terrible when you see that they know that. Even worse when you know that this aggression by a stronger animal against a weaker one worked. It’s an awful feeling when you see that he to is ruled by the jungle, understands he is in mortal danger (he is not at all. I would never touch him in any way aggressively, but he doesn’t know that yet, and it’s exactly what I intended him to react to.
I go away because my aim was met, but I’m already sick to my stomach. I immediately regret what I’ve done. Yes, meatheads, the commonly scrawled phrase on gym shirts, in what I can only assume is a font called ‘spraycan’, of ‘NO REGRETS’ is absurd, harmful and very very bad. We should all feel regret. Not all the time by any means, but certainly with some frequency. At least as often, say, as you feel like going out for a steak. There is a name for people that feel no regret. The name is sociopath.
So I find myself back downstairs, sulking on the couch imagining a precious little 3 year old curled in bed, silent with fear. I check the monitor a couple minutes after I left and his head is still hidden away so you can’t see his face, flat on his fading Mickey Mouse sheets, shielded by the side of his pillow and his hand, praying that the scary monster, me, can’t see him if he can’t see me. I just want to die. I have won and it is killing me.
This only lasts this long because of my man-ness. This wouldn’t happen to Karen. Sure, she has yelled at her three year old a couple of times by now, like literally twice. It’s not that, it’s the really stupid blindness of masculinity. Or at least of mine, is that when I’m enraged like this, and it is just that, rage, the simplest and most obvious solutions are sometimes lost on me. I’m not being obstinate, I swear. It takes a few minutes, some self-loathing for motivation and eventually the thought of returning to his room, sitting and comforting my scared child and owning my mistaken rage fueled outburst and asking for his forgiveness smacks me in the face. It’s so stinking obvious. And I can see how women don’t believe that we don’t see it, but some of us, some of us with all good intentions, are literally, not figuratively, incapable of seeing that as an option. That does not mean we reject it as an option. Quite to the contrary the second it occurs to us, boom, it’s done. No. We actually don’t see it. Because in this area, the area our emotions fueling socially acceptable, though ethically dubious displays of power and frustration, we’re still evolving.
Unfortunately for my kids, both boys, they may in fact deal with these parts of my personality that the 37 years before they started arriving here didn’t sufficiently get beaten out of my DNA.
So it’s this beautiful, wonderful, motivating regret that puts me right back up in the bedroom, telling my kid, dammit if I’m not a jerk. I mean, I don’t say it like that as that’s such a confounding turn of phrase, so it’s more simple, something like, ‘Hey buddy. YIKES!’ and then I say very clearly ‘I’m sorry.’ Because I am. Because I need him to know that when he is big and powerful, and he very well could be some day, and already is in relation to his little brother in the next bed who wants in on this convo, it is important for him to remember that failure is an option, not a problem. It’s something you can be relieved of by saying you were a jerk when you recognize you were one, and saying sorry to the person you were a jerk to. And I say it until he’s smiling and laughing again. And then I lay into his ass. Cause,you know, it’s a jungle out there.
That’s not at all true. I humble myself as a good role model should. I ask him and his brother if they’d like to skip nap, because you know, I must pay penance, and then we all go downstairs, pop in Ratatouille and hang on the couch giggling and smiling.
developing dad 
