Some moments are just magical. They arrive unannounced and if you are lucky you recognize what’s happening in time to capture it in some way. This is not one of those moments.
‘Daddy? What’s your favorite butt cheek?’
Hmm. Thinking. Resisting every inappropriate joke running through my head.
‘My left butt cheek, I guess.’
Phew, dodged all bullets.
‘No. I mean between me and Teddy.’
‘I don’t have a favorite. I love all four of your butt cheeks equally.’
…and, scene.
With great power comes great responsibility, sure. But with middling power and autonomy there comes some amount of privilege. When that power and autonomy is exercised at great distance, and when it is accompanied by insane committment and endless hours, so many that you move to work for a few months to attack the job at hand, well, it comes with the privilege of ocassionally taking liberties. In my case my great liberty was I skipped first breakfast. I brazenly entrusted my senior staff, their staff and the staff they supervised with breakfast for the 6-12 year olds.
It was understandable and in my defense I tried hard to be there by the end of Wawa breakfast to at least check in. My skills were rarely needed here and my support was hopefully felt in other ways. You see, the hours of a summer camp professional, roughly sun up to sundown to curfew to on-call until sun up, are the hours one keeps when they are a mythical creature or a college student. Being neither, being in reality a 33 year old man with a quite specific, though veiled case of Peter Pan syndrome, I felt it was within my capacity to do this job that I’d been doing in some capacity since I was the college kid getting up at the crack and getting my guys ready to be to breakfast on time. I was normally right. I did the job well, really well and by the end I at least maintained ‘well enough.’ This was probably the sunset of my ‘really well’ years and I knew how to operate.
There is a specific thing that goes by the wayside at camp. Vanity. Actually, now that I say that I realize it’s a lie. I was awash in vanity. It just looks different at camp. Vanity is masked in disgusting personal habits, lax hygeine, scattershot bouts of shaving and an overall bedraggled appearance that screams for attention with witty asides and hats that once spoke whimsy that now speak to tradition. I did all the things. I was a fully institutionalized man you could say, a camp guy. Complete with my own unique quirks and a signature style of management. I was a guy that by all accounts was camp basic. Standard issue to all who were more than an arms length away. I was quick with a smile, easy in conflict, ready to stand up to anything and ready to help whenever asked and happy to be invisible when things were good.
My day to day at the camp was as often at a desk as it was out and about. I loved getting out though. I loved stepping always from budgets, off the phone, away from my responsibility to my bosses who were based hundreds of miles away in the city. The camp day was a race to accomplish all the proactive planning one intended to do versus the reactive responding one was compelled to do and often it left you working until all hours. Then it left you waiting until the very end of the talent show to see the routine the cabin of 14 year old guys had been working on all week and responding to the girl who couldn’t understand why the girls she liked didn’t like her, or she didn’t think they did.
Then it was the counselors, the hardest working 17-22 year old kids you’d ever want to see finding you to tell you all that transpired that day and the week leading up to that day (for context) and why it was all so unfair to them. Then walking the smartest, most talented people I’ve ever worked with through the experience they lacked in order to build them up to earn the experience they’d get from facing the challenges that come with being accountable to 30-40 kids with special needs, the parents and caregivers of all those kids, the bosses, like me and others they were working with and all their friends who now needed so much from them now that they were supervised by them. This last part was my favorite.
On the day in question I was asked at breakfast, not the one I skipped, the second one, the older kids breakfast, If I’d be making a run. This was another one of my jobs. Making the hour plus drive to Walmart to get supplies. I wasn’t planning on it, but they were kind of stuck if I didn’t. It was for the girls cabin and I asked Lexi if it was stuff they NEEDED needed or if it was stuff that could wait til next week. I was home on weekends (more of that earned liberty taking) and had a busy day of commitments. She said yeah, it would be good if I could go. She was uncommonly talented and knew at 20 how to gently tell her boss, ‘Yes, dummy, this is important.’ Being good at being the boss I understood her. I wasn’t going home til the end of the following day, so I was sure I could make it happen, even if it was at the end of the night.
The day proceded however it proceded. As it was getting to the end of second dinner I was telling Lexi I’d be heading out and would drop the stuff off at the girls cabins when I returned, after evening program.
‘Um, can you help me with something first?’ She said.
‘Sure. What’s up. Do we need to step outside?’ I asked.
‘No, but come with me.’ She grabbed her tray and radio and stood up.
‘Go sit with the STEP guys. Hang out for a minute. Tell me if you see anything.’
So I did. STEP was our older guys, 18-24 or so, who were capable of coming back and having a work experience be a part of their time here. It wasn’t for everyone. We had at most room for 10 per session. Kind of a graduate level camper. They had need for support, but they had a great deal of independent skills as well.
‘So, did you notice anything about Taylor?’ She asked.
‘Not particularly. Seemed to be in a good mood.’ I replied.
‘Yeah. I mean, he’s always in a good mood. But it took me a bit too. He shaved his eyebrows off.’
‘WHAT?’
‘Yeah. I asked him why and he said, my mom told me to shave my whole face while I was at camp.’ She said.
‘Oh my GOD!’ I said and started cracking up.
‘I know. I asked him how he liked his new look and he said he thought it looked cool.’ She said.
Now, I can’t tell you how much this is no big deal for someone like Lexi. She was poised beyond her years, emotionally and in all other ways intelligent and intuitive. But when you are 20 and you take your job of taking care of others kids seriously, and you are a tad shellshocked from being the point of contact for parents of kids with special needs, day and night for weeks on end, who are on ocassion quite nervous to be alone without them for what is often the very first time, well the potential for disaster in calling a parent to tell them their kids will be coming home with at best a five o’clock shadow where their should be eyebrows, well, it can call for some support from your boss.
We talked and laughed and talked and laughed and finally arrived where we needed to be.
‘How’s your relationship with his mom?’ I asked.
‘Great. I mean, until now.’ She said.
‘How about we just laugh. Life is short and she seems like someone who gets it. I mean, I’d be happy to make the call if you like, but I think we should just treat it with her like we’re treating it now. No one got hurt, it’s super funny. We could present it that way. I’ve always known her to get it. What do you think?’
She was down, and she would make the call. But this was a risky approach. We had faith that she would have a good perspective, but I was going to be there. So, once whatever the activity was that was going on that night was off and running we stepped out to the office to make our call. Being a pro I took the pro’s approach…
‘Oh no, I’ve done a ton of these kind of calls, you get used to it. You want me to do it?’
‘No, I think I got it.’
Phew. She bought it. Now, lets see how this goes.
Ding ding ding… We were right! His mom coulndn’t even stay on the line long enough to say goodbye in real words. She was in stitches. Crying, laughing. It was a highlight of my life hearing the volume of that laughter that came from that phone as Lexi joined her cracking up at something that was genuinely funny.
So, dusk upon us I told her I’d be heading out.
‘What do the older girls cabin need? In the hubbub of dinner I didn’t get a list.’
‘It’s not a list. They need a few cans of FDS.’
‘What’s FDS?’
Sometimes when you are young you forget that people who are right next to you don’t posess all your knowledge. She was dumbstruck.
‘um, really?’
‘Really.’
She hemmed. She hawed. I waited, unaware why she was so uncomfortable.
‘Our girls are a little older. You know, we go up to 18?’
Nope. I’m still staring at her blank faced and innocent.
How about this…
‘What does it stand for?’
‘Feminine Deoderant Spray.’
I was inclined to say something like, Oh, like ‘Secret’, but the implication was that it was not ‘secret’, and it was. Nuff said.
‘Where do I find that?’ Okay, one more question.
So there I was, a list from the younger girls cabin in my cargos, unshaven and unkempt in clothes that were wearing me headed off into the late night to do my little part that took a long time. An hour plus each way to the Walmart in Kingston where I would ocassionally see several people I just knew were there doing the same thing. Making time where there was none to do things important but not important enough to be done earlier than the middle of the night.
Now, all of this is context. I was away in the woods in a committed lifelong pursuit to make the world a better place. I was a man who cared about how he spent his time, but not so much how I appeared outside of this little world where all of us, dirty, tired and worn, understood who we were and why we were there. We were the good people, dammit. Breaking down barriers in the real world and in the minds of children who would go on to build on our small but hard earned successes. We were planting seeds and tending gardens that would bare fruit for our children. But to the other people in Walmart, I was just a clearly unwell man, one who could use some help taking care of himself. Someone to be cautious of, someone to perhaps be careful with. Who smelled funky.
But there is no one who was more concerned for who I was or what I was up to then the woman at the cash register as I lay my admittedly very small pile of items onto the belt for her to ring up. If there were a silent alarm system under the till I am both thankful and concerned that she didn’t activate it. You see my list consisted of three items and three items only. The aforementioned Feminine Deoderant Spray. A few packs of multicolored underwear for little girls. Candy.
I saw the look in her eye and rushed my way through all my explainations. I’m engaged to be married, I run a camp for kids, sleepaway. I was sent with this list. I didn’t even know what this stuff was a couple hours ago. Ugh. It was only making it worse. We both survived our one and only interaction, but we were both scarred, far as I could tell.
As I dug into the candy for the ride home I did something I never did on any of the other nights I was out and about running errands throughout the Catskills. I set the cruise control. For the exact speed limit. If ever there was a night when the cops might be looking for me it was this one.
Sometimes trying to make the world a better placed can be severely misunderstood.
I am spending the summer home with my sons. They are 5 and 7. I fully appreciate the unencumbered, freewheeling imagination of these bright young boys. I do. I say this as a disclaimer to be applied to what might be considered a hurtful thing to say did you not know how truly enamored and impressed I am with these children. They are the apple of my eye and the light of my life.
They are also the progenitors of the largest private collection of horribly conceived ideas I’ve ever come across. The tonnage alone makes their collection impressive. I am the sole arbiter of these ideas. I am the judge and jury and I can tell you, I could shout ‘NO!’ at the outset of any question beginning, ‘Daddy can I…’ and I’d feel justified and correct in my response 99 times out of 100.
Being a good person and modeling the patience I wish them to possess I listen fully to most of these proposals. Here’s a small sample of things I’ve said no to this summer.
‘Daddy, can we bring the hose into the trampoline?’
‘Daddy, can I walk to the store alone?’
‘Daddy, can Charlie drive me to Grandma’s house and you and mommy stay here?’
‘Daddy. Can you open my window so we can jump down to the top of the umbrella on the deck?’
‘Daddy, can we go by ourselves out to stop strangers with dogs to pet them, right by the road, around the corner where you can’t see us and ask them if they have candy and if they would take us for a ride in their windowless van?’
Okay, that last one wasn’t asked, the 5 year old just did it. Granted, it was just the petting strangers dogs around the corner part, but any decent parent fills in the rest and doesn’t allow them out to the back porch without supervision once they are reminded of the total lack of common sense possessed by a five year old.
These are the times when they think to ask. Other times it’s just luck that I caught them in the act.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask incredulous.
‘I’m putting sunscreen on my tongue.’
‘NO!’
Saying no to my kids was once a hobby. After this summer, seeing the decisions they’d make without me, I have come to think of saying no to my kids more as a passion. It is what I need to do, sure, but it is also what I love to do.
Besides, saying no to trying Fortnite is so much easier when it is part of a larger milieu.
There is nothing more exposed in me by our marriage than my pridefulness stubbornness vanity my unending need to be right. This was a surprise to me. Before marriage I could delude myself into thinking myself nearly always validated. If not by actual confirmation of my rightness than by a complete and utter lack of having to own my wrongs. I could always just take my conviction with me, fully intact and unharmed by anything approaching a fair adjudication. This is the great privilege of being single; a deep and unloveable self righteousness that I miss. Sincerely. That’s the good shit right there. But marriage, with all its pleasures, brings with it a heavy dose of reality. Which in my case reveals the aforementioned, strickened attributes. Comeuppance for short.
Still, sometimes, backstage, my old self comes out. Unafraid of conflict and unmoved by evidence and I will stand my ground no matter how wrong I am. I should note that in what is to follow I’m not even certain I was wrong. She very well could have been. Most likely it wasn’t even a disagreement based on disagreement.
Marriage sometimes requires subtle parries around simply who we are. We were likely just in need of some generalized disagreeableness. It’s okay. It might sound awful to one considering marriage. That’s okay. I’d have spent a good deal of time judging that when I was not married too. For sport I now realize. But at the time it was serious and important. Just know that your feelings are more important and I’m considering your reasoned scorn and doing some good hard thinking about myself, buttercup. And to my married friends, I think you know what I mean. Some good old fashioned, no blood, no foul, standard issue, Sunday morning silent sneering. It passes with some minor pointed statements, some purposeful planned ignoring and a good 15 minutes of alone time, usually under the guise of a trip to the bathroom on one or the others part. In this instance it was me who scrammed.
The last angry thought I had that particular Sunday morning was likely some 10-15 minutes later. I sat there largely cooled off before thinking, ‘Why the hell don’t we always have a spare roll on the back of the GD toilet like every other f****n’ bathroom in all of suburbia!’ Yes. There I sat, praying there was a hidden bidet we’d never noticed at purchase. This would be the PERFECT time to test out a bidet. I mean, I’ve never tried one, but god, it sounds luxurious. Besides, when better to take that private leap than when you are in desperate need of assistance but your personal shortcomings as an actualized person keep you from doing the only logical, only sanitary thing and calling down, in the age old tradition, and asking your spouse to come up and get you some TP. Well, needless to say I wasn’t doing that. I considered calling the kids, but that was too suspicious. Besides, they would sell me out somehow faster than I’d be caught out if I did call her for the help.
Nope. I ‘prideful manned’ it out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, all the way to the linen closet and duck walked all the way back to my proper perch. It was the act of a desperate man. Immediately upon my return I realized how very, very stupid I am. It made me laugh. Than I meme’d it. Because I’m 44 and desperate for likes and smiley faces. This further de-escalated me and like that the disagreeableness was over. I came down, after washing my hands thoroughly of course, showed my wife and we were once again right back in to the lifelong laugh we are sharing. No worse and probably a little better for having asserted a little thoughtless ego preservation.
I’ve never been truly thin. Not even as a kid, when I reasonably could have been considered ‘lanky’. Whatever wireyness I might have possessed was due almost entirely to my reaching my height sooner than most of the kids I grew up around. I’m 6’2″ if you go by the tale of the tape next to my headshot in the program. 6’1″ easily if you go by actual measured height and I got a legit 5’11” of that height by the time I was in 7th grade or so. But even then I knew not to go shirtless too regularly. I was kinda fat-skinny.
In the years since then I’ve become just plain old husky. I’d be burly if I could pull it off, but doughy tugs pretty firmly at me. I’m 43 now so I’m not sure I’ll ever dip down below 200 lbs ever again. I’m okay with that as long as I’m able to stick around for as long as my kids really need me. But let’s just say the metabolism ain’t where it could be. Or rather, I’m 43, from what I hear it’s exactly where it should be.
If you are not yet of an age, let me tell you this central and universal bit of misfortune that comes with age; You can gain significant weight in one lost weekend and you can’t lose that weight without a month or more of committment, discipline and sorrow. At least I’m told you can. You certainly can’t lose it with a months worth of backsliding committment and little to know will power and endless taking it easy on yourself and having that extra cookie. That much I can say for certain. That path is one I’m testing. Been doing it twenty years now and while I’m not yet fully ready to share my data, I’ll let you know that I’m starting to notice some pretty predictable patterns. I mean, it’s like the least groundbreaking science you’ll ever see. To that end I’m taking it easy on my overstressed joints in hopes of making them last a tad longer. Cross your fingers for me!
So this post weekend was the worst kind I’ve come across over my many era’s. While it was thoroughly enjoyable in all other ways, this weekend was a disaster for my ever diminishing hopes of ever getting back into that suit I wore on the wedding day. A day I should note happened in my mid thirties when I was significantly past my playing weight. And don’t get me started on ever fitting in that speedo I’ve yet to buy that I’ve always imagined I’d use to embarrass my kids at beaches over the summers of their youth. Though that’s perhaps more of a committment issue for me. I mean, I really have to go for that bit for it to work, but I’m just not there yet, guys. Please don’t pressure me.
This past weekend was a quick trip to the grandparents. Well my kids grandparents. My inlaws. They are the nicest, kindest people on earth. So nice that they, well, she, makes ALL of the things I’ve ever complimented and told her I loved. Have you ever had pumpkin pie ice cream? Not pumpkin pie with ice cream, though I will note this here for future reference, but rather pumpkin pie flavored ice cream. I have. I hadn’t when I woke up last Friday. Now I’ve had an easy half gallon. Super easy. Like so easy.
I remember hearing for decades now that you can get serious control over your diet by writing down everything your eat. It’s supposed to keep you from overindulging I guess. Maybe spur some healthy, light self loathing. After loosening my fat cargo’s I thought, maybe I have to do it. So I took a sheet of paper and wrote. Chicken salad sandwich, 1 2 3 bowls of pumpkin pie ice cream, chocolate chip coo- and I stopped. Right in the middle. Damn that was one fine homemade chocolate chipper she gave me, I thought. There have to be more. No one bakes one cookie, I thought some more. And like that I was off. Sure enough. Full tin. Right there, out in the open. Where I could grab a half a cookie anytime. There, maybe six halves, whenever I walked by. Damn, damn, damn. Writing didn’t work. Don’t worry, there were rich buttery scones to get me through breakfast.
Anyway, it occurred to me this past weekend that Perhaps I’m missing a real opportunity here. Maybe there are other men, men like me, men of what we like to call a certain age. Men who pause a beat too long when someone says to us from behind a counter, ‘Sir, I said we have a chip reader’. I love chips. I just learned how to make them from scratch. Well I mean, it’s pretty basic, but I digress. My million dollar idea is simple. It will take some marketing to convince my customers, but I’ll be the first and most enthusiastic of adopters. Without further ado…
It’s well past time that men like myself should have a good, high quality, fashionable, High waisted, control top, boxer briefs to wear in the wake of these lost weekends. This market is real
Who’s with me!
‘Hello Sh*thead, how are ya?’
This was my morning greeting. Every morning. For two weeks each summer from 1995-2002. I can’t remember which session he came, but Devin was a legend. Well, maybe not originally. I think he was kind of a blender-inner prior to us boys of Lodge 12 meeting him and getting to know him in ’95. From that summer forward though, he was a legend.
I can tell you that he came session 3. There were five sessions and his was in my first as Lodge Leader. Yep, I was a camp counselor, the foundation of my 20 year camp career, for 4 weeks. Anyway, another story for another time. Just know that I was nervous. I was eager to do well, and as was and remains my custom, I really was very unprepared for what my position was. I work best when hiding panic and ignorance under a facade of confidence and competence.
‘Oh, hi. You the leader.’
‘I am. Your Devin, right.’ I asked.
We were outside the cabin after rest hour, before period 3 activity. I was all official, hiding behind my clipboard with my daily schedule and other forms I hoped no one would ask about.
‘Did you take a shower, Devin? Like, just now?’
Devin was maybe 46. I was 21. Still, I was the Lodge Leader and he was the guest.
‘Oh, no.’ He said, wistfully, voice drifting. ‘I haven’t showered in five f*cking years.’
I think I heard that right, but I better check.
‘What was that.’
‘Five long, happy, Jewish years.’ Devin said.
I looked over at him and smiled. I then laughed. He reflected me.
That was how I met Devin.
Devin lived with his mother, best as I could tell. He was the living and breathing definition of an ‘unreliable reporter’, so who’s to really say. He would often wake in the cabin, the one we all woke in, in sight of everyone all night, to tell his cabinmates and staff that he was hungover.
‘How are you hungover?’ we’d ask.
‘I was drunk last night. Oh, yeah. I had two Schaeffer’s beers.’ Everything he said was kind of sing-songy and benefited greatly from a delivery I can’t even begin to capture. He’d say these things, eyes getting big, face serious, holding your appraising eyes for a couple of seconds until his whole face would break out in a big jowly grin, eyes now softening and gleaming with mischief and humor.
I came to seek out his familiar and always energetic salutation, ‘Hello sh*thead, how are you?’
Devin, all our guys, they lived lives of limited independence. Limited, certainly, by their abilities. They required some level of assistance, some a good deal, some it took a while to find, but all of them were there for a reason. But they loved camp because we were new. New staff, kids and they were the old pros. Some might have seen all of us taking a guest ‘under our wing’ and developing real, lasting bonds and genuine connections. What you had to be there longer to see was them taking us under their wings, teaching us and grooming us. Befriending us and taking a shine to us. We got to know them and they got to know us and at some point we all had different roles to play and we loved playing them, but there really was just an ‘us’. ‘Them’ were left behind about half way through the first day the guests arrived.
Devin was funny. His sense of humor was a tool for him like it is for many of us. One that is hugely helpful and ocassionally misused and capable of getting any of us who use it into trouble. It helps us out of trouble more, though. It’s a powerful thing, the ability to make others laugh and I loved that he had it. Largely because it’s also a powerful thing to laugh and he made me laugh nearly every day.
So when it came time to take him to the dentist I jumped at the chance when asked. I wasn’t in his Lodge anymore and I’m sure I had no idea what it was for. Whatever it was it wasn’t anything major. Still, I had to at least prep him for what was to come. I decided to do so in the van on our way down the mountain to the dentist.
‘Now, Devin, I know you know this, but I feel like I have to say it.’ I said.
‘What?’ He said, in that overly expressive and delightful way of his.
‘We’re going to be in the community. You have to mind your P’s and Q’s’
‘Yeah.’ He said, giggling.
‘Seriously. Gotta be careful with the language. At the lodge, we’re family, but these folks won’t know you.’
‘I know. Helen tells me not to swear at the dentist.’ Said Devin.
‘Well, You have a very smart mother.’ I said.
It was just that. He was more than capable of understanding and I was virtually sure that he did. The rest of the ride was just fun. If you haven’t worked at a summer camp you can’t know how fun it is to get in a vehicle that can in no way be classified as a bus, to go to that magical land known only as ‘off grounds’. To be doing so with a legend, well, that was just the cherry on the top of this already super awesome sunday of a ‘job’ I was asked to do on this day.
I’ll skip the details of the appointment as they are not notable save this one factor; I can’t tell you the joy it brought me as ‘The Kaiser’, as he often referred to himself as, would just look at me sideways, smiling, ever on the verge of bursting, from across the room and in the chair. It was magical and sustained. He was giving me this look of not at all hidden conspiratorial mischievousness that was just great. And he did great. He was a model patient as I’m sure he always was. He was, after all, a simply lovely man.
‘Sir. Can you sign this please.’ We heard as we approached the door to leave.
‘Of course, I say.’, and we made our way back to the lobby window. It was a standard, midsummer, midday, midweek dentist office. Moms and kids mostly. Perhaps a few working people getting some work done on a workday. Nothing of note but the room was populated.
‘Just sign here.’ I would have signed anything she gave me. I still have no idea how that appointment came to be and less of an idea of how it might have been paid for. I didn’t even look at or even for the number. But apparently, Devin did.
‘Holy f*cking s*it, Helen’s gonna f*cking kill me.’ Devin sung.
It. Just. Hung. There.
Slowly I turned to look at him. I wasn’t angry or even bothered. I was just in awe.
‘What?’ He asked, eyes gleaming and smirk growing.
I know the moment now all too well. The moment when I am responsible for someone who is unaware of the proper way to handle a situation and I’m supposed to communicate something akin to, disappointment, I guess. The stern look of a dad to my child is what I do now but there are times where the overwhelming funniness of the thing they have done so outweighs the importance of the ‘teachable moment’ that we all just crack up in a ‘laughable moment’ of true and beautiful connectedness. Well, I can say for certain that the receptionist didn’t see the humor in this outburst. Her loss. It was instantly and remains one of the genuinely most joyous moments of my life walking out of there with him, both of us cracking up.
‘Ew, no Charlie! Wahhhhhh!’
The above is shouted. Sharply and insistently. It is my four year old son’s response to his brother eating yogurt. Or an apple. Or drinking milk. Teddy is not one for subtleties. He cares not for the feelings of those who offend his olfactory senses and he will not be dissuaded from his opinion that the vileness of these things are rightly and roundly rebuked. No sir, he will simply prefer to spoon his ketchup into his mouth in a different room, thankyouverymuch.
Okay. He’s 4, it’s not like he’s great at thinking of others feelings, but you’d think there’d be some recognition that registering his disgust so broadly, and by that I mean in the ‘broad comedy of Jerry Lewis’ (May he RIP) sense of the word, might be hurtful. But no.
Just today we were in the car and he starts.
‘Drink it! Charlie, Drink it.’ The first sentence was shouted. This is white noise to all of us by now. It is ignored and as much registered as a first, ‘morning’ one says prior to coffee, still half asleep. But the second was screeched in the manner of the classic Hollywood scream queens. This is by no means reason for alarm though it does wake the rest of us up.
‘What?! What is happening! Why are you screaming! Is everyone okay! WHAT’S WRONG!!’ This situation clearly needs a bumbling, distracted, middle aged man to thunder in with volume and stress. It’s just the recipe to really get everyone calm quickly and I’m just the man to do it.
‘Charlie won’t drink his drink.’ Teddy says.
‘Teddy, that’s too far. You are not in control of when Charlie drinks his drink. Come on, buddy?’
Appeals to reason, I should know by now, are only passingly accepted and ONLY when they suit his need for utter and total control of all that he purveys. This statement, I should note, could easily be applied to myself or T so, you know, art is in the eye of the beholder, so whichever you prefer.
‘Charlie’s drink is empty.’ Says Developing Mom (a name I hasten to add is only employed in the most sophomoric of tongue in cheek fashions as she is a fully formed and wonderful mom) in a manner that is dismissing the dramatic nature of the 4 year olds clearly false claim, for which he has clearly been busted for his over dramatic ways. This is done so nonchalantly as it is de rigueur by now.
‘No!’ screams T, ‘The drink in his mouth!’
Come to think of it, Charlie has been suspiciously quiet. Good for him, don’t let him take you down, dude.
‘Teddy. He can swallow whenever he wants. You don’t get to control everything. But I will let you know something. The mare you ask and cry the less likely he is to swallow it. Just be quiet for a minute and I’m sure he’ll swallow it down. Besides Chocolate milk slowly turns into rotten chocolate milk if it stays in your mouth too long. Surely he knows that.’ Okay, I’m making up the last bit, about the rotting in your mouth. But I wish I said it.
‘Teddy, it’s gone now.’ said Charlie, finally entering the script from his pivotal though silent role as unwitting, though I suspect fully witting, agitant.
And like that we’re off, to our next dramatic flourish which is surely no more than a mile or two down the road. Teddy is like me in many ways. One is that he can be ‘over peopled’. Today we were at the Adventure Aquarium, one of his favorite places on earth. He loved it and behaved. He was all you could ever want from an excited and engaged four year old. His big brother was at his best as well. But, you know, now back in the car, away from the maddening crowd, he had to let some of that stress out. It was a huge relief to be home after periodic meltdowns all the way home. We said no to screens all the way home as well, so it was a bit.
But it was good to be home. Everyone reverting to their creature comforts. I with my whiskey (okay, that’s only happening now as I write in a quiet house at 1:14 in the morning), Teddy with his cheese stick to wash down his pizza (I can’t wait until I offer a menu item with mozzarella and he insists he hates the stuff) and Charlie with his apple and a yogurt. Yep. I was over done and I brought out two parts of T’s unholy trinity just like that and put it down right there, right where he could smell it (his claim to how it offends) and see it (the obvious actual trigger to his claims of fear and loathing).
I braced myself. But nothing came.
‘I eat apples like that at school.’ He said. School is daycare.
‘What?’ I said, incredulous.
‘I Like them at school.’ He said. Just like that. No biggie.
‘He said he likes yogurt there, too.’ Said Charlie.
When the hell were you gonna tell me! I didn’t say it, but come on!
‘Did you hear this, honey? Teddy eats apples at school. He likes them!’ I said as Developed Mom walked by.
‘I know.’ She said.
‘Did you know he likes YOGURT there too!’ Come on, share some outrage at this travesty I screamed with my eyes.
‘No, I know. He drinks milk there, too.’
What the hell.
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From the start this blog has been an art project for my kids. It was meant to be a place where I could document the process, from the start. I wanted a place where they could visit where they were before the memories were there own. A place to shade and fill in the memories they cling to years from now, when we are old and the world is there’s. To this day that remains the thrust of my writing.
Over time that initial idea has expanded. I want them to know who I was when they were little, but the further I went down that road the more I wanted them to know who I was when I was little like them. I want them to know who Nana and Papa were and why I think of them as heroes. I want them to have a place to learn the story of how I met their mom. I want them to read about the love we had for each other that lead to our family. I want them to read about how hard it all was as well as how fun and amazing it has all been. I wanted them to understand my flaws and see my imperfections. I want them to understand that I knew they were there and worried about how they’d be affected by them.
As you can see the sprig of that initial idea, to make an art project for them of our early family is at the root, but like any organic thing fed and loved, that idea grew and continues to grow. One way it grew was that it turned out that there was an audience for this kind of art. This project with a specific audience seemed to be relatable to many others feeling and experiencing the transformative nature of parenthood in a way that made others seek out some of my sotories. Some were funny and some tender. It was a huge day when outlets like Scary Mommy would accept these writings and publish them. I’m thrilled to have worked with amazing editors at sites like Mamalode, Good Men Project and Sammiches & Psych Meds, amongst others.
It’s been and remains a journey that I’ve enjoyed. It was only natural when I came to a point where I decided I wanted to collect the best of my writing, the most personal, the funniest, the most well written and turn it into a book. It was exciting to work on these pieces and in the process I started to see a forest amidst examining the trees. This process of growing into the dad I am now has been extraordinary and I’m so happy I have this place where not only they will be able to come to learn about us but Karen and I will be able to visit years from now when we want to visit this most vital and amazing time in our lives, when we are rich in memories and have time to collect ourselves and make sense of lives well spent I’m heartened to know this place will be here for us.
If you would like to purchase a kindle ebook or a paperback copy of your own with these stories you can find them here.
‘It’s because Donald Trump is Mayor!’
There’s some subtle humor in the phrasing, but it doesn’t overshadow his tone. Charlie is not a fan of our current President. We kept the election from the kids but we haven’t been able to control the fallout.
Charlie came home on November 8th having learned about the process of voting. Apparently they held a mock vote in his class. Kindergarten. Whatever. Best I can tell he heard the names of the candidates the first time that day. Being our child he felt a great deal of guilt when he found out that he voted for a candidate he wouldn’t have had he been better informed. Than a kindergartener. Again, whatever.
‘Now Charlie, we disagree with President Trump, but we don’t get angry.’ I say, obviously causing some confusion as I’m certain he has met me before this moment and is aware of my Tuck Frump t-shirt I wear on my demeanor at all moments of the day. That said, I’m here to teach. ‘We have a job to do. We have to be extra nice to people. We have to show people that we love them and care about them. Right?’
It’s not that often, but it’s a routine conversation by now and we are all familiar with our script. Some of the older kids at the Y dropoff informed him one day that his brown friends were going to be kicked out of America. Strange conversations are being had with kindergarteners these days. Lots changed since either of my turns in Kindergarten in pre-Reagan America.
Over the weeks following the election he became more militantly defensive of Hillary than I was. I certainly liked her enough, to paraphrase my favorite POTUS. But we fancy ourselves decent people and as such we believe in equality. Some people call this many things, one of them being feminist. I prefer to think of it as decent, but fine, feminist is a badge we men in this family will wear well if a woman so chooses to place it on us.
So you could imagine my shock when I heard Charlie dancing around the house singing…
‘Shake it, shake it, Hillary.’
On it’s face this may be the exact antithesis of what we hope for our boys. It sounds objectifying. It sounds dismissive. It sounds sexist. And it would be if, say, I were the one saying it. It wasn’t me. It was a six year old kindergartner.
I got one of those Google Home things for my birthday. It’s amazing and can change how everything in your home, née your life, works. It can apparently simplify everything from taxes to exercise, provide onsite security and clean your house at the mere utterance of ‘ok, google.’ This is what the commercial will have you believe. For our purposes however it’s mainly a voice operated speaker. It plays music. Still, a great value for such a magical thing.
One of the magical memories of our brief, though memorable courtship my wife and I share were our many weekend trips from the city up to our favorite hippy dippy slow food gourmet restaurant in Woodstock. We used to luxuriate on the rides upstate. After our meals we would drive home, not a care or pressure in the world. After having kids I’m pretty sure I remember life before as pressureless. One of the things we liked to do on these weekend trips was listen to cool radio. We dated in our 30’s so sometimes this meant NPR weekend entertainment. Other times it meant college radio. WFUV was a favorite. You could get it for about the last hour or so of our ride back to Astoria, Queens.
‘This is a Dead song. I don’t know who’s playing it, but the dead played it as well.’ I said.
‘Hmm. It’s good.’ She said.
We enjoyed after the song hearing the story of the song, what the meaning of the song was and all it’s somewhat obvious storytelling. The history of the song was fascinating as well. How different bands had come to it, earliest known playing of it and the songwriters story. I could have this all wrong. Whatever was said, we both kinda fell in love with the song. ‘Sugaree’ was the name and it was one I’d always known but never really heard. It was like we discovered it together that night.
So fast forward eight or nine years and it was nice to finally have our magical voice activated jukebox be able to whisk us back to that awesome time. It was a more than risqué song, but it was buried under melody and metaphor and adult knowledge, and none of the words in themselves were bad, so what harm could it do to have it playing while we raised two little boys. Besides, could do worse than the Grateful Dead.
Until your burgeoning little man starts singing a woman’s praises by imploring, ever so innocently, to ‘Shake it, shake it, Hillary.’
developing dad 