Tag: love

I Wish I’d Met You Earlier

‘If I could change anything I’d go back in time and meet you earlier so I would have more time with you.’

imageOf course for that to work I’d actually have to go further back than you might think. I’d have to go back to the relationships before I met you, to the therapies and jobs and life lessons and various family functions when I festered with free floating rage and self loathing. The feelings that led me to some of the terrible decisions I made that left me looking for you in my early 30’s via the internet, wasting one Saturday night after another with the wrong people engaged in the same search. And of course you’d have to go back and relive all you’d lived to get back to the same place at the same time. In the end even that wouldn’t give us so much as a fighters chance of creating the events necessary to ensure another 5-10 years with each other.

The truth is had we met earlier I wouldn’t have been ‘the one’ yet and you may not have been either, though I have a harder time thinking that. Truth is we had to get to where we met, separately. In hindsight it was the only way it could have happened. Had you met me earlier you’d have met an even more imperfect man.

But we didn’t meet earlier. Life knew when and where you were going to be and made sure that I was ready. Made sure I had resolved my old and musty issues and was better able to understand how little I knew. Made sure I had learned, even if only in theory, that the person you love and commit to is not meant to be the end of the challenges and the resolution of all discomforts but rather they are your help and comfort while facing them. Life made sure I knew that it was my job to be that for you, too. That the dream of finding someone to love and be loved by was not the equivalent of going on permanent vacation. That it was not your pillows fluffed and your sheets turned down and rooms cleaned magically and freshly stocked paper products everywhere you looked. It was not nonstop nights of endless passion and wine and late night bathroom window cigarettes and days full of endless entertainment.

Wedding DayLife brought us to the same place at a time when we were ready to commit. To face the challenges and monotony and joys and unknown glories of having someone to do it all with. To commit not only to someone that could make the highs pure bliss, but also someone who could endure the lows, tell you your crazy and put up with the issues you haven’t resolved. Someone who will love you if you never resolve them. Someone who can write all these things at 12:51 in the morning after we didn’t have our best goodnight ever and never ever have to worry that that means anything other than we each have to figure out what it is we have to apologize for. Because this is real. I’m forever thankful for you. You absorb my frustrations and reflect my joys. You make the bad times quick and the good times permanent. I hope I can do at least some of the same for you.

None of this could have happened any earlier than it did no matter how much later it was than either of us might have expected it.

That said, it does leave me sad in one specific way.

I’m thrilled that Charlie is who he is and that Teddy is who he is. Specifically. Had it been another time they would have been other people. They wouldn’t exist as we know them. So in that sense I’m so happy it happened when it did.  But now I’m left looking at them and thinking…

‘I wish I could have met you sooner so I could have had more time with you.’

imageIt’s impossible for me not to project out now that they are with us. It’s hard to look down the road and know that at 20 I’m whispering to 60.  The math gets more unnerving from there. I’m not going to live forever. It’s something that hit me the second our first was born. Perhaps I’m dumb. We all know it doesn’t last forever. To say that it occurred to me at the moment Charlie was born is to somehow suggest I hadn’t known it all along. I did. I mean I knew people died and I knew I was a person. So, ipso facto and ergo and whatnot. But not like now. Now I’m going to die on my kids. I mean, even in the best case scenarios I die and leave them behind. But at my age the chance is it’s going to be when I would have been too young for my parents to go.

I didn’t learn to even start appreciating my parents until my 30’s. Not in the way they deserved. Not in the way that’s a bit more reflective of the amazing job they did  And my god, I’ve needed them more these days than I can ever remember needing them. I understand how silly and sweet that sentiment must sound to them. I ‘get them’ now that I’m a parent.  It must be cute to them to think I think I ‘need them’ now more than ever. Because those early days, my prehistory, the prehistory that is the equivalent to the one my kids are living now, concurrent with the peak of vibrant life for me are days they won’t  remember. They’re our days, actually, not theirs. Theirs come later. And I was their third. Of six. And there were a few more. I have two and I’ve needed them for all of it.

It worries me to no end that I’ll die while they still need me. The early days are just like that, and I’m still in the early days. But the deeper fear is that I’ll die without them being ready, without them being of an age or established in the life that will be there’s to live, that’s the one I can’t shake. I know no one is ever ready. I know I won’t be. But I’ll have a home, a wife and a job and my boys. I fear leaving them before they have any of this. Before they have roots.

There’s also a selfish piece to it all. I want to live long enough for them to forgive all the things we’ll get wrong and to see us as people, who loved them all the way through, even through the hard times when they couldn’t see why we did what we did. Through the times when we get it wrong. When they couldn’t see the love that was at the root of it all. Because having kids and being a parent and a spouse, it’s made me understand my parents in a way nothing else could. It made me love them in a way that’s oddly equivalent to how much I loved them when I was just Charlie and Teddy’s ages now, when they were my whole world and I was theirs and it made all of us special. There’s a symmetry now and I can see all that they did. I once again think of my parents as something so much more than ‘just people’. It’s your job to realize that they are in fact just people as you depart your family of origin. You have to see them for all their humanity and in that you find shortcomings and magnify them. It’s a part of your liftoff you have to exercise. It’s the balance to those years when they were the sun and the moon. It provides you perspective. But if you’re lucky enough, like I am, you get to come around on that later and see how superhuman their lives have been. I’m back to a place where I can tell them unabashedly how much their love means to me. How much I love them. I want that with my boys. I want to make it there.

‘I wish I’d met them earlier so we would have had more time together.’

Summer Vacation

Spending a summer home with the boys. Exploring and adventuring and looking for work. Lets hope we all find what we need.

Daddy-Charlie-Mommy-Teddy GraduationI’m spending the summer home with the boys. I know that I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to do so. That reality is not lost on me though at times other issues are taking up more primary real estate in my brain and in my heart.

I lost my job. Technically I resigned. This technicality allows me to ascribe far more intent to the action than was necessarily present at the time I wrote the letter, packed up my office and walked out. But in reality, I was canned.

It was the first day of summer vacation yesterday and we got off to a great start. We are home bound until at least July 3rd as we have a fairly major repair due on the car so the boys and I spent our days the way I used to during the long, lazy summer days that feel like someone else’s memories by now. We watched some TV with cereal on the couch in our sleep clothes. We hung out in the backyard hitting wiffle balls and bouncing on the trampoline. We even dragged some music out there and played in our tiny, portable, makeshift sandbox.

For the first few weeks, while the boys were in school and I had at least a couple of days home alone I was able to send out mass resume’s and cover letters. I’ve even gotten a few interviews which have gone well but may not lead to anything and certainly won’t for some time. Which is increasingly fine. Frankly, if I could match my income, or even approximate it from home I’d prefer it. I’m not one of those people who will hate retirement. It suits me. If it weren’t for the nagging, inscrutable loss of a sense of self worth that accompanies this part of the journey, when an income is most critical.

We actually did a couple of boxed science experiments that we picked up a few months back. This morning the plaster has set on the citric acid and baking soda volcano we are set to detonate out back. Crystals should be forming in a dish in the garage. We’ll see about that in 4-7 days. I’m dreadful with science. It was actually a fairly comic scene actually, watching me try to pour 13 ounces of water in the bag of plaster/sand mix as instructed seeing as there was about 4 ounces worth of space in the bag to pour into it.

‘Well, the sand is porous, so surely they wouldn’t give us a bag to use for this without it having enough space within it to follow their instructions.’ I said, foolhardily. Though in hindsight it was obvious that the bag, minus the mix, simply empty, could not have carried the water it instructed us to add. Learned that trails of plaster mix can be cleaned up pretty effectively with wipes. So that experiment turned out at least.

I’m not defeated but I’m probably a perfect dupe for someone pitching me the secret to making a six figure income from home with only a couple of hours of work a day and a modest $399 investment upfront. I would be real receptive to that kind of pitch right now, so please, have some mercy my friends. Also, if I come at you with such a pitch in the months ahead, please say no but be kind. I’m a little lost these days.

Teddy PreK GradI am so happy to have this time with the kids. I just hope I don’t blow it. It’s a strange time in my life and in the world at large to wallow in self-pity. I don’t really have the oomph for that kind of thing right now. The self doubt may grow, but let’s face it, I’m in a house, with my kids who are 5 and 7 and want more of me than I can give. Kind of the ideal time to get an unexpected break from life, so long as I land on my feet on the other end having landed this midlife Triple Lindy.

If there’s one lesson I can take from how it ended it’s this. I brought myself to the edge months ago. I knew it was not working. The work was good, the people were great and by most measures I was doing very well. Unfortunately the relationship between me and my boss, the CEO, was broke. I certainly did my part to break it and was at a loss to fix it. I tried, but it wasn’t fixable. Not by me at any rate. I had prepared and interviewed, had been for a good 9 months. I’d turned down offers because they weren’t enough. Enough money, sure, but I think it was more than that. I think I needed pushing. In the end I’d packed up and prepared to jump and then I waited to be pushed. I won’t do that if this ever happens again. I don’t think it will, but next time, I’ll jump.

Today is day two of summer vacation. We have spent our boxed activities and run out of lunch ideas already. Netflix will take us to 10 but then it’s out back to adventure and explore. Let’s hope we find what we’re looking for, whatever it turns out to be.

Used

We were lying prone and sleeping 

In a bed that wasn’t ours

The fog that had encircled us 

Hid us from the stars

 I’m not one to think out loud

Neither do I drink it proud

But never should you confuse this

With any of your unearned bliss

Chances are my thoughts aren’t deep

Lying crying while you sleep

So shallow laid you in my palm 

Enticing stupor renouncing calm

Had I gathered all your kisses

Collected tears, called you Mrs. 

You would still be gone you see

While I’m right here alone with me

I still know that you were real

And hope that you have learned to feel

The pain you poured so thoughtlessly

Inside a man you’d set to sea

Death and dying will encroach

Us left upon this orbits brooch

 When I assign my life it’s meaning

 Ours won’t have been worth repeating

When I look back on our mistake

I’ll be relieved that all it takes

Is soft and sunny love repaired

By one that never used my cares

The Curious Nature of Time

Time is immutable until it isn’t. For me it got all out of whack after kids.

  When Charlie was born I became a dad. That’s when time first shape shifted. From that point on I haven’t been able to get a hold on it. When I catch up to it and live and move with it, when it all sycnchs up it’s magic. Before long I’ve lost the thread again and even in my memory that moment has morphed from a point in time to a blessed eternal experience that will live outside of time and space for the rest of my days. Other times, times like the colossal journey of the early years are even more inscrutable. The days were repetitious and overwhelming. Too large to be effected by the spinning of the earth. It felt like one never ending day. Until a morning came that looked different and the remembrance of it all now seems to grow smaller, ever more brief the further I am removed. 

  The first moment, the instant I saw my first child broke all understanding and left me a mess. It is easy to look at it and see the 30+ hours of consciousness that buttressed his arrival and think that time was aided in her transformation. Perhaps. What flooded me in that moment though was not due to exhaustion or elation. The full scope of the allotted time for a person became very tangible that moment. I was alerted very directly in that moment to my exact spot on the line that starts with my birth and ends with my death which is now incredibly important that it stretches as far as I can hope out into the timeline of this little mans own linear track. Life was abstract and time accompanied it before. Not tied to anything, not rooted in another’s story. Now it was finite and fading and valued like never before. 

Soon after we were home. Days were like years. Almost literally. I may have conceded to times dominion before I knew it could be questioned, but I knew the differences the years made. I was different at 4 than I was at six than I was at 16. It basically tracked with a standard deviation, but each year brought more knowledge more understanding and dare I say, ocassionally some earned wisdoms. They were absorbed, the ones I could recognize, passively. The learning you achieve by breathing more. By the uncontrolled firing of synapses making connections inside and out. I may not have put it together, not have put words to it, but years came with more than numbers. They brought growth. I grew years in those early days. Not the journey around the sun years, but the equal of them in terms of learning about me, the world, what it all means, how to feed, clean and care for something more than myself. Those are years. And they happened every day their early on. Some days more than others, but every day brought something that gave time a new track to explore and play with. 

  Baby world melded together from one to two. Charlie was just at his first birthday when we learned there was a Teddy coming. So no sooner had we nailed a bedtime routine than we added competition to it. Regression met emergence and envy and competition and compassion and peer-ish relations entered our home. We rolled with the punches much better the second time which was somewhat by necessity as life seems oddly to respond to addition with multiplication in many ways. That said, whatever more there was, it was fed by more and more love and concern. To paraphrase myself from an earlier time, if Charlie came and taught us how long the days could be, Teddy was the child who taught us how short the years could be. 
  Now I am as much observer as participant. I’m a dad of kids who need a good deal of observing. I am also a dad who can’t stop himself from watching as they explore and navigate the world and ideas and their abilities and challenges. They are compelling. They demand attention and I’m now walking with them. I may still retain control but that’s mostly a height thing at this point. Honestly. Their instincts are what drive us now. We maintain rules of the road, but they are driving in every way other than literally, and in many ways they are doing so figuratively even at those times. 

Time is uncatchable for us now. It is surging forward too fast or stopping completely. Slowed to crawl or dancing to its own rhythm and we are learning to find some of the wisdoms we can find from its nature. But mostly, we are finding that the wisdom is knowing we are at the mercy of time and we try as much as we can to respect her and do as much as we can to invest as much as we can that is of value in her. 

Desire 


I won’t rest, I won’t stand still
I’ll do my part and say my fill 
Turn my deed away you’ll see

Though how can you have faith in me

I wasn’t won’t and can’t break free

From fraught and fated history 

A reckoning has come to be

A fate that I shall never see

Too just ain’t for Me you see

No borrowed oppression fantasies

And no one should have sympathy 

For what it is I’ll never see 

never meant and shouldn’t be

Still there is something never told

Bout me from one who wouldn’t know

See parts of me are heaven bound

Trust they are just what you’ve found

But true still is the wanting weed

Turnt easy to the pleading reed

Nature changed in a subtle breeze

To something I can never seize

A light internal burning fire 

Unleashed amidst a burning pyre

Combustion sparked from glint of these

To a guiding wanting leading me

One truth that none can ever tell

For words a gentlemen ever quells

That spoken by the craven beast 

Leave truth unburdened from the least

Though gentleman I surely am

No gentle ten can sooth a man

Whose truest measure is the choir 

That sings to put out the raging fire

Of this good men speak all in jest 

Subverting diverting a mortal quest

Compelled by nature to conspire

The worst we are to quench desire

Civility misunderstood 

By those that wish to know what good

Would come from slinking ever low

Deceiving those they wish to own

It is not so simple for good men

Goodness comes from deep within

Where it fights with thoughtless wonder

To beat out that which divines hunger

Wish the willow you may scream

Hollering in endless fields serene

My body is not mine to drive

Nor is vital and alive

A steady steam releasing pressure

That nothing I can do can measure

I see and hear and respect your pleasure

And hope I win this war forever 

In the end..

For me it won’t be a question 

I won’t consider our connection

The love I’ll feel will not be new

I’m the lucky one for knowing you

Close my eyes I’m standing on toes

Reaching for the hugs you gave me 

Striving for the love I’ve taken

Eventually I’ll know it in my bones 

That the love you gave was mine alone

So special did you make me feel

That never did I want or reel

From blows I fought that never came

And loves I lost for not a thing

In the end it won’t be like that

You have seen to giving me

A taut and tough security

No in the end I’ll never wonder

Of all the love I’ve thrown asunder 

No in the end what I’ll succumb to 

Is did you know how much I loved you.

The Opportunity Lost: Boys and Sexuality

To be frank, there is no place for my voice in the reckoning society is going through. I can fancy myself as inclusive as I care too. It won’t change the fact that I am afforded a single key hole through which to see and interpret the world. I can be educated, empathic, open to new ways of thinking and sensitive to the different world others see and it doesn’t matter. I am 44, male, white and middle class. I am as full of blind spots as anyone else and as imbued with the confidence inherrent in a man who has perhaps done good things but who has also been the great beneficiary of a world that has tilted toward him. What I can speak to is the perspective I have. As silly as it may sound now, I think I should. Because I was raised in a world that has produced and provided the elaborate permission structures that have allowed all manner of vulgar and vile atrocities to be laughed off, smirked at, dismissed and tacitly supported when not explicitly permitted. So I say my piece aware it is a tiny and possibly unhelpful observation, sure it will reveal unknown blind spots. I’m hopeful there is a grain of fresh perspective in it and accepting of the likelihood there isn’t. 

Male sexuality is to be feared. That is fair. History is replete with wreckage left in its wake. It is a blunt tool wielded too often, far too often, by brutal craftsmen and it is capable in its cruelest, bluntest form of destruction. It has been used to destroy  women, children and men. Wielded as power to subjugate and deprive. Yet it is given to each and every one of us. As such it’s important to be aware of its potential for harm and we should be incredibly cautious. 

This sucks. This is true and it sucks. Why does it suck? For a fairly obvious reason, actually. A reason that is far too often ignored. 

Sex is the porthole to intimacy for so many men. Connecting with other human beings in human ways, in face to face open ways, is not what so many of us are good at. Even those of us that appear well mannered and socially fluent often struggle maintaining relationships in those rare instances when we can initiate them. For many of us the actual physical act is the truest cure for the deep seeded, existential loneliness we live with daily. It truly is access to the divine beauty of the human experience. Not every time, but sometimes. And when it’s not it is always an expression of love in some form. Sometimes its the functional day to day love we give just by being there. Other times its the silly joyousness of sneaking around your kids to care for each other, to give to one another. Sometimes its to comfort and sooth or stoke and enliven. Unfortunately we rarely talk about it this way. I think we should. I think it would go a long way, over time, in reducing the great numbers (far greater than I ever knew) of men who wield their sexuality so overtly and aggressively. A nice side benefit might even be increased personal fulfillment. 

Our world is in the midst of a reckoning around the brutal sexuality we have tolerated, hidden, obfuscated and even celebrated since long before my first, nascent stirrings while sneaking under the coffee table to look at the parts of the JCPenney Catalog I didn’t know I shouldn’t have been scanning. I felt no shame lying my body heavy on the carpet. It felt good. I was five. I quickly learned I shouldn’t be doing that. I learned I should not want to feel that. I learned to sneak it. Innocently exploring sexuality unaware of the word ‘sexuality’, guided solely by native, natural instinct. I don’t actually recall how I learned it, I just did. I sadly would and probably have thoughtlessly facilitated the same type of realization for my own boys. 

The persistence of male sexuality in all it’s unpolished, garrulous, often aggressive insistence is something we can’t turn our heads from. That’s a sentence that has proven false yet still it feels important to state. Like ‘All men are created equal’ or ‘you will be insulated from repurcussion and you are encouraged to inform HR when you feel you have been harassed by a superior.’ These statements are presented as observations but perform as aspirations. We in fact have turned our heads from the day to day, inch by inch indecencies and do so by rote. We have proven to be pretty good at turning our heads from far more than that. From those offenses that cross several lines at once, up to and surpassing criminality. Ignoring transgression has been the norm. In fact very often, prior to this specific moment, and still in many cases in this moment, we seek to poke holes in the victims story immediately so as not to have to deal with it. 

Its going to be hard for any of us who are of a certain age to deny some level of complicity. Probably far more complicity than we think. Even us good ones. All because of a vile and crude understanding of the powerful, near universal sexual immaturity that our culture, western culture, has institutionalized in men. 

Testosterone comes with many things and aggression and competition are certainly prominent among those things. They are not the only thing, mind, but they are prominent and naturally occurring. We exercise all manner of power in seeking to satisfy the dumb, basic urge to have sex. What we have become in so many other areas as a species since the cave dwelling days is startling in comparison to how little it would appear we have evolved in this area. We have adapted, appropriating new methodologies to achieve the clubbed-head outcome, but we have not evolved far from it. That’s sad.

It is not as sad, not nearly as sad as it is for the countless women and girls and boys (and some men for that matter)  who’ve had to navigate a world of near constant predation. I can only imagine, am only just now starting to realize how the world  is for so many, a world where there is very little benefit in trusting anyone. I am not sad for these men finally being held to account. But I am sad for the ones who are navigating childhood and are seeing ever more evidence that this natural occurring thing, this pleasure that forms out of thin air and in their bones, is not to be discussed, explored, thought about or talked about. As if holding it at bay is the best way to process emerging sexuality. Make no mistake, it is dangerous and hurtful and capable of causing calculable and incalculable damage and it should be repressed. Which of course to some degree it must be. But unless you’ve been the 7th grader arroused by nearly every damn interaction with anyone of any type, meaning even just having seen someone from across the schoolyard or accidentally seen the poster of the girl in the spandex gym clothes who is only there to sell your mom yogurt, and known you couldn’t stop your thoughts and your bodies reactions, you’can’t know what it’s like and how terrible you can feel about your bodies insistence.

No one wants to hear the nascent yearnings of the adolescent boy. That’s the problem. We run from the subject, we tell them to ignore this one thing they can barely control. Worse, we tell them to funnel their energy into sports. Great. Go channel this into war games with winners and losers largely determined by physical dominance. In fact be loyal to your teamates at all turns and work together to ensure you deceive, dominate and defeat your opponent. Good. WTF. I love sports, but it is a bit too broadly applied, this universal supplication to boys being involved at all times in it. 

The reality, one I’m frankly more aware of intellectually than I am emotionally, having been raised in a manner greatly fearing and rejecting my teen, male sexuality is the photo negative of the sexless sexiness that is constantly being put on teen girls. Except in the case of girls they seem to be far more engaged in at least the healthy exploration of feelings and relationships. Well, at least they are until all of it is taken from them by one of us viewing the world as a territory for acquisition, dominance and accrual. 

We need to start talking to boys about the beauty, the human nature of their own sexuality. We need to try to get them when they are being overrun by hormones and lack of judgement and act to civilize them. Don’t underestimate the male libido’s wily conceit. It arrives when full physical power does and before consistently sound judgement does. It is an evolutionary positive despite the chaos it can cause society. Who’s more likely to contribute to the growing of the species more efficiently than a horny teen after all. We need to not hide from this Mack truck of hormonal insistence that is sprung on these guys and we need to help them through it. 

Boys need to know that sex is communication on a deep, even transcendent level. They need to hear that it isn’t a game to be won. There is no value in the numbers and tallies. The value is inside the conversations and flirtations, it is in the moments  when you learn why she laughs and what moves her to tears. It is in the physical comforts of intimacy when we are feeling pain or comforting those we care for. It is in the note you write to cheer that special  person up and yes, it is in the kisses and caresses and fumbling eagerness of overpowering desire. And it is in the maddening misunderstandings and uncomfortable conversations. It is in the showing up and staying through the discomfort. It is in the thrill of the urge as much if not more than in the satisfying of it. 

Young men would laugh out of discomfort in being told these things. They’d say something typically stupid in many instances and dismiss the teller as irrelevant. So what. They do that with everything. They are teen boys. But we can’t keep going on forever ignoring, fearing, rejecting and judging the unavoidable sexuality of adolescent boys. Its a necesarry ingredient in making monsters of men. I don’t have answers and don’t know how we can make a world that embraces and fosters a fuller understanding. But I dream of one and hope it arrives in time for my own kids. 

Thanksgivings

I’ve come full circle on sentimentality. It’s not that to some degree I haven’t always had the predisposition, I have, it’s just that it’s become something I embrace, even seek out now that I’ve got some road behind me.

Life is moving as fast as it ever has. Faster in many ways. But for some reason I’m less and less moved by it. I’m underwhelmed by momentous change. I’m not as easily energized by my own morphing and evolutions. I’m simply living it. I’m running full speed to keep up and I’m barely processing it’s going so fast. Who can make sense of this stage with the solid oak I grew from growing ever wiser and the seeds I’ve planted requiring constant tending. Not to mention the intentions I had for myself before the realities I never considered became the droning and pressing necessity of each day as I try to make a life I’ll be proud of.

I’m tired and busy and energetic and overwhelmed at all times. I’m looking at a life that is zooming past and trying to find any and all rest stops and exits that look like I can afford to take them. I’m trying to get as much of this finite life as I am able and it feels impossible to catch up to it.

So I find myself on days like today, Thanksgiving 2017, in a sentimental place where I can experience the benefits of compounding interest as I feel the past in the present. It’s easy to do as Thanksgiving has been a huge part of the magic of life for me.

The early ones were at home and had the tables, all that we could move, fold, setup and tear down, stretching against the grain and crossing transoms to stretch far enough to fit all the family who could be there. I was a kids table holdout who ventured rarely and always regretfully to the grown up table at least once before I was ready. As a result I was always more than happy to give up my seat with the big people to spend another year at the fun table. The food was warm, the air was steamy, small rooms filled with big people and warmed by a kitchen that never stopped.

Later, when we were a tad older, but still young it became Florida! We went every year to visit our grandparents in Vero Beach. It was there my dad pointed out the connection that it might not be pure coincidence that Nana and Papa moved to where his beloved (Brooklyn) Dodgers had there spring training facilities. There I saw the shuttle from the driveway and looked up with my dad who marvelled that his dad, staying warm on the enclosed deck had been around when horse drawn carriages and Model T’s were filling the streets and now we were here in his driveway watching the space shuttle. It was there where we snowy natives spent hours learning how to body surf and seeing my dad in shorts, something rarely seen, but always when there was an ocean to swim in. He liked to bob in the waves, floating with his toes popping out of the water, riding the tide in peace. It was there that I saw the dance between my mom and her husbands wonderful, but decidedly commanding mother play out with a remarkable amount of good humor, understanding and grace on all sides. It was there where the adults I’d know later were the kids I remember now. When we see each other I like to think they see that young vibrant me as well. Time has taken its toll and it always wins, but its nice to know their are cousins who’ve seen you all the way through and know you. The real you. And it was their that I learned I may be the funniest in a room now and again and that may be a very useful thing, but I should never forget that theres a family tree of funny that has deep roots and long and surprising branches. I come from funny stock. Thanksgivings with the Wershing/Medler’s were the funniest.

College came and the family tradition couldn’t last forever. We quickly redeployed and had the usual guests and local family holidays that are the norm. Soon I took to heading up to the mountains where some friends had established roots. Saranac Lake and environs. It might have been just three or four times, but those Thanksgivings were amazing. They were like a vast, tribal, artisanal, low culture-high culture blend you can really only achieve in your twenties. Full capacity, zero responsibility, unmatchable sociability and comraderie and a determination to be adult. To this day, no offense to anyone else ever those meals were the most succulent and delicious I’ve ever had. It was a 3 day party and there were late night shenanigans, beer fridges and high times indeed. It was a joy of being alive kind of feeling that I’ll always love.

Then we had the family gathering at my brother’s house in Poughkeepsie. It was like a perfect little blessing that for those years, with me in the city and my sister in the area as well. We would inevitably show up the night before, until there were kids. Mom and dad would show up at night, mom having cooked a meal for twenty and packed it all in the trunk and we would unload into the just gorgeous home he was always so generous with. We would each offer dish and be welcomed to bring it and make it. My mother always liked us to be involved, but it was her production for sure and it was perfect. Food on the piano for serving, table set to Rockwell like perfection and new family as funny as the rest in on the conversations and bringing new humosrs and smiles to our faces. I don’t know what was said, I may have even had a part in the sequence leading to the laughter, but a memory that sticks out for me is my mom removing her glasses and wiping tears, in full all out laughter, only at catch her breath to say, ‘I haven’t laughed this hard since last night.’, only to kick off another round of table wide guffaws. We were all a little grayer at these gatherings, but we still through the football around and stayed up late enough for our turkey sandwiches and movies. Resisting every urge we might feel to get going home if that was in our plans. This was our first real thanksgiving after the kids. The one where we could bring a baby and begin our families traditions in earnest.

Circumstance changed and kids continued to grow and we began to have our traditional Turkey days at Karen’s parents house. It was such a treat. They live on beautiful land outside Saratoga county. Youhonestly couldn’t paint a more beautiful picture of holiday land. The house was always full of all our favorite treats and every meal was a chance to sit and visit between indoor and outdoor adventures in a landscape carved carefully by nature and man over decades of tending and refining. There were sled rides in snow, treasure hunts, long adventures in the basement workshop and treats to fill the hearts of toddlers and middle aged men. These were magical visits that always started with Grandma and Koba greeting us at the car, as excited to see us as we were to be there. Travel is hard at that early stage, but they always understood and went so far out of their way to make sure the memories were of the wonderous variety.

Now, today, the tradition turned again as we went to a new gathering place in Maplewood. We’ve been passive observers of Karen’s sister and brother in law as they’ve put in countless hours making a warm and welcoming home, a dream home really since moving in years ago. Now once again the tables were laid out against the grain, traveling through the home from back to front, seating and feeding generations of family with more than a delicious meal. It was a magical day. The kids sat at the big table and did mostly great, when they weren’t crawling underneath. Hectic moments when all arrived and too many hands went on instinct to the kitchen, chaos slowly turning to perfection as the food was pulled together by my brother in law, the magician, casual conversations happening everywhere you looked between people who loved being with each other and can so rarely be due to the simple and never ending logistics of life. Good laughs and good food, great stories and long and luxuriant pickingat desserts that fed and fueled the days journey into night. Hugs and goodbyes and smiles and warmth. The tradition is beginning for these guys, the little ones. For me it’s settling into the pace where, seeing it starting again for the kids and watching it evolve once more for all of us grown ups, I can finally catch up to the sentiment. I can feel the nostalgia and the beauty of it all in real time.

It all leaves me so grateful to be sharing this journey with these fellow travelers, every one of them from each iteration.

I Hope You Know… 

I sure do spend a lot of time yelling. I spend a lot of time hugging and reading and cooking and cleaning. I spend a good amount of time playing, though not as much as I should. I spend a lot of time laughing and talking and a lot of time listening. But the yelling. 

It’s losing it’s effectiveness. When I do it in response to inappropriately timed or overly exciteable silliness, you have taken to smirking. I hate it, but sometimes at that point I get super serious and scary. It’s not real scary. At least that’s what I tell myself. I mean, I know for a fact I’d never ever hurt you. But that’s a justification. A true enough one, but one that intentionally uses a very narrow definition of the word, ‘hurt’. 

You’re our first ever 6 year old. I worry every day about what I’m getting wrong. I worry about how I’m going to handle all that I’ve yet to see. What is it gonna be like when you are 7 or 12 or 17. How am I going to protect you from a world you don’t fear enough and I fear too much. What kind of protecting is enough. What kind is too much. What does that look like. I don’t know. You know even less. You see, we’re breaking new ground, in some ways, with every new step you take. I want you to know, I’m scared too. 

I don’t yell as much as I used to. You’ve become a remarkably good little boy and a quite unique and kind and sensitive big boy. But it still happens, more than it should. 

On the flip side I don’t really share with you all that you mean to me. I’m so thankful to know you. As I’ve told you before, you are the person, the only one who will ever live, who made me a dad. Your dad. It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I will never, could never thank you enough. I am so incredibly proud of you. When I was your age I was on my second year of kindergarten. It was an advanced kindergarten that required two years due to the incredibly high IQ’s of the special people selected for it. Okay, that’s not true. When I was first in kindergarten I cried all day every day for months. I was not 5 until Thanksgiving time and i wasn’t ready. I don’t fully believe that even now. To some degree it just felt like failure to me. Failure by me. It was, technically speaking. I’ve actually spent a lot of my life getting over that. I never recovered in relation to school. 

When you so bravely took on the challenge I died a little. I have always despised those parents who lived vicariously through their kids, but apparently I couldn’t avoid it. I said I was scared for you. I was. But I was scared because of me. You were a rock star. A rock star is what we called kids who opened toys on youtube when we were little. Except they weren’t kids and they were in bands. Still, think Evan. You were all kinds of EvantubeHD about the whole thing. 

You are so honest about your feelings and aware of them. You are brave. I struggle with that now. But you are the most sincere and loving hugger of goodbye’s I’ve ever seen. You’ll get silly with your brother when we are leaving, but when Mommy or I are heading out you are so so insistent on making sure you wish us a good day and hug us as many times as you can. We’ve trained some of that out of you by accident, but there’s some that lives in you that we’ll never be able to get to in order to save a few minutes in the morning. Evidence that sometimes wisdom is inate and not a thing that requires age and experience. 

I’m so proud of how thoughtful you are. How much you worry about others. How diligently you go about showing kindness to others. How you try to be creative about making others feel happier. You talk about it. You ask questions about it. You show up, day after day, brave, loving, kind and determined to make others feel how much you love them. 

I hope you know how much I love you. Because sometimes I yell. Sometimes I must look like a truly crazy person. Sometimes I’m imperfect and sometimes I’m scared and I’ll fail a lot. Thankfully I have time. But the years slip by fast and I’d be crushed if you didn’t know how proud I am of you. How much I love you. 

Teddy’s Cheeks

Perhaps its just my nature to be wistful. That very well could be it. I could easily make the argument that wistfulness is my strongest suit as a writer. But wistful for me these days is honest. Because while parenthood is very very good at making you spend a good deal of your day living in the moment, it is also a role that is forever slipping through your fingers. 

There’s a lot that surprises you that first second. I became a dad in an instant. One second I’m a husband and about to be dad and the next I’m a dad. Full blown, card carrying dad. The card in this case was a Visa card and not some license to be a dad, though were there one my merely being a dad would not entitle me to the card. Nope. That comes later. I’m certified now, but still a newb. Becoming a dad is merely the starters pistol in your sprint to learn to be a dad. 

What I learned first, after the new brand of love, the overarching, in your bones kind of love that you learn in that first instant, what I learned was that life is fragile and mine will end. Hopefully some day decades and decades down the road when the loss will be real for my kids, but when it will be manageable. Still, this little boy had a story and it was starting right there, smack in the middle of the story I’d been only just getting accustomed to sharing with his mom. If everything goes right, if it goes as right as it can go I’ll get a few decades to overlap, 30 or 40 or 50 years to be in his story. Then, inevitably, I’d be leaving. Wrapping up my tale with tentacles lingering on the fringes of the stories they will be living. It’s the best outcome one can hope for and it is unavoidably imbued with melancholy. Sad is the wrong word. Melancholic. A sustained low level presence of unavoidable sorrow, that recedes to the background when joy is present and it is so so present so much, along with exhaustion and frustration and confusion and exhaustion. Did I say exhaustion twice? I did? Well, clearly I’m not as tired as I was a few years back. Then the entire list would have consisted of exhaustion and the list would hav been 7-12 items long. All of them exhaustion. 

My first son made me a dad. He came into the world and boom, I’m a dad. He cried, I messed up, I learned my error and I became more of a dad. This is a seemingly infinite loop. I mess up, I recognize it by something going wrong with him, I see that I messed up and I try something new and it gets a little better  and we do that all day every day forever. Which is true, but not true. It’s not forever. Time is very viscous and slides faster than I can keep up. You do eventually give the swing to sisters and brothers who will need it. You throw out the car seat that is beyond beaten and smelly and you recycle the last bottle you’ll ever have. Things disappear into the far back memories and then they go from there. Some of them go invisibly and without regret or a second thought. I’ll never change my kids disaster diaper ever again. The kind where you resort to cutting the clothing off to save everyone the terror of it coming off any other way. That piece of history is happily behind me, though I actually think I appreciated it for what it was at the time. Your mind and memory play little tricks like that. I know better. Just happy that’s in the past. Other things, well, I can’t let go of so cavalierly. Like Teddy’s cheeks. 

Teddy’s cheeks aren’t going anywhere. I trust he’ll have them for the rest of my story. But they are changing. He has epic cheeks. Anyone and everyone who has known him will tell you. They are squat and round and adorable. They are a feast for the eyes and they are so connected to the little misspeakings of an adorable toddler with the childlike voice that I’ll never fully have anymore. He is our last and when those cheeks go, they’re gone. Forever. And this time forever means forever. 

My Teddy’s cheeks won’t come back. So I am wistful. Nostalgic. Sentimental in the extreme because my life, my consciousness has a timeline and the horizon, though distant, is firmly in view and when I lose Teddy’s cheeks that horizon will draw ever so slightly nearer.