parenthood – Page 7 – developing dad

Home, Home!

They all start the same.

Teddy is the alarm clock. He is two and a half years old. This age comes with many challenges for the little guy and can lead to many challenging moments for us. It’s all okay though as evolution has whittled away at this problem for some time by now and as a result he is in possession of natures cutest adaptation. He is unbearably adorable. All cheeks and just enough language to get his point across eventually after several missed guesses, while giving your heart if not your countenance a smile as you try to interpret his barely understandable babble/speak. Even if the way he pronounces a word like ‘truck’ is mortifying at first, it’s also sweet beyond words. So his morning cries (more often then we tend to admit coming from the space between us in our bed) are tolerated.

The first instant is the only challenge. How can you possibly be waking up this early, you think. But he is anything if not persistent. His insistence makes you open your eyes. The fog lays low for a bit, we are almost 5 years into this schedule however and we long since have stopped cursing the morning light. Before you know it the blurred vision takes focus and he is there, all cheeks and sorrow that we are not yet awake and feeding his belly and his need for attention. Momma never asks for relief from this duty. She knows I’d help, at least most of the time, but she loves the morning light with her coffee and her soon to be giddy and happy boy.

It’s her story to write, the story of the morning the two of them share, but I love what I walk into when I go downstairs anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour later. He is curled up under her arm, laughing and silly, every bit the showman. His belly and life are full at the moment as he’s been afforded the chance to be mommy’s only for a few minutes each day. They both love it.

Before coming down the stairs I open the door to Charlies room. I turn off the white noise and allow our low key morning fun to drift up to him, allowing him to wake gently. On the good days, on most days, we’ll hear something like, ‘Mommy. Come get me.’ at full on four year old volume 10 or fifteen minutes later. Mommy comes eventually, or if he has to wait a minute he might come down on his own. Either way the morning is in full swing by now, taking a turn from the rhythm of a ‘home day’ into the reality of a ‘school day’. They don’t know that yet. We do. Its also a work day and we need to dress and make lunches and dress the guys and prep for the day. So the TV goes on. the boys sit silently on the couch, cereal and sippy in their laps while George or Sponge Bob more recently, entertain us as well as them. We are fully engaged viewers of TV for children and we know when somethings good or not. It’s mostly not, but these two we like.

Our slow and soothing rhythm steadily increases in velocity. What we would allow to occur organically earlier in the morning now has two parents prompting and prodding if not begging for them to move move move. It’s a bummer for everyone involved. Mommy and I frantic to make deadlines, some real and unavoidable, some self-imposed, all interfering. By the time we sit in our cars we know that the bubble was burst, but we never can actually notice it while it’s happening. The weekend is over and we all have to get on with what it is we get on with.

‘Is today a home day, Daddy?’ Charlie will ask. He and Teddy both wait for the answer.

‘Nope. Sorry, buddy. But it is a school day! You get to see all your friends!’ And it’s true. He loves his school friends. We all do. But eventually has asks how long until another home day. We answer together, I start.

‘School, school, school, school, school…’ and I look to him in the rear view mirror.

His eyes get wide and he’s so happy to speak up for his part. ‘HOME, HOME’

Food Allergy PTSD

Parents of kids with food allergies tend to have a form of PTSD. It’s a commonality that ties us together. We get it. We know when we’ve run into another parent who understands us. Most parents empathize, but only we can truly understand.

At least that’s how we feel.

Food allergy PTSD leads to a lifetime of sensing threats around corners, threats both real and imagined. We have intimate knowledge. We have the knowledge you can only get when you are holding your baby and running for help while he is dying in your arms. The one job we are tasked with above all others, to keep this child alive until he can do so on his own, is slipping away and every second counts and you know, KNOW that were this a hundred years ago you’d be burying your baby. Having survived it you are changed. Broken. You are facing a changed landscape and a changed job. It’s unfair but it’s pointless to dwell on it.

I remember thinking terrible things about the parents of young kids at Target or Wegman’s or any of the other places one finds themselves mixing with young families before having kids of one’s own. I remember thinking, ‘Wow. How can they talk to their kid like that? It’s just mean. I’ll never be like those people.’ I remember thinking of friends that had a kid, ‘I’m tired. I’m always tired. Who are these people that think they’ve cornered the market on tired.’ These were reasonable thoughts to have. I had no freakin clue what the hell I was talking about. Having no clue was my perspective. Still is in many areas of life, to be honest. The fact that it was completely uninformed and laughably ignorant doesn’t invalidate that perspective.

The only thing that could revoke the validity of my perspective was having kids. Since then I have caught myself scaring my three year old into compliance during a short trip to Target. I like to think that my terrifying, clenched-jaw frustration was less upsetting to the ecosystem of the store than the screeching of others. Of the parent of three trying to get the grocery shopping done without a full meltdown, but to anyone that saw me around a corner, grasping the scared little boy’s biceps and staring him in the eye with the insane focus of a cartoon villain I’m certain mine would be the one more deserving of a call to CPS. Dad scary can be truly scary. I remember this from my dad, who I knew all along was the most gentle and loving and thoughtful father the world has ever seen. But toddlers require different. My mother once caught me at 5 or so playing with matches inside a camper and when she told me ‘Just wait til your father gets home.’ I knew enough to be terrified. Since it is required to scare kids early on to make the point, we change. We have to. And when we do we feel shame around other parents who might be having a good day while I’m staring at my little boy and doing my best impersonation of DeNiro in Cape Fear.

When it comes to other people and our kids food allergies it’s insane to think they can have our intimate knowledge even after they’ve heard our harrowing tale. Only we have that. That’s why we are each other’s best support. We can speak shorthand. We can elaborate on our stories, on our near misses with one another and know that we are understood. Regardless of how compassionate, empathic, caring and sensitive we are, for most of us, we’d be lying if we said that we didn’t change when it happened to us.
For many of us there’s residual shell shock and we find ourselves frantically unloading on kindly people that will listen and simply increasing our volume because why shouldn’t everyone share my perspective and this fight. At least all parents. My god, your hummus and carrots are a literal loaded gun free to be played with in any room where my little boy is. Don’t you get that? Is hummus really that important to you? ARGH!! You’re awful!!

Intimate knowledge can be like that. It can seem so true to you, so elemental that you forget there was a time before you had acquired that knowledge. Acquiring it leaves you changed. When I became a dad I was surprised by a few things. Certainly the amount of time there is in 24 hours. I thought I had that concept down, but I was way off. I was surprised by how aware of my own mortality I became. That’s how the responsibility hit me I suppose, that and the love. Also, I was surprised by the instant sense of connection and empathy I felt for parents everywhere. We can get as modern as we want but the primal nature of holding your newborn baby, however he or she got to your arms, is universal. Nothing was the same ever again. Almost immediately I was sliding away from my former perspective and a new life was stretching out before me. As it unraveled it revealed understandings of my life and its meaning. Now that I was here, on this side with the other folks that had had this beautiful and magic epiphany, I knew it was where I wanted to be. I proceeded on this path and began to find less and less in common with the people who hadn’t had kids. I was fully a parent.

Then I was born into a smaller family of parents. The rare club that was more exclusive and less desirable. I became a food allergy PTSD dad. I became a husband that had to relearn how to relate to his family and the world with this terrible new knowledge. Our son had an anaphylactic reaction to a single bite of a sandwich with a small amount of dressing on it that contained a small amount of sesame and it nearly killed him. It would have had a seed fallen to the floor from our bagels or our Chinese food that we had eaten regularly that first year and he had gotten to it while we were in the other room. Its traumatic information to live with. As hard a time as I had relating to parents before having kids, and as hard as it became to relate to people without kids after having them, it is now equally hard to relate to parents that don’t worry about their kid’s immediate environment every minute of every day. I just don’t get them. I can’t. What’s worse now, I somehow feel like they should all be able to relate to me. The childless, the parents of kids without life threatening food allergies, everyone needs to be in this thing with me. Right?

It’s easy and understandable to lose perspective. Sometimes it’s even advisable. And since it’s our kid’s lives I’m all for erring on the side of crazy if there’s any question of safety. But from time to time we have to poke our heads out of the bubble and remember that it’s a great big scary world out there for a lot of people. For a lot of reasons.

In my son’s classroom, where they will see me and confront me and Charlie every day, I may need to ramp up the nutty. Perhaps it will cause that extra attention when it’s called for, which it may never be, to save my son’s life. But if I want my message to be heard by the people that don’t have reason to understand my plight intimately, it’s my job to learn what invisible realities they are facing and try to share in those struggles. To not be so blinded by the dangers of the world as to forget that others have children suffering even worse, more assured tragedies. That while there are loaded guns ready to end my child, there are others whose children have bullets headed there way. That there are many parents in the exact same situation as me that couldn’t stop the grip of the unknown entity that ruined their lives forever. That it is a great gift I’ve been given to be able to know for sure what I need to do to assure my child safe passage and that I shouldn’t ever take for granted how lucky I am. That if I want empathy and understanding I have to remember that the world is full of parents facing innumerable struggles, challenges and threats and it’s my responsibility to support others and seek out ways to help, just as I ask them to do for me. Compassion is not a finite resource, it is infinite and needs to be fed constantly in order for it to grow.

Sometimes the PTSD and the eminent dangers make me rude. Make me insufferable even. Sometimes I’ll need others to forgive me for that. Sometimes I have to forgive myself for that. Sometimes I have to learn from it.

7 Ways Having a Dog Totally Prepares You for Parenthood

You skeptics. Seriously. You think that nobody without kids can understand how hard it is. That’s just crazy. Sure, having kids, caring for them and raising them is a challenge. We all empathize. But you don’t have to get so superior about it. I’ve even heard some people dismiss the attestations of pet-owners, dogs cared for since puppy-hood even, as not fully preparing one for the experience of having kids. Well, I say phooey to you. As skeptics I know what you need is evidence. Allow me to enumerate my argument.

Love – Until you’ve had a puppy, a precious baby dog, look up at you with those beautiful eyes expressing trust in you to care for her in ways that melt you, you can’t know love. Plain and simple. The full weight of love is only felt with a puppy and can’t be replicated by anything else. And as anyone who has seen a Nicholas Sparks movie adaptation knows, love is painful, guys. Seriously.
Sleep – I totally think this sleep thing that so many parents talk about is SO OVERDONE. It’s a naked and frankly embarrassing cry for attention. As a friend I try to be sure not to indulge it. It doesn’t take a lot of looking to find out that science has shown that babies sleep like 15-18 hours a day. You want to talk about sleepless nights? Yeah. Has your kid ever chased down a porcupine and had quills stuck in it’s gums? No? Well, there we have it. You don’t know sleeplessness my friend.
Worry – You parents act like the world isn’t totally designed to help you. You wring your hands over your child in daycare all day. You know what you can do? You can call. You can ask a qualified professional how your child is doing. How your child who’s been playing with friends and snacking on healthy food and being tended to at every turn, how they are as they nap peacefully. Not me. All I can do, ALL I CAN DO is worry.
Cost – Okay. I’ll grant you college. But the likelihood of that out of control scam known as higher education being fixed by the time it’s an issue for you is pretty good, so let’s not overstate it here. Meanwhile, I have an animal that can need everything from mental health therapies (don’t laugh, you have no idea how big a deal this is) and complex surgeries to prevent any number of ailments that are likely to compile and none of that is covered by any ‘family’ insurance plan. I mean seriously, if this dog isn’t family than I don’t know what family is.
Strain on Your Relationship – Do you have any idea how hard a dog is to incorporate into your life. I mean really. It’s like the hardest thing you can do. A baby, that’s a strengthening of your bond, born of your shared DNA it can’t help but bring you closer. Dogs are so SO needy. It’s like you hardly even have time to spend with your significant other. In those early days, and we’re talking easily 6 months here, I don’t think we had our ‘alone’ time as a couple more than 4 or 5 times a week. What the hell is that? Baby’s don’t do that, puppies do. Am I right!
Potty Training – I’m to understand this is unpleasant for you. Now imagine your baby naked and unable to wipe. At least unable to wipe without doing so with your carpet. I rest my case on this one.
Guilt – One word. Kennel.

I think I’ve made my point here. Don’t be so sure I’m not ready to be responsible for a human life. To raise it and care for it. To love it and set it up for success and fend off the wolves at the gate. I’ve had a puppy, so I ain’t scared!

Karma Crapped in the Tub: How My Wife Became a Poop Doula

Like riding a bike, I always presumed that pooping was one of those things that once you learned how to do it you pretty much had it down for the rest of your life. Turns out that journey is not so simple. Our four year old has apparently hit some bumps in the road. There are small, almost imperceptible changes occurring within me over time that might suggest there is the potential that this could be an issue for me as well, albeit in the distant future.

Anyway, there I was, sitting all smug up on the toilet catching up with my selected family and friends on my phone. This was my me time. I didn’t have to use the toilet, but it’s a place a parent can sit on occasion, as long as one’s spouse is there to occupy the kids, where they are given a moments reprieve. I think of it as a panic room of sorts in the hour after dinner, before bedtime. A place to go to forget about life for upwards of 3 minutes. A spa. It was here that I came across and amusing post by my younger sister. I’m paraphrasing here, but it said something like, ‘I’ll NEVER get used to cleaning poop out of the tub!’. I responded the only way I knew how. ‘Oh my god. That’s so gross!’

After a minute or two, and after a few, more kindhearted friends and family expressed empathy and understanding in the comments, it occurred to me that I might be tempting fate. In an attempt at something of a reverse jinx I went back in to the comment thread and expressed something closer to thoughtfulness. Something like, ‘Oh that so sucks. I’m so sorry. We’ve been lucky so far.’ But I was totally faking it. That sh*t doesn’t happen if your careful and stay attenti…

‘Joe! Oh no.. Joe!’ My wife shouted from upstairs.

I was on the couch enjoying my own end of night screen time alongside the big boy, the four year old, the one in the clear from the possibility of such an accident when my life took a dark turn.

‘T had an accident. In the tub!’

Oh crap.

I’m guessing that having made it this far through without this happening there are some parents that have made it all the way without dealing with this dark day. With the extracting by hand a turd that floats in parts and sinks in others like dynamited fish in a filthy pond. I remained calm on the outside because you need your children to know that although life is forever changed and we’ll never be able to truly look each other in the eye again, that they are okay and that one must be strong in the face of fear. I am a role model.

Karma was not through with us.

Believing that we’d learned all we needed to learn in order to avoid this issue in the future, we let down our guard. Somehow a few days passed without our big boy making a poop family in the potty. That’s what he calls it when it happens in phases. It’s amazing what you find cute when your kids say it. When we pointed it out to him and asked him to try he was resistent in a way that only a four year old could be. He had become afraid to poop. We coaxed. We bribed. It worked a couple of times, but it hurt and came with tears. Then he just stopped. Refused. He would have intermittent bouts of pain due to his being backed up. We couldn’t convince him with logic. We tried everything. What happens next is amongst the dumbest things I’ve ever done. I can’t believe it occurred even as I sit here and write it. It’s so dumb I’m embarrassed to say it. I decided that a good warm bath would do the trick. It did.

Our 4 year old is huge, like the size of a 7 year old. This is not an anecdote. He is the average size of a seven year old. I’ll just say that it’s possible for a backed up 4 year old, who is the size of a 7 year old to poop like a 41 year old who had a steak burrito and coffee for lunch. Through tears and the splashing of fecal infested dirty bath water we learned the power of karma and at that moment I knew it was done. Karma had made sure that I learned my lesson.

We are a modern family and my duties as a man are far more involved then men of previous generations. I am a competent and caring nurturer. Still, there are certain tasks that only a mother can perform. One of those tasks is exercised now when we note it’s been a couple of days. Our elaborate system of rewards for willing poops (chocolate, funnily enough) is pretty good. But if we let it slide the fear returns. When it does my wife becomes the guide for our boy that he needs at that moment. They will retreat to the bathroom where she will allay his fears, stick with him through his vicious rebukes and tearful apologies, always reassuring him that this is how it has worked since the dawn of time. That despite his fears, he will live through this and be so happy with the results that he’ll choose willingly to do it again! Eventually he believes her and they are one, holding hands as she provides him with the spiritual and emotional support allow his body to do what it’s made to do.

Without intending to and being motivated only by deep deep love, my wife is now a poop doula.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve heard that there’s no style of learning more effective than experiential learning. This stands to reason. I have some experience in this area. Here are some things I’ve thought and some things I’ve learned.

I’ve thought, ‘What a freaking nuisance. You know this is just an overprotective helicopter mom and because of her, because of these two or three nut jobs I can’t make myself a damn peanut butter sandwich without breaking building ordinances. Anywhere.’

I’ve thought, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it covered. Sure, little Billy’s mama made a stink about it, but we got one of the pizza’s with soy cheese. We’re not jerks, of course we want the kid to be safe and able to have fun.’

I’ve thought, ‘This is mom’s issue. The poor kid gets stuck at the table with all the other kids he doesn’t know and has to have a special plate of crap brought out to him with his name on it. All because mom loves the attention she gets calling 13 times a day to make sure he’s not eating anything other than what is on the stupid list.’

I’ve thought, ‘Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen?’

I’ve rolled my eyes and used air quotes when explaining that a kid in my care, but not my kid, had ‘food allergies’ and gone on to explain in coded but withering judgment of said child’s mom and her hyper anxiety.

Whether it was coincidence or not it was always the moms.

Thank god, none of these misconceptions had fatal outcomes or even critical ones.

Then experience came knocking and taught me in an afternoon how mistaken I was.

Do you remember your 9/11 story? I do. For years after that terrible day anytime you were with someone you either didn’t know before or hadn’t seen since before that day the conversation always got around to your story. Your experience of that day. Still happens, just not as much as more and more ‘adults’ are not of an age to have remembered it or you’re so familiar with everyone’s tales that you reference rather then recount them.

Well, parents of kids with anaphylactic food allergies engage in the telling and retelling of their tale whenever we find someone that gets it. Unfortunately for us and our kids, parents of kids with anaphylactic food allergies are the only ones that get it. Each of us encounter the ‘me’ from above who doesn’t get it and we know they don’t get it and it can only make us act crazier. See we have to be crazy, insane, so crazy that you’d rather just bitch about me and my hyper anxiety then have to deal with my crazy wrath if any of my seemingly bizarre and self centered requests are found to have been ignored. We’ve been granted the greatest education possible through our experiences. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Many parents have a crazy period early in their first child’s life, first week or two, when they can’t stop thinking that it’s possible that the baby will stop breathing and just die. We had this bit of experiential learning ourselves and for a 10 day period after getting the kid home one of us was awake at all hours of the day and night to make sure this didn’t happen. How we’d stop it if it did is something we never even considered. Just seemed the right thing to do. Then you realize, this is crazy, if he’s gonna give us a few minutes we need to take them. You learn these fears are baseless.

Then, a year later or so, we were having our normal lunch. Then little red pin pricks around his red and watering eyes. That’s weird. Then bright red blotches all over his face and a high whistle of air trying to get in and out. Then running to the car. Then heavy vomiting as its the only way it seems to breath. Then, no breathing and beat red. Then enormous vomiting. Here’s something. Do you know where you park at the ER if your baby of 1 year of age is red and unable to breathe, turning purple and all of you and your wife and your baby are covered in vomit as he writhes to try to loosen the vice grip of the snake he feels choking him, only its not a snake, it’s his own body choking him from the inside? Where ever the f**k you want. In our case it was at the door. The car was vomit filled, and I mean covering the windows, all of them, including the windshield. By at the door, I mean they see you and guide you right to the door. You leave your car there running, doors open.

I don’t know about you, but my experience at the ER has never failed to include a stop for at least a second of triage. Not us. They see a baby, see he’s barely holding on to his precious little life and the breaths are gone, they point and TELL you, ‘RUN!!’ and you do. Your adrenaline is flooding your body and brain and you do it. You run.

When you get there you don’t care who it is. You just need someone to save your baby’s life. They do. You calm down on the outside and panic on the inside as you help your baby calm down. Eventually he’s laughing and playing and you and your wife are trying to reflect his carefree demeanor, sneaking in conversation about what the hell could it be. You won’t get answers until you see the allergist in a few days. So you empty your kitchen. Almost all of it. Because something in there can cause that silly fear you had as new parents to be a reality. Your little love can just die. It’s knowledge you carry until there is either a cure or you die. That’s it. That’s the list of all the ways you’ll come to stop worrying. You get better at living with the knowledge, but you reorder everything. Used to have a career working in the city, but since I know from all my conversations how many people think this whole ‘food allergy thing’ is being way overblown by nervous parents, I pretty much ignore that job and rest on the laurels I’d earned and after that on the sheer audacity to just show up late, leave early or not show up at all, while trying to find something that works closer to home, since you’re told that if he goes into shock the staff at the daycare’s can’t go with him, he’ll just be taken by the ambulance, terrified, waiting hours, hopefully, until we arrive. So, I take a 20,000 pay cut and take a gig, a good gig, one I love, but a step down to be sure, to be with him for the day, feet away, always ready to run. Which you’ve done once and hope to never do again.

These experiences stick with you. Forever.

Dysfunctional Bliss

This weekend I found myself in the ridiculous position of standing fast, insisting my child finish his pancakes before he could get his Skittles. I’d say its the principle of the thing, but I have a hard time coming up with the principle. Perhaps the principle is the simple exertion of authority. This sounds like bullying even to me, and perhaps it is to some degree, but until you’ve spent a good amount of your time with a four year old in your care you can’t know how important it is to hold fast.

I’ve spent a long time avoiding power struggles. It was a tactic that I not only employed, but one that I taught. Seriously. I co-wrote a curriculum that I’d teach to young adults working at a summer camp for kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities every year about the allure of a good power struggle, what it accomplishes and what challenges it presents. Then we’d work on skills to recognize, deflect, avoid and re-engage in order to avoid the power struggle. As counselors it was a no win game for them since inherently, as the caregivers, the power dynamic was in their favor. By accepting the invitation to the power struggle they were simultaneously lessening their own authority and feeding their charges defiance. Year after year I’d see the best of the best get sucked in. I thought to myself, that won’t happen to me.

Ever notice that when you take such absolute stands they almost always bite you in the ass? I feel so bad for my kids. Before I had them I was a perfect dad. Seriously. I could have easily been a dad-coach. I could write a dad behavior plan with detailed instruction on how to interact, how to behave, what to let your kid win on and how to always end at the result you wanted to and I could have guaranteed the results if you committed to the process. It’s what I did and I was good. Parents consistently praised our abilities, mine and those that worked with and for me, to bring out aspects of their child that were wonderful and yet to be seen. We were good. So what the hell happened that made me so, so… mediocre with my own kids?

It’s a simple answer, really. Its the expected answer, though perhaps one you can know to be correct without fully understanding why. It’s because I love them so damn much. It’s because they love me so damn much. It’s because we resist every separation and on a level we aren’t even conscious of, we know that we have to separate to survive. Granted, it’s decades away, but when you love something this much you need a few decades to let go fully. it’s because disappointed expectations is a part of the process for both growing up and being a parent. It’s because we each, parents and kids, think there’s some version of a perfect god in the other which is hugely disappointing when a perfect god is incapable of resisting the urge to punch and kick you (toddler attacking parent and NEVER the other way around) or when the perfect god has chosen to make a thing like Skittles and then made them ‘bad’ for you. It’s because on the grandest and most minute level we are engaged and intertwined so thoroughly with our children that in order for them to grow up and be independent we must be constantly working at cross purposes, us holding on to whatever control we have in order to ensure their safe passage and them trying desperately to gain more and more self direction in order to learn through trial and error, the very errors we try so hard to protect them from, how to navigate the world. The one tiny piece of information I lacked that would have assured my burgeoning dad coaching business its failure was nothing less then the very nature of parenthood and family. The parent child relationship at its best is by definition dysfunctional. Magically, blissfully, frustratingly and wonderfully dysfunctional. So much so that I can’t help being proud of the little tykes and how maddeningly defiant they can be.

Riding In Cars with Boys

Driving with my kids is a joy that I’ll always relish. I wrote a piece once about the road trip to my future that I took with my dad decades ago. He responded to it. In his response he gave me one of those direct instructions that he’s parsed out over the years that are offered so sparingly that you know immediately he’s giving me instructions. Were he a more crass person it might be accompanied by something along the lines of, ‘Hey, don’t be a dope…’. Not being a crass person, he just stated directly, ‘Always say yes if your kids need to be driven somewhere far away. Its the best conversations you’ll ever have with them.’ Its great advice, I can tell already.

Driving the kids to ‘school’ each day at this age when they are coming to as people, where every discovery is a process and there are a thousand discoveries exploding like fireworks in their constantly curious minds, is a privilege. These trips are filled with questions and laughter and tears and fights and I Love You’s and play that song loud’s and the rest. It occasionally is even accompanied by long stretches of silence, believe it or not. We have a long, nearly unbroken off the beaten path two lane road that takes us through a beautiful ‘country edge of town’ that allows for smooth passage lending itself to peacefulness. Enough peacefulness at least that they can breath quietly for a few minutes if the mood hits. It’s all quite blissful really. It’s the calm between the hubbub of morning prodding and deal making and the hustle and bustle of the day for both them and for me.

This morning was different. It happens from time to time. But I only had one with me. Today it was because the younger one, Teddy, has been pretty congested this week, and since Mom would be working from home today and also slightly under the weather, he’s home as well. Having moved his car seat to mom’s car it’s always arresting to see the bare (though disgustingly, VISIBLY sticky with all the drippings of a toddler through the whole winter when it’s too terrifyingly cold to clean it up!) seat where a kid, an adorable, cheeky kid, usually sits. Its even a little viscerally disturbing.

Just last week I came home and Karen told me that she had one of those close calls where somebody nearly ran her over with a truck. It’s the kind of thing that happens to anyone that drives at some point. Probably a few times. When it does it has a way of immediately reordering ones priorities and this was evident in her as she retold the tale. It was really scary and she was appropriately shaken up. Nothing to stop her from anything, and nothing to scare her off driving or anything, just palpably aware of life’s fragility. We all have been there, and it passes. It’s always good to feed that respect.

It’s a respect that I didn’t fully have until I had kids. Amongst the surprising reactions to parenthood for me has been the awareness of my mortality. It was amongst the first reactions I had after the love and adoration and uber respect for my wife, right after Charlie was delivered and made me a dad. My healthy respect for and mild fear of death became a different thing and it has remained different ever since. I’m pretty much solely worried about death because I can never ever be okay with leaving these guys. Even if it happens 50 years from now, in my sleep, peaceful and having said my goodbye’s. This dream scenario will still leave a gaping hole in my kids hearts and it’s natural and I can’t stand the thought.

The other fear, the true fear, is the fear that something unnatural could happen. That the proper order could get mixed up and we’re left without one of them, or the thought that Karen or I, or the truly awful thought, Karen AND I could be randomly run over by a truck and that’s it. Done. It’s at the same time too scary to consider and so scary it’s hard to ever fully rid it from your head. I even play out the scenarios. I can’t help it.

Being a dad is not often scary. It’s exhausting, confusing, exhilarating, exasperating, inspiring and even liberating. But occasionally, when a bit of scary slips in, it’s terrifying.

Then your little man asks you to put on the funny song and turn it up loud and the car is filled with the beat boxing skills of Matisyahu as we drive down the road having the time of our lives and it passes.

5 Ways To Prep Your Kid To Be Hysterical In Therapy Someday!

Everyone of us wants to set our children up for success. Cruelly, there’s literally no chance of us not messing up our kids at least a little. In fact, without messing them up a little we won’t give them what they properly need to successfully launch from the comfort of our respective bosoms. So I propose some simple steps a parent can take to assure that your child has the right level and style of dysfunction to be a compelling listen for even the most disinterested therapist.

The feeling of satisfaction you receive from making your therapist giggle or smirk or simply stay awake for the entirety of countless 45 minute sets of your best material is indescribable. I have never been cheered by throngs of devoted fans living just to be in my presence, but I have to imagine it feels exactly the same as getting a guffaw from your therapist. I owe it to my kids to provide them with enough hangups and dysfunctions to experience this tremendous feeling of accomplishment.

By my reckoning there are an infinite number of ways even good parents, even the best parents, can go about messing ~~with~~ up their kids without truly impinging upon their chances for success. Let’s start from the start.

Hold On Desperately – How else will they know you love them without the smothering attention of desperate people unwilling to let go of anything? Example: Force feed pacifiers for months after they naturally want to let them go. Pro Tip: Sneak it in while they sleep. They’ll appreciate it comes from a place of love. By starting early you won’t have to change directions later when they want to start dating or drinking coffee. It’s a precedent setter.
Potty Train When You KNOW They’re Ready – Like, 4 or 5 years old. Sure. It’ll be a pain, but just think of the material they’ll be able to give that shrink when they have actual memories of lying in the back seat on warm summer days having their diaper changed. I should note, we have not employed this method. Don’t ask me how I know about this.
Stare At Your Phone While They Yell – We live in magical times. This strategy is one our parents couldn’t employ without the help of company or a truly, grippingly inappropriate program on the television. I do this one on a daily basis. And I don’t ignore them forever, I just let the volume rise until I have to shout at them that I hear them, despite the obvious fact that I’ve been ignoring the escalating screams to read Facebook updates for as much as 3 minutes. It’s this kind of unfair overreaction that will garner them the empathy of their future therapist. This empathy is the foundational building block of transference, which is the real goal of every therapeutic relationship, right?
Throw Out Every 10th Art Project – This one’s pretty obvious. Let’s face it, they’re not all keepers. This will be hard to do the first time around but will become remarkably easy. You don’t even have to draw attention to it. Your casual dismissal will be even more effective in making them crave your approval in a way that you can never fully satisfy. That’s a job for future shrink. Be on the lookout for pattern recognition. Switch up the interval of your dismissal when you change your clocks.
Express Unconditional Love at Unexpected Times – At the threshold of every life transition (Graduation from Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade… Etc. through college) remind them that its okay to fail. That they can choose to stay right where they are, not evolve or challenge themselves and you’ll love them just the same. This is just the kind of confusing response to success that will both reinforce that they are loved and that their are no expectations on them, running counter to every message you and anyone else ever sends!

These are little things you can do to ensure that your child has the ability to keep their therapist not just awake, but filled with validating, life affirming mirth as the transference they build together eventually fills the wholes that are left in everyone whose made the treacherous journey from child to adult.

They’ll thank you for it in the end!

The Hum.

We occasionally find ourselves dissatisfied with life. Not unhappy, just, blah. Suddenly, without warning, we feel like we are failing. Our whole lives are on display and in the way all the time.

We have a small kitchen area that has been blocked by gates since moving in over two years ago. The dumping ground it has become makes us feel bad. As has the general disarray of our modest home tasked with holding the detritus of a life being lived by two toddlers and two parents that both work full time. The fridge is a mess. There is a general paper explosion starting in a basket on our counter that bursts forth slowly, perpetually until it occupies half our free counter space, at which point we just plow them back until they so overwhelm us that we take a day off to organize them, starting the process over. There’s been an empty bottle of olive oil on the counter for weeks, months perhaps. The bags that sit inside the gate reach out into the room and are scattered between the edge of the kitchen and the door leading to the garage (not to mention the disaster that is the garage) and are so permanent that any topographical map of our little kitchen would have to include them as permanent features. The TV’s on. The monitor’s on. Every godforsaken screen is covered in dirty, sticky toddler finger prints and I daren’t guess what lurks in the back of the cabinets. The top of the fridge. The top of the damned fridge.

Adding to this is the general unwellness of parenthood. It’s true. Your spirit soars with the magic of new life, new life designed to inspire your heart to give up on all self-care in order to bathe this child with love and affection and the endless hours of work it takes to present them clean and fed and rested to the world. Leaving you generally speaking about 36 hours from a shower in either direction at all times. This defies all logic, but is so. You’re left with back pain from the terrible posture required of you nearly constantly. You are fat from a diet of kids foods often, healthy grown up foods rarely and downing copious amounts of coffee just to live. The kind of coffee binging that leaves you so dehydrated that it hurts to pee and you say things like, ‘man, I really need to start drinking some water’, while you sip another coffee, pour the water, only to find it the following weekend in the very place you’ve been looking past it since you put it down. A week ago. Full.

Then there is the noise that keeps you a bit crazy these days. Exhaustion has a sound, and it sounds like whining to everyone in ways you find embarrassing way too late, about how tired you are. You are a cliche, and that hurts when you’re aware enough to notice it. But how could you when you are so distracted by your obsession with avoiding mirrors. I mean, you look grey. Their I said it. I’m fat and grey and I don’t know if I’ll ever bounce back. To cope with this I choose candy. Lots of it. So what. The only people I’m starring for are my kids these days. Well the lady of the house too, but she’s in this with me.

Then there’s the noise. My children’s voices and the things they say take my breath away dozens of times a day. They are magical, truly special creatures and I assume my honesty on this blog I write is about the only thing that can keep each of them from being re-elected as President of the United States. But I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if they overcame that too. They’re that amazing. But the reality of each day is that your toddler can be amazing 36-48 times a day and still leave you with hours upon hours of really challenging behavior. Challenging behavior that comes with tears and maniacal comic-book-villain laughs and screams just to scream, just to startle you into looking, only to find a giant ear to ear grin on this little boy that just screamed like he was being stretched by Prince Humperdinck’s henchman. All to the soothing sounds of the most infernal and dastardly aural creation the world has ever known: The Fresh Beat Band. Actually we haven’t really watched them in a couple years, but I still hear them. Everywhere.

The mess. The Exhaustion. The noise. The work. This hum that so annoys me each day. This hum that I can’t stand at times. This hum that causes my wife and I to lose patience with each other far more often then we’d care to admit. This hum that we so desperately wish to quiet will one day fully dissolve. Already the nights are longer, and the boys are bigger and if pressed I can become sentimental about 3 AM wake up calls for feeding and the tiny fingers that looked like a dolls.

The thing about this hum, this hum that I have a really hard time embracing and complain about far more than I ought to is that it will someday disappear. The corners will be clean, as will the counters and the floors. The TV will be on to entertain only us and the noise of a full house will dissipate and be replaced by more pleasant and welcome noises. We will be allowed to enjoy silence, sweet sweet silence. The exhaustion won’t ever fully go, but it will get more manageable. The hum will fade, like all other things, to history. When it does I suspect I will relish the clean and the quiet. It will allow me all the free time I’ll need to look back and appreciate all that was done here. To appreciate the times I couldn’t appreciate fully in the moment. To fully embrace and love the hum that I’ll never get the privilege to be enveloped in ever again.

My Life in Stories

We have two boys. Two separate but intertwined stories. I’m lucky to be here at the start of their tales. Amongst the first things that became evident was that I was not going to see the end of their story. I can’t even hope to see these stories through to their natural end. Nope, these tales are meant to extend beyond me.

My life has been anchored around stories. They have been a tether to the world and to the people in my life for as long as I can remember. I have loved movies and television my whole life, but in my heart I’m a reader. These days, with two very active little boys I’m often only a ‘reader’ as a description of who I was. That said the nights are getting quieter and longer, slowly but surely I can now begin to think of building a bedside tower of books to read for sheer pleasure.

I’ve had my nose in books since I was a kid. I used to sit on the landing at the top of the basement stairs, atop loosely stapled carpet, door to the “living’ part of our home closed, sequestered in my private little compartment, feet on the steps, bare bulb overhead atop the dangling string used to turn it on and off. There amidst the stored 2 litre bottles of Adirondack sodas I’d read through the scripts of the plays I’d seen my older brothers perform in middle school and high school productions. I’d read all the lines and all the stage directions and recreate Oklahoma! in my head. I’d devour the scripts to Cheaper by the Dozen and Sweetest Little Girl in Town for the hours between getting home and being beckoned from the kitchen just on the other side of the door beside me, to the dinner table.

On occasion we would go up to the Seymour Library and I’d look for scripts by Rogers and Hammerstein. I’d investigate the section filled with scripts until we were leaving and I was forced to pick. It was what friends of mine would do at the record shop, what I still do at book shops if I can steal a half hour in the afternoon. This was all before I was 10. I’d get a stocking stuffer book about Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabar of the quality you used to see at drugstore checkouts. Books with all the slapdash appeal and accuracy of neglected Wikipedia entries on singers of little note from bygone era’s. I’d read that biography time and again until it was incapable of maintaining its structural integrity. Then I’d read it ten more times, being sure to keep the many loose pages precisely where they should be. As a teen I would discover novels. I’d go through phases. A little Holden Caulfield here and some Phillip Pirrip (Pip) there. I’d take the Electric Cool Aid Acid Test in college, not a novel but so full of eclectic and eccentric characters that it read like one. This would spark my curiosity about Kesey and his perfect representation of how we all got it wrong. I’ve come to think of that type of outlook as misguided and stereotypical of my young manhood. To be fair though, he wasn’t altogether wrong, but as I went on my tools became more refined and I gave more credit to my specific history and I fell in love with John Irving. The early striving and reaching and failing of Water Method Man or the so-close, pre-brilliance of Garp, the tease that made you know that something great was to come. It did with A Prayer for Owen Meaney. A fairytale of the neighborhood sort. The story was so great I didn’t care about the clumsy attempts to make a statement of the moment in the midst of an allegory that was timeless. I followed Mr. Irving to India and to the prep schools of the fifties and sixties and the Hotel New Hampshire and felt like I was getting a private tour of a brilliant mind trying to understand the complexities of the human heart. It was thrilling and I relish visiting their still. I’ll skip alternate chapters in Owen Meaney now to avoid the now dated commentary on the political realities of the time it was written. I’ll read only the first half of A Widow for One Year. These are my stories and I can consume them however I like.

I moved on to Russell Banks. He is still the pat answer for the question, who is your favorite author. I didn’t have the patience or inclination for the early stuff. It was designed to spit at convention and in so far as it buttresses me when i know its right to spit at convention, it was helpful, even not reading it. But everything from the blended cultures and New York upState teen life of Bone to the Hardscrabble New Hampshire of Wade’s life were and are things of brilliance. Being in these books are some of the most wonderful times of my life, reading these books and discovering a tender hand at the helm of such hard stories of hard lives. The pure intellectual self satisfaction with which I read the account of Owen, the youngest son John Brown, as he told his tale like it were a gospel, and for him it was as John Brown in fact made himself a bit of a god while pushing us to confront our sins. He was as much a True Believer when it came to god and to abolition as ever there was. The book was a tome. And it was and is something I’ll carry with me forever.

I have had a very real and vibrant life in stories. They have provided me with a language to understand, organize, proclaim and make sense of the story of the life I’m living. What none of them have prepared me for is being a bit player on the outskirts who dies half way through. But to some degree this is where I found myself after Charlie was born.

At the moment, a phrase that is pretty much the entirety of my life since having kids, I don’t often think of the end of my story. In fact I rarely think of my story at all. Not that it’s not important, and their are certainly things that bring it to the fore now and again, but

Before I was a parent, I was the author of MY story. I was the maker of worlds and the decider of fates. Granted, on a small scale, but still. To some degree, to be the author of my tale was the ultimate power I could wish for. Since having the kids I’ve lost all that authority. Now my life and its schedules are determined by the needs, and frankly, often, by the wildly swinging vicissitudes of two toddlers, who with all the authorial power, but none of the awareness or judiciousness of a good storyteller, throw chaos like beads from a Bourbon Street Balcony on that which pleases them and threaten with tears and tantrums if they are displeased by something so slight as having to endure a moment’s boredom. I am completely out of the moment to moment control and authorship game when it comes to my life. My story is now one of messiness and disorder and to be honest, I never knew that I’d so appreciate losing the long view of next week or next month in favor of trying to manage and please minute to minute while always attempting to ensure safety and security measured now in years and decades.

Before kids I was having a great time steering the ship and living my story. But there was a terrible reality that started to creep in. The terrible reality that this is a story with an ending that is coming ever so slightly into focus. Looking 30, 40 or even 50 years out, there it was. The lines were blurry but I’d started to recognize the colors of that portrait. It was navigating, this knowledge that we all have at an early age, from my head to my heart and becoming more real for taking up residence in both.

Thankfully, I’ve come to understand better the larger view. I’ve sacrificed my central role in the story to be sure, but I’m so much happier now. In this story. In their stories. Still a featured character, one with impact and one with an important role to play in the stories of our protagonists, but more to the side of the main characters. For my graciousness in ceding the lead role I’ve been given a new perspective. A new perch. I’m still headed to where I’m headed, but now it happens in the middle of the greatest story I could imagine, one designed to be of more interest and import to me then nearly anyone else on earth, rather than at the end of a story that was mine, but which never grew to live beyond me. I’m a part of a larger, more inclusive and connected story now. I’m a part of something bigger, better and far more enjoyable.

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