Tag: parenting

Rantings of a Middle Aged Dad

IMG_1478I get it. It’s a different time. We aren’t as connected and our lives intersect virtually rather than physically. No longer is the fabric weaved tightly enough to allow for our children to roam safely upon it.

Lately there’s a certain level of mental and perhaps spiritual health and well being that I can only achieve by waving a clenched fist in the air and flapping my gums about whatever it is that bugs me. I’m entering the ‘get off my lawn’ stage of life. These are my greying and grumpy years. In an effort to get through this quite annoying phase I am attempting to yell my displeasure into the void that once was a neighborhood as I stand on my porch in my slippered feet and ever expanding belly, fueled by fear and confusion just as eons of men have done before me. I’m not afraid to be a stereotype.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Why is everyone so damn angry? Why is everyone in love with those of us most boldly expressing free floating rage with the least responsibility and the greatest amount of hostility? When did we adults become so fragile, kicking and screaming when things don’t go exactly as we want them to? I feel like my grandparents generation rolled with the punches so much better . They understood that your vote was your voice and when more people voted for the other guy you had to accept it. Nowadays, disguised in tough guy individualism, everyone’s a bunch of ninnies outraged that the world is not there to serve them solely, exactly meeting the very specific needs of precisely one person. 300 million ‘one person’s’, all dissatisfied and lashing out. Grown ups ain’t what they used to be.

Superheroes are for kids!

Grow up!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not impugning the quality of those films that get it right. Good films are good films, regardless of genre. You can tell a good story about anything. But superheroes now are terrifying, angry, violent and often vile. They live in a world that looks like ours if you did nothing but look at it via cable news and clickbait terrors all day. Then they are marketed to 2 and 3 year old’s who suddenly want even their stuffed Elmo’s and Winnie the Pooh’s to ‘battle’! Call me crazy, but hidden documents will emerge that show the companies that underpin the military-industrial complex were huge supporters of this simple way to desensitize humanity to constant ‘battle’ or war as us old timers used to call it. Honestly, had I known I’d have treated superheroes like alcohol. Not until you are of legal age and your hormones have settled a bit.

College is a vitally important scam that I have to participate in to better the odds that my children can earn enough to barely get by.

Seriously. What a crock.

My parents generation was the last to not leave college in massive debt. State schools are running in the tens of thousands per year now. What the actual bleep is that? More and more it feels like the systems are established to make sure that only those that can find a way to pay the toll are allowed to get through the eye of the needle that will allow them to get a job that will overwork and underpay them to keep them on the treadmill as long as possible. And these, these are the lucky ones! I left college with a worthless degree and 25K in debt, which is a DREAM scenario for my own kids at this point.

Fix it! This is unsustainable, unethical and unbelievable.

We have legalized drug dealing and it’s taking over your television.

Have you seen the lines at the pharmacy in the last 15 years? Of course you have. You have stood in them, just like I have. We are over served. Somebody needs to start giving us sugar pills and sending us home to sober up.

There are a ton of reasons why I can’t watch commercial TV with my kids. The lewd lasciviousness of the content is tame next to the practically pornographic nature of those commercials that aren’t verging on actual depictions of evil. But for god’s sake, don’t make me have to sit there watching you push drugs for everything imaginable. Recently I’ve started seeing commercials for drugs that help offset the side effects of OTHER DRUGS! What the hell!

Have some shame people. Racism, sexism and xenophobia is reprehensible not electable.

Donald Trump. Donald freaking Trump. You did this to yourselves. I’ve had enough of the lot of you.

GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!

Living Vicariously Through My Kids

When I was four years old I went to kindergarten. It didn’t work out all that well. From that point on I kind of hated school. 

My first official act after registering for school was dropping out. I was, I am, a kindergarten dropout. 

  The relationship I have with the educational system is fraught with complicated emotional reactions met with juvenile responses from a cocky autodidact lacking confidence in his abilities. Added to that is the shame and embarrassment I carried with me from my early inability to adapt. I’d say I’m a bright guy. Meanwhile I failed as much as I could all throughout. I made it through my sophomore year without notebooks or a pen in 1990. I did just enough to make sure my 3rd ‘F’ was a ‘D’ so I could keep playing basketball. I’d stroll in around 11:55 so I could play or practice that day. The rule, and I can’t believe this was true, was that you couldn’t participate if you failed 3 courses in the same grading period. You could play or practice any day you showed up by noon. The day lasted until 2. I was given a lot of leeway and I availed myself of it.

Anyway, this isn’t about that. Not entirely, at least. A lot of people are accused of living vicariously through their kids. When you think of these people the image that comes to mind is the dad that pushes his kid to achieve at sports, hoping that all the wins and accomplishments his kid has will make up for all that he fell short of accomplishing. Or of the pushy stage mom signing her daughter up for pageants and auditions. In both stereotypical cases these are vainglorious attempt to fill a hole in their hearts that was either congenital or acquired. Either way it’s not the kids problem. Well, more to the point it absolutely is the kids problem, but it’s not their issue. Not at first at least. 

These folks deserve some judgement. The self-awareness they lack is having potentially serious and harmful outcomes on their kids. We all get this. Even those of us engaged in such unhealthy endeavors when we recognize it in others. 

What I didn’t understand until I had kids, however was that these folks also deserve sympathy. They deserve love and respect like everyone does. Their issue isn’t a lack of love but in most cases its just a matter of faulty calibration. Because all of us, to some degree, are living and reliving our lives through our kids. Hopefully there’s a point where we engage in the struggle and learn to let go of the false sense of control that parenthood so fills us with and we are freed to see our kids as fully realized individuals that are of us for sure, but separate from us in the end. 

   

 As I watch my kids grow up far too fast for their own good, I know that the fears I have for them come from somewhere specific. They come from me and my life story. They come from all the feelings and failings that have made me who and what I am. To try to divorce myself from those experiences and those feelings would be impossible, not to mention imprudent. To forcibly guide them to confront my issues, thatn would be the line for me. That is what I hope to avoid.

What I hope to do is to inform their lives through mine. I hope to send my smiling boy off to kindergarten and have him return excited about being there. There’s every reason to think he will do so. He’s had a different life than the one I did already. I had spent every day of my life home with my mom when I went to school that first time and burst into tears and didn’t stop for months. My son has had two parents that needed to work to put a roof over his head. He has been out and social and listening to teachers and getting in lines for as long as he’s been able. Yet still, my heart is heavy thinking about him in school.

This is just Kindergarten. It clearly failed me as much as I failed it. What about all the anger I carried for so long? What about the self destructive behaviors that fed and fostered my latent depressive and destructive nature as I got older? What of all those relationships I was so determined to undermine be they romantic or platonic in a foolish effort to be invulnerable? What about the constant battles I had with weight and food and alcohol? What about those years I was too afraid to even conceive of them, of me being their father and how close I came to letting that fear rule my life? The same fear that kept me from doing this, writing and being honest about who I am and what I think and how I feel? 
I have endless hope and belief in my kids. They’ve given those things to me through their love and belief. I have true faith in them. I believe they are special. You would to if you knew them. But they are fragile too and I know they come from me and some of my stuff will inevitably be theirs too. I’m determined to stay out of the way of all the life they need, but it’s too much to ask to not bring my own experiences to the table as I try to beat back the demons on the path. Some of them will go around me and they will have to slay them on their own. But some of them I’ve seen before and I hope this second time around, with my knowledge and their strength, the fight won’t take nearly as long. 

Developing Dad is on The Good Men Project Today

  I’m so excited to have an article running on The Good Men Project today!

It’s about masculinity, emotional development and me. Head on ove and take a look! 

#TBT is a Lifeline, Parents. There’s Hope!

 

A funny thing has happened to Facebook since you’ve been blessed with your babies. All those invisible friends who were having kids and obsessing over kids and posting pictures of their kids who were white noise to you before, they are now the people you notice and stop on as you scroll. The others with their pictures of drunken nights and play-house dinner parties in urban settings, dressed fashionably and looking for all the world like they are at a photo shoot are now cruelly taunting you as you hide on your toilet check in on the world through the window of your phone. It can feel awful. Look how much better everyone is doing then you. How fit and trim these other parents are and how interested they are in how their food is made and how much they can exercise. Which is strange because you are kind of, well, not totally, but yeah actually totally fat. Like fat in the face fat. Not just a little tight in the crotch fat, but all new pants and a new strategy at Kohl’s kind of fat.

Smartest In the World. And Robert.
I was positively lanky back in the day!
You aren’t really aware that it’s happened until you see a picture. But once you do see it, you know. You have crossed the line. It’s gonna be a long journey to fitness. You subsist largely on the three C’s of early parenthood; candy, coffee and catnaps. Crying can be substituted for candy or catnaps. Coffee is untouchable. You are both dehydrated and bloated which seems impossible, but isn’t. You are tired and sleepless and tasked with more than you knew you could do. So your glands seek sugar for the short bursts of energy you need. In this early phase with peeks of happiness driven by loving something more than you ever thought possible and lows of madness for exactly the same reason, you turn fat, grey and blobbish.

There is a light at the end of this tunnel. That light is hashtagged. #TBT. Thats right. The mockable, thoroughly pleasurable social media phenomena of Throwback Thursday is your saving grace.

First, find all your friends who’s kids are older then 8 and younger than college. Then, really wind yourself up by looking through their family photo albums. Look for albums with titles like, ‘Fun Run 2013’ or ‘A Day at the Beach’ or simply ‘Mom Runs Two Marathons in One Week’. This should really get you to pull the trigger on those Donuts. Maybe even make you down a pint or two of Ben and Jerry’s just before bed. You’re not really searching the short energy burst at this point. Your just eating your feelings. It’s a complicated emotional maneuver. Your recent trip through your closet, your truly fucked digestive system and your coworkers catching you wearing the only 2 pants you fit in anymore has led you to think there might be something to it.

Then do it. Find all those same friends with their grown kids and look at there various TBT photos of them with their babies at their first birthdays or first anythings, really. If they don’t participate in TBT, no problem. Just scroll through their photo’s. You’ll get there. You’ll see the now dated photos of those parents, those marathoning sunbathers bundled in formless clothing, dressed perpetually for fall, playing with their babies, sprawled on couches and covered in kids. You’ll see it. In addition to their beaming happiness and pride (they are after all curating these pics and they can only go so far in there unwitting role as caregiver to your broken psyche) you’ll see the familiar pallor. The grey ghoul expression on their double chinned faces. Their general dishevelledness. You will see their wholly recognizable unwellness, and you will smile. They too were like you. They too lost all sense of self. There is hope that you may process food effectively again. You too may sleep and exercise and know the names of the movies, maybe even see a few, that were nominated this decade. Their is a chance that you will once again order the flat fronts and not worry that your underbelly will be too evident.

There is hope.

The Currency of Love

Smartest In the World. And Robert.Before I became a dad I had no understanding of the elasticity of time. I considered time a constant. It marched ceaselessly, never wavering, never stopping. These are attributes of time, to be sure, but it was a reductive understanding. Since having the kids I’ve traveled in time, seen it slow to a crawl, marched through years in the span of an afternoon, even traveled to a time so far off I could never live to see it. Time is not simple. Clocks are simple. Time is incredibly flexible and capable of transporting you if you let go, surrender your control over it. It’s okay. You can almost always recapture it.

Other times you surrender parts of yourself to stay forever in a moment.

image
She really is too good to me…

Meeting my wife was one of those moments. The kids are part of that moment too. That they weren’t born yet is of little import in my new relationship to time. So many factors made this moment one capable of stretching years. Despite this the moment itself has not suffered from thinning or become weak as it stays tacked in place and stretches out to stay forever with me. Quite the contrary, actually. Parts of us will always be sitting on those bar stools, hearts jumping like live wires, trying our hardest to both conceal and reveal the excitement, not wanting to scare away the other but unable to control that which we’d harnessed within for so long.

When I became a father and when I became one again time proved as malleable as ever. If I were to leave it to the clocks and the calendars there would be some difference I’d have to assign to the experience, as if the experience were split in two and by virtue of separate arrivals I’d have to assign different values to each. But to use time that way would be unfair as the moment of becoming a father is one moment, one moment that hopped forward and backward through space and time, meeting itself with perfect symmetry.

imageIn that moment when life was shown to us, when we learned all we truly needed to know about love, we experienced one of times most beguiling characteristics. We learned that all that had passed before had been of a nature we didn’t understand. We learned that the compiled joys and pains, fits and starts that we had so bemoaned were in fact time teaching us patience, perseverance and endurance. Time always knew that we would come to understand all it had done to us and understand our lives once we could see them in the light and perspective that time was so diligently showing us. Time was a patient teacher and we very impatient students.

Since our kids have come time has managed to speed up in the macro and slow down in the micro. Each day, hour and even minute can have the potential to be excruciatingly long. Thankfully for those moments which are of endless value to the kids who will never remember them and only be able to appreciate them when they endure them from our perspective, we are able to drop them and leave them where they lie until such a time when the waves of time moving in all directions so obscure them as to make those moments disappear into the ocean. Meanwhile in the macro time seems to be packing so much of itself into each and every day that we are finding ourselves wondering how so much of it has passed. Fretting away moments here and there with sorrow that we won’t have enough time to fully experience life.

Happy 2016!

I never thought much of the time when all my moments would be up. Until I had my kids the pile seemed so large as to be inexhaustible. Then the value of each and every one of those minutes became precious. The fact was I could see in the distance that my boys piles were considerably larger than mine. At least I hope that is what I see. Now I treasure my minutes, trying my hardest, though often failing, to turn as many of my minutes remaining into moments.

Moments are the only true legacy I can leave to them, leaving time from my life and adding time to theirs, as my parents have and do for me. I don’t know that I’d value any minutes if they were endless. So the smaller the pile gets the more invested I am in making as many of them a part of my legacy for my kids as I can. Because in the end time is not only endlessly morphing, it’s also the currency of love.

 

Missives From My Captivity: Notes From The Toddler In The Back Seat

I woke from my nightmare shrieking, terrified. I was harnessed, strapped to the most unsuitably uncomfortable plastic monstrosity one can imagine. It was suffocatingly hot. Had I not wiped the tears from my eyes and been able to properly assess my situation I’d have bet any man a fair few shekels that I was a son of the south and this was the steam that one only finds in the deepest of Faulkner’s novels. But the world that whipped past my view through the windows of my carriage were clearly the cold grey of the north. This suits my druthers for political and humanitarian reasons but I’d be fairly called a liar if I didn’t concede that even then, even dripping from inside a puffy coat that could serve a Sherpa with more than enough warmth to assist a white man to the top of the highest mountain, that I am without question more suited to gentler climes than those that greet me on this day.

I had only been screaming for seconds, perhaps as much as a minute, in pain and discomfort before my captor, the barbarian, my father, reached back and gave me a drink to cool down and restore some small amount of what I’d sweated away in my stupor. I must let the old man off the hook for some of this. I’m merely a child of 3 years at this stage and I’m incapable of recalling a time when I wasn’t thrown into a soothing and restful state once a drive has begun in earnest. I enjoy this view of the world moving so steadily past me at such high speeds and the hum from the motor in my ears and on my body have a positively narcotic effect on me that I’m hard pressed to resist. I rarely do. I was not drugged or harmed in any real way beyond the sores that have occasioned my body after my full weight has pressed my delicate skin against the hard plastic that is barely disguised by what my captors seem to think is a quite playful, bovine pattern on long ago matted, formerly  plush fabric. In the end these are not a good reason for concern as I’m 3 and have miraculous capacity to recover and heal. Sincerely. Any bruising resulting from my journey’s in this chair will disappear by nightfall once I’m at my destination and allowed to remove myself from this seat. Seriously. I’m to understand this won’t last forever, but one could literally watch me heal in a sitting if they were so inclined.

The barbarian removed all such things that might bring me joy and placed them on the floor beneath me to taunt me. So I have chosen to get his attention the only way I am still able to. I have fashioned my drinking cup into a weapon. A projectile to be exact. I shall only be able to use it once so I’m hopeful it will be understood that I had no choice. My rambunctious rebellions are his fault. He had left me no alternative.

Direct hit.

I daresay I shall use the technique again considering how very effective it was in getting his attention.

Once done I asked, nee insisted he retrieve my books and assorted nick-knacks and colorful do-dads from the floor beneath me. If he wished not to do these things he shouldn’t have put them just beyond my reach and restricted my free movement so thoughtlessly. I guess from the color of his face and the boisterousness of his exclamations while completing the task of gathering my things that he won’t be so thoughtless in the future.

Now placated and able to wiggle I am relieved and able to find some comfort by shifting my weight in order to start brand new sores on some other part of my body. As a captive I’m being treated fairly. I’ll never tell the savage and give him the satisfaction, but I know that he has won this battle. I fight on through diffidence and surprise attack whenever I see the opening. For example, I ask for things, everything in my sight. One at a time. He fetches them for me. He is smart and long ago ceded this territory for hope that his seeming benevolence will placate me. To keep this dynamic I am on a strict policy of being satisfied with something given me every third time. The other two times he gives me what I ask for I scream and cry and kick and generally behave as if he has done me some unspeakable harm. Truly inconsolable. This is to last no less than two minutes. I know. It’s nothing, but I’ve come to find me screaming for  for as little as two minutes appears to be a form of torture to him.

Finally I turn and once again become lost in the world of the free that flies past my window, close enough to touch but far enough to stay just beyond my reach. This seat becoming my own Folsom. I contemplate my cruel fate and begin my ablutions when out of nowhere the heathen speaks.

‘Get your finger out of your nose.’

The gall! He knows what forced air heating does to my sinuses and knows that in my current state of imprisonment I have no ability to retrieve my neti pot and address the issue in a civilized fashion.

Besides, he’s a habitual nose-miner himself. What? Does he think I won’t notice. I think I even saw him eat one once.

Farewell fellow travelers and if you see me and I am liberated, please have pity on my jailers. They mean well.

 

Things I Don’t Give a Crap About… On Sammiches & Psych Meds Today!

Hello dear readers!

It’s always so exciting when I get the chance to be published on Sammiches & Psych Meds! Today I’m over there with a list of things I truly could care less about now that my life and priorities have been rearranged by parenthood.child-1141497_1280 Please head over and give it a look and have a laugh!

All the best,

Developing Dad

 

5 Things I Learned in Becoming a Dad

I’m married to a wonderful woman and I have two happy, healthy boys, one 5 and one 3. I had plenty of time to learn plenty of things about life before diving in to this whole ‘family man’ lifestyle. In fact I’d worked for nearly two decades in the ‘caring’ professions and had managed behavior and cared for children that required more support than mine do. You could argue that I was as prepared for fatherhood as one can be. In addition to all of this I am lucky enough to be the son to two genuinely amazing parents and I grew up in the middle of a gigantic family. Like smack dab in the middle. Life has always included room for everyone at the table for me.

All of this gave me a leg up I suppose. But that leg up made me merely, ‘completely unprepared‘ as opposed to say the dad I would have been at 22 who would have been ‘utterly and completely unprepared and destined to fail.‘ I appreciate the advantage I had. Still there are some things that you learn when you become a dad. Here’s a short list of some of the more important and impactful ways I’ve changed and things I’ve learned.

  1. I control so little in life – As men we are perpetually rewarded for acting upon the world. For being determined and decisive and for behaving as such. Having a kid will teach you that this quality is much more useful when used sparingly. 
  2. What Love Is – I love my wife as much as a man can. It’s with my whole person and it’s amazing. But the feeling you have when you hold that little baby needs a different word. Instantly life before that moment becomes irrelevant and as you hold this little baby you realize that you have a purpose. You have a reason to be here, a profound reason that is an elegantly simple one. So much of what was important before is not even on your radar anymore. If it is it’s because it serves a bigger purpose than it ever did before. An example for me would be the gym. I’m back into it now after the baby years made me, ahem, large again. Now when I’m working out it’s not about vanity, ability or attractiveness. It’s about being healthy longer so I can see as much of this show as I can.
  3. How to Fight, Apologize and Forgive – Fighting. It’s our territory. We have a running tally in our heads of our fights and it’s a huge part of our identity. I for one am not much of a fist fighter, but I’ve been lawyering people to death since I was a kid. I had like a 896-0 record going until we became parents. Seriously, I was amazing. Quite improbably most men have a similar record prior to parenthood. This is what happens when you leave us to keep our own records. For a short time after the kid arrives I kept  fighting like I always had. Take no prisoners, win at all costs and end the relationship if it preserves your perfect record. Good men quickly learn this is not sustainable if we hope to be around these people for any length of time. Turns out winning isn’t everything. We still take our victories when we know we are right. We just figure it out quicker when we aren’t or even might not be and we value a return to peace and love over all out war. It’s hard as early on there’s a lot to agree and disagree on. Learn to disagree productively. At the very least learn to disagree in a way that minimizes any long term destruction.
  4. Moms are HOT – They were literally invisible before. Now without ever noticing when it happened you hardly see anything but the moms. This is biological, I’m telling you, once you notice how hot moms are you can’t stop. My wife was a stunner when I met her. It’s true. But she’s never ever looked better than she does today. She thinks it’s just me being nice. Its not. She’s super hot and I’ve never been more attracted to her.
  5. How Precious and Short Life is – Perhaps this is a temperamental thing and not everyone experiences it like I did. Maybe it’s just an older dad thing, doing the math and worrying now that there’s a good reason to not die. Whatever it is I became truly aware of my mortality the second I saw my son the first time. The giant clock that ticks over us all made itself known to me. I know there’s an alarm set on that clock just for me. It sucks. If there’s anything in life that I want to see through to its end it’s the lives of my kids. But that’s not how it works. It’s probably for the best as I wouldn’t be able to survive seeing the end of their stories. I’m invested in making it as long as I can, but I can’t ever stop being aware that all of this is so magical and to be appreciated in the moment because it won’t last forever.

The learning curve is steep for all parents. Moms have to start sooner and as a result men sometimes make big mistakes early. Have some patience. Good men don’t know anything about being good dad’s until they are given the chance to learn from experience. 

Our Kindergarten Dilemma

I’m stressed. We’re stressed. It’s mid January and I’m stressing about how we’ll handle things come September.

I have a fairly Idyllic situation. I drive both my sons, Charlie and Teddy, five and three respectively, to and from daycare every day. I’m able to do this because I work where the best daycare we have ever seen happens to be. Every day has challenges, some have really big challenges, but in all it’s a pretty great trade off. 

For every time I snap and growl aggressively at one of them for not listening to me about opening the garbage can full of salt for melting the yet non-existent snow or have to carry a kid into the building who isn’t yet ready for the ride to be over, squirming and fighting to run back to the car I get ten chances most dads don’t. Most parents don’t for that matter. 

I get to see them throughout the day as I bump into their class heading here or there. I get to poke my head around corners when I know they’re going to be somewhere and watch them making friends and being three or five and breathtaking. I have a relationship with the people that take care of them all day that is just a tad more than it would be if I were to drop them off and leave for the day. Hell, I get to relax my shoulders all day knowing that they are right around the corner and I can see them whenever I want. 

Still, I’m stressed. Tense. 

It’s time for us to sign Charlie up for Kindergarten next year and we don’t know how we are going to do it. While we live literally across the street from where he’ll be going to school, we both work a half hour from there. On top of that the kindergarten that’s offered is of the half-day variety. Meaning we’d have to come get him by 11:30. So this kid, who’s thought of ‘school’, which is how we refer to the daycare, as something that runs about 8 hours a day every day for several years now has to go to ‘real’ school, where its serious. And where it lasts a couple of hours. 

Logistically this causes a good many problems. How are we supposed to get him from there, again a half hour away, back to where I work, which will give him free aftercare, five days a week. I can’t take that much time every day. For Karen it would be twice as much time as she works about a half hour away from me. 

We’re investigating everything but nothing seems simple. The local place that could do aftercare costs $900 a month for 2 days a week. There’s another program that is held where we took him for a few months  for daycare before I took this job a couple years ago where they might be able to take him and we might be able to remain solvent, emphasis on ‘might’ for that last part. But he cried literally all day every day there. He’s so comfortable in his school now and the thought of that is traumatizing to us. We could and will if we have to, try to pick him up everyday. It will be a very stressful year but of course we could figure it out. The consideration at the top of our list is to move out to where I work. This is for kindergarten. Public school, half day , no wait list or crazy application process kindergarten. 

I’m tense without a solution. I’m the ‘don’t worry, we’ll figure it out spouse’ in my marriage and even I’m fretting this one from here, 8 months out. Who knows what we’ll end up choosing and who knows if it’ll work. 

Truthfully these are wonderful stresses to have. He’s a lucky kid (at times) for having parents this concerned. The stress is endurable and the solution will be whatever it is we choose. We’ll see how it goes and if we need to change course midstream it wouldn’t be the first time. Woudn’t even be the fiftieth time. We’re actually getting better and better and switching saddles whilst wading in low waters.

I’m not bothered by it, even if I am a bit annoyed from time to time. Because I remember ten years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. I can tell you what was on TV and what it was I was doing on Tuesday nights at that time. It was a flash. All of it. It was a blink of an eye. Ten years from now I’ll be starting the conversations with him about college. If that’s the direction he goes. If not I’ll be talking to him about a thousand other things and I’ll be looking back on all the time we spent driving back and forth from wherever he may end up in September and back to work with me. I’ll be remembering it with a full heart and so much wistful nostalgia for a time that was the fullest of my life. A time I thought was stressful but was actually the most joy filled days I’ll ever know. None of it lasts forever anywhere else but in my mind and I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to be stocking my memories so generously.

The Couple Date, Toddler Edition

To be fair, you really should do this more often.

It’s your semi-annual date night with people similarly afflicted with children in the ‘rugrat’ stage of development. You will only go out with couples in the same stage as you as there’s just a hair more acceptance of your general dishevelment and lack of understanding of anything that has happened in the past 3 years that took place outside of your own home.

You start the night having properly timed everything, painstakingly, to be as together as you can be at the moment you are to arrive. And it’s wonderful. You are 0nce again putting your best foot forward and demonstrating at least a modicum of pride in your appearance. It’s such a foreign feeling that it gets you a little heady. Your hosts are in the same boat and the laughs and understanding of a person who gets what you’re going through is intoxicating. You aren’t crazy. Or you are, but it turns out you are supposed to be.

Before long you are on your second glass of wine and you are now well on your way to drinking like a college freshman again, ready to get sloppy and emotional and ready to call a taxi later to get you home. You’re getting your drink on tonight. Having put more effort into this night than has been put into anything you’ve done for yourself in forever you determine that you just have to get going to that new ‘high end’ pizza joint downtown. There’s no way you’re getting this dressed up and not getting out, no matter how much fun you are having here.

Once there you see the line. Are you kidding me? You have a vague memory of a time when a line was a small challenge, a mere hiccup. A good one. One that spoke to something desirable at the end of it. This is purely a memory. There is not even a tiny residue of that feeling left, but none of you want to let the others down by being a drag on what’s so clearly going to be an…

‘To be honest, I don’t even think there pizza’s that good. I had it with some guys from work. It’s not that much better than the place around the corner. No wait there.’ you all dance around the idea for a minute before the ‘thank god someone said something’ moment happens and you all walk gloriously down the street.

You ask for the bar menu after being seated and noticing a disturbingly high number of families with kids there. It’s alright. They ain’t yours. You do miss them though and make a note that someday, when bathrooms aren’t as urgent a need as they can be with little ones that seem not to understand the feeling of something coming, only recognizing it’s arrival, it might be a nice place to come for lunch with the kids.

No. Bar. You can bring your own though. The men head out and find a store and return wine in hand. Rather, wine in box in hand.

You’re such a jackass.

Don’t be silly. It’s not the giant fridge box. We can put it on the floor. There’s three bottles in here!

Turns out it’s okay. You even see some presently-parenting-parents looking longingly. You offer, they demure. These are your people and lines are for suckers.

By the time you’ve sufficiently made it impossible to shove any more carbs in you realize you should be getting home. The kids are going to be up early and you need to get some Gatorade and aspirin down before getting to bed. These little ones make no distinction between weekday and weekend and six in the morning is extra early for a morning after.

So you all agree that you are tempting fate and should get home. You hug and shake and do the manly combo thing and tell each other you’ll definitely do this again next week. Well, not next week, but certainly in the next month. If not certainly sometime around the holidays. Or maybe just after, once all the travel is done. It’s the kind of on the fly planning you do with friends when you are drunk. You are totally drunk, but you’re a grown up now and that just means you have to hold it together.

Your cab comes and you give them your address and you laugh and flirt in the back and it’s awesome. You’re totally gonna have sex when you get home. But first you have to be dropped on the corner so you can chew some gum and eat some old Altoids so as not to smell like vagrants for the babysitter. You see them through the window, all adorable and in their jammies so you decide to hang out for a little. But they don’t go down. Looks like they’re waiting for you. You promise that once they are down you can meet up in the bedroom and ‘finish’ your date. You mean it this time. Seriously.

Your arrival is greeted with such excitement that you decide at least one half of a Curious George is probably a good idea. One or two. Before long you are bringing slightly calmed kids to their rooms and laying with them for a bit looking at the ceiling of green stars shone from the timed light on the dresser. You eventually notice that your eyes are closed and you haven’t heard anything in minutes. You open and see the stars have timed out and he didn’t even notice. His back is to you so you wait and listen. Breaths aren’t deep enough yet to risk it. So you close your eyes and wait.

Finally you drift to sleep. It’s okay. Same thing happened in the other room. It’s not how you’d have scripted the date ending, but you’ll take it. Every time.

We really should do this more often.