Christmas and Parenting

Anne, Carver, and I have now lived together as a family for two Christmases, and for two Christmases Anne has jokingly but seriously tried to talk me out of getting a real Christmas tree. [n.1] Anne’s suggestions have, however, been unsuccessful, for I am adamant about having a real Christmas tree for Carver.

Not only do I insist on having a real tree, but I also am extremely particular about the lights that are on it, what sits atop it, and the music that is played throughout the season. I’m particular about how we do Christmas because I want Carver to have what I see as the right sort of Christmas accoutrements, so to speak.

After my mom moved out when I was just about 16, my dad and I became a bit lazy about Christmas trees. After a year or two we gave up on real ones, and decided to bring in a potted tangerine tree that we had out by the pool. It was a small tree in a huge pot, beanpole thin all the way up and topped by a nearly round plume of green and tangerines. While we noted that the tangerines served as fine ornaments, if not technically, we also threw on a small string of lights, a handful of cheap ornaments, and even some tinsel (something we’d never put on a real tree). It was awesome, and most of my friends viewed it with envy as the coolest symbol of bachelor ease they’d ever seen. The tangerine tree was all well and good for that point in my life, but for Carver’s early youth, I want him to have the things that I had and cherished about Christmastime.

I have many fond memories of Christmastime, but most of my fondest involve our tree in one way or another. I can still see in my mind’s eye the soft multicolored glow and twinkle of the lights as I lay on the couch, dreaming of Santa and enraptured in the joys of the season. I can still feel the excitement I felt when we’d go to a lot, or a self-cut farm, and pick out the year’s tree. I can still smell the evergreen. All of these memories remind me of good things, family and hope and joy and love. They are precious memories to me and I want my son to be able to have similar memories of his own.

Of course he would still have his own memories even if we had a fake tree, but no one can convince me that it would be the same, that the memories would be as sweet.

I have serious literary support for my obsession with the importance of the tree in Christmas memory making. Truman Capote, in his A Christmas Memory (hello? can there be a greater authority on Christmas memories?), discusses the joy of the hunt for the perfect tree. [n.2] There are also positive tree references in Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Cather, Cummings, Thackeray, and I suspect many more. And here’s a great, very apt one from Dickens:

"There was everything, and more." This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side—some of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses—made a lively realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments at that well-remembered time.

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.

Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top—for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!

Of course Carver is his own person and his life need not mirror mine. He can and will have his own memories. But why would I not want to share with him what I so loved? Isn’t that part of what bonds us? Isn’t that part of what parenting is? I say yes. When he becomes old enough to make his own decisions and have his own preferences, I’ll be perfectly happy to entertain them. If some day he, like my friend Marco’s son, decides that he doesn’t like the idea of cutting down a tree just to later throw it out (or, more properly, recycle), we can consider other options. But for now I want to share one of the most precious aspects of my life with my son, and I hope his Christmas memories are even greater than mine.

Note 1: By real I mean an actual formerly live tree, preferably some sort of fir.

Note 2: My Christmas memories don’t involve hiking into the woods to cut down a tree, but if I ever live somewhere where it is possible, I’d like to start that tradition.

Dog-eared

I’ve decided to copy my wife’s “dog-eared” feature (though I don't actually "dog-ear" my books—I'm kind of anal about keeping my books in nice shape). These posts will contain brief quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

From Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

“But in college Ralph’s goals were hazy. He thought he wanted to be a doctor and he thought he wanted to be a lawyer, and he took pre-medical courses and courses in the history of jurisprudence and business law before he decided he had neither the emotional detachment necessary for medicine nor the ability for sustained reading required in law, especially as such reading might concern property and inheritance.”

Yes. I find his view of the requirements for being, and tolerating being, a doctor and a lawyer to be very accurate. He should be thankful he figured it out early.

“They had held hands the night before their wedding and pledged to preserve forever the excitement and mystery of marriage.”

When there’s a sentence like that in a Raymond Carver story, it’s a sure sign that something bad is going to happen.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 5: Drugs

[Soundtrack for this post: The White Album]

[Beer for this post: Port Brewing Company’s WipeOut IPA]

On to the fourth essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

D.A.R.E.

In this essay Chabon talks about talking with his kids about drugs. He admits to having smoked quite a bit of marijuana between 1980 (his freshman year of college) and 2005, and much of the essay involves the various issues involved when a former, long-term drug user is trying to encourage his kids to stay clear of drugs. [n.1]

I have never done an illegal drug. Not once. I have never “experimented”—I have not had the slightest interest. I am convinced that my roommate Brian and I were the only people in our entire freshman dorm who did not smoke pot, and all the others not only smoked pot but they did it every single day. Along with Brian, my friends Chad and Gary, and my first girlfriend, Lianne, were also fiercely anti-drug. [n.2]

I don’t know why I have never had any interest in “experimenting” with drugs. My parents smoked pot well before I was born and well into my lifetime, a fact of which I was fully aware from a relatively young age. [n.3] They had also done other drugs, but I wasn’t so sure of that until more recently. One of my sisters also used drugs when I was young, and I was aware of it. I see that experience as having two possible effects: (1) either my exposure would make me more likely to try drugs myself; or (2) because my parents smoked pot and tried to hide it from me I’d develop an aversion to pot smoking. Obviously the first didn’t apply to me (though it did to a friend of mine), but I’m not sure how much the second applied either.

I’ve always been convinced that I am a D.A.R.E. [n.4] “success story.” I did most of my growing up during the ‘80s, a time when Nancy Reagan was telling us all to “Just Say No,” [n.5] D.A.R.E. was blossoming, and anti-drug after-school-specials seemed to be flooding the airwaves. I even went to a D.A.R.E. day-camp when I was 12. My young brain fully believed that drugs made you stupid, rotted your nose to the point that the divider between your nostrils ceased to exist allowing for disgusting tricks with tissues, and that drug users had all sorts of horrible, nightmarish experiences involving perceived spiders crawling all over their bodies, or young girls whoring themselves out, and so on. Some might use the term “brain washed.”

Aside from my parents, sister, and one friend, the only other people I knew who used drugs were schoolmates of mine who smoked so much pot that they did it at school. These people, “stoners” we called them, were invariably very stupid. So I could not help but deduce that either: (1) smoking pot made you incredibly dumb; or (2) only incredibly dumb people smoked pot. Either way, it would be an understatement to say it didn’t spark a desire in me to burn one down.

Chabon has this to say about the first time he saw someone (his mother) smoking pot (he was in his mid-teens):

“Nevertheless, smoking marijuana remained for years afterward nothing I had any interest in trying myself, not so much because I feared its effects or even because it was against the law but simply because I was a good boy, and as such I looked down my nose with a cosmic, Galactus-sized censoriousness at the kids I knew—stoners, burnouts—who smoked it.”

Now I would not usually call myself a “good boy,” but I can totally relate to this. I certainly have, and continue to, look down my nose with a certain censoriousness at most people I know who do drugs. I have a hard time with balancing this with my fierce libertarian ideas that those people can do whatever they like, and it has never bothered me to have friends or fellow dorm dwellers smoke a bowl right in front of me—to each their own. But I also think it’s dumb, and remain certain that it isn’t for me. And when it came to people I cared about, love interests in particular, the thought of them getting high has always been enough to gut me, emotionally.

I don’t know where this disdain comes from. There’s the illegality, but given that I freely break the law in at least one other context (I tend to view speed limits as loosely advisory), and also firmly believe that marijuana should be legalized, it would be strange if the illegality is what gets me. There’s also the mind-altering aspect, which has typically been something I disapproved of. I always viewed drug users as the weak who can’t deal with life, which is something at certain points in my life I would’ve considered one of the most damning things I could say about a person. But over the last year and a half, a time of much emotional strife in my own life, I have quite obviously self-medicated with alcohol, comfort foods, and self-pity, so you’d think I’d get off my high horse already [n.6]. Perhaps in this respect I’m like a Republican Senator—I see nothing wrong with drinking myself into a stupor [n.7], but I’ll be goddamned if I’ll condone some hippie drug.

Chabon and his wife decided in advance that when the drug conversation came up that they would be honest with their kids (though he does balk at telling his kids, when his son asked him how many times he smoked marijuana, that he has done it approximately one million times—he instead said “a number of times”). I’m not sure how my wife and I will address the drug conversation. Let’s just say that my wife’s experience with drugs is very different, perhaps even a near exact opposite, of mine. I’m not sure how I can be honest with my son about my ideas about drugs without saying things that he may construe as a direct attack on his mother. I will almost certainly have to qualify my old ideas that only dumbasses and weaklings do drugs, and my wife will have to come up with an explanation for why she did the things she did. I imagine we have several years before we have to get our story straight, but it’s something we’re going to have to work on.

Note 1: Chabon also says that 13 “is the age at which you begin to become fully aware of hypocrisy, contradiction, ambiguity, coded messages, subtexts; it is the age, therefore, at which you must begin to attempt to sort things out for yourself . . . .” I find the precision, and lack of qualification, in that statement to be odd.

Note 2: I have some truly excellent friends, and I’m convinced that my good taste (or good fortune) in friends has much to do with my relative success in life. But that’s a topic for another post.

Note 3: Note to parents, teens, and others: Spraying air freshener does not remove the odor of marijuana—it just makes it smell like marijuana and vanilla (or whatever bouquet the air freshener has).

Note 4: Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

Note 5: She even invaded one of my beloved sit-coms, Diff’rent Strokes:

Note 6: There was a time though, when I never would’ve considered ingesting anything mind-altering at times of grief and struggle—I firmly believed that I was supposed to feel what I was feeling, and drinking or using some drug would be a cop-out that would deny me what I was supposed to feel. I wish I had hung on to that.

Note 7: That’s not true.

Fearrington

I noticed an ad in an issue of The New Yorker that reads:

"Retire to Fearrington - A charming country village near Chapel Hill, NC with bluebirds, belted cows and fascinating people of all ages."

And I thought, how strange that this little village in North Carolina is advertising in The New Yorker to try to attract some new residents. I thought I'd offer a kind suggestion to the good people of this quaint village: if you want to attract more residents, perhaps you should remove the word fear from your town name.

But it turns out, as far as I can tell, that Fearrington is nothing more than a new development created by an ambitious developer. The ad is much less surprising to me now.

What's that?

"Made from 3% of the World's best coffee beans"

I don't think that's what they meant to say . . . .

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 4: Circumcision

[Soundtrack for this post: Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas]

[Beer for this post: Victory’s Hop Wallop]

On to the third essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

The Cut

In this essay Chabon writes about his decision to circumcise his second son. He debunks many of the arguments for why people circumcise their boys, but he nevertheless chose to have the procedure performed on his sons.

In case you don’t know, my wife and I have a son. So we too had to make the “to circumcise or not to circumcise” decision. Anne left it up to me, presumably because I’m the one with a penis. [n.1]

A friend of mine had a boy several months before Anne and I had Carver, and as far as I can tell they never doubted that their son would get “the cut.” I, however, struggled with it for a few months. My mom, who’s a nurse, sent me some literature about circumcisions with a note saying that if she had known more about it at the time, she probably wouldn’t have allowed me to be circumcised. Like Chabon, I have very strong doubts about the arguments made in favor of circumcision—they all tend to be bogus, as far as I can tell. Some say circumcision reduces the chance of getting certain cancers and infections. Others say that boys will be confused if they don’t “match” their father or brothers. I don’t buy any of it. On the other hand, people say circumcision greatly reduces the pleasure a man feels during sexual contact.

In the end I chose to have my son circumcised. Why? you ask. That’s a good question. Like Chabon, I find the practice to be insane, yet I subjected my son to it anyway. And I’m not even Jewish, unlike Chabon, so there was no religious reason. I’ll tell you why I did it though, even though it might be hard to believe.

I did it for him. I was concerned that he might miss out on some blow jobs if he weren’t circumcised, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to cost my son even one blow job.

You see, just about every boy I knew growing up was circumcised. So to me, early on, a complete penis was an oddity. [n.2] I have little doubt most of the girls and women I knew growing up felt the same way. I know for a fact that certain women I know find uncircumcised penises to be a major turn-off. While I recognize that there are undoubtedly women who prefer complete penises, they have been either nonexistent or at most a tiny minority in the group of women I’ve known. I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the same would be true for my son. So I had him circumcised so his penis would fit in. (Ahem.)

But I wouldn’t do it again. While I don’t really regret having Carver clipped—I’ve heard people who claim it is an extremely traumatic experience, but I was with Carver within minutes after his procedure and he seemed to recover remarkably quickly—if we have another son I won’t have him cut. My reasons: (1) I think it is absurd, yet the one reason I stuck with is that I didn’t want my son to have an odd penis. But the only reason it is odd in my (sub)culture, to the extent it is, is because of people like me. I now want to stop the madness. (2) While Carver's went smoothly, there is a degree of danger. There are stories about nasty infections and even boys losing their entire penis, which would suck, to say the least.

And as for the thing about it greatly reducing pleasure. All I have to say is: What? I don’t see why it needs to feel any better. It’s probably better that it doesn’t.

Note 1: It’s important that the presumably is before the because.

Note 2: An example: A friend of mine moved to a different town when we were just entering high school. He played on the football team there. One day he was talking with us, and said, “You know, Mexicans cut of the heads of their dicks!” I asked him to repeat what he just said. He explained that in showering and such he occasionally caught sight of his teammates’ penises, and how all of the Hispanic guys had snub-nosed members. I was in shock for a few seconds, before I realized that some of his teammates just weren’t circumcised. My friend didn’t know what a complete, natural penis looked like, and that what he thought was standard was in fact a modification.

A Word I Love: Caper

Caper in the sense of “a capricious escapade” or “an illegal or questionable act; especially theft,” is a great word. I’d much rather be involved in a caper than in robbery, thievery, larceny, burglary, a job, a heist, a stickup, a holdup, an annexation or appropriation, a break-in, rip-off, score, deprivation, or to steal, pirate, filch, fleece, grab, pinch, lift, plunder, purloin, or swindle. Two of my favorite uses of caper are:

(1) The Great Muppet Caper:

(2) Strong Bad E-Mail # 68, “Caper”:

I’m disappointed I’ve never been involved in a jumble caper.

Poetry: Mothers

A few weeks ago, I saw Kay Ryan and Billy Collins speak at the final event of this year’s Chicago Humanities Festival. They’re the current Poet Laureate and a former one. They read some poetry and bantered, and it was really, really good. The theme of this year’s CHF had something to do with humor and I was thinking that two poets wouldn’t exactly cause much knee slapping or side splitting, but it was very funny. The poems they read were almost all excellent too.

The Lanyard

Billy Collins has a great poem called The Lanyard. It’s about mothers and the debt that we each owe ours. I’d like to say something insightful about it, about mothers, but I think the poem stands up just fine on its own. I was going to post the full thing here, but I decided I don’t feel comfortable doing that, so you can find it here. If you’d like to hear and see the author read it, the Poetry Foundation has a video of Billy Collins reading The Lanyard and I highly recommend it. Actually, I beg you to watch it—please—it’ll do you good. Watch it here. Or here:

So, yeah, what he said.

Notes:

(1) Anne: The introduction to the video is by G.K. (yes, that G.K.), so you may want to start at the 20 second mark.

(2) Look at all those people listening to a poet! It warms my heart.

Jolene and Suicide

[Soundtrack for this post: Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble]

I saw Ray LaMontagne perform last week. He was awesome, as usual. He mentioned how he was on Elvis Costello’s TV show Spectacle. He said that Elvis said Allison was a song that still resonates with people, and that Elvis suggested that Jolene was a song of Ray’s that might have the same qualities. Ray then played Jolene and I came close to tearing up.

Jolene

Jolene is almost certainly in my High Fidelity -like “top five songs of all time,” and it has a shot at being #1 with a bullet. I’m obsessed with lyrics, so most of what affects my opinion of a song is what the words say. I love many of Ray’s songs, but there’s something about the storytelling quality of Jolene that really does it for me. Take Shelter as an example in contrast: a great song, a song I love and is Anne’s and my “song,” so to speak, I love it, it is beautiful, but I don’t see anything when I hear it. Jolene is different.

With Jolene I can see the coatless man, smoking his cigarettes. I can see his pain. As with many songs, I insert myself in the role of the protagonist. I am Jolene’s man. I can see the picture of Jolene holding a picture of me, it’s cracked and faded from spending so much time in the pocket of my blue jeans—I can see it in my filthy, cracked, and shaking hands. I can see myself and feel the pain of the man who has woken in the ditch, with booze in his hair and blood on his lips. I know exactly what he means when he says a man needs a nine-pound hammer or a woman like Jolene. It’s a magnificent song about love and loss. I love it so much I easily forgive the mispronunciation of Spokane, which is saying something.

Maybe it’s the mention of eastern Washington, or the drug use and boozing of what I assume is a blue collar man, or the name Ray, but the song reminds me of Raymond Carver and his stories of working class love, drug use, and drinking.

Something about it makes me want to be the strung-out drunk who wakes up in a ditch with booze in his hair and blood on his lips—something about the pain on display that can’t be ignored, a pain that shows up in such an obvious and devastating way. It’s a physical manifestation of feeling, even if AA would say what he’s trying to do is not feel. [n.1]

But of course I can’t be the Jolene man now. I have a wife and a kid. I can’t be coked out and passing out in ditches, coatless. I now have responsibilities that affect others. But I’ve felt that way for the last dozen years.

My parents lost a child in 1997, one of my sisters, and it was undoubtedly the hardest thing either of them have ever had to deal with. I determined that they, my mom in particular, could never handle another blow like that. Which means that I have to do what I can to stay alive, for them, and now for Carver too.

Suicide

I have no problem with suicide. I used to. I used to think that it was a cop-out, a way for the weak to avoid struggle. But I don’t feel that way anymore.

I am not a religious man, and am pretty dubious when it comes to any sort of afterlife. So if someone’s life sucks and causes him nothing but pain, I don’t see why he should be chastised for calling it quits a little early. Maybe that’s hard on the people that get left behind, but that’s their problem. Staying alive for the sake of others is a strange idea in at least one way: if you hate life and want to die, why do they so want you to live to suffer more pain? Can their wants be anything other than selfish? [n.2]

Regardless of what I said in that last paragraph, I am one who will always do what I can to live for others. I want to live for me too, but I also want to live for my family. The idea of my son growing up without his father is something that I can’t even think about without nearly gagging with disgust. And I am not willing to take responsibility for my parents losing another child.

I had a discussion with a psychiatrist a few weeks ago about suicide. I had explained to her how I had basically led a rather charmed life, loaded with opportunities (relatively). She asked why I thought I might be so unhappy considering that I just said I was lucky in the life department, and I responded, I shit you not, by saying “Well, people are complicated.” As if she needed to be told. I then went on to talk about David Foster Wallace.

Dave Wallace was a writer of massive acclaim and much (relative) celebrity. He was also wicked smart, to the extent where I have no problem conceding that he was way, way, way smarter than me, which is not something I concede very often. He also had a history of depression. Dave Wallace was famous, brilliant, incredibly talented, had a rather large cult-like following that undoubtedly included beautiful groupies who would do his every bidding, had a very desirable teaching gig at a fancy liberal arts college that required little more than he be himself, et cetera, et cetera. And in September of 2008 he hanged himself with a belt from his back porch. [n.3]

The psychiatrist’s question, which was undoubtedly asked more to see how I would respond rather than in an attempt to be unpuzzled, applies to Dave Wallace at least as much as it does to me (almost certainly much more so). I don’t think I have a better answer than “People are complicated.” Depression is complicated too.

Note 1: Or so I’ve been told.

Note 2: This is true, if it is at all, only when the suicide is well considered; a teenager blowing his brains out because a girlfriend dumped him is a different matter.

Note 3: In David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest, there’s a scene where one of the students at the tennis academy where much of the story takes place confesses his obsession with having his picture show up in tennis magazines. The sweat-licking [n.3a] guru to whom he is confessing basically ruins his dream by telling him that people who get that fame do not really enjoy it, and in the end their horror becomes a fear of the day when they no longer show up in magazines. Some have speculated that Wallace was working hard to surpass Infinite Jest but that he recognized there was a real chance that he never would. Need I elaborate?

Note 3a: Literally.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 3

[Soundtrack for this post: Flunk’s For Sleepyheads Only]

[Beer for this post: Southern Tier IPA (again)]

On to the second essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

William and I

In this essay Chabon tells a story about how he is complimented in the supermarket for being a “good dad.” He talks about how the good dad standard is so different, and lower, than the good mom standard, and how fathers in the past had it even easier.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an experience similar to what Chabon recalls in his essay, how many times I’ve been stopped and praised for being a good dad when I’ve done, as far as I can tell, nothing to warrant comment (much less praise).

I’ve often thought about this double standard. The first time I really got it was when the three of us went to visit my mom for the first time since Carver’s arrival. My mom lives on the coast of Washington so we always fly into Seattle. On that trip we spent the night in Seattle at my aunt Merlee’s apartment, which we often do rather than tackle the four-hour drive on the same day as the flight. Carver was just shy of three months on this particular trip, and he still wasn’t sleeping much. My aunt’s apartment is all on one level and isn’t huge, so when Carver woke in the early morning, I figured I should take him somewhere so Anne, my mom, and my aunt could get a couple more hours of sleep. I took Carver to a Tully’s, which is a coffee shop chain similar to Starbucks, but much better. I got a coffee and bought the New York Times, and struggled trying to move my coffee and paper and get settled why carrying Carver. At some point one of the Tully’s ladies asked me something like this: “Oooohhhhh [spoken in that very sweet way that conveys that the speaker finds something adorable], are you watching the baby so mom can sleep in?” Yes. “OOOOoooohhhh [almost orgasmic], you’re such a WONderful dad! That is so sweet.” Almost from the moment she started asking, it was as if every woman in the coffee shop decided to eavesdrop and descend on me and Carver, cradling us in this ring of praise and adoration that seemed strangely tinged with lust. I knew that if it were Anne and not me no one would’ve even commented about her mothering. That was my first noteworthy experience with the parenting double standard, and I’ve benefited from it many more times since.

Chabon has this to say about how we as a society see mothering: “Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby’s gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair. Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself. We do not judge mothers by snapshots but by years of images painstakingly accumulated from the orbiting satellite of memory.” Good fathering, by contrast, apparently just means sticking around and seeming to be content with very limited parenting responsibilities. In some subcultures, it seems good fathering simply means still being around by the time the child is born.

Chabon also has this line about his father’s parenting: “My father educated me in appreciating the things he appreciated, and in ridiculing those he found laughable, and in disbelieving the things he found dubious.” As a father and a son, I find that to be a remarkably apt description of fatherhood.

I have always thought that both of my parents were pretty good parents, but that’s based on an extraordinarily limited sample size. They’re both imperfect and a little nuts, but my guess is that that describes just about everyone. I don’t have any reasonable complaints.

I have worried about being a horrible father for about as long as I’ve recognized that I might someday be a father. When I was in high school I developed a theory that parenting styles skipped generations. I used my own family as an example. My paternal grandfather was, in my young eyes, a harsh, mean, and scary man, and thus probably a bear of a father. By stark contrast, my father was, at least in my eyes, understanding, kind, and laid-back perhaps to a fault. My theory was that my father didn’t want to be like his father, so he was much easier going. My fear was that I would be like my grandfather, because I had a nice father and didn’t appreciate what it was like to have a harsh father. By that time I could see parts of my grandfather leaking through me: a fierce temper and an occasional severe lack of patience with others.

It has become clear to me in the last 15 years that I will not be my grandfather, but I will not be my father either. I have my own still developing way, and while I rarely manage to meet my own standards for what I expect from myself as a father, I do recognize that I am, relatively, probably going to be pretty good at it.

Poetry

I have published precisely one poem in my life. It was in the University of Michigan Law School’s Griot, so that’s using a very liberal interpretation of “publish.” Most of my other poetry has consisted primarily of sentimental love poems, most of which probably aren’t very good.

I actually submitted two poems to the Griot and they took only one, and I always thought it was the lesser of the two. I also still bristle when I think about the editing process for the one they took. One of my reviewing readers asked a very dumb question, and in the end they both convinced me to chop the end off, a decision I regret.

I figured I’d post them here so you can read them and, if you want, let me know what you think about them, particularly which is better and if you like “Waiting for the 33” with the end or without. Keep in mind I wrote both of these in one evening, so…

Waiting for the 33

Two crows on the power line

Mating ritual – Big male, smaller female

Cawing/cackling

Picking/preening

He shifts away, she shifts toward

She shifts and flies away

He stays

Perhaps it was her unladylike behavior

Perhaps he’s just a coward, like many men

He stayed on awhile, cackling

Five minutes later he caws across the street, in a tree

Five minutes later she joins him, they resume the dance

He stays near, preens her

Coyly playing their game, jumping from branch to branch

Preening, kissing in the rain

Back on my side of the street

Back where they started

Their movements cause the line to quiver.

(vibrations from their love work across, into the poles, continue into the staples and nails and tar)

[The published version does not have the final line]

Laundry

“I hope he wakes up this morning and has no socks.”

she says to no one, as she rubs at her mascara.

The tissues go in the toilet.

After grimacing at the initial raucous roar,

she waits for the sweet ring of the B-flat that follows.

Back behind the counter, wondering why

each drink is so unnecessarily complicated,

she winces when the milk turns to foam;

as the warm quiet rumble builds to a wail.

Fleeing the clamor,

finding the stillness of the back alley,

she takes one drag before she tosses

her cigarette to the ground.

Choking back a sob, she picks up the butt,

and extinguishes it on the thin skin of her wrist.

Biting down on nothing, wiping at her tears,

she thinks of bare feet on cold tile,

and smiles.

The Unbearable: Harm to Children

[Soundtrack for this post: Tom Waits’s Alice]

[Beer for this post: Southern Tier IPA]

Anne and I both get a huge amount of mail from people who want our money. Some of them are nonprofits asking for donations. I assume we get these because we often give money away (sorry, Neal). We get so many of them that I don’t usually feel bad when I toss them in the trash without much more than a quick glance at the return address. But I’ve been hanging on to one that haunts me every time I look at it. It’s from a charity called Smile Train, a nonprofit charity that repairs cleft lips and palates (sometimes called, inappropriately in my opinion, a “harelip”).

I initially kept the Smile Train request for money because the envelope says “Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again!” I’ve tossed Smile Train pleas before, but that one sentence got me to hang on to it this time (fundraisers take note). And it’s the hanging on to it that has allowed the envelope to work its checkbook loosening magic. For you see, they have pictures of afflicted children on the envelope.

On the front of the envelope, which is right next to me as I write this, is a picture of an infant boy with a unilateral cleft lip and palate. His head is cocked slightly to the right, his eyes are glassy, as if wet with tears, and his expression pleads with you to help him, please for the love of all that is holy help him. It is utterly heartbreaking. I’m tempted to scan it and post the picture here so you can see it and experience the agony that I do every time I look at that poor child, but I won’t because I don’t want to crush your soul and faith in whatever you have faith in. The picture is simply too powerful and might cause you to die of grief, unless you’re a stonehearted monster.

On the back there are three more children, but each has a “before and after” set of photos. You get to see the good work they do there at Smile Train. And that series, after nearly having my heart ripped in half by the image of the dear boy on the front, makes me want to give Smile Train every dollar I have--it makes me want to take out a dozen loans and max out my credit cards so I can give them even more than I have. But after I stanch my tears I get to wondering why. Why them and not most of the other countless charities that want my money?

That’s a good question. I’m not even sure whether there are any benefits to repairing cleft lips and palates other than the cosmetic. It may be that fixing them reduces infections, or speech problems, or whatever, but I don’t know. So part of me thinks, why am I so worried about what may just be a cosmetic problem when there are other charities that feed the starving, inoculate those that need it most, et cetera, et cetera? Is it my own vanity? My own American obsession with physical appearance? I don’t know, but I don’t think it's something so shallow. I do recognize that I assume it will lead to social difficulties, and the extent of those that I imagine may indeed be affected by my American sensibilities, but I think the biggest thing is that it looks like a wound, and I cannot stomach children suffering.

I’d like to think that I always found the suffering of children to be a horror, but I have never been as sensitive to it as I am now that I have my own child. Now whenever I hear stories of a child being kidnapped, abducted and raped, tortured, or whatever, I suffer physical pain. The mere thought of it is almost unbearable.

There was a woman a while back who forgot her infant daughter and left her in the car to, essentially, bake. She was on Oprah talking about the incident years later. All I could think was that if I did that to Carver, I would kill myself immediately. The idea that I killed my son, the thought of how he cried in vain and suffered alone because of my stupidity, I would not be able to take. I’d off myself, guaranteed, by any means. The same goes if he were kidnapped (and kidnapping at an age where the child can’t identify himself or remember his name totally freaks me out even more). I would, seriously, go completely mad.

I was watching a South Park the other day and the boys convinced Butters to fake his death so he could pretend to be a new girl in school and infiltrate the girls’ inner sanctum. They made a life-sized Butters doll and loaded it with pig guts and bacon and such. They placed the doll at the edge of a building and, as his parents were watching, pleading with “him” not to jump, the boys shoved it off and the whole thing exploded in a mess of blood and guts right in front of Butters’s parents. There was a time when I might have been amused, but now all I could think of was Butters’s poor parents and how incredibly messed up the whole thing was.

This issue makes me think about God, or rather whether one or more gods exist.

I’ve never been a religious person. My parents baptized me to please my paternal grandmother, but we never went to church. I’ve pretty much always been either an agnostic or a borderline atheist, and one of the things that serves as a serious hurdle to me ever thinking otherwise is Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov. Dostoevsky was a Christian, and the Brothers was not meant to have the effect that it did on me, but I have a hard time shaking free of Ivan’s skepticism in the chapter typically titled Rebellion. I don’t know if I can believe in a Christian god that allows people to be born with cleft lips and palates and other deformities, but I can easily understand and curse a nature that produces them. That may sound crazy to you, but I've felt that way for a long time, and having a child has only reinforced my position.

“But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. It’s just their defencelessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

“This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to dear, kind God’! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! . . .

. . . .

Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.

“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level- but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?- I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

“That’s rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 2

I saw Michael Chabon last night. He’s touring to support Manhood for Amateurs and spoke at the Chicago Public Library. He read two pieces from the book, answered questions, and then signed books. I had a really nice time. Three notable impressions: (1) the guy can read, and by that I don’t just mean he’s literate, which of course he is, but that he really does a superb job reading his essays, possibly the best I’ve heard live; (2) he’s very funny and charming when answering questions and interacting with the audience; and (3) he’s very attractive in a sort of bookish “cute” way, I can see why the ladies would be into him, and why some gay men really wished he was gay. If he comes to your town, I recommend seeing him.

The Loser’s Club

The first essay in Manhood for Amateurs is called The Loser’s Club (I’d like to avoid spoiling the essays for those who haven’t read them, so I won’t do thorough summaries, but I’ve got to set it up, right?). He writes about the time when he was 10 and started a comic book club, complete with a newsletter that he did the layout for and typed using nothing but a typewriter (he even made columns and sidebars!). He rents a room at a community center and advertises the first meeting. His mom helps him set the room up and then leaves him there. Only one person shows up, a young boy, but he leaves almost immediately after seeing no one but a lone, lonely boy and his newsletters.

Carver and I visited my mom and sister and pretty much the entire maternal side of my family about two months ago. We drove into Neah Bay for Makah Days, my tribe’s annual celebration. As we were looking for a place to park, I saw a pair of kids running a lemonade stand in a very bad location, business wise. I pointed them out and asked my mom if she remembered the time my friends Chad, Sheri, and I set up a lemonade stand at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, which is quite possibly the least trafficked spot in the entire city. In the few hours we sat down there I think we saw one car, which did not stop, and one pedestrian who was nice enough to act excited about the lemonade and suggest he’d come back if he could scrounge up some money. My mom admitted, for the first time, that she hated it when we did “things like that,” admitting that she always knew they’d be horrible failures but also not wanting to be discouraging.

Chabon says that this failed comic book club meeting was when he began to think of himself as a failure, and that no one gets past age 10 without learning that the glory of success is always trumped by the pains of failure, that a criticism is not evened out by a compliment. But when I think about that lemonade stand, I don’t remember ever being disappointed. I don’t remember feeling like we failed. In fact, if memory serves, we actually did it again. Granted, we were under Chabon’s designated failure-recognizing age of 10, so maybe that had something to do with it. I certainly have a fear of failure now, and I’ve had it for a long time.

I had a birthday party when I turned six but didn’t have another until my dad decided to throw one for me when I turned 21. I never wanted to have a party, because I didn’t want it to fail. To this day I’m very unlikely to throw a party or host a dinner because I’m convinced no one will show, and it’ll hurt, it’ll be undeniable evidence that people don’t care about me. Without that evidence I can go on thinking otherwise.

While I have my means of trying to protect myself, flawed as they are, I don’t know what to do when it comes to my son—I certainly don’t want to raise another me. At this point I suppose the best thing to do is what Chabon’s mom did when she rented the room and helped him set up chairs, and as my parents did when they didn’t discourage my lemonade stand. I want him to try, to put himself out there when he’s ready, but I also can’t stand the idea of him getting hurt and becoming jaded, of his dreams being crushed.

My friend Matthew once mentioned to me how during a trip they took with a group of friends his son first experienced another person being consistently very mean to him, and how hard that was to watch. Now that I have a child of my own I know what Matthew meant, and when that day comes for Carver, when someone is cruel to him, it’ll break my heart. Which is why I’m worried about how to deal with his lemonade stand and comic book club aspirations. It’ll break my heart the first time life is cruel to him too.

Advice for Single Men

A surefire way to get attention from interested women:

(1) Borrow an adorable baby, ideally one who can walk and is between 12 and 20 months.

(2) Take the baby to a Paper Source, Jo-Ann’s, Michaels, or any other crafty type store.

(3) Pretend, if necessary, that you really like the baby. Interact with him, speak to him, et cetera, and generally act like a good dad.

(4) Purchase, or at least gather in your cart, things for your “planned” craft project. The artier the better. Have a heartwarming story ready for why you’re doing the specific project, one that does not involve another woman unless that woman is a close blood relative.

This is guaranteed to work.

Notes: (a) Being a happily married man, I can only vouch for this technique’s effectiveness at getting attention, I cannot ensure you that you’ll get laid; and (b) I don’t know how effective this would be if you aren’t incredibly handsome and preternaturally charming.

Manhood for Amateurs

[Soundtrack for this post: Stan Meets Chet and Kill to Get Crimson]

I bought Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs last week. It’s a collection of essays about being a father, husband, and son. I’ve never read anything by Michael Chabon (pronounced, according to him, Shea like the stadium, Bon like Bon Jovi), but I really like the movie Wonder Boys, which was based on one of his novels. I heard him giving an interview on NPR last week and thought the book sounded like something I could learn from and perhaps identify with. [n.1]

I’ve read the first three or four essays and each one has either caused me to think back to my childhood or my experiences as a new father, and they’ve all sparked a desire to write down those experiences and the related stories. So that’s what I plan on doing. As I read through Manhood for Amateurs, I’ll post responses to the essays that cause a spark that leads to ignition.

But before I do that…

I’d like to comment on the back cover of Manhood for Amateurs. It contains “praise for Michael Chabon” in the form of six quotations. Here are excerpts from the first four: (1) “Probably the premier prose stylist—the Updike—of his generation”; (2) “He is one of the best writers of English prose alive” [n.2]; (3) “The best writer of English prose in this country”; and (4) “A prose magician.” My point, in case it isn’t obvious, is that HarperCollins must really like the word prose, or maybe reviewers feel like it is a mandatory buzzword when talking about Chabon. Either way, it’s ridiculous.

The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts

Before I start with the stuff in the book, I’m going to begin with an essay that Chabon has up on his website (you can find it here). This essay is similar to the stuff in the book and it’s called The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts. The gist of the essay is that when he was young he had five channels on his TV, received through “rabbit ears,” and he discusses how the change to the present’s hundreds of always-on channels is in some ways a loss for his kids and their peers. He talks about the incredible, in some ways marvelous, boredom that resulted from the dearth of programming options, and how kids will watch anything, no matter how bad, rather than nothing.

This might sound like a typical “kids these days” or “things were better back in the day” type essay, and maybe it is, but I don’t read it that way an that’s not what I want to focus on anyway.

The “kids will watch anything rather than nothing” thing really hit home for me. When I was young, say 12 and under, I would watch just about anything, even if it pained me. I remember watching Pink Floyd The Wall repeatedly with my sisters in my parent’s bedroom. I was probably seven. My sisters rented it and watched it three times in one day. I hated it. I had no idea what was going on and it bored me into a near coma-like state, yet I watched it with them. I watched it with them three times and bitched and complained the whole time. I could’ve left the room, I could’ve watched the other TV, I could’ve gone outside, I could’ve done countless other things, but I sat there and watched three times over a movie I absolutely loathed. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was a desire to try to get into what my older siblings were into. Maybe it was a fascination with the film even though I had no idea what was going on—I still recall the scenes with the children falling into the meat grinder and the bullets on the train tracks. Maybe I just wanted the company.

The same thing happened with the Little House on the Prairie. I hated that show too, but I still watched it. I even briefly got into the Young and the Restless one summer when my sister broke her leg and was more or less bedridden—every day I’d actively go into her room and watch it with her, even though (at least at first) I hated it.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I think I agree with Chabon that there was something magical about that boredom, a level of boredom I haven’t felt since.

That’s not to say all I did was watch TV. I feel like a had a pretty idyllic suburban childhood, despite a one or two year period where I had a deep fear of being murdered in my sleep that required therapy (a topic for another post) and more than a few problems in my parent’s marriage that ultimately lead to divorce. I had a tight group of excellent friends, and we spent a great deal of time playing outside, running games of football or baseball at the top of my cul-de-sac, making M80-charged cannons in my backyard, playing hide-and-seek or freeze tag or “swords” or gun fighting. We also spent most summer days and evenings in my pool, sometimes only getting out long enough to eat. I also once built a very elaborate cat trap in my garage, something similar to what you put together in the game Mouse Trap, to catch stray cats that I thought were holing up in the garage. I actually caught a cat, which, considering my trap, bordered on miraculous (now that I think about it, I can’t help but wonder if my parent’s rigged it). We of course also played our fair share of video games, but as with the TV it never seemed like it got in the way of our more active fun.

Now that there is so much more TV programming—and the Internet with its social networking, online video, and all—I can’t help but wonder if it’ll reduce the amount of old fashioned (?) outside fun. When I was young we had cartoons available for an hour or two in the afternoon on weekdays and on Saturday mornings. Now you can watch cartoons whenever you want with the Cartoon Network and the kid specific channels out there, not to mention DVRs.

There’s something to be said for limited opportunities. I remember sitting in my friend Chad’s room when we were probably around seven or eight trying to record songs off of the radio. We’d have a tape in the deck and would sit there and wait for a song we wanted to come on and then we’d hit record. Once Chad was hoping to get a copy of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. I wonder how long he waited, how many songs he sat through that he didn’t know and didn’t care about before he got it, if he ever got it. I couldn’t imagine doing that now, and my son will almost surely never know what its like to have that experience. Within seconds he could find a copy on iTunes or even a video for the song on YouTube. My son will never know what it’s like to miss an episode of a TV show and have no way of finding out what happened, only hoping that it will be rerun sometime, most likely months later. He’ll never know what it’s like to stay up late enough to see the channel “sign off” with the Stars and Stripes waving proudly before turning into a wall of static. He’ll never know what it’s like to have to sit through 45 minutes of the inanities of the nightly news to catch his favorite team’s score or, worse, have to wait until the next day’s newspaper.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, being able to find out the Dodgers’ score in seconds on ESPN.com, or even “watch” the whole game on GameCast, compared to having to wait for the results in tomorrow’s newspaper, isn’t a huge loss. Of course in many ways it’s a big gain, but it is a change that will certainly have an effect on how he relates to sports and information in general. While I certainly appreciate being able to get my scores with a single click of my touchpad, I think there is absolutely something good lost with the forced waiting and patience, the anticipation, and it’s a loss to be mourned.

Note 1: About my use of “identify with” [Did I end my sentence with a preposition? So fucking what if I did.]: I initially wrote “relate with” but then wasn’t sure if it should be “relate to.” I did an Internet search, because I was too lazy to get up and get a book, but wasn’t satisfied with the results, [n.1a] so I had to get up and get my copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner—a man for whom I have a deep respect nearing reverence—calls relate to a “voguish expression,” which in Garner-ese is a damning pronouncement indeed. He links relate to to identify, and under identify he notes that identify in the sense of “to understand sympathetically or intuitively, esp. through experience” is “often disapproved of because when used in that way, identify is a VOGUE WORD—more specifically, a pop-psychology CASUALISM—bearing a nontraditional sense.” OH SNAP! and DAMN! He continues to say that a more conservative writer would simply use understand. But come on, understand doesn’t mean the same thing in this context, and I was too lazy to try to think of a different way to put it, so I went with indentify with. Deal with it.

Note 1a: I often do Internet searches when I’m looking for a quick answer about grammar or usage. The top results given by Google always contain English language forums where “non-native” English speakers discuss grammar, usage, words, et cetera. There are almost certainly all sorts of sample size problems here, but it makes me think that non-native English speakers work a whole lot harder at speaking English properly than most native speakers do.

Note 2: I think that would be better as “one of the best living writers of…” Don’t you? [n.2a]

Note 2a: Sorry, again, for the notes. Anne, I swear I’m not doing it to piss you off. But really, you’ve got to admit that none of this belonged in the main text, but I wanted to mention it, so . . . .

Daycare Update; and One of the Many Reasons I Hate Microsoft

October 15, 2009

Carver,

You've successfully completed your third day of full-time daycare and it seems to be going quite well. You still totally freak when I leave in the morning, but they tell me you calm down quickly. You also have become more comfortable in the brief period I hang out there with you: the first day you clung to me, seemed scared, and took a long time to finally start exploring a little; today you sat on my lap for a minute, but quickly started roaming around and having a good time.

Also, Arlinda, your afternoon teacher, basically told me you were a genius (OK, she just said "very smart" but she said it in an awestruck, I-can't-believe-he's-so-brilliant sort of way that suggested she meant more). She asked me, with great interest and all sincerity, what we "do with you" that has made you so very smart. I wasn't sure how to answer this question, mostly because the real answer is probably something like: "Well, we just kind of let him do whatever he wants, including all sorts of things most people would find frighteningly dangerous. And maybe read him a book or two every now and then." Also, I wasn't sure what she'd think of me if I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was something like: "Well, his mother and I are both, like, wicked smart, so it's only natural that he's awesome."

Arlinda also said that you are a shining example for your peers and that you help them and seem to try to teach them things. So overall I think you're rocking the daycare thing.

Microsoft, O’ How Do I Loathe Thee

Anne has a ThinkPad that runs Windows Vista. She got it not long after Vista came out, so the Vista bombing that seems to be so prevalent hadn’t gotten up to speed, or at least we hadn’t heard much of it. When she ordered it she asked me to look at what she spec’d out and I paused briefly at the operating system selection and thought about suggesting that she go with XP because I had heard a few of the early grumblings about Vista. I am extremely guilty about not voicing my concern at the time because now she has a slow, obnoxious, incredibly annoying $1800 “internet surfing machine” (what she calls it because of the following problem).

Her optical drive has not worked for several months, which means she can’t rip CDs to iTunes, can’t install the copy of MS Office that she’s had sitting here for months, et cetera. Not only has it not worked, Vista no longer recognized the drive. She’s tried a few times to fix it but got frustrated and gave up. So I gave it a shot and—hours later—I got it working again.

In my effort to find and fix the problem, this is what I deduced: (1) the problem most likely occurred one of the trillion times Windows updated itself, something about filters and such; (2) Microsoft blames 3^rd party DVD/CD ripping software for the problem, in some places the finger is pointed directly at iTunes; (3) Microsoft knows what the problem is and will fix it for you, but they’ll only do it if you click on the tool using MS Explorer because the tool doesn’t “recognize” Firefox or any other browser; and (4) the fix they provide for the problem they know about does not work. So, to recap, you’ve lost your optical drive because of Microsoft’s heinous operating system but they blame Apple. They’ll fix it, but only if you use their piece of shit browser. And the fix actually doesn’t fix anything.

I eventually found a thread on an online forum and modified the registry myself. Presto fix-o.

October 13, 2009

Carver,

Today is your first day in full-time, regular daycare. It’s a hard day for me, and probably is for you too. Up until now you have spent a handful of days in “backup” daycare, but aside from those few days you’ve spent everyday with your mom or me. You also spend many of your weekday afternoons with your “G-Ma,” who takes you to the park and gives you baths and you generally clearly love. Your G-Ma’s willingness to watch you most afternoons (and it seems to be more of a legitimate happiness than a mere willingness) has been quite possibly a literal lifesaver for me.

Unfortunately, or so I feel, I seem to need more help than your G-Ma’s tremendously generous and extremely appreciated assistance. So your mother and I have decided to send you to full-time daycare. Ultimately, I believe that this is in your best interest. But it’s still hard.

One of the reasons we decided to put you in regular daycare is that we think you’ve reached the age where you should make some friends and socialize with other babies. In your experiences in backup daycare and at the park you really seem to enjoy hanging out with other kids. We think you’ll like having some regular buddies to play with.

Another reason we’re doing this is that I simply don’t seem to have what it takes to be a top-notch stay-at-home parent. This makes me sad and makes me feel like a failure. I truly believe that your new teachers, professional child care providers, will do a better job at interacting with you regularly and feeding you well-balanced meals and all sorts of other things that I think you need. I wish I was better at this for you, I really do, but it’s become clear that I am not. I think the daycare is the best place for you right now.

My goal for myself now is to figure out what I’m doing, both professionally and generally, to try to sort out my life and attain some personal happiness. I’m drifting now, and it isn’t good. My goal is for you too, for I feel like in the end it is in your best interest to have a happy father, a father in whom you can be confident, a father you can be happy about having. It’s my goal for us.

This morning, as we were getting ready to go, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth as you were standing there just outside the doorway, happy. You turned and noticed something out of my view; you ran to it and came running back with a ball in your hand. You held that ball up and cackled with absolute glee. You tossed the ball toward me, still laughing and smiling, and I thought about how you were the greatest, happiest, most awesome baby ever to have lived. It was a lovely thought, but it was immediately followed by a concern that perhaps daycare will have a negative effect on you, that you won’t like it and will become an unhappy baby—i.e., that my failure to be able to care for you every day will hurt you into losing your joy. I hope that’s not the case, I have faith that it won’t be the case—if I didn’t truly think that you’d be fine I wouldn’t be doing this—but it still worries me and makes me sad. Perhaps I could take some solace in the fact that in the time you’ve stayed home with me you have been a very happy and very capable baby, ahead of the curve on nearly every mark. But I don’t, because I love you and I don’t see the value in consoling myself; my only concern is what’s best for you.

The few times you’ve been in backup daycare you’ve totally freaked out when you realized that I was leaving you there. As soon as we arrived you’d hang on tight and hold yourself as close to me as you could, clutching with more strength than I knew you had, looking suspiciously at the daycare ladies (they’re always ladies). When I left you’d scream and sob and chase after me—it was heartbreaking every time. I don’t understand your baby brain enough to know what you felt this morning, but I hope you know that I did it because I love you—that at some point you’ll know that I only did it because I love you, that I love you more than anything and everything combined, and I only did it because I think it’s the best thing for you.

Papa

Love/Hate: Carlos Santana

Why I love Santana

My first concert ever was Santana at the Universal Amphitheater just outside of Los Angeles. I was seven or eight years old. I went with my friend Chad and his parents. At that point I could recognize Black Magic Woman or Oye Como Va, but I didn’t know much more than that about Santana.

I had a very good time at the show—it was very exciting. But there are only two memories from that show that have survived the test of time. In no particular order:

Santana, in case you’re weird and don’t know, is a talented guitar player—he can play a mean solo. Memory number one is Chad’s dad, immediately parroted by Chad and me, yelling something along the lines of “Blow up your amp!” Chad and I later noticed smoke rising from the neck of Carlos’s guitar. I cannot effectively relay the excitement we felt upon seeing this smoke, as we elbowed each other and marveled about how Santana’s guitar playing was so awesome and fierce that his guitar was smoldering and about to combust. To say I was somewhat let down when I realized that Santana simply stored his lit cigarettes between the strings of his guitar’s headstock would be an understatement.

Let’s just say, without incriminating anyone, that at this point I knew what marijuana was and what it smelled like. There was a ridiculous amount of marijuana smoking going on at this Santana show. Memory number two is this: As we’re enjoying the show, Chad and I notice this gargantuan joint making its way around the row in front of us. This was an absolutely colossal joint, like the one from that scene in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke. It was the size of a medium banana, both in length and girth (without the curve). So this joint is getting passed around. Eventually it makes its way to the lady sitting next to me. She takes a hit and then—keep in mind I’m seven or eight years old—gives it to me. I’m dumbfounded, so I give it to Chad. This is the image that will stay with me for as long as I exist: tiny little Chad in his denim jacket with the Corvette patch, holding this massive joint—his fingers don’t make it all the way around the monster J—looking at me with this “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” look on his face. Then…then Chad tries to pass it to his MOM, who is horrified and probably had a mental seizure right then. Chad ends up giving it back to me, and I give it back to the lady next to me.

I will forever treasure my first concert experience. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Grothe.

Why I Hate Santana

He unleashed Rob Thomas’s “Smooth” on the world, which became arguably the most popular song in Billboard charting history. I loathe Smooth. Mood, moon, cool, and groove, do not rhyme with smooth. Maybe they’re assonant rhymes, but I hate it nonetheless.