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.