Three Things, After a Long Absence

Can I see some ID?

I bought a pack of cigarettes for my sister a few weeks ago. The girl at the checkout counter, who was just a girl, likely still in her teens, looked at me sideways for a bit longer than is normal for that kind of transaction, so at looked at her back, waiting. She finally scanned the pack and said, “I almost carded you there….” Somewhat flattered and somewhat shocked, I said, in my attempt at charm, “Well, you got it right. It’s been a pretty long time since I was too young to buy cigarettes.” And she quickly replied, as if to immediately shoot down any confusion, “Oh, yeah [clearly meaning: obviously]. But we’re supposed to card anyone who looks under 40.” No longer flattered, and somewhat crushed, I said, “Oh,” looked away, and started to pretend something else had caught my attention as she finished ringing me up.

God damn you, father time.

Carver and Zoë

My immediate family came to visit this weekend. That includes my grandniece Zoë. Zoë and Carver love each other. It’s interesting, as a parent, to see. Carver thinks Zoë could walk on water. If she likes something, he’s almost set on liking it himself. When he sees her, he lights up. And it is just obvious to someone who has spent a huge amount of time around Carver that he thinks about her in a different way than he thinks about anyone else.

I’m not trying to say something ridiculous, like they are bound to get married, or something. First of all, they are first cousins once removed. Second, Carver is two and Zoë is six, they don’t think that way yet and we don’t think about them in that way. And when it comes right down to it, Carver would miss either of his parents more than he’d miss Zoë, but the friendship is special. There’s something about how kids relate to other kids that adults, no matter how fun and cool, just cannot match. And that’s better than fine.

The Road

Anne and I just finished watching The Road. Here are some of my thoughts:

(1) It was a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. With a few minor issues, some of which could be considered major depending on your viewpoint.

(2) Viggo Mortensen is a badass. He is the epitome of hardcore when it comes to acting. I love that dude.

(3) Anne thinks she’d take the route the mother did [SPOILER ALERT], which is to kill herself after the point when things get really bad. I like to think I’d stick it out and follow “the road,” clinging to hope. But who knows what one would do if things got really, really bad.

(4) Anne says she wouldn’t eat our dog. I say, you know, if you’re starving…

(5) Anne and I listened to the audio book of The Road when we took a road trip to South Carolina when Carver was a month old. During the movie Anne and I had a quick conversation about how the story is harder to bear now than it was then, because we have a child. We had a child then, but it was different. I figured that then the reality hadn’t really set in, and/or that it’s harder now because Carver is more of a person, with his own personality, than he was then. Either way it is true, and tells me something about love.

I love my son more than anything. Not to be flip, or silly, or spout some sort of cliché, or whatever, but I didn’t know what love could mean until Carver came along. I love my wife, and my family and dear friends, and have loved past girlfriends, and (particularly with my wife and past girlfriends) at various times I’ve felt I’ve loved them so much that I’d die if something ruined that relationship. But seriously it doesn’t even compare to how I feel about Carver. While it’s hard to think about and accept, I think if anyone I cared about other than my son died I’d be very, very upset, but I think I’d recover eventually. I’ve suffered that kind of loss before, and it’s awful but I can take it. But if something happened to Carver…I seriously, from a very informed perspective, cannot even imagine being able to go on.

And all of this informs my reading/listening/viewing of The Road. And let’s just say that the story is hard to take.

Also: I don’t think I ever fully appreciated what my parents felt about my sisters and me. When I think about how they probably think (or at least thought) about me the way I think about Carver, it makes me wish I were much, much nicer to them.

(6) The story also, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, makes me think that maybe those survivalist crazies aren’t so crazy. Of course I don’t mean those who think our government is out to get us, or those in the town I grew up in who thought they needed to arm themselves to the teeth during the LA riots because all the brown people from the city were going to storm our fair (literally, in one respect) enclave of privileged racists. But if something horrible happens and you want to protect those that mean more to you than everything else in the world, how frustrating would it be to not have an extra $10 in ammunition when you’re left with two bullets in your revolver?

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 9: Freedom and Adventure

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm; Tom Waits’s Small Change]

On to the eighth essay in Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs (for previous posts on Michael Chabon and MfA, click here). [n.1]

The Wilderness of Childhood

In this essay Chabon writes about growing up in his suburb in Maryland (I’m pretty sure it’s Columbia, a planned community outside of Baltimore), specifically how he and the other kids used to roam his neighborhood and the nearby woods. He also talks about how things have changed, and how his kids, and pretty much all kids these days, don’t get that experience.

I grew up in an exurb of Los Angeles that is completely ringed by hills that buffer it from the surrounding towns. It was a remarkably safe place in the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s when I lived there—it probably still is. It was pretty consistently ranked the safest city in America with a population over 100,000, and even when it wasn’t number one it was always still in the top three. [n.2] I don’t think I ever once thought I was in any sort of real danger when I roamed my town.

And roam I did. I have memories of walking with a friend to the closest shopping center when I was six. Maybe even five. And because my house was almost square in the middle of our expansive housing tract, the store was about a mile and a quarter away. Through the course of my childhood I made that walk countless times. We used to go to the liquor store or the pharmacy and buy baseball cards and bubble gum, and later the video store to rent movies and games. When we got a little older we’d ride our skateboards or bikes, and we’d go much farther. We’d go to the movies, or Target, or a restaurant, or the hills, or wherever. The park, the library, friends' houses. Sometimes I’d go alone but usually I was with at least one friend. Often we rode in a pack—a little bike or skateboard gang racing down the hills. It was great. We explored everything, we took care of ourselves, and we did it all the time. We even did it in the middle of the night, when our activities were almost never malicious but were often…impolite.

Those sorts of things are things I can’t imagine letting Carver do. Chabon talks about this, about how things have changed. But what’s changed isn’t the level of violence, or abductions—he cites Department of Justice numbers that say the frequency of these things hasn’t really changed all that much, and that abductions by strangers (possibly the biggest fear of many parents) are extremely rare [n.3] —it’s that the horrors are much better known; that parents are practically encouraged to develop deep, irrational fears about things happening to their kids; that we’ve developed a cult-like obsession with protecting our children to a level of absurdity. But he acknowledges that he’s like that too, that he’d never give his kids the kind of freedom he had.

This change is most unfortunate. This is at least the second post I’ve written about how I’m concerned that my children’s childhood is going to be different than mine and thus extremely disturbing. But I honestly think there’s more to it than just a “kids these days” and “the world is going to hell” thing. Chabon talks about how children wandering their neighborhoods and the nearby wilderness is a historical thing that pretty much every generation so far has shared. And I think that’s true. My grandfather and father were raised in very different places (my grandfather in depression era Prescott Arizona, my father in post-war Los Angeles), but they still shared a similarity in their childhoods that were rooted in parentless adventures. My dad used to tool around his town on a Flexi Flyer or Flexi Racer and was in near constant peril of smashing into or under a moving or parked car. He has stories of riding his bike around town, going fishing, sand skiing, heading down to the beach, et cetera et cetera, without a hint of parental involvement. Much of my childhood was the same. I sometimes liken it to the movie Stand By Me—it was always a group of kids making their own adventures, heading out on their own quests, walking down railroad tracks out in the middle of nowhere, with no adults involved (or even informed). [n.4]

These parentless adventures were invaluable in creating independence, developing problem solving skills, socialization, and so on. I have been a fiercely independent person since I was about 13, and while I was a child in many ways for many years after that, I was quite capable. I was very prepared to leave home at 18, and I’ve never felt like I needed help in getting by (except when it comes to dry-wall repairs and electrical work—that’s an inside joke). What happens to the kid who doesn’t have that? I don’t know; all the people I knew very well when they were in their late teens and early twenties had it.

So when I think about this issue I can’t help but think about whether it would be better to live in the suburbs, or a small town, rather than in the city. Everywhere I’ve lived in the last 10 years has been near a city center. I want to live in the city. But I’m not sure if living in the city is the best thing for my son. My wife grew up in the city of Chicago, but I don’t know enough about her childhood to discern how it compared to mine pros and cons wise. All I know is that just about everything I loved about my childhood was possible only because I lived in a safe exurb. But I also don’t really know what I was missing by not being in the city as a child. So I don’t know.

But even if we were to move to a suburb or exurb or small town, would it even then be the same or similar to my youth? Or are parents so paranoid even in those places that that lifestyle of unsupervised children roaming the streets and hills and woods is gone everywhere? I think it might be. Chabon mentions how one of his kids got a bike and wanted to ride around, but the only thing he was comfortable letting her do was to peddle to the store with him walking behind her. He also mentioned that there are two nine-year-old kids on his street (in Berkeley), one kid a couple houses up the street and another a couple houses down. These two nine-year-olds have lived a few houses from each other their entire lives and have never met. So he notes: even if he were to stifle his fears and let his daughter ride around on her bike without supervision, who would she ride with? No other kids are out there doing it.

Note 1: I just looked back and realized that it’s been more than a month since I wrote a substantive post (stuff other than lists of what I’ve been reading on line and words from Sutree). I’ve also been thinking that I’ve been dragging out these Manhood for Amateurs posts for way longer than I thought I would. I’m hoping to get through the rest of the posts much more quickly.

Note 2: Thousand Oaks, a neighboring town, and Irvine were always the other two.

Note 3: 115 total in 1999.

Note 4: Coincidentally, after I wrote this part of the post (it’s taken me a few sittings), I got an email from a friend who mentioned that he always thought of one of our mutual friends as the Corey Feldman character from Stand By Me of our group.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 8: Legos

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm]

[Beer for this post: Green Flash Brewing Company’s West Coast IPA]

On to the seventh essay in Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs (for previous posts on Michael Chabon and MfA, click here).

To the Legoland Station

In this essay Chabon talks about Legos (the toys). He has several insightful points here; most of them involve how Legos have changed and what that means. He notes that the Legos of his youth were offered in only a handful of colors and very limited shapes, while now there are a huge number of very specialized pieces and kits so you can build Tie Fighters, Formula 1 cars, fighter jets, and the like. The main point I took from this was that he was concerned that the proliferation of specialized pieces and the massive manuals necessary to construct a perfect Tie Fighter, etc, would kill creativity—it was no longer about building things from your imagination out of numerous rectangles but rather carefully constructing a pre-imagined item using provided directions. But he found that his fear was unfounded—his kids, in the end, used the special pieces in interesting and unusual ways, making unique and beautiful creative creations.

I enjoyed Legos when I was a kid, but I didn’t own many—I usually just played with my friend Chad’s when I was at his house or when he brought them to my place. Chad also had a huge box of Lincoln Logs that we loved to go to town with. The only toys of that sort I had were a big collection of Tinkertoys pieces. The Tinkertoys were my favorite, but I can’t say why. Tinkertoys are just awesome.

I never really understood the purpose of the special Legos kits where you were intended to use the pieces to build the planned and pre-designed object. The ones that attracted me the most were the Star Wars ones, since I was a big Star Wars nerd, but in the end I couldn’t figure out why you’d want to build a Lego Tie Fighter when you could just get a regular Tie Fighter toy. The whole point of Legos, for me, was that you could build whatever popped into your head. If you want a Tie Fighter, just buy a Tie Fighter (the price was almost certainly comparable)—then your regular Star Wars figures would fit in it, unlike the Legos one that would only fit little Lego dudes.

I’m happy to hear that Chabon’s kids used the special pieces in their own creative projects. Chad’s big mix-and-match set of Legos had a few weird, non-standard pieces, and we always found a place for them in our creations.

The Wikipedia page for Tinkertoys says that the inventors (who were from Evanston and originally displayed their new toys in Chicago!) created the toys to “allow and inspire children to use their imaginations.” And that’s what Tinkertoys did, and that’s what made them so cool.

Not to toot my own horn, but for someone who never really formally studied engineering, I am very capable or understanding mechanics and just generally figuring out how things work. There are many reasons for this, but I don’t doubt that the Legos, Lincoln Logs, and Tinkertoys played a part. I hope Carver enjoys them as much as I did.

Aging and -Life Crises; and a Self-Image Paradox

[Soundtrack for this post: Neil Young’s Harvest]

[Beer for this post: Goose Island’s India Pale Ale]

You’ll likely notice that both of my topics in this post include quotations from David Foster Wallace. And you may have noticed that several, if not all, of my recent posts have quoted or talked about Wallace. It isn’t my intention to turn this into a David Foster Wallace blog, it’s just that I’m currently obsessed with him. I’ll write about it in my next post.

Old Man Look at My Life, I’m a Lot Like You Were

“I had kind of a midlife crisis at twenty, which probably doesn’t augur well for my longevity.”

The quotation above (which is not a “quote”) is something David Foster Wallace said in an interview in 1991 (which is discussed in a New Yorker article that can be found here). He killed himself when he was 46.

I had a -life crisis on my 19^th birthday, but, apparently being more optimistic than Mr. Wallace, I called it my “quarterlife crisis.” And that’s partly what the crisis was about: it occurred to me that my life was likely at least one-quarter over—I didn’t have just a foot in the grave, I had a whole leg in there.

I turned 19 a few months after I started college. I was living in a dorm room with my friend Brian, who I had known all through high school. My birthday was midweek, if I recall, and going home was not an option. I was out at a class, or something, when my dad’s good friend Garn, who lived about 10 miles away, dropped off a cake at my dad’s request. The cake was a lovely gesture, and in the end probably made things better for me that day, but my heart sank when I saw that thing. It was an object I associated with celebration and being with friends and family. That object, absent the celebration, friends, and family, was depressing.

So that was part of it, the whole being-alone-and-away-from-home at a time when I really wanted to be home. I imagine this is a typical moment for freshmen who have gone away for school. But there was more to it—the cake and the feelings of aloneness were just the start. It got me thinking, and that’s when I realized I was much closer to death than I wanted to be. I was a very young man, in most ways still a boy, but my life was a quarter done. This was not a happy realization.

Recognizing my rapidly impending demise, I got to thinking about the ages and approximate remaining life years of those close to me. After ruminating for a few hours, lying awake in the middle of the night, I resolved to have all the kids I was going to have by the time I was 30.

I had my first child at 31, am currently 33, and will likely have another kid. So obviously I failed my 19 year-old self. But I still think I was right in a way. My thinking was something like this: at 19 I still had three of my four grandparents, two of whom lived to see me graduate from college, and one of whom made it to see me enroll in law school nearly eight years after my little crisis. I thought that was a good thing, and I figured if I wanted my parents to be around to see my children go to college, and for my children to really get to know my parents, I couldn’t put it off too long.

As it stands now, my dad will need to live to 79 (or so) to see Carver start college, my mom will need to make it to 76 (or so). These days, that’s certainly possible, but it’s also quite possible that they won’t. And if I have another kid, the odds become even longer.

And given that I’ve experienced what I find to be the extremely common sensation that time moves faster and faster as we get older, those days will be here before I know it.

I don’t think I ever came to a happy resolution to my crisis—I just managed to stop thinking about it.

“Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.” – S. Beckett

. . . I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On

One night [David Foster] Wallace met the writer Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose depression memoir, Prozac Nation, had recently been published. She thought he looked scruffy — jeans and the bandanna — and very smart. Another night, Wallace walked her home from a restaurant, sat with her in her lobby, spent some time trying to talk his way upstairs. It charmed Wurtzel: "You know, he might have had this enormous brain, but at the end of the day, he still was a guy."

Wallace and Wurtzel didn't really talk about the personal experience they had in common — depression, a substance history, consultations at McLean — but about their profession, about what to do with fame. Wallace, again, had set impossible standards for himself. "It really disturbed him, the possibility that success could taint you," she recalls. "He was very interested in purity, in the idea of authenticity — the way some people are into the idea of being cool. He had keeping it real down to a science."

When Wallace wrote her, he was still curling through the same topic. "I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I'm not one of the good ones. But then I countenance the fact that at least here I am worrying about it, noticing all the ways I fall short of integrity, and I imagine that maybe people without any integrity at all don't notice or worry about it; so then I feel better about myself. It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am — so where does that put me?"

That’s from The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace, published in Rolling Stone.

The last paragraph is what I’m interested in (I thought the rest was necessary and interesting context). I’ve been trying to decide how much more I want to say—part of me wants to just say “Yeah, what he said.” But I guess I’ll draw it out.

For as long as I’ve been aware enough to think about it, I’ve found that I possess what strikes me as a strange blend of superiority (perceived) and humility. More than one person has told me that I initially came across as kind of a smug, arrogant bastard, but over time it became clear that I am actually nothing of the sort.

This blend that I am is odd, and hard for me to wrap my head around. I have little doubt that I am more honest, trustworthy, sincere, caring, considerate, well-rounded, and others-centered than most other people (note that me having “little doubt” doesn’t mean it is true). [n.1] But I also recognize that I am so loaded with faults and failings that the mere idea of beginning to list them is exhausting, and in whatever way I may be superior, there are also many ways in which I am hideously weak. Nevertheless, like Wallace, I think points are in order for recognizing my failings and caring about them.

What is probably at work here is the combination of my hatred of pride with the extremely high expectations I have for myself. I hold myself to a very high standard, one that I rarely meet, and I do not forgive failure. When it comes to me, I am entirely unforgiving. I have a list of the things that I most regret, and I will not forgive myself for them. Many of them are things I did as a child, most of which would seem like minor childhood indiscretions to most people, but they matter to me. One of my girlfriends and I used to argue about this, about how it wasn’t good to not forgive yourself. Since then people I have paid to tell me what’s wrong with me have suggested the same thing. But I still won’t do it. If I forgive myself it would be like conceding that those things were OK, that I could go ahead and forget them. But they weren’t OK, and I don’t want to forget them. I need the shame and self-loathing to remember to try to be better. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. That’s worth something, right? [n.2]

Note 1: I also believe very strongly that pride is an ugly vice, if not a sin, and therefore I work at not being proud of anything. So when I note these things it is only that I see them as matters of fact. I am not boasting.

Note 2: You may have noticed that the heading to this part of the post doesn’t really make much sense. But so what?

Manhood for Amateurs, Parts 6 and 7: Artwork

[Soundtrack for this post: The Australian Open on TV]

[Beer for this post: Dark Horse Brewing Company’s Crooked Tree IPA]

On to the fifth and sixth essays in Manhood for Amateurs.

The Memory Hole

In this essay Chabon talks about throwing away his kids’ artwork. He says he keeps some of the better pieces, but throws most of it out. He also mentions how his parents kept very little of the art he created in his youth.

One of the first things that I think about when I think about this essay is: what did his kids think when they read it?

I have a hard time thinking that I’d ever want to throw away anything that Carver created. But I know the time will come, probably soon, when I will. Well, I might not want to throw it away, but I’ll realize that I need to. I’m kind of a hoarder by nature and we have too much stuff in our house already, so there’s no way we can keep every bit of art Carver makes. And even if we chose to, if we put it in bins and then put them in storage, what would be the point? Chabon says that the good stuff they keep just goes in a bin that goes in the attic and is never seen again. Carver, Anne, and I are probably never going to want to look at every single piece of art that Carver ever makes, so it would just sit there in the dark.

My mom has in her house a couple drawings I made in my early youth that she has framed. I love that they are there, and I love being able to see them, but I think having a few meaningful pieces is enough.

My dad maintains my “baby book” (his term), which now fills an entire armoire. And the thing is: what’s going to happen to it? When my dad moves on, it’ll be left to me to decide, and since I’m a hoarder who doesn’t like to throw stuff out I’m going to want to keep all of it. And then what am I going to do with it? It would inevitably just sit in some dark storage area. I’d probably prefer that it not be there, at least most of it. But I’d tell my parents: “Do not feel obligated to throw away my baby book stuff. Actually, don’t throw it out.” I could never encourage the destruction of evidence of my existence and testaments to who I am. Which is what that stuff is to me.

The Binding of Isaac

In this essay Chabon talks about watching President Obama speak at his election victory party in Grant Park. He has his five-year-old son on his shoulders. He’s caught up in the joy of the moment, but then he suddenly feels sorry for Obama’s daughters, for they are about to lose access to their father as they’ve known it. But then he feels sorry for Obama. And he talks about how a child’s want for his father’s attention is insatiable, and how all fathers abandon their children, in some small way, countless times.

First, I wonder if Carver is going to be mad at Anne and me for not taking him to the election night celebration (and, in case you don’t know us that well, it was a celebration for us too). We were about four miles away, holed up in our apartment. Carver was just shy of two months and I had no interest in fighting the masses to get into Grant Park that night while trying to pacify a two-month old. But part of me now really regrets not being able to tell him that he was there on that night.

I think a parent can be a positive influence even if they aren’t there all that often. I like to think that President Obama can be a fine father, and a fine example for his daughters, even though his new job undoubtedly keeps him extremely busy. I think the same can be true of military parents—even in absence their service can be a shining example. I think some sort of presence is required, but it doesn’t need to be constant. And I also think it is important to have happy and fulfilled parents, so if that means the parents need to tackle time-intensive jobs, then so be it. Setting an example is just as important as being available.

Sports and Parenting

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm]

[Beer for this post: Brooklyn Brewery’s East India Pale Ale]

I was sitting at a table around the Christmas before last with Anne’s family and we were talking about Carver and his cousin Ryan playing sports. Ryan’s mom, Anne’s sister-in-law, was saying that Ryan would not be allowed to play football. I have a feeling that Anne would love to say the same thing about Carver, but it wouldn’t be true. Carver will play football, at least for a time, because I really want him to.

I played organized baseball for many years, but I never did play organized football despite talking about it a few times with my dad and my friend Chad’s parents. I was recruited heavily to play on my High School football team—my ninth grade P.E. teacher raved about my football and general physical abilities considering my size, at the time I was 205 pounds when the average guy in my class was probably 150, and I was still very quick, I have little doubt I would’ve been a monster of a fullback and linebacker—but football conflicted with Band, and I wasn’t going to give up Band for anything. There are parts of me that wonder what would’ve happened had I played football, would I have been as good as I like to think? But I also have a hard time thinking that I didn’t make the right decision; Band provided me with music, a huge amount of fun, great friends, my first love, and my first real school-centered community. I don’t see how I could’ve had it better.

So when I say I really want Carver to play football, I imagine many people will think it is the typical dad-trying-to-live-through-his-son situation. But I don’t think that’s it at all. I want Carver to play football because I love football, and I want to share that love with him. I also want him to learn to play music. If the time comes when he has to choose between music and football (or whatever), I would never begrudge him his choice. But I want him to experience both.

To me, football is the ultimate team sport, and I love it with an obsessive passion. Why would I not want to share that with my son?

Golfing with My Dad

My dad is an obsessive golfer. I enjoy golf, but it doesn’t mean that much to me. Golf, to my dad, is a very important part of his life. My dad plays at least once a week, almost every Sunday—he considers his Sunday golf rounds as “going to church.” When he started dating again after his most recent divorce he told me how he made a point to make it clear to his prospects that he plays golf every Sunday, and that every Sunday means every single Sunday, regardless of whether it is Mother’s Day, Christmas, or the apocalypse. My dad is committed to getting in his rounds. To him it is a sort of refuge, and a love.

So when he gave me a set of cut-down clubs and signed me up for youth lessons, I don’t doubt some might have taken it as is version of the typical dad-trying-to-live-through-his-son situation. But that wasn’t it at all, I know.

My dad’s dad was an excellent golfer, and my dad played with him on occasion. I imagine the time those two remarkably dissimilar men spent on the course as rare moments when they had a love in common, when they shared a pursuit. I imagine it as a time of bonding and father-son togetherness that my father appreciated deeply. So it should surprise no one that he shared the game with me at an early age. And the bonus was that he almost certainly did it with more care and love than he got from his dad.

I don’t play nearly as much as my dad does. I’ve lived in Chicago for nearly two years and I’ve played once here (granted, you can’t play half the year here, and I have played a few times while away on vacation). I don’t love golf the way my dad does, yet, at least, but that’s OK. I do enjoy playing, and playing a round with him is one of my favorite things to do, and I know it’s something he treasures dearly.

In the summer of 2005 my dad and I, along with two good friends, did a golf tour of Ireland. We spent a night in Dublin, stayed at some great hotels, drank pints of stout, and hand some great food. But it was about the golf, and the time before and after the golf, and us doing it together. Sure, we bickered a bit here and there, as anyone who has to spend 10 days with me will learn is inevitable, but it was a trip of a lifetime for both of us and it never would’ve happened with out my dad’s love of golf and his decision to share it with me.

Sherman Alexie wrote a great piece in The Stranger about keeping the Seattle SuperSonics in Seattle (which, unfortunately, didn’t happen). Much of the content of Alexie’s pitch to “save the Sonics” is worthy of its own post, but for now I’ll just share this part:

While my father was dying, he and I talked basketball. Three days before he died, my father still had enough will and character left to deride Kobe Bryant for being a rotten smallpox wound on the game of basketball.

"I know," I said. "I can't stand him."

That meant I love you, Dad.

"I still can't believe they traded Shaq instead of Kobe."

That meant I love you, too, Son.

Of course, no matter how much I hate Kobe, I still love to watch him play. He's a ferocious poet on the court. And I most especially love to watch him lose.

I hate Kobe like other people hate the New York Yankees. And, man, it feels good to hate like that because I won't start any wars because of it. I get to hate without fear of violence.

And my father hated Kobe like that, too.

When I look back at my relationship with my father, when I put a narrative to it, I realize that every plot point, every surprise, and every tender and/or painful moment has something to do with basketball.

My father was a great basketball player. I was a very good small-town hoopster but I couldn't beat him one-on-one until I was 16 years old.

And I have never felt better or worse than the day I finally defeated my father.

My father haunts every basketball game.

In every round I play with my dad, Great shot, Bud, and Nice putt! means I love you, Dad. And when he’s gone my father will, without a doubt, haunt every round of golf I ever play. And that’s a great and beautiful thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.