Half Cleveland Dad

Equilibrium

When you become a parent, it’s a big change.  Your relationships to society, your spouse, and your self are all subject to the interposition of this thing shaped like a humanoid but that’s really part of your soul that’s bulging out.  It’s disorienting, and cool, and lovely, and interesting as hell.

 

You’re adaptable, though, and pretty soon your normal equilibratoritiness smooths you out.  You get habituated to being a parent.  You develop a range of solutions; you avoid unnecessary challenges; you figure out a way of handling things in your own mind.  It’s not disorienting anymore; it’s only a little bit cool, sometimes lovely, and interesting if you think about it.  You get kind of fat.  Change doesn’t pitch you over anymore; it’s incremental; except that sudden change is something you associate with accident, sudden illness, or midlife crisis-style misjudgment.

 

That’s where Beeb and I are now.  Being Sweet Potato’s parents today is sort of different from being Sweet Potato’s parents a year ago … but not really.  It’s still important to us, and even marvelous, but it’s important or marvelous or lovely or interesting in the same way we were used to before. 

 

This is why parents only have friends who are other parents.  It’s a community that presumes stasis, that relies on inertia.  It’s amazing how quickly they don’t grow up.  This is also why it’s hard to craft very many light entertainments in the form of blog posts about parenting.  I was about to tell you about Sweet Potato’s months-long obsession with her tutus and ballerinas and princesses, but got bogged down in my own disdain and exasperation with the princess thing, but it’s really my exasperation with the gross (large) routine of it all.  My own habits have desensitized me to the things that are interesting about being Sweet Potato’s dad (and Beeb’s husband).

Beeb the Mom

In bed with the flu for a couple of days, like a sweat lodge vacation and a diet all in one. 

 

I was incapacitated but fairly alert:  the first day, it was marvelous to hear Beeb the Mom and Sweet Potato go about their day together without me around to distort their groove.  The house was spriggy and sparkly with the sound of their joking, and playing, and talking, up and down the stairs, all morning. 

 

The next day Sweet Potato was at daycare, and the house was quiet -- the sound of Beeb concentrating on making things and getting her things done.

 

It’s Beeb’s nature to confine her personal intensity within a small perimeter.  In the old days Beeb and I would spend a lot of time close to each other, doing things, making prints and drawings or cooking or reading or watching movies.  It was a time of slow color and intimacy.  Now that our life together demands a greater efficacy, we execute our roles of Breadwinner and Stayhomer, but I’m out of Beeb’s everyday sweetness perimeter now, so it was great to feel that her sweetness is still in place, and that Sweet Potato burbles in it all day. 

 

Breadwinner and Stayhomer trust each other and rely on each other, but being near the “personal” Beeb again reminded me how much I admire her gentle, oddball way of arranging herself.  I also loved how well her way fit in with Sweet Potato’s way, which is going heavily the way of the oddball, too.

 

Happy anniversary, you beautiful old Beeb.  So far, so good, anyway!

Driving and Running

One of the jokes … or, rather, one of the regular axioms, in our house is that I’m a bad driver.  In fact, I’m inattentive, impatient, and vaguely resentful that I’m not riding the subway instead because I have I book I’m trying to read.  Driving is also one of my Tourette’s triggers.  It’s possible that Sweet Potato thinks Peesa Shit is a type of car.

Anyway, we drove to Washeen’na Dee See (weah dry’vihn ahw dhey!) recently to hang out with Ghamma Widt No Kittycats and Deh Ahda Ghampa and my brother’s family.  It was fun to Tourette in the DC traffic, and do some real city driving, which in my mind is a lot like playing Tetris. 

Sweet Potato and I, being the only early risers of the bunch, scouted out a lot of the city each morning.  As soon as we were on the street, Sweet Potato would say, woodjoo lyke to wuhn widt me Dehddi?  Lotta running, lotta pausing for tears and scraped knees, these days.

Uh, and, yeah, we're still in the tutu phase.

 

 

 

 

Pleasures and Anxieties of Friendship

The pleasure of childhood friendship seems so intense.  Once you get in the groove with other kids, laughing and running and shouting, there’s no direction except to amplify the excitement and your synergies.  As you get older you learn to prolong the groove -- some of my best childhood memories are of playing street baseball as it got dark in the summer, all the kids shouting and making rules, and trying to keep it all going.

Although I don’t think the activity connected to friendship -- the “bonding” activity, I guess you’d call it (though I’d rather not) -- is important by itself, in my memory those activities are bonded strongly to the feeling of pure friendship. In the third grade I had a school friend named Mark.  His family took us to a baseball game his older brother was playing in.  Once the game started, Mark said, come on!, and ran toward the school buildings (it was a weekend, and the buildings were dark).  I ran after him.  Come on, help me carry this!  We hoisted a metal garbage can up a fire escape, maybe three floors up.  What are we doing, I asked.  We were winded.  Mark took a bunch of matches out of his pocket, and started lighting all the paper garbage on fire!  NOW!  THROW IT OFF!  Holy shit!  We threw that burning garbage can off the fire escape!  That was in Fresno, forty years ago, and at this moment I am remembering it with great fondness, and thinking, throwing a burning garbage can off a fire escape is one of the greatest things a kid could ever do, and it would be great if Sweet Potato could have that same experience!  But really what I mean is that I hope she has friends who make her world bigger, and surprising, and adventuresome, and fun.

***

I wonder when heartache becomes associated with the pleasure of friendship; that is, when does the break of friendship become an experience of pain, rather than just disappointment or a discontinuance of pleasure?  Then, when does a kid develop anxiety about friendship and acceptance?  That is, when do you begin to anticipate the disappointment or suffering of friendship before it begins?

After that it’s not long before your conflicting feelings of pleasure and anxiety are hyperaccelerated by unimagined but insuppressible sexual feelings and gender identity compulsions; then before long you’re at the age that I heard described recently as the “universal age of romance” -- 20.  The wildness of emotional pleasure and unknown dread can be destabilizing and full of suffering, and I worry about Sweet Potato, not a little bit because I also want her to be the kind of person who can throw a burning garbage can off a building for kicks, when, of course, it's the right time to do something like that.  20 is also a time of no parental access.  Not to mention that I may well have died of old age by the time Sweet Potato's 20.

My idea these days is that a kid has to understand her feelings in a broader context, fit them in the greater scope of the world, before having to go through the destabilizing age of puberty.  For instance, think of the way devout theists can understand their lives in a religious or hierarchical context.  They can go out and do rumspringa or something, and still find a way to hold it all together. 

But what can selfish, introspective, atheistic parents do for their lovely kiddo?  Besides talk and talk and talk too much?

Metrodad

This post just about fixes Metrodad back at the top of my list of favorite bloggers.

Cool and Pretty

This weekend we got a kiddie seat that attaches to the back of my bike.  With Sweet Potato in it, the thing basically rides like my previous aftermarket haulage accessory -- a milkcrate -- when it would be filled with groceries or beer. 

We got a helmet for Sweet Potato, too.  She went for the purple and pink flowers.  She says, Dhe-ehd, yohr hehw-meht is cooh an mine is pwhetty.

It’s great Sweet Potato thinks I’m cool.  One of the reasons I liked my daycare job in high school was that one of the five-year olds said, You’re strong!  Yeah, kiddo!

In fact, I look like a cross between Junichiro Koizumi and Bert the Muppet; my belly button is deepening; I dress entirely in off-price “irregular”-grade clothing, faded and bleach-stained, preferring to layer four old shirts rather than wear a jacket; my helmet is a garish blue (sale bin color); I ride a 25-year old bike that I picked up at a hillbilly yardsale for ten bucks; my beloved two-year old daughter is wearing a flowery helmet, an SF Giants hoodie, froggy galoshes, and a tutu.

But yeah, it’s great being cool and pretty.  Plus, it was pretty god damn cold to ride (high 30s and windy), so we yelled all the way down the street, It’s NOT WARM!  AT ALL!  AT ALL! AT ALL! 

***

In the fall I helped my six-year old niece learn how to ride a two-wheeler!  It was one of the most terrific times in my life, and I just wanted to wake up every morning and go out and help her practice.  I remember so clearly the moment I learned how to ride -- I realized I was in balance, by myself -- and I’d always wanted to help someone else learn.  Throughout my childhood, my bike was my key to quietude, adventure, and independence; an experience of the world through motion, wind, and smells.  The key to helping someone learn is to hold the seat and keep running; don’t be lazy and pull on the handlebars. 

Our motives aren't knowable, and our selves are not fixed

As we live our lives together, you add so much enjoyment and dimension to my life, but I’m probably a relatively flat figure to you -- a limit, a wall, a source of rules and unexamined habits -- a thing that shapes your own presence, that provides you with a certain area to grow up in.

Parents are mysterious.  My parents are mysterious to me.  In a fascinating book about the mystery of parents, the unbridgable gap of unknowing, Family Romance, John Lanchester suggests that the substance of the mystery is the inability of people to tell the truth about things. 

Parents are people who can’t convey the truth about things, not only because they often just don’t know the truth, but mainly because the parent-child relationship is just not about conveying the truth of the parent’s experience -- it’s about behaving like a parent, about creating the child’s grow-up space. 

Who knows what you’ll want to know about your mom and dad when you grow up, but at least these little bits will be floating around and you’ll get an idea of what it was like to be us when you were two.  And what it was like to be you!

 

Friends

When you were about two, maybe in the fall of 2009, David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote out some thoughts he had for a speech he was giving at his old high school.  It was an Advice for Young People that You Won’t Get in School-type of speech.  I recall two points:  (1) that the most important decision you’ll make is whom to marry; (2) the most important skill you’ll learn is how to make and keep friends.  Now that’s interesting advice, I thought; I’ll have to point it out to my Sweet Potato.

Just remember that, as far as the marrying part goes, my best advice is probably that you should follow someone else’s advice.  My approach to marriage has been largely … aleatory.  My real advice regarding marriage probably only comprises two points:  (1) being married to someone is a lot different from not being married to that person, even if nothing else changes; (2) the everyday dynamic or habit of kindness is a subtle but all-powerful force in marriage.  Of course, I’ll try to help you be a person who can make good decisions in love, but, uh, I hope your mom has some ideas, too. 

On the other hand, my grown-up life has been beautifully rich in friends, and I have a lot of ideas about how to be a friend.  I’ve practiced a lot at friendship, largely because I’ve needed my friends a lot (in no small part, perhaps, owing to my Ionesco-like romantic life), and because I have been curious about different things that have brought me in contact with interesting people, like refugees, chessplayers, boozehounds, perverts, jazz buffs, readers, eaters, talkers, birders, blowhards, monastics, violists, printmakers, jewelers, and they've each been able to show me or tell me something about how people really are. 

My early, received ideal of friendship was that of the “best friend.”  But I never had a best friend, so for a long time I thought I had no friends.  In fact, it only takes a little ability to exchange something to bring someone into the realm of friendship, just a few grains of cross-pollination.  Like a person with whom you exchange a nod in passing, or who shows you where the Indiana waterthrush is.  There are all kinds of friends, and they each make your world bigger; it helps to understand your spectrum of friends as a whole.  Like a work friend, or a would-be lover, or a complicated friend who is cool or funny but also needy or dismissive or too wasted.  Accepting all these kinds of people as friends means being able to accept the limits of friendship, of accepting “partial” friendships, and letting them grow or fade as appropriate.  Your friendships lead you to understand differences between people and the range of feelings and affections that make up your personality and your society.  The spectrum of your friends fluctuates as you change and move; friends fade in and out, but old feelings remain, and one day something -- a note falling out of a book, or an old photo, or a message on Facebook -- will freshen your feelings for the life of friendship. 

Friendship is a sort of agreement, that begins with an offer or invitation to spend time togther, or some other way of offering something of one's self, like correspondence or other entertainment. 

I had a great and gracious friend, who in effect was my mentor in friendship; for years the chief expression of our friendship was in letters; we were pen pals, but I spent many holidays with her family, too.  When one of my less auspicious romantic complications accidentally slipped into marriage, our friendship weakened.  Later I was able somehow to marry more appropriately, and although we tried to speak more, I was far away, and she was sick. When our Sweet Potato was on the way, I called my friend, but she was too weak to come to the phone.  I wrote her a letter to tell her about you, but she died before she could read it. I hope I can pass on to you the treasure of friendship and compassion I learned from her.  Not sure I can do it, because I'm kind of a dick and Edith wasn't, so I just want to make a note of my good intentions here.

The Dawn of Friendship

The point of toddler play, at this moment, for Sweet Potato, is to negotiate “fun” with some other toddler.  It’s the rudimentary dawn of friendship.  Peak success is to be able to agree on some coordinated, simultaneous physical activity (usually running, jumping, or singing either Happy Birthday or If You’re Happy and You Know It) that leads to squealing and laughing gleefully.  It’s not easy, because you have to figure out how to coordinate the activity; that is, you have to agree to do something that’s fun for all of you, then work out the timing. 

Last week we sat for friends, and had their 2-year old Zydrunas come for dinner at five.  Z is a big, beatific toddler.  He’s always wearing something special; for a few months it was his bat ears that his mom had sewn for Halloween, but maybe now it’s a pair of sunglasses.

Sweet Potato had taken in the news of Z’s visit very quietly the day before, but by the time Z came over, she had developed a program of sharing and making friends; to wit, she would first share her bumpy balls with him (he would play with the green one, and she would have the red), and then she would show him her easel.  She was tremendously excited to implement her plan and was delivering the whole instruction manual as Z walked in the door with his parents.  Z you pay widt dhis bhall um gween won an dhen um an dhen I’w pay widt dhis won, ohkay, bhat ohkay you stehn oveh deah ohkay puddout yoah heands!

The ball sharing was easily negotiated, but the actual playing activity was never quite established, so the parties adapted the game by jumping and laughing in Sweet Potato’s fire truck together.  While they were jumping on the bed, Sweet Potato said, less hode heands.  Then they were holding hands, jumping, and laughing.  Then they climbed on the front of the bed, and jumped off, singly, then together.  The success of reaching an agreement -- doing something together -- creates more glee than parallel play does.  It’s also amazing to listen to toddlers talk and understand each other!

The easel idea kind of fell apart because the parties failed to reach agreement regarding the occupancy of the opposite sides of the easel, and simultaneous use of either side of the easel overloaded Sweet Potato’s capacity for sharing. 

The evening ended several hours later with all toddlers crying, but I mean that in the best way. 

***

This week we went to a birthday party in some unbelievably remote suburb.  The toddler social experience peaked when they ran together with balloons across the living room.

It’s interesting how the peak only lasts a couple of runs.  Then, you know, someone cries, or something breaks, or some parent says it's time to go, or something else throws off the rhythm, the vibe, and you can’t get it back.

 

Discontent

This spring I’ll have lived in Cleveland, Ohio for ten years.  I’ve always been discontent here, so I raise my eyebrows a bit and say, hmmm!, when I picture the number 10 in this context, but I'm accustomed to being rather chronically discontent, and out of place, and I'm aware of my failure to answer the if not here, where sorts of questions regarding Cleveland, Ohio, so it would be inaccurate to say I'm surprised, because, if nothing else, I know I'm still here.  I'm getting a clue, though:

 

The other day Sweet Potato and I were walking around the neighborhood in the snow.  She was watching her feet and listening to her crunchy steps, but stuck up her mitten and said lets hode heands, dad.  Then I was holding hands with a two-year old, walking through the snow, singing Happy Birthday and Twinkle Twinkle, and I had to admit to myself, this is the best my life will ever be.  It wasn’t a Proustian revelation or anything, but more of an admission, or settling.  My general discontent settled a bit with acknowledgment that, yep, this was a dreamt-for moment; a sudden, sweet pool along a crooked, tentative rivulet. 

 

I did thumb through a little Proust after our walk, and Remembrance of Things Past made a new kind of sense.  I used to think it was about love and art, but now it seems like an enlightenment tale:  life is suffering, and suffering is desire, and desire is whining about how you can’t always get what you want, but when you do get it you whine about it even more, until you leave it all behind in order to really think about it, based on a hint of transcendence you get from a chance sense-memory, and then you develop your hint into a meditative practice based on writing that eventually floods you with understanding and compassion for everyone, the result of years sequestered not in a mountaintop hut but in a cork-lined room.