Kevin Tudish's Blog: A mid-life perspective, page 2
December 21, 2013
Infants don't want to sleep, tweens don't want to wake up
A longer excerpt from health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety
It started as soon as we got her home. She wanted to be held. She wanted her arms and legs free, but she wanted to be held. She napped in our arms, lying on top of us, next to us. We tried to put her in a crib at night: held her until she fell asleep, set her down on the mattress. If she woke up on the way down, she’d start screaming. If we managed to get her into the crib, the moment she woke up alone, she’d start screaming.
We brought her into bed with us. This tiny baby who seemed most at home between the two of us. We all slept.
We tried the crib again after her first birthday. She’d been walking for a few months already, and would stand holding the sides of the crib. Jailer! Jailer! Bouncing up and down, chattering while we were there, wailing if we tried to walk away.
“Let her cry” was one theory making its rounds in the new-parent community.
What sadist advises something like that?
“You let her cry for a minute, then go in and soothe her,” my wife said. “But just for a few seconds. Then two minutes, then five, ten, twenty, until she learns to soothe herself.”
Who thinks it’s healthy to abandon someone just out of infancy, and then keep poking your head back in the room with the false promise of your return?
She was resolute in her misery, and the longer we left her, the louder she cried.
We tried singing. Put her in the crib, sat in the rocker next to her, but just out of reach. The same songs we sang to her in utero. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…” By the fourth song, she’d be drowsy. By the sixth or seventh, sleeping lightly. We’d have to slowly lower the volume until the last half of the last song was just a whisper, sneak out of her room the last few bars.
We’d get a few hours until she’d wake up and start rattling the sides of the crib, screaming for company, then one of us would retrieve her and we’d all settle in together.
When she could get out of the crib on her own, we started the transition to a big-girl bed. Mattress on the floor, and one of us would lie down with her, chit chat and sing until she fell asleep. Sometime in the night, she’d be standing by our bed, poking one of us to sit up and let her in. Eventually, she figured out she could just climb over and crawl in between us.
“I can’t sleep with her thrashing around all night,” my wife said.
“She usually settles down by four or five,” I said.
“I need sleep. I’m useless all day.”
There’s a certain level of fatigue that’s inevitable with some kids. If you indulge the resentment, you exhaust yourself further. At some point, I accepted that I was going to be tired for a couple of years, that my eyes would burn, that a smog of incoherence and irritability would settle over the stumbling rhythm of my life.
Once I capitulated, I slept. If she were screaming and I went to get her, I’d pull her out of the crib, hold her close, and be almost asleep by the time we got back to bed. Later, I’d wake up and she’d be there between us, and I’d take comfort in that gentle, constant prodding and kicking. The space between us felt empty when she wasn’t there.
“She has to start sleeping in her own bed,” my wife said.
“She will. Another year or two, she’ll be too embarrassed to be crawling into bed with her parents. You’ll miss it then.”
Somewhere around eight, the midnight visits became less frequent, and finally stopped. She’d come in some mornings to wake us up, to lie between us and tell us what dreams she’d had, or what she had lined up for the day. On weekends, it was a beeline for the couch and the remote.
By the time she was nine, we had to go in and wake her up.
It started as soon as we got her home. She wanted to be held. She wanted her arms and legs free, but she wanted to be held. She napped in our arms, lying on top of us, next to us. We tried to put her in a crib at night: held her until she fell asleep, set her down on the mattress. If she woke up on the way down, she’d start screaming. If we managed to get her into the crib, the moment she woke up alone, she’d start screaming.
We brought her into bed with us. This tiny baby who seemed most at home between the two of us. We all slept.
We tried the crib again after her first birthday. She’d been walking for a few months already, and would stand holding the sides of the crib. Jailer! Jailer! Bouncing up and down, chattering while we were there, wailing if we tried to walk away.
“Let her cry” was one theory making its rounds in the new-parent community.
What sadist advises something like that?
“You let her cry for a minute, then go in and soothe her,” my wife said. “But just for a few seconds. Then two minutes, then five, ten, twenty, until she learns to soothe herself.”
Who thinks it’s healthy to abandon someone just out of infancy, and then keep poking your head back in the room with the false promise of your return?
She was resolute in her misery, and the longer we left her, the louder she cried.
We tried singing. Put her in the crib, sat in the rocker next to her, but just out of reach. The same songs we sang to her in utero. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…” By the fourth song, she’d be drowsy. By the sixth or seventh, sleeping lightly. We’d have to slowly lower the volume until the last half of the last song was just a whisper, sneak out of her room the last few bars.
We’d get a few hours until she’d wake up and start rattling the sides of the crib, screaming for company, then one of us would retrieve her and we’d all settle in together.
When she could get out of the crib on her own, we started the transition to a big-girl bed. Mattress on the floor, and one of us would lie down with her, chit chat and sing until she fell asleep. Sometime in the night, she’d be standing by our bed, poking one of us to sit up and let her in. Eventually, she figured out she could just climb over and crawl in between us.
“I can’t sleep with her thrashing around all night,” my wife said.
“She usually settles down by four or five,” I said.
“I need sleep. I’m useless all day.”
There’s a certain level of fatigue that’s inevitable with some kids. If you indulge the resentment, you exhaust yourself further. At some point, I accepted that I was going to be tired for a couple of years, that my eyes would burn, that a smog of incoherence and irritability would settle over the stumbling rhythm of my life.
Once I capitulated, I slept. If she were screaming and I went to get her, I’d pull her out of the crib, hold her close, and be almost asleep by the time we got back to bed. Later, I’d wake up and she’d be there between us, and I’d take comfort in that gentle, constant prodding and kicking. The space between us felt empty when she wasn’t there.
“She has to start sleeping in her own bed,” my wife said.
“She will. Another year or two, she’ll be too embarrassed to be crawling into bed with her parents. You’ll miss it then.”
Somewhere around eight, the midnight visits became less frequent, and finally stopped. She’d come in some mornings to wake us up, to lie between us and tell us what dreams she’d had, or what she had lined up for the day. On weekends, it was a beeline for the couch and the remote.
By the time she was nine, we had to go in and wake her up.
December 16, 2013
The party life of a middle-aged parent
A short excerpt from health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety
The vegan donuts were the draw for me. They were baked, and had at least the veneer of being healthy. Or at least not being so deadly.
My wife went vegan after recovering from cancer, first to detoxify from the treatment, then to stay healthy. I was vegan at home because it was easier for everyone, but was still an omnivore outside the house. When I tested high for cholesterol, I went totally vegan. And avoided anything from a deep fryer. Great for my cardiovascular health, but not for my sense of indulgence. Having given up everything to set a good example and live long enough to watch my daughter grow up, the part of me that indulged in plainly suicidal behavior was feeling neglected and restless.
Though steaks and cheeseburgers didn’t tempt me, I still craved a Reuben and fries, pizza, a fluffy, sugary glazed donut. Something that said to the world that I was willing to waste myself in the pursuit of a good time.
And there in the pastry case at the coffee counter were vegan donuts. Covered with chocolate, maple, blueberry icing. Chocolate and coconut. Crumbs. Like tying off for a B-12 shot. A soy latte and a chocolate vegan donut. In the purified air of healthy parenting, that was enough of a rush to settle the urge.
The vegan donuts were the draw for me. They were baked, and had at least the veneer of being healthy. Or at least not being so deadly.
My wife went vegan after recovering from cancer, first to detoxify from the treatment, then to stay healthy. I was vegan at home because it was easier for everyone, but was still an omnivore outside the house. When I tested high for cholesterol, I went totally vegan. And avoided anything from a deep fryer. Great for my cardiovascular health, but not for my sense of indulgence. Having given up everything to set a good example and live long enough to watch my daughter grow up, the part of me that indulged in plainly suicidal behavior was feeling neglected and restless.
Though steaks and cheeseburgers didn’t tempt me, I still craved a Reuben and fries, pizza, a fluffy, sugary glazed donut. Something that said to the world that I was willing to waste myself in the pursuit of a good time.
And there in the pastry case at the coffee counter were vegan donuts. Covered with chocolate, maple, blueberry icing. Chocolate and coconut. Crumbs. Like tying off for a B-12 shot. A soy latte and a chocolate vegan donut. In the purified air of healthy parenting, that was enough of a rush to settle the urge.
December 13, 2013
Loving your child
An excerpt from health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety
I never imagined I would love anyone like I love my daughter.
You get prepared for romantic love. You have crushes from kindergarten. You see it in the movies and on television, read about it in novels and poems. Year after year, you meet girls who excite you in new ways, and you imagine what it’ll be like when you meet one who just obliterates the thought of anyone else, who completely captivates you and gets you, and loves you dangerously for exactly what you are. Every day you add something to the vision: what kind of legs she’ll have, the shape of her ass, the warm caramel of her voice when she tells you she loves you. It changes every time someone new excites you, but you recognize it and understand it.
And then that woman’s there, and maybe nothing like you thought she’d be, but you’re the way you knew you’d be: you arrive at that place you’ve been imagining for so long: maybe it’s not quite the narcotic effect you’d read about, but it’s the homeland for your heart, a place you’ve only glimpsed but recognize like you’ve never set a foot anywhere else.
Then your daughter comes along, screaming for her first breath, and the only thing that matters is her comfort.
This little being who thumped around inside your wife and kept you guessing for nine months is here and helpless and yours, and nothing in your life has prepared you for how completely you love her.
It takes some getting used to. It’s nothing like you love your wife, and nothing like you love your parents and siblings. Uncontrollable, unconditional love that pushes everything else aside, including you.
I never imagined I would love anyone like I love my daughter.
You get prepared for romantic love. You have crushes from kindergarten. You see it in the movies and on television, read about it in novels and poems. Year after year, you meet girls who excite you in new ways, and you imagine what it’ll be like when you meet one who just obliterates the thought of anyone else, who completely captivates you and gets you, and loves you dangerously for exactly what you are. Every day you add something to the vision: what kind of legs she’ll have, the shape of her ass, the warm caramel of her voice when she tells you she loves you. It changes every time someone new excites you, but you recognize it and understand it.
And then that woman’s there, and maybe nothing like you thought she’d be, but you’re the way you knew you’d be: you arrive at that place you’ve been imagining for so long: maybe it’s not quite the narcotic effect you’d read about, but it’s the homeland for your heart, a place you’ve only glimpsed but recognize like you’ve never set a foot anywhere else.
Then your daughter comes along, screaming for her first breath, and the only thing that matters is her comfort.
This little being who thumped around inside your wife and kept you guessing for nine months is here and helpless and yours, and nothing in your life has prepared you for how completely you love her.
It takes some getting used to. It’s nothing like you love your wife, and nothing like you love your parents and siblings. Uncontrollable, unconditional love that pushes everything else aside, including you.
December 6, 2013
Naming things
Sometimes it’s an emotional presence, an image. It’s palpable, visible, but doesn’t immediately articulate itself.
Like the wooden screen door on my grandparents’ house. It’s always the same picture, watercolor and dry brush, faded but vivid, fixed in a time when the difficulties of our lives were uncomplicated.
The aluminum screen was oxidized to a dull silver. The wood was worn smooth and stained where each of us had held it open or stood there swinging it back and forth on the hinges to watch the long spring stretch away from the jamb. Where my grandfather’s hands had passed over it, black from working on the tractor, bloody from dressing game. Or ours, sticky from Turkish Taffy or Sugar Babies, Cokes or the milkshakes my grandmother made. Aunts, uncles, cousins, parents—everyone left a mark there.
In the winter, it was just an extra step to get into the house.
In the summer, it was our egress to 200 acres of meadows and woods, barns and hay bales. The rope swing in the big oak. The ponds and the creek. The twilight fog and flurry of bats and lightening bugs.
It was our ingress to lunch, when everything outside stopped--the mowing, baling, planting or harvesting: all activity on the farm was centered suddenly around the stove and the table, the sink where we all grabbed for the soap. My grandmother and her daughters, our moms and aunts, brought out the serving plates from the kitchen, filled the middle of the table. We grabbed and passed, assembled our meals. Recapped the morning, planned the afternoon.
Back out the door into the humid summer.
You could yell through the screen, get the attention of someone on the other side without having to move from where you were. You could sit on the porch swing and hear your mom yell from the kitchen for you to run up to the hen house or around to the garden. You could yell that you were off to the creek, or down to the bottom to look for arrowheads.
There was no resistance when you pushed it open, a lazy slap when the spring finally pulled it shut.
There were a hundred things on the farm that we got into—the bank barn full of hay, the horse barn full of old tack, the spring house, the open basement left after the first house burned down, the hollow by Junior’s property, the flat up in the woods where sandstone pushed up through the soil and laurel and ferns thrived in the shade—but that screen door remains my touchstone. And language lets me name the memories.
Like the wooden screen door on my grandparents’ house. It’s always the same picture, watercolor and dry brush, faded but vivid, fixed in a time when the difficulties of our lives were uncomplicated.
The aluminum screen was oxidized to a dull silver. The wood was worn smooth and stained where each of us had held it open or stood there swinging it back and forth on the hinges to watch the long spring stretch away from the jamb. Where my grandfather’s hands had passed over it, black from working on the tractor, bloody from dressing game. Or ours, sticky from Turkish Taffy or Sugar Babies, Cokes or the milkshakes my grandmother made. Aunts, uncles, cousins, parents—everyone left a mark there.
In the winter, it was just an extra step to get into the house.
In the summer, it was our egress to 200 acres of meadows and woods, barns and hay bales. The rope swing in the big oak. The ponds and the creek. The twilight fog and flurry of bats and lightening bugs.
It was our ingress to lunch, when everything outside stopped--the mowing, baling, planting or harvesting: all activity on the farm was centered suddenly around the stove and the table, the sink where we all grabbed for the soap. My grandmother and her daughters, our moms and aunts, brought out the serving plates from the kitchen, filled the middle of the table. We grabbed and passed, assembled our meals. Recapped the morning, planned the afternoon.
Back out the door into the humid summer.
You could yell through the screen, get the attention of someone on the other side without having to move from where you were. You could sit on the porch swing and hear your mom yell from the kitchen for you to run up to the hen house or around to the garden. You could yell that you were off to the creek, or down to the bottom to look for arrowheads.
There was no resistance when you pushed it open, a lazy slap when the spring finally pulled it shut.
There were a hundred things on the farm that we got into—the bank barn full of hay, the horse barn full of old tack, the spring house, the open basement left after the first house burned down, the hollow by Junior’s property, the flat up in the woods where sandstone pushed up through the soil and laurel and ferns thrived in the shade—but that screen door remains my touchstone. And language lets me name the memories.
December 3, 2013
Turning your child into a weapon
Another excerpt from my book health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety.
It’s easy to make kids proxies. You repeat the same things over and over, let your own pain or disappointment color the remark, until it becomes an inherited truth like racism. There’s an ignorant glee in thinking your child is having that same moment of clarity about your spouse that you had, the revelation that explains what’s been bothering you all this time but you couldn’t quite articulate, that thing to which there were so many early clues but you didn’t have enough context then. Your child isn’t going to be duped like you were. You do it without knowing it, the way you hold a fork or fold your arms. Or you do it with full malice aforethought, eager for an opportunity for someone to share your pain or understand your disappointment. Not some friend in whom you confide over tea or a beer, who sympathizes but can’t commit to your daily struggle; but someone who is there every day, who is tied to both of you, through whom you can retaliate because your partner’s like an open wound to your child.
When a marriage is working, it’s easy to resist the temptation and side with your partner. But when things aren’t going well, when your partner’s suddenly less of what you’d dreamed of, out of sync with your evolution, then the temptation is narcotic, an unmonitored opportunity to break that promise of always giving your best and instead inflict on her something like the pain she causes you, let some poison trickle out through the proxy of your child and tear at her in return.
But there’s no inoculation for your child against being the conduit of your frustration, no way not to poison her first in the process.
It’s easy to make kids proxies. You repeat the same things over and over, let your own pain or disappointment color the remark, until it becomes an inherited truth like racism. There’s an ignorant glee in thinking your child is having that same moment of clarity about your spouse that you had, the revelation that explains what’s been bothering you all this time but you couldn’t quite articulate, that thing to which there were so many early clues but you didn’t have enough context then. Your child isn’t going to be duped like you were. You do it without knowing it, the way you hold a fork or fold your arms. Or you do it with full malice aforethought, eager for an opportunity for someone to share your pain or understand your disappointment. Not some friend in whom you confide over tea or a beer, who sympathizes but can’t commit to your daily struggle; but someone who is there every day, who is tied to both of you, through whom you can retaliate because your partner’s like an open wound to your child.
When a marriage is working, it’s easy to resist the temptation and side with your partner. But when things aren’t going well, when your partner’s suddenly less of what you’d dreamed of, out of sync with your evolution, then the temptation is narcotic, an unmonitored opportunity to break that promise of always giving your best and instead inflict on her something like the pain she causes you, let some poison trickle out through the proxy of your child and tear at her in return.
But there’s no inoculation for your child against being the conduit of your frustration, no way not to poison her first in the process.
November 29, 2013
Church? Really? On a Sunday?
We don’t go to church, though my wife brings it up from time to time. Sunday’s the Sabbath, a day to rest and reflect—why waste it in church? I talk to God. Sometimes just to say thanks for such a gorgeous day, sometimes pleading to keep a Republican out of office, always for the success of my lottery ticket.
My wife grew up Catholic, and seems to have had more of an Inquisition experience, and she’s still trying to settle those questions.
I thought about that stuff a lot when I was a kid.
When I lived through a car accident that was supposed to have killed, then crippled me. On the way to physical therapy after that, thinking I could as easily as not be here right now, I could have been removed from the world but I wasn’t. Like I had been granted a wish I hadn’t known to make. At fifteen I got a sense of how fragile life is, how every day is a gift to enjoy. Not that I succeeded in that every day, but I’d been let in on the secret.
And how fragile a body is, how easily it can become lifeless or useless. How lucky you are if you heal, what a fucking miracle it is when you can get out of bed under your own power, stand up to pee, put one foot in front of the other and move through your day.
When people put their hands on me and prayed, when I yielded further to a God I barely knew but who had been so generous with me, when something ignited that tinder of gratitude into the glossolalia of recognition and acceptance.
When I poured through the New Testament to understand what happened, what should happen next.
When Buddhism and Taoism made more sense than Saint Paul.
When the zen of just living the life I had been given made the most sense.
I want my daughter to make some kind of journey like that, be able to understand what an amazing thing it is to have the opportunity of a life in this world. Well, how amazing it is for some of us who were lucky enough to be born when and where we were. I just don’t feel like church is the best point of departure.
My mom took me to church. Because she wanted to go, and my dad was golfing, and I was too young to leave at home by myself. I hated it. The last day of the weekend and it had to start out in clothes I hated, followed by an hour of bad music and incomprehensible rambling, locked in a sterile sanctuary away from sun and grass and playground equipment. What bozo thought that was a window on the magnificence of God?
My wife grew up Catholic, and seems to have had more of an Inquisition experience, and she’s still trying to settle those questions.
I thought about that stuff a lot when I was a kid.
When I lived through a car accident that was supposed to have killed, then crippled me. On the way to physical therapy after that, thinking I could as easily as not be here right now, I could have been removed from the world but I wasn’t. Like I had been granted a wish I hadn’t known to make. At fifteen I got a sense of how fragile life is, how every day is a gift to enjoy. Not that I succeeded in that every day, but I’d been let in on the secret.
And how fragile a body is, how easily it can become lifeless or useless. How lucky you are if you heal, what a fucking miracle it is when you can get out of bed under your own power, stand up to pee, put one foot in front of the other and move through your day.
When people put their hands on me and prayed, when I yielded further to a God I barely knew but who had been so generous with me, when something ignited that tinder of gratitude into the glossolalia of recognition and acceptance.
When I poured through the New Testament to understand what happened, what should happen next.
When Buddhism and Taoism made more sense than Saint Paul.
When the zen of just living the life I had been given made the most sense.
I want my daughter to make some kind of journey like that, be able to understand what an amazing thing it is to have the opportunity of a life in this world. Well, how amazing it is for some of us who were lucky enough to be born when and where we were. I just don’t feel like church is the best point of departure.
My mom took me to church. Because she wanted to go, and my dad was golfing, and I was too young to leave at home by myself. I hated it. The last day of the weekend and it had to start out in clothes I hated, followed by an hour of bad music and incomprehensible rambling, locked in a sterile sanctuary away from sun and grass and playground equipment. What bozo thought that was a window on the magnificence of God?
November 25, 2013
Some of my goals as a fiction writer
health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety
Fiction is a technique to find a vantage point, an oblique way of getting at the facts, catching them off guard, getting a look at them when they think your back is turned.
This book isn’t a story in the traditional sense, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but when all the pieces are assembled, it’s a story in the sense that any portion of our lives are stories: circumstances and choices from years before that shape the present, present choices that shape the moment, the way a grandfather you never met informs your relationship with your daughter.
Life is messy and meandering, multi themed and multi faceted; sometimes you exert an influence, sometimes you’re swept along.
My goal is an illumination of a particular set of circumstances with the hope that the personal becomes universal; that my rendering offers a perspective you might not otherwise have had, or puts a voice to something whose presence was mute but palpable.
Fiction is a technique to find a vantage point, an oblique way of getting at the facts, catching them off guard, getting a look at them when they think your back is turned.
This book isn’t a story in the traditional sense, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but when all the pieces are assembled, it’s a story in the sense that any portion of our lives are stories: circumstances and choices from years before that shape the present, present choices that shape the moment, the way a grandfather you never met informs your relationship with your daughter.
Life is messy and meandering, multi themed and multi faceted; sometimes you exert an influence, sometimes you’re swept along.
My goal is an illumination of a particular set of circumstances with the hope that the personal becomes universal; that my rendering offers a perspective you might not otherwise have had, or puts a voice to something whose presence was mute but palpable.
November 24, 2013
Driving lessons
An excerpt from health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety:
When my wife was pregnant, I didn’t want to know the sex of the baby. How many surprises like that do you get in your life? But I wanted a girl.
I’d had the experience of growing up a boy, I knew what the world looked like from that perspective. My sister, though, had a completely different experience with the same parents, the same family. What was different about her world?
And what would it be like to see elements of myself embodied in a daughter? Would it give me more insight into the female psyche? Would she go full throttle and run the train off the track just for the adrenaline rush?
There were glimpses. Like when we’d have some open road ahead of us and no traffic around, and she’d laugh from her car seat, “Daddy, do the speed,” and I’d mash the throttle, feel the GTO kick down a gear, summon up 400 pound feet of torque and mash us against the backs of our seats, and not another sound but the engine and exhaust until I had to lift off.
“Hee hee hee. Again, again.”
“Not when there are other cars around. It’s not safe when there are other cars around.”
I wanted to instill good driving habits early.
When my wife was pregnant, I didn’t want to know the sex of the baby. How many surprises like that do you get in your life? But I wanted a girl.
I’d had the experience of growing up a boy, I knew what the world looked like from that perspective. My sister, though, had a completely different experience with the same parents, the same family. What was different about her world?
And what would it be like to see elements of myself embodied in a daughter? Would it give me more insight into the female psyche? Would she go full throttle and run the train off the track just for the adrenaline rush?
There were glimpses. Like when we’d have some open road ahead of us and no traffic around, and she’d laugh from her car seat, “Daddy, do the speed,” and I’d mash the throttle, feel the GTO kick down a gear, summon up 400 pound feet of torque and mash us against the backs of our seats, and not another sound but the engine and exhaust until I had to lift off.
“Hee hee hee. Again, again.”
“Not when there are other cars around. It’s not safe when there are other cars around.”
I wanted to instill good driving habits early.
November 21, 2013
Trying to stay connected to your kid
Another excerpt from my book health happiness love longevity peace prosperity and safety.
“Don’t tell Mom, okay.”
She usually shared confidences with her mom, not with me. Just ten and a world away from eight and nine. And even those years, not the little girl who ran to the door when I came home.
You love your child like you love nothing else, and those first years are a joy you never imagined. This little creature who depends on you for everything, who’s yours to love and protect and nurture. Who sometimes is your own face staring back at you, who feels like she’s always been there, who materialized out of you the way your forty-year-old self materialized out of the twenty-year-old you just were. You hold her because you can’t believe she’s actually there, and she holds you back, presses against you and stretches those little arms across your chest. Wraps a hand around your finger. Falls asleep in your arms, sleeps on top of you while you sneak a nap.
It’s easy until she’s walking and grabbing things, seeing where her hands fit and what everything tastes like. There’s no sense of reason you can appeal to, but you have to keep her safe, keep her alive. No, no, Honey. No, no. But she’s determined, and you know nothing good can come of a wet finger in an electrical socket. NO. You can’t appeal to reason but you can instill fear. She freezes and starts crying because she’s never heard that voice from you. Honey, you offer softly, and move toward her, but the screams are even louder. She’s alive, and unlikely to go near an outlet again, but you’re different to her now.
You trade a little trust for her safety. You love her so much you’ll make that sacrifice. You can reason with yourself. But that bartering hurts.
Your wife sweeps her up. It’s okay, it’s okay. Shh, shh. Shields your daughter from you, and gives you the look to let you know you’ve violated all the protocols of good parenting.
She’s okay. She’s not writhing on the floor with 110 volts coursing through her. And everyone hates you for it.
A few hours later she seems to have forgotten about it. She has a fist full of your hair and probes relentlessly to get a finger behind your eye. You wrap your hand around hers, kiss her hand, kiss her face, try to distract her from maiming you. There’s no danger to her now, so you can succeed with feints and redirection.
That first little fissure widens over time. You become an impediment to the things she wants most, the barrier to her fulfilling the impulse to run into the street or disappear in a department store. There’s an experience of the world she wants and you won’t let her have it, and she starts to cultivate a suspicion of that love she took for granted.
You try to explain that coming into contact with a moving car is kind of like the time she did a face plant on the sidewalk, except much worse and probably fatal. That if she disappears from you, if you can’t see her, you can’t protect her. Someone else might walk off with her, someone who doesn’t love her like you and Mommy do.
Over and over. Until you get the why, you just have to believe that it’s because I love you, or if you don’t believe that, believe that I’ll yell again and we’ll both hate it. Over and over until the allure of all that blacktop starts to diminish. See, we always stop and look because we don’t want to get killed by some clown in an SUV who thinks the speed limit is only for suckers. Mommy and I stop at every corner and look both ways. And look whenever there’s a car in a driveway that might back over us, or wherever there’s a cutaway in the curb.
We do this stuff to stay alive, and so should you.
She gets a little older and starts to understand cause and effect, lets go of some of that initial suspicion.
You teach her how to ride a bike, run along beside her after the training wheels come off, hold the seat to keep her upright until she’s going fast enough to stay up on her own. Keep pedaling, keep pedaling. And she’s off down the sidewalk. Don’t look at me, look where you’re going.
And now you’re the agent of her freedom and the best guy in the world.
Until she thinks she doesn’t need a helmet. You want to spare her the accumulation of head injuries you incurred as a kid, but worry about the cost of letting her know there was a time when no one wore helmets.
Back and forth over the years and that offset between trust and suspicion gets wider and wider, and she spends more time thinking you’re a weasel and less time snuggled up to you on the couch. She wants Mom to put her to bed, and Mom to brush her hair. Some days she runs past you like you’re another lamp or barstool.
Bye, Honey.
Gone.
You love her, but now have to take your reward in what you hope is independence and not indifference.
Don’t tell Mom glows inside you.
“Don’t tell Mom, okay.”
She usually shared confidences with her mom, not with me. Just ten and a world away from eight and nine. And even those years, not the little girl who ran to the door when I came home.
You love your child like you love nothing else, and those first years are a joy you never imagined. This little creature who depends on you for everything, who’s yours to love and protect and nurture. Who sometimes is your own face staring back at you, who feels like she’s always been there, who materialized out of you the way your forty-year-old self materialized out of the twenty-year-old you just were. You hold her because you can’t believe she’s actually there, and she holds you back, presses against you and stretches those little arms across your chest. Wraps a hand around your finger. Falls asleep in your arms, sleeps on top of you while you sneak a nap.
It’s easy until she’s walking and grabbing things, seeing where her hands fit and what everything tastes like. There’s no sense of reason you can appeal to, but you have to keep her safe, keep her alive. No, no, Honey. No, no. But she’s determined, and you know nothing good can come of a wet finger in an electrical socket. NO. You can’t appeal to reason but you can instill fear. She freezes and starts crying because she’s never heard that voice from you. Honey, you offer softly, and move toward her, but the screams are even louder. She’s alive, and unlikely to go near an outlet again, but you’re different to her now.
You trade a little trust for her safety. You love her so much you’ll make that sacrifice. You can reason with yourself. But that bartering hurts.
Your wife sweeps her up. It’s okay, it’s okay. Shh, shh. Shields your daughter from you, and gives you the look to let you know you’ve violated all the protocols of good parenting.
She’s okay. She’s not writhing on the floor with 110 volts coursing through her. And everyone hates you for it.
A few hours later she seems to have forgotten about it. She has a fist full of your hair and probes relentlessly to get a finger behind your eye. You wrap your hand around hers, kiss her hand, kiss her face, try to distract her from maiming you. There’s no danger to her now, so you can succeed with feints and redirection.
That first little fissure widens over time. You become an impediment to the things she wants most, the barrier to her fulfilling the impulse to run into the street or disappear in a department store. There’s an experience of the world she wants and you won’t let her have it, and she starts to cultivate a suspicion of that love she took for granted.
You try to explain that coming into contact with a moving car is kind of like the time she did a face plant on the sidewalk, except much worse and probably fatal. That if she disappears from you, if you can’t see her, you can’t protect her. Someone else might walk off with her, someone who doesn’t love her like you and Mommy do.
Over and over. Until you get the why, you just have to believe that it’s because I love you, or if you don’t believe that, believe that I’ll yell again and we’ll both hate it. Over and over until the allure of all that blacktop starts to diminish. See, we always stop and look because we don’t want to get killed by some clown in an SUV who thinks the speed limit is only for suckers. Mommy and I stop at every corner and look both ways. And look whenever there’s a car in a driveway that might back over us, or wherever there’s a cutaway in the curb.
We do this stuff to stay alive, and so should you.
She gets a little older and starts to understand cause and effect, lets go of some of that initial suspicion.
You teach her how to ride a bike, run along beside her after the training wheels come off, hold the seat to keep her upright until she’s going fast enough to stay up on her own. Keep pedaling, keep pedaling. And she’s off down the sidewalk. Don’t look at me, look where you’re going.
And now you’re the agent of her freedom and the best guy in the world.
Until she thinks she doesn’t need a helmet. You want to spare her the accumulation of head injuries you incurred as a kid, but worry about the cost of letting her know there was a time when no one wore helmets.
Back and forth over the years and that offset between trust and suspicion gets wider and wider, and she spends more time thinking you’re a weasel and less time snuggled up to you on the couch. She wants Mom to put her to bed, and Mom to brush her hair. Some days she runs past you like you’re another lamp or barstool.
Bye, Honey.
Gone.
You love her, but now have to take your reward in what you hope is independence and not indifference.
Don’t tell Mom glows inside you.
October 27, 2013
An excerpt from the first chapter
Here's an excerpt from the opening of my book health, happiness, love, longevity, peace, prosperity, and safety:
Sometimes it snows at Christmas, like two years ago when we got two feet overnight, but usually it's just cold and the trees are bare. Animals forage, but the miles of forest are otherwise dormant, gray and brown.
Inside, there's plenty of life crowded behind the steamy windows. More people than bedrooms, more food than can fit in the cupboards and refrigerators. The golds and greens and red velvet of Christmas.
Despite everyone's promise to dial it back this year, the pile of gifts overwhelms the tree.
You start gaining weight the first day. The walk and the crunches and the blueberry smoothie first thing in the morning are vestigial habits that give way to shuffling down the hall to the breakfast table for coffee and nut rolls.
Nut rolls are an important thread in my family history. Both grandmothers made them. My mom made them every Christmas: wherever we lived, whichever coast or continent, she rolled out the tiny crescents of sugary dough, filled them with walnuts and cinnamon soaked in milk and butter.
Three days in, you're glad you brought sweat pants.
Outside, though, it's that dead early winter, a preamble to more cold, colorless months.
Thankfully now it's just a couple weeks at Christmas. An hour and a half north to Pittsburgh and we're on the plane. We leave late so we can drag out the last day, not have to rush. It'll be our regular bedtime when we get to California.
We leave our suitcases in the living room. My wife usually unpacks as soon as we get home, but she and my daughter both slept all the way home from the airport, and she's too tired to do anything but brush her teeth. My daughter doesn't even want to go that far, but we prevail over the whining.
It's nice to visit there, but I like it here. More bedrooms than people. No cache of baked goods behind every cabinet door.
I'm the first one up. I pull up the blinds behind the kitchen sink and have to squint against the light. The sky is an even blue. The ferns and climbing vines, the geraniums and agapanthus are green and crowded around the fountain. The camellias are blooming. Even in January, there's a rose on the arbor.
The cost of living exceeds most places on earth, but this morning it feels like a fair price.
Sometimes it snows at Christmas, like two years ago when we got two feet overnight, but usually it's just cold and the trees are bare. Animals forage, but the miles of forest are otherwise dormant, gray and brown.
Inside, there's plenty of life crowded behind the steamy windows. More people than bedrooms, more food than can fit in the cupboards and refrigerators. The golds and greens and red velvet of Christmas.
Despite everyone's promise to dial it back this year, the pile of gifts overwhelms the tree.
You start gaining weight the first day. The walk and the crunches and the blueberry smoothie first thing in the morning are vestigial habits that give way to shuffling down the hall to the breakfast table for coffee and nut rolls.
Nut rolls are an important thread in my family history. Both grandmothers made them. My mom made them every Christmas: wherever we lived, whichever coast or continent, she rolled out the tiny crescents of sugary dough, filled them with walnuts and cinnamon soaked in milk and butter.
Three days in, you're glad you brought sweat pants.
Outside, though, it's that dead early winter, a preamble to more cold, colorless months.
Thankfully now it's just a couple weeks at Christmas. An hour and a half north to Pittsburgh and we're on the plane. We leave late so we can drag out the last day, not have to rush. It'll be our regular bedtime when we get to California.
We leave our suitcases in the living room. My wife usually unpacks as soon as we get home, but she and my daughter both slept all the way home from the airport, and she's too tired to do anything but brush her teeth. My daughter doesn't even want to go that far, but we prevail over the whining.
It's nice to visit there, but I like it here. More bedrooms than people. No cache of baked goods behind every cabinet door.
I'm the first one up. I pull up the blinds behind the kitchen sink and have to squint against the light. The sky is an even blue. The ferns and climbing vines, the geraniums and agapanthus are green and crowded around the fountain. The camellias are blooming. Even in January, there's a rose on the arbor.
The cost of living exceeds most places on earth, but this morning it feels like a fair price.
A mid-life perspective
New writing, and excerpts from older stuff.
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