UNDER A GLOWERING SKY

Here at Chez Finn in Santa Rosa we are under the weather, both literally and figuratively. Literally in the sense that we seem to have moved inside a giant steel ball bearing. All we see overhead is a dirty scrum of dark clouds. The weather is gray, cold and wet. And it has been this way for nearly three weeks. Which coincides with the figurative portion of this allusion; we came down with a nasty bug at the same time the sky went irretrievably into Seattle-mode. And true to the holiday spirit of giving, we have been passing said bug back and forth between the three of us – wife, child and self – since then.
For those keeping score, this is my fourth cold of this fall. Ah, the joys of fatherhood!
I have been stuck indoors busying myself with filling hankies full of yellow phlegm and reading every book in sight. I knew I topped out on the boredom meter when I spent a full weekend watching high school football championships – and enjoying them. If there has been any football game of even moderate interest on television in the last 3 weeks, trust me, I have seen it.
Vivienne has a good old fashioned case of the croup and we have installed a vaporizer in her room in the hopes of getting her back to normal. For someone as sick as she, there hasn’t been a lot of whining and complaining. She has left that to the 2 adults she lives with. My wife and I have hourly illness comparisons in a futile effort to determine who is sicker; and therefore in need of the most sympathy.
I think I’m winning.
The regal Akita’s reaction to all this has been to ignore the lot of us. She can smell the sickness on our breath and when any one of us tries to give her a hug she gently but firmly slides away with a sidelong glance that says; “You’re nuts if you think you’re giving me that disease.” Then she climbs the stairs, leaps upon the bed and falls asleep. Smart dog.
If I were still a skier I could at the very least be all excited about this miserable weather, figuring that if nothing else it was dumping truckloads of snow in the Sierra. But now I don’t even have that going for me. No, now I get to appreciate fully how grey and wet Santa Rosa is during the winter. And to add final insult to injury during one of the recent windy storms part of our roof blew away and we sprung a leak. I called out a roofer and learned the sobering news that, while they could put a temporary fix to my current problem, my roof was 25 years old and I would need a new one soon. All for the not inconsiderable price of fifteen thousand dollars.
It’s enough to make a man want to lie down and weep like a lovesick schoolgirl. But if I did that I’d need a clean hankie and they are all in the dryer.

FIVE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY TODDLER

1. She eats; anything and all the time. My wife insisted that Vivienne have no processed sugar in her diet for at least the first year, having read that this would mean the child would eat more vegetables, fruits, etc. And you know what? It worked. This child will eat whatever is put in front of her. Broccoli; loves it. Cauliflower; can’t get enough. She did have a sweet once; a cupcake on her 1st birthday, and promptly smeared it all over her face and hair. We were in Safeway the other day; I had Viv strapped in a shopping cart as I went up and down the aisles. I was talking to the guy behind the meat counter when I noticed a couple of women giggling behind me. I turned around to see that Vivienne had grabbed a large stalk of broccoli from the cart and was eating it raw. She had green speckles all over her face and chest. One woman said; “I wish my kids would eat vegetables like that.” And the other woman chimed in with, “If only.” So as I watched my darling daughter the epicurean eat uncooked broccoli straight off the stalk, I thought; “This is a good thing. She’s not yanking large bottles of Prego sauce off the shelves where they will shatter on the floor, she is not frightening the other shoppers with her Banshee shriek, and to top it all off, she is eating raw broccoli, which is probably good for her. I can live with this.” And for a moment I almost felt lucky.
2. She sleeps; 12 hours per night and usually a 2 hr. nap in the afternoon. I didn’t realize how big a deal this was until we were at a party recently talking to a couple whose daughter did not sleep a full night until she was 3 yrs old. During the course of the conversation my wife innocently asked if they were planning on having any more children and they both said in unison; “We will never, EVER have another child!” So, yeah, the sleeping is a big deal.
3. She knows sign language. From birth my wife has been teaching Vivienne American Sign Language. I was pretty skeptical of this effort and may have made a few snide remarks about an infant’s inability to learn. But my wife insisted that even if the kid couldn’t do the signing now, as soon as she got to a certain level of motor control, it would kick in. And she was right: two months ago Viv began to signal for milk and food. She can tell you when she has had enough of something, and when she wants more (and with her, it is usually more). She can make the sign for banana and my wife is teaching her to sing ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. All of this is more or less amazing to me and I take no credit for it. My wife is turning out to be a child raising genius, while her husband, who raised 3 kids from a previous marriage, is basically a useless doofus.
4. She is happy all the time. This kid wakes up singing in the morning and babbles to herself all day in sort of a happy giggling voice. She can entertain herself. This is especially helpful when I am mired in the dumps. Some mornings when the black dog is hounding me I can put Viv down after her breakfast and tell her, “Go play, honey, Daddy needs to go in the other room and sob for a while.” And she will look at me with that solemn expression children sometimes get and then she will waddle over to her play area and amuse herself.
5. She tells us when she is ready for bed. Most nights around seven o’clock she will make the hand sign for milk and then begin crawling up the stairs towards her bedroom. This means it is time for Rochelle to make her a bottle of milk and put her to bed. At the landing on the stairs Viv will stop and blow me a kiss through the green netting I have installed on the railing to keep babies from tumbling to their death. Then she continues her progress up the next flight to her bedroom, all the while babbling happily. It you don’t think this is a big deal, try put a cranky baby to bed sometime.

BABY ROT

Because our baby had never had diaper rash, my wife and I had been congratulating ourselves on what a sterling example of parenthood we were turning out to be. Of course the very next morning when I went to change Vivienne’s diaper, her perfectly formed vulva was covered in an unsightly scarlet rash. It reached from, oh roughly her bellybutton right down through her crotch and into her bung hole.
Just seeing this virulent stain brought back to me the many times I had jock rot in high school; probably because I never bothered to wash my jock for weeks on end. But that’s another story.
Enough digression.
Several days later we had tried a variety of cures for the dreaded baby rot, with varying degrees of success. Alas, our previously serene baby was not so unruffled any more. Now she cried, and with good reason, for the rash was a bright crimson swath that screamed to be scratched until raw. I knew, from my previous experience with such disease, how it must burn and itch.
And for one of the few times in my life I actually felt some compassion for another human being. But I was powerless to fix the problem and this feeling of failure tapped into my core insecurities and made me feel inadequate; and so I learned the sorry truth that compassion isn’t such a swell thing after all. I mean, maybe it’s great for the Dali Lama, who can practice it in a general sort of all encompassing way, but he doesn’t have kids with baby rot.
But back to the tale at hand.
A week into our travails I was changing Vivienne one morning as she was sobbing with pain and frustration. And I thought to myself as I stood hunched over the changing table and the writhing baby, “Self, when I have had jock rot, what would have helped make it feel better?”
Without hesitation my Self answered; “Scratching it!”
“Alas, poor Self, we both know that scratching the rot only makes it worse. And even though we want to succor our miserable baby, we don’t actually want to spread the rot any further. No, esteemed Self, you will have to think of something else.”
And then my Self had a true moment of inspiration, “Blow on it”
And so I bent my head over my daughter’s inflamed crotch and I blew cool air on it. And lo and behold, the crying stopped. Again I gently blew and again Vivienne stopped her sobbing. And as I maintained my ministrations my daughter let out a sigh of something close to contentment for the first time in a very long time.
For many minutes I kept on with the gentle blowing of my daughter’s reddened crotch. And during this time my daughter was at peace. Finally she fell asleep, a beatific smile on her face. And I thought to myself; “Self, if anyone ever sees me doing this they just might get the wrong impression.”
And my Self said, “Then why don’t we keep this to ourselves, Bunkums.”
And so we did. Every time I changed the baby I gave her a good blow and she was contented and happy and for some time thereafter she was relieved of her throbbing pain. And all was well in our world and no one was arresting me for practicing unseemly acts on a small child.
A few days later divine providence blessed me with a sparkling opportunity to practice my basic nature; which is never a pretty thing.
As I walked by the baby’s room I happened to glance in and see my wife with her head bent over the baby on the changing table. I remained quite as I watched Rochelle gently blowing on the baby’s crotch. She was cooing softly as she did this, in the way only a truly loving mother can croon. And the baby’s cries were stifled as she descended into a state of blissful harmony and all was at peace in the Finn household.
Naturally I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by and so I sidled up to my wife and said: “East of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon Line you could be incarcerated in a grimy women’s correctional institute for doing that to a child.”
Between breaths she told me just where I could put the Mason-Dixon Line.
“No, seriously,” I said to her, “that is totally perverted.” I didn’t tell her that I had been doing the very same maneuver on the baby earlier in the day.
“There’s only one pervert in this room and it is not Vivienne or me, Buster.”
“Hey, I’m not the one blowing the baby!”
This clever rejoinder finally got a rise out of her and she stopped her comforting long enough to fix me with a glare. Her cheeks were flushed, either from blowing on the baby or from anger; I like to think, in my humble way, that it was the latter.
“That sounds disgusting,” she said to me. “I am not blowing the baby.” And then she bent over the table and continued to blow the baby.
“You’re lucky you live in California,” I said, knowing how much she appreciated it whenever I begin to list the ways in which she is lucky. “We are enlightened in this state. But you better believe me, Sister, there are plenty of states in the South where you could do hard time for blowing a baby.” She loves it when I call her Sister too.
Her head snapped around in a gratifying fashion and she said; “Then why don’t you hop a plane to Alabama and go fuck yourself!”
“Whoa there, Sister.” I recoiled in mock horror. “I’ve told you before how I don’t want you using filthy language around our child.”
Rochelle was silent.
“I should get my camera and film this, then upload it to UTube. It’d probably go viral overnight. I can just see the headline; Woman Blows Baby!” I don't even own a camera and I couldn't find UTube on the internet if my life depended upon it.
I took her silence to mean that she had surrendered the field to superior forces and in my magnanimity I put my arm around her shoulder and asked innocently; “So does it work?”
“Does what work?”
“Blowing the baby”
“Just look at her, she’s peaceful.” And my wife gazed on our perfect daughter with a look that, I, in my Roman Catholic Catechism scarred brain, imagined the Blessed Virgin fixed upon the Baby Jesus.
And indeed, Vivienne was the picture of contentment. Lying on her back, her legs spread, her wicked red rash temporarily appeased.
“Yeah, I know,” I told her. “I’ve been blowing her for a week. Works like magic.”
She pinned me with a look that she reserves for truly special occasions and said sweetly; “I meant that about Alabama, you should really find somewhere to go and fuck yourself.”
And I left the room with a new bounce in my step.

TYPHOID MARY

I used to be a healthy guy.
I got sick maybe once a year. You know, your typical seasonal cold, good for 5 days of runny nose and itchy eyes, and then back to normal; or in my case what passes for normal.
But now I have had 3 colds and a sinus infection in the past 10 weeks. This may cause you to ask; “Dude, what is going on with you?”
And I would answer; “Dude, I live with Typhoid Mary.”
Actually her name is Vivienne Esperanza Finn and she is a total germ factory. Although she never gets sick herself – just like the original Typhoid Mary – she is something much worse; a carrier. In fact, she is an aircraft carrier of viral illness; sending out squadrons of deadly microbes in search of uninfected victims to contaminate.
Since she is 14 months old and as yet possesses absolutely no social graces, when she sneezes she just lets fly. And, brother, when you are bending over the changing table and catch one of her sneezes right in your kisser and feel the bacteria-laden droplets spraying across your mouth, nose and eyes; well then, brother, you will know that you are well and truly screwed. Because within 24 hours you will feel a tickle in your nostril and shortly thereafter the sneezing and waterworks will begin.
In order to prevent all of the above, I have resorted to using a saline nasal rinse once a day, taking pro-biotics daily and chewing Vitamin C tablets twice a day.
Lucky me, I am going to get a real-time test of how all this proactive prevention works, because this morning Typhoid Mary came down with her first head cold. As I look at her now, she has snot running down her nose and she is sneezing non-stop. I am wearing one of those white masks you see on the denizens of Tokyo when the smog gets really bad. I wash my hands frantically after being near her.
Now, do you think any of this is going to actually work? Am I going to get out of the next four days of child care scot-free? Or should I say, germ free? Could all my ministrations possibly protect me from this germ laden little factory of snot? Do I like my odds?
Nah.

VENUS & MARS

We were making a spectacle of ourselves at a table outside of Starbuck’s; Kebu, the toddler and I. Cheerios and dog treats dotted the pavement. Vivienne repeatedly threw her bottle to the ground with a look that said, “I like the sound of hard plastic hitting cement and then echoing all through the square and disturbing one and all and I defy you to stop me.” I retrieved it a few times then tired of the game; which only made her unleash the dreaded Banshee screech from hell.
I can assure you it was quite a show.
Well-dressed women coming for their daily brew hauled small dogs on the end of ornate leashes. Invariably these toy dogs displayed ‘small dog complex’ and went into a virtual barking frenzy at sight of Kebu. Our regal Akita would sniff the air in their general direction and then turn her head and ignore them. Strangers stopped by to admire the baby or the dog and each would perform their requisite tricks; shaking hands for Kebu and smiling and waving for the baby girl. It was a real three ring circus.
My good friend Bill arrived and from fifteen feet away I could tell he had on new shoes; bright white and gold sneakers that reminded me of the Puma track shoes I wore while running the ½ mile in high school. These shoes would have stood out anywhere, but especially on my buddy. Bill, like me, is an ex business executive, and, again like me, thinks the height of sartorial splendor is a crisply pressed – lots of starch, please -- long sleeved button down shirt matched with khakis whose crease could cut paper, all bottomed out by sensible dark hued shoes. In other words he worked for IBM his entire career and he still dresses as if he were going out to make a sales call on a customer.
I think he looks first-class.
When he had got his coffee, said hi to Viv and given Kebu a treat, I said to him, “Those are some nice shoes. Where did you get them?”
He looked at me with a hangdog expression while a shudder passed through his lanky frame and said, “My wife took me clothes shopping.”
“You poor man.”
“Brother, you don’t know the half of it. I was minding my own business, watching the Auburn – Alabama game…”
“Best game of the year,” I interjected.
“Don’t I know it,” he agreed. “And the next thing I knew, Tess walked into the room and announced she was taking me shopping for some new duds.” At this he stopped and shook his head with a slightly dazed expression, the way a person will when they have seen a really ugly traffic accident.
“And shortly after that,” he continued. “I was driving us to the mall. And shortly after that I was wearing these new shoes.” And he looked down at his snazzy shoes as if their presence in his life still surprised and offended him.
Personally, I liked the shoes, but I could see how they were hauling some heavy baggage for Bill. I mean, on the one hand, he had football, which most men love to watch endlessly, and on the other hand, he had shopping for clothes, which most men find excruciating.
Later that day I was thinking of Bill and I was reminded of the tired old maxim: women are from Venus and men are from Mars. And there is just enough truth to this venerable trope to lend it merit today. And I can think of no better example than my wife’s attitude toward shopping as opposed to mine.
Succinctly; she loves it, and I hate it.
I should first make some disclaimers; my wife is not a shopaholic, nor am I a total slob. I think we are probably fairly representative of your average couple. We hold similar views on many important subjects but when it comes to shopping we could not be more dissimilar.
It is not rare for my wife Rochelle to go shopping for an entire day and come home with a pile of clothes that she then hangs in her closet. Make note; she is careful not to remove the tags from the clothing. Over the course of the next year she will occasionally dip into this cache of clothes, try an outfit on and then decide to wear it. Only then does she remove the clothing tag. If at the end of a year she has not worn an outfit she takes it back to the store for a full refund.
She promises me that this not unusual behavior for a woman.
Now contrast this with my history of shopping. In October 2004 Rochelle and I were in New York City, visiting with our fashionable friend Bruce who ran his eyes up and down my clothing (yes, khakis, button shirt, etc) and said; “Jeff, really?”
I expressed with some incredulity that I was dressed quite spiffy. My wife laughed in the background. This didn’t help my cause any.
“No, you are not well dressed,” Bruce told me. “We’re going down to Soho to get you some clothes.”
“Yahoo!” Rochelle the traitor enthused. “I can never get him to go shopping.”
“Girlfriend,” Bruce said to Rochelle, “we are gonna dress Grampa up!”
So I spent that afternoon being hauled around Soho by the two conspirators. I got the full ensemble, Polo Jeans that cost me $70 (I had never paid more the $15 dollars for Jeans), stylish shirts – sans button down collars – handsome belts and even shoes. I spent more money for clothing that one afternoon than I had paid in the previous two decades. And though I thought it a horrible scandal to pay the exorbitant prices, I went along good naturedly because the two of them were having so much fun playing dress up with a live mannequin.
If you didn’t mind constantly stepping into undersized changing rooms and contorting your body to fit into ever-tighter jeans and shirts, it was even kind of fun. I got into the spirit of the thing and for an ephemeral instant experienced the joy that shopping must bring to untold women. Then I got grumpy again.
And here is the absolute truth; I haven’t been clothes shopping in the six years since.
In fact, as I write this I am wearing a pair of jeans that I bought that afternoon. It would horrify Bruce to know that I am still wearing clothes I bought over 6 years ago, but they still fit, and they are still the most stylish clothes I own.
Here is another fact; I frequently wear a Pendleton shirt that my mother gave me on Christmas Day in 1970. It fits me to this day, and doesn’t have but one hole in it.
I doubt any women are wearing clothes from that time period, unless to a 70’s retro party on Halloween.
When my jeans wear out I will buy replacements, I promise you. And I will most likely be wearing the stylish shirts from NYC to parties for at least another decade or two. Bruce has great taste in clothes and they are by far the most fashionable clothing I possess.
To net it out – men are best at watching football and women are best at shopping.
Each sex should stick to what it does best.
And then guys like my unfortunate friend Bill won’t end up wearing shoes that remind people of a 1970’s high school track meet.

OUR TODDLER – A.K.A. FRANKENSTIEN’S MONSTER
At our daughter’s one year check up our pediatrician observed her shambling gait across the examining room floor and pronounced judgment: “Yes, she has the Frankenstein walk down to perfection. Perfectly normal.”
And as I studied Vivienne later that same day at our home, I had to agree. For though she is but 25 lbs and barely reaches my knee, she is our own tiny imitation of Dr. Frankenstein’s fabled monster; lurching in a stiff legged gait, arms outstretched as she pursues her innocent victim – in this case our long-suffering Akita, Kebu – from pillar to post.
I tell you, it is the reign of terror in our home; unearthly screeches shatter our peace as our daughter Vivienne hunts down her prey. And when she catches the dog she sinks her pudgy-fingered fists deep into the thick ruff of Kebu’s chest and then lets all her weight fall to the ground; imagine a lion on the African Savannah bringing down a water buffalo four times her size and you’ve got the picture.
While her parents frantically plead with her to; “Pet the down gently, Vivienne,” she pays no mind but, shrieking with joy, plunges her face into the fur an inch from the dog’s ear. My wife gets down on her knees and demonstrates to our daughter how to gently stroke the dog. In a twisted parody my ham-handed daughter then proceeds to clobber the dog with both fists.
All the while I am maintaining eye contact with Kebu and speaking to her in a soothing voice. “Good Kebu, good Kebu,” I say. “What a good dog you are.”
You’d think this commotion was stressful enough, but then, you don’t live with Vivienne Esperanza Finn; for my lovely daughter subsequently developed an unhealthy fascination with Kebu’s bung hole. Like a heat seeking missile Vivienne will enter our great room, search out the dog and follow around behind her, arm outstretched towards the Akita’s nether regions. And when the dog stops moving, my daughter plunges her fist into the thick fur surrounding Kebu’s butt while squealing with delight. The dog leaps as if touched with a live wire (wouldn’t’ you?) while I hurry over to hustle the tiny fiend away.
Then the dog gives me her most aggrieved expression, which says; “Why am I singled out for this indignity? We had a good thing going here before you brought the succubus into our home. And you, Pack Leader, how can you let this misconduct continue? I know my place in the pack, why can’t this revolting little creature know its place?”
And since I really don’t have an answer for Kebu I feel vaguely guilty. I trained her to be the perfect Social Therapy Dog; gentle, calm and obedient. And thank God that I did, because now her good nature is being put to the test.
When Vivienne is not busy trying to embed her hand in Kebu’s rectum her next favorite pastime is stealing Kebu’s toys. Any plaything Kebu takes an interest in, well, that is just the thing that Vivienne suddenly decides she must have; and so she promptly rushes over on her fat little legs and snatches the toy from the dog’s mouth.
And then shoves it in her own mouth.
Our daughter has also discovered a fevered fascination with any food that has come into contact with Kebu’s mouth. I have to feed treats to the dog in private, because if Vivienne is present she will immediately grab the food right out of the dog’s mouth and, you guessed it, thrust it promptly into her own mouth. When an adult asks her to give it back to Kebu, she proceeds to first plunge it into the dog’s mouth, then back into her own, back and forth, back and forth; sort of like Indian Giving, only with sharp teeth to add the element of imminent danger to the proceedings.
Watching this travesty, I think; if I were a dog that would probably infuriate me. And once again I thank my lucky stars for this somewhat aloof and essentially cautious dog; for never once has she snapped, growled or barked at the diminutive monster tormenting her.
And then I take a moment to thank the Japanese Samurai centuries past who first domesticated this breed and taught it to guard the home and children. However they did it, they inculcated a tolerance in this breed that nearly defies comprehension.
My reverie is interrupted by a clatter from the kitchen and I turn to see the dog gazing with mute forbearance at my daughter, who is down on all fours and has her face buried in the dog’s food dish; where snuffling sounds indicate that, yes indeed, she is eating the dog’s food.
Who could ask for more?

SENSORY DEFENSIVE MALE

After we had been living together a while, my wife said to me one day, “You are sensory defensive.”
Because she is a health professional she can get away with using big words like this. But I put her in her place by saying; “More sex will cure that.”
“Hm, that seems to be your answer to everything.”
Well, as they say, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
But yes, I am sensory defensive, which means sharp noise, clutter, bright lights, they all set me off. If we start off on a trip somewhere and there is the faintest noise in the car I will pull over and find the noise and silence it. I like to walk into a room where everything is neat and shipshape, and if my house is messy I have to clean it; and not later, but right now. And just to complete the trifecta, bright glare from a windshield can bring on a migraine.
And, frankly, outside of sex, I’m not so crazy about touching.
So you can imagine what having a 14 month old toddler is doing for a man like me. Our house has become clutter central. And now that Vivienne has ‘found her voice’ (the wife’s words) and begun screeching like a flight of Banshees let loose from the gates of hell to inflict a pernicious din on the unsuspecting, I am seriously considering using my Black & Decker adjustable speed drill to drive wood screws into my forehead.
Which is all a long way of saying that I lost my mind last weekend.
It wasn’t pretty, but then, it has been my experience that my life rarely is. However, I do have some tools I use when my hardwiring shorts out and the bad tapes start to play in my head. And so the first thing I did upon losing my mind on Saturday was to call my friend Louis; mainly because I needed someone well-adjusted to speak with.
I know Louis is more balanced than I am because he; listens to public radio, flosses his teeth, practices yoga and meditation on a daily basis, is unfailingly kind and considerate to others, has street smarts from being raised in Queens, can parallel park a car better than any man alive, successfully runs his own business, and eats no processed sugar. Oh, and he is a graceful dancer too.
If he weren’t such a nice guy he would be insufferable.
Still, I called him anyway, and then lay on the couch in a dark room with the cell phone pressed to my ear. It was sort of like a psychiatric visit, only over the phone and without the hope that any real progress would ever be achieved.
The essence of our conversation was that we stumbled upon the disturbing truth that in our century plus of cumulative living, neither of us had as yet attained an understanding of women.
At first we found it unfathomable that two smart guys like ourselves could have gone this long without a clue about women. But the more we talked it, the more we realized that we were probably not likely to get a clue any time soon either.
Lying on the couch in the dark talking to Louis and realizing that I wasn’t the only one without a clue about a subject some might consider vital, well, that made me feel a lot better. So much better, in fact, that I decided to call another male in the hope that my recovery would gather speed. And the lucky recipient of my call was my younger brother Matt in Atlanta, and I talked to him about football for so long that my cell phone battery died.
You would think that it would take a lot of talking to kill a cell phone battery. And you would be right. Still, I wasn’t done talking, and so I called my brother back on the land line and we spoke football some more.
And here is a remarkable fact; after the first 5 minutes of our conversation, neither of us offered a fresh insight or original slant on football over the next 2 hours of talking time. We just kept repeating the same pithy observations over and over, first me and then him. But it did not bore us, or at least not me; I found it strangely comforting.
After we had beat the dead horse of football to death he talked about his job for a while and then happened to mention that his BMW was on the fritz and he was looking into a new car, and so we exchanged sage advice on cars for another half hour with, again, neither of us offering a fresh view after the first couple of minutes.
Now this is a crucial difference between men and women; when women talk on the phone for hours on end they talk about three things; their feelings, their relationships, and their feelings about their relationships.
Feelings and relationships did not come up in my conversation with my brother. Unsurprisingly, this omission did not bother either of us. We are guys, and guys talk about sports, work, and machines, and sometimes, if we are really desperate, action movies and rock and roll bands. So you can see, we had touched nearly all the bases, so to speak, in our dialogue.
When I awoke on Sunday I was sane until the Banshee began to sing and the sound bounced off the walls and dug into my brain through the right ear I damaged back in 1973 at a Black Sabbath concert by sitting too near the stage while totally stoned on Panama Red.
And then I lost my mind again. And it stayed lost all day until my son called me from New Zealand where he and his wife are traveling for a year and we talked about…….you guessed it……….sports. And since my son is a pretty high brow fellow we followed the mandatory sports dialogue with a thorough exploration of Bruce Springsteen’s music and the best zombie movies of all time.
Again I felt better until Monday morning whence the Banshee sang her hideous song. Luckily I was going to lunch with my buddy Mike and when I described being sensory defensiveness to him, and how I even had to pull the car over to detect and silence any stray noise, he just nodded his head and said he was exactly the same way.
Mike has a thoughtful, reasonable mien, as befits a man who teaches Political Science to college students. He said he lived his life in fear of being proved dissolute.
I just loved that. It felt just right to me, the perpetual perfectionist.
So once again I felt better, having demonstrated the old chestnut that misery loves company. And I stayed feeling better right through swimming 2500 meters at my gym and donating blood down at the Redwood Blood Bank—a place where I am welcome even when disturbed because, let’s face it, they are desperate for my blood -- and coming home where the Banshee still sang here hellish song and, to my surprise, it did not bother me.
On Tuesday I reached out to my old friend Bill and he reminded me that before adopting Vivienne I had told him that my job was to write the checks and provide a safe and stable environment for my family. I needed to be reminded of this. He said my duty was to provide the setting in which the chaos of childhood could occur; as it is predestined to do. And he suggested that within this space I carve out my own room – a ‘man cave’ he called it – to retreat to when it all got a bit much for me. Again, sound advice.
So you can see that it helps to have friends who are not loony.
On Wednesday I went to see my therapist, because, let’s be honest, a guy like me needs all the help he can get. When I described losing my mind, my therapist didn’t seem particularly surprised or alarmed. Either this is because he has seen it all before, or he just figures Jeff is going to lose his mind and there is no sense in getting all worked up about it.
I’d prefer to think the former.
And when I described my efforts to regain my mind he nodded approvingly and said, “A guy like you, you probably need a lot of friends.”
Now, what do you think he meant by that?

DON’T HIT THE DOG

Eighteen months prior to our adopting our daughter Vivienne – while we were still in the ‘discussion’ phase (which really means while I was still trying to push off the inevitable) – my wife Rochelle said to me, “We should get a dog.”
And I, the ever-reasonable spouse, replied; “Honey, that is one great idea,” thinking, and hoping, that we would never follow through. Because, you see, I have had dogs, and I know just what ‘getting a dog’ means. It means training a puppy in the vague and misaligned belief that it won’t turn into ‘the dog that ate all our shoes and furniture.’
“Good,” the wife continued in a tone that gave me a sinking feeling. “Because there is a breeder in Sacramento with a litter of Akita puppies that turn 8 weeks old today.”
“That’s swell, babe, but what does that have to do with me?”
“Grab your car keys,” she told me, and fifteen minutes later we were in the Highlander on our way to Sacramento.
“Why an Akita?” I asked as we drove along.
“When I was thirteen we had a female Akita, Sadie, and it was the best dog we ever owned.”
I’d seen Akitas; big, furry, ferocious looking dogs with pointy ears, short snouts and a fluffy curly tail. I knew nothing about the breed, but this ignorance was not going to last for long.
“We are going to get a female Akita from this breeder tonight – I have been looking on the Internet for the past month – and I want you to train the dog so that it can be certified as a Social Therapy Dog and visit patients at my hospital and in rest homes. It’ll be good therapy for you too,” she informed me.
Anyone who has ever been married can see what has transpired here; I had been had.
With an ever sinking feeling, I asked, “And do you have a name for this dog?”
“Kebu,” she said. “It means hope in Japanese. And frankly, you can use a little hope in your life.”
My wife is on a quest to fix me, but she has been sadly misinformed that this is even remotely possible. I am beyond repair, I know, and raising a dog was liable to do further harm to my already scarred hard wiring rather than somehow miraculously ‘cure’ me. But, I have been married a while and I wanted to stay married a while longer, and so I kept my big yap shut.
At the breeders I asked Miss Know It All how we should proceed in picking out a puppy, since there were six females. “I looked it up on the Internet,” she said (big surprise!). “We don’t want a puppy that just lies in the corner and doesn’t connect with us, nor do we want one that keeps begging for attention. Right in between is what we want; not too needy, but not retarded either.”
“Sort of like me,” I said.
“Exactly.”
We found two female puppies that fit her specifications and she clearly could not decide on which of the two to take. They looked nearly identical, grey and brown fur, a black mask on the face and ears and white stockings reaching to mid leg. Strikingly beautiful dogs.
I played with both dogs, weighed them in each hand, and then said to the breeder,”We’ll take this one,” indicating the puppy in my right hand.
“How do you know which one to pick?” my wife asked me.
“Easy,” I said. “I’m a guy; they pay me to make the big decisions.”
“I could never have picked one, they were both so cute.”
“Cuteness is overrated,” I told her. “I opted for the one that weighed the most.”
She looked at me like she would never understand me. But that’s okay, I don't understand myself either. But I made the tough decision and we drove home with a 13 lbs bundle of fur that got sick in the car outside of Vacaville and pooped on our carpet upon entering the house.
“So,” the wife said to me later that night as we lay on our big bed with the dog between us, “what do you know about training dogs?”
“I’ve trained tons of dogs,” I lied. I mean, seriously, I’m a guy, how hard can it be for a guy to train a dog? It’s a no-brainer. I’d read ‘Call of the Wild’ and ‘Whitefang’, by Jack London. Once you’d read those two books you knew all you ever needed to know about training any animal, and it boiled down to this; Listen, Dog, I am human, I am superior and you will obey or else.
I expressed sentiments more or less along these lines to my wife and she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment while I got that old sinking feeling again, and then she pulled two books from her bedside table; one book was titled simply “Akitas” and the other was titled “Dog Training for Idiots”. Oh, and it had a DVD on the inside front cover, you know, just in case you were too big an idiot to read.
Hmmmm, wonder who these could be for?
Because I am a guy and I know everything, I tossed the books towards the foot of the bed and said, “I don’t need these, I know how to train a dog.’
The wife handed the books back to me and said, “Believe me, you need these.”
So the next morning, in an effort to keep peace in our house, I started to read the books. And I am here to tell you it was a damn good thing I did because I quickly realized I knew nothing about training dogs. In fact, my fuzzy theories about dog training were not only dead wrong, they were positively destructive to any hope of ever rearing an obedient and calm dog.
In short, what I learned from the book was this; Don’t Hit the Dog!!
The book said that if your dog was disobeying you and you started getting angry and frustrated you should find the morning paper and grab two thick sections, like the front page news and the sporting news, and then you should roll them tightly into a very hard baton-like shape and then you should hit yourself in the head with this now wooden like object just as hard as you could. And keep hitting yourself in the head until it got through to your thick head that the dog was not the problem; the trainer is always the problem.
This was stunning news to me. Imagine, accountability for my own gaffes and mistakes. Positively earth shattering stuff, I tell you.
And from the Akita book I learned the following; this mountain breed was one of the last dogs domesticated and so is very much still a pack animal, hence, they are most comfortable when they have no doubt about their standing in the pack. And, most importantly, she wants to know who the leader of the pack is. And after reading what comes next, you will probably agree that the leader had better be me. To wit; Akitas were bred to do three things in Japan; hunt bears, accompany their Samurai masters into battle (they have dog-sized armor in museums in Japan), and guard the home.
In short, though Kebu looked like a little furry powder puff now, when she reached maturity she would be 90 plus lbs of solid muscle with an instinct to hunt and defend. And, the book further informed me, if the master did not properly train the dog as a puppy, well, forget about doing in later, because once Akitas reached 2 years old they were likely to become territorial and aggressive unless broken early.
Oh, and one final tidbit; the average Akita is typically somewhat aloof and probably smarter than her master. No probably about it in my case, I thought, more like definitely, and I began to get a resentment towards my wife for tricking me into agreeing to train a dog that had a higher IQ, better blood lines, and superior moral fiber than myself.
So I did the smart thing; I promptly got the morning’s SF Chronicle and wound up the front page until it was hard as a rock, and then I began to beat myself in the head with it. And, surprise, surprise, after five minutes or so I began to feel better.
And everything the books said was true!
I spent countless hours training Kebu and she became a Sonoma County Certified Social Therapy Dog that I take to old folks homes where blue haired ladies hug her and reminisce teary-eyed about big, furry dogs they once owned before their ungrateful children packed them off to the rest home.
Kebu will politely shake your hand. I can put a dog treat on her paw and then leave the room and she won’t eat the treat until I come back into the room and give her permission. I put a dog treat between my lips and ask her for a kiss and she removes it gently from my mouth. And she will nibble a treat softly from my hand, never snapping at or even touching my skin.
I tell ya, the blue haired ladies eat this stuff up!
I walk Kebu off leash through our rural neighborhood -- awash in squirrels, deer, and cats -- and she will stay right by my side even though her every instinct is urging her to run off and chase down some prey and shake it violently until it dies.
And through all of our training every time I have had the urge to hit Kebu because of some perceived malfeasance on her part I have instead rolled up the Chronicle and beaten myself about the head and shoulders in a vigorous and resolute manner.
And, I gotta tell ya, it makes me feel a lot better.
And so that is the long and short of how my sneaky wife hoodwinked me into acquiring, feeding and training a type of dog I had never even heard of, and taking said dog to rest homes where I actually do a good deed – which, as you well know by now, goes wholly against my nature.
And as I run through the hills with Kebu on a long red leash attached to my arm, or watch her asleep on her dog bed by the door into our bedroom, curled in a big grey ball, or sense her endlessly patrolling the interior of our house, looking out of our picture windows and smelling for intruders, or watch Vivienne grab a fistful of dog fur while shrieking in fiendish glee and Kebu merely looking slightly aggrieved, I ask myself; where would I be without this dog?
And I can answer truthfully; I would be a lesser person.
It’s almost enough to make a guy want to beat himself briskly on the head with some tightly rolled newsprint.

HARDNOSED GRATITUDE

Because I am a ‘glass half empty’ kind of guy I have always been vaguely suspicious of those who expound on the whole ‘attitude of gratitude’ outlook on life. Still, I am going to attempt to write about gratitude without getting too platitudinous and sappy; I’ll just try to say what is true for me.
I am really grateful for my wife. I am basically an insecure, self-centered and mordant man. And yet my wife Rochelle has stuck with me through the fun and the sorrow, probably because she appreciates my levelheaded pragmatism and sarcastic sense of humor. If she ever stops laughing at my caustic observations on the unending folly of man I am in deep trouble.
I am enormously grateful for my kids. I have a step son, two biological children and an adopted 14 month old who are all turning out to be better people than I had any reason to hope for. Their mothers are primarily responsible for their characters. I have mostly served as the example of ‘how not to do it’. I am proud of my grown kids; they are all functioning, useful members of society. And even though I have let each of them down in some abysmal way along their journey, they have all had the grace to forgive me.
I am grateful for my three siblings. For too long I competed with my older brother and this soured our relationship, not because of any actions on his part, but because I was just too busy comparing myself with him. When I was finally able to let go of all that injurious self assessment, we started to build a real relationship. My sister called me this morning to wish me a happy Thanksgiving and it made me feel good to talk to her. Even though we have had our disagreements throughout the decades we both have been there for the other when the times were toughest. She is one of the most spiritually developed people I know and I don’t mean this in any highfalutin sense, but rather I mean that she is a person who moves through her life in a spiritual manner and is aware of the essence of this life in real time. To achieve this on a daily basis, as she has, is remarkable. I shared a bedroom with my younger brother for a decade and besides the fact that this was probably not a good thing for him, it also made us very similar. He and I face many of the same internal demons. Lately he has been calling me regularly because I have been going through a difficult time and he knows I need to talk to him; probably because he is a better version of myself.
My parents are both in rest homes and as their lives wind down they are, quite frankly, losing their minds. I find it exceedingly difficult to think about them, much less write about them. My feelings about them have been conflicted from my childhood and that has not changed. I am grateful for the qualities they gave me; pragmatism, financial austerity, humor (of the sarcastic bent), a competitive nature, and an abiding inability to procrastinate.
I have found that guys mostly make their friends through work and since I don’t work anymore, a lot of my friendships have fallen by the wayside. However, even though I do not have a lot of friends, the ones I do have I can talk to about any subject and feel they do not judge me, nor I them.
I could go on and on about all the wonderful things that make up this life – Yosemite, swimming, food, art – but then I’d get all pious and touchy feely and I promised to avoid that. So I’ll just keep this missive to the people I am grateful for, with one exception, which anyone who owns a pet will understand; I am grateful for my dog, Kebu the Akita. She never quits on me when we go on our long runs through the hills of Santa Rosa.
And on those days when I am home alone with her and the baby and my depression is squeezing my brain in a sharp edged plastic vise, I’ll lay beside her on the bed. I bury my face in the thick fur around her neck and then rub my aggrieved forehead on the hard skull between her ears while deep in her throat she growls in primal acknowledgement.
And I am soothed.

MORTIFICATION

I don’t think I ever truly understood the word mortification until we took our daughter Vivienne, 12 months old at the time, out to a supposedly relaxed and friendly dinner with some friends.
We had fed her while we ate, and kept her happy and relatively quiet by giving her bits of French bread as the meal went on.
And then suddenly it all went to hell.
There was a repellent retching sound – imagine a large dog gagging on a jagged piece of bone and you have the proximate decibel level and sound quality – and every diner in the restaurant swung about as one, their heads pivoting to view the spectacle unfolding at our table. Our genteel daughter Vivienne had shoved her right hand down her throat and was in the process of gagging herself. In fact, the arm was invisible right up to the elbow; meanwhile her face turning tomato red and tears brimming from her eyes. All the while accompanied by the aforementioned choking sound.
My daughter had been doing this to herself, usually when bored, and usually at the dinner table, for about 2 months. When we told our pediatrician about this behavior he waved it off as if swatting a slight nuisance, saying only that she was ‘exploring her body.’
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think about ‘exploring my body’, something a little more enjoyable than self induced choking comes to mind.
We were usually able to get her hand out of her mouth before she got the full fist all way down the throat. But you had to be alert and you had to be quick. Alas, while dining with our friends and enjoying good food and conversation we were neither alert nor quick.
So as sixty diners gawked at our lovely daughter, they got the Full Monty, so to speak. The beet red face, the tear filled eyes, and a sound straight from the gates of hell. And just to top it all off, to make their dining experience a truly unforgettable affair, everything that Vivienne had eaten in the past 3 hours then flowed out of her mouth, around her fat little arm and down the front of her, spilling over the booster chair onto the restaurant floor.
And in the embarrassed stillness that followed, while our friends stared at our previously darling daughter with looks of stupefied disgust, and my appalled wife leapt to attend our daughter as I looked for a hole to crawl into; it was then that I came to fully comprehend the meaning of the word mortification. For indeed, I was well and truly mortified.

WWTHD
I am not a hotbed of good mental health.
And while genetics has a lot to do with this, I believe culture is at least partly responsible. You know; the old nature versus nurture debate.
When I was roughly ten years old a bombshell exploded in my life; Sean Connery as James Bond. I was immature, impressionable and exceedingly naïve (and yes, I haven’t changed much since) when the first Bond movie, DR. NO, premiered. And basically that was it for me. From that point forward I patterned my self image after Sean Connery/James Bond. A mental template formed in my mind and it was this: a real man smoked cigarettes, drank hard liquor, looked tough and seduced big-breasted women.
Believe me; I am not advocating this as a positive or realistic role model.
For the next three decades this was the operating manual for my psyche. Now, I’m not going to go into a lot of exploration about how well this model did or did not work for me, but by my forties, it had stopped working entirely.
Smoking? In our society, are you kidding me?
Drinking? Let’s not go there.
Seducing women? Uh, not if you want to have any meaningful relationship with a real, live adult woman.
Looking tough? Yeah, all it got me was a permanent crease in my forehead and crows feet around my eyes.
And so I had to find a new role model. And through no fault of my own I stumbled upon an icon who fit my new reality; Tom Hanks. Specifically Tom Hanks as Capt. Miller in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and as Capt. Jim Lovell in APOLLO 13.
Tom Hanks never plays a sociopathic, violent, chain-smoking, alcohol swilling womanizer, so this was a plus for me from the get go. Usually he is an everyman, a role model for my constantly evolving fantasy life that I could easily picture myself – well, my better self – as.
In the former movie Tom is part of the D Day invasion who then takes his small squad of squabbling diverse Americana on a dangerous mission – namely, to save Matt Damon. And I think we can all agree that saving Matt Damon is a good thing. Tom goes about this difficult task with a level-headed reasonableness that is truly heroic. His men fight among themselves – they are Americans after all – and encounter nasty Germans and snipers and what all, but through Tom’s unfailingly stoic and noble example they soldier on until they finally save Matt Damon while stopping the German army from taking the most important bridgehead in the entire history of World War II. Yeah, sure, Tom dies in the end, but this is war after all.
But that’s nothing compared to Tom’s pure-American can-do-itness and composure he shows while on the space ship Apollo 13. This NASA trip is essentially the mother of all clusterfucks. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And not only that, but Tom has to deal with a whiny Tom Paxton, who is slowly dying of pleurisy and an inept Kevin Bacon, who has totally honked up their re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. But Tom doesn’t panic, he just stays even-keeled and likeable and leaderly and saves the lives of all while guiding this totally FUBAR mission back to planet earth.
And here is the other thing about Tom Hanks. Unlike Sean Connery, Tom is not an imposing physical specimen. I mean, I’m probably even taller and brawnier than Tom. No, he is your basic average Joe who rises above daunting situations not by force, but by relying on his innate decency and good old American know-how.
At this point you are probably asking yourself; “Okay Jeff, we get how an insecure, immature guy like you inappropriately morphed himself into some quasi-James Bond and subsequently trod the road of wrack and ruin, but how would modeling Tom Hanks ever work in your real life?”
I’m glad you asked, because I have a perfect example.
In this beautiful Indian summer we are experiencing I had the bright idea of taking my year old toddler, Vivienne, and our dog, the inimitable Kebu, to the beach.
This seemed like a good idea at the time.
So I trundled them all into the Highlander, drove out to the coast through our magnificent Sonoma county landscape; rolling fields of green, sheep grazing bucolically, high arching Redwoods, the whole beautiful Northern California scene. It was positively idyllic.
Until we actually arrived at the beach and had the full beach-baby experience. And then my daughter proceeded to eat sand, sea weed, dog poop, and any other unnamable matter she could lay her hands on; including a dead, rotting seal.
I was screeching, “No, no, oh God, no!” like a demented Banshee as she proceeded to sample one toxic substance after another.
It was pure hell.
But at least the dog had a good time; chasing seagulls, wading in the surf and romping with other dogs.
After an interminable time of, oh, say, 2 hours, I had had enough; bundled the kid up, leashed the dog and got back in the car for the drive home. I was never so exhausted in my life – you really can’t believe how much energy you expend chasing a toddler through hot sand while constantly lunging to intercept forbidden articles from entering her mouth.
Once home I changed her poopy diaper, bathed her and then hopped in the shower myself while I let her crawl around our bedroom in a fresh diaper. I could hear her babbling happily as I dried off post-shower and I made the mistake of thinking to myself; “See, self, that wasn’t so bad. Yeah, it was tough at the beach, but here you are now and all is well; the baby’s singing in her Chinese Opera voice, the dog is lying majestically upon our bed, safe from the terrors of the toddler, and you are showered, refreshed and a really competent dad.”
And with that self satisfied mood I existed the bathroom and stood transfixed, naked, and absolutely mortified to find that my sweet daughter had yanked off her diaper, had a bout of truly copious diarrhea – no doubt caused by all the noxious elements she had consumed at the shore – and now was sitting happily amid the reeking mess and gleefully eating her own excrement.
And upon sight of her dear old dad she extended her foul hand towards me and with a beaming brown smile squealed in evil merriment, as if to say; “Here, Dad, you should really try some of this, it is super good!”
At this point two thoughts simultaneously entered my mind. Thought one; it is probably not a good thing for a child to eat fecal matter. Thought two; if my wife comes home from work to see this scene, I will be subjected to my third divorce.
This is what writers frequently call a ‘sobering moment’.
And that is when I thought; What Would Tom Hanks Do (WWTHD)?
Clearly, the Sean Connery/James Bond model was not going to help me at all in my current circumstances. But Tom had faced a lot worse in outer space; at least I didn’t have an incompetent Kevin Bacon to coach through re-entry. I just had to get my shit be-smeared baby and her ungodly mess cleaned up before the wife got home.
I glanced at the clock; I had one hour before my space capsule entered the atmosphere and I burned to a cinder. I could do this, I just had stay level headed, not lose my cool, just think like tom Hanks/Jim Lovell and deal with the situation, as awful as it was.
I didn’t yell at the baby; Tom Hanks never yells at babies. I calmly picked her up, while cooing at her in a phony happy voice, deposited her in the tub and hosed her down. Once I had her cleaned up, I dressed her and placed her out of harm’s way in her playpen.
I now had 45 minutes before re-entry and certain death.
Still naked, I hustled down to the kitchen and from under the sink grabbed every solution and implement that might assist the cleanup effort in the bedroom. I stood pondering a not inconsiderable brown stain while the Akita looked on from our bed with an expression of disdain.
“You’re not being a lot of help,” I told the dog.
Then I set to work, spraying rug cleaner on the offending stain, scrubbing and sweating, working like a Trojan. I didn’t panic, but worked methodically; a naked man in his mid 50’s, on his hands and knees, cleaning crap from his cream-colored carpet and trying to maintain a Tom Hanks-like sense of Wah.
With 5 minutes to spare I arose, dressed, deposited the horribly stained cleaning cloths at the bottom of our trash barrel, replaced all the cleaners under the sink and surveyed what I had wrought. There was a stain, yes, but I could deal with that.
Knowing my ever-observant wife would note the stain; I looked at the dog and said, “Bad Kebu.”
The wife entered our happy abode to find me calmly doing a crossword puzzle on the couch, the baby sucking happily on a bottle at my feet and all seemingly placid. When she asked about our day I answered we had enjoyed a swell day at the beach, basking in the great weather; not a word about our child eating dead seals.
She came back down the stairs after changing out of her work clothes and said, “There’s a brown stain on our carpet.”
In my most measured, Tom Hanks voice, I answered; “Yeah, Kebu must have drank a little too much salt water at the beach and she had a little diarrhea while Viv and I were in the shower.”
My entire manner said it was no big thing; I had dealt with it calmly and efficiently. Just another minor obstacle in the day of the Dirty Diaper Dad, aka Tom Hanks.
“Oh, poor Kebu,” said the wife. “I hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I put her out on the deck just to be safe, but she hasn’t been sick since then.”
And I nodded sagely, like the super-competent and level headed Tom Hanks dad that I am, and went back to my crossword puzzle while my wife got down on the floor to play with our excrement-eating child.
Houston, I thought, we have a successful re-entry.

NEW TOOLS

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
This post will be about honesty, so if that disturbs you, read no further.
I stand in abject awe of those who have a faith that stands them through good times and bad, year in and year out. I am one of four siblings and my two brothers and sister have a faith I can only yearn for.
But I am the lost sheep, the seeker; destined to search for, but never find the one answer that will see me through my tumultuous journey.
I had 12 years of Catholicism and it didn’t take. I memorized the Tao Te Ching and recited it daily for 6 years until it too lost its power to inspire. I have undergone Jungian analysis, hypnotherapy, a 12 step program, and even found brief enlightenment in the teachings of his Holiness the Dalai Lama. None of these efforts provided the permanent answer to my quest for illumination.
I have two good habits; daily exercise and healthy eating. But I also have size 12 feet of clay; an enduring melancholia coupled with serial recidivism.
In short, I am deeply flawed, and so, it should not surprise you to learn that from time to time I avail myself of psychological counseling. Last month I went to see my counselor, David, and told him I needed some new tools to deal with the stress of being a house husband at 57. I was having trouble finding purpose in my daily tasks of changing diapers, doing the dishes, making dinner, feeding our toddler, and the other sundry tasks that filled my day. I was out of sorts and feeling like a failure when the inevitable frustration of the manifold tasks mounted up on me.
And he helped me; with new tools that allowed me to step back from whatever I was involved in at the moment; exercises enabling me to observe and really focus on the task at hand without getting caught up in the litany of negative tapes that play in my head.
And most importantly he got me to believe that my purpose was not some grandiose illusory creation of my bad brain, but rather, whatever was my current simple task at hand; whether doing the shopping or changing a diaper.
I left his office feeling calmed and hopeful. Then I went home and took over for my wife as she went off to work. And I set about making dinner with my toddler, Vivienne, creating havoc in the kitchen as I worked. As I cooked she spread all her toys around the kitchen, creating an obstacle course that I had to navigate as I went from sink to refrigerator to butcher block. And she hung on my legs, clutching my jeans in her fat fists, her head between my knees, singing what sounded like Chinese opera in her keening voice as I shuffled about.
And then our dog Kebu, enticed by the smell of fresh meat, ambled out to the kitchen and I tossed her a treat and my daughter promptly took it from the dog and put it in her own mouth, and then back in the dog’s mouth, back and forth; playing your basic bait and switch. And I watched my well-trained dog exhibit super-human patience with this teasing, never snapping but gently taking her deserved treat when Vivienne finally tired of the game and let it go.
And everything was just as it was meant to be; the chaotic toddler, the regal Akita, and the Dad fixing dinner. I wasn’t an unemployed loser without a purposes; I was just a guy making dinner for his kid and his wife while my obedient dog lay in her assigned spot and hoped for the occasional treat thrown her way.
I just stayed in the moment, not frustrated, singing along with my daughter’s nonsense prattling, preparing dinner and observing myself and the chaos surrounding me, and being okay with all of it.
And when I had put the dinner in the oven and finished with my work I took my daughter out on the deck to observe the sunset. It was one of those superb Indian summer dusks we in Santa Rosa have been blessed with lately. The sky was positively Venetian in its coloring, shifting from orange to purple to yellow. Vivienne raised her arms, indicating that she wanted to be held, and so I lifted her up on my lap and she sat still as the sun spread a golden hue over the grass and oak trees that fill the valley behind our home. The shadows lengthened and still Vivienne sat quietly as I bounced her gently on my knee.
Then my daughter turned and looked at me, said, “Dada,” and pulled at my moustache. She put her mouth on my nose and my beard, running her hands over my face as if memorizing every crows foot and worry line on my face.
And I felt closer to her than at any time in her 13 months with us. I felt a connection that was deeper than all the strivings, failures and conjectures that have made up my turbulent history.
And then she pursed her lips, tilted her head up towards mine and graced me with her first kiss.

WHY I’M NOT TIM LINCECUM

I’ve heard it said that men spend most of their time thinking about their work and women spend most of their time thinking about their relationship.
Now that I don’t have work to think about I can devote most of my thinking to that other really important male pursuit; namely, sports.
And like a lot of other Bay Area sports fans, I spent all of my September and October fascinated by the San Francisco Giants. Having lived in the SF area my entire life, their victory in the World Series seemed to salve some deeply rooted angst. As the final out was recorded in Game 5, I turned to my wife and said: “Now I can die happy.” And, sadly enough, I really meant it.
I felt a glow for the next couple of days, and I think others felt it too. When I said hi to strangers, whether at the coffee shop or strolling around Spring Lake, I always followed it with some comment about the Giants, and people invariably responded with smiles of satisfaction and delight. It is a good time to be a fan, and this selfless team with their quirky personalities has made me feel somehow more alive and appreciative of the great and diverse place we live.
My hometown of Santa Rosa, about 45 miles north of San Francisco, has a lot of open space and parks where I go on long runs, anywhere from 6 to 10 miles. Often I will take my one year old daughter in her BOB jogging stroller, and I’ll have our dog, Kebu, along as well, attached to my left arm via a red leash. Kebu is a female Akita; 90 lbs of fur and muscle, with a black face, pointy ears, white legs, curly white fluffy tail, and a coat of shifting grays and tans. She is a striking dog and people often stop and comment on her; some with alarmed expressions, as they think she is part wolf.
After loading this crew in the car, driving to a trailhead and then unloading and getting started, I turn on my IPOD and take off running. And then my mind takes off too, usually on some fantasy that will last me the next hour or longer.
Now, I am a shallow individual and so my fantasies revolve around my being exceptionally successful in some profession that brought fame, fortune, and glory. Oh, and groupies too.
Like I said, shallow.
And invariably over the past month I have fantasized that I am a San Francisco Giant, specifically Tim Lincecum. Now, I know this may sound foolish and maybe even childish, but, remember, I am a guy and my mind is deeply programmed to perseverate on achievement, keeping score, and winning. And, like I said, if I can’t have work to focus on, then it’s gonna be sports or some other magical endeavor where I can lose myself.
And besides, I have a lot in common with Tim Lincecum. When I was his age I too smoked a lot of dope and wore my hair long.
Only then it was called being a hippie.
So as I run I fantasize about how great it would be to be Timmy; striking out batters, winning games, being a part of a great team. And this carries me through my run and I feel fairly happy and complete. As opposed to a lot of the time when I feel confused and inadequate.
After the run, as I am loading all the crew -- panting dog, muddy stroller and a babbling, happy baby -- back into the Highlander, my mind brings me back to reality by calling up memories of my baseball career. And I come back to earth, realizing I could never be Tim Lincecum.
And here is why.
Baseball is played with a hardball. And the operative part of that word is HARD. I quickly realized as a lad that if a baseball, a hardball, struck any part of my tender young body it hurt me in a way that left me in tears and feeling offended.
My overly active imagination was terrified of two things while at practice and during actual games; ground balls while playing in the field, and getting struck by a pitched ball while batting. So, basically, I was scared stiff all the time I was on a ball field.
Because I was tall and I could catch balls thrown right to me without dropping them too often, I was placed at first base. Now, if you have to play the infield and you are terrified of ground balls, first place is just the place for you. Most balls hit my way came off the end of the bat of right handed hitters who had swung too late at the pitch, and therefore, these balls rolled slowly towards me.
This was just fine with me. ‘The slower the better’ was my motto as I stood in the field pretending to be into the game and with only the scant protection of a lousy leather mitt to cover my entire body.
I lived in constant fear of the dreaded ‘bad hop’. A bad hop was a grounder that was rolling along on a nice, even, predictable course, and then at the very last instant as the fielder bent over, glove extended, (basically in his most exposed position) the ball took a sudden leap and eluded the glove entirely, thereby skipping through the legs of said fielder (thus causing unceasing derision from his coaches and teammates) or, worse yet, leapt up and hit the fielder somewhere on his person.
The bad hop could bark your shin, leaving a nice shiny welt roughly the size and shape of, you guessed it, a hardball. Or it could hit you anywhere on the softer parts of your legs, arms or torso, again leaving a welt and stinging like bejeezus. And then, of course, there was catching one in the balls. As we got older we were required to wear cups that supposedly protected our privates, but I had seen enough guys catch one in the balls, cup or no cup, to know that there really was no foolproof protection. When you saw a player lying on the ground in the fetal position and mewing like a frenzied animal in its death throes, you didn’t have to ask, “Hey, what happened to him?” You just knew; right now that kid wished he’d never heard of baseball, much less tried to play it.
Nearly as bad as catching one in the balls, the bad hop could take a demon-like strike upward and hit you in the throat or face. As I manned my position at first base, crouched over as if anticipating, even relishing, a ground ball, my mind was slowly going over all the ways I could be maimed by a bad hop; I could have my Adam’s Apple crushed, and never speak again; the bad hop could hit me right in the mouth, knocking out my front teeth; it could break my nose, or hit me right in the eye and I’d spend the rest of my life with a patch over that useless eye.
And the pain, oh the pain!! I had been the recipient of enough bad hops to know that even the most innocuous nick from a hardball brought an unwarranted amount of physical pain with it.
I was in the field roughly half the time during any given game, the other half on the bench. But even there I couldn’t relax. We didn’t have protected dugouts; no, we sat on benches with peeling green paint, and if you weren’t careful you could get slivers. And, if you weren’t doubly careful, if you didn’t keep an eye on the game, a screaming foul ball could find you in the time it takes to bat your eye. And if it hit you in the head it would kill you right on the spot. So really, there was no relaxing, and even if I would have been foolish enough to enjoy my time on the bench, I was constantly aware of the progression of the batting order and when I was due up.
For if you thought playing in the field was the worst of it, think again, my friend. There was nothing quite as horrifying as stepping into the batter’s box against a ten year old pitcher who was going to heave a hardball in your general vicinity, but with no real idea of exactly where it was going to go.
This was before the invention of batting helmets, so we wore a leather get-up that covered the side and back of the head, with a canvas strap across the top to hold it in place. No one was kidding themselves that this was actually going to protect their cranium when they got brained. Yeah, we tugged the headgear on before we got into the box to hit, but it brought little solace as we faced our death; except now we couldn’t hear too well either.
So basically, you are standing there, deaf from the headgear, holding your older brother’s bat that weighs too much, your mouth dry, your guts churning, and with only one thought; let me out of here unscathed. Actually getting a base hit, driving in runs, hitting frozen ropes for doubles; that was for strong, coordinated and fearless boys, not a quaking coward like me.
I had seen bad things happen to people who swung the bat; foul tips that hit your foot or ankle; cracked bats that left your hands throbbing with an invisible fire for days afterward.
But worse than that of course was getting drilled by a wild pitch. And like I said above, young boys who throw baseballs only have a vague idea of where the ball is going. Yeah, they mean to throw it over the plate, but it’s not like they can do it every time.
I’d been hit by pitches. And I didn’t like it one bit. And every time I’d been hit by a pitch it only reinforced the belief that I never wanted to experience that again. Thus when I swung at a pitch I pulled my left foot towards 3rd base and did the classic ‘bail out’, thereby ensuring that I would never hit the pitch, but, and more importantly, that it would not hit me.
Then the coach would scream at me; “Finn, quit bailing out!!” and the other players would laugh at me and my dad in the stands would shake his head once more. And sure, I’d strike out and head back to the bench with a look of false determination that said I’d do better next time. But really I was just relieved to get out of that damned batter’s box untouched; lucky to be away from a place where erratic young boys threw hard, deadly objects in my vicinity. And maybe it was a coward’s victory, but then again, I wasn’t in the back of an ambulance, siren blaring while it careened to Mills Hospital where they would have to perform emergency surgery to relieve the swelling on my brain caused by……… you guessed it, a hardball.
And that’s why I’m not Tim Lincecum.

THE BAD BRAIN

My brain is my enemy.
It was Sunday afternoon and I had been playing Mr. Mom to my one year old daughter Vivienne since Wednesday. I hadn’t had any real adult conversation in five days and the only reading I had done consisted of; Gentle Giraffe Storybook, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and On the Day You were Born.
On the plus side, I could now recite Goodnight Moon both forwards and backwards.
Vivienne had awakened from her nap with a diaper full of pee and poop, which I cleaned up lickety split. But not fifteen minutes later I detected a disturbing odor surrounding the girl, and, not believing she could have so quickly done the deed again, pulled open the back of her diaper and peered in.
Hmm, nothing here, Sherlock.
Still, something didn’t smell right and so I stuck my finger down into the diaper to pull it further from her little round butt.
And that is when I got a finger pull of warm poop.
Yelping like I’d been stung by a bee, I leapt to my feet and raced to the kitchen sink, where I frantically scrubbed the offending substance from my hand. After drying off I picked up the smelly little knucklehead, slung her over my shoulder and went into my studio, where we keep our downstairs changing table.
I set out once again on the seemingly endless Trail of the Diaper Change. Once you start down it, pardner, there ain’t no turning back.
I took off her pants, undid the diaper and………..
Holy Shit!!
The size and complexion of this BM rocked my world so thoroughly that for the briefest of moments I lost my wits and just stared at it with something like admiration. And that was all it took for the little wiggle-worm to spin sideways and threaten to topple right off the table. I made a desperate grab and hauled her back up, wheezing with relief.
Only to find that now she had thrust both feet squarely in her own stool. With a squeal of ardor-filled glee she wiggled her feet back and forth.
“Daddy, this is so much fun,” her smile seemed to be saying. “You should try it too!”
Too late I grabbed both her ankles with my left hand while removing the offending diaper with my right. But in my haste my grip slipped and her left leg came clear. She immediately seized her foot and pulled it towards her mouth. I just as quickly lurched forward and grabbed it right back, and felt my suspect lower back give a small stab of pain. Portent of lumbar troubles later, I knew, and felt a small part of my inner resolve begin to crumble.
So, just to recap the score; crap on my hands, crap on my daughter's hands and feet, and a grown man beginning to come apart at the seams.
I don’t think I'd arrived at crying just yet, but I was starting to round the bend.
With her left hand Vivienne reached over and grabbed a Pamper diaper from the top of the stack. She raised it in front of her face and, after studying it with a surpassingly serious expression, tossed it on the floor as if it did not meet her lofty standards.
“Please don’t do that,” I said.
Vivienne grabbed another diaper and repeated the trick.
“Please, please, don’t do that.”
She did it again and then looked right at me with a haughty expression that seemed to portend a look I would be getting twelve years hence, when she hit puberty. “Oh, I am sorry,” the snooty look said, “Did you say something?”
It was then that the Bad Brain began to attack. A tiny, whispery voice – with the merest suggestion of a frown – asked, “Jeffrey, just what the hell are you doing here? How did you come to this?”
I took a moment to gather my faculties and noted a certain sliminess under my left hand. I checked just to make sure, and, yes, I had crap on my hands for the second time in this rapidly disintegrating day.
I think this is when I first began to weep.
At this sign of weakness the Bad Brain began to speak in earnest. “You used to be somebody,” it said, now sounding disturbingly like Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront. “Every morning you used to tie an immaculate knot in an Italian silk tie you bought in that little shop by the Duomo in Milano, and then you’d put on your power suit and go to your high-paying job and lunch with Wall St. power brokers and advise CEO’s…………..and, pardon me if I’ve mistaken you, but didn’t you used to be someone who mattered?”
Unperturbed by my inner dialogue, my daughter continued to rain Pampers on the floor; a small mountain of white diapers grew at my feet. She began to sing her nonsense song that sounds like the characters in Farewell My Concubine singing Chinese opera; each syllable seeming to end on a questioning, upward, lilt.
Sadly, this song did not reassure me and the Bad Brain continued its assault; “Man, who are you kidding? You can’t do this. I mean, seriously, Dude, look at you; standing here crying with a hand full of shit.”
And this nugget, “You used to make money. A real man makes a lot of money; he doesn’t spend his day changing shitty diapers.”
Holding my daughters be-shitted feet with my equally fouled hands, I hung my head in resignation as the familiar refrain of the Bad Brain began to thrum inside my head like the drumbeat accompanying the legions of Napoleon’s doomed army as they set off to conquer Russia.
“You know,” the Bad Brain said. And its tone was all sweet reasonableness now. “After the crappy day you’ve had, you really deserve a drink.”
And the world began to fall away.

TOO CUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!!

Women love babies. This is a good thing.
Because, let’s face it, if it were up to men the human race wouldn’t have made it this far.
Just picture this scene; during the Stone Age a group of primitive humans huddle around a roaring fire. A man shoves a barely cooked piece of Mastodon meat at a toddler. The child makes game but pitiful attempts to eat the meat. Finally the man snatches the food away and, glaring at the kid, snarls, “What the hell, I gotta chew it for you, too?”
See what I mean? The start of eating disorders -- and the end of the human race.
So yes, I understand why women and their ‘feathering the nest’ instinct are sort of indispensable. I get it, at least on an intellectual level.
But, I must admit that, on a more instinctual level, I would dearly love to throttle the neck of the woman who, upon viewing a pink baby’s jumper, first shrieked the words, “Too Cuuuuuute!!!!”
In the first two months after Vivienne arrived I heard the word ‘Cute’ used more often than in the prior ten years. ‘Super-Cute’ and ‘Too Cute’ were also pole-axed into my brain on a regular basis. And it’s not like I was attending baby showers, I avoid those things like the plague.
And, now that I think about it, I would prefer getting the plague to going to a baby shower. Seriously, with the bubonic plague you know you are going to be dead in three days, tops.
But a baby shower? With its games, and wrapping paper and feminine squeals of delight, now that truly has the potential to stop time and drop a man straight down a worm hole into Dante’s seventh level of Hell.
And don’t get me wrong about the whole gift-giving gig; I am all about getting free stuff from friends and strangers. You’d have to be nuts not to love free stuff.
As a newly minted house husband one of my nightly chores is cleaning the dishes and I was thus engaged after dinner one night when two of Rochelle’s friends dropped by to coo over our daughter Vivienne and her plethora of ‘too cute’ outfits.
Now, these are nice women, and I like them in every respect. Normally they are intelligent, and good conversationalists, and interesting observers of life.
Normally.
But some strange affliction descended upon them when they entered our home. I was scrubbing away at the plates and pans in the kitchen sink and I wondered what had become of the two people I had once talked politics and movies with, for from the living room came inhuman shrieks of glee that seemed out of all proportion to the occasion.
And then my head began to melt in on itself like a special effect in a Poltergeist film and I let out a horrid cawing sound like some winged freak from hell let loose at last.
And I collapsed in sobs over the sink.
Still the gaiety in the other room continued unabated.
While back in the kitchen I held up a water glass, studying it closely while I considered shattering it in the sink and picking out the sharpest shards to plunge into my eyes.
Okay, just so we’re clear here; a man would prefer jabbing shards of jagged glass into his eyes rather than listen to the fairer sex coo over baby clothes.

My wife Rochelle has been attempting to get our daughter Vivienne to say Mama from just about the first minute we brought her home from the hospital. (Okay, maybe that is an exageration, but it sure seems that long). Vivienne is now 13 months old and, believe me; my wife’s efforts have not eased up.
I, on the other hand, have not spent even one moment encouraging our daughter to speak. My attitude is this: once the girl starts talking she may never shut up, so why encourage the process?
Now, after all of my wife’s fervent urging, and my benign neglect, guess the only word my daughter says?
Yep, Dada.
And they say there’s no justice in the world.
This morning my wife was sitting at the foot of our bed, bouncing Vivienne on her knee and in a very animated (well, actually, fairly irritating) fashion, singing out joyfully, “Mama, Mama, Mama!!”
(And with a French accent (God knows why), which didn’t appreciably lessen the irritability quotient in my opinion. But that’s just me; I’m sort of glum in the mornings. Well, actually more like clinically depressed.)
So anyway, you get the picture; I’ve got the merriment equivalent of the Flying Nun singing gaily in faux French and bouncing the poor bobble headed baby up and down like a demented puppet and practically pleading with the kid to say “Mama”.
And so I’m climbing into my clothes while trying to avoid the usual abyss of despair which gapes at my feet every morning, and the increasingly grating singing is really making my internal voice ask with the sort of heightened jollity of a demented game show host; “Gee, Jeff, which of these two attractive alternatives would likely be the less painful manner in which to exit this essentially purposeless existence; a valium and whisky highball, or, opening your veins in a hot bath, Roman emperor style?”
(Minor Digression -- you oughta hear my internal dialogue when my wife sings “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old” for the forty ninth time while preparing our daughter’s – you guessed it – porridge for dinner. )
My wife is doing everything but begging – well, yes, she is essentially begging – to get Viv to say “Mama”. And I’m pulling the same shirt over my head for like the fifth day in a row – it smells reassuringly of me, no sweet baby smells in here, brother – and then gazing out the window as the sun lights up the golden hills on the other side of Bennett Valley and the accumulated dew drops from the oak tree branches onto the redwood deck below, and I’m thinking, “Vivienne, at this point I will pay you to say ‘Mama’. Only, please, please, shut your mother up.”
And Vivienne, as if hearing my thoughts, swings her gorgeous head around, espies me, breaks out in a radiant smile and sings out; “Dada!!!! Dada!!! Dada!!!” All in a tone to suggest that I am not only her very favorite person on this earth, but the very reason for her existence.
And my wife weeps.
Conversely, I feel a little better about the world as the gloom starts to lift from my internal gearbox. Not exactly chipper, mind you, but what the hell, I’ll take any stray ray of sunshine I can gather.
Just to complete Rochelle’s perfect morning, as I walk from the bedroom I rub my knuckles on her scalp in a way that really irritates her, and say, “Good job, Honey.”

And thus begins another day for the Dirty Diaper Dad.