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.
HER GUARDIAN (a new oil painting by The Dirty Diaper Dad)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
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.
“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.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, November 8, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
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.”
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.
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