Category Archives: Fatherhood

Raising Abigail

Guys like Seth MacFarlane are why I bought my daughter a Tonka truck

Fatherhood, , , ,

This weekend I was solo parenting Abigail while Erin was in New Orleans for a half-marathon. We were supposed to be down there as a family but a last-minute toddler cold and fever had us facing down a nightmare travel scenario for our first plane ride together. Less a noble act of chivalry and more self-preservation, I did wonder – after what seemed like Erin’s second Facebook status about beignets – if I’d chickened out a bit.  Midnight on Friday-into-Saturday morning with Abigail refusing to sleep unless she was leaning against me argued otherwise. It’s one thing doing that in your own house, another on a plane and other unfamiliar surroundings.

(Side note: Somewhere in my head is a post about how parenting is the art of things not going according to plan but I made two runs at it this weekend in between sick-toddler tantrums and I’ll be damned if I can fashion the ping-ponging thoughts into something coherent. Nora Ephron was right.)

Anyway, the weekend wasn’t without its merits.  Saturday we tested out the family-friendliness of  Horse Thief Hollow, a new gastropub-ish spot here in Beverly (passed with flying colors) and Sunday we went over to Toys-R-Us so I could buy Abigail a Tonka truck.

—

I’ve never much cared for Seth MacFarlane though I’ll admit to enjoying some of his Family Guy-fueled Star Wars parodies on a couple weekends away with some guy friends. Overall, I was disappointed that a dude who is clearly a song-and-dance man at heart felt the need to overcompensate with misogynist humor and gay-baiting.

Vulture writer and person-I’m-proud-to-call-a-friend Margaret Lyons sums up his hosting performance better than I can and explains why it’s not “just a joke” though I’ll add this: Just because there are other sexist aspects of the Oscars – the pre-show theatrics, plot elements of the films, etc. –  doesn’t mean we can’t object to a joke about Jennifer Aniston lying about being a stripper. What we joke about when we joke about women: appearance, emotion and sexual availability. All this time and so few are working with new material or imagination.

—

We were at a kid’s birthday party several months ago when Abigail grabbed the back of a Tonka truck and steered it around the basement with glee. I was thrilled: Here was our daughter, young enough to be blissfully ignorant of the concept of gendered play and enjoying the hell out of a truck, tossing stuff in the back of it and self-powering it all over the basement of someone she just met. And not just any truck but the fabled Tonka truck – the Bob Seger-soundtracked-Ford-F-150  of kids’ toys. I made a mental note to buy her one for her next birthday.

With Erin in New Orleans and me needing reasons to get us out of the house, the timing seemed perfect for a trip to the toy store. I’ve obsessed over written of my desire to not default Abigail to pink and princesses and give her some say in her play.  So, even with an agenda in my head, when we walked into that Toys-R-Us I took her hand but let her lead. She zipped past the shelves of Barbies but paused at an endcap of generic dolls. “Lala!” she exclaimed and ran over to the dolls, picking one up and inspecting it. Abigail’s first nanny was Polish. She bought her a doll and the Polish word for doll is “Lala” so there you go. After getting to know her, she hands me the doll. “Do you want this doll?” I ask. She nods yes.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re here to buy a truck. But I want to get her the truck for the same reason I don’t want to assume she’s genetically wired to like princesses. When possible, the world should be hers to explore and decide for herself what she’ll like and what she is like. Someone else’s expectations – even my own – are just that: someone else’s.

We walked through a few more aisles. I took her down the superheroes aisle just to see what would happen; she couldn’t have been less interested. When we got to the Tonka truck aisle there were three that caught her eye though we eventually settled on a dump truck of a size large enough for her to be challenged by it but big enough for her to master.

There was, however, still the matter of Lala, an issue made abundantly clear when Abigail placed her in the bed of the dump truck and proceeded to push the still-in-its-box Tonka truck across the floor. A dollar amount was in my head for this trip and Lala #2 put us over it by about 10 bucks. Plus, it’s not like Lala #1 wasn’t still sitting in her crib.

At this point, I’m rather charmed by Lala #2 so I’m happy with whichever toy makes it home. If it’s the truck, I’m pleased I’m introducing her to the concept of options. If it’s the doll, I’ll prove to my wife I’m not against girly things so long as it’s Abigail who decides it’s what she wants and not everyone else.

I put it to her:

“Do you want Lala or the truck?”
“Truck.”

Win. Except…wait…

“Do you want the truck or Lala?”
She thinks about it a moment.
“Lala.”

“OK, do you want the truck?”
She nods.
Do you want Lala?”
Nod.

At an end, I put the doll in my left hand and the truck in my right and hold them out in front of me. She looks back and forth between the two before charging at the truck, grabbing it with both hands and walking away. When we pass the endcap, I put Lala #2 back on the shelf, knowing I’ll remember this moment the next time I’m passing a Toys-R-Us and turn into the parking lot before the thought passes out of my brain stem.

—

All I’m saying is I don’t care if she wants a doll or a truck so long as she knows she has options.

Hopefully, she never sees Seth MacFarlane host the Oscars.

* In the interest of limiting the scope of this post, I’m not going to get into The Onion’s idiocy other than to say if we as a society can’t rally around the idea that if you’re going to send up the misogyny we aim at actresses you probably shouldn’t use a misogynist term and the name of a nine year old actress within the same 140 characters – yes, even “satirically” – then I don’t hold out much hope for us.

OMIC roundup: Taken 2 edition

Comics, Fatherhood, Internet, Media, Music, Politics

Have felt somewhat creatively bereft this week so here’s a roundup on the topics this site’s most often devoted to:

Comics: Part of me still wants to reserve judgment on The Superior Spider-Man, the new Marvel title arriving in the wake of Amazing Spider-Man #700; a story arc in comics can’t be judged from one issue. But all my concerns about this new direction seem to have come to bear and a new one’s risen: the idea that Doc Ock is burdened with responsibility is jettisoned for a literal deus ex machina. I won’t spoil it here but if you thought Peter’s death lacked weight before… *

The other Marvel relaunch I checked out recently was Fantastic Four. I really liked where Hickman was going in the previous series so a Reed who charges ahead without considering his family first – or bringing him into his plan – is a step back. Again, we’ll see.

All this was enough to make me pick up last year’s Spider-Men crossover, which was excellent and touching and therefore recommended.

Fatherhood: Last night I watched Taken 2 while I assembled a small pastel table and chairs for Abigail – a gift from her grandmother. I’m sure many fathers mentally see themselves as Liam Neeson, willing to do whatever it takes to save their families from enemies both foreign and domestic. Let’s be honest though: Most of the time fatherhood means assembling a pastel table and chairs at 11pm on a Saturday night while you drink scotch, eat beef jerky and watch Taken 2. I am perfectly fine with this.

Internet: This video of a Fisher-Price record player spinning a bootleg “Stairway to Heaven” blew my mind.

Here’s the backstory (via @SennettReport).

Media: Alpana Singh is leaving Check, Please so the show is looking for a new host. This sentence from a report on the move caught my attention:

“The station hopes Singh will continue to appear occasionally on Chicago Tonight, WTTW’s nightly newsmagazine, where she answers viewers’ wine and beverage questions posed by host Phil Ponce in the “Ask Alpana” segment.”

Hopes? Has there not been a conversation about this yet? Is this high school? “Yeah, I know we’re broken up and everything but I’m really hoping we can still be lab partners without there being all kinds of weird vibes. I mean, she didn’t say we couldn’t so I’m sure everything will be cool. We’re adults, you know?”

Music: I’ve found Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, especially “Two Girls,” to be revelatory. You ever hear something for the first time but find yourself able to sing along with it? I’d also recommend a listen to Taj Mahal’s “She Caught The Katy” if only to hear how much the Blues Brothers version nicked from it.

Politics: With so many problems facing Illinois, the possibility that the governor’s race will become Daleys vs. Madigans is profoundly depressing.

* If you don’t mind spoilers, this AV Club summary gives you the gist.

Collecting a few old things

Fatherhood, Media, ,

I spent the better part of the afternoon rounding up many of the media appearances and live readings I’ve done in the last seven years: WBEZ spots, Paper Machete readings and even a Chicago Tonight back in 2010. A few are missing because I haven’t had time to track down the audio –  the glorious fun I’ve had doing You, Me, Them, Everybody and the quick shots at 20×2, specifically. Eventually, I hope to add them all.

Doing so meant I finally got around to posting a couple old bits. First is “You’re Only Old Once,” an essay I performed at Tuesday Funk, my friend Bill Shunn‘s reading series at Hopleaf. I tend to do more personal pieces there and this one about approaching middle-age had been kicking around in my head for a little while.

Then there’s “Mark Wahlberg Hates America.” Claire Zulkey‘s Funny Ha-Ha was an occasion for me to go all out so I used a startling amount of vulgarity and then rapped a little. It’s definitely one of those pieces that’s better performed than read, which is why I hesitated to post it at all, but it’s also one of my favorites because it’s so ridiculous.

Eventually you just drop off

Fatherhood,

It’s 11:14pm and Abigail’s been asleep for 45 minutes or so. This should not be the case. She should have been asleep for about three hours or so. I don’t think either of us do well when her mother’s out of town.

Here is a rough, annotated timeline of what happens when my wife is out of town for business or a girls’ weekend or even just out for the night.

8pm
“This is awesome. I am going to eat pizza and drink beer and play video games and watch movies Erin hates and stay up late.”

9pm
Pizza and beer consumed. Watch half of a movie that turns out to be terrible, spend 20 minutes looking through Netflix to find something else to watch and fail, read five pages of a book, check Twitter a thousand times then stare at the couch.

9:43pm
Have become significantly fatigued due to pizza and beer. Refuse to go to sleep early. Resolve to stay up until The Daily Show.

9:46pm
Text Erin: “What’s going on?”

10:00pm
Turn on The Daily Show, spirit renewed.

10:12pm
Pass out on couch

Somehow, when Erin – a woman who has no problem with me eating pizza, drinking beer, staying up late or watching movies/playing video games she doesn’t like so long as I do so in another room – is away I am driven by a desire to live the life I imagined for myself when I was 14. As if somehow my choice of food and entertainment choices is impeded through marriage. As if I would stay married to a woman like that.

I dislike it when my wife isn’t around for a night of two. I miss her. The house is really quiet. The bed’s too big, as Sting once sang.

And truth be told, the post-Abigail era has meant when Erin is out of town my magnetic north points upstairs to the little girl in the crib in the room at the north end of the house. There’s generally still beer and pizza but I never know if Abigail will wake up and need soothing to go back to sleep. There’s a sword of Damocles is what I’m saying. My priorities have changed.

Erin and I have jobs that occasionally require us to disrupt our lives at home. On some occasions, she carries more of the burden. On others, it’s me. But we’re lucky enough to be at jobs that appreciate the priority we place on family. So if sometimes it means one of has to be a solo parent, that’s the gig.

After an uneventful first night with Erin away, AG woke up at 6am this morning, yelling to be picked up. When things are in a normal state of affairs around here, she goes down around 730-8pm and sleeps until 7am. Don’t think I don’t know how blessed that makes us as parents. But this morning, I didn’t get my usual hour of prepping for the day ahead – coffee, news-reading, a shower, emptying the dishwasher and whatever else is easier to do with a sleeping baby – before Abigail is awake and demanding Elmo.

Tonight she was similarly stubborn. Took a good half hour to go down then was up here and there, requiring two sessions of in-the-glider cuddling before finally dropping off for good. Getting a toddler back into the crib after she’s fallen asleep on you is some Indiana-Jones-with-a-bag-of-sand stuff. I’m usually pretty good at it but she was fighting it tonight. Still outran the boulder though.

Yesterday my boss gently alluded to my two-night solo parenting stretch and I took the opportunity to assure her it was no big deal since I was quite the active father and not like those other dads who can’t be left alone with the kid for more than a few hours at a time because they get all freaked out about diapers and what have you. She hadn’t implied any of that but I wanted to let her know it all the same.

Hubris.

If you have a kid who blesses you with the regularity of schedule, you’ll likely get used to it. I know we have. But when your kid spends her first four months struggling with colic and reflux, you’ll always feel like that pattern is never far from repeating itself.

Abigail finally dropped off for good around 10:30pm. Maybe she wanted to stay up for The Daily Show.

It’s 12:27am. Erin just texted me: “Landed.” I’ll probably go pass out now.

Like I said, neither of us do well when her mother is out of town.

Abigail picks her name

Fatherhood, , ,

“So, how is Abby?”
“Er…Abigail.”
“Oh, yes, Abigail.”

I’ve been having some variation on this conversation with people since our daughter was born. When I say “people,” I mean everyone from her grandparents to friends to co-workers.

Erin and I made it pretty clear to people that Abigail was, well, Abigail. We never called her Abby, either casually or formally, in verbal or written form. Yet somehow people always wanted to shorten her name to Abby.

There’s nothing wrong with Abby, mind you. It’s just that it wasn’t the name we chose for her. Nicknames or shortened names should be something organic, a way of referring to someone after you get to know his or her personality. Abigail had plenty of personality from about six months on. Maybe that informed us calling her AG, short for Abigail Grace, because it stuck. Just sort of happened in the way that nicknames do. It seemed to fit.

If she was going to be Abby she could decide that for herself.

We had an idea in our heads, Erin and I, about our daughter. Abigail is Abigail because of Abigail Adams, the First Lady to the second president of the United States. Abigail Adams was a tough broad in tough times. Any father should want the same for his daughter.

If I’m being honest, Abigail is also Abigail because of Abigail Bartlet, the First Lady to President Bartlet on The West Wing, one of our favorite shows. She’s tough, too, and a doctor and can make the word “jackass” sound like poetry. Sure, she’s fictional. Everyone has flaws. *

And finally, Abigail is Abigail because that’s just what seemed to fit our hopes and ideas of who she would be. Abigail Grace. Toughness meets divinity.

You have an idea in your head about how your kid is supposed to be, you see.

Then one day you’re watching one of your child’s favorite shows with her and the lead character breaks the fourth wall, as characters of children’s shows are apt to do, looks out of the TV and says “And you: say your name!” And your daughter says “Ab-beeee!”

Abby.

Of course, then you realize your daughter’s other favorite show is Sesame Street, a show with a flying fairy who she adores. A flying fairy named…Abby. She’s learning her alphabet now, too, and really mastered the first two letters. A..B. AB. Ay-bee. Abby.

Since then, the answer to “What’s your name?” is “Abby.”

Our ideas about how much control we had over our child’s mind ended before Abigail was even born so this development should not come as a surprise.

She’s got even more personality now. She’s as quick with a “Yay!” when you do something she likes as she is with a “Nay!” when it’s something she doesn’t. (Seriously, it’s not “yes” and “no,” it’s “yay” and “nay.”)

She knows a little about who she is and so she knows her name. Abby.

Maybe it sticks. Maybe she decides as a teenager that she prefers Abigail. Maybe as an adult she likes A.G. Smith because it sounds ungendered and she likes to keep people on their toes.

For now though, as far as she’s concerned, she’s Abby.

So long as she sticks with toughness meets divinity, she should be fine.

* Just because someone else will point it out if I don’t: President Bartlet always called his wife “Abbey.”

“You’re only old once” – Tuesday Funk 8.7.2012

Fatherhood, , ,

Here’s an essay I read at Tuesday Funk, my friend (and acclaimed sci-fi author) Bill Shunn‘s reading series at the Hopleaf. You can see me deliver it in this YouTube clip (warning: language).

Here are three things I said to my wife last night:

“Do you have idea what’s going on with those weird bare patches in the lawn?”

“The nice thing about having these shoes for working in the backyard is there’s almost no tread on them so when I step in dog shit it wipes right off.”

And the third thing is honestly not worth quoting in its entirety but it involved the phrase “Well, when we were in our 20s…”

And then I took a fish oil pill.

I fucking love being old.

Last night, my wife and I were talking about this piece and I told her I’d been trying to work up some ideas around the notion that I’d grown old before my time and she said to me “No. No, I think it is your time.”

And she’s right. First, I am 37 years old. I am seven years past the age when the youth of America are supposed to stop trusting people my age. Second, my other idea for this piece was an explanation of why I don’t like going to public pools which is just about the most old man thought one can express other than “Alright, who touched the thermostat?”

It’s become clear to me that I am living the life of a man twice my age. Note the following:

1. Yesterday morning I got up at 545am so I would have enough time to put some fertilizer on our lawn before going to work.

2. I listen to the AM all-news channel quite a bit. I used to turn it on strictly for “traffic and weather on the 8s”…and then started listening for the headlines…and pretty soon I had memorized the commercials for services that prevent identity theft.

3. I got a hammock for Father’s Day. It was something I asked for and it made me deliriously happy. To put it another way, I was given a gift that facilitates me lying down for an extended period of time.

4. A couple weeks ago, I sat in my driveway in one of those folding lawn chairs and drank. Now, granted, my wife was with me. And we talked about our life together with our daughter, our work, our hopes and our dreams. But mostly we sat in our driveway in a couple of cheap-ass lawn chairs and drank until it got dark. The only thing missing were black socks that came up to my knees but who wants to wear that in this heat, I ask you?

Oh and speaking of drinking, I drink scotch. I’d rather drink scotch than almost anything else. Walking around with a glass of brown liquor into which you have put nothing else except maybe ice is a pretty good signifier that you have stopped trying to impress anyone with your knowledge of fine wines or cocktails infused with something.

5. I love mowing my lawn. I find it calming in a way that yoga, massages or sunsets do not offer. (Also, I’m not too keen on massages because of all the touching.) Mowing the lawn offers me both a sense of accomplishment and the restoration of order amongst chaos. When my neighbor has occasionally mowed our front lawn – in a gesture of pure goodwill and admittedly he does a really nice job of it – it’s completely freaked me out and made me nervous. He might as well be doing it while wearing a pair of my pants. It makes my blood pressure go up a little.

Oh also, I have high blood pressure. When you find out you have high blood pressure, you learn the proper phrase is not “My blood pressure is kinda high right now” the way you might say “Yeah, I’m feeling a little bloated today” or “I’m a little out of shape, gotta get back in the gym.” You just have it for the rest of my life. Like how you’re never not an alcoholic. I’m like an alcoholic but for heart disease. Although the main difference here is although I have high blood pressure, I can control it with diet and exercise but there are few things that make one feel old like a physical condition that needs to be controlled with diet and exercise.

So…I’m old. But rather than find it confining or condemning, I find it liberating.

Before I go on, I want to note something here: This is not a screed against youth. The world needs youth. Without youth and folly, the world does not dream the impossible. You can draw a short, straight line from the same lack of impulse control that makes kegstands seem like a good idea to thinking you can take something the size of a Mini Cooper, strap 76 pyrotechnic devices onto it, launch it into space, know you will lose contact with it for a full seven minutes during which it heats up to 1600 degrees with only a parachute able to withstand 65000 pounds of force to slow it down and then LAND IT ON MARS in a space roughly the width of Vermont.

(I only had room for about ⅓ of the amazing aspects of that Mars landing so do yourself a favor and Google “Seven Minutes of Terror” and watch the video about it.)

Anyway, what I’m saying is youth and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is awesome.

And that same spirit of adventure you have in youth should carry you throughout your life. But the one thing about youth that you should not carry with you forever is the notion that all options need to be on the table. This doesn’t mean that you never try new things or stop learning. In fact, trying new things may be what makes you happy. But that usually falls under the headings of “I like books and reading” or “I like staying physically active” because when you stop doing those things you get all moody and feel like something’s missing in your life and then when you finally pick up a book on the Spanish Civil War or learn how to throw a javelin you remember “Oh right, I like me when I do this stuff.”

Still, at some point, you have to know yourself. You have to know what you’re good at, what you love, and what makes you happy and you have to do those things provided they don’t visit harm on you or the people you love. And some of those things are cool or make you seem smart. But a bunch of them probably aren’t.

I would love to read and understand A Brief History of Time enough to be able to explain significant portions of it to someone. But I was never particularly good at science. I love what science produces and the awe it inspires but grappling with the larger concepts like black holes and the uncertainty principle make my head ache. Eventually, I’m going to get through A Brief History of Time but now it’s because it’s an obstacle I’d like to overcome not because I think it will mean I understand particle physics. I’m never going to understand particle physics. Probably best to move on from that.

As Michael Keaton showed us in Multiplicity, the more you keep trying to segment yourself, the less like you you become. It seems really obvious that doing what makes you happy means you should just do those things. But it isn’t. It’s hard to know that when the world is constantly telling you what it thinks will make you happy. The world is usually wrong, but it’s kind of a loudmouth about it so it can be hard to tune it out.

There is nothing cool about enjoying the mowing of one’s lawn. Or sitting in cheap patio chairs in your driveway. Or listening to AM 780. Or going to the gym purely to stave off a heart attack.

..Scotch is pretty cool…

But all of these things – among many others – make me happy. So I’m free from thinking that on a Saturday in August I should be, say, in a mud pit at Lollapalooza when what I’d really like to do is mow my lawn, sit in my hammock and drink a glass of…well, honestly, every summer I make an official Summer Back Porch cocktail. This year it’s the Kentucky Buck, the base of which is brown liquor, specifically bourbon. But to make it you have to muddle a strawberry in lemon juice, add Angostura bitters and simple sugar, shake it thoroughly and pour it over ice before topping it off with ginger beer. When it’s finally made, it’s a pinkish color and garnished with a lemon.

Ah, what the hell. You’re only old once.

Storming the castle boat

Fatherhood

20120422-114109.jpgA couple weeks ago Erin bought Abigail this “castle boat” – as a friend’s four year-old daughter called it during a recent playdate. A ramp with footholds on one side, a slide on the other and a somewhat nautical-looking steering wheel in the center where one can stand and approximate the life of a sea captain without all the bother of Somali pirates. The whole thing is not unlike the playground equipment you see in most newer parks, just smaller.

To be honest, it’s probably a little advanced for her age. Sure, at nearly fourteen months she’s an active, physical toddler – climbing, running and lifting large items with one hand are standard for her. And she’s still considered tall for her age (no idea where she gets it). But the place where one stands and…er, sails the castle boat is about as tall as she is and she doesn’t yet understand that a slide is something you experience while sitting and not something you jump off the top of while making the international hand gestures for “Catch me, Dad!”

No matter. She is our daughter. If it is in front of her, she will try to conquer it.

Footholds? They are for the weak. She grabs onto the landing for balance and swings her right knee to the top of the ramp, putting her weight on it. Clawing her way forward onto the landing, she pulls her other leg up, now practically standing on the top of the ramp if she weren’t bent at the waist and executing a fireman’s crawl across the landing as she works to bring her whole body together again so she can sit at a great height and let out a small laugh. At these moments, I imagine she’s laughing at how easy it is for her now and how she used to struggle with this climb and give up momentarily, only to try again and learn a little more each time.

I wonder if she remembers that those struggles were just last week.

I wonder if she’ll remember this feeling of triumph after several days of effort and how the difficult things become easier with repeated attempts.

I wonder if she realizes she’s making it hard on herself – those footholds are literally there to give her a leg up – or if she just doesn’t care. She knows there’s one way to do it, but she wants to see if she can do it a different way. Her way.

I wonder if she realizes the world doesn’t make it easy for people like that.

I wonder if she thinks that’s part of what makes it fun.

I hope so.

***

A day after I wrote the above, Abigail figured out how to go down the slide…by turning around, lying on her stomach and pushing herself backwards. It was a rough adaption of the method she uses to get down off chairs, couches and our bed but definitely not the “correct” way to use the slide.

Of course it wasn’t.

Celebrating a birthday

Fatherhood, , ,

Today is my birthday.

When I woke up this morning, I walked downstairs and saw balloons stretching up to the ceiling and streamers hanging from the chandeliers and door jambs. The colored, helium-filled balloons said Happy birthday in white letters and fake confetti. At the end of the streamers were pink cardboard flowers and white cardboard circles with scalloped pink edges which read, in pink lettering…

Happy 1st Birthday

None of the decorations were for me. In fact, the streamers had been up for days and some of the balloons now drooped a bit from their once ceiling-level heights. The balloons and streamers were for Abigail, whose birthday had been four days prior.

Doesn’t matter. Her birthday has made me enjoy celebrating my own again.

***

Last year it was already clear to me that my birthday would now and forever be overshadowed by my daughter’s.

Abigail wasn’t even a week old yet so I know I hadn’t gone back to work but other than that I can’t remember much about my birthday last year. Whether that’s a result of the ongoing betrayal one’s body and mind commits with increasing frequency as the years go on or some stress-induced by-product of the first week of our daughter’s birth – maybe there wasn’t anything worth remembering other than how much parenting we did – I don’t know. I think it was the day before we came home from the hospital. If Erin were awake right now, I’d ask her and she might remember as she’s always been better about birthday-related matters than I am. But she’s asleep and so I turn to the electronic tools that I use as crutches in countless moments now.

Google Calendar says on the night of my birthday last year we were working on “paperwork [for] lactation consultant.” That, I remember: The struggles Erin went through trying to breastfeed and all the stops we pulled out to try and make it the primary means of feeding our child before realizing a good while later we weren’t going to be able to no matter how hard we tried. Rude Parenting Awakening #7 by that point.

Gmail and Facebook don’t reveal much else aside from a pregnancy-related to-do list I emailed myself on my birthday that read:

To Get:
Ibuprofen
Lunch
Guinness
[REDACTED ITEM THAT RELATES TO WHAT HAPPENS TO A LADY AFTER GIVING BIRTH THAT ERIN PROBABLY DOESN’T WANT ME TO REVEAL TO THE WORLD]

But a big parenting high-five to 2011 Erin and 2011 Scott for March 4th because the Calendar also says that day we A) Had a 9am pediatrician’s appointment B) met with a lactation consultant at 11am and C) went to a midwives’ appointment at 2pm. How insane is that? There’s no way we’d attempt that kind of schedule now, for crying out loud.  Although our subconscious rationale at the time was probably “Let’s surround ourselves with as many people as possible who know that the fuck they’re doing.” Come to think of it, I think we might have gone right from the hospital to the pediatrician which means I probably spent that day in the hospital.

So whatever else was going on that day – aside from finishing up this cathartic post – I did not trust myself to remember a four-item list that was crucial to the happiness of my still-recovering-from-daylong-labor wife. I certainly wasn’t celebrating my birthday. My mind was on other things. (On the plus side, I had beer.)

***

It’s a little later in the morning now. Erin’s now up and off to Derby Lite and Abigail’s down for her nap. We spent the first part of the morning as we always do on Saturdays, giving Abigail her breakfast and enjoying some extended playtime that our jobs don’t allow for during the week. The house is quiet aside from the occasional rustles from the baby monitor as AG kicks and moves in her sleep.

I generally don’t like making a big deal about my birthday. I think Ron Swanson has it right:

Well-wishes from friends, a nice dinner out with Erin and time to read and relax is my idea of a perfect day and that’s how today’s shaping up.

But now that Abigail’s birthday is days before mine I have a whole new reason to celebrate. At 37 – jeez – I get more joy out of buying presents for Abigail than I do getting them myself. We had a party last week for her and I don’t know about you but I enjoy making a fuss over someone else on their birthday way more than I enjoy having a fuss made over me. Especially when they look like this.

I’ve never been big on reflecting on the past but I’ve spent the morning revisiting Abigail’s birth, looking at pictures of how tiny she was and thinking about how far she’s come in just a year. I’m sure next year I’ll re-read this and think about how we spent that morning playing with her ukulele, listening to James Brown during breakfast and entering Day 3 of No More Bottle. A day full of things worth remembering.

Best birthdays ever.

“Mark Wahlberg Hates America,” Funny Ha-Ha, 1.23.2012

Fatherhood, Media, , , ,

The amazing Claire Zulkey asked me to read at her Funny Ha-Ha series so obviously I said yes though  I performed a slightly different version of the piece posted below. Andrew Huff of Gapers Block graciously asked me to be a part of 8×8, an event that matched writers with designers to create an original piece of work. I submitted this piece in the form below as the original had a whole bit where I rap (it makes a kind of sense in context) and while it worked well in a live setting, it didn’t work as well as pure text. Andrew paired me with Kyle Fletcher and he created a piece that perfectly captured the mix of humor and horror in my meager words. You can view his design here. The text I used for that show works better when read so it’s used here. If you really want to hear me rap, ply me with liquor.

—

Just in case you’ve been thinking about more important things like your family, your job or how to immortalize your cat’s moments of hilarity on film and ride them to YouTube-fueled glory, let me get you up to speed on what Mark Wahlberg recently said in an interview with Men’s Journal magazine.

In addition to discussing his thoughts on being a parent, producing the TV show Entourage and his past as an underpants model, Wahlberg made a brief mention of what he would have done had he been on one of the planes the terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. It’s not a completely out of left field topic for a reporter to ask about: were it not for a change of plans several days prior, Wahlberg would have been on one of the flights that took off from Boston that morning.

And it’s a real shame he wasn’t. Because according to Mark Wahlberg, Mark Wahlberg would have saved untold numbers of lives that day. In the interview, he says:

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”

I swear that’s an exact quote.

Now, if you were listening carefully you probably didn’t hear anything in that quote that comes close to Mark Wahlberg saying he hates America. Technically, he didn’t. But apparently he thinks everyone on those three planes is a total pussy. Even the ones who rushed the cockpit of Flight 93, fought a bunch of terrorists and prevented the plane from crashing into a building in Washington D.C. And since America decided long ago that the people aboard Flight 93 symbolized all that is great about the American virtues of self-sacrifice, patriotism and courage then metaphorically speaking, Mark Wahlberg hates America. Or at least thinks America is a total pussy.

To the average person, Wahlberg’s statement reeks of Hollywood braggadocio: Planeloads of people weren’t enough to prevent the tragedy of that day yet somehow his specific combination of genetics and personality would have made the difference. But consider how often Mark Wahlberg sees his image projected on a screen thirty feet high. That has to give you an inflated sense of self. Plus, if you make it through a movie like I Heart Huckabees with your career more or less intact you start to think you can do pretty much anything.

Ever since Mark Wahlberg said Mark Wahlberg could have prevented 9/11, I’ve been trying to imagine how things might have been different. What particular Wahlbergian je ne sais quoi would have succeeded where others had failed? Would it have been like his movie Four Brothers wherein Wahlberg bands together a seemingly-estranged group of young men who fight against a common enemy? Alas, no. That film had not yet been made in 2001 so any skills at building camaraderie amongst a dissimilar people would not be his until 2005. Even his early film work in Boogie Nights would not have helped him as terrorists are immune to large prosthetic penises.

No, it seems clear how Wahlberg would have made his valiant stand for freedom that September morning: He would have drawn on his time in Boston’s mean streets and fought the terrorists…with Good Vibrations…Funky Bunch-style (ooo-ooo): He rises from his first-class seat (yeeaaaahh),  bare-chested and dressed in a pair of dark jeans (can you feel it baby) and backwards baseball cap (I can too) gold chain reflecting in the early morning sunlight (bum bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum). As he approaches the Saudi terrorists (come on swing it) who seek to strike fear into the heart of America (come on swing it), he begins to slowly wrap his hands in boxers’ tape and bring forth the rhythm and the rhyme.

Oh terrorists, he would have gotten his and you would have gotten yours. In fact, there would have been sweat comin’ out your pores. For on the house tip is how he would have been swinging it, strictly hip hop, boy, he wouldn’t be singin’ it.

Indeed, if Wahlberg were on that plane – with his kids-  it wouldn’t have went down like it did at all. Marky Mark would have been there to move you, the vibrations would have been good like Sunkist and ya’ll would have known who done this. There would have been a lot of partyin’ on the positive side and then him saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.” Because makin’ you feel the rhythm is his occupation.

It all makes sense now. Evil is allowed to triumph over good because of one simple reason: Mark Wahlberg is but one man and he cannot be everywhere at once. He is human, like all of us, and is bound by the rules of time and space. Imagine, if you will, a Mark Wahlberg who could defy physics, slipping in and out of the timestream to revisit history’s greatest disasters.

“If I was in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina with my kids those levees wouldn’t have went down like they did. There would have been a 70% margin over the maximum design load and then me saying “OK, we’re going to have a shrimp po’ boy now, don’t worry.”

Or…

“If I was around during the Holocaust with my kids it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of Nazi blood in Auschwitz and then me saying to the Jews, ‘OK, we’re going to go enjoy some rugala, don’t worry.’”

Or even…

“If I was in Europe during the mid 14th Century with my kids the Black Death wouldn’t have gone down like it did. There would have been a lot of me stopping the spread of flea-infested rats from the merchant ships that traveled through the Mediterranean and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to go start the Renaissance now, don’t worry.’”

Having spent the last few pages mocking him, I want to admit something here: I think I get where Mark Wahlberg’s coming from. Having read the full Men’s Journal interview, I can tell you the 9/11 quote comes out of nowhere. There’s nothing else in the interview about 9/11 but that quote and there’s no indication why the topic was raised in the first place. But I can imagine the writer probably got Wahlberg to talking about his change in travel plans and whatever survivor’s guilt he might have felt. Then they might have talked about what would have happened if he had been on the plane and, say, you’re a father now can you imagine what it would have been like if your kids were on that flight with you?

***

I became a father on February 28th, 2011 at 5:23 pm. At approximately 5:24pm I began imagining elaborate scenarios that would require me to defend the health and safety of my child from enemies, both foreign and domestic. In the year since she was born, I have mentally defeated a significant number of robbers, home invaders, hitchhikers, creepy department store Santas, murderous pediatricians, ninjas, space aliens, Kim Jong Il and his just-recently installed successor Kim Jong Un. Also, if I was Bruce Wayne’s dad? My son never would have become Batman, OK? That mugging in the alley wouldn’t have went down like it did. I would have kicked the shit out of that guy and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to go have some ice cream, Bruce, don’t worry.’”

So if I was lulled into a conversation about a tragic situation I’d managed to avoid and then someone asked what I might have done had my daughter been there, I could see how I might have expressed a wee bit of machismo. And the closest I’ve ever come to being Mark Wahlberg is watching The Departed via Comcast On Demand.

Clearly, Wahlberg and I share a love of elaborate revenge fantasies and making tough guy faces while posing in our underwear. But I’m not sure he or I would have fared better than anyone else on those planes that day. Let’s put this in perspective: Mark Wahlberg starred in a Planet of the Apes remake and he couldn’t even prevent Tim Burton from giving it that shitty Abraham Lincoln-with-a-monkey-head ending.  I know it’s not a direct correlation to terrorist-fighting ability but come on…

Plus, Mark Wahlberg’s kids weren’t even born in 2001 so they wouldn’t have been on that plane in the first place. But in the moments when there isn’t a reporter around asking him questions about it, he’s probably just as grateful for that as I am about never having to defend my daughter from Kim Jong Un.

But I could totally do it if I needed to. That guy’s a pussy.

Feel it, feel it.

“Supergirls” – Essay Fiesta 8.15.2011 / Tuesday Funk 5.3.2011

Comics, Fatherhood, ,

This was a piece I read first at Tuesday Funk, my friend (and acclaimed sci-fi author) Bill Shunn‘s reading series at the Hopleaf. I read it in a slightly different form at Essay Fiesta a few months later. I don’t usually repeat pieces like that but I wanted another crack at performing it since I didn’t feel I’d quite done it justice the first time. Honestly, this is a piece that works best in front of an audience of comic geeks or, failing that, with visual aids. I didn’t have that in either case (though the Tuesday Funk crowd was pretty close) so the fact that this piece worked at all is a testament to my ability to mine cheap laughs out of the words “bosomy” and “pantsless.”

For my previous thoughts on the intersection of comics and fatherhood, read Comic Books are for Girls and Pink.

Watch this piece:

Since February, my wife and I have been the parents of an amazing little girl named Abigail. Many months before she was born, I began to obsess over how we’d raise her in a “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” culture. My hope is we’ll raise Abigail to figure out her own identity and pursue her own likes and dislikes, irrespective of the expectations of others. I realize this is akin to saying “And hopefully she will someday own a unicorn” but that’s my hope.

My biggest concern with the color pink is the princess culture that seems to accompany it. Everyone in this room looks pretty intelligent – in addition to being incredibly good-looking – so I don’t need to go into all of the pitfalls here. But suffice it to sabuy I don’t want to raise a daughter who expects to be saved by a handsome prince. Frankly, I’d be happy if the sum total of my daughter’s experiences with princesses involved getting to the end of a level of Super Mario Brothers and getting annoyed because the one she is looking for is in another castle.

But I realize some of the girly pink stuff is going to be inevitable. My wife once told me “Our daughter might like pink and Barbies” in a tone that left unsaid the words “and that’s OK” as well as “and you might just have to suck it up and deal.” I’m certainly aware of the irony of burdening her with all my expectations in an effort to help her avoid those of others. If she’s going to be her own person then I need to tread lightly lest I send her running into the Disney Princess section of Toys R Us and have her emerge covered tiara to toe in wee royal garb.

This has not, however, stopped me from conceiving of alternative options for her.

Obviously the surest way to get a kid interested in something is to, in some way, suggest that it is somehow “bad.” So merely suggesting princesses are dumb isn’t going to work. When I first got out of college, I was a substitute teacher for classes that ranged from 1st to 8th grade. When I was trying to correct the behavior of younger kids it wasn’t enough to tell them not to do something. You have to redirect their undesired behavior to something positive. So if one of your charges was getting into an argument with another kid you would break it up but then, say, walk them over to the bookshelf and have them pick out a book.

So if the dominant societal culture dictates my daughter is inevitably going to gravitate to women in unrealistic costumes with fanciful backstories who operate from positions of authority steeped in tradition…isn’t it possible I could interest her into comic book superheroes instead?

My plan was to acquire five appropriately iconic comic book covers featuring female super heroes and use them as art in our daughter’s room. My hope was that the imagery would carry with it a certain magisterial air that would seem an acceptable substitute for the elaborate sashes and gowns of princesses. And as she grew up, my daughter would inevitably have questions about these characters and we’d share their stories, discuss their heroics and, in doing so, gently reinforce the values of self-reliance, sacrifice and adventure – all of which seemed to run counter to princess culture. Eventually she would decide uh…for herself that superheroes were cool and princesses drool.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Scott, this all sounds kind of sneaky.” To which I would respond “Yes. Yes it does.”

Anyway, I realized early on that this wasn’t a perfect alternative. There’s plenty of problematic imagery – particularly when it comes to women – in comic books. So I came up with a list of traits that would help guide me to the responsible choices:

[Fair warning to the non-geeks in the audience: This next bit is going to get super-nerdy. If the last thing you saw involving someone with a cape was Phantom of the Opera now might be a good time to go get a drink from the bar or hit the bathroom.]

1. EACH CHARACTER SHOULD HAVE HER OWN IDENTITY AND NOT BE DERIVATIVE OF A MALE CHARACTER
Even though this would knock out some perfectly acceptable options – Batgirl, She-Hulk, Mary Marvel – it seemed to run counter to this whole exercise if the entire list suffered from Ms. Pac Man syndrome and my daughter equated female identity with little more than lipstick, false eyelashes, a beauty mark and a hair accessory. (As an aside, how many of you remembered that Ms. Pac Man had a mole?)

2. EASY DOES IT ON THE CLEAVAGE
Obviously, female superheroes are going to have boobs. And for uh…whatever reason it seems that a predominant number of them have large boobs. Clearly, for women who are predisposed to saving the Earth there is some kind of correlative genetic marker for large breasts. There didn’t seem to be much of a way around this but at least it could be managed. So I resolved to favor women who wore shirts, jackets, jumpsuits or perhaps battle armor. It also meant Power Girl wasn’t making the cut.

3. NO ONE WITH AN “AND THEN SHE WAS EVIL” PLOTLINE
It would have been great to put Jean Grey up on my daughter’s wall: a female hero whose greatest power derived from the use of her mind? Perfect! Up until the point where she turns evil, becomes Dark Phoenix and commits genocide by wiping out an entire planet.

4. PANTS ARE PREFERABLE TO NO PANTS
I felt we were doing our daughter a disservice if we suggested to her that the world at large is OK with a young woman who parades around in underpants and fishnets. We’d really just be setting her up for two possible careers: pop singer or magician’s assistant. I’m not saying either of those is bad, but it seems kind of limiting. So this meant Black Canary was out and so was Zatanna – who I think was an actual magician’s assistant at some point.

The corollary to this rule was that shorts were also acceptable so obviously the X-Men’s Jubilee was a possibility. Then again, I had to ask myself whether I wanted to endorse jean shorts as a fashion choice.

But when I got down to the business of making my list based on these rules, I found sticking to them was pretty much impossible. Even my wife thought I was being a little too restrictive. On the turning evil issue she said “I think it’s OK to have been evil at some point; there is an important lesson there. Everyone gets to make mistakes, no one is born perfect and we all get a shot at redemption and triumph.”

What I eventually realized was trying to shield my daughter from pantsless, bosomy, infrequently evil characters was going to prevent my daughter from figuring out why these rules were important all on her own. By creating a set of rules about what was OK I was working against my own efforts to instill in her a contrarian spirit. Or, as my friend Veronica put it, “Well behaved women rarely make history. This covers not wearing pants.”

So yes, there might not be Supergirl if there hadn’t been a Superman first but that doesn’t mean she’s any less dedicated to truth, justice and the American way. And I came around to the notion that it’s OK that Wonder Woman isn’t usually wearing pants because she inspires others to be strong, powerful women. And Buffy Summers saved the world a lot, even if she once had to kill her vampire boyfriend to do it. All three of them made the list.

Rounding out the top 5 were the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four and Elastigirl from The Incredibles. Both are mothers with a strong sense of family. I figured it was valuable to teach my daughter that moms are superheroes, too.

The act of making this list was what finally made me realize the problem I originally set out to solve didn’t need fixing. If we’re otherwise smart about how we raise our daughter then she won’t need her father to save her anymore than she’ll need a prince to do so. She’ll make her mind up all by herself. There’s plenty that’s problematic about princesses of the Disney variety, sure, but there’s also Princess Leia and Zena: Warrior Princess. And just as the pictures of the women we’ve chosen to hang on Abigail’s wall aren’t to be judged solely by their costumes so to are princesses to be judged by more than the color of their gowns.

Though I still think she’s going to be heartbroken when she finds out we won’t let her leave the house pantsless.