“The Past Ain't What It Used To Be”

I overheard a very enlightening conversation between two six-year olds the other day.

“I knew what 11 plus 11 was when I was even in my Mommy’s belly,” said the girl.

“Well, I did, too,” retorted the boy.

“So? What is it?” challenged the girl.

After a moment of not so subtle calculation, the inevitable reply was made.

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

These kinds of conversations are happening all the time. They are like the barely audible hum of crickets and grasshoppers on a hot September day. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to hear them, otherwise they are simply background noise, filtered out by busy-ness and the need to be somewhere else.

My eight-year old son, Sam, has an extraordinarily lovely relationship with his friend, H.J. They were both born in the same hospital, several months apart, and were both delivered by the ob/gyn.

Because of this, and the tremendous value they place on their friendship- they still hug when they see each other, and will often hook arms when they are walking together- they have their own creation myth.

They have agreed that before they were born, they were floating together out in space, playing just as they do know. When it was Sam's turn to be born, he told H.J. which hospital he was going to be born in, and who the doctor was; H.J. took note of this, and when the next opportunity came along, took the delivery shuttle down to Beverly Hospital, where, three years later, these two old souls connived to reconnect and continue their lifetime playdate.

Between the insistent progress of science and boundless urgency of metaphysical inquiry, I can’t say for sure that these memories aren’t real. They are for these six-year olds, my son and H.J.

I can’t remember much of my time spent in utero, but I’m sure that’s just because it was during the fifties, and there wasn’t all that much worth remembering. I’ve always had an affinity for jazz and rock and roll, and assumed that is because it was music I was exposed to before my public debut.

Actually, these days, I spend more time worrying about my post-uterine memories than trying to channel any possible exposure I might have had to “Your Show of Shows” before I was born.

These kids give me hope.

I think we all get simply saturated with all the stuff there is to remember. It isn’t like you can zero out the old memory account, and start adding new ones. Perhaps that is why I can remember my phone number from 1959 (Ludlow 3 9395) but can’t for the life of me remember the phone number in the office next to the classroom I teach in.

I can sit watching the sunset on a summer day in the Catskills, somewhere around 1962, and watch the deer slowly emerge from the woods and blend into the field we played in all day (this was, of course, before the invention of deer ticks), and smile as the last rays of the sun touch my face. But when someone catches me on the street and praises the column I wrote last week, I can’t remember what the topic was. I’m stuffed full of memories.

I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation, but I find it hard to believe that my brain has storage space for more than one lifetime of recollections. Then again, in a previous life, perhaps I was a snake. Snakes probably don’t have a lot of actual memories.

“Well, I can remember eating that warthog back in ‘97. Took me six months to digest him. Oh, and I could never forget that reticulated python, the one with the great curves.” Ya think?

But you see that’s just the point. These wonderful, creative kids don’t have to think about it- they imagine it, and it just is. It appears to them as if cut out of whole cloth, real and tangible. Truth is relative when you imagine in full color.

I can remember when one of the only TV shows that broadcast in color was, of course, Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color.” And I remember sucking up to a kid in school I didn’t really like, just hoping to get invited to his house to see something, anything on a color television. He was the only kid in the neighborhood whose parents had one. And they didn’t even keep it in their bedroom.

I didn’t know that “The Wizard of Oz” even had a color sequence in it until I was 14. But it didn’t matter, because then, like know, I was lucky enough to imagine in all the hues of the rainbow.

Math facts in utero. I would have thought that biology would be a more logical subject. Then again, try talking logic with a seven-year old.

Bring'em All Home

If you can watch this and still believe that we what are doing in the Middle East is the best way to waste American and Iraqi lives, g'wan and enlist, or take your kids down and sign them up.

If you can watch this without crying, more power to you. We need stoics in this country. Too many equivocators, hampered by morality and ethics.

But the 90% of you who break into tears like me when you watch this; we gotta get our fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and friends, and friends of friends the hell out of Iraq, the sooner the better. Honor the sacrifices made by our armed forces by ensuring we've learned the lessons of Viet Nam.

Daddy's Home!

Rainy Days and Mondays

I used to really love rainy days; some, I still so. As the primary source of entertainment for my two progeny, four-year old Sam and seven-year old Lily, rainy days now come bearing a great burden.

Take away daytime options lime the wading pool, the walks at Maudsley and the beach, Plum Island, and I find myself claustrophobically short on options. In fact, all that is left is to entertain them myself, to try to do something educational with them. I must avoid falling into the trap of video marathons, achieving toxic levels of sugar through multiple ice cream snacks, reinstating kiddie naps, and other potential acts of avoidance.

I always embark on these wettish days with the best of intentions. I ponder the family calendar, hoping to find something scrawled in, like “puppet making at the library”, or “play date with Algernon.” On a good rainy day, I find something. On most rainy days, I don’t. I look at the workbooks, neatly piled on shelf, unused; and I immediately search for other books to read to the kids. But they are on to me.

“Come on Sam, I’d like to read this book to you.”

He eyes me suspiciously. I ignore it.

“Come on up here on the couch. It’s a book about a mouse and a motorcycle.”

He wanders over, pouting.

“OK, Dad, but you have to sit up.”

“Why do I have to sit up?”

“Because when you lay down to read to me you always fall asleep.”

Busted. So I sit up and read to him. I still start nodding off; each time I do Sam pulls on my beard or jerks the book out of my hand. It is something like torture.

Lily meanwhile busies herself in her room. Occasionally, she calls out, asking me to help spell a word. When she has finished her project, she brings it downstairs to show me. It is a card, hand-drawn, for a friend who lost her brother. There is a beautiful butterfly, and flowers, and the word “Tommy” on the card. I am very moved by her sensitivity; and I know that our friend will be as well. The card is for a friend of ours, Angela, who lost her much beloved brother Tommy on 9/11. Kids manage to really cut through to exactly what is important, and Lily has done so.

We are off to the library, where the kids are delightfully entertained by a woman who teaches them movement songs and nursery rhymes. Thirty minutes fly by, and despite my calling for encores and holding up a lighter, it is over too soon, and we head back to Camp Damp in the rain.

When we arrive, the kids plant themselves in front of SHREK and I take orders for lunch. We have a little ritual about summer lunch, a little duet we do.

“Hey guys, what would you like to eat?”

“What is there?”

“Same as yesterday.”

“What was for lunch yesterday?”

“Well, PB &J…”

A chorus of “yuck.”

“What about grilled cheese?”

Lily is unrestrained in her response.

“YES!”

“Sammy, do you want grilled cheese?”

Of course not.

“I want eggs.” Of course he does.

So I retreat to the kitchen, Chef Daddy, and labor over the hot stove. My first effort at grilled cheese is a failure; apparently I cannot really labor over e-mail at the same time as I am cooking. Finally, though, as the aromatic smell of burnt bread wafts through the house, lunch is ready.

Lily is not enthusiastic. After nibbling a quarter of the sandwich, she confesses she isn’t really hungry. Sam, after stabbing his eggs repeatedly with a fork, echoes his sister. I sigh, and grant their request to leave the table. Rufous, our dog, and I split the kids’ lunch.

A half-hour later, the kids return to the kitchen.

“We’re hungry.”

Without showing the slightest exasperation, I ask them what they’d like. Sam would like a grilled cheese sandwich, and of course Lily insists on eggs. I make them without complaint, this time not even burning the first grilled cheese sandwich.

Not 5 minutes later, the two additional lunches sulk on the counter-top, abandoned by the kids (again). After staring at the woebegone eggs & sandwich for a few more minutes, the dog and I split the leftovers. And as if the lunch debacle isn't enough to result in Nutritional Probation, when my wife gets home around five, she discovers Sam hiding under the dining room table, stuffing fistfuls of Goldfish into his mouth. When she tries to extricate him, he scuttles away, a trick we agree he has picked up from our dog, whose obvious willingness to eat anything makes him the most-fed member of the household.

And so, Chef Daddy is busted. Sure, I make nutritious meals for the kids, carrots and eggs and calcium and fruits. The problem is, they don’t eat them. The secondary problem is that the dog and I then eat them. And the tertiary problem is that both the dog and I need to lose weight. Weightwatchers does not make doggie low cal meals.

I figure the dog is on his own.