“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.

Suffer the Children; The Congressional Fund for the Children of Closeted Bi-sexual and Homosexual Republicans

It's always the kids that suffer the most. Nobody thinks about them. Mom, stoic, a smile frozen to her face, bravely standing next to her husband during the press conference, even though racing through her mind is the terrorizing thought "did he at least practice safe sex?"

And the politician is surrounded by his children, proving that he is a man, a virile man, a man firmly planted in the biblical tradition of fruitfulness and multiplication. A fruity and mathematical man.

But what about the children? Do they ever join the congressional junkets to the Caribbean, where their fathers go to frolic friskily? Or to countries where the market for sex is so large, it is calculated into the gross national product? Do they ever get to fly through Minneapolis?

No, the children are left behind. Stuck at boarding schools, reading about their father in the newspapers, as one by one, their friends drop by their dorm rooms, confessing to having had their thigh or butt squeezed on a visit to the house, "which is why I just won't do another sleepover at your house," they say, adding, "nothing to do with you, dude. Your old man just gives me the creeps."

The children suffer.

Well, there is something you can do about it.

By contributing to The Congressional Fund for the Children of Closeted Bi-sexual and Homosexual Republicans, you will make it possible to send these deserving, long suffering kids to a mixed gender camp for two weeks in the summer.

Burdened by the family secrets all their lives, the kids will be able play games in the sunshine, sing around campfires, and most importantly, with the help of qualified professions learn that moral hypocrisy is not hereditary, it is an acquired behaviour. And that social scientists already have identified dozens of "hotspots" where the malady is rampant, and can be avoided. There is a treatment for it, and these suffering children will learn that they are not condemned by biology to live the lives of hypocrisy of their forebears.

We will work with those kids and teach that statistically, the longer you live a lie, the more likely it becomes that it will reach up and bite you in the rear. Or an even more sensitive spot.

Contribute, and ease the suffering inflicted on these children by a father whose adulterous sin is not loving too much, but too many, and not being specific about the gender they chose to lay with. Or get laid by. Or lay. Something like that.

All checks should be made out to The Congressional Fund for the Children of Closeted Bi-sexual and Homosexual Republicans; you may put my name in brackets, I'll see that it goes where it should.

Thank you, on behalf of the kids.

Holding Down the Fort

One result stemming from our wet and cool spring has been the ever-present challenge to entertain the kiddies indoors. My attention span is far too short to consider board games; I was forty before I learned that they weren’t spelled “bored” games. Indoor soccer is incompatible with a houseful of “chotchkies” (a Yiddish word for “fragile junk”). You can only dress the dog up in a “Who Let the Dogs Out” t-shirt so many times before the elusive charm of it wears off. What’s left?

Indoor “forts” are left. Admittedly, outdoor forts are a warm-weather diversion; the indoor variety can be a year-round activity.

I use the word ‘fort’ guardedly. To sidestep becoming aligned one way or the other with our militaristic pre-occupation of these recent days, I revert back to the late 1950’s meaning of the word, which was interchangeable with “hideout”. A hideout was somewhere we went to avoid being hassled by parents, who were forever bothering us about things like lunch and washing our hands. The very essence of a ‘hideout’ was that parents might have suspected where it was, but they didn’t know for sure.

A “hideout” became a fort when our parents discovered where we had built it, and intended to lay siege until we agreed to break for a tuna-fish sandwich and a glass of milk. Who knew about mercury back then; I’ve always felt that my own resistance was a matter of principle and not self-preservation.

Anyway, forts were one of the few remaining cards in my tattered parental miracle deck. And then it rained. And rained. And my wife Julie had some sort of meeting. And it was still raining. The kids, four-year old Sam and seven-year old Lily, kept looking at me with those “Daddy, I’m bored and I can’t entertain myself” eyes. I felt cornered; my resolve buckling.

So I told them to scour the house for blankets, and bring down sundry and un-sundry pillows. I moved the piano chair into the center of the living room, and as the rain beat a martial tune against the windows, I moved a chair from the dining room so that it was back to back with the piano chair. A few artfully arranged blankets, some rubber bands to secure the blankets, and we created a two-room hideout, with a small common area.

The kids were delighted. They spread some pillows inside, each bringing a book to read by flashlight and several trusted toys. As for me, I put the CD player on shuffle, stretched out on the couch, opened a book and sighed. I never read a page.

“You’re on my side!”

“Am not. And you have my toy!”

“Do not! You gave it me!”

“To play with, not to keep. Give it to me!”

I’m something of a connoisseur of pointless arguing, being on the School Committee, so I listened with some interest. The two siblings went on like this for a short while, and I waited anxiously for one or the other to toss out the ‘tie-breaker.’

It was Sam this time.

“Daddy, Lily is sitting on my side!”

Now, there are a number of ways a parent can respond to this sort of dilemma. Some would take down the fort and send the squabblers to their rooms. Some might hand them raincoats and ask them to play in the compost. Still others might find it a teachable moment, and work with them to resolve the conflict peacefully.

Then there is me. I moved five more chairs into the room, pulled comforters out of storage, and expanded their humble fort into a virtual condominium. They each ended up with three rooms, and a small common area. My living room looked like Bed and Bathroom Shop that had exploded, creating a multi-colored panorama of textiles, down, and sheets haphazardly arrayed.

I was pleased. So were the kids. For about fifteen minutes, we were both pleased. Then, they decided to watch thirty minutes of their allotted television time. Arthur trumps the berserk and unfettered creativity of desperate Dad. Happens all the time.

So I was left alone to consider what had transpired. I realized that I had, in a microcosm, built my own little 40B project, my own sprawling uber-development. I had filled all the available space, on speculation. Not for money, but in the hope that my kids would stay entertained… for at least a chapter or two. Something better than money.

Unlike the results of speculative development, though, I was able to clean up, and restore my living room to its original, if cluttered, presentation. And in the den, my kids watched Arthur, subconsciously trusting that there will always be natural places nearby for them to explore, and understand, and experience. I know that probably won’t be the case and that we are literally losing ground every day because of greed and apathy, and a profound loss of communal reverence. Once the land is gone, it is gone; what happens is a sort of modern day alchemy that turns land into gold for a few, creates a municipal burden for the rest, and sheds the natural history of the area, bird by bird, bush by bush, acre by acre.

It’s a lot harder to hold the fort than it used to be, I guess. Still, that sounds like a lousy excuse to give my kids when they ask me these kinds of questions in a few years.

A Mighty Wind

Well, my newly-minted five-year old son Sammy floored me with a question the other day. Usually, I can be pretty unflappable about his relentless quest for knowledge and understanding but this one about knocked me flat.

“Dad,” he asked. “Does God break wind?” That isn’t exactly how he asked me, but you get the idea. After pausing to regain my balance, I responded by telling him that if we were made in the image of God, then I suppose you could say that breaking wind was invented by God. And I might have mentioned something about thunderstorms, I just don’t remember. You can laugh, but how many of you would have done any better?

Sammy has been really exploring the idea of a higher power, and doing so in that delightful combination of seriousness and absurdity so characteristic of fiver year olds. The other day, lugging his birthday-present-new, monogrammed & overstuffed pilot’s case up the stairs, he was calling out for assistance; “help me, God, help me!” Not for Dad, but for God.

He wants to know about God’s family. “Does God have any sisters or brothers?” then he looks at his eight-year bold sister Lily, and I suspect he’s hoping the answer is no. He wants to know some of the specifics of God’s working day. “Is God everywhere at once? Even in Florida? Even at Montessori?”

The wife and I come two different spiritual persuasions. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sammy, who is really all about understanding what he has in common with God. Do they like the same foods? The same baseball teams (Red Sox and the Marlins)? The same kind of candy?

I think the boy is onto something. Me, I worry that mankind has gone too far around the bend to warrant divine intervention anymore. We kill in the name of God, hate in the name of the higher power. We thank God for the ability to make obscene profits and don’t feel called to share our good fortune with others. We believe that God has made us stewards of the environment, so we turn up the heat like the climate was a global hotpot. We really believe that there is a line drawn in the cosmos by God where the love between two human beings can be parsed and parceled out based on gender and preference. But not Sammy. He knows love when he sees it, and love is what counts to him. I know, because a half-dozen times a day, he grabs me and hugs me and tells me he loves me.

His construct of God allows for the leaving of treasures on the sidewalk for him to find as we walk home from school. Sammy’s God is part buddy, part ever-present, and can be found in the dancing greeting of his dog Rufous when we get home. Sammy knows Rufous is getting a little older, and can conceive of a time when Rufous will “go to God.”

“I will be very sad that day, very sad,” he tells me. He pauses, shaking his head sadly at the thought of the loss. And then, he tugs on my sweater and says “Dad, after that happens, can we get another dog and a hamster?” He doesn’t sweat it; he knows the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, and can therefore be expected to giveth again. As an adult, I do sweat it, because I never know if at any part of the deal I will deserveth.

Sammy is teaching me about God. He teaches me to find the joy in each new discovery, to find the newness in each experience. He teaches me to listen, to play, to respect the process of learning and growing. Above all, Sammy teaches me about the sanctity of questions, of faith.
And for my wife and I, we have come to realize that Sammy and Lily are both our prayers, and God’s response to our prayers.

So here we are, the 21st century family, all under one roof. Christian and Jew, neo-pagan and Buddhist student, spiritual explorers and meditators, participants in men’s and women’s spirituality groups; trying to find out what the rules are and live them fully.

Did I just hear thunder?

The Scarecrow's Reverie

These are the dog days of summer, which around here often means that there are two dogs serially marking one of Sam’s neglected toys in the backyard. I’m not sure I really understand this aspect of doggie behavior; the two dogs are friends, and they take turns marking the toy.

They each sniff gingerly at the other’s nether areas before taking their turn, as if something could have possibly changed in the last thirty seconds. Four and a half year old Sam, of course, is laughing too much to tell me what they are doing until they have finished.

It is muggy, and hot, and it rains every afternoon, right around the time I have stuffed the car with needed beach supplies and have inserted the key into the ignition. I stare through the rain-splattered windshield, listening to the kids yell in unison “where are we going now, Daddy?” I don’t have the heart to tell them the truth, that I have exhausted all options outside of the house. It is simply too damned hot and muggy for me.

As a kid, I didn’t really experience these kinds of summers, petroleum-fueled and artificially inflamed. My summers started with cool and foggy mornings, and grew warmer gradually, civilly. Later, as a young man noticing the changes taking place in the climate and being more engaged in preserving the environment, I always suspected there would be a special place in hell waiting for those who sustain Global Warming, the ones who torture good science and profit by the misery of others. I’d like to think the head of the beast is in D.C., but I know the tail and rationale extends deep into our culture’s values.

Still, while Nero pumps oil, we must persevere, and that means getting the kids out and exercised. At the recent Homecoming Family Day held at Atkinson Common, we had another one of those “hey listen to what my kid said” moments, which I share with you modestly. Don’t be surprised; if Arnold Schwarznegger can be Governor of California, then I can be modest.

Hungry, Sam and seven and a half year old Lily waited on line at the food table for about forty minutes. The kids came back to the table staffed by my in-laws, the Forneys (peaceful play) with empty hamburger buns and a bag of potato chips in each happy little hand. Sam, our four and a half year old, opened the bag and started nibbling the bun.

For many years, as the only non-meat eater at family barbecues, I would take potato chips and place them between the slices of a bun, sort of a “chip sandwich”. I shared this with Sam, who with the wonderful abandon of childhood immediately created one. Within seconds, he was experiencing the singular wonder of crunching chips embedded in soft, doughy bread. I returned to talking with the grownups.

A few minutes later, there was a tug on my t-shirt. It was Sam, and he beckoned me closer, so I leaned in. “Dad,” he said, mouth brimming with chips and roll, “you’re a genius.”

Well. I beamed. I didn’t tell him that I could put him in touch with many people who would disagree, and didn’t tell him I wasn’t. I didn’t qualify it in any way. I told him that I loved him. And not because he believes my culinary improvisation makes me a Mensa candidate. I did it because he is my son, and I love him; it is what fathers are supposed to do.

He will figure out soon enough where I stand on I.Q. spectrum, or sit. Or even recline sleepily. He’ll learn that there are many different types of smarts, and just as many types of stupids. He will learn, in fact, that a smart can become a stupid pretty quickly, although going the other way happens much less often, and is much more difficult to accomplish.

He’ll learn that being too smart can be a problem; how big a problem being too stupid is always depends on where you are on the food chain. He may learn that those wallowing in the waters of stupidity are often over-represented in political life, and tend to be under-represented in community life. He will learn that as you get older and open your mouth less and your ears more, you can get smarter.

Maybe he will even learn these things: one of the smartest things you can do is love your family. He may learn it is smart to love your community, to ask questions of power, to listen deeply, to respect elders, to respect the land and the water and the air.

All that may come. For now, Sam already knows two important things, that his Dad is a genius, and that it is stupid to throw a basketball at a skunk. The rest is a piece of cake.