family

Seeing a Divided World Through the Eyes of My Teen

Although news, podcasts, blogs, and conversations with friends, family, and coworkers have led me to believe the country is at a breaking point through our divisions, distrust, and uncertainty, I see the tiniest hints of hope when I watch the world through the eyes of my fourteen-year-old and listen to the words he uses to describe it. Now, listen, I fully understand that he is being raised in a progressive bubble, but if you know me, I’d hope you know I’m not the type to preach with a clenched fist or expect my child to follow in line with all my beliefs. I do my best to present opposing opinions to stories we hear on the news, debate our perspectives and tell him he’s free to believe what he wants, even at the expense of him not loving Pink Floyd as much as I do. Recently, he told me he was motivated to clean his room after repeatedly stepping barefoot on some Connect Four pieces he had left lying around after playing with a classmate. He laughingly said, “Because of […]

From a Journal 23 Years Ago.

Recently I was asked to find a journal I kept when we met twenty-three years ago. In it, I found a passage in which I wrote about a dream I had awoken from. Twenty-three years ago! We had been dating for less than a month. The Key to a Happy Marriage In my dream, I sat with S. Morgan in first class on a transatlantic flight. For most of the flight, we sat in the silent peace of new love, only pausing to remark on an elderly couple sitting in front of us. We hoped that when we reached their age, we would look as they did and be as happy as they were. They looked like kids in love. They cuddled and sat with their arms around each other, regardless of whether the stillness hurt their old bones. Midway across the ocean, the plane started developing troubles, and it looked like we wouldn’t make it to the other side. It was a slow descent, giving us time to reflect on our short time together. We watched the couple kiss

On Grieving

After our son was born I called friends who already had kids and apologized to them for not being more excited for them when they became parents. I didn’t know until I saw our own son how awesome it was. How could I? I did the same after my father passed. I called friends who had already lost a parent and apologized for not being more sympathetic for them at the time. How could I have known? And then I became acutely aware of the grieving of others. A mention of a loss or a diagnosis stops time and puts me back in the moment when I heard the news. The news that changed things. While a smell can take your mind back to summer camp just a few words arranged in the right order can transport your heart back the same way. The day I heard the news. How I held it together for a few minutes and then cried on the shoulder of the first person I saw. I didn’t know her too well but she was older

Teaching Irony through Sarcasm

  I have the luxury of working weekends and being able to pick up our son from school most weekdays. I watch with joy as he bounces down the steps from his school happy to tell me all about the things he did during the day. Rarely does he come out upset. Never has he come out needing comfort. Until this week. I was waiting with the other parents as we stood around making fun our kids behind their backs… as we do. The doors opened and he came flying out full of wails and tears. He looked inconsolable. The other parents parted making a red carpet like path for him to have easy access to my welcoming arms. He collapsed to the sidewalk at my knees gasping for air between his breathless screams of agony. “Oh my son. What happened man?! What’s going on?!” I cried back to him. “I didn’t have time to finish my stress ball!!! My stress ball! I didn’t have time when the bell rang!!!” He cried out at what to me appeared to an

Avoiding the Dad Stereotype

Mr. Mom (1983) Directed by Stan Dragoti Shown: Michael Keaton It’s been nearly seven years that I became a dad.Seven years and I’ve done the best I could to avoid being the bumbling dad stereotype on tv shows. You know the one. He pours orange juice in his coffee and puts sticks of butter in their lunchboxes.I’m the modern dad.I wore the baby.I carried his diapers in my back pocket and bottles in my backpack.(Blue bottle = formula. Red = White Russian.)I went to Mommy and Me.He’s starting first grade and I’ve made it without knocking back the dad cause or erasing the gains my fellow dads have made.We changed Amazon Mom to Amazon Family!I’ve carried the flag well I hope.Except for that one time.I was tired. It was early.He was just beginning to make recognizable sounds.I was just learning to ignore him.We were rushing out the door for daycare and I was knocking things off my before takeoff checklist.Never rush a checklist.I was calling out the items from memory and he was finding his voice.It was white noise to

Rambling With Flashcards

We recently upped the ante on our nightly single sight word flashcard routine. After recognizing the word on the card before him the boy has to use that word in a sentence. At five and three quarters old (his description) the words these days are short and typically monosyllabic. We’re giving him things like BROWN and CAME and FUNNY and DOWN to read to us between bites during dinner. Sometimes his sentences turn into paragraphs that take us far from the given word and down a long stream of thoughts. But in the end he finds a way to tidy things up and use the word on the card before him. Does he begin with a theme or does he simply ramble his way through a thought until he finds us nearing the end of our attention span and then clean up the loose ends with the given word? His word was “DOWN”. “Um, after dinner and after I finish my words and my food and my milk and my applesauce and after I wash my hands and clean up

Time… According to a Child

     How amazing it must be to have no concept of time? How liberating. Plotting our sons growth alongside the chart of mankind’s evolution, he is close to understanding that as the sun settles near the horizon it’s time to get back to the cave. Walking upright? Check. Simple cave drawings? Check. Charting the Suns movement across the sky and breaking it into 24 equal increments? Hardly. Our five year old’s time thumps to the rhythm of his own internal combustion engine… and the beat of his imagination. Unless it’s a school day and his routine is orchestrated by our needs, he wakes when his body tells him he’s had enough sleep. It’s never the “groggy, rolling out of bed hesitant to start the day” look. His is the “I got exactly the amount of sleep by body needs to replenish the energy I lost on the previous day playing and doing kid stuff” look. It’s our job though to manipulate his clock. He has yet to fully comprehend that the numbers on the face represent the time of

National Adoption Month. Where Do Storks Come From?

“Father?” Said the almost five year old. “Listen, there is something I’ve been thinking about. You and I have been watching a lot of classic television programing lately. Shows like Tom and Jerry and Dumbo and I’ve noticed that in them, often a Stork drops off a baby to Moms and Dads.” “Yes?” I answer while thinking, “Here we go. It’s time to talk about his adoption story. Where’s Mom? It’s something her and I have had on our to-do list but just haven’t gotten to. Damn you MarioKart.” “So in these shows,” He continues. “The families always receive their babies from flying Storks. They are dropped from the moonlit sky and the little ones float in under a full parachute safely to land on the doorstep of their eager families. I’ve seen a Stork drop little elephants, giraffe and humans. All sorts of things. But what I’m wondering is this. Who brings the Storks?” “Uh, I’m not sure I follow?” “Well. A Stork flying around with a baby llama is quite a sight. Clearly that’s not the Storks child.

Future Daddy Blogger Support Group

The meetings are held in the basement of a church near an all-night donut shop. Although both are helpful, the location is more about the donuts than the man upstairs. The chairs are arranged in a circle. The donuts are placed on an end table in the middle. They are a focal point. The embers of a fire that never goes out. There are always more donuts. “It’s time to start the group.” The host says. “Thank you all so much for coming today. I see a few new faces and many familiar ones. Who wants to begin today? Tyler? How about you start?” Tyler was seated in the circle directly across from the host. Although he was a regular to the support group he was hard to remember. He had an unassuming disposition and talked in a hushed voice. The others leaned in when he spoke because he was barely heard over the buzz of the box fans. It’s not uncommon for the grown up kids of dad bloggers to shun the spotlight. Growing up online was enough. Tyler

His First Joke

For the first time in his life he has come up with something funny. Months later he still calls back to it. And it is funny.He’s had funny moments before. He’s pulled some physical gags and laughed at himself and then asked if it was silly. But this is his first joke. Sometime late summer the subject of a sweet dessert came up. He was asking for it and I didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t saying it right. His pronunciation was off. It didn’t make sense. It was something he got somewhere and I didn’t know what it was. At four he’s too young to have things in his life I’m not aware of. We both laughed (hysterically) as I made it into a game of twenty questions. He caught on to the bit and riffed with me. He was asking for something that sounded to me like “Fruit Myer”. “Is it cold?” “Yes!” He said laughing implying that of course it is served cold. “Is it in the refrigerator or the freezer?” “It’s in the freezer silly!”

My Son. My Chronological Yardstick

Every memorable event in my life that happened before the spring of 2010 is filed away in my brain with a five-year buffer. My mental calendar from the era before I had a child is ordered in half-decade increments.When did I graduate college? “I was done wearing flannel shirts by that time… mid to late 90s?” Since my son was born he has become a yardstick on which I measure time. Instead of just inches marked off on the door frame, I see months and the corresponding historical events. I look at his growth notches on the wall like a geologist sees the colors of a canyon. My brother was married the month our son’s adoption was official. June 2010. February 2011 he started scooting around the coffee table on his way to becoming bipedal. In addition to tagging my memory with his chronology, I’ve watched the evolution of mankind as he’s inched his way up my leg. His descent from the crib was akin to an early man deciding that a tree wasn’t such a great place to raise

What I Did Not Do During My Summer Vacation

I was on vacation during the month of July. I ceased all work related activities. I also didn’t… It was a blissful month away from the airport. I return to the cockpit tomorrow. I just hope they didn’t move any of the buttons around.

Captain Dad – I Called Maintenance Control for a Toy Helicopter

My work life and home life collided yesterday when my son complained that his toy Hess helicopter wasn’t working as it was supposed to. “My helicopter won’t fly anymore!” It never flew. The blades spun. It lit up. It made lots noise. But it never flew. In his world, it did though. And now it did not. The batteries were dead. Naturally, they died while we were in the car. Away from fresh batteries. I suggested maybe we should take it to the helicopter doctor. In hindsight… this wasn’t the best approach. Although I liked the sound of helicopter doctor and it sounded pretty damned cute when he said it, it got pretty old when he refused to do anything but go to the helicopter doctor. “I think maybe the doctor is not in today.” I said. “I want to go to the helicopter doctor.” “Actually, they are not accepting new patients at the moment. I called last week for Mommy’s helicopter.” “I want to go to the helicopter doctor now!” “There is no such thing as a helicopter doctor!

On Father’s Day

I used to give lip service on Father’s Day. Cards were sent and thanks were given and the love was spread around as abundantly and efficiently as I could spread it. But I’m not sure I really meant it. And then I became a Dad and realized that my life was no longer about me anymore and I began to appreciate the sacrifices my Father and stepfather accepted to raise me. They shaped the man and father that I am today. My buddy offered a simple line of advice before I became a dad. He, having already tread into this new world said, “It’s no longer about us anymore.” And it’s not. The time I give to myself or my wife is the time between all the times when my son is my first priority. I remember that line on those rushed days when I look down to the smiling boy holding my hand and see that he’s well fed and bathed and smells good and is comfortable and relaxed and I’ve not eaten, rested or had my own visit

The Beat Poets Taught Me How to Talk to a Four Year Old

Many days during my college decade were spent studying the Beat Poets and experimenting with stream-of-consciousness prose. We turned words cut from the newspapers into dialog and had nonsense talks over wine. We verbally riffed and let our talks ebb and flow on a course of their own often ending where they began… with a twist. Talking to a four-year-old takes me back to that time. Those late-night jams wired my brain to help me navigate most of my dialogs now. At least the ones I have with him. The child. With him, I know where our conversations start and how I want them to end… my job is to orchestrate the words to reach that desired crescendo. I take his words… cut them up and use them against him. All the while letting him think he has a say in things. He’s just providing the tempo. For me, it’s lots of verbal bait and switch. Subtle misdirection. Our breakfast conversation may start with him telling me how much he “Doesn’t like bagels! I will never eat them again!” With my

He Already Thinks He’s Smarter Than Me

He’s only four and he already thinks he’s smarter than I am. He’s learned how to give the look that says, “Seriously? I wasn’t born yesterday you know?” I give him the look back that says, “In the grand scheme of things… close enough.” He’s given me that looks twice in his life and they both happened last week. The first time he may have misinterpreted my amazed facial expression as defeat. I wasn’t as impressed with his problem-solving skills as I was in shock that at such an early age he already thinks I’m full of shit. The second time he gave me the look I was prepared and let him think he outsmarted me. I’m playing the long game. No need to sprint. “Well played son.” That is what my face said. But my mouth added, “Listen little man. From your very first day of life when I turned powdered formula into food through a science you can’t comprehend I’ve been smarter than you.” The first debate that arose this week revolved around the construction of a Thomas

On Fatherhood: Almost 40 With a 4 Year Old

How different his world is in 2014 than mine was when I was his age in 1978. This is the blessing of the late blooming father. Had I begun the child rearing phase of my life a decade or more ago things would be different. We could enjoy the Hunger Games together, we could both simultaneously suffer from Bieber Fever and I could have eaten all of his leftovers without worrying about calories. Not so when 35 years separates us. Now I can easily justify saying, “When I was your age.” “When I was your age, we called a thirty second video clip a commercial.” Will I be able to teach him to appreciate the things that made me who I am today or is he too far removed from my generation? Will the coming of age moments for me be relevant for him? Will the movies, books, video games and music mean anything now or will they be campy and ironic to him? I’ve begun compiling a list of media he will need to consume (and appreciate) as he

I Fear My Son Will Think I Don’t Read

I fear my son will think I don’t read… or listen to music… or vacuum since that task has been assigned to the robot. It’s been years since I bought a physical book and I can count the number of physical CD’s I’ve purchased in the last decade. I have neither of these things lying around as conversation starters for him to ask about. That being said, I read on my Kindle every day and spend hours around the house with my iPod and at least one earbud jammed in my skull. For all he knows though, I’m watching My Little Pony on the tablet or doing “the letter game” since that’s what a tablet is used for in his world. And for physical copies of music, I listen to vinyl with him since he likes to watch the turntable spin around. He probably thinks the evolution of media is from cassette to CD and then on to vinyl. I’m sure he assumes the retro Fisher Price turntable Target sells was just recently invented too. I’ve wondered how his world

Though We May Not Share Blood

Since his birth in 2010, I’ve wondered when we would start seeing our traits in him. Without the blood bond biological children share with their parents I’ve been anxious to see us in him in ways that must be distinctly learned.  Along those lines, I’ve also been anxious to uncover the surprises we will find as he matures. Will there be a gait, posture, or curiosity that is neither mom nor dad but then seconds later a stance or pose that is uniquely us? Like me, will he look foolish when he dances?  When he says “Okedokee” will I hear my Nana? One of my favorite scenes in the movie Jaws is when Captain Brody is sitting at the table with his young son stewing over how best to save Amity Beach from the killer shark. Lost in his thoughts he takes a drink from his glass and looks up to see his son do the same. Quietly, he continues with a few hand movements and watches his son mimic him. It’s a silent game of Simon Says at the dining room

It Puts the Lotion on the Skin or Possible Parenting Fail.

For a few years now (well, specifically since January 2010), I’ve been quoting a particular scene from a particular horror movie during a particular time in the post-bath pre-story time portion of my son’s evening. I realized today this could come back to haunt him in two possible ways. One… asylum. Two… a perfect flashback during retro movie night when he is in college, surrounded by his friends and peers. It’s the year 2030, and someone in his dorm bought a VHS player from a yard sale. Naturally, this is a perfect reason for a party. Retro movie night posters go up. Of course, they also have to buy an old TV because certainly no sets have coax inputs anymore. They search around the library and call on grandparents, looking for something to watch on this antique machine. Someone finds an 8-track cassette tape and shoves it in, almost breaking it. They find a copy of “Silence of the Lambs” still in the box. “It’s cool to see a picture of the movie before you watch it.” “The tracking lines

Eight Years Ago We Wed – Since Then, I Became an Adult

For years now (more than a decade of them) a friend and I have been playing the “who’s the first to become an adult game”. It started in college and was simply a game that would define the moment when you became a man. You entered adulthood when you bought frames for your posters or purchased a box spring for your mattress were common life-changing events of the time. As we aged, those moments became more mature scenarios like drafting a will, buying life insurance or having your first hernia operation. This summer when my wife and I took a trip abroad without our toddler I realized I had officially become a man. The moment I recognized I was helpless to the person whose life depended on me. Across the ocean and in capable hands he was safe and secure but still I appreciated at that moment what it means to have grown up. Having someone depend on you and allowing yourself to feel absolutely responsible for their safety and security. Eight years ago, I became a husband and was

Pacita Jugo Ladd… “Nana”

My Nana passed away on February 13th, surrounded by her family, after being diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks before. She passed very peacefully and kept her wit until the very end. Hours before, when people were coming in and out of her room, I said to her, “I think you, Susan, and I are the only sane ones in this bunch.” She replied, “I think you’re right, honey.” My Nana was many things to me over the years. She was a grandmother and a babysitter. She was a mentor and an advisor. She was a resource for travel tips and a great-grandmother to our son. Through it all, and especially as I grew mature enough to realize it, she was a friend. Our conversations, though split by a fifty-year spread, were always casual but meaningful. She would offer me suggestions on how to live my life and how to raise my son, and she did so as a peer—never with an air of authority. She kept that spicy Filipino side suppressed until necessary to quickly end a conversation.

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