The Dark Night Rises (or, In Case of Emergency)

Spoiler alert: This post is not about Batman or Bane or Catwoman or Christopher Nolan’s elaborate, liberal conspiracy to turn the electorate against Mitt Romney through subliminal messaging in a pop culture medium (the man himself is perfectly capable all on his own).

But I’ve gotta try to get eyeballs somehow, right?

Sidenote: We’ve been watching a lot of Rocky and Bullwinkle with the Doozer lately, hence the double title. I’m currently obsessed with this device where they tease the next segment of the serialized story with two alternate (and often pun-filled) titles. Just from a writing standpoint it’s impressive, there are three in an episode and each season is like 40 episodes and I’m terrible at math, so I’m not going to try and figure out that number, but it seems to me it’s pretty large.

The second half of the title is perhaps the more accurate and apt message as I encountered a rite of passage in parenthood that I had previously not even fathomed: I had to take the Doozer to the emergency room in the middle of the night. On a Saturday. He’s fine now (was then, even, after antibiotics and ear drops), so it’s not a terribly dark or sad story. Of course, I’m still upset about all the sleep I lost, but I suppose that’s a separate issue.

He’d gone to bed as normal. But a few hours later, he was crying out. At first, we thought it was a nightmare. But the wife went in to comfort him and discovered him writhing around in pain, complaining about a pain in his ear. It’s important to note here that the kid never complains about anything, any kind of pain or ailment. When he had an ear infection a few months ago, he never even mentioned it. When the doctor finally checked out his ear, she was amazed he hadn’t complained about it more—it looked that bad in there.

So obviously this was a red flag. We gave him Children’s Tylenol (drugging kids is the best, isn’t it?) and encouraged him to try and go back to sleep. But every time he laid down for any length of time, he was squirming and crying again. We mentioned the hospital and he very calmly hopped out of bed and headed for the stairs as though this was a common occurrence. His nonchalant behavior made us question the severity of the situation. But in the end, we could not deny that he was uncomfortable and not going back to sleep.

So we went to the hospital. And the adventure began.

And yes, I mean adventure. Because that’s how he treated it. The hospital was approximately a 3-minute drive from the house, but along the way, the Doozer marveled at all the lights everywhere (porch lights, etc.). Being out this late at night was a novelty and he was savoring it.

We got to the hospital and checked in. The Doozer’s eyes were wide, taking it all in. We were sent to a small waiting room where Judge Judy was playing on a giant flatscreen on the wall. The Doozer was mesmerized. I’m assuming just by the TV, as the pathetic “case” of the episode—and the inbred yokels engaged in the legal shenanigans—couldn’t hold anybody’s interest.

I kept asking how he was doing. He was acting fine, more than fine. Active, alert, interested. Intrigued. Excited almost. Which started to bother me. Because I could be home sleeping.

At the same time, it’s hard not to find the whole thing nerve-wracking. Even if your kid is acting normal, not bleeding profusely or unconscious or anything, visiting the hospital is serious. He could be really sick. You don’t know. There’s no roadmap for this thing. The tiniest ailment could become the biggest calamity. You just don’t know. And if you’re not paranoid as a parent, then I don’t think you’re paying attention.

Also, there’s germs everywhere, right? Now, I’m not the biggest germaphobe, but it is a hospital. With disease everywhere. And I’ve now brought a child into this pestilence-filled den of seething decay. Everywhere he sits, everything he touches, I just keep thinking he’s going to leave this place in worse shape than when he arrived.

Although, there was not a lot of obvious germ-spewing going on around us. It was surprisingly quiet. One would think Saturday at midnight (“Saturday midnight . . . memories of this night are extremely hazy”) would be primetime for an ER freak show. But it wasn’t. No escaped lunatics, drunken morons, or shooting victims anywhere to be seen.

Though I am pretty sure there was a prostitute in an adjacent room.

The next few hours passed in a sleep-deprived blur and a running dialogue that consisted of “What’s that?” repeated ad nauseum by the Doozer, followed by my response of “Don’t touch that.” Eventually, he said, “I want to go home now.” Oh, really, I thought. Well, it’s a little late for that, pal. This is your doing.

Wait, I almost forgot. The popsicle. Sometime around 2, 2:30 in the morning, after the Doozer and I had spent an inordinate amount of time waiting around an exam room (not to mention fielding dozens of questions from him on the eye maladies depicted on a graphic poster on the wall), a nurse or doctor (maybe nurse, I’m sorry, I was very tired) brings in an orange popsicle and shows it to him, then, then, almost as an afterthought, turns to me and asks if it’s okay.

Thanks. Thanks for that.

It was a double popsicle and so we split it. Part of his fell on the floor and I had to spend the next several minutes talking him down off the ledge. Because we don’t eat anything off the floor. Especially the floor of a hospital exam room. A little while later, he turned to me.

“I didn’t know they had popsicles at the hospital.”

Yeah, yeah. Neither did I. And I can see the wheels spinning in his head, I can see the excitement in his eyes. Hospital = popsicles. This place is awesome! When can we go back?

And sure enough, the next day at dinner, he begins to reminisce about the grand adventure.

“Dada, remember when we went to the hospital that time?”

“Yes.”

“That was fun.”

Right. And I can’t wait until we get to go back. Good times.

Unfortunate Side Effects

There was an incident recently that some people might find flattering, but I had the opposite reaction. An apparently incompetent grocery store clerk questioned my driver’s license. Didn’t believe it was real. That there was no way I was the person in the photo.

One of the things that simply floored me was that anyone could look at me and see anything but what I actually am now, the thing I see every day in the mirror:

An old man.

Old. Out of shape. Tired. Exhausted. All the time.

I’m an old man. It’s true. Who is that in the mirror? No grey hairs yet, though I can sense them. They’re coming. I know. They’re in the post, as the saying goes.

It wasn’t always this way. But kids do this to you. They literally suck the life out of you. It starts almost immediately, this transference of energy and power and vitality. Now there’s the two of them and so the soul-sucking has been even more amplified.

The wife and I stare at each other and wonder what happened. We used to be fun, right? We had energy and vivacity. We used to do stuff.

But then we had kids. And between a 3-and-a-half-year-old and a 4-month-old, I have nothing left. I’m prematurely old. The man in the mirror is no longer recognizable to me.

I need to get in shape. Because otherwise, they’re going to kill me. No, really. They’re going to kill me. Some people train for marathons or the Tough Mudder or whatever. I need to train in order to not drop dead just playing with my kids in the yard.

Kids keep you young. That’s a thing I’ve heard. I don’t know why anyone would ever say this. I don’t know what it means. Makes no sense to me. Because what they really do is make you old.

And it’s not just the energy or whatever. It’s their experience of the world. It’s watching the Doozer slide his fingers across the screen of my laptop and expecting some kind of result. It seems like a decently modern machine to me, but apparently it is already ancient. He picked this up from using his grandfather’s Kindle. Which I still don’t know how to work.

It’s our own fault, too. For instance, we don’t currently have a stereo. We have music on the computer and so the Doozer is of the opinion that’s where music comes from. I’m not sure he’s ever even seen a stereo. This is kind of wrong. We need to rectify this.

Then I look at the baby, the Doozer’s Little Brother, and think about the world he’ll grow up in. And it’s very different than the one I inhabited. Not so long ago.

Just watching them makes me tired. I want to sit down, I want to take a nap. Which is ironic, because they are children and yet, they are not sleeping. They are not taking a nap. Even though that is what children are meant to do, nap. Napping was invented for children. I think.

Both of them are just on, all the time. So open and full of curiosity. And wonder. Makes me feel more jaded and cynical, like I have been around forever, for too long, so nothing excites me anymore. As opposed to infectious, which I think it’s supposed to be.

Kids don’t keep you young. They are sent here to destroy you. Beware.

In Memory of Maurice Sendak

One of the great things about parenthood is the opportunity to share magical, meaningful things from your own childhood with your kids. Be it certain books or Star Wars action figures or favorite animated movies. And witnessing that joy of discovery in their face, that’s a pretty amazing feeling. It really brings you together.

For a while now, we’ve been reading Where the Wild Things Are to the Doozer. Like pretty much every person who grew up after it was published in 1963, it was easily one of my favorite books as a kid. It’s also not one of those things you revisit as an adult and wonder why you liked it in the first place—it holds up. (And Spike Jonze’s movie is pretty amazing, too, if very, very strange.)

It’s become a favorite in our house now, a permanent part of the reading rotation. The Doozer has grown fascinated by the characters in the book, the details that define them, the kind of hair they have, whether they have horns or not, if they have sharp, scary teeth. And again, it holds up. My experience of it is different today and, if anything, it’s even more brilliant now.

But I do have a complaint. And this may not necessarily be about the book or its author, the wonderful, recently departed Mr. Sendak—because honestly, it seems a bit unfair to blame him for my son’s reaction to the book—but I have a complaint. And it’s this:

This book is impossible to properly explain to a 3 ½-year-old.

There have been countless readings of this book where the Doozer has simply sat rapt, enjoyed the story, and kept his mouth shut. But those days appear to be behind us. Now, there are questions. What seems like an endless stream of them. Questions, questions, questions.

So we’re at this phase now.

And it comes out now on a regular basis when reading certain children’s books which are a bit more conceptual, or abstract, than others. (I’m looking at you, There’s a Monster At the End of This Book.) And Where The Wild Things Are is a prime example. I mean, here’s this beautifully illustrated, very appealing, and clever little book, and yet, and yet, at its center, there is a very confusing conceit (at least when it comes to explaining it to a child).

What happens to Max’s room? Where is his mom? Where is his dinner? Where does the boat come from?

I mean, I get it. The wife gets it. We're not dumb. But how do you explain it? Again, it’s conceptual. Abstract. These are not easy ideas to put across with a child.

So thanks for that, Mr. Sendak. (And for your wonderful, wonderful book, don’t get me wrong. We don’t have one without the other and I am well aware of that.)

The question phase is new. But already kind of astounding. Reading another book, there's a picture of fire and smoke. What’s that? the kid asks. It’s smoke, I reply. And go to turn the page. But, no, no. He stops me. He flips the page back. Dada, I have one more question.

I don’t understand. Fire = smoke. How is there a follow-up question?

His question is about the color of the smoke. It looks different from smoke he’s seen in other pictures. This confuses him. Why isn’t all smoke the same color he seems to be asking?

And how does one go about answering that question exactly?

At least that's a relatively easy one. For the others, thankfully, there are the Interwebs. What did parents ever do without the Google?

Things I’ve Learned From Being a Parent #167: A Brief Guide to Extricating Your Child From a Party

As summer kicks into gear, we’ve found ourselves traveling as a family to a variety of functions, such as barbecues, birthdays, and graduation parties. And there are many challenges inherent in such an excursion—honestly, in leaving the house anytime for any reason, but I digress—though one particular challenge we routinely face is the exodus from the party. Convincing a child to leave and return home is often an exercise in abject futility and simultaneously a massive power struggle.

Here are some things we’ve gleaned from our recent experiences:

• Plan ahead. Like an hour or two before you want to leave. Start seeding the idea. It’s no longer you and your spouse, on the same page, ready to leave at the same time. You are not on the same page, you may never be on the same page with this one. Start a countdown. And just keep reminding them of it every few minutes. Because they will have completely forgotten what you talked about mere minutes before.
• Come up with convincing excuses. Have your stories worked out. Remember going out in high school, maybe with a sibling, maybe with a friend, and you’d been doing something you shouldn’t be (or were expressly forbidden from doing) and you were going to be home late and you needed to have a reasonable explanation that needed to match up with your friend’s/sibling’s version of events, lest there be later conversation and fact-checking done between the adults in question? It’s kind of like that. But with a child. He’s still like a detective, he will ferret out the inconsistencies and nail you for them. Don’t let him.
• Enticements, cajoling, flat-out bribery are not out of the question. But they should not be your go-to options.
• Children are not reasonable. Remember this. This is key. You can’t reason with them the way you would with an adult. Absolutely not going to happen. So don’t waste your time.
• And don’t use their sibling as a reason for leaving, in any way. This will only further enrage them.
• Sidenote: Maybe just go someplace that isn’t fun to begin with. That’s another option.
• Paint the other kids at the party as bad, somehow. Because they are. Yes, take the opportunity to sell out someone else’s child for your own selfish ends. Who will know?
• Steel yourself for a scene. Often you can’t really prepare yourself. But you do not want to be seen screaming at your kid—or possibly worse, crying—in front of all these people. You want to remain reasonable and maintain the appearance of composure. At all costs.
• Sharpen your negotiation skills. Don’t be fooled by him. He’s going to manipulate you. Don’t collapse like a house of cards. Nobody wants to see that.

Of course, this is not a foolproof approach. The other thing you need to learn is the ability to improvise and adapt. The dynamics will shift and the kid will wriggle out of situations or traps you construct (verbally, physically, etc.). Easily. So you need to be on your toes. And you need to work in tandem. You and your significant other need to be on the same page and sometimes it will actually take both of you working together to outwit and outmaneuver the pint-sized terrorist who will pull out all the stops to defeat you.

This is actually a philosophy you could apply in almost any situation of life with a toddler. Maybe be prepared is the best suggestion. And not only for success. But also failure. Because it is inevitable. If you can chalk up more victories than defeats, you’re getting somewhere. Yes, I’m advocating keeping score against your child.

It might be the only way to survive the whole ordeal.

Brothers Gotta Hug

So, we have kids now. Plural. Two of them. One could say that before this we were just a couple who had a kid. Now, we’re more likely to be referred to as a family. Many people in our life now refer to “the boys.” And sometimes, for a moment, I have to stop and think, The boys? Who are they? Who are they talking about exactly?

Oh, right. Our kids. The boys.

Being a parent (at least in the early stages) reminds me of that saying about not being able to see the forest for the trees. It’s easy to get absorbed by the minutiae and routine of parenting, the dressing, feeding, cleaning, entertaining, consoling, diapering, wiping, cajoling of your children. As a result, you don’t see what’s really going on. And it’s very easy to miss the big picture.

You’re a family now. You created these bizarre little creatures, brought them into this world, and let them loose. Which is kinda, pretty amazing, if you think about it. They are not just vomit, pee, and poop machines that you have to spend all your time managing (although it can seem like this sometimes). They are actual human beings. With personalities. And now there are two of them.

Lately, I’ve begun to notice how our three-month-old stares intently at the Doozer. Studies him. I mean, he is utterly fascinated by the kid. And truth be told, he’s a pretty interesting character and we tend to watch him a lot ourselves. Of course, often he needs to be watched, so he doesn’t crush Little Brother in a well-meaning, but far-too-aggressive hug, or so that he doesn’t try to scale the bookcase in the living room, Everest-style. But it dawned on me recently what I’m really watching.

Bonding. These two kids are now in this relationship with each other that’s going to last their whole lives. Sure, they’ll get mad at each other, they’ll fight, they might not talk sometimes, sometimes possibly for a long time, but they are bonded. They are connected. They cannot escape each other, no matter how much they may want to.

These things are not always obvious. You don’t always know that it’s happening. Again, you’re just in it, right there in it, and life is happening and it’s sort of hurtling by. You can’t slow down time. It just keeps accelerating. Faster and faster.

I won’t go on and on about the miracle of life or anything like that, but yes, the experience of creating and shaping little lives is pretty amazing. Amazing, mostly, because we are simply allowed to do it. But there’s something in them both, something that is us and not really us. We can play them music and show them movies and talk to them and read great books, try to shape them into miniature versions of us. But they are their own people, too. They have their own personalities. 

Sure, it’s a reflection of us and how we parent. But it’s them, too. It can seem foreign sometimes. We don’t know where the Doozer gets the stuff that comes out of his mouth sometimes. We’d like to pat ourselves on the back and say it’s the result of having such incredible, smart, interesting, talented, kind parents. But that can’t be it. I mean, entirely.

Things the Doozer has said lately, unprompted, about Little Brother:



“I really like being in love with him.”

“He is the cutest baby in the whole world.”

“When you get bigger, you can eat coffee cake, too!” 

“I noticed he needed some toys to play with.”

Of course, these sentiments are often accompanied by a generous physical display from the Doozer which could easily cause, without intervention, suffocation of the baby. He has learned to love his brother, but he has not yet grasped the immense weight difference between the two of them.

This is happening. Right now. As we speak. It’s easy to fail to notice. It’s good to think of Ferris Bueller’s advice: If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

And I don’t want to miss a minute of it.

The Continuing (and Apparently Never-ending) Adventures of Lightning McQueen

Have you seen Cars 2? I have. A lot.

No, really. A lot. Though, let me rephrase that. I’ve seen parts of Cars 2 many times. Many, many times. I’ve seen parts of it only once. There are still other parts that I have never seen. Because the Doozer has devised a completely new (and honestly, whack job) manner in which to view a movie.

In pieces. Out of order. The climactic showdown, followed by the first race. The end of Act 1 and then the beginning of Act 3. The part with the bomb. And the part with the bomb again. It’s like a Dadaist reimagining of a Pixar movie. And it’s bizarre.

But there’s something I’ve learned. Kids fixate. Kids obsess. Kids develop deep, abiding affections for routine and repetition. They like what they like and they like it a lot. And they must experience it over and over and over again.

Is it possible to have the Beatles ruined for you? I recently asked the wife, after the Doozer forced us to hear the one-two punch of “Drive My Car” and “Ticket to Ride” for something like the zillionth time. Wait, sorry, “Ticket to Ride” and then “Drive My Car.” That’s the correct order. According to our son.

The weirdest part about the Doozer's narrow and oft-repeated playlist? No matter how many times I hear “Here Comes Your Man,” I still can't figure out all the words Frank Black is singing. What is he saying?

Of course, just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of the routine, it changes. You put the songs in the order you think he wants to hear them, you set up the London sequence of Cars 2, and the kid changes things up on you. And then seems to question your decision, as though what you have done is crazy. It’s like he’s just discovered the concept of changing one’s mind and now that’s his new favorite thing.

I mean, I get it. I have my own favorites, songs on repeat on my stereo. And lots of favorite movie scenes (when they try to rob Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights; when Gwyneth Paltrow gets off the Green Line bus in The Royal Tenenbaums; when Indiana Jones chases down that truck in Raiders of the Lost Ark—that’s a good one). But here’s the difference: I watch the entire movie that surrounds them. In order. Usually.

So I must count it as a minor victory in parenting when I convinced the Doozer that the Pixies have recorded songs other than “Here Comes Your Man.” And that we can listen to those ones, too. Although I’m sure I will still never learn all the words.

And no matter how many times I see it, I still don’t get what’s going on in Cars 2.

He’s trying to mess with me, isn’t he?

At least he’s into movies. That’s something. It’s easy to complain about the absurdity and unpredictability of life with children. But it’s nice to know that our interests might actually intersect at some point.

And so the education continues. For both of us.

Dazed and Confused

So, school’s out. For the summer. Yeah. That happened.

I have no idea how. The Doozer has completed an entire year of school. Preschool, sure, yeah, but again—an entire year of it. It’s over.

How did this happen?

Of course, we do have a stack of artwork to attest to the passage of time. His early, Pollock-influenced, spattered canvases: raw, spare, impulsive, informal. And then there are the more recent additions, the more complex constructions, the ones that required scissors and glue and sometimes multiple types of materials. He learned to use scissors. He learned to use glue. A lot can happen in a school year.

He’s taller. He has bigger feet. He got a baby brother. He discovered the Avengers. And realized that his favorite kind of cheese is smoked gouda. Mastered the Kindle. And Angry Birds. He made friends. Kind of. Got a girlfriend (we think). He used tools. Memorized the dialogue from Cars and the lyrics to “Rumor Has It.”

He grew up. He’s growing up.

The picture of the two of us on the front stoop from the first day of school? I could’ve sworn that the wife took it yesterday. We look the same. And totally different, I realize now. It was just yesterday. And it was also forever ago. Part of me wants to live in that moment forever.

All of me knows that I’ll never have that moment again.

It was only nine months or so, but it was also a lifetime. A blueprint, for the years to come. He’ll just go to school more and more. There will be more accomplishments, more projects, more teachers, more assignments, more friends. More, more, more. Then Little Brother will join him and everything will double. Experiences will multiply. I imagine it will be hard to keep up.

School years will end. Summers will pass. Time will go on.

I know I can’t keep it from happening, but perhaps I can slow it down. Enjoy every peal of laughter as the Doozer runs through the sprinkler on a warm, sunny day. Smile at the smear of soft serve ice cream across his face on a Friday evening. Sing exuberantly along with him in the car to the songs of Adele (until he insists that I stop). Watch him on every trip to the zoo or the lake or a family barbecue, see him smile, hear him laugh, feel his boundless energy. Be the boys of summer. Every day. Every hour. Enjoy. Appreciate. Love.

Because soon again the leaves will change, the temperature will drop. T-shirts and shorts will be traded for new sneakers and sweatshirts. Summer will end and school will resume. And in a few more falls, the Doozer and his Little Brother will both be headed off, away from home. More school days, more experiences, more life.

We have just a few short summer hours to spend together. Better make the most of it.