Becoming Richard Vernon

Every time I take Holden to his doctor's appointment, I leave feeling like shit about my abilities as a parent.  There are so many things that can go wrong, vital components of development that you have been put in charge of, and are royally fucking up.  For instance, my kid isn't talking.  This is probably because while attempting to promote my fledgling, stupid career by being rigidly dogmatic about writing at assigned times daily, I'd distract the kid by turning on the TV.  NPR says TV is bad for kids and stunts growth.  I grew up in front of the fucking TV.  So did my brother.  And look how we turned out.  OK.  Bad example.  But how the fuck can you be a parent and try to get any work done without a little distraction?  So for a few weeks, between the age of 9 and 11 mos., which are apparently the most critical to your child's developing mad skills to be a winner, I, with my well-documented limited coping abilities and severe anxiety, selfishly turned on Yo Gabba Gabba to give me a few minutes to finish writing, while my wife enjoyed her precious sleep.  Plus, the kid fucking loves Yo Gabba Gabba.  It was win-win. Right?  Wrong.  I got some writing done, all right, and in the process retarded my son's verbal growth, dooming him to a life of communicating like one of Dr. Necessiter's test subjects.

Being a parent is fucked up, and you cannot win.  In baseball, you are paid millions to fail 7 out of 10 times.  As a parent, all you need to do is fuck up once, to have that fuck up repeated for your kid's friends and families, and future husbands and wives for, like, forever.  We all have the story, the time our mother made us sing the "Star Spangled Banner" in front of her friends because, at 8, we were fucking tone deaf.  The time our father humiliated us at our baseball birthday party by striking us out.  It's like this Onion article.

Study Finds Every Style Of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults

OCTOBER 26, 2011 | ISSUE 47•43

SANTA ROSA, CA—A study released by the California Parenting Institute Tuesday shows that every style of parenting inevitably causes children to grow into profoundly unhappy adults. "Our research suggests that while overprotective parenting ultimately produces adults unprepared to contend with life's difficulties, highly permissive parenting leads to feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood," lead researcher Daniel Porter said. "And, interestingly, we found that anything between those two extremes is equally damaging, always resulting in an adult who suffers from some debilitating combination of unpreparedness and isolation. Despite great variance in parenting styles across populations, the end product is always the same: a profoundly flawed and joyless human being." The study did find, however, that adults often achieve temporary happiness when they have children of their own to perpetuate the cycle of human misery.

As a man, when you have a kid all you want to do is do a better job than your father.  All the inappropriate, mean, and hurtful things he said ("Joey will feed the cat," says Mom.  "Joey is too stupid to feed the cat," says Dad), won't be repeated by you. You practically outline a goddamn how-to manual of all the ways to succeed at this.

Now I know there are men out there who get along with their dads, think highly of them, have a wonderful relationship with him, and I am very happy for P. Scott Cunningham.  But, by and large, the majority of my friends have had tumultuous relationships with their pops, to say the least.

This past Saturday, at Lip Service West, we featured Hin Leung, a student at Cal, who read one of most powerfully devastating and emotionally wrought pieces you'll ever hear.  It was about his being in high school back in Hong Kong and finding out about his father's affair.  Hin deftly frames the piece with a chess game and fatherly advice, about standing tall, never surrendering, being a man, which Hin repeats at the end.  Whereas the advice in the beginning is sage and sound.  After his father's fall, those same words only invoke the the phony and pathetic.  Hin is young, his anger just and real.  I am somewhere in the middle, and while I don't condone infidelity (see my second marriage [whore]), I have more sympathy for fathers in stories like that than I used to.  Because I know how complicated this life gets. There is little left of the black and white, right or wrong, all/nothing views of my youth.  Because I am no longer the son.  I am the father.

Yeah, I just compared my parenting to Superman.  So fucking what?  Besides being fucking strong and all-around awesome, Superman is pretty fucking smart too.  The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son.  We've been doing that dance since the primordial ooze, and mankind's been moving forward OK enough. Until now.  Because apparently TVs and cell phones and milk and 8 billion other modern accouterments are conspiring to undermine my best efforts.  (For a little context, my mother-in-law says I am poisoning my son by feeding him milk.  Just fucking great.  She also thinks cooked food is poison, not that that means jackshit when Holden gets the sniffles.  Virus he caught from one of the other kids at day care?  Nope.  In between stifling his ability to speak, I am apparently also poisoning my child by letting him drink milk like millions of other kids.)

I really fucking hate the Bay Area.  When I was growing up, fuck, man, we got plopped down in front of the TV for days.  And my brother and I drank a goddamn gallon of milk between us a day.  We also played in gravel pits, rode bicycles without helmets, and used wasps' nests for a pinata.  We rode motorcycles (without helmets), hit in batting cages (without helmets), and walked across thin ice through the spring.  I look back, and there are large chunks of time where I don't remember a single adult interfering.  

Then again, I am looking at it from a kids' perspective.  Maybe my mother knew where we were at all times.  Probably.  She was a good mother.  

The weird thing is now being on the other side of that line.

*

My cousin Celeste bought me a new pair of slippers for my 41st birthday.  They are handcrafted, comfortable.  Justine's friend Jane came over the other day.

"You know those are old man slippers, right?" Jane said.

Fuck, yeah, I do.  And I like walking on my front lawn with my old man slippers and terrycloth bathrobe to retrieve my goddamn paper, too.  It is time to accept that I am not John Bender anymore.  I have become Richard Vernon.

I always figured I'd remain hip and relevant.  I am not equipped to be the grown up.

I like being the Good Time Charlie.  This transformation has been the strangest part, going from siding with the 16-year-old, fuck you, POV (to which I still cling mightily) to the, "Hey, put down the candy and eat your vegetables."  It's primal man, just kicks in.  I want to be "the cool dad."  I will not be the cool dad.  

We're going back east for Thanksgiving to see my cousins, who are on Facebook. Lately they've been posting pictures of the whole goddamn family shooting guns. Little kids, too.  Shooting guns.  What the hell?  I'm considering canceling the whole damn trip.  I talk a good game about letting Holden ride motorcycles and box.  That kid ain't fucking riding motorcycles. And he sure as shit ain't boxing.  And he's wearing a fucking  helmet when he rides a bicycle (but not because I think he should; it's a state law out here).  Frank Zappa said speed turns you into your parents.  Well, you know what else turns you into your parents?  Being a fucking parent.

What happened to me?  I feel like Ice Cube after they gave him some money and a hug.

*

I closed with this song the other day, but it's been running through my head a lot lately, so you'll forgive an old man if he repeats himself.

The Big 1

The kid turned one year old the other day.  Normally, I try to eschew the schmaltz, but it's a pretty big fucking deal when your kid turns one.  Historically, around the world, it has always been a big deal because of mortality rates.  That isn't the case quite as much these days in modernized, first world nations. Still, one means you've made it through the trial period, like the regular season in hockey. The four or five weakest teams have been eliminated, and the remaining 78 enter the playoffs. One year old signifies, "Welcome to the Party."

Oh, and we threw him a party.  Pirate themed.  Mama dressed up like a wench; I was made to wear a pirate bandana--which I hated because I didn't know a lot of the people who were coming over, or at least hadn't seen them in a while, and I didn't want them to think I was one of these bald guys who wears bandanas to hide the truth.

Holden dressed up as a pirate, which is something I used to do.  Not dress like a pirate, I mean get dressed up for my birthday party.  I used to wear a full Yankees' uniform.  I was 14.  (And surprisingly I found it hard to get dates in high school.)

Lots of people came, he scored more presents than he'll know what to do with, we had burgers and pizza, and we did the whole let-him-eat-cake/face-full-of-frosting thing.  It was a nice day.  Except for the drum circle entourage entrance, lead by my perpetually tardy globe-trotting, troubadour, hippy-father-in-law.  But Justine is half Puerto Rican, and I guess it's heritage.

When the day was over, and we'd finished cleaning the mess, I was struck with one thought more than all the others: I can't believe I've only done that 40 more times than Holden has.

40 times is hardly anything.  40 baseball games in a season?  Over like that.  $40? According to my old boss at the print shop, Alan, bums make that begging for change in an hour, which meant that they made more than him, so why the fuck should he bother working when he could just grab a cup, sit on the side of the street, and earn 100K a year?  Either way, he sure as shit wasn't giving them his hard-earned spare change for their racket.  (And this was in 1992.  Fuck, these days, bums probably earn half a mil.)  40 is not a big number, yet it feels like I have lived thousands of these things.

This year with Holden went by faster than I can explain.  Flew by, I guess.  So much so that I feel compelled to now litter the cliches.  Because it really does seem like yesterday that the baby's heart rate dropped and they whisked Justine into emergency surgery (as her brother Kahlil took pictures of me in my scrubs in a baseball catcher's position [the doctors had told us everything was fine.  They sort of lied]).

Then they cut her open, and there was so much blood and gore, one of the technicians fainted, and I got really scared because I knew the doctors had been lying and that something might be wrong with this kid, who I never met but already loved.  Everything started moving way too fast, and I started to panic, because that's what I do under the slightest bit of pressure, never mind honest-to-God life and death moments; and next thing I knew I had a little purple thing covered in what looked like a soft cheese staring up at me, making a little baby fish mouth.

That's not my kid in the second video.  But that's what he looked like doing the baby fish mouth.  Except, y'know, good-looking.

Petersen always talks about the scariest moment in his life being when they sent his wife and him home with their newborn son, Dylan, how he remembers thinking, "We're supposed to take care of this?"  And it is a helpless feeling.  You have those first few days in the hospital, and even though the baby is already in your care, nurses are coming in and checking vitals, taking the baby for tests (and you never leave the baby's side because your wife has made you vow never to leave the baby's side because your wife has seen one too many Lifetime "Switched at Birth" movies), and so you get this false sense of confidence, that if anything should go wrong, well, you're in the right place.  Then the day comes (i.e., whenever the insurance company says it's time for you to get the fuck out) for you to pack your shit, wheel out your eviscerated, drained wife, and this little shriveled monkey boy, and be on your way.

There are a whole bunch of axioms you come across growing up, and you don't need an explanation, the "those who remember history" sayings, because they are obvious and even trite.  But then the day comes where you experience something so deeply and heartfelt, has such an impact, you're like, So that's what that means!  A bird is the hand is worth more than those two in the bush (and so you go to the backseat with the homely Sarah Fitzpatrick and get your first hand job because Melissa Cote and Tracy B. ain't dancing with you).  So that whole "kids don't come with an operating manuel" didn't truly click until I was driving home from Kaiser, through Oakland, about a year ago, maintaining a safe and sensible 20 mph.  I didn't know how I'd make it through an hour.  Yet, here we are, a year later, the kid safe, sound, and healthy.  Except for the gash on his forehead where he face-planted into the fire place the day after his party.  He was riding his new pirate ship car and it was defective and one of the wheels came off.  Wasn't my fault though.  I didn't buy it for him.

Dropping Hats

Order of Sunday morning status updates across my various social networks:


8:26 a.m.: I am so sick of mental illness (double entendre intended).


8:28 a.m.: "The easiest way to get a reputation is go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter." F. Scott Fitzgerald


8:34 a.m.: Yeah, I'm done going "outside the fold and shouting as a dangerous radical." Holden just said, "Love Dada," and my heart melted. I have been tamed. Where's my 401K?


*


I received some distressing news in the mail on Saturday afternoon.  Not going to go into it much, except to say it was legal in nature (in the broadest sense of the word) and related to my anxiety condition, triggering a massive panic attack.  I get these attacks fairly regularly.  Usually they are health-related (various cancers, etc.), sometimes they event-based, but they always suck.  I can't overstate how bad they suck.  Nor can I adequately explain, logically, something that is brought about by something so often illogical.  


It's funny the amount of sympathy I receive(d) over the motorcycle accident. When I was laid up in Miami with the shattered pelvis, broken back, collapsed lung, etc., hooked up to the medicine machines and pump, everyone came to visit.  They brought gourmet, homemade meals and they stayed long, asked if I needed anything, and they kept coming back.  Their faces betrayed genuine ethos, pathos, and fuck, why not?--logos.  Because most of these friends were in grad school with me.  And I appreciated it; don't get me wrong. Nothing like seeing how much you mean to other people when you've almost died.  But the truth is, I'd take a lifetime of chronic physical pain over the mental stuff. (Fortunately, for me, I don't have to choose.  I get both.)


It's easy to see, regarding the sympathy factor I mean, why the physical trumps the emotional.  You can see a broken leg; you can't see a screwy brain.  I remember watching this comedian do a bit, and he was, like, "These days, everyone's bipolar, or they got ADD or OCD, or they got borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorder, whatever, but it used to be people were just assholes. You'd be like 'What's wrong with Bart?'  And someone would say, 'Bart?  Oh, he's just an asshole.'"  


I get sick of it too, everyone's whining about some psychological ailment.  You see someone's who's always depressed and whinging about not being happy, and it's like this Cracked article: http://www.cracked.com/article_19376_5-scientific-reasons-your-idea-happiness-wrong.html.  Which I agree with, wholeheartedly.  In theory.  So I get even more disgusted with myself when I fall victim to the same faulty, touchy-feely mindset.  I read what I've written above, and I think, What's wrong with that guy?  Oh, him? He's just an asshole.   


But I do panic.  Can't help it.  I have a severe anxiety disorder.  I see doctors for it.  Receive medication for it.  It's the real deal.  And when it is at bay, I look around and wonder what the fuck I was so worried about...  Until the next one strikes.


So I got upsetting news in the mail, and it was very foggy outside, the new house in the SF fogstream, and I became convinced "they" were taking away my money, my house, my wife, my son, and I was going to either end up A.) in prison, or B.) back under the bridge.  Which is where these attacks always go. Because I lived like a hobo in the '90s.  Entirely my fault, mental issues or not. I was a jackass.  I did very bad things.  I got what I deserved.  I know that.  But we got out.  Or rather, some of us did.  Some of the others shot themselves, went mad, took sleeping pills and put plastic bags over their heads.  Some went to jail.  Some disappeared.  But a surprisingly high number of us got out. Which always begs the question: why me?  Why was I so lucky?  When will God realize his oversight and ask for the payback?  Anyway, that should address Status Update# 1.


Then about six minutes later I thought of the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, one of my favorites, and a life-path I followed to a T.  All the trouble I caused, which precipitated this unique brand of survivor's guilt, it was just another cliche in a lifetime full of them.  Even these posts I write now, I'm a goddamn phony.  I went outside the fold, shook an angry young man's fist at an invisible enemy, and as soon as the danger became real I crawled back to the shelter, tired of being cold and hungry, taking solace in the loving arms of the same world I railed against and spat on.  


Status No. 2.


Then my son said he loved me for the first time.


I know, I know, Ol' Mr. Stumpy.  Put the sap back in the tree.  If I was subjected to such schmaltz when I was a younger man, I'd have retched, too. But I am not a younger man.  Not anymore.  I'm just a mentally ill guy, who was in the midst of a wicked panic attack, when his son decided this was the time to give his daddy a kiss and tell him he loved him.


How much fucking better does it get than that?  The answer is...None.  None more...fucking...better.  


3.


I'd gotten up early with Holden.  Or rather Justine did, because I was mired in the funk, having not slept, head not working properly.  And when she passed him off to me, I wasn't feeling any better, my mind taking me to bad places with worse fates.  It was early.  I was down.  Kids are pretty sharp, and I can't hide my emotions for shit (which is going to be a challenge raising a child, I know). But I'm typing away on my laptop, trying to salvage production at least (I work a job-job on the weekends), and he's hanging around, all snot-bubbly, because he woke up with the snot bubbles, and I'm just trying to type and he won't get off my feet.  Holden's got this new habit where he likes to watch TV standing on my feet as I sit, pinching the hell out of them.  


Then it happened.  He looked back and up at me.  I bent down, tried to smile, and said, "I love you, son."  Then he leaned over and kissed me, and said "Love Dada," in the sweetest little kid voice you ever heard.  


My mother talked about this for years, all that "nothing like the love you have for a child," and I'd be, like, Yeah, yeah, so can I borrow the $40 or not?  But Mama got the last laugh.  Like everything else, she was right about this too. Because nothing has ever come my way that made me feel like those two little words did yesterday.  The little hand on mine, the twinkle in the eye.  And hearing my son tell me he loves me.  (Anything makes you feel better than that, and I promise you it is illegal.)


Of course, I tried to get him to do it again when his mother woke up.  And he wouldn't.  He proceeded to spend the rest of the day in "little terror" mode, throwing food off the highchair, pulling the dog's ears, refusing to nap, and every time I said, "I love you, son" and would lean in for a kiss, he'd push my face away.  Or if he was holding a toy, he'd hit me with it, refusing to give me the satisfaction again.  Which made sense.  He is my boy after all.


And how many fathers have sat like I did on a Sunday morning?  The rest of the world asleep, isolated from the cold outside, sitting with your infant son on your lap, and promising not to make the same mistakes your father did with you.  Nothing but good intentions, pure and noble, implemented by the profoundly fucked up...  Saying the same things I do now: I will get it right this time.  And I promise you I will. 


Now who feels like crying with a little Cat Stevens?

Tricks

One of the downsides to the new house is the extra fog.  Apparently the top of the hill upon which we perch is in a goddamn jet stream or something.  You can see the fog roll tumble in from the Pacific and over the city every night, slowly rolling across the bay.  And come morning, it's here.  Like the fucking Sunset.  It's not that big of a deal for me, since I like to pretend I am Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and all this fog makes me feel like ghosts are haunting my moor.  But it does strike a certain mood when you wake up.

And I woke up pissier than usual.  The reasons for this are many.  New vials at the allergist overloading my system.  The cocksucking Red Sox coming back against Mo in the 9th.  Burnout from a terrific stretch of short story writing that has seen almost 10 pieces taken in little over a month.  Plus, y'know, I'm getting older. Yesterday, Justine pointed out how much more gray I have since we met (yet drawing no direct correlation).

But then there's the kid.  Holden.  Whenever I can't figure out what to write about, especially on grey, wet, depressing,  burned-out, sickish mornings like this, I've got daddy blogging.  And it makes me...happy.

I imagine hearing about someone else's kid, especially when you don't have one of your own, is tantamount to listening to someone ramble on about sports when you have no interest in them, but since I promised I wouldn't talk about sports, and specifically the Yankees, and the cocksucking front office that have sent my beloved Bombers into a gun fight with the Sox, armed with nothing but a rich history and a handful of stem cells, this is the best I can offer you.

I'd always heard people talk about kids, but I didn't listen much.  Because I didn't have one, and I didn't see what the big deal was.  You have a kid, it's part of you, cycle of life, etc.  I get it.  Only I didn't.  This isn't something you can experience conceptually.  Especially the tricks.

When my father (figure) Jim Petersen (and I mean "father figure" in the "mentoring in a parental manner" sort of way and not the creepy George Michael "I will be your father figure" kind of way) had his kid, Dylan, way back in the last century (Petersen is really fucking old), he used to call me all the fucking time with whatever Dylan had learned to do.  Like when Dylan climbed the stairs, Petersen would call, all, "Dylan climbed the stairs!" And I'd be like "I give a shit.  I don't want to hear about your kid's latest trick."  Because I was 20-something, with real world problems, like how to manipulate, steal, lie, cheat, and get the most for Joe to compensate for having been screwed over by the world (don't ask how a good-looking, middle class, white kid, who's college education had been paid for but pissed away, translated to being "screwed over," but I firmly believed it).  Anyway, fast forward 20 years, and now it's me calling Petersen telling him about Holden's tricks.  Just like someday, Holden will call his father with his son's tricks.  (Although I'll probably be dead by then.  I had Holden so late, and my family tends to drop dead in their 50s.)

Holden's latest trick is by far his coolest.  Walking.  It's something we take for granted, because you do it all the time.  But I don't take it for granted because I had that motorcycle accident in '06, and for a while I was stuck in a wheelchair, and I couldn't walk for six months.  The first time I was finally able to walk again was in the pool (a third of the weight).  So I know how much it sucks.  But the kid is finally joining the rest of the bipeds.  And it's fucking hilarious.  He can only take two or three steps before he face plants (don't worry; I catch him), but the look on his face is the best part, this mix of excitement and courage and wonder, a little terror at the unknown but this ingrained evolution that makes him have to try.  He looks like a baby Frankenstein('s Monster) when she starts out, arms outstretched, legs stiff, wobbly.  Sometimes after a step or two he'll stop and smile wide, shoot his arms in the air like he's just won the gold medal.  Then he'll fall.  It's hard not to laugh.  I'll keep catching him and setting his back upright so he'll do it again. He's like a really big action figure--that moves!   So fucking cool.

I'm not tormenting the boy; he's learning.  I'm a good dad.  And it's a break from his other trick, which involves jabbing his toy shark (Chinchilla) into daddy's mouth until it bleeds.

Like Father, Like Son and Oatmeal

Now that Holden is ten months and he's making like Pinocchio (i.e., turning into a real boy), it's a trip to see him acting more and more like me.  Like yesterday when I caught him kissing his own reflection in the mirror.  But it's the little behavioral traits that are really getting me.  When I was kid, my mother used to complain how restless I was.  She'd say, "You know what your problem is, Joey?  You need to be entertained all the time!"  And I did.  Most kids need to be stimulated, engaged, of course, but it was more in the yearning for more, the wanting it all that would play such a significant factor throughout my life.  It's not a "good" or a "bad" thing, necessarily; it's like The Force: it can be either, depending on how it's used.  I see these same things in Holden.  Which makes sense; he's my kid.  He looks more like me, too, with the dimples and the little baby guns; we have the same eyes. Unfortunately, he also seems to get easily flustered like his daddy.  Which is countered/exacerbated by the same strong will.  He stood one his own, with no help the other day, and at first he wobbled and looked like he might go down, looking pretty confused, then he stabilized, looking surprised.  Then he shot his arms in the air, like Rocky.  Holden rules!

Where the kid and I definitely differ, though, is the energy.  Holy shit.  I get tired just watching him.  Maybe I've listened to too many commercials for male "enhancement," but I am starting to think my testosterone is seriously depleted.  I'm fucking tired all the time, feel like I am walking in a pool, like I did after the accident when I was non weight bearing for six months, which meant I couldn't put any pressure on my right hip, which of course rules out walking.  I had a pool at my Hollywood, FLA, condo, and after several months I could "walk" there.  Which was awesome after spending all that time in a wheelchair, on a walker, crutches, and finally a cane.  But it's not so cool now, because it's been six years since the accident, and I can walk fine, albeit with a slight limp.  It's one of life's great jokes, how when you finally start to get some shit figure out, your body starts to fail you. Although, admittedly, mine is an extreme case.

Coffee has stopped working.  I can drink a pot before I got to sleep.  What I need is some Holden energy.  Which is impossible, since all his parts are new, not worn down and out, and he's seeing this shit for the first time.   He's like Old Man Spencer with that Navaho blanket, gets a bang out of everything.  I just have a body like Old Man Spencer, sans the gout.  Which is good.  My buddy Tom Pitts has got the gout and he tells me it's no fun.

*

I had oatmeal for breakfast.  I have oatmeal for breakfast just about every day. Because it's a complex carb and you shouldn't eat it later in the day.  That's not the point.  It reminded me of Martin du Pours, the soup kitchen on Potrero in the city, which is where they feed the homeless from a giant vat every morning. It was really really good oatmeal, best I've ever had.  All the homeless junkies said the same thing, maple and plump raisins.  Then again, most of us hadn't eaten in several days by the time we finally made it to du Pours, so it's kind of like Eddie Murphy says about a starving man and a cracker:

It was funny, because Martin du Pours would let you have as much oatmeal as you wanted.  You could take that shit to go.  You just needed a container, so outside the soup kitchen you'd see all these dirty riff-raffers picking up empty Gatorade bottles and trying to saw them in half with their teeth.  I guess "funny" isn't the right word.

*

You're probably wondering how I'm tying together Holden and oatmeal.  I'm sure there is a connection in there somewhere, like how I hope his strong will and boundless energy doesn't lead him to the Dark Side like his father.  Which is a real concern.  But not at 10 months.  More than likely, this is simply a rambling, incoherent post, because the little bugger has been up since 5 a.m. and I'm delirious.