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.

The Serious Limits of Fatherhood Pt. I

Today's writing prompt comes from li'l Sean C., age 14, from Des Moines, IL.  He writes,

Dear Joe,

You know what I'd like to see from you? Hardcore father. Something about coming up against the serious limits of what fatherhood requires of you, and finding out that your devotion to the kid trumps it all. Yeah, I am an old-fashioned moralist and see great virtue in that paradigm.

                                                                                     Sean

Actually, Sean is Sean Craven, who co-edits a terrific little literary magazine out here called Swill (http://www.swillmagazine.com/).  He's read for Lip Service West, and will be doing so again August 12th in Oakland.  He also has his own blog, Renaissance Oaf (http://seancraven.blogspot.com/), which you should check out. That takes care of the plugs.  Now onto the question.

It's a good question.  Which is why I am answering it.  It's why I started this blog in the first place.  Well, one of the two reasons, the other being what all blogs are for, ranting.  But the more people who read this, the less inclined I am simply to vent, and the more responsibility I feel not to waste anyone's time bitching and moaning (needlessly).

Of course, the biggest responsibility I feel is toward the little guy, my son, Holden, the boy who will one day be king.  At least this is what I tell him.  I suppose the biggest test of being a dad is suppressing my natural proclivity toward negativity. That is how others see me, negative, although I see myself less as a pessimist and more as a realist.  Holden will (most likely) never be king.  There are only a handful of monarchies left, and we ain't one of them (and most of those positions are already filled).

My primary job as a dad is to get Holden to believe he can be anything he wants to be.  Even though life, most likely, is actually going to go like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIP8lFWa_mg.  Which I've always known, intellectually, and I would've accepted that there simply comes a certain amount of disingenuousness with being a dad.  Santa Claus and all that.  I was "lied" to, and that just seemed to be a part of how all this works, working through the bullshit you are spoon fed from childhood, gradually shedding layers of mistruths, on your slow march toward the grave.

Except...

Here's the rub, the part I didn't anticipate.  I really believe Holden can be anything he wants to be.  Such hopefulness for me feels like this:

Still, I believe it. It's the strongest primal pull I've ever felt, the need to give this kid everything I had (and never had).  It's a form of self-preservation and -ascension.  I have seen the future.  And he is me.

So to answer Sean, it don't get any bigger than that.  My hatred, disgust, the governing force of my (pre-dad) life, my desire to say fuck it and fuck up and quit, Holden trumps it.  Something bigger than I takes over and makes me want to protect, shield, help, do right, do good for this kid.  And maybe those tendencies to do the same for me were always there, but for whatever reason I didn't find the subject worthy.  With the heir to the throne, I do.

Fuck, what do I know?  This is eons of evolution.  Lions and cubs and all that.  This is bigger than me.  And realizing that, just might be a first.

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.