Dog Days of Fall

What could possibly possess a man to drive down the road on a freezing morning with his windshield covered in frost and his head hanging out the driver’s side window?  How could he not have enough time to let the van's defrost setting warm up and do its jobs? Or enough sense to drag a scraper across the frozen surface to create at least a peephole?

This may read like a rant against a dumb driver I saw this morning.  It’s not.  And I know what affliction can cause such behavior:  Children.   More precisely, Children who’ve missed the bus and are late for school -- again. 

For, this morning, I was that dumb driver.

The first reaction is likely, this sounds dangerous.  Normally, I’d agree.  But our trip to school is along all neighborhood streets, of which I had an unobstructed and clear view.  The only things in any danger were my eyebrows and any squirrels who didn’t hear us coming.  I also didn’t go faster than 15 miles per hour, being quiet roads, and seeing that my icy brow couldn’t take much more. 

I’m a bit of a safety nut.  So I can assure you it was safe, though certainly on the stupid side. 



Sometimes, I wish I had a layer of fur.

Still, why not let the defrost work before departing, or at least scrape the damn windows?  Answer: time and circumstance.  

This morning was the first deep frost of the fall, leaving a layer of white on everything in sight, including the cars.  I first noticed it when we came barreling out of the house in a mad dash to school.  As we scrambled into the van without a second to spare, I turned the defrost on full-blast and used the windshield wiper spray button – loaded with negative 15 de-icer -- to take off the layer of frost.  It appeared to work, and we departed.  

Yet, with the cold air moving across the outside of the front window and the semi-warm air blowing on its inside, the frost came back with a vengeance. 

The clock ticked on.  Our 7-year-old was almost certainly going to be late for church school, which she attends before elementary school one day a week.  It’s her first communion year.  Last week she was 15 minutes late for church school, which might be a mortal sin; I'll have to check my Catholic handbook.   Our 10-year-old, on the other had, had less than three minutes before the late bell rang out at the middle school.  Luckily, that's not a sin.  Still, both were late far too recently for another incident. 

Frankly, at this point the 7-year-old can be classified as a chronic offender, continuing her life-long challenge with making the bus and promptly arriving at school.  I remember a report card she got after one quarter back in 1^st Grade.  She read it, saying, “I got one 5 …”  Which, under the newfangled grading system, would put her off the charts.  Then she finished reading, “… but it’s for Tardy.”

You’d think waking them up an hour and a half before school starts would be enough.  That’s assuming they actually listen to instructions, like wake up, get dressed, brush your teeth, and eat breakfast.  It seems so easy when broken down into these four simple steps, but it never is.  

Clearly, as the frost overtook the window seconds into our desperate trip, I had few choices.  I could park the car and let the defrost blowing out of the AC unit catch up: estimated time, 3 to 4 minutes.  I could stop, get out, find the scraper I haven’t used since March, and see if this sort of frost is the type that can be scraped off: estimated time, 2 to 3 minutes, with a 50 percent chance success rate.  Or I could roll down the window, stick my head clear out into the cold morning air, and trudge onward to the two school drop points.

So, that’s what I did.  

I’m not proud.

Luckily, the window cleared before the first stop; my eyebrows defrosted by the second.  And both kids arrived at their destination safe and sound.  Only one was tardy, but she’s always late.    

One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, New Fish

“Dad?  My one fish looks different.”

“How so?”

“Well, he looks kind of bigger...”

“So he’s growing.”

“And, he used to have a black tail. Now he has an orange tail.”

“Oh. That.”

Among other things, this simple exchange extinguished any delusions I had that I could get away with an actual crime, like a casino heist. Not to say I'd try; but, I’ve occasionally wondered if I could. Yet, clearly, I can’t even pull off a common fish switcheroo.

Every parent with fish-owning children knows the drill, often involving a late-night run to the 24-hour Fish Emporium looking for just the right shade of pink Beta, or goldfish, or some other tropical variety. We’ve all done it.  

Earlier in the day, I stood in front of the fish wall at Pet Smart staring at three tanks filled with Sunburst Platies -- in various hues of yellow, orange and red, some with black tipped fins, others with just dark orange fins -- trying to recall the exact color of my daughter’s recently departed Sunburst Platy, who went by the name of Sunny. 

Meet the new and improved, Sunny
the fish.  A bit larger, more orange,
and he still swims.  Yeah, Dad!  

I found Sunny this morning lying on the bottom of the tank motionless, the other fish swimming around acting like nothing was wrong. I figured, dead fish float, right? So I got the net and tried to see if I could get him to move. Nothing. And this is why my wife objected to the idea of getting the kids fish from the start, because of the certain eventuality of dead fish. It skeeves her out.

This isn’t our first attempt at fish. 

A few years ago we had the misfortune of winning a few goldfish at the state fair. We didn’t actually win, it was just one of the last nights of the fair’s annual run and the carney working the fish booth decided my kids deserved a few fish, even though they couldn’t get a ping pong ball to land in an empty fishbowl to save their lives. We left that god-forsaken booth with three fish -- one for each of the girls. It was a long ride home.

The next day I read about goldfish, and somehow wound up at the pet store buying sixty dollars’ worth of aquarium and aquarium accoutrements to keep the free fish alive. It didn’t work.    

Over the next three months I went to Pet Smart as often as Norm went to Cheers. The staff would greet me with, “Want the usual?” I became a master of the fish switcheroo.

Then one day, I decided to give up my hobby of replacing dead goldfish with live ones, and to use the whole goldfish experience to teach my kids a bit about life – and death. The next time a goldfish died, I sat the kids down one at a time and told them that it died. I expected waterworks. And at least one of the kids did cry. But I remember then 5-year-old Chloe’s reaction most of all. I told her the fish died; she looked at me and said, “Can we get a kitten?”

Within another two months all the replacement goldfish were dead, and the empty aquarium and accoutrements were stowed on a shelf in the basement.

This summer, when 10-year-old Maisie declared she wanted to get the old aquarium going again and set it up in her room, I anxiously agreed, with one condition: no goldfish. We read up on tropical fish and decided on Platies, and a few other hearty varieties. It’s been a few months, and everything has gone swimmingly. That is, until Sunny stopped swimming.

And, then I did what parents do. Yet I'm not sure why we work so hard to shield our kids from the death of a fish. As deaths go, it's an easy one to take. Maybe we just don’t want them to be hurt at all by any loss? Maybe we just want to protect them from all the harsh realities of the world? Or maybe we’re afraid they will get too used to those realities at too young an age? What happens when the cat dies, will they want a pony?

In reality, most kids take the death of a fish better than parents do, even if they’re not quite sure why it happened. It’s sad, but they move on. I’ve seen it. So, I’ve decided today’s failed switcheroo was my last.

Before she went to bed tonight, Maisie and I discussed what happened, and she pointed out to me the differences between Sunny and Sunny II. And, it’s true, Sunny II is a bit bigger. He doesn’t have the same gradient of yellow orange as Sunny, nor the black tips on his tail and fins.

She ended our little talk with a piece of advice:

“Dad,” she said as I began to close the door. “Next time, just tell me.”

Damn You, Soccer Socks. Damn You Straight to Hell.

If it’s a Saturday in Autumn, you can be certain of at least one thing: at some point in the day our house will be host to a desperate, frantic, tear-filled search for a clean pair of soccer socks.

I adore soccer. Yet I have grown to truly hate soccer socks. Maybe I shouldn’t say hate. As a rule we discourage casual use of the word “hate” in our family. So, let’s just say I detest soccer socks. Better yet, I loathe soccer socks.

Again, I really like soccer. I played all while growing up, and into high school. And, I’ve always been one of those soccer snobs who thinks following international play makes me a superior person. You know the type.  

I have a favorite premier league team: the Gunners, of course. And I have a strong opinion about who is the best midfielder in the world. And it’s not Xavi, or even Ronaldo, who’s more of a striker in my eyes. As you can see, my self-proclaimed affinity for soccer borders on the obnoxious. 

So when our kids became of soccer playing age, we did like most American families and signed them up. These days we have two kids playing, and I happen to be the coach for one of their teams and the assistant coach for the other. Luckily, my kids love soccer, too.

But do they love soccer enough to just put on any pair of soccer socks and play? No.

Our younger soccer player, in particular, refuses to wear just any pair of soccer socks, of which we have quite a few. And each Saturday in Fall (and Sundays now too, with both of them playing) the same scene unfolds, usually about an hour before game time.

 

“Do you have your soccer socks?” I ask, to blank stares from said child. And so it begins. 

“Let’s find them!” I order, as the anxiety of being late for a game I’m coaching gets the better of my tone, and we set off in search of the missing socks. 



Behold, I have seen the enemy. 
And, it has four pink stripes
and is made of cotton.
 

We start by searching for my wife, who often displays encyclopedic knowledge of the whereabouts of every piece of clothing in the house, to ask if she knows where said socks may be.

“Honey!”  I’ll call, either up the stairs or down the stairs, or in the general direction of where the mother of my children is at that moment. “Have you seen her soccer socks?!”

The answer goes something like this, emanating from whichever floor my wife is on at the time:  “One pair is in the basket upstairs! There's another in her sock drawer! And a third just finished up in the washer!”

You’d think knowing the approximate whereabouts of three pairs of soccer socks at this point would make finding and putting on a pair easy. But it doesn’t.

 

Invariably, the pair in the drawer doesn’t fit right and they never have, I’m informed. And, it turns out there’s only one sock in the basket, all alone, a state many socks tend to find themselves at the end of the laundry cycle. It was the wrong pair anyway. Because, you can almost guarantee, that the preferred pair of socks -- the ones with the four pink stripes – are almost certainly wet and in the washing machine. 

There are, of course, many other pairs of clean soccer socks in the house, a small army of seldom used stockings amassed over several years of our finicky kids playing soccer. But none of those others ones will suffice. This particular soccer player needs the pink-striped pair.  

Doesn't she know that once you're running around, you won't notice what socks you're wearing? She should, because I tell her this every time. She refuses to believe it. Doesn't she know that some kids in the world play soccer barefoot, on fields made of dirt? And that she should just feel lucky to have any socks at all, and a ball not made of duct tape? None of these logical arguments move her off the pressing need for this particular pair of socks.  

In all my years playing soccer, I don’t remember once caring about which socks I wore. Cleats mattered. Shin-guards mattered. But socks?

Yet, as our family goes through our weekly pregame ritual, the passion about socks becomes evident. There’s often screaming. A few tears. Occasionally, there are threats of never signing them up for soccer ever again, or of making them play barefoot, depending on which parent makes the threat. 

Then somehow, almost miraculously, the damned pair of pink striped soccer socks are dry and on the feet.

And, we finally get to go play and coach and watch soccer. Which, we do adore.    

By the way, if you're  wondering who is the best midfielder in the world. Clearly, it's Cesc Fabregas.


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Government Shutdown Edition - A Fox Leading the Hen House

[Warning: This one's on politics.]

In psychology, they call it the self-fulfilling prophecy: to believe something so completely that it becomes true through your own actions.  And, it’s at the heart of the political crisis playing out before our eyes.   

For decades, we’ve witnessed the constant assailing of our federal government by a vocal corner of our political spectrum. Their refrain that this government of ours is wasteful and inefficient; that it’s hampering our economy; and that it’s even a threat to our freedom and our American way of life.

We all buy it on some level, because nobody supports waste, economic failure or threats to our freedom.

When we do so we ignore that most of us support the fundamental goals at the heart of our government spending:  a strong and capable defense; the education of our kids; safety in our homes; an environment free of pollutants and toxins; a safe and reliable food supply; reasonable access to higher education; Social Security for older Americans; a safety net that prevents our most destitute from starving in their homes or dying on the streets; and, now we can include access to affordable health coverage.  We want to do it as efficiently as possible, but we support these goals.

We often forget that, buying into how much our government sucks, because sometimes it really does.  When we see the cost of a hammer at the Pentagon, or we hear about federal employees partying-up in Vegas on our dime, we all get pissed off. 

You know what else should piss us off?  When some among us root against our democratically-elected government, hoping that it fails.  Because, that’s what is happening today. 

The evidence is all around us.  Just look how excited some were that government websites went down on the first day of the Affordable Care Act.  Proof again, in their eyes, that our democratically-elected government can’t do a thing right.  How can we ignore that these sites went down because of too much traffic, caused by a  mass of Americans desperately looking for an affordable answer to their healthcare needs.  

Here's one idea: make the shutdown permanent. 
Why didn't we think of that before. Thanks, Fox News.

While this occurred, House leaders were digging in on the federal government shutdown – indicating they won’t relent until their demands are met.  They refuse to wait until the next election, or until the people actually side with them in this epic battle over how we, as a nation and as individuals, provide for our health in an affordable way.  They’d sooner shut down our federal government than let this law try to solve a long-standing problem.

It's frustrating to watch.  But what’s more frustrating is why they are doing this.  

The shutdown is described by many as a battle over the Affordable Care Act.  And it is that.  But it’s also much more. 

Sure, these House members don’t like the ACA.  But it is just a hill on which to make their stand – one battle in a wider war against everything our federal government and our nation has become, pretty much since the Great Depression.

If you’ve visited the Fox News website since the shutdown began – which I have, just to see what the color of the sky is in that alternate universe – you’ve likely seen proof of this wider war in one blaring headline asking one simple question:

"Budget Battle, Partial Shutdown Raises the Question:  Can We Do Without It?"

Without it?  The federal governments' body is still warm, and they want to kill it more.  

The news site goes on, in much smaller text, to list as sub-heads a few departments and agencies, such as HUD, Education Department, NASA, and of course, the punching bag that is the IRS.   (Sure,  I could live without the IRS.  But I don’t know if our country could).

So there it is.  In criminal law it’s called “Mens Rae.”  Guilt of the mind.   And it shows the real motive for the shutdown.  They want the federal government to fail.  They think it’s failure would be a good thing – and what they’d get to do next would be good for them and for their bank accounts.

In psychology, it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.   In America, we can just call it the conservative agenda: 

We want to cut our federal government because we think it sucks.  Now we’re making sure it sucks.  And then, we’re going to try and cut it some more.

The truth is, its easy to hate Washington.  To forget all our democratic government does and all our nation stands for.  It reminds me of a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, where the PFJ is sitting around a room hating on the Romans.  John Cleese's characters asks the group:  "What have the Romans ever done for us?" 

The answers are not what he expected, ending when he has to ask the question one last time: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"  

Fox News asked their own version of this question, what could we do without?  But I think this budget battle raises a different question.

Today, we are a nation that feeds its poor, educates its young, defends its borders, protects its environment, keeps promises to its seniors, promotes fair play, and does what it can to foster opportunity.   And here's the question:  Which of those should we stop doing?

Actual Conversations with Kids: The Sphinx and Its Nose.

The setup:  Near the end of Dr. Seuss’s Daisy-Head Mayzie book, there’s an image of a news anchor saying Daisy-Head Fever is gripping the nation.  The anchor sits in front of an array of images from around the world, including one of the Sphinx with a daisy on its head.  Reading it to my 5-year-old and 7-year-old the other day,  I was privy to the following actual conversation.



Otherwise historically accurate, this image shows
a nose on the Sphinx.  Can you believe it? 

As I read the words on this particular page, Sadie, age 5, stopped me.  Pointing to the image of the Sphinx, which in this artist’s rendition had a small, but distinct bump of a nose, she said, “Wait, the Sphinx lost his nose, didn’t he?” 

 

Clearly, she was confused by this image – though, apparently unfazed by the flower growing out of the main characters’ head on the cover of a Time magazine.  

 

“Yes, it’s gone,” I responded, wondering how the heck she knew what a sphinx was, or that the famous one in Giza, Egypt, didn’t have a nose.  (Phineas and Ferb, most likely).   

 

“Oh,” she replied, clearly dismayed the image was wrong, and that the actual Sphinx was still nose-less. 

 

Then she added, as sincere as only a five-year-old can be, “I sure hope somebody finds it.”

Laughing inside, I didn’t know what to say.  Luckily, her big sister,  7-year-old Chloe, did.  Sighing at her younger sister, she replied with typical big sister wisdom and superiority, “Sadie, if they found the nose, it would be in the newspaper.”

Duh.  C’mon Sadie.  Clearly, that would be a front page story.  Not just reported via an old drawing in a Dr. Seuss book.   And so the global search for the missing Sphinx nose goes on -- at least in the minds of my children.

In writing, they say it's important to have believable dialogue.  Thankfully, in life, the same rules don't apply.

Bonzo for Bedtime

Ten years into this parenting gig, you’d think we’d be good at the one thing we have to do every darn evening. You’d think. Yet, without a doubt, bedtime at our house sucks.

The younger ones are supposed to go to bed at 7:30. The older one at 9:00.  “Supposed to” being the operative phrase. We usually send the kids to bed as close to the designated time as possible. If they are all asleep by 10 p.m., it’s been a raging success.

Between helping them wash up, reading to them and one of us lying down with the younger ones to help them settle down, it’s always at least a two hour process. More often than not, the one of us who lies down, falls asleep.

It’s a rare evening that we both make it through bedtime awake, with the kids actually asleep. Even when that happens, we almost certainly get a post-bedtime visitor, wandering back down the stairs claiming “I can’t sleep,” or “I had a bad dream,” or, my favorite, “I’m hungry.”

Sometimes they don’t even come down. We just hear giggling, or screaming, or the unmistakable sound of furniture moving across their bedroom floor as midnight encroaches.

Candid scene captured in my children's dollhouse, proving
frustration with bedtime is universal. At least in our house. 

“What the hell are they doing up there tonight?” I’ll ask from my prone position on the couch, as my wife puts her face in her hands and starts to weep. Personally, I don’t care where they put the furniture, as long as they don’t come down the steps.

We’ve thought about it for a while, and we were finally able to pinpoint exactly when the difficult bedtimes began.  Shocker, It was when our first child was born. To be more precise, it was on our second night as new parents.

Ironically, on our very first night as new parents, as we slept in a tiny room in the maternity ward at Georgetown Hospital – my wife in the hospital bed, me on a bizarre fold-out chair that kick-started a decade’s worth of back problems -- the nursing staff wheeled our new baby girl out of the room to the nursery, so we could get some needed sleep. As the sun rose the next morning, an older nurse who’d cared for thousands of newborns on their first night, wheeled our new daughter back in and told us she slept like an angel. We felt blessed. 

After the second night, the same nurse wheeled our child back in again and, this time, gruffly told us that our baby was up all night and was “inconsolable.” They sent us home from the hospital that day, and bedtimes have gone downhill ever since.

We struggled mightily with bedtimes as our child grew and became adept at the bedtime-avoidance arts. We asked more experienced parents, read how-to books, watched Supper Nanny – nothing worked. 

My wife read this one book, in particular, called the “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” The authors had not only figured out how to get difficult bedtimers to sleep, but they posited that failing to do so would result in unhappy children. Yikes.

These experts suggested setting up a routine. Like a bath. So we did it. They suggested reading to them, to help them wind down. We read. They suggested being firm. We were firm. Nothing worked -- at least, not for long.

As a last resort, the book suggested letting our young child cry it out. (We have since learned that "CIO" is a major dividing line in parenting philosophies). They said, most kids will only cry for about 40 minutes. And after a few nights, they'll never cry again.

The first night of “crying it out,” our daughter screamed for three hours before we relented. The second night, it was closer to four hours. Clearly our kid was more stubborn than the test children the authors experimented on. We just didn't have the hearts of the will power to do it. Maybe it's because we had hearts.   

We’ve added three kids to the mix in the decade since. And we’ve tried lots of “strategies” to get them to sleep.  We've sung songs. We used positive-reinforcement, like “Good-Bedtime Charts.” We’ve tried bribery. And, we experimented with yelling at them – at least, I did. Nothing worked with regularity.

Nowadays, we still use routines as the bedtime foundation; one routine being that we always read stories to them. (Though our oldest now reads to herself). Sometimes we lie down with a kid to help them settle. And sometimes we fall asleep.

 

We're still perfecting our methods.

But ten years in, there’s only one thing we know for certain: bedtime sucks.

Blogger Confidential

I’ve often wondered why the “F” I write this blog. Like, what the hell is wrong with me?  

 

Why expose my family -- my wife and kids in particular -- to the world for its viewing judgment, and for potential public ridicule. (It’s not that public, no post of mine has ever gotten more than a few hundred thousand hits). But seriously, why would anyone blog?Why put yourself out there, like an open book, to be judged, or liked, or defriended. Are bloggers just masochists (not that kinds of masochist), or a narcissists, or some other “ist” I’m not even aware of yet?  

Thinking about it makes me wonder why any of us do the things we do, especially the public things. Why do we sing, or act, or take pictures that we share, or aspire to cook for large groups of people? Are all these, in some ways, just self-aggrandizing endeavors?  

Then, the other day, I was watching one of my favorite writers, a self-described “essayists,” who was talking about his own version of this affliction. The essayist was Anthony Bourdain. He doesn’t know me, but I consider him a personal friend. And, yes, I know how stupid that sounds.

To give an understanding of my level fondness for Bourdain -- one I’m sure I share with many friends of equally good taste in writing, food and drink -- he makes my short list of the people from all of history I’d have dinner with, given the chance. The list: Mark Twain, Cal Ripken and Anthony Bourdain. If nothing else, we’d tie on a good buzz -- after Cal went to bed, of course.  

Tony, as those of us who know him well call him, said the following describing what exactly he does for a living:

“I’m certainly not a journalist. I’m not a chef anymore. I like to flatter myself by saying I’m an essayist. But, I’m a storyteller. I see stuff. I talk about that. I talk about how it made me feel at the time. If you can do that honestly, that’s about the best you can hope for ... I think.”

Hearing that, something clicked. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with this dumb blog. And to say I wanted to isn’t even accurate. I can’t help it. It just comes out of me, like it really needs to get out and into the open air. It's cathartic.

It’s like my brother who has to bring his guitar to every campfire he attends. Or my photographer friends who can't walk away from a gathering without a memory card full of pictures. Writing about my life, about what I think, what I see, and what I feel, is all I know to do. When I don’t do it, I feel less whole.

It may annoy some people when I put up the umpteenth story about my too-cute-for-words kids. (I know, that alone is barf-worthy). And I may have caused some friends to block the incessant self-promotion of these so-called “bits.” But writing is part of who I am.  

I see stuff. I write about that. I write about how it made me feel at the time. If I can do it honestly, that’s about all I can hope for ... I think.

The Revenge of the Red Bowl

I’ve already begun plotting my revenge. But it’s going to take at least a decade to pull off.   
 
The plan is simple. When my kids are all teenagers, I am going to take them to a restaurant that serves its meals on plates and bowls of all different colors – so it’ll likely have to be a Tex-Mex joint or maybe a Café.   

I’m going to order the soup. When the wait staff brings it, I’m going to act completely shocked. Then I’m going to stand and scream at the top of my lungs:

“What! No! Not the green bowl! I wanted the red bowl!”  

Then I am going to cry uncontrollably until someone brings me my soup in a red bowl. It’s fool proof.  

If my kids have learned anything from me, it’s that you appease the screaming person who wants their cereal in a specific bowl, or their apple juice in the Nemo cup not the Princess one. Because each one of our kids has done this to us, and each one has eventually gotten their way.

Clearly, some one has tried to
serve his food in the wrong bowl.

This childhood obsession with specific tableware usually starts around 2 years old and last well past 5. It’s a stage of development, I assume. I gave up trying to convince a screaming kid that Rice Krispies tastes the exact same out of any colored bowl. (It’s also true of the generic Wegmans-brand alternative Crispy Rice, which is 2 bucks cheaper).

Toddlers, preschoolers and, apparently, kindergarteners are simply not old enough to understand that the molecular structure of apple juice is in no way altered by the kid cup in which it is served. I stopped engaging in that argument a few kids ago.

Maybe by appeasing them, I’ve trained them to act so rashly. But with the first one, we really did try. 

We were determined never to negotiate with our first toddler. We were going to teach her to eat out of whatever vessel her breakfast was served in, and to be grateful for the pleasure. 

Of course, that led to long standoffs, where the cereal would sit there, between us, getting mushy in the wrong bowl. The screaming and crying would continue well after the cereal was ruined and dumped in a pile in the sink.
 

She could go hours without eating just to get her favored bowl. Apparently, there’s a strain of stubbornness that runs in either my family, or my wife’s. I’m not certain which.

We had similar stand-offs with kids two and three -- though, with each my breaking point became easier for the child to reach.

By the time our fourth kid entered the phase where he cared passionately about the color of bowl, type of spoon or brand of cup, I just said, "Fine, which bowl do you want?"

Even if I have to dig it out of the dishwasher and give it a quick hand wash, it's less trouble than listening to a kid scream through breakfast.

Over the years, our policy of tableware appeasement has saved time and cereal, and it also bought silence – at least occasional silence.

Of course, if a kid wants a specific bowl that another kid is already eating out of, well, that’s another story. They have to wait ... or they could just eat out of another bowl because it really is the same.

WAHHHHH! Fine, just wait.

I’m sure there are loads of people better than me at parenting that have an answer to this dilemma, who could solve my children’s propensity to scream when given an inferior vessel or an unwanted spoon. These so-called “toddler whisperers,” I imagine, could cure my cranky kids after just a few meals. But four kids into this parenting thing, I’ve got more pressing battles to win.

Instead, I plot.
 
My revenge is going to be awesome, and, I anticipate, a bit unexpected. Because, I’m hoping all my kids will be out of this stage by then; And, it really makes no logical sense to complain about the color of your plate or bowl so loudly that the establishment refuses to serve you a meal. Especially if it’s a really good Tex-Mex joint. I do love me some enchiladas.

On second thought, I’ll definitely have to find a Café to exact my revenge.



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Childhood Moments Through A Viewfinder

This week, my third daughter got on the bus for kindergarten for the first time, and I missed it.  I was standing right there.  So, it’s not like so many dads and moms who have to miss milestone like this because of work or other duties. 

I missed it because I was more worried about getting the shot than living the moment.   

We were ready, waiting in the front yard: my wife, our daughter, our neighbor, and me.  When the bus rumbled up the block, I assumed the perfect photographer's angle and position, crossing the street in front of my daughter to line up my lens so I could see right up the steps of the bus.  I’d be ready when she turned around and waved.

I stood with the camera to my eye (a digital Rebel SLR – I know, old school).   And through the tiny view finder I watched a tiny version of my little girl cross the street, then round the front of the bus.  She hesitated for a moment as the district-assigned school bus assistant gave her basic bus loading instructions, then she climbed up the steps, turned and disappeared down the aisle.   

I got a few photos, but I missed the shot.  She never turned around on the steps -- the pose so many other parents posted this week on the internet -- and she never gave us a wave.  

Immediately, I was bummed that the shot hadn’t happened.   Dang.  

Then I looked over and saw our neighbor, who has helped babysit our baby girl since she was born, crying.

 

In this old New Yorker cover, parents are all checking
their email during trick or treating.  In today's version, we'd
all be recording and posting. Which is far better. Right?    

Our neighbor said what made her cry was when our daughter paused, stepped back and looked up with her big, uncertain eyes at that open bus door – the one that, for us parents, represents our vulnerable babies going out into the world (even if it’s just kindergarten).

I didn’t see that happen at all.  I couldn’t see it looking through the back end of a camera, standing where I had to be in order to get the perfect angle for the wave-from-the-steps shot.   The perfect angle?

 

I realized then I hadn’t just missed the shot.  I’d missed the moment.

And I'd missed the emotion.  I didn’t get that familiar lump in my throat when those growing-up milestones occur before our eyes.  My eyes were blocked by a Canon and my emotion stifled by the frustration I felt that the bus driver or the assistant hadn’t told her to turn around and wave at the family photographer. 

It made me think of all the time I’ve spent filming and photographing their lives, looking through a viewfinder or staring at the back of an Iphone: birthdays, school plays, graduation ceremonies. 

 

If I didn't have a camera to my eye, I'd feel naked.

When you get the shot and capture that moment, it can be perfect.  Years later, when everyone gathers on the couch to look at old photos, or to watch an old video, it's certainly worth it. 

 

But how many times have we watched those birthday song videos, which I have dutifully recorded every time at the expense of just soaking it in.

Are all of us so obsessed with recording life that we are missing it?

 

Because, I can tell you, when you miss the shot and the moment, it kind of sucks.  

This time, for sure, I wish I had a second chance just to live the moment.

When Did Back To School Become Its Own Season?

I knew it was going to happen eventually, starting a post with the phrase, “Back when I was young.”  So, here goes:

Back when I was young, we didn’t set aside the final three weeks of summer to focus solely on going back to school.  We just didn’t. 

 

Sure I remember buying some #2 pencils, and digging through my older brother’s dresser drawer to see if his school shirt from last year fit me.  We had to make sure it didn’t have too many stains, or that yellow tinge from the rusty water in our well.  But we’d usually do that the day before school started. 

 

What was so important she couldn't make it three feet
from the mailbox before opening?  Teacher Letters.

My kids, on the other hand, have been talking about back to school-related rituals and procedures since early August.   It began with the hype in advance of the so-called teacher letters – so-called because its from their new teachers, telling them which class they’d be in for the coming school year.  And, this year, two of our kids are moving up to new schools.  So it's a big deal, no doubt.  But, come on people. 

There were actually internet-based rumors in our town about when the local school would mail the teacher letters.  Vacations were scuttled so that families could wait by their mailboxes. 

Not us.  We happened to be out of town on the Saturday the letters finally arrived.  My wife and I got a text from a neighbor that the “letters have landed."  We decided it best not to tell the kids, to avoid them begging to go home early the rest of the weekend.  We told them on the drive home.  You’d swear we said Santa was waiting in our living room.

“Drive faster, dad!”

The letters are just the start.  Next, you have to read all that stuff.  Then comes the detective work determining which friends are in your class.  I almost needed another phone line to handle all the calls.

And the letters, of course, have within each a supply list.  That's when the real shopping starts.  Which is followed by the school meetings and tours.  Then more shopping.  There's more, but that's all I care to recall in my current back-to-school-season frazzled state.

Is there a Hallmark card for going back to school?  Maybe they’re behind this?

Or, maybe it’s a public school thing?
 
Growing up, we went to a small, private school – which was not nearly as fancy as that sentence implies.  It was very small, and not exclusive.  We went there because my dad’s family had a thing for Catholic school education.  And because the public schools near our suburban-D.C. home were too big and not known for being particularly good at educating children.

My parents may have been concerned about us falling in with the riffraff at the public school.  As it turned out, we were the riffraff at our private school. 

As school started, sure we’d do a bit of back to school shopping.  But we didn’t have some big, all-hands-on-deck, multi-store trip, where everyone got new clothes, sneakers, new book-bags and more erasers than even my kids could ever need. 

For one thing, we had uniforms.  We made, maybe, one trip to JC Penney’s to get a pair of khakis and gym shoes.   That was it for clothes.  And we’d be lucky if we got some new, lined loose-leaf paper, a few folders and a lunchbox that didn't smell from being closed all summer.

We also had small classes at our schools.  So we knew in advance who the teacher was going to be, usually the same teacher that had been teaching that class for decades -- Sister something-or-other.

The school year would start when we’d pull up to said school, get out of the car, and our parents would pull away.  There were no big, instruction-filled teacher letter packets that I recall.  No orientations.  No soft-grand-openings.  No two-page long lists of supplies.  Okay, maybe once I remember getting a Trapper-Keeper.  But only the once. 

Still, I'm pretty certain it wasn't quite like things are today.  My mom may remember it differently.

Am I wrong?  Or am I just getting old?