aleo and i have been playing some video games together. much of this time, especially in the early going involves him getting me functional. occasionally his use of language is the greatest. two examples that stand out are:
1. i was complaining about my joystick. he asked to see it. he moved around a bit and then said, "yeah, your joystick seems to be a little cockier than mine. we can trade if you'd like." i said i'd rather not, because i for sure thought the cockier controller would pay off in the long run (this has not yet come to pass).
2. then we were playing something else on the computer and i was complaining about the mouse being extra twitchy. again, he asked to see it, opened up a control panel or two, moved some dials and then told me to try again. in explanation, he said his friend maria was over playing with him and he had to turn the "sensibility" up for her. knowing maria as i do, i'd second aleo's suggested course.
and let's get past the point where i come off as a over-delicate fool that just complains when things aren't exactly to my liking. it's not like this is getting exponentially worse with each year that passes. i can't help if i'm a touch cocky and high on sensibility.
in all the hubbub i never finished our topsy-turvey tale. i left off with me having knee surgery (see topsy turvey part 1 for the detail). so i had my surgery on a tuesday and everything went fine and well. prior to the procedure i asked what to expect recovery wise. i was told i would walk in and i would walk out. i took that to mean it would be like nothing at all had happened and that my life would resume as soon as the anesthesia wore off. with this understanding, i told my office i'd be be out tuesday and back on wednesday. the first sign this was not the case was the prescription for 60 vicodans they handed marty on our way out the door.
in addition to the prescription there was the direction to keep the knee perpetually iced and elevated for the next 72 hours. while the week was shot to three kinds of hell, on the good side of all this dour news, marty and i discovered downton abbey. while laid up and bored in bed, i trolled the netflix hallways looking for anything of interest. something took me towards downton abbey. i watched the first five minutes of it and hit pause. i called for marty and said she should plan on having lunch with me in bed as i had a show for us to watch. so we sat in bed, my knee wrapped in ice and atop four pillows, eating sandwiches and discovering a 1912 english village while our children were at school. possibly our most quaint and romantic workday afternoon since our college days (and certainly our most peaceful moment in recent weeks).
i gingerly returned to work on friday to begin the dig out. it went slow but steady. at three in the afternoon marty called. she said the principal from the high school she used to teach at called. a teacher had taken ill and they needed someone to fill in for three weeks ... (pause) ... starting monday. after another pregnant pause i noted that by her calling me at work and positing the question, she was expressing interest. yes. after a third pause in the conversation, i said i supported whatever she wished and said we could talk about it further that night.
before children, marty taught for nine years (at this same school that was calling now). marty then took off nine years. returning to teaching is something that has definitely been on her thoughts especially now that our youngest, anthony, is slated for full day kindergarten next year. but next year is the earliest we'd ever thought about her return and would have, in an ideal world, preferred two years to give marty one year to breathe and collect herself before returning to the fray.
marty was interested on several levels which i'm sure i'd botch if i tried to represent them so won't. suffice it to say marty's brain was above an idle with the notion of challenging her mind beyond innovating on what went in her kid's lunchbags or reading a new goosebumps book to her five year old. i get this need. fully. when i returned home that evening and saw how lively her eyes were, i made three points. i asked that she didn't start monday because the still-broken fridge was scheduled for repair on monday. i asked that she not let this sudden jump back into a professional routine, taint her notions of returning for real because she wasn't giving herself a chance to re-enter work life with a proper amount of time to plan and prepare, professionally or mentally. and i said, i could handle the kids in the morning but she had to find places for them, especially anthony, when they got out of school. within twelve hours she returned the call saying she would do it. fortunately, because of paperwork she couldn't start on monday anyway so the fridge got repaired (thank gawd!!! as post-knee surgery is not the time you want to be without a working ice-maker).
her first morning of work she left at 6:00 am. i woke up early to make her breakfast. as she ate i confessed this was only a "first day back to work after nine years off" treatment and she shouldn't expect it everyday. i also made her a lunch and stole a little note in there in case she was getting treated poorly by the day or the kids. then she left. after a short bit of quiet, i started prodding kids out of beds.
the kids knew my getting them ready was going to be different. marty is definitely far more accommodating that i am. she is known for making them pancakes, kraft macaroni and cheese, or even crazy time-consuming waffles. when they ask me for such things, i look at them as if i didn't understand the questions, which in some regards is true. in the early days, they'd repeat the question and i'd tell them to go get a muffin and yogurt. now they don't even repeat the question. they just look at my face and head to the muffin tin all on their own. progress! and, if i'm known for anything in the morning it is when i am ready and they are not i stand in the foyer and yell, "you're putting me behind schedule Dufresne. don't make me come up there and thump you." rabid fans of shawshank redemption might recognize this loose translation of one of my favorite lines from the film. my kids obviously have no idea what i'm talking about or who this Dufresne cat is, but they get the gist that i'm getting irritated and they best up the pace.
i wasn't too intimidated about getting the kids off to school. this is something i usually do on wednesdays so i have a sense for what is involved. but there was one variable i failed to consider. every time i've taken the kids to school on my wednesdays, marty was there, in the house and part of the morning. we'd really not gone through the drill without her. the problem stemmed from anthony's morning ritual, which goes like this. when anthony wakes up you will often here a stretch and a yawn. this gets followed by hearing the creaks of the slats in his upper bunk as he moves to the ladder. once down, you hear a quick patter of feet, and might see a flash in the hall, as he quick steps it to the bathroom. urination. more patters—this time to marty's side of the bed. then you hear one word in a very business like tone: cuddle. with this marty's arm raises the covers like batman might swoosh his cape and anthony lithely slides into the warmth of her space and the covers drop, engulfing him. this is followed by three to ten minutes of silence which is broken, always, by the same question: is it a computer morning. computer mornings are weekend mornings where the kids get a few hours of computer to start the day.
on the first day marty was away anthony woke, he went to the bathroom, then the empty bed, then came and found me.
ANTHONY
where's mom?
TROY
at work. remember she's going to be working for a few weeks.
ANTHONY
but what about my cuddle?
TROY
oh. i can do your cuddles while mom's away.
ANTHONY
but you don't know how.
TROY
i'm sure they won't be as good but maybe you can teach me.
ANTHONY
now i'm doing nuthin'! and i'm not going to school!
with this declaration anthony turned and ran back to his room, climbed his ladder and cried for the next ninety minutes. although to say he cried at the news is like saying i was merely disappointed when i re-injured my knee. what he really did was screamed for a full hour and a half that we wanted his mommy. bella, alex and i quietly ate breakfast to this upstairs tirade. as i told bella and alex to suit up to go, alex asked me what i was going to do about anthony. i answered honestly that i didn't know.
i climbed the stairs and entered his room. he repeated his missive that he wasn't going to school. i told him he had to. it was the only choice. no one was going to be home. he said he didn't care. i said i wished i could leave him but i just couldn't. it wasn't safe. he pleadingly said he'd lock the door and not answer it, no matter what. i told him i wished that was enough but it wasn't. he was just too young and he had to go to school. when he said no again i had to pull out the big gun, the one thing for which anthony seems to have no defense: 1-2-3. immediately after i said the single word "one" anthony yelled, "okay stupid head, i'm coming." and he did. he immediately came down the ladder descended the stairs, headed toward the kitchen but i stopped him saying he missed breakfast and now there was no time. without protest he sat down and i put his shoes on. he put his coat and backpack on and headed towards the car without breakfast and still in pajamas.
he sulked on the way to bella and alex's school. he sulked after their drop off and on the way to his school. when we pulled up he got out of the car still fully under protest and began a slow walk into the building. just as we started i saw anthony's best friend grady get out of his car. i called hello to him and when he saw us he yelled a gigantic, arms-in-the-air, ANTHONY!!! he then charged towards us and ripped his coat open showing a large scooby doo shirt. he said his mom let him get one just like the one he gave anthony for his birthday. astonished anthony unzipped his coat to show his scooby shirt and the boys happily marched into school arm-in-arm.
that proved to be the turning point for anthony and i had no more problems after that. in my second week i was heard to say things like "did you get your milk out of the freezer and put it in your lunchbag" and "don't put your shoes there because you won't remember them in the morning." which is really good news because after marty did her three week stint filling in, the school offered her the job, full-time, starting next year ... (pause) ... and, she accepted.
the question on my mind as of late has been about mentoring and namely about why it seems so challenging for middle-aged guys to find and nurture mentoring relationships with our elders. i mean there are plenty of older men out there. and many of them are certainly accomplished enough. hell, simply by being older, even if you squandered the lion-share of your years in an armchair watching crappy, or even good, television, you're bound to have observed a meaningful thing or two, even if by accident, in your multiple decades of life.
so, these days, when i meet a person around my age i ask them about any older mentors they have and how they came to have them—you know, just the normal backyard party small talk. i posed my question to a neighbor who is a surgeon. through our talks we discovered how similar developing young talent is in both technology and medicine. he was experiencing some difficulties with a new, super-bright doctor his practice had brought on. when he asked one of the senior partners about it, the older doc pithily said with a hint of knowing sympathy in his voice:
good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions.
and that was all he had to say on the matter. in reflecting on the brief response, i'd conclude, that might be all that needs be said on the matter. while there are many challenges in aging, having a better grasp on the why's and how's of life certainly goes a long way in making those physical deficencies sting a little less.
no. i'm not talking about that kind of family tramp. i'm talking about the family tramp that the neighbors who moved away gifted you before their departure. i don't think a week had passed since members from both families hefted the awkard ring over the three-foot fence (pictured in the background) that marty commented on how comfy of a bed it looked like. then, i don't think two days passed befor ...
when i first played it for bella, i blindfolded her and sat her in my office chair facing my stereo speakers and then blasted the song irresponsibly loud. something about that focused listening enriches the experience.
marty was driving home from georgia after a week away with the kids. i was in a meeting in my office. in the middle of a sentence my phone, which was sitting the desk between the man i was meeting with and me, began to ring. in the seven years i've had my phone this might be the eleventh time it rang as no one really had my number and those that did knew using it was about as effective as screaming my name out their front door. surprised to see it come to life, i glanced down at the screen. it read: SEX GODDESS. i swung my eyes to the man on the other side of the desk to see if he noticed the caller. he had not. i said i had to take it and answered the phone and heard:
hi troy. it's marty. we got a flat. everyone is ok, but we're stalled out here and i wanted to let you know.
i later told the guy what happened and was relieved at the time that he didn't see it. he said if he did see it and i wasn't going to answer it, he surely would have.
bella and i were on an evening bike outing. in the summer she has taken to riding later in the day, some rides lasting well past sundown. while many parents and riders would balk at these post-sunlight rides, bella landed the right riding partner because for twenty years i did all my distance cycling between 10pm and 2am for a number of reasons i won't get into here/now.
on this night, we wended our way through our typical route. as we rounded a gentle bend with high brush on either side, we came upon a broad meadow that, at this particular moment, had thousands, and i do mean thousands, of fireflies dotting the landscape. the vision fully took our breath away as we rolled through a scene straight out of a Miyazaki film. as far as you could see in either direction small dots of light silently winked on and off in the dark.
it wasn't until we cleared the meadow that bella turned her head to me, mouth agape. she didn't even say anything—she just had a look of amazement on her face. i shook my head in agreement. the next time we stopped a few miles later, before the bikes had even stopped rolling, bella was commenting.
BELLA
did you see that?
TROY
yeah that was really something.
BELLA
have you ever seen anything like that?
TROY
never.
BELLA
we shouldn't tell anybody about it. just keep it as our secret. and only show it to people we really love.
we fist-bumped the deal. so if you ever want bella and/or i to take you to firefly meadow, you're gonna need to amp up the charm, like a lot.
i was making some new benches for our front porch (in part due to a new, totally sweet, dowling jig i recently bought). i was modeling them after a bench i made several years ago. between my superior skills (compared to several years back) and improved tools (uhhh, dowling jig), i considered upgrading to a higher grade of of wood. the problem point here is that it would add a fair bit of cost to the project so i wanted to make sure i could pull the benches off without any issues.
while getting things organized, i stepped out to the porch to take measurements on my existing bench. while crouched down and measuring the various parts and pieces, i noticed how the top slabs of wood, where you sit, had deep divots and mars in them from the kids various projects. the most damning of the marks came from our meat tenderizer hammer where, i recalled this day specifically, the kids went through a multi-day period of busting open acorns for sport using the medieval looking meat hammer as the pounder and my hand-made bench as the worktop. i imagined my reaction to them doing this, or any other number of their child-divined games, on high-dollar pieces of lumber versus the simple treated wood i've historically used.
then, from my crouched position, i recalled one of the first and most meaningful parental lessons i ever learned: you can love your things or you can love your children, but you can't love both.
after completing my notes, i, with nary a reservation, went and bought my low-grade planks of wood.
the mancation tradition has been happening long enough that we don't really know how long it has been happening. if asked, we say it has been in effect for around twenty years.
i know that it has been going on long enough that when bookguy got married, he listed his mancation as a non-negotiable part of his life and like his occasional surly attitude, is just part of the package.
great, right down to the album title: Same Trailer Different Park
bella turned me onto this girl awhile back. at first i expected just another wispy dove-voiced girl who looked and moved right. but in each of the three videos my daughter sent me of the girl's work, i was repeatedly struck by her lyrics and storytelling. i'm not sure if she writes her own stuff or not but if so she's got a real talent for observation and bending it to fit her need. if it's someone else, she's got a good songwriter backing her up. i for one loved the days where songs more consistently made storytelling part of the craft
(e.g. johnny b good, american pie).
we just look like we were in a knife fight a few days ago.
here's a recent lesson on aging marty and i just bumped into. scars on older people stick around much longer and in an uglier, darker form than when you're young. i commented on how two cuts i recently got were acting like they weren't in any rush to go away. she flashed me her own battle wound and it looked almost exactly like mine. to add to it she told me to keep an eye on anthony, a kid who seems to get a minimum of one cut/bruise a day, as you can almost watch his skin heal back to perfection before your eyes.
if you are storming up on this lovely physical milestone as well, the good news is while our external mars don't go away so easily, the internal cuts that used to take weeks and months (or longer) to heal in our teens and twenties, barely break our thicker, tougher emotional skin these days. so aging, as people sometimes like to claim, isn't just broken eggs and spilt milk—there is a fluffy, cheese-filled omelet (or two) sitting within arms reach as well. you just have to look on that side of the table.
i recently bought amazon's most recent technology offering--echo. it is very similar to iPhone's siri but instead of being carried around in your pocket, it sits somewhere in your home. i situated ours on a window shelf in the kitchen. it's a fun sort of toy that can play 80's music (my preference) while you cook, make note of things you need from the store, tell you jokes (anthony's favorite) or ...
during school anthony would visit a speech therapist a few times a week. she was helping him with a few sounds he seems to stumble on when talking fast, like R's (my struggle when his age were any words with double-Ls). she, like seemingly all speech therapists, is young, charisma-heavy and attractive. she smiles big and talks with great positivity and brightness. both marty and i were struck by her after meeting at a patent-teacher conference. a few weeks after making her acquaintance a school-day story made its way back to us.
moments before anthony walked into the speech-lady's office she fumbled her drinking glass and spilled water down the front of her shirt. she dabbed it up as best as possible and then went about work. she greeted anthony when he stepped into the room and told him to take his seat. then as she turned to face him our second-grade anthony said:
i think your boob leaked some milk.
as is her nature she handled this unexpected comment with grace and humor. it probably didn't hurt that she was in fact a breast-feeding mother (not that anthony had any idea about that--but perhaps there is a look or a smell though--although it is probably more the case that he thinks all young women are breastfeeding some human). she later told marty she was struck by the ease and confidence of the eight year old's comment to which marty simply said, "well, you can tell he's a boy who saw a good number of years of breast feeding--maybe possibly a few more years than he should have."
driving back from utah from our third year of skiing we slid into a wyoming rest stop. the kids and i took first shift in the bathrooms. upon returning to the van, we saw no sign of marty. i asked bella if she was in the bathroom with her. bella said no. we scanned the space looking for a sign then a goofy bird sound had us all look over our heads where, high in a tree, sat the children's mother. ...
regarding yesterday's pro-peril story, for any wondering, my part of the peril was installing the rope on the tree. i'm not a fan of heights and for sure know bad things can happen. but if i want my kids to leave their comfort zone and travel to new places, i reckon i should as well every now and again.
granted, being taunted by anthony while going through my trial with chants of "do you want me to climb up there and do it dad?" does not enrich the experience in any meaningful way other than, maybe, egging me on to finish the job.
and i'd never been more thankful for my failing vision because once i was at the peak of the climb and trying to manipulate the thick-as-my-wrist rope into the slip knot my super-neighbor taught me minutes earlier, i was able to slide my glasses down my nose a bit and given my severe near-sightedness, the distant world below blurred out, looking much less ominous.
i don't think folks talk nearly enough about the awesome parts of getting old.
we were gifted a trampoline a year ago. for the record, most cool things our kids have can be connected to the generosity of someone who is not their parents. the tramp is a modern-day issue with the high netting all around. for reasons i'll explain in a moment, we recently removed the saftey netting. seeing a tramp without this encasement these days is kinda like spotting a black bear in yellowst...
a few days after my fourteen year old bella was mistaken for a grown woman (ref), she and i were out running errands. i told bella that given (1) her looking older than she is and (2) me looking younger than i am since shedding 25 pounds we might start running into situations where people look at us and wonder if we're a father and daughter or a rich guy and trophy girl. after icking and hacking her way through the suggestion she explained that no sensible human could be that mis-guided. i agreed that it seemed crazy and unlikely but said she should prepare herself for the possibility.
not even twelve hours later bella and i were on an evening bike ride through our park. we pulled up in front of the art museum to adjust some gear (me giving bella my helmet because she forgot hers - again). as we were working things out a woman exited the museum and walked by us. glancing our way, she pulled up and complimented our bikes. she stood back taking them in and then said it was so great that we enjoyed the same things and got out together. she began saying "it's nice when a ... ". here she paused and looked at each of us and bella finished her sentence "father and daughter" and the woman picked it up thanking bella and saying it was hard to tell sometimes.
after we parted and got out of earshot of the lady bella turned to me, saw my broad smile and said, "don't say a word. not a word." and we biked on in silence for a bit while bella digested this new development.
and yesterday, May 10th, 2015 dearmitt.com turned 15.
for more than ten years people have been telling me that i would regret this website. they cited reasons varying from "your kids are going to hate that you shared their life so publicly" to "one day you are going to ...
in trying to convey at point at the dinner table to anthony, i said:
TROY
haven't you ever heard the saying "as a man thinketh, so he is"?
ANTHONY (8)
uhh. no. and i know i've never heard that saying because i've never heard the word 'thinketh' before.
although after that exchange anthony will never again be able to make that claim because 'thinketh' saw tons of play after that as in "do you thinketh you could bring in the ice cream" or "i thinketh it is time for dad hours" or "i thinketh i must use the restroom."
all three kids were scheduled for haircuts. we lived through survived a time that logistically scheduling three kids for a haircut in the same visit would have proven a herculean and catastrophic endeavor. herculean given the ambitious feats of occupying the two not in the chair and catastrophic in the sense that afterwards you'd need the remainder of the day to recover. but these days with a 14, 11, and 8 year old, marty called out a ten minute warning. in seconds the boys charged by to get dressed (it was only 12:00 on a saturday). as anthony passed, marty asked him to wake his sister. and that critical thought you just had about our daughter sleeping at noon isn't judgmentalism, it's jealousy—i know because i felt it too. after getting dressed, anthony returned to marty and asked if he could say that it was her idea to wake up bella. marty chuckled and said, yes, he could say that "mom said" to wake her and then added that he should just give her a gentle nudge on the hip and say it was time to get up. and that's what was done and they were in the car at the appointed wheels-up time. AND the dearmitt-walter clan set yet another salon-record for amount of hair removed from three humans (granted, bella and alex carry the day here).
and the best news of all regarding this maturation is it totally possible for me to say to my wife that while she and kids were getting haircuts i was thinking about catching a movie. because there was most definitely a time saying those words to my wife while in arms reach could have resulted with her holding my larnyx in her balled up fist but now, instead of rending parts of my anatomy from their home, she says "yeah, that sounds great. we'll meet up after." and not in a facetious way but in a, "great—go have fun" way and there's like flower petals floating down around us and soft music playing in the background. so i got to catch a weekend matinee of ex machina, a movie i would suggest you carve out time out to see as it is a wildly excellent and thought provoking affair about not our future, but about our childrens' future (possibly our grand-childrens') but assuming we can hold this planet together long enough, it is in someone's future. curious riddles they will be. and if you can go to a guilt-free afternoon matinee i would suggest doing so, if for no other reason, just because you can.
when we pulled into the lot for the walter family easter event, before i killed the engine, anthony (8) announced that he wouldn't be hunting easter eggs. later, when an uncle pressed him on the matter he said, "what's the point. all you do is run around finding eggs. you eat the candy in them. you get fat. and then you spend the next year trying to get de-fat. just so you can do it all over again ...
i don't know if this leaves me motivated or dispirited. whatever the feeling is, i couldn't help but force myself to experience it multiple times. sheesh.
and in case you thought it was a fluke, there's more.
bella and i had just finished biking our second and final lap at the park. just as we turned to head home a guy i met a week earlier passed by. our faces lit up at recognizing each other and he applied the brakes coming to a stop. we stepped off the path and greeted each other. he introduced himself to bella and in short order we got talking about bike routes and group rides. i turned to bella a couple of times and could see the talks were not of interest to her given her unengaged observance. i tried to slow the conversation a few times but it kept re-gaining steam (this is a very interesting and knowledgeable man to me). after what was probably twenty minutes, we finally broke off and headed our original ways. once we were back on the bikes and out of earshot, i thanked bella for her patience and said i knew she wanted to go and that i appreciated her not getting huffy or embarrassing in front of my new friend. she replied:
well, i figured there's been lots of times you've driven me to rollercade and then drove back to pick me up or took me to birthday parties or walked me to the library or came to my soccer games when you'd rather be doing other things so figured i owed you a talk with your friend.
sometimes i wonder how my life would be different today if i possessed my daughter's maturity and empathy levels when i was fourteen (instead of getting them when i was 34).
there are also fewer fights around the dinner table thanks to all those facebook feeds
kottke recently shared a story from a guy that said since smart phones arrived, nobody picks up coins they see on the street anymore.
From 1987 to 2006, he averaged about fifty-eight dollars a year. Then Apple introduced the iPhone, and millions of potential competitors started to stare at their screens rather than at the sidewalks. Since 2007, Pasquier has averaged just over ninety-five dollars a year.
my smartphone observation, and one of the few true boons of the technology would be an immediate and sharp decrease in the incidents of road rage you hear about. turns out people are too distracted to get annoyed at anything.
and there is a comment marty made a few years back that stuck with me. if you recall, marty taught 9th grade science for eight years in the 90's. then took nine years off to be home with the kids. she is now in her third year back in the classroom. when she first returned i asked her what, if anything, had changed in the educational landscape. her response: "well, there weren't smart phones when i taught before." i'll leave it to your imagination to ascertain if their impact on our educational process has helped or hindered our mission to grow a new and improved generation of thinkers.
the further we advance in time, the more the movie wall-e looks like a documentary and less like a kids movie.
