Over the Rainbow

By my calculation, Lilly probably listened to “Over the Rainbow” between 35 and 45 times today. The CD player in her room somehow got jammed on “Repeat” during her rest time and I didn’t have the juice to climb the stairs—13 of them, I’ve been counting lately—to fix it. Not that I would have known how. And not that she minded. It’s all Wizard of Oz all the time around our house these days. And in our car. On our walks. Compared to the Wizard—meaning, mostly Dorothy and her impossible/possible journey—Santa didn’t have a chance. He came and went on Christmas with barely a mention, outside of a couple of pudgy-looking reindeer that came to us from folks who work at the church next door to our house.

When he’s not asleep or smiling up at one of us from the changing table, Joey spends his days right now in his bouncy seat, swinging from side to side and caroming off the doorway leading into the kitchen. He’s 4 months now, grabbing at everything and threatening to sit upright at any moment. Lilly meanwhile is running around the kitchen, screaming: “Let’s sing Over the Rainbow superfast Dada. And she skitters around like the song is propelling her motor. “Somewhereovertherainbowwakeuphigh,” like that. I say “wake up high dada.” There’s another fix she’s made to the song that she loves and here it comes. “theresalambthatIheardofonce inalullaby.” This morning, she sang it to a handful of people before church started and she looked up at me playfully when she got to the “lamb” part. A little too knowing in her charm maybe but charming nonetheless. She’s 2 ½ after all.

Mostly, we surf across the top of the charming madness that is our children’s childhood, pretending that we’re fully evolved adults with mortgages, meaningful work, books on our bedside tables, and messy histories that we’d rather not talk about—especially around toddler ears. The truth is messier than that though and lately I feel like I’m constantly dipping in and out of my own childhood, even while the God that I know seems to have put me and my partner in charge of a couple of children of our own.
I’m in church this morning kissing my sons cheeks, and he’s not cooing as much as he’s humming like a lovestruck bee. His voice echoes around the simple sanctuary and my mind immediately spins to my own father. Did he kiss and cuddle me like this? Lie down in bed with me at night and listen to my breathing, the way I listen to little Joey’s. Did he crave that skin-to-skin contact that I can’t get enough of lately?

The past also echoes its way into the present when we’re driving around the Valley, Lilly and Joey strapped in for whatever our latest gambit is. I know it’s 2008 in my head as we cross the river and head for the grocery store a day after Christmas. But the strip of stores that is fast replacing beautiful farmland puts me in mind of the iconic strip near my own hometown and the not-quite-square farmstands that slowly melted away with my youth. We had designs on cutting our own tree at a farm in the hilltowns west of where we lived. But an ice storm that cut power to some towns for upwards of a week pushed that idea aside. A few days later we found ourselves across the river and guiding our car into a deserted farm stand where someone was selling trees off the back of a tractor trailer. We nosed our car almost up against a rotund balsam and I suddenly saw my father in the driver’s seat. “Maybe we should take that one,” he would say, even before getting out of the car. But this time it wasn’t my father. It was Nell, who at times exhibits his gift for efficiency. I protest, because not to means drifting completely into the past, and falling completely out of the present, which will be calling from the backseat momentarily. Soon we’re home with the tree and reaching directly into the past in the form of ornaments that have come down through our own childhoods. Tin soldiers, a crocheted Christmas ball made by a wonderful aunt, an entire entourage of snowmen with their permanent-marker dates on the bottom offering more proof of my ever-present childhood. Lilly plays with them like toys, or manages to dismember them with the cheerful ineptness that is 2 ½. I want to gaze into them for hints about the future, the way the witch gazes into her crystal ball to scout out Dorothy’s location. But we hang them on the tree, plug in the lights and barely take note of the tree's tender beauty before rushing onward to the next event.

Santa and Oz did cross for a minute this year in the form of a 30-minute, toddlerized version of the Wizard of Oz that Amazon.com, I mean “Santa,” gave to Lilly. In this version, the wizard looks no more other-worldly than a bowling ball. The music, clearly left behind in some ugly copyright battle, is nowhere to be found. The whole thing comes off like an episode of Scooby Doo. It’s an assault on our artistic sensibilities but not on Lilly’s. She watches transfixed from the couch and doesn’t care a whit that the Tin Man’s song—perhaps the most clever few stanzas ever set to music—is nowhere to be found. The witch scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid sitting on my own couch. We haven’t watched the adult version yet because Lilly’s too young. But contemplating the flight of the witch past Dorothy’s window as the shards of Dorothy's life spin about still gives me chills. I contemplate the way the shards of our own lives appear and re-appear from time to time as I move about through our lives. Just this afternoon the sight of Lilly stamping in muddy puddles and of her little jeans soaked nearly up to her crotch nearly made a puddle out of me. But there were dishes in the sink, and piles of things that needed to be moved around and made into other piles of things, only to be moved and moved again, across our house and across the ages.

"You're a Great Dad!"

It happens in the basement of a building where my wife is working. Little Joey in the front pack and me bobbing up and down spastically trying to get him to settle/sleep. My wife is upstairs working, as she does many nights. A woman comes by--it happens to be someone I know--and gives me the "look." Her eyes get all soft, her face just opens up and then she says it: "You're a great Dad."
These are never the wrong words to say to a parent, of course. A lot of us will just melt into a puddle of tears at the words, just because there are so many big and little moments during the day when you feel like you're behaving more like some rogue dictator, meting out punishment and laying down arbitrary edicts to your powerless nation of littlies. So if you think I'm doing a good job say so and watch the tears comes to my eyes.
I hear this a lot. What I wonder about is why mothers don't get the same kinds of fawning reactions. I catch myself in this double standard all the time. The sidewalks in our town can be full of moms with one kid on their back, another kid in tow, and a couple of grocery bags hanging from an arm and it doesn't occur to me to say, "Wow, great job. You're an awesome parent." Then I'll see a Dad on the street with an infant in a front pack or sitting at a table in a coffee shop sharing a muffin with his daughter. This is a tableau that moves me every time.
I'll keep this short because my own kids are going to be up in a couple of minutes. Yes, please, offer the men you see and know some praise when you see them on the street trying to snuggle their kid to sleep or herding a little one past the 50th set of enticing steps or a sparkly window display. But if you're going to do it for the men, do it for the women too. They're working hard (if not harder). It's just that somehow we fail to notice their work in the same way.

Skin to Skin

Kids have so much lovely, soft skin. In our house it's always on display: on the changing table, in the bathtub, sure. Also, our bedroom, the hallways, Nell's third-floor office, the kitchen, the playroom, the back yard, the front yard. Growing up in my own house everyone always seemed to be covered in layers--make that pounds--of flannel all year long. So a few months back when Lilly was running down the driveway naked and heading for the front of the house my mother, who was visiting, let out an audible gasp. "Um...are...you...she's...ah....."
"Naked?" I said.
"Yeah, don't you think you should put some clothes on her?"
Uh, no I didn't, though my mother's commentary took a little bit of the joy of having all that skin around.

When Joey came home in August the amount of kid skin in the family just about doubled. Lilly was born in early May at the beginning of months of inviting summer weather. With Joey there were just a few blessed weeks before fall arrived and we had to start bundling him up. But my relationship with him and his skin was different. I felt free to snuggle up with Lilly, to nuzzle her with a cheek or stroke her back, massage her legs or just generally absorb the beauty of her naked body. When Joey came home, though, there were all sorts of questions fluttering around my mind: could I nuzzle with him in the same way? Stroke him so lovingly? Kissing felt funny at first. I remember his slobbery lips brushing against mine one early morning as I was carrying him back to bed. Those lips were so soft and slippery-delicious. Who doesn't like kissing? But I felt uncomfortable; the weight of the culture was pressing in, invading our little House of Skin. Maybe it was the weight of western, American, male culture. Skin-to-skin? SKIN-TO-SKIN? THAT'S NOT OKAY!
Physical comfort and contact with infants is so pure. But here he was maybe two or three weeks old and all I could think was: am I wrecking him? Already? Is anyone watching? Right now? What would they think? Was there some sort of Stasi of fatherhood that was going to swoop in and cart me off for violating one of the basic tenets of maledom: keep physical contact among our side of the gender divide to an absolute minimum? Outside of butt-slapping on the football field, it's all supposed to appear nearly accidental.
Joey has this blocky little torso and is already muscly around his shoulders and upper arms. And that chubby-cheeked face of his already has hints of maleness to it. Yep, he's got a penis. But blessedly he's got no sense of gender. This occurred to me over a matter of weeks, the way an ocean current slides beneath your boat and moves you slightly off course over a matter of hours or days. He's not a boy as much as he's a squeezable little human with tight little fists and the best smelling head ever. His skin of course is the conduit to his tender, still-under-construction nervous system. Placing his skin against mine is probably the best thing I can do--for him and for me. Being belly-to-belly is like mainlining a box of sedatives, which is why he sleeps so soundly in bed. He cuddles in between us but really he sleeps with his mother. Sometimes early in the morning I'll look over to see that he's slipped off the breast, but never completely away from it. It will look like he's using his mother's breast for a pillow. It's not hard to put my own envy aside. Skin-on-skin. The look of contentment, of pure ease, is impossible to miss. There's a lot to be learned from that pre-dawn tableau. I'm learning as fast as I can.