Monday, February 16, 2009

Invitation

I'm contemplating opening this blog up to other fathers of young children who want to write about their experiences. I'm wondering if anyone who reads this has an interest in doing this or knows some folks whom they would like to pass it on to. Leave a comment to this with an email address and I'll get in touch with you if it seems to make sense. I'm trying to keep a lid on all my pre-judgments and the general need to be an editorial dictator. But one thought I have is that my goal for contributors would be that their writing would struggle with the work of parenting on an emotional level. There's plenty of testosterone elsewhere in the world and online. That's not forbidden but I'd be looking for something a tad, shall we say, deeper in addition to that.

I haven't completely made up my mind about opening the blog up but it's the direction I'm heading just because this project seems to need more voices than my own.

Thanks for your interest.

Balance?

Lately, I've been having some fantasies that seem rather detached from my current life. To wit:

A conversation about San Francisco, the city of our honeymoon, led to a daydream of returning there to spend more time. I imagined Nell and I wandering down a street and turning into a bookstore to get lost for an hour or two. We spilled out of there and into a cafe further along the street and then, our faces soft and serene, eventually wandered back to the apartment we had rented in Noe Valley without a care as to the time. And then....SCREEEECH, the memory of our two very vibrant children crowded into my thoughts. We wouldn't be taking in the view from the Golden Gate Bridge or wandering the boardwalk adjacent to it. More likely we'd be talking our way into the closest bathroom and figuring out which piece of our clothing we could use as a "wipe" since one of us left the actual wipes in the car, or the apartment, or just didn't bring any to the West Coast to begin with. Closer to home my thoughts drift to time loitering in a local coffee shop, where I used to hang out for hours reading or noodling in my journal. Then I remember that someone died of a heroin overdose in one of their bathrooms a while back and I wonder if I'd want to be wiping anything in there. Also, though it's mid-February, the thought of an annual kayaking trip I take to Maine with three or four friends causes my chest to heave with an expansion of breath that it hasn't known in, lo, so so many diaper changes, occasions of getting puked on and generally acting like a bellhop for the under 3-set in my house. There's another way to say all this: I'm tired. Actually, bone-tired, in the sense of the D.H. Lawrence poem.

My parents weren't writers but when I was growing up they could wax downright poetic on the notion of creating balance in your life. But having two kids under two (ish) means your life is constantly out-of-balance. It's like sitting in an over-filled rowboat while a couple of trolls jump up and down on the gunwhales as you paddle. Sooner or later someone's going to bang their head or just end up in the drink; it'll be a miracle if no one gets whacked with a paddle.


At the moment, we're planning to take our out-of-balance show on the road to Florida for a couple of days. This is a really good idea, except that it's not. If you've done something like this, you know the packing considerations related to car seats, strollers, etc. An added attaction is that, while I can't mention my wife's work, I can tell you that she'll be working and that her work goes late into the night. The kids and I will be with her at those places. Or we won't. Or we'll be in a hotel with their grandmother and all the lights off so that they--and we can sleep. Or we won't. (We're not the best planners in our family.) One thing is clear: we'll visit a lot of different bathrooms in a lot of different towns and hope that no heroin addicts have died in them. For a couple of nights we'll stay with her grandparents in a condominium they own not far from the ocean. Which is good. We'll make little plans to amuse ourselves, like "Go to the beach" and "Visit bird sanctuary." We might even get to the beach for an hour or so before someone melts down or gets 1st-degree burns. But our "To Do" list will look more like,

Find a place that sells environmentally friendly diapers
Caffeine
Family-sized Advil?
Caffeine
Will therapist do phone appointment?
Caffeine
Get wipes
CAFFEEEEEEEIIIINE!!!!

We're all addicts for happiness, and for formulas to attain more of it. Sometimes being a parent looks like a big board game designed to demonstrate what a silly quest that is. The point here isn't that there isn't a lot of crazy joy on the journey. It's just that nailing it down and making it repeatable is beyond elusive. Not that my little brain actually registers that and gives up trying.

I'll let you know how the trip goes.