MY WIFE: What do you mean playing with it?
ME: Well, they’re cuddling and petting it.
MY WIFE: (Sounding upset) They’ve got a DEAD RABBIT in the fridge on their balcony and they’re CUDDLING AND PETTING it?!
ME: For God’s sake, honey. The rabbit’s alive.
MY WIFE: (Furious) THEY HAVE A LIVING RABBIT IN THEIR FRIDGE???!!!
(Silence)
ME: You know, sometimes it feels like you don’t listen to me at all.
Empathy. Your mother has it.
Dinner with a couple who have children your age
HER: (Looking at the children playing on the floor) God, they’re so big already. I’ve almost forgotten all the bad things about being pregnant now.
HIM: Yeah, it’s crazy how quickly you forget. You had a real tough time there for a while.
HER: Yeah, it’s just that so much of it was new. So many weird things happening to my body.
YOUR MOTHER: No joke. My body went completely insane. I just waddled around all fat and clumsy, feeling like an elephant in everyone’s way. I couldn’t even fly properly. I’m used to being able to curl my feet up beneath me on the seat, but suddenly I barely had room for my legs! And let’s not even get into how starving and cranky I was all the time, sweating constantly, the permanent heartburn…
(Silence)
YOUR MOTHER: I actually developed much more understanding for Fredrik afterward. He lives like that constantly.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LOVE
I don’t know all that much about love, if I’m completely honest.
I mean, I can tell you I love you, but I don’t know if you understand what that really means. Because I don’t love you the way I love bacon or Manchester United or the second season of The West Wing. This isn’t that kind of love. I mean that I love you as though you were a runaway freight train thundering through every cell in my body. I mean that this love didn’t grow on me, it knocked me over. It’s an ongoing state of emergency.
But love. I don’t know what to say about that. I don’t know all that much about it. Of course I know that people say it’s when you find someone who “completes” you, but honestly: I’m not so sure about that. When things are complete, that means they’re in order. No joins or cracks. Just perfection. Two puzzle pieces cut precisely for one another. Like when you see two people and say, “God, those two were destined for each other!”
And, well. Your mother is from Tehran. I’m from the south of Sweden. She’s five feet tall. I’m six foot one. If you put me on one side of a set of scales and two of her on the other, my side would still tip the balance. I lumber through life with my hands in my pockets; she dances. I don’t actually know anything she loves doing as much as she loves dancing, and I can’t find the rhythm in a clock. People have said lots of things about us, but trust me, no one has ever said that we were destined for each other.
So I don’t know what to tell you about love. Maybe that some people say you need to know yourself before you can know anyone else. That could be true. I’ve put a great deal of time into getting to know myself, and that’s given me a whole load of valuable insights. Like the fact that I know I love the second season of The West Wing and Manchester United. And bacon. Not the way I love you or your mother, of course. Not at all. I have a different kind of love for bacon. I don’t know if you will too. Your mother always mutters that no one on Earth could love bacon the way I do. She often says that when other women travel for work they’re afraid they’ll find another woman’s underwear on the bedroom floor when they get home, but she’s expecting to find a defibrillator.
I don’t know what you’ll grow up to be. How much of me will end up a part of you. You have all her big brown eyes and her endless shadows on your cheeks. There are days when I think someone must have blown all her eyelashes into the ocean just to wish for you. You have all her laughter and all her spellbinding ability to step into a room and immediately make everyone in it want to move a little closer. Not like when I step into a room, and they instinctively hide all of the lasagna dishes and table decorations.
But if there’s the slightest genetic hint of my side in that little body of yours, then you’ll spend a large portion of the next ninety or so years being hungry. You may as well prepare yourself for that now. Life will revolve around food.
Thinking about food, dreaming about food, hunting for food, making food, ordering food, waiting for food, talking about food, questioning the lack of food. Never in my life have I looked at a menu and thought, “What looks nice?” I’ve always been too busy focusing on “What will be served in the largest portion?” If I ever write an autobiography, it’ll be called Hungry—A Lifestyle.
Your mother likes different stuff. She understands beautiful things in a way I wish I could. Art, music, theater. Maybe I’m too focused on what kind of snacks there will be during the intermission to be able to maintain enough concentration for all that, I don’t know. But I do lose focus pretty quickly. And my temper, I can lose that pretty easily too. Especially when I’m hungry. It’s had quite an impact on my life.
So at roughly the same time your mother and I moved in together, she introduced the concept of “pre-eating” to me for anytime we were going anywhere with what she refers to as “grown adults” present. By “grown adults,” she usually means people who think that soup is food. People who can stand around with a glass of wine, talking about their job for two and a half hours without eating anything but small crackers with randomly placed bits of fish on them. They call it “hors d’oeuvres,” but believe me, it’s really nothing but a mystery novel about the mystery of where the hell they’ve hidden the real food.
The fact that I pre-eat before we spend any time with these people has saved your mother and me from plenty of arguments. Like, for example, whether I “growled” or simply “cleared my throat demonstratively” at whoever it was who tried to reach for the potato chips when we were at our first couples dinner together and the hostess of the gathering casually mentioned that the dinner would be forty-five minutes late.
And, naturally, I’ve developed a number of particularly effective favorites for this pre-eating purpose. Like, for example, the pre-eating hot dog. It’s two chorizo sausages, bacon, cheese, potato salad, béarnaise sauce, crispy onions, and some other good stuff in a full-size baguette. I’ll eat that whenever we’re going to a social event I’m particularly skeptical about. Often the kind where your mother, when I protest at having to wear a tie, reminds me that when we got married it was actually only until my death that she promised to love me for better and for worse.
I call it the L’Oréal Sausage. Because I’m worth it.
You start by taking a baguette and scooping out the middle with a long spoon. (You can keep the bread you scoop out. I usually roll it into balls and fry it in butter and beer while I’m making the hot dog, as a pre-pre-eating snack.) Then you fry the chorizo. Decide for yourself whether you want to use butter or oil. I use both. And then add a little extra butter. And then quite a lot of beer. Your mother isn’t all that keen on me frying things in beer, so I sometimes make the hot dog over at your grandma and grandpa’s instead. It’s good to know, in that case, that this recipe calls for two cans of beer. Because your grandpa will want to drink one of them.
There can be a bit of smoke when you pour the beer into the pan, but don’t worry about that. It is, as Zlatan Ibrahimović likes to say, “f-ing normal at this level of professional sports.” I usually fry the sausages until they look like they’ve been beaten up by the characters in Sons of Anarchy. But if you don’t watch all that much TV, you can probably take them out earlier if you like.
After that, you add the bacon. How high a temperature you fry it at is something you can decide for yourself. Personally, I like it when the pan is so hot that the bacon almost curls up in the fetal position and covers its eyes when you add it, but that’s down to individual taste.
While the bacon rolls around in the pan, you can s
tart filling the baguette with various good stuff. It’s down to your own conscience what kind of good stuff you choose, but I like to start with mayonnaise and mustard. Don’t be shy. It will not do you any good.
The mustard? I like it strong. Exactly how strong is, of course, up to you, but I like it when it’s so strong that it starts screaming at you in an accent and suddenly marches away to pull a truck out of a ditch or defeat a Roman army. I think that’s enough. Your grandpa has a pretty damn good homemade mustard that he makes by rolling a small cannonball around a plastic bowl full of mustard seeds. It’s strong as hell. And if it’s not strong enough, your grandpa sends angry letters to the local paper and threatens to report the mustard to various judicial and nonjudicial (and, in all honesty, often completely made-up) courts of law. That usually gets the mustard back in line.
People, of course, often ask why I need so much mayonnaise and mustard in the bread. But it’s because the crispy onions just don’t stick as well otherwise. This is important street-smart stuff for you, right there.
Next, I add melted cheese. If you want to, you can melt the cheese in the microwave, but I normally just use the cheese knife as a spatula for frying the sausage, and when the knife is covered in scalding-hot oil, I use it to slice the cheese. Partly because it’s effective, and partly because it makes me feel like it’s what Rambo would do. Then I roll the cheese around the chorizo, and the bacon around the cheese. Like a cheese-and-bacon sleeping bag. After that, I push the chorizo/bacon/cheese roll into the bread. If there’s too much friction, you haven’t used enough mayonnaise. No worries. There are only two things in life it’s never too late for: an apology and more mayonnaise.
Next, you push all of your good stuff into the bread. You can choose whatever you want. I like potato salad, pickles, and crispy onions. Ideally so that the pickles are practically spooning the pieces of potato as they slip inside the baguette. Like the pickles and the potato were two freezing soldiers on a training exercise, promising each other never to talk about this with anyone.
If you feel like really spoiling yourself, you can add some kind of colorful garnish on top. We do actually eat with our eyes too. Some people like parsley and things like that, but I think that a little béarnaise sauce and some extra crispy onions look good. It’s down to personal preference.
How many pre-eating hot dogs you eat before you leave is, of course, completely up to you. I normally eat three or four or so. But you only weigh about twenty pounds, so maybe one is enough for you.
* * *
And, well.
You’re probably wondering what all this has to do with love, and I told you already. I don’t know all that much about love. But your mother is a vegetarian. And she still chose me.
So I guess that might teach you more about this than anything else I can say.
Because the reason I don’t know much about love is that I’ve really only ever loved one woman. But every day with her is like being a pirate in a magical land far away full of adventures and treasures. Making her laugh is a bit like wearing rain boots that are a little too big and jumping into the deepest of puddles.
I’m blunt and sharp and full of black and white. She’s all my color.
But I don’t think I complete her at all. I mostly cause trouble. And maybe that’s the point, I don’t know. But no one has ever, ever, ever said that we’re perfect for one another. I’m a foot taller than she is and weigh more than twice as much. I have no sense of rhythm and my body balance is like a drunk panda’s.
Your mother loves nothing in this life as much as she loves dancing, and she chose to share her time on Earth with a man she can’t dance with without seriously fearing for her safety.
She chose me.
And then you came along. And you love music. And when you dance, you and she… If I could only choose one single moment to live inside for all eternity, it would be that.
I can’t tell you anything about love. Nothing more than that.
The eagle has not landed.
(This morning)
WIFE: Are you taking the car into town?
ME: Yeah.
WIFE: So can you drop him off at preschool?
ME: Yeah.
WIFE: Can you pick up the rug from the dry cleaner’s too?
ME: Sure.
WIFE: And swing by the pharmacy? And do the food shopping on the way home?
ME: Yeah.
WIFE: Perfect. I’m going to work now, then. See you tonight!
(Thirty minutes later)…
ME: (On the phone) Hello?
WIFE: Hi! Did I remind you to pick up the rug from the dry cleaner’s?
ME: Yeah.
WIFE: And that you need to swing by the pharmacy?
ME: Mmm.
WIFE: And that you sho—
ME: YEEES! Do you think I’m deaf or something?
WIFE: Nonono, sorry. I just wanted to check. You can be a bit forgetful sometimes, so I just wante—
ME: I’m not bloody SENILE!
WIFE: Nonono, sorry. See you tonight.
(Another fifteen minutes later)
WIFE: Hi, it’s me again. Are you at the office?
ME: No, I’m in the car.
WIFE: Ah, okay. So everything was fine when you dropped him off at preschool this morning?
(Fairly long silence)
WIFE: Hello?
ME: (Looking into the back seat, where our son is asleep in his car seat.)
WIFE: Hel… lo?
ME: (Clearing my throat) All right. Hear me out, now. I know I can be slightly forgetful at times and I know I was rude to you this morning with the whole “I’m not senile” thing, but before you say anything now I just want you to remember that AT LEAST I’m not one of those parents who forgets to PICK UP my child from preschool…
This seemed like a slightly less idiotic and irresponsible idea at the time.
But yes. Note to self: Wite-Out is really, really, really hard to get off a two-year-old.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHEN I HOLD YOUR HAND A LITTLE TOO TIGHT
You’re going to meet a lot of people in your life who’ll try to tell you what the meaning of it all is. What we live for. Some of the brightest minds in world history have tried to sum it up. Musicians, authors, politicians, philosophers, artists, poets. They’ve talked about the transitory nature of life, about its irony, its passion, its desire, and its magic.
They’ve said and written grand, wonderful things.
I hope you get to read and hear all of them, because there’s something so special in that experience, in falling in love with words. Feeling them like fluttering butterflies beneath your skin. Like whirlwinds in your head. Like a punch to the gut.
I’ve read the works of thinkers and prophets. The holy books, and the most unholy. I’ve benefited from mankind’s most brilliant brains devoting entire lifetimes to explaining who we really are. What the hell we’re doing here.
What life is all about.
But nothing has hit me as hard as this one line: “Life’s a game of inches.”
Al Pacino said that. In the locker room just before the final game in Any Given Sunday. Damn good film, that. There are people who will try to tell you that you need to love sports films or at least like football to be able to really appreciate it. But they’ve got it all wrong.
“[L]ife’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small… One half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch.”
There are people, and purely hypothetically we could call them “your mother,” who will shake their heads and sigh so deeply that they need to pause halfway to take in more air every time I show you that film. But you and I know better.
Because life is all about the small margi
ns.
A few inches here or there.
The job ad that took me to Stockholm might have been five inches. The stamp to get on the subway may be one. The threshold I stepped over at the very same moment I saw your mother for the first time might have been three. The first bed we slept in was about thirty-five.
Two birth cities can be two thousand miles apart. A first home can be two hundred square feet. A boy can be born and be nineteen inches.
A bullet can be 22 millimeters.
There’s nothing from your childhood that I’ll owe you a bigger apology for than always trying to impress you. So I guess I’ll save this until you’re old enough to think I’m so boring that I’ve probably never experienced anything exciting at all.
That’s when I’ll show you the scar and tell you about that day a few years before you were born.
And sure, in all honesty, you probably won’t think I’m even an ounce cooler for it. But still. I’ll take what I can.
The police said it was just an ordinary robbery. The kind that happens in banks and post offices and shops almost every day. “The important thing is that you realize this wasn’t anything personal,” they repeated over and over again. No one really knows exactly what happened. A couple of men with guns and another group of people in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess, that’s all. Like all robberies. Maybe the robbers got stressed out, maybe what happened next was more an accident than anything else. Hard to say.
But by the time they ran off, one of them had shot someone.
And I don’t want to teach you to mouth off at the police or anything. But it’s quite difficult to get shot and not “take it personally.” Let’s just leave it at that.
The bullet entered my thigh about four inches above my knee and burrowed through my flesh into my thighbone. Not that I knew that at the time, of course. One funny thing about being shot is that you don’t really have time to perceive where you’ve been shot, when you are, in fact, shot. So it might have taken a second or two before I even realized that the gun had actually gone off, and that it’d been aimed at me. And then it took me another second to realize that it hadn’t been aimed at my head.
Things My Son Needs to Know about the World Page 9