Familyhood

  “So, I’m not nuts?” I ask, relieved for the validation. “I mean, it looks terrible, right?”

  He explains to me that, in fact, new TVs are so technologically advanced they’re no longer compatible with virtually everything filmed earlier than, say, last week. So pretty much everything I watch on this TV will look significantly worse than watching it on my last TV. The one I just gave away to my nephew because I wouldn’t be needing it anymore now that I have this new one, this state-of-the-art beauty that apparently can take an award-winning movie of three years ago and make it look like it was filmed with a gas station security camera.

  But there is hope, he tells me. If I want, they can disable some of my TV’s fancy settings to bring it down a few notches, to make the picture look a little worse, which would be easier to watch. And therefore better. It makes so little sense that my head hurts.

  Why, I’m asking you, can’t we just leave well enough alone? Why must my computer offer me updates every two days? Are there really that many significant breakthroughs happening that often? Were they so wrong and shortsighted the last time they updated it—Wednesday? Even if the update is better, do I really have to get it now? Can’t it wait till I get a new computer in a couple of years? I mean, I know we’re meant to be appreciative, that we’re kept so up-to-date and everything, but all I feel is annoyed.

  I can only conclude that the computer geniuses are not doing their job properly. They seem too eager and unfocused. It’s like when I see my kids finish their homework too quickly. “Done!” they say as they push away from the table, darting off to go fool around. But then they think of something.

  “Oh, wait—I forgot to put my name on it.” So they scribble their name and jump away from the table.

  “No, wait, wait—I forgot to finish that last part.” Scribble, scribble, scribble. “Done!” (Beat.) “Oh, hang on a second—I think we were supposed to draw a picture on question four—I forgot to draw the picture.”

  It never ends. Don’t these computer people understand we’re not going anywhere? Relax. Take a second, make sure you got it right, and then hand it in.

  BUT WE HAVE GROWN accustomed to—addicted to—getting newer, better, faster . . . more all the time. And I don’t see how it can ever end well.

  My boys like rolled-up dried fruit. It used to come in little strips—a couple of bites’ worth per serving. Now it’s sold by the foot. I’m delighted they want to eat something relatively healthy, but putting a foot of anything in your mouth is just wrong.

  We were at the movies and my kids talked me into getting them each a Slurpee the size of my first apartment. I know it can’t be good for them, but to be honest, it’s just that the cup is so big, I figure whatever’s going on inside it must be pretty terrific to justify that kind of commitment.

  And besides: the price of a massive amount of Slurpee is not that much more than a small. Same with the large size of popcorn or fries or anything; having already jumped off the ledge of good health and reason, why quibble over the amount? Might as well go whole-hog. (Do you notice, by the way, it’s never “half-hog”? Even in describing our gluttony, we have to go overboard. You would think half a hog would be more than enough to paint the appropriate picture, but no—we need the whole hog.)

  I KNOW THAT, AS PARENTS, it’s our job to guide our children in these matters, to help them develop that muscle, that internal mechanism that tells them when they’ve “had enough”—of anything. But I may be the wrong person to lead on this one; from the get-go, portion control has never been one of my strengths.

  My wife continues to be bewildered at my inability, when eating, to distinguish what might be reasonably called “a portion.” I continually defend myself by arguing that I only eat “one” of anything.

  My units of measurements are, however, admittedly murky. A platter of roasted potatoes, for example, meant to serve many, is, to my way of thinking, still just one thing of potatoes. Eating two families’ worth of potatoes would be piggish, no question. But one family’s worth? Come on! It was there, on the plate. I assumed it was meant to be consumed in its entirety, so I did. Why is that wrong?

  Eating one muffin and then another muffin could, I understand, be considered eating two muffins. But I don’t see it that way. I round up to the largest unit of measurement. There was a box/a plate/a bag/a container—a thing, whatever you want to call it—of muffins and I ate it. I ate the thing of muffins. I didn’t have two things of muffins, because that would clearly be unhealthful and inconsiderate.

  Do you see what I’m saying? I fear you don’t. Yeah, well . . . I’m not arguing; it can be a problem. Even without entire industries conspiring against me, I sometimes have a hard time knowing when enough is, in fact, enough.

  I’m the same way with work. I love to work. I also love doing absolutely nothing. What I do not enjoy is doing just a little of either. I tend to lean toward all or nothing.

  If I’m doing nothing, I really must do absolutely nothing; I’m talking about a not-moving, staring-into-space, slack-jawed, spittle-on-the-bottom-lip Nothing.

  When I’m on vacation, I have great clarity of purpose. I know what I’m there to do. I look at a beautiful mountain and say, “That is a beautiful mountain.” My job is simply to look at it, take it in, and enjoy it. Nothing else. I don’t have to climb it, fix it, or explain anything to it. I don’t have to report it, sell it, talk to it, expand it, or turn it into a novel. I just have to let it be a mountain. I am very clear about my job and committed to it.

  Just as when I’m working, I commit wholeheartedly to that. I dive in, work constantly, stay up late, and wake up early, preferably working on several things at once, with an equal amount of adrenaline-stoked energy brought to each of them.

  As there are but twenty-four hours in a day, this amount of work necessarily detracts from my personal life.

  I recently made the mistake one night of bringing a script I was working on into bed with me. I was so excited and immersed in the story, so happy with that day’s progress and anxious to continue tinkering, that I just couldn’t help myself.

  My wife looked at me from her side of the bed with that same expression of bewilderment she has when I happily polish off a whole thing of potatoes. This look was a little worse, actually. This was as if I had brought that plate of potatoes into our bed. With a stripper. It was a hybrid look; equal parts amusement, disgust, and confusion, topped off with the slight tilt of the head she does which I have come to recognize as “You’re kidding me, right?”

  I was then made to understand by my lovely bride that either I could stay or the script could, but that she was not prepared to deal with three of us in the bed.

  Point taken, I rolled up my script and headed downstairs to our guest bedroom to spend the night. My reasoning being: as much as I adore my wife—and I do—she would likely still be there tomorrow, whereas the brilliant idea I had for the script might not. (Again—I’m not saying this is good. I’m saying, yes, there’s a problem: I can’t always tell when enough is too much.)

  I STARED AT THE PAGES for a while, but sadly, predictably, the inspiration had passed. I had nothing.

  I tossed the script aside, and having already “made my bed,” so to speak, I shut the lights and finally called it a night.

  But I was still too wired to sleep. So I flipped on the TV we have there in the guest bedroom. It’s from three houses ago. It’s eighteen years old, square, thick, and has no def whatsoever.

  You know what? I’ll be honest with you: it looked fine.

  Faith

  I think of myself as a person of faith. Not necessarily religious. It’s not like I’ve even thought these things through particularly well. I just . . . kind of have faith.

  For starters, I have faith in people. I like to believe that people are basically good.

  But in the real world, pressure and circumstance conspire daily to cause even the best of people to behave Not So Good. So I also have faith that I will often be di
sappointed. I don’t like it, I’m just not that surprised by it anymore. So my faith still pays off.

  As far as the Big Picture goes, I would consider myself a Believer. Is there a God? What do I know? I know it makes me feel better to believe there is, so why not? Plus, how else to explain the splendor, the grandeur? I mean, we’ve had a lot of smart people so far, but I don’t think any of them could have invented rain. Or an apple. Or the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. This comes from something beyond human endeavor. As Mel Brooks’s Two-Thousand-Year-Old Man says, “There’s something bigger than Phil!”

  As to what that something is, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t have the details. I don’t need to know specifically how it works; I’m just happy that it seems to be working. Life is short enough as it is, so I figure it’s better to focus on things I have a chance of figuring out—like why men insist on flushing before we’re done peeing. It makes no sense, it’s counterproductive, yet we continue to do it.

  As I say, I’m simple. My wife, on the other hand, is a much deeper person. She demands clarity.

  A few months ago, we were enjoying a lovely walk along a lovely beach on a lovely day, when we came upon a dead goat. Not a whale, mind you, or a baby seal—something you could reasonably expect to see washed ashore. A goat. Dead. On the sand.

  “Oh my God!” my wife says, grabbing my arm, pulling me with her as she inched closer to investigate. “Why is there a goat on a beach?!” She was transfixed by this anomaly.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe it washed up.”

  “From where?”

  “A boat? Maybe it fell off a boat?”

  “In Malibu? You see any boats going by with goats on them?”

  I was defending a thesis I not only just made up, but for which I had no conviction whatsoever.

  “Okay, well, maybe he got separated from a herd of goats or from his goat-herder and wandered off the road,” I offered.

  “From where? There are no other goats around here.”

  “Okay,” I said, now pulling possible scenarios out of thin air. “How about this: some people, from a culture perhaps more goat-centric than our own, were planning to barbecue it, and then . . . got distracted and went back to the car. And by the time they realized they forgot the goat, it was too late. So they left him here.”

  “No,” my CSI-expert wife concluded. “Because there’s no fire pit, and no evidence of human activity.”

  “Hmm,” I concede, having run out of possibilities. “Weird. C’mon—let’s keep walking.”

  So we walk, but my wife is now very disturbed. Not by the goat, mind you. By me.

  “How does that not bother you?” she asks, in a joltingly accusatory tone. That I didn’t share the intensity of her perturbed-ness was more irksome to her than the perturbing offense itself. “Don’t you find it weird that a goat is laying there, in a place where goats should not be?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it doesn’t bother you?”

  “No.”

  “But . . . Why?!”

  I shrugged. “I just accept it.”

  I DIDN’T SAY IT to be flip, or dismissive. I meant it. There is great liberation in being a simpleton. I was genuinely okay with a dead goat on a beach being “just one of those things” that will likely never be explained to our satisfaction. So why not embrace it as a “miracle” and move on? Miracles don’t always have to be big and flashy, you know.

  I once had a half-eaten cookie appear on my desk from nowhere that had no conceivable explanation. I hadn’t brought that cookie into the house. I lived alone at the time and no one had a key, so nobody else could have put it there. (The idea that a burglar still struggling with the concept of burgling might have broken in and brought it to me as a housewarming gift did cross my mind, but was ultimately rejected.)

  And it was a very specific cookie too. Not readily available, or even store-bought. It was a homemade, dry, chalky mandel-bread kind of cookie that is edible only if you dip it in really strong coffee for a really long time. Like my grandmother used to do. In fact, this was the very kind of cookie my grandmother used to make. I hadn’t had one since she passed away some twenty years earlier, but I was certain this was a grandmother cookie. Then, with a chilling shiver, it hit me: Maybe this was from her. Maybe my grandmother “visited” from . . . wherever grandmothers go when they die, and left me a cookie. With a bite taken out of it. (That’s how sweet she is; she even tasted it to make sure it was good.) Yes! I was certain. There was no other explanation. (How she found my apartment, or even knew I had moved to L.A., I hadn’t figured out yet. But, again—this is not for me to fathom. It just “is.”)

  And as ridiculous as it sounded, it made me really happy. What was at first a troubling conundrum was now a very pleasing, supernatural care package from my deceased grandmother. Is God great or what?! (I didn’t eat the cookie, of course. I threw it out. But still . . . a miracle.)

  AS TO WHEN I may have started to believe in God, God only knows. I don’t think I was born with it. It was something I must have learned, but that doesn’t make it any less real or heartfelt. I mean, I also believe two plus two equals four, but somebody had to explain it to me first.

  I would imagine that, to the extent I even thought about it, as a kid I probably figured my parents were God. After all, they made me. They gave me life, and from there continued to keep me alive with food, shelter, warmth, love, hats—everything I needed.

  It wasn’t long, though, before I began to suspect my parents were not, in fact, God. I don’t mean this as a criticism. It just didn’t make sense that God would be so concerned about me and my sisters, and so much less about everyone else in the world. It didn’t add up; I had imagined God to be a more thorough deity.

  But I found this discovery reassuring. If my parents weren’t God, then they must be human beings, doing the best they can. Same as me. So, okay—good; we were all on the same team.

  By the time I was a teen and started exploring the subject a bit more rigorously, I got a glimpse of how many diverse opinions, descriptions, and variations there are of what God might be and what people think God can do, and I realized I was going to have to make some choices. A little picking and choosing seemed in order. For example: Did God really see everything I did? Not so sure. I couldn’t imagine anyone tolerating being that bored.

  Also the idea that there was some sort of Master Plan in effect didn’t hold up to scrutiny for me either. While I was happy to understand that God created the world and all that was in it, I never really believed He was intimately involved in running, say, the airlines. Or arranging for dogs to get hit by buses. Or whispering suggestions to nut jobs to blow things up. Or keeping the Cubs from getting to the World Series. I imagined the Lord would be too busy for this. And personally against these very types of things. Which, again—I found comforting; if God’s not responsible for all that’s bad, then He’s probably as frustrated and heartbroken about these things as the rest of us. Maybe even more. Which now put Us on the same team, too.

  EVEN IF I HADN’T BELIEVED in God before, seeing the birth of my boys would have swayed me entirely. From the moment you first hold your child (and, really, every time you look at them thereafter), you can’t help but be overwhelmed with the sheer marvel of it all. Are you kidding me? How can this be?! We started with nothing, and now this? A whole human being who can learn English in less than twenty-four months and kind of looks like my grandfather? How is that possible? And the heart and the lungs all know what to do? Who could’ve possibly made this happen? I mean, my wife and I are good, but we’re not that good. Some other force is clearly at work.

  It’s a good thing that having children fortifies your faith, because you need it. As a parent, you get tested in ways you could never have imagined, and that extra dose of belief comes in handy. Maybe that’s why they made birth so spectacular; to instill us with a faith that then gives us the strength to endure all that follows. It’s like movies that have a great f
irst ten minutes; it may not in any way reflect the next hour and a half—but the fact that you were so impressed up front will keep you there till the end, believing all the while that it will ultimately be worth it.

  This extra sense of “awe” sustains us through the patches of less awe; those stretches of mundane tedium in which “awe” is replaced by “aw,” as in, “Aw . . . I wish you hadn’t broken that.” “Aw . . . that is really disgusting—please stop that.”

  And having the extra conviction helps when your kids start asking the same questions you used to ask. “Where does God live?” “What does God look like?” “Do dogs have the same God as people?” Addressing these questions is like playing the net at Wimbledon. You don’t need to score so much as keep deflecting. Keep your racket up and try to just keep the point alive. And not get hit in the eye.

  Even when faith wavers, sometimes just having a good sense of tradition can do the trick.

  I remember a few years back telling my boys that it was the high holidays and we would be going to temple. My big guy was into it. He loved the ceremony, the familiar faces, and the funny guy at the door in charge of welcoming everyone, and the seemingly endless supply of apple juice.

  My little guy, on the other hand, not so much. He was maybe five at the time, and while he’d certainly been in synagogue before, he hadn’t clocked that this was going to be recurring. He didn’t get that this was a place we return to on certain occasions, and today was one of them.

  “Wait a second,” he said, apprehensively. “Where are we going?”

  “You remember,” I told him. “The place with the singing and the praying and the standing and the sitting and then standing again . . .” He was not pleased.

  “Oh, I hate that place.”

  I couldn’t have been prouder; that I had instilled in my son such a shallow appreciation of tradition and ceremony that he knew of our house of worship only as “that place”—which, by the way, he didn’t like. I asked him why.