Familyhood

  BUT I’VE NOTICED that both categories—the pings of pain and the pings of happiness—both cause me to make the same involuntary (and not particularly attractive) facial expression.

  It doesn’t have a name, but you’ve seen it. If you’ve ever looked at your children and for a brief moment marveled at how what originally appeared on a sonogram smaller than a quarter, now speaks English and can pour itself a glass of orange juice, you’ve probably even made the face yourself. It’s somewhere between a smile and a grimace. A “smi-mace,” if you will. Or, if you prefer, a “gr-mile.”

  It’s not a pretty face. Imagine holding a wedge of cheese so unreasonably pungent you can’t un-squinch your face, but you also can’t put it down. It makes the back of your eyeballs twitch a little and your head shake from side to side in sheer admiration of its potency.

  My wife tells me I make this face all the time. Like an old guy who hums without knowing it. Now she just walks by me and says, “You’re doing it again.”

  “What.”

  “The face.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You’re not? Look at your face.”

  “So?”

  “It’s creepy. You’re just staring at them.”

  “But it’s not ‘bad’ staring—it’s ‘good’ staring.”

  “I know, but just—”

  “Alright . . .”

  And I stop. But my point is that that face, and that feeling—the powerful bittersweetness, the sense of wonderment running right alongside the equally powerful sense of just how precarious that wonderment is—I get that all the time. And I know that before I had kids, I didn’t.

  Now trust me, I was never an “I can’t wait to have children” kind of guy. The reason we originally had kids was because . . . well, that’s just what you do, isn’t it? You “get married and have children.” Because if you don’t, everybody in the world nags you and pecks at you till you break down and say, “Fine, alright, we’ll have children!”

  AT LEAST THAT was my journey. My wife, on the other hand, originally wanted children, I maintain, mainly so she could buy them clothes. She couldn’t wait to buy tiny sweaters and pajamas the size of hand puppets. We briefly discussed getting a circus chimp, seeing as how cute they look in those little suits, and how entertaining they’d be at parties. Plus, by having fuzzy animals instead of children, you cut out the whole “private school vs. public school” discussion. Just leave ’em in the yard and keep tossing those bananas. But ultimately, we decided against it and instead we made two little boys, and I have to say it’s worked out much better.

  ORIGINALLY, I THOUGHT it was nuts that anyone would even let me be a father. My understanding was that fathers, traditionally, had to be older. You know, like my father’s age.

  As fate would have it, when our first son was born, I was the exact same age my father was when I was born. That threw me. I started rethinking my image of my dad and had to entertain the notion that as much as I liked to believe otherwise, my father was probably not born a father. There was a good chance he started out as a kid, then spent a few years as a teenager, a single guy, newly married guy . . . all the things that I myself had been. After the initial shock, I found this very liberating. I thought, “Wow, he probably didn’t know what he was doing either.” So how hard could this be?

  NOW I CAN’T BELIEVE how much I love being these boys’ father. Just hearing a sentence coming my way beginning with the word “Daddy” gets me every time. Even if what follows is unpleasant, as in “Daddy, I’m begging you—please stop singing.” Or “Daddy, I found this in my pants.”

  I think more than the sound of the word, it’s the lingering, vague hint of a question mark before the sentence continues that I love, as in, “Daddy . . . ?” There’s such hope in the air there. Because as far as they know, I’ve always been a father. So when they say, “Daddy . . . ?” the implication is, “Daddy . . . ? You’ll know the answer to this.” Which is ironic because, in fact, I don’t know the answer to anything.

  Like for example, I don’t know what to do if anything happens. If nothing happens, I’m fine. But the possibility of something happening makes me very nervous.

  Also, I don’t know where anything is. In my own house or, for that matter, in the world. I just haven’t really been paying enough attention. I sometimes say Argentina when I mean Venezuela. I don’t know why, on a DVR, sometimes you can record one show while watching a different show, but other times it doesn’t work out. I don’t know where anyone in my family might have left whatever it is they’re looking for. And—probably more important than anything else—I’m not always clear on what my wife has already said to the kids. This is key. It’s imperative to know what conversations have already been had, what assurances have been made, and what ground rules have been laid. Otherwise, you’re dead.

  My kids not only know they can manipulate me, they taunt me with the fact that they know it and that, furthermore, there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Recently, I said yes to something I probably should have said no to, and my older son just smiled. And then, in his best “Look-how-I-can-be-cutesy-like-Shirley-Temple-even-though-I’m-a-boy-and-also-I-don’t-know-who-she-is” face, he looked right at me and said, “Oh, thanks Daddy. You’re the best-est daddy in the whole wide world.”

  “Oh, really?” I said, smiling proudly. “How come?”

  “Because you let me do anything I want, all the time, even though you’re not supposed to.”

  Oh. I think what I said was “Why, thank you!”

  I DO KNOW THAT the key to effective disciplining is to identify what is most important to your children, what gives them the most pleasure, and then take it away. Or, more likely, threaten to take it away. In our house, the luxuries most frequently put in jeopardy are TV time, dessert, and the chance to continue to live with us. Usually, I start with TV.

  “Okay, if I hear the word ‘butt-face’ one more time, you’re losing TV tonight.”

  That gets their attention. Then minutes later I hear something to the effect of “Bla bla bla bla butt-face.”

  “Okay, buddy, you just lost TV tonight, and one more time, you’re losing tomorrow too!”

  Then you keep raising the stakes—a week, a month, and so on. There is a point, though, at which they’re reasonably sure you can’t back up the threat.

  “Okay, you are now not allowed to look at a TV, computer screen, video phone, or any broadcast media till you’re fifty-five, or until seven years following my own death, whichever comes later. And don’t think I won’t know, because I will.”

  Of course, the threat of taking away what they like only works if they really like something—otherwise you’ve got no cards to play. It’s like those old prisoner-of-war movies where cigarettes were the only currency of exchange. I always wondered about the one guy who doesn’t smoke. This guy could never be gotten to. You can’t take away his cigarettes because he doesn’t have any, and he can’t be bribed with a chance for more cigarettes, because he doesn’t want any. The guy would be unstoppable.

  With kids, though, sometimes it’s tricky discerning exactly what it is they want and don’t want. A few weeks ago we were all at the dinner table and my teenage boy was doing a great impression of a really obnoxious teenage boy who was raised by terrible parents. With great conviction I said, “Okay, you know what? You’re going to leave the table right now!”

  There was an awkward silence as my two sons and their mother all turned and looked at me with a palpable pity, till the younger brother finally complained.

  “But he wants to leave the table. That can’t be the punishment—’cause then he wins.”

  I didn’t miss a beat. I turned again to his big brother.

  “Oh, you want to leave the table? Then, you can’t!”

  “Till when?”

  “Till I say so. And we’re taking your plate away so you will not be having the rest of your dinner.”

  “I don’t want the rest of my dinne
r.”

  “Then you have to eat it! Wait a second—which is the thing you don’t want?”

  “He wants to be done with dinner so he can go play,” says the junior senator.

  “Alright, then—the exact opposite is what it shall be. More food, and no playing.”

  For a brief moment, I savored the sweet taste of victory. But then a thought occurred.

  “Wait a second. Unless . . . Unless that’s exactly what you thought I would say and you’re trying to trick me! I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. Okay, pal, now I decree it shall be the opposite of what I just said was going to be the opposite; now you must leave the table and go play at once! And that is final!”

  As he headed away smiling, I suspected I may have misplayed the point.

  I THINK THE REASON “disciplining” will never be my strong suit is I’m always subtly rooting for my kids to win. I mean, I remember what it’s like to be a kid, how good it felt to win, to get one over on your parents. Who am I to deny my own children that victory?

  I remember once, as a kid, I did some dumb thing or another—I forget exactly what. I think I may have shot a convenience store clerk in Reno. Oh, no, wait, that wasn’t me—that was Merle Haggard. Okay, scratch that. I think my actual crime was I lied about where my friends and I were going one night.

  My father—because he wasn’t born yesterday—called me on it, and I felt appropriately stupid and embarrassed. And then in a rare moment of parental candor, my father lovingly showed his cards and explained. “It’s okay,” he said. “Your job is to try to get away with stuff, and my job is to try and stop you. That’s how the game works.”

  I had no idea that was how it worked. I mean, I suspected it, but I wasn’t sure. And I certainly wouldn’t have thought he knew it too. I guess it really is a game, I realized.

  AND IT’S A REALLY FAST GAME, too. I mean, not to get all “Sunrise, Sunset-y” here, but no kidding—it really does go unbelievably fast. And you’d think that knowing that in advance would help, but it doesn’t. Everything—the good stuff, the bad stuff, the hard stuff . . . it all ultimately just goes away. It evaporates, with no clear warning. One day you just notice, “Hey, you’re not watching that stupid cartoon anymore. I guess we’ve moved on. Good.”

  But the things you like doing fly away too. One night a few years back, it just hit me, “Hey, you stopped asking me to read you bedtime books. Hmm . . . I guess that’s over.” Or, “Hey, you don’t waddle when you run anymore—you run like a big kid now. When did that happen?”

  The changes are so imperceptible. But, I suppose, how else could it be? Your kids are never going to tell you in advance, “You know how I can’t get off the sofa without jumping over the coffee table and banging my knee every time? I’ll be outgrowing that next month. And also, how I call my brother ‘butt-face’? End of July—done.”

  It never works like that. Nowhere along the growth curve do kids announce, “Dad, Mom, y’see this little fleshy part of my thigh that’s soft and still somewhat toddler-esque? Well take a good look, because that’s all changing Wednesday at three.” No one tells you that, but come Wednesday, sure enough, that’s all gone.

  SO, AS IT TURNS OUT, my father did know what he was doing. His game plan was simple but on the money. “You be the best kid you can be, I’ll be the best father I can be, and let’s see what happens.”

  And what happens is: ping, ping, ping, ping, ping!

  But the good news is: ultimately, they’re really all “good” pings.

  And given that anything and everything could be gone by Wednesday, all we can do, I’ve decided, is try to pay attention Tuesday.

  Life and Death

  I’m a big fan of Life, not so much of Death. As the proud co-creator of two terrific human beings, I am proud of having contributed tangibly and positively to the former and, as far as I know, have never done anything to cause the latter.

  I try to avoid even thinking about death, as a rule, mainly because it’s depressing, but also because—why? Nothing good comes of it, really, unless the thinking time is spent re-imagining your life entirely so it can then be put to much better use than whatever it is you’ve been doing up till now. Otherwise it’s just wasted, anxiety-provoking time you never get back.

  But just as death comes on its own wacky, unpredictable schedule, so too can the very discussion of death. It just creeps up on you, sometimes, out of the blue.

  The other day I was enjoying a perfect, sunny afternoon with my older son, blessedly oblivious to any Big Questions, when he chimed in with: “Daddy, I really want to speak at your funeral.”

  I got to say: I wasn’t expecting that. I was touched, but also worried. Did I miss a meeting? Had my doctor’s office called with some unsolicited bulletins? And why would they have told my son and not me? Or worse, maybe there was some nefarious plot afoot and my days were numbered—and he was in on it.

  After I caught my breath, I realized the kid probably didn’t have any inside information, and was more than likely not involved with a family-wide conspiracy. He was just feeling loving. Yes, maybe he was expressing it a little dramatically, but still, it was very nice.

  But I could see he had already moved on—his mind was racing, headed for deeper, more troubled waters.

  “Wait a second, Dad. You’re still going to speak at my funeral, right?”

  Now I’m even more nervous. Why was he thinking about his own funeral? And why would he think I’d still be around for it? Had he been to the doctor lately? How many meetings are going on in my house that no one is inviting me to?

  As all this is going through my mind, my son is just staring at me, waiting for . . . something. I tried to explain to him that unfortunately, this was one of those “either/or” situations. We can’t both go to each other’s funeral. And I had no intention of still being alive for his because he was going to live for, like, forever, whereas I might not make it through this conversation. I get to go first. That’s how it works with parents and kids.

  Nice. A decent handling of a thorny subject, I thought. His response—“Not always. Sometimes kids die.”

  Was he trying to kill me today? I mean, how badly did he want to speak at my funeral?

  Doggedly, I tried to explain to my son that in an “ideal” world—well, not really ideal so much as “in the natural course of events”—the young outlive the old; children hang around after their folks leave. Anything else would just be wrong, not to mention too painful to bear or even consider, though every parent I know has some daily passing, fleeting image of exactly that nightmare scenario. I didn’t mention this to my son. Instead I just smiled reassuringly and told him that he’d outlive me by plenty, and that’s exactly as it should be, so there was nothing to worry about.

  He seemed to accept this for a moment, but then I could see it in his eyes; this “natural order of things” didn’t appeal to him at all. Because it would mean being alive without me being around. Not that I’m such a treat, but because for good or for bad, I’m his dad.

  I REMEMBER the first time I heard that parents die. I was about five. I remember very vividly my mother telling me about something that happened years earlier, and in the most casual of tones, she said, “Yeah, I think that was a little after my father died.”

  I was shocked. I mean I knew she used to have a father, and that he wasn’t around anymore. But I had never done the math and seen that for him to be dead, he had to have, at some point, died. He had to have transitioned, somehow, from “alive” to “not so alive.” And my mother had, since then, become somehow okay with that. “A little after my father died” was how she said it. So matter-of-fact. Like “It’s supposed to rain Tuesday.” As if having her dad die was acceptable. As if life could continue beyond that. This boggled my five-year-old mind.

  WELL, I’M OLDER NOW. I’ve had losses of my own. I get it. But as I gazed at my barely adolescent son, I hated the idea of him ever having to say, “This was a little after my father died.” I know him;
he’d hate that.

  So then how do I spare him from that? Only two ways I could think of: I could live to be a thousand—though I’ve spoken to my doctor, and for this to happen, I’d have to seriously cut down on meat and dairy. But at least by outliving my son’s old age, I could spare him the pain of having to be the one left behind.

  Or Option B—going entirely the other way—to guarantee that I outlive him, I could take him down myself. Which is not only the thought of an insane person, it also, admittedly, looks very bad on the police report. “Well, truth be told, Officer, I couldn’t stomach the idea of my boy having to be that sad, so I, you know . . . had him taken out.”

  Sure, that’s less than stellar parenting. But I know my kids; they get upset when the cable goes out. I don’t want to imagine them dealing with me going out.

  THE CONCEPT OF SACRIFICE on your children’s behalf is instinctive, and non-negotiable. I shake my head in bemusement when flight attendants tell you, “In the event of any sudden loss of oxygen, put your mask on first, then your children’s.” That’s just never going to happen. I’m willing to bet money that whoever came up with that rule does not have kids.

  The idea of putting myself before my children goes against every molecule in my body. (With one exception: if it’s late at night and I’m hungry. There have been a few incidents, I confess, when there was one really good cookie left, and even though I knew my kids had their eye on it, I ate it and rationalized that they were asleep and would probably never notice. And if they did, I’d just tell them the truth: “I think Mom ate it.”)