Familyhood
Page 16
My wife reminded me that back then we spent an awful lot of time talking about when we would have kids, how many kids would we have, what it would be like to raise those kids . . . So even before they were here, we were talking about them. And now that they were gone, we were still talking about them.
“Didn’t we ever talk about anything else?” I wondered.
“Once,” my wife reminded me, “we talked about getting new plates.”
I hadn’t remembered. So apparently it wasn’t that great a conversation.
WITH THE KIDS AWAY, the air in the house felt stale. Stagnant. The absence of chaos bordered on the creepy. There were no socks or quickly discarded basketball shorts draped over every other piece of furniture. Seeing toys neatly lined up on shelves instead of thrown all over the floor blocking any pedestrian passage now seemed simply wrong.
I remembered a friend sharing that the only time he ever lost his temper with his kids was when he stepped out of the shower and landed on a plastic yellow dinosaur, piercing his foot on the thing’s tail. (In all fairness, it was a pterodactyl, which, in case you’re not familiar, is known specifically for tail sharpness and rigidity. A brontosaurus tail, for example, would have likely been a non-issue.)
He continually harangued his kids about leaving toys lying about the floor. And now that his kids were out of the house and in college, he confessed to me, he regularly cursed the silence and the tidiness, and longed for nothing more than to once again step on a yellow dinosaur.
Now I knew what he was talking about; I was missing the dinosaurs. I tried tossing some toys and comic books willy-nilly around the floor, but it rang false; I wasn’t kidding anybody. I couldn’t match the authentic state of havoc my boys regularly produce with, literally, no effort.
I noticed that with the kids out of the house, even our dog was not himself. From the first moment he saw the duffel bags and sleeping bags come out, he knew something was up. I don’t know if all dogs share this sensitivity to luggage, but our dog consistently falls into a pathetic melancholy whenever we so much as take down the suitcases. He instantly does the math: “Suitcase equals packing, packing equals leaving, and whoever those bathing suits and sunscreen are for, pretty sure it ain’t me.” What kills me, though, is the immediate and surprisingly mature resolve with which he accepts his impending abandonment. And, since dogs don’t generally have a strong understanding of the calendar, they don’t really know how long two weeks is. Or, for that matter, that there even is such a thing as a “week.” As far as I can tell, dogs register only “here” and “not here.” I would imagine they envision every departure to be the final one. Why would they assume anyone’s ever coming back?
All the more impressive, then, that when he does see us pack to leave, our dog offers no significant protestations. No barking, like when he gets stuck in the garage. No whimpering, like when he wants your chicken. When he saw my boys pack for camp, there was just a slight cock of the head followed by a breathy, mournful sigh, bemoaning his inability to forestall the inevitable—not that different, come to think of it, from the sound my mother made when I went off to college. (Unlike my dog, however, I don’t believe my mother then sank to the floor, laid her chin between her two extended arms, and stared at the bottom of the couch for nine hours. Though, again, I wasn’t there to see, so . . . who knows?)
WITH HIS HUMAN BROTHERS out of the house, the dog definitely registered specific, tangible loss. There were far fewer belly rubs, far fewer playful romps and high-speed walks. There were half as many beds to share and half as many people who might potentially be shamed into dropping chicken.
My own sense of loss continued to reveal itself.
Flipping channels, for example, I realized that while I was now free to enjoy shows of my liking for far longer than I would normally, not having the boys there to persuade and convert made it less worthwhile. Stumbling across a Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin movie, for example, it was a refreshing treat to not have to fend off a chorus of “Uch, Daddy, it’s black-and-white—it’s so boring! Change it.” But I also didn’t have the challenge and sweet victory of getting them to love it.
As the days wore on, I began to realize that what I missed maybe more than anything was exactly that: my children’s excitement.
From day one, your world is about trying to excite your children. You make funny noises to their face. You dangle red plastic keys over the crib for their amusement. Now, you know and I know the red key is not that great a toy; it’s a piece of cheap plastic in the shape of a key. But they don’t know that. They’ve never seen it before. It’s fantastic. And you must be quite the aficionado for having such a thing in the first place, let alone the generosity of spirit to share it with them.
And childhood is an endless parade of more of the same. You point out the pretty truck, the picture of the clown, the cow in the field, the guy dressed up like Mickey Mouse . . . they love it all. And they love you for showing it to them. And you love it all because your children are happy, and you’ve helped facilitate that happiness. Everything is firing on all cylinders and life is grand. Until it’s not.
There’s a carnival near our house at the end of every summer. The kids love that carnival. They love the rides, the games, the noise, the once-a-year-ness of it, the tradition of it, the anticipation of it . . . everything.
A few months ago, we drove by the site, and with customary excitement, I pointed out, “Hey guys—two more months to the carnival!” There was a beat of silence, and then, just realizing it themselves, they both said, “You know what? I think I’m not really into the carnival anymore.” My heart sunk. Obviously I didn’t care about the carnival myself. I never even liked it. But I felt a crushing loss that it no longer excited them. (Never mind that now I had to come up with something new to dangle for their amusement.)
They had outgrown the carnival. As they should, I suppose. You wouldn’t want your kid to still be fascinated with the shiny red plastic key when he’s in high school. In time, almost everything will lose its appeal. In this case, my children had digested everything the carnival had to offer and, I’m guessing, come to see it for what it was: a dirty, dusty lot jammed tight with crappy rides operated by toothless, joyless, vagabond carnies, moving, most likely, one step ahead of the law. Perhaps I overstate, but you get the point: it’s just a lot of silly, noisy, artificial distraction. There’s nothing really to it.
But let’s be honest: there’s nothing really to anything. When held up to the light, nothing’s that terrific. Most of what we enjoy is enjoyable only because we declare it so. The real enjoyment is in the pointing out and the sharing. And that’s what makes children indispensable: we need their excitement. Even when they don’t like something, they dislike it with such gusto that everything is still better because of them. And we’re the ones who reap the fruit. It’s their enthusiasm we live off. It replenishes us. Rejuvenates us. Consoles us. Without children, life just bounces back duller. Nobody likes a quiet carnival.
AS I LAY AWAKE at night, listening to the whir and hum of my house, staring at the glow of all the electronic twinkling and downloading and charging, I charted my plan of action for the boys’ return: the second they come through that door, I resolved, I’m going to hug them until they can’t breathe and then hug them a little more.
Not for them, mind you; for me. Entirely for me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people must be thanked for making this book a reality.
First of all, a big thank-you to Rob Weisbach—to whom I will be very careful what I say in the future. Apparently if you tell Rob you’d like to maybe, possibly, conceivably someday consider writing a book, it ends up there’s a book.
An enormous, grateful, and heartfelt “where would I be without you” thank-you to my genius friend Jonathan Shapiro, he of the limitless talent and insight. It turns out it’s a good thing we sit and talk about our kids—look what happens.
To Mr. Lenny Shapiro, whose enthusiasm for the first book
s encouraged the idea of doing this one.
To Ellen Archer, Elisabeth Dyssegaard, Gretchen Young, and all the fine people at Hyperion who made this too darn easy and pleasant.
To Peter Safran for keeping all the trains running.
To Peter Benedek, who sometimes has some darn good ideas, and who always operates with remarkable class and dignity.
To Katie Moeller for keeping track and remembering everything—all under a loudly ticking clock.
To my mother and father and sisters—not only for being such a great family but also because they let me talk about them in public like this and have never once—as of this writing—threatened legal action.
And, as ever, thank you thank you thank you to Paula, Ezra, and Leon for not only inspiring a book, but also being so understanding when I was so busy writing it. (Oh yeah—and also for making my life so magical and complete. That’s very nice too.)
About the Author
Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actor, writer, and stand-up comedian Paul Reiser has appeared in many films and television shows, including co-creating and starring in the critically acclaimed NBC series Mad About You and The Paul Reiser Show. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Couplehood and the follow-up, Babyhood. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
ALSO BY
PAUL REISER
Couplehood
Babyhood
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Paul Reiser
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
“The Grmile” was previously published in Hollywood Dads. Photographs © 2007 by Joyce Ostin; introduction © 2007 by Paul Reiser. Used with permission from Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco. Visit www.ChronicleBooks.com
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Original hardcover edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-2432-2
eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0372-3
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