“It’s a knee party/ A knee party/ for my Oona/ A knee party/ A knee party/ for my Oona!!”
Her eyes are widening. I’m a new musician and she’s a new baby. She’s a better baby than I am a musician.
January 5, 2016—Oona is nine months old. Jen is off camera saying, “Oona, what does Dad do?” Oona smiles. Jen says, “Does he gesticulate? Can you gesticulate like Dad?” Oona does a spot-on physical impression of me flapping my arms around. She’s the only toddler who knows the word “gesticulate.”
March 20, 2016—I play guitar in Oona’s bedroom and she dances. The floor of the room is covered in playmats and pillows to soften her falls. I’m making up the words as I go:
“She loves her mom… and she loves her dad… and she loves her hat… and she loves her cat… But she hates to sleep… And we don’t know why… She hates to sleep… Because she hates goodbyes.”
I notice something in these videos for the first time. My songs have come a long way from “Hiccuptown.” I notice something else: Not only do I witness my daughter evolve from the size of a crawling grapefruit to the size of a walking watermelon like a stop-motion animation. But I also see Jen’s reaction to Oona and I see mine. Jen’s reaction is that of a person watching a part of her own body break free and then, eventually, learn how to drink from a cup. My reaction is that of someone who is happy for my wife, but also afraid. I’m afraid that our marriage may never be the same.
I’m proud of my cinematic accomplishment. I was right. I took thousands of photos and I have the evidence to prove it. I present this evidence to Jen. She says, “It’s nice that you assembled these photos but the truth is—I took most of these. You can tell because a majority of them are me capturing you and Oona. The ones of just Oona and me are close-ups. They’re selfies.”
Jen guides me through her photos: “I have great footage of you singing to Oona. Her biting your nose and the both of you giggling. Her playing your belly like a drum. But the candid footage of Oona and I connecting in this way doesn’t exist.”
I say, “What about all the photos I sent you?”
Jen says, “Seventy percent of your photos are shots that I took and sent to you.”
“But…”
I struggle to respond.
I say, “What about the one I just showed you? The video of you putting Oona in the stroller, you couldn’t have shot that!”
Jen pivots to the death blow. It’s the first time I can see that Jen feels hurt that I haven’t documented her growth with Oona.
She says, “I made sure to capture the magic moments between the two of you. I don’t feel like you captured that for us. I shot principal photography of Oona’s first year. And you shot B roll.”
The Cup
It’s not that I’m jealous of water when she drinks it—
It’s just the way the cup covers most of her face as she brings it to her lips—The way my boob would cover most of her face before she could speak and she’d sing along with my singing with the wideness of her blueberry eyes—It’s the same now—She will have a conversation with only her eyes, or a nod of the head, her face swallowed up mostly by a cup as she drinks—
It’s not the water that brings these pangs of envy as much as the flash of an expression from behind the cup.
XI.
NATURAL CAUSES
SUGAR FRIES
We have a party for Oona’s first birthday.
We were never going to have a party. We barely celebrate our own birthdays. Oona won’t remember it happened. We won’t get the stains off the couch. No one wins. But then it happened. We had a children’s birthday party. It cost about a half million dollars and I think someone stole my umbrella, but it’s over and that’s the best thing about children’s birthday parties: They end.
As the guests are leaving, one of the moms says to Jen, “You know, the first birthday isn’t for the kid, it’s for the mom.”
Jen starts crying.
Perhaps they are the tears of all the birthdays of her own she never celebrated. Perhaps they are tears of joy that we’ve made it through the first year, or perhaps they’re tears of pure exhaustion from the three and a half hours of sleep she patched together the night before. Whoever the party is for, it’s a happy birthday.
Oona is one year old.
I am almost forty.
Some people pull off forty pretty well. I don’t feel like I’m gonna be one of those people. I’m gonna be a hard forty. I’m gonna be a forty where people say, “Are you fifty?” I’ll say, “No, but thanks for adding a decade of decay and no wisdom to my life!” Forty is big. And scary. It’s exactly halfway through your life. Not technically. Not everyone dies at eighty, but no one’s ever like, “Eighty through one hundred. Those are the years!” They say things like, “I was eighty-three and I reached for a grape and I never walked again.”
The expression for forty is “over the hill.” I never understood that idea until I climbed up the hill and looked around. I thought, Oh! There’s natural causes! They’re not close, but they’re coming!
I walk into the bathroom to shower off the birthday germs and I step on my scale: a new all-time high. I look at my calendar and see that I’ve gained twenty-two pounds in the last two years. Jesus. How did this happen?
I’ve taken sympathetic eating to the extreme. My sympathy has expanded my belt size and thickened my neck.
The next day I visit my doctor and he takes blood.
Two days later I’m working in Columbus, Ohio. My doctor calls me and says, “I got your results. You have type 2 diabetes. I’d like to put you on medication.”
I say, “I really don’t want to take medication since I already take the Klonopin for sleep. I’d prefer to try to change my eating habits.”
He says, “Well, I don’t know… It would have to be drastic. You’d have to cut out red meat, sugar, fries…”
That’s when I start thinking about “sugar fries,” which isn’t a thing—but it should be. It’s a match made in heaven. Sugar. Fries. Plus, it has an obvious theme song: Sugar fries, sugar fries, sugar fries, sugar fries in my eyes!
I get off the phone with my doctor and lie in my hotel bed, ruminating on my own mortality. I had cancer when I was nineteen. Diagnosed with a sleepwalking disorder at twenty-five. But here I am at age thirty-seven with what somehow feels like the beginning of the end.
I’m addicted to food. I’m addicted to work and stress. None of this helps.
Food, with the right combination of salt and sugar, causes my body to feel like it is pressing a button. Once I do it I feel better. It’s usually after a series of events that seem out of my control. Let’s say I spend the day sprinting to make a flight in traffic and then sprinting to the gate to catch the flight and then sprinting to the rental car agency and there aren’t enough cars and then I have to scramble to find public transportation and then eventually I get to the gig and everyone in the audience hates me.
That is out of my control.
Do you know what’s in my control? Sugar fries.
I’m lying in this hotel bed in Ohio and I turn on the TV. I watch all these ads for mysterious medications that apparently we should ask our doctors about. The ads feature a series of elderly actors who are apparently thrilled to ask. Am I going to be one of those people soon? Am I going to be popping unknown pills and be thrilled about it?
I hit the minibar. I’ve spent a lot of time rooting through hotel minibars and I’ve never purchased the little alcohol bottles but I’m triple digits on glass jars of peanut M&M’s.
If you suck on a peanut M&M long enough, it’s just a peanut. If you suck on that peanut long enough, you can taste pure shame. But that feeling of shame eventually turns to pride. You think, This is actually pretty healthy. I’ve been meaning to eat more nuts. Then you pop a couple hundred of those and you get a sugar high. You think, I should run a marathon!
And then you don’t.
And then you get type 2 diabetes—which is an unfortun
ate outcome.
I’m sucking on a peanut M&M, flipping channels. I see a commercial for heartburn medication and all I can think is That pizza looks so good. I gotta get some of that heartburn-medication-brand pizza. I don’t know if that’s what they’re getting at, but I am in.
I lower the volume on the TV and FaceTime with Jen and Oona before Oona goes to bed. FaceTiming is an activity that, with a one-year-old child, you might as well not bother trying. You’re just this loud, two-dimensional image of a dad. You’re a cartoon but less colorful, shiny, and fun. I start to tell Jen about my dramatic call with my doctor, but, before I can get into it, Oona accidentally presses “end.”
That seems about right. We’ll be witnessing the end sooner than expected if Dada doesn’t get his shit together.
I shut off my phone as I suck on the inside of a peanut M&M. I think, Something’s gotta change.
I order a pizza. I’ll need some energy to implement this new plan.
wean
a little
less and
a little less and a little
less and then
no more.
but tonight, a little more.
a little
less and
a little less and a little
less and then
no more.
but tonight, a little, a little more.
ORGANIC TOXIC WASTE
Part of my new health regimen is that every Sunday I walk three thousand steps to Whole Foods.
The activity serves multiple purposes. At one year old Oona eats solid foods and at age thirty-seven I start to eat vegetables. Plus, I’m doing something tangible for the family while Jen is putting Oona to bed. I also get some steps in since the doctor suggested I try to walk fifteen thousand steps per day.
Every time I make this trip it’s not lost on me that I’m walking across the Gowanus Canal, which has been called by some “the most polluted waterway in the world.” I skip past this toxic canal to pick up some organic vegetables.
That part isn’t lost on me either.
But Jen is intent on organic vegetables.
She sends me articles about how the government is lifting regulations on chemicals that are causing health problems in children.
One night, a few weeks before, the organic store was closed, and Jen asked me to pick up some fruits and vegetables so I went to the nonorganic but also very expensive grocery store and returned home with nonorganic fruit. I don’t remember if it was raining that night but it was certainly raining in my heart when Jen said, “Didn’t you read the article I sent you?”
But I also get it. We might as well strive for a food product that isn’t doused with chemicals. Especially since we have a child. She’s got a long life ahead of her. I’ll eat the poison apples, but she might prefer some nutrients.
That said, I’m skeptical of the whole “natural food” industry. I really don’t believe things whose proof of their naturalness is a sticker. I feel like a lot of people could just buy a sticker and place it on any old banana. What’s further confusing is that the organic fruit generally looks worse than the other fruit. But apparently that’s part of the brand: “We didn’t paint the bananas yellow; that’s why they’re brown.”
I grab a cart and walk the aisles of the Whole Foods. I look at my list and start to choose some items: organic avocados, organic lettuce, organic bananas, organic apples—all the while sending photos to Jen to ask if it’s the right type of organic food item. When the history books are written, there will be millions of photos of husbands and wives posing with various types of cereal and vegetables to find out whether their spouses think this purchase is a good idea. By the time those history books are written I think we may also be laughing heartily at the idea of “organic vegetables” for reasons we don’t yet understand. Nevertheless, I press on.
I grab some organic milk, which I assume is from organic cows, which means the cows are alive. I’ve always felt it is important to get your milk from cows that are alive. I start to think that maybe milk will be my way into the family. Jen’s whole thing is breast milk but maybe my angle is purchased milk. I think, Right now she’s reliant on breast milk but that could change. I could take Oona to the store. Show her around the milk section. I’d say, “What can I get ya? Chocolate milk? Strawberry milk? Five gallons of milk? Dada’s going to hook you up! We could even take photos for Mama and text them to her. It could be our little inside joke: me and Oona. Dada’s willing to forget that you ignored him for your entire life so far. Did I mention that purchased milk is gonna taste better than Mama’s milk? Mama’s milk is all squirts and dribbly. This is gonna be a steady stream of the good stuff. Organic milk from cows who are alive!”
I make my way to the coffee shop that is inside the Whole Foods. For some reason I’m already exhausted and need to fill up on some liquid false energy for the rest of my shopping spree. As I glide through the aisles with my cart, it strikes me that 80 percent of what I’m seeing will end up in a landfill. A vast majority of what I’m looking at is packaging: brightly colored blends of plastic, cardboard, and metal that in one way or another will end up in the Gowanus Canal. Grocery-themed confetti. Good thing I brought my own reusable bags, my empty gesture in this imploding planet that says “I’m doing my best!”
I swing by the cheese samples station. This is perhaps my favorite activity at the grocery store because you’re eating cheese but somehow not paying for it or even feeling guilt for eating it. You think, This is the exact amount of cheese I wanted and I didn’t even have to purchase it.
Over the years I’ve become an “every-aisle” shopper as opposed to a “specific-aisle” shopper. Specific-aisle shoppers are myopic. They’re like, Paper towels and cereal, now get out of my way! Every-aisle shoppers are like, Isn’t life really just a trip to the grocery store? I used to be a specific-aisle shopper and then I had a few incidents where I’m home and it’s eleven o’clock at night and I think, Oh no. Graham crackers. An every-aisle shopper is basically mowing the lawn that is the grocery store while sipping coffee and popping cheese samples. It’s not a bad life.
I gulp down my coffee as I head to the checkout counter.
The woman at the register scans my Organic Girl organic butter lettuce. She looks me in the eye and says, “What does ‘organic’ even mean?”
I panic.
I sputter and stutter and say something to the effect of “My wife sent me this article about chemicals and…”
I look up and see that she’s not really listening.
She says, “What?”
I say, “That’s what my wife wants.”
The look of judgment from this Whole Foods cashier is as mean as any bully I’ve ever encountered. And she sells organic food for a living. I think, She was supposed to convince me to buy fraudulent overpriced vegetables, not the other way around.
The cashier asks if I have the Whole Foods app on my phone and I pull out the app and I run it under the machine. I have earned a savings of $3.10 plus thirty cents for bringing my own bags. I’ve bought $120 worth of possibly organic fruits and vegetables, but I’ve saved enough money for a slice of nonorganic pizza.
I exit the store and walk across the toxic brown Gowanus Canal with my reusable brown bags filled with organic brown vegetables. I’m feeding my family and saving the planet. One step at a time.
YMCA
When Oona is a year old, we take her to Cape Cod to visit my parents. I bring her to the neighborhood swimming pool.
Seeing Oona in a pool is an activity that defies my own cynicism about children. It’s enough to make the Grinch celebrate Christmas seven days a week. Oona loves the water. She loves that it splashes. She loves that she floats. She loves that Dada does silly things like hop onto the edge of the pool like a seal.
Jen is watching us from a lounge chair beside the pool and laughing.
“Clo, you can take an hour to yourself while we swim. I got this.”
Jen says,
“I can’t. You don’t know how to swim.”
I say, “Yes, I do.”
But I don’t.
It doesn’t occur to me until Jen says it that I actually have no technique whatsoever. I’ve been winging this swimming thing for years. But now my inadequate swimming has stakes. I can’t be a liability in the water. I have to be a reliability. A buoy. A float. At the very least I need to be better at swimming than my one-year-old daughter.
Later that day we’re driving back to New York and I’m stewing over the idea that I’m a bad swimmer and I decide I’m going to learn how to swim. The next day I walk into the YMCA for my first swim lesson in thirty years.
I have been actively avoiding the YMCA for decades.
When I was four years old, my mom took me into the women’s locker room of the YMCA. I had never seen a vagina and then all of a sudden I saw one hundred. A year later she sent me into the men’s locker room. The only thing more shocking than one hundred vaginas is one hundred penises at eye level. They were grown-up penises, which is a key detail because that aspect was particularly demoralizing. I thought, Mine does not look like that. This is gonna be a long life. So I looked around for child penises (please don’t quote that out of context). I thought, Phew. Everything’s going to be okay.
I never wanted to return to the YMCA. I can’t identify the key turnoff. I don’t know if it was the half-blown-up basketballs or the snack machine room with a coffee maker that also makes soup or the rowing machines that were also a fan that seemed to be powering the entire building.
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to go back. But at this point I have no choice. I need to get better than my daughter at swimming.
As I approach my neighborhood YMCA in Brooklyn, I don’t need directions. You can smell that chlorine stench for miles. They are not shy with their use of chlorine at the YMCA. It makes you think, What the hell kind of heinous crime are they covering up? Are there Mafia hits in the middle of the night where the mobsters say, “What do we do with the corpse? Should we dig a ditch or do we bring the body down to the YMCA? I’ve got a family membership. We use a guest pass for the corpse. We drop the body in the pool and it’ll disintegrate within six hours.”
The New One Page 14