Happy Hour Breaks Out

Matteo wanted pancakes for breakfast. He always wants them from “scratch” but when we make up the batter, somehow 3 to 4 pancakes emerge. That means there are always leftovers to contend with. “I want different things in them.” he reminds me, “I want you to cook them.”

Surreptitiously, I slip a pancake disk from the refrigerator into the toaster. I change the subject to discussing what kind of “syriap” he wants on the pancake he’s requested. I used to put the maple syrup into an applesauce/yogurt mix, and heap it over the pile of cut-up pancake “squares.” I watched on several occasions while he studiously forked all the “sweet” into his mouth, leaving behind a sorry disarray of pancake brick-ettes.

So now the applesauce and yogurt is on the side, and the pancake foundation alone soaks up the syrup, and must be eaten to benefit the sweet tooth.

When I finally arrive at the breakfast table with my bowl of home made granola, he spots the peanut butter (some neutral observers have said that my granola preference is only a pretext for getting at the peanut butter) and cries out, “Happy Hour!”

What “happy hour” must mean to Teo has nothing to do with the bottles of beer he finds in the pantry and brings to me at any hour of the day when he’s feeling helpful. It has more to do with people eating out of the same container – dips, chips, carrot sticks, and so on. It’s a nice concept, that eating together off the same plate is “happy” making.

Anyway, he leaps down from his perch, locates his long-handled, baby spoon, and returns brandishing it. With the application of “please,” he receives a glug of peanut butter, which he snarfs. Spoon reappears. “What’s the word?” “Please Have Peanut Butter.”

If breakfast is our happy hour, swimming is our unhappy hour.

It’s all my doing. He is joyful tooling around on his noodle and his floatation backpack for ten minutes. As he gets bored, I come in for the “desensitization.” I want to be able to play with him, to be able to invade his perfectly ordered universe of toys clutched in hand, arms slung over noodle, with a little pulling him around (“motorboat”) or swimming with him on my back (“whale”) or showing him he’s got all it takes to stay afloat by holding him without the noodle, letting go, retrieving, letting go. Last winter he did all of this and more.

He lets me know this plan is unacceptable. We went through this “desensitization” Monday, and after the tears he was having a ball. This time I started with 30 minutes to go, rather than with 10. It was sort of an trial, attracting much negative attention.

Even Margie, the swimming maven, got involved. She told me to put a different, more buoyant, floaty-buttpack on him, but when I tried to stand him on the side to retrofit him, he got all “nonviolent” on me and went weepy limp.

Ordeal alert! All the other moms who were coasting their kiddies around, splashing them, jumping them in, catching them, and holding them, were turning away and marking their child-protective-services scorecards. Nancy and Molly-the-twin came over and checked in. I tried to boundary the mounting anxiety, stuck to my guns, and lost only a pint of blood.

Then at the library afterwards, he stood outside the front door and wandered, weeping like a public inebriate, because I wanted to save his banana for when he could actually eat it. He won the right to eat the banana in the car while I returned his books and got no new ones. The banana got eaten, and a bonus! – the shoes and socks got removed, by the time I returned.

So, barefoot to Value Village, which I often breeze through, pawing through the 4T (toddler) rack with Teo on one arm to minimize toy-clutch Weep-a-Ramas. Wednesdays VV gives 55-year-olds 20% or 10% or something off. The cash register girls never do a double take when I announce. My face-lines have finally won the battle.

We run the ten miles up to Fox to see if the spring water’s running after getting skunked last Saturday. Teo gets more animated, kicking his bare feet into the back of the driver’s seat for pure exuberance. The spigots are unfrozen, I fill up our four 5-gallon containers, and we head home.

Bonus Number Two: Mr. Happy Hour, a.k.a. Mr. Ordeal, falls asleep. When he’s safely in his warm little crib, I call up and tell my humiliation to Marin at work, and soon find myself in defensive mode. Awkward hang up, someone has work to do.

Ordeal Alert Number Two. Licking new wounds, I write her a helpful little letter which won’t make the blog. Marin, unexpectedly, writes back. A thoughtful reply. We fight better online than in person. That’s because Escalation, our main fighting flaw from our guerilla days of single-hood and dating and breaking up, is much more easily avoided online.

Face to face, later, the issue doesn’t come back up. Our own version of the invasion-proof, perfectly-ordered universe?

“Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again,” is currently Teo’s favorite made-up song. Another happy hour threatens to break out.

Noodling Round

“He has you all figured out. We just watch him play you, and laugh.” That from Margie, the swimming maven at the Mary Siah pool, said with a knowing, compassionate smile.

It was in response to my advance publicity at the front window that Matteo might swim “without his noodle” today, because he’s so brave and such a big boy. The theme has been rattling around our house since last week, when Teo pretty much confined himself to hanging off the buoyancy device with both hands filled with plasticky toys for the 45 minute “swim.”

“Are you going to swim without your noodle (next time/ tomorrow/ today)?” The answer from Teo was usually affirmative.

In the water today, however, it was “noodle” all the way. He did want to try without it at first, but, despite the butt-pack which floats him as long as he keeps his head up, he panicked, loudly crying out NO NO NO and turning all heads in the room toward him, until the noodle was inserted under his arms.

Then came the big smile as he tooled recklessly off with two green balls in his two little hands.

I waited to make my move until the last ten minutes. It was all “No, Papa” till then. No touching him, no lifting him, no pulling him, no throwing ball, no jumping in from the side.

I came in, touched him, and stayed. “No! NO!” was followed by louder, longer objections, followed by loud tears. I couldn’t back down. The public despair continued. A friend with two happy little swimmers came by, and asked, “trying to desensitize him?” to which I nodded. Nancy, who had brought her 18-month twins Molly and Lizzy for their first swim today, came over and asked if she could help.

I stuck to my guns, despite feeling like a brute. After a very long 5 minutes, Teo just stopped, and got into being pulled around. Soon he was comfortable enough to request that I tow him with one hand only. “Faster,” he requested.

By the end he was a different kid. The glass bubble was broken. Happily, we headed into the shower.

I can’t wait for Wednesday.

"Cat's in the Cradle"

Heading into the deep freeze. Weekend temps expected around minus 40.

The clouds opened this afternoon (Friday), and the sun oozed out toward dusk, a golden egg-yolk floating in butter, as the ice fog from our little town hazed away all definition. And Aurora Energy, burning coal to heat and power this town from it’s downtown location beside the frozen river, drilled it’s plume into the sky from a hypodermic black stack with a fierce, spinning urgency against the setting sun.

The days layer on the details, but lack a theme. I want a lesson plan with Teo, something that we’re building upon week by week.

He is stalled out on swimming again, it’s been two weeks since he let go of my neck and began clutching his “noodle.” Now, we both are on our own, by his vociferous insistence. If I approach his flotilla, he spins around away from me with a “NO, Papa.” He doesn’t want to jump in from the side, or fly out of the water above my head on my hands (very controlled, no splash, what’s not to like?), or swim noodle-free, or even let go of whatever he has in his hands (little plastic junk, small plastic critters, balls) so he can better maneuver on his noodle.

All of these activities have in the recent weeks brought him great delight and the satisfaction of achievement. But that was then.

He may appear to other parents, who are all playing, holding, cooing, laughing with their kids – teaching them floating, and kicking, and the like – like an illustration of the rich man who can’t let go of his stuff, loses his friends, his bearings, and goes down with his hands clutching his treasure.

Too dramatic, Marin always scolds me. Lighten up. He’s a kid.

Okay, to myself I appear to be the father who is too preoccupied by other things to know who his child is, what his child needs, and who is condemned to the sad ending of that Cat Stevens song, “The Cat’s in the Cradle,” where the businessman father is asked by the young son, “when you coming home Dad?” and the Dad: “I don’t know when,” he answers, but assures the son, “we’ll get together then, you know we’ll have a good time then.”

The verses sing through the son’s inexorable growing up, until the father does have time to spend, after his retirement, but then the son has a job, and has learned the refrain, and sings the “no time, now, but we’ll get together later” song back to his dad... Now that I'm a Papa, the song can well me all up.

But even if Matteo resists me whenever I (a) want to sing a song (“NO, Papa.”) or (b) do a puzzle with him (“I don’t WANT to.”), or (c) swim with him, we still get to paint pictures a couple times a week, and I get to tell him a story after Mama reads him a book at night, usually around 9 pm.

These days I spring him from his crib, into the pitch black of the guest bedroom, and we curl up and I tell a story – right now we’re into the story of a huge blizzard which paralyzes all of Fairbanks. I’m as much a victim of these nightly stories as he, meaning, I put myself to sleep, too, and wake up around midnight, needing to brush my teeth and change into pajama-surrogate clothing for my “real” bedtime. Sometimes Marin stirs and comes over to wake me, but usually she’s exhausted, and long asleep by the time the “musical” beds gets resolved.

A Childrens' Story / Christmas Day 11

This startling day begins unassumingly.

I’m trying to write a little. It’s 7 am, Marin’s orbiting out to work, Teo is caught up in her gravity, but will be in mine five minutes from now. Time to commit – bread baking! I get out the Kitchenaid mixer my brother Ronnie sent us for Christmas. Insert bread hook. I falter when I realize that my bread recipe uses 12 cups of dry, and this mixer only allows 8. Okay, time to reconfigure all ingredients.

Then next half hour is about getting all the ingredients ready, the yeast and honey into warm water (Teo loves to lick fingers with honey on them, his highlight of the process), the dry ingredients, the new machine. It all works as planned. When the machine is done, some hand kneading is still required. Which is what Teo has been saying the whole time: "Papa, don’t forget to knead the bread."

Then when it’s all put away for first rise, and I want to write about worship for the UU’s for Sunday, Teo begins to turn off all the lights in the house. He wants to sit and sing to the Christmas tree. He’s already sitting as I join him. "Further away," he commands – I’m sitting too close to the tree. All the details have to be correct. His template for this "liturgy" is all of two weeks old – we’ve done this half a dozen times evenings before supper.

Teo starts singing "O Tannenbaum" and I try to help him with the German (I don’t actually know and therefore can’t teach an English version "O Christmas Tree") but he cuts me off. "By myself!" he commands. And he manages to get through it, the whole thing, in sort of German, while exuberantly spinning himself in a circle beside me on his butt. Choreography!

Then I start "Away in a manger," followed by "Silent Night," which he lets me lead. His enthusiasm returns when he starts what to Marin’s chagrin may endure on his list of Christmas songs, a Christmas-invasive song from my guitar teaching, Bob Marley’s "I Shot the Sheriff."

As the morning picks up steam, and I’m dressing Teo downstairs, we stumble upon a new game. I hum out the melody of a song he knows, and Matteo explodes with delight when he figures out which one it is, charging forth with the words, and demanding another challenge. As with "Tannenbaum," I’m amazed at his feats of memory.

It’s another banner day at the pool. He takes off on his noodle, "walking" himself all over the pool, chasing balls, squirting me with water from his mouth, having fun. So different from just one week ago, when I was still "wearing" him around my neck. Now he’s expansive. He even tries getting off the noodle, and manages to stay up in the water, but panics. He’ll get this in another couple weeks, no question.

After swimming, we join three other families across the street at the library for the two-year-olds’ storytelling hour. It’s all about kitty cats, with three story books, a felt board, just good fun. On the road again to the Post Office, we are bathed in orange light. The sun is knifing through under the clouds, and there’s a sun-dog shining like the end of a rainbow toward the south. "Teo, a sun dog, over there, see it? See it? Like a rainbow. See it? Over there." I’m not sure he gets what I’m talking about but there’s no missing my enthusiasm.

All day long I’m trying to digest Barak Obama’s and Mike Huckabee’s remarkable victories in the Iowa caucuses. It seems so long since there’s been a sign of hope for our poor, earnest, abused, exhausted nation. Seems like voters in Iowa wanted to shake things up. What luck! In mid-afternoon, while Teo pretends to sleep, and the bread’s in the oven, I web-stream KCRW’s "Left Right and Center" in Santa Monica to hear what Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, and Tony Blankley have to say about Iowa. They’re giddy that, after months of jawing over the so-called "inevitable" nominations of Clinton and Guiliani/Romney, there’s been an across-the-board upset, and cynicism is legitimately replaced by amazement.

Hearing a peep downstairs, I go looking for Teo. He’s not in our bed, where I read him to sleep an hour earlier. The peep is coming from his bedroom. I look for him to be playing in the dark on the floor. Instead, he’s managed to scale his crib from the outside in, and was curled up in his "nest" with blankies, stuffed critters, and a half dozen books. Not sleeping. Whoa.

I urge him to reconsider sleeping, and I have the sense that he’s ready. It’s part of what is happening between us, he’s growing up, there’s more relationship there than there used to be, more reciprocity, more trust.

Then, back to the computer: KCRW had put me on the trail of U Tube and Obama’s Iowa victory speech. I listen to three minutes of 15 before I have to leave. It was goosebump material. I am amazed at the Martin Luther King moral authority and confidence and gratitude he conveyed in just his opening. I walk down to the garage after Marin arrives home (and we tag-team off on both bread and child) greedy for more, but brimming with a sense that I could feel at home in my country again. Thank you Iowa.

Driving out to meet a friend for coffee, I was suddenly catapulted into another ecstasy. Sunset, that same sub-arctic sun of the morning, was prying the late afternoon clouds up with a molten hot blade of light. The omnipresent plume of smoke from Aurora Energy downtown was rising silently into the stratosphere, twisting in rose-colored slow-motion like an erupting volcano.

When I get back in an hour, Marin is meeting with two birth-assistants, the term is "Doulas," the Greek word means "helpers/ servants." We talk about Obama and hope. Remarkably, we all felt today the fear that the nearly impenetrable darkness at the heart of our nation the past 7 years could easily rear up, a cosmic Dick Cheny, to blow our hope away. This dreadful, cowering fear is often what characterizes abuse victims. But, concerning the birth, they are confident and have lots of supportive, thoughtful suggestions for making our birth a peaceful transition, rather than a harrowing, risky ordeal. Now that’s "good shepherding." After winter, new life.

Later, at supper, when Marin and I are discussing dog mushing, talking about dog positions – the lead dog, the team dog, the wheel dog – Teo pipes up, exuberantly, "Sun Dog!"

How serious and joyful is his play at making meaning. We all have much to learn from the children, who never cease to "worship" and who blithely amend our light-in-the-darkness rituals with just the right choreography, singing our song while spinning on their butts.

Navigation / Christmas Day 10

I trooped down the stairs at what Teo calls "the brown house," our Birch Hill log home, into the darkness. I’d promised him I’d be back in a minute, after getting out of pajamas and getting into clothes for our MWF swimming gig. I promised him skiing as well, and was putting on the three layers which zero-to-plus-ten-degrees requires when I decided to check the temps.

It was minus 10. Even here on the hill. That meant more like minus 25 down in the hollow. And it also meant, I didn’t want to go skiing. Skate skiing can work down to zero. But it’s really marginal after that. Herringboning uphill isn’t all that much fun, especially with a 50 pound kid carrier dragging behind.

So, a lot less "cross" dressing, that is, dressing for two very different activities on one body in one morning. We were out the door without even any food, since we’d be back in an hour and a half.

But when we got to the pool, the normal ended. Matteo didn’t wait for me to get in the water to clutch my neck, to make us a two-headed buoy bobbing around, cheek to cheek, singing, watching others play, clinging.

Instead, he chose the green noodle marched down the steps into the drink, threw his arms over the noodle (with butt-buoyancy already attached), and launched.

Of course his next move was to grab hold of the side of the pool. But that only lasted about five minutes. I challenged him to "swim" across the pool, "you can tell Mama you swam across ALL BY YOURSELF," and, with no further urging, he did just that.

I was beside myself with joy, relief and pride. Finally! (If you’ve been reading along in the past month, you understand...) My previous frustration instantly vanished. But that was minor in the face of Teo’s disarming grin. I think he didn’t know that he could do it.

He moves by hanging vertically in the water, arms on his noodle, with a ball in one hand and a bucket in the other, not kicking but "walking" with his feet. And between breathing a little harder, he keeps up a patter, "I tell Mama Teo is a BIG BOY. Mama be VERY PROUD. Teo BIG BOY, very BRAVE." It was fetching. Suddenly, we were having a lot of fun, too. Splashing, laughing, going in circles, chasing balls.

When we got back home, there was a message from Marin on the machine. She had an appointment with the gynecologist. She found out that "Pepita" has turned, she/he’s in birth position. Yaay!

The tenth day of Christmas. Ten lords a leaping, five for Matteo’s grin, and five for Pepita’s navigational kicking.

Sterling Courage / Christmas Day 7

Sterling, my Papa, was born this last day of the year, in 1918. He’d be eighty-nine today. He died of complications related to Alzheimers in 2000. You could say, complications related to motorcycling. He and my mom banged their heads big time in 1991, running their BMW into another biker at a rural stop sign my dad missed. I am thinking about him, I guess, because my Mom just died in October (see blog entry, November 9), same ailment, same complications.

And the end of the year is here, an assessment of things.

I’m in the pool at Mary Siah. Matteo is clinging to my shoulders, and I’m trying to dislodge my disappointment. Last two times in the pool, he let me pull him by the two hands on his styro-noodle. Those times I’ve gotten him to let go of my neck by coaxing him to jump from the side of the pool.

This time he won’t let go. For thirty minutes, I sing Christmas carols bouncing in a dizzying circle, with Matteo clinging to me. One by one the other families come in, one-year-olds letting their moms pull them around and laughing. Two-year-olds paddling around (like Teo did last winter, totally ignoring me) either with a noodle under their arms, or not.

In the back of my head I hear Scott Noelle reminding me to celebrate what Matteo comes up with, instead of clutching what I was hoping for. I hear other parents telling me I’ll miss it when Matteo finally dumps me, I’ll miss him cheek-to-cheek with me in the pool singing songs, laughing, licking each others faces, blowing farts on his neck when he isn’t looking.

I tell him to be brave, come on, climb up on the side, jump in the water. He won’t. "Float with papa." No!

I’m thinking, okay, why am I so disappointed. I guess because I’m so proud of him when he takes risks, and so,,, anxious? when he seems to doubt his abilities. He was doing this so easily and with confident gusto last year, totally without a noodle, swimming all the way across the pool. I worry, I guess. Does this regression mean something?

"Be brave," I urge him. "Look the little girl is being brave, she’s jumping in, watch, one, two, three, there she goes." He did this last Friday. Not today, apparently.

What did my father do that helped me be brave? Was my father brave? Am I brave? Are there any pools I’m standing on the side of, courageously jumping into? There’s the second child we’re preparing for, but that’s something nearly everyone manages. Sure, it takes gumption, but there’s a lot of support out there as well.

When I was talking to friends on the phone last night, thinking out loud whether it’s worth the investment of time to keep up on current events and current thinking about the state of our country and our outlook for the future, both of them responded instantly, "It’s all about local." It reminded me of how much a role one can play as an individual in these small Alaskan communities, and their hometown of Sitka is probably less than a tenth of the size of Fairbanks. And both of them are very engaged in Sitka’s future.

I do care deeply about our nation, and how things have skidded off track. But I’m doing little more than talking about what’s wrong and what could change. I’m not changing anything.

Bob Herbert, columnist for the New York Times, had a piece today, "the American Dream, Betrayed." It turns out that people used to expect to do as well as or better than their parents, economically, but for the young, it’s not an expectation anymore. I sense this happening, not just in terms of jobs and housing, but also in terms of the land, the sea, the air. Plus, there’s a lot more questionable chemistry going into Matteo as a 3-year-old than ever went into me at the same age.

And then there’s the big question about what will come after Peak Oil. Marin and I hosted some best friends for Christmas brunch a couple days ago, and while Marin and Teo napped, a subset of the party, Jen and Ian, Al and Michelle, and I continued talking about our take on things. In their mid thirties, both couples have built their own homes, and both couples are thinking of building again. Al and Michelle have some gorgeous land outside Healy, and Jen and Ian were thinking of buying closer in to Fairbanks.

Now both are re-thinking, because of Peak Oil, the soft economy, and the challenge of a future in a very cold (warming, actually) place, where food costs could easily soar out of reach of the middle class since every morsel has to be flown in from 3,000 miles away. There’s a certain pioneer courageousness to look directly at the radical changes which will likely result, and begin to plan.

We talked and talked. Soon, Marin, Teo and I had to leave for a dinner engagement, so we turned our house over to our friends, and it turned out that they continued the conversation about the challenging future and how their plans and hopes were eroding, and changing for another three hours.

What kind of courage Teo will need! He eventually kicked backed off from clinging to the side of the pool, and said, "lookit, Papa, I’m floating." Soon he let me pull him around by the hands, and he was grinning. "You’re swimming, Matteo! Wait till we tell Mama!"

What a challenge, raising kids. Thanks, Papa Sterling.

Wading In / Advent Day 17

Advent is for waiters. And for waders.

Teo used to be a swimmer, buoyed by his styrofoam butt-pack. We went three times a week last winter, and even took "lessons" in the spring. Early last year, he’d take off across the pool hanging off a foam noodle, and later in the season I convinced him to give up the noodle, and he’d stay up using his arms and feet (and but-pack). He’d head off across the pool while I would be talking to my friend Laurent. No longer.

I’ve gone four times this winter so far. The first time, Teo held on so tight I could barely breathe. The second time we brought a friend Cooper along, and I played with Cooper some while Matteo clung to the side of the pool. The third time I eventually peeled him off me and set him up on his floaty noodle. His subsequent howly tantrum scared everyone. Margie, the no-nonsense but congenial woman who’s taught all of Fairbanks to swim when they were Teo’s age, marched in from her front office, and reprimanded me...

As did my wife. Marin, who rolls her eyes every time I compare Teo to other children (as in, "the other kids trust their parents and play together in the pool, and laugh together, and have fun..."), said simply, "Maybe he needs someone else to teach him to swim."

So, yesterday I resolved to desire nothing. Simply to show up with Matteo and keep us mostly submerged for the 45 minutes so we wouldn’t get cold.

Clinging was the order of the day. Matteo’s little arms clenched around my neck, and my arms gathered him in as I ambled in from 3 feet – the shallow end – to neck deep. Like a ccockroach, Matteo kept climbing higher on the sinking flotsam which was Papa.

Whenever I removed a hand from him, his alarm would go off. "No, HOLD me," he’d insist, right in my ear. Remembering his ability to bring the law down on me, I didn’t disobey. So we were pretty much cheek to cheek, banging noses whenever one of us turned his head. Dare I mention the parents who were pulling their 18-month-olds on the other end of snaky noodles, laughing, splashing; or the other Papa whose son was jumping into the water from the deck, into his arms...

I opened the door into the little intimacy Teo was creating with me, against the rest of the world. I started singing "O Tannenbaum," while bobbing and turning a little. We became ballroom dancers. When I’d get a little too emphatic in rhythmic ducking or spinning, he’d fire off his stern "No, Papa!" We danced through "Away in a Manger," with several questions posed ("what’s ‘cattle are lowing,’ Papa," or "what’s ‘stay by my cradle?’"). One hand came off him during "Silent Night," and two came off, with him standing on my thighs in full cling during "Jingle Bells." By then he was actually having fun, shouting out "Hey" at the appropriate time in the song, and even splashing a little without panicking.

The time went quickly, which is sometimes all that a parent can ask.

Half a parent-week later (conversion factor: one stay-at-home-parent hour = a day / one SAHP day = a week), when we were lighting candles in the dark at suppertime and giving thanks for things, Matteo lit his candle and said, "for Papa and Matteo singing in the pool."

Worth wading for.