"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.