badass dad blog » grownups

fear

badassdadblog — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:03:36 +0000

For the first time today, I really missed my old job. I got an email from a friend and former coworker about her visit to the office where we used to work, to have lunch with people we used to work with. Reading her note, the pang of remorse I felt came as a complete surprise to me. Remorse? Or is it grief? Wishing I still had the comfortable job, comfortable income, comfortable perception of stability. Obviously the comfort I felt wasn’t real, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

At the same time, Owen has been obsessed with earthquakes. I think it started with glimpses of Haiti coverage he saw while we were out of town a few weeks ago. Since returning home he asks almost every day about what would happen if we had a big earthquake. Would our roof fall in? Would things fall down? What about the pictures on his walls? Would they fall on him? On his brother?

We live in Southern California, so we can’t tell him we don’t have earthquakes. We talk to him about our sturdy old house, about the things we do to stay safe in an emergency. We hold him and we tell him not to worry.

Also this week, Nicholas started day care for the first time in his 20 months of life. He’s a trooper, and he’s doing well, but clearly he is not thrilled about this change. The first few days he was uncertain at drop-off. Now he knows what’s happening, and he is not happy being left. This will pass, I’m sure, but while it lasts it’s hard to walk away from our sad baby.

So, I find myself facing my fears alongside my young boys. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what we can’t control. Fear of the new. For them, I know, they will get through it. They will endure and eventually these fears will fade.

For me, I strongly believe the same will be true, but it’s harder to see it. Will the work I’m doing translate into income that will support us? If not, will I find something else that pays the bills and doesn’t eat my soul? I struggle with these questions. I take strength from my boys while trying to comfort them. One way or another, we’ll all get through this.

risk

badassdadblog — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:26:00 +0000

Our boys are so different from each other. They’re similar in some ways, too — they look a lot alike, they both wake up at the asscrack of dawn, they’re both pretty happy kids. But in many ways they are just very different people. One such difference is how they approach taking risks.

Owen — four years old — is cautious, thoughtful, and sometimes downright fearful. (He’s also smart, verbal, goofy, stubborn, sweet, and hysterical; but that’s not what this post is about). When he was a baby, we learned not to worry he’d put something unauthorized into his mouth. The kid would never put anything he didn’t know was food (and food he LIKED) in his mouth. This hasn’t changed (much to our consternation at the dinner table). With physical stuff, too, he talked early, but didn’t walk until he was pretty sure he’d be good at it. He wasn’t a big climber, jumper, run-headlong-into-wall-er. While I sometimes worry he’ll hold back too much and miss out on things, I also take comfort knowing he isn’t likely to do a swan dive off the jungle gym. I see a lot of myself in him here.

Nicholas — almost 16 months — is crazy. The dude has no fear and does not hesitate to do pretty much anything that strikes him. Partly this comes from being the younger brother. He sees Owen do things and he wants to do them, too. Never mind Owen’s three years older and generally able to do a lot more stuff without risking death. But even when Owen’s not around, Nicholas does things Owen never would have. Whether climbing onto tables taller than his head, running headlong down our steep driveway, or sticking anything he can get his hands on into his mouth (apparently chalk is now a snack food?) the kid just knows no fear. And pretty much always has at least one good facial bruise to show for it.

In this photo I imagine Nicholas struggling to free himself so he can stick that chalk back in his mouth and leap to the concrete below while Owen tries to take the chalk away and hold him back from certain doom. Is this who they will always be?

Watching Owen over the years, he’s changed. Grown is probably a better word. He’s overcome some fears, while others have surfaced. I used to think he was going to be a kid who wasn’t afraid of the dark, but as he got older and his imagination started to bloom, so did his capacity for fear of the abstract unknown. At his core he’s still the same kid — cautious, thoughtful, a little scared about things he’s unsure of, especially physical danger.

Owen’s gymnastics coach — the always amazing Coach Scott — tells him fear is your body’s way of telling you to be careful. When you do something even though you’re scared, that’s bravery. Being brave doesn’t mean not being afraid. If you’re facing something truly dangerous and you’re not scared, you’re not brave, you’re stupid. The key is to listen to that fear, allow it to heighten your awareness and proceed with care, but don’t let it stop you.

So I guess in a way I hope Owen will continue to conquer his fears, if thoughtfully, while Nicholas learns to be at least a LITTLE BIT scared of things that are potentially life-threatening.

I find myself taking some new risks lately. I’ve decided not to look for a “steady” job like the one I left (note my inaccurate but self-affirming choice of verb here) and instead go to work for a startup I think has great potential but which at the moment has no money to pay me. I hope I’m striking a healthy balance — being thoughtful and conscious of the risks I’m taking, without being too afraid to take a well-considered leap now and then. I hope I can learn from BOTH my kids and show them how to blend the best of each of their strengths.

No matter what, they’ll still be way cuter. I’m learning to live with that.

who am i?

badassdadblog — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:53:00 +0000

There are many mes. (I refuse to use an apostrophe for a word that is neither possessive nor a contraction, but the plural of “me” does look very strange.) I don’t mean in a clinical, multiple personality disorder sort of way. Rather, I wear different faces/hats/pants in different aspects of my life. Maybe it’s more accurate to say there are multiple versions of me (also doesn’t look so weird). They are more alike than different, but they are distinct. They sometimes overlap, they occasionally collide, and I find myself struggling to decide how separate I want them to be.

Most people have some separation of church and state, don’t they? Separation between who they are at work/school/church/bingo and who they are at home/the bar/online/bowling, or where ever they feel at ease. For some these lines are bright and clear. For others they might be blurry, even nonexistent. I do have lines. They fade in and out, sometimes to my detriment, but they’re there. Here are a few of the mes (there’s that word again) I know.

Work me: Veneer of professionalism. Moderated sarcasm and snarkyness. Confident. Capable. Reduced use of profanity. Somewhat detached. In the course of my working life, more of my true self has come out, but work me is still several steps removed from who I think I really am.
Real life me: Who I am with people I know well. More relaxed. Funnier (I think). Laugh easily. Cry sometimes. Say fuck a lot. Give hugs. A bit self conscious. Avoid confrontation. Keep things light.
Blog me: Not so different from real life me. A bit more thoughtful. Certainly better edited (I think!). Brave enough to say things I might not say elsewhere. Wise enough to hold back some I might regret. I explore things I rarely talk about, and no one gets to interrupt me. I crave ~~attention~~ comments. I like to know you’re there, and what you think.
Twitter me: Almost no filter. Self-assured (mostly). Flirty. Hilariously funny (I’m certain). Brave in my relative anonymity, yet supportive and (mostly) friendly. As long as you can read sarcasm.

Identity is funny. Mercurial, you might say. No one is who they were yesterday, yet we remain who we are (witness protection and sex changes notwithstanding). Identity and blogging have an interesting relationship. Some bloggers create a persona completely separate from who they are in life. A nom de plume. Their blog world is completely separate from their real world. Friends and family may not know they blog. Blog readers don’t know their real name or their families names. Mr. Lady and BHJ are in this camp. Mr. Lady recently flirted with taking down the wall and revealing her real name on her blog. BHJ, by contrast, shut down his much loved (by me, anyway) blog and started a new one after being discovered by some folks from life he did NOT want knowing about his blogself. I respect this path. Sometimes I envy it. They can write anything they want, yet all the while flirt with potentially damaging exposure. It’s a bit like working for the CIA. Ok, only a little, but still.

Others take the opposite approach. Heather‘s last name is in the title of her blog. Dooce, the most popular “mommy blogger” there is(?), shares her name, her city, photos of herself. I presume these people started their blogs to share their lives with friends and family. It made no sense to hide who they were. The fact they’ve become widely read and followed was not part of any plan, it just happened. In any case, they chose the path of openness.

I’m somewhere between. I use our real first names, but not our last name. I talk about where we live. There are photos of us on the blog. My parents read and comment regularly. Many friends know I blog. I link to my blog on Facebook. I don’t hide it.

You might think Mr. Lady and BHJ’s recent musings on this topic inspired this post, and perhaps they did. But the real trigger? Business cards. Yes, business cards. You see, I’m faced with another question of how separate these worlds should be. I’m looking for new employment. Do I put my blog on the card I’ll use to look for a job? In exploring what I might want to do, writing comes up as something I enjoy and would like to do more. This blog is an example of my writing. For now, it is the best, certainly the most readily available example of my writing. Yet I hesitate to reveal it to prospective employers, at least initially. I blog about my kids, but also drugs and kids toys that look like vibrators. I say fuck a lot. The name of the blog is badass dad. How seriously can anyone take THAT?

I’ve already faced some consequences of the various versions of me intersecting. A comment I made on Facebook resulted in a talking to from my boss about setting a professional example as a manager. An email I got from a friend, misdirected to a colleague I didn’t know, which just happened to mention ass fucking, also got me in some trouble at work. And my comment on Twitter about how in California we can buy booze anywhere and have all the anal sex we want raised some eyebrows when a coworker discovered it. (No it seems like I’m obsessed with anal sex. Another blog post for the resume!)

I don’t like having to hide. But again, perhaps this is what everyone does, to a degree. This blog, Twitter, and Facebook have created a scenario where things that would traditionally have been semi-private are now quite public, and can have real consequences. This may have worked out well for Dooce. Not sure I want to bank on the same happening for me.

When I was an adolescent searching for meaning in the universe, I came upon Richard Bach’s Illusions. New agey, yes, but exactly what I as a curious, thoughtful, lovesick, non-religious youth needed. There are many things about that book I still believe and work to hold in mind. One in particular I do my best to live by:

“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world. Even if what is published is not true.”

I think it means own who you are and what you do. Be secure in your self-knowledge, and unconcerned with the opinions of others.

But how do you do that in daily life? How does that stand up to the need for a paycheck? I’d love to work for someone who knows and embraces all I am. But I’d also like to pay my mortgage and feed my family. Can these things be one and the same?

The answer I came to was no, for now. No blog address on the cards. Name, phone, email. There’s plenty of room to write on the card. If it makes sense, I can always scratch it in.

How about you? Are you friends with your mom on Facebook? Does your boss know you blog? Are your yous fully integrated, or are there streams you just don’t cross?

as one door closes

badassdadblog — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:45:00 +0000

I learned Monday I no longer have a job.

I’ll spare you the technicalities and simply say that after 12 years at the same company, working up from an entry level job through the ranks to Senior Manager, in a few weeks I will be unemployed. In fact, other than cleaning out my office and possibly a few transition discussions, I’m essentially no longer working as of today.

So, what does this mean?

First please do not worry about me or my family. We are and will be OK. The upside of being with the same company for 12 years is I will get a generous severance package which will allow me to conduct a sane and thoughtful search for whatever is next. You won’t see my pulling shots at Starbucks. Unless the baristas are slow or try to put water in my grande nonfat dirty chai latte. ‘Cause then, outta my way.

Before I even think about my next job, I’m going to take a little time to regroup. That may mean I’ll be doing a lot more writing on the blog, tweeting in Twitter, and whatever the verb is for what people do on Facebook. (Does that have a name? Is “Facebooking” a thing now?) So for those who read, follow, ~~stalk,~~ or are “friends” with me, this could be a good thing. Or it could be very bad, as it may rapidly devolve into even more mundane minutia than it already is.

Possible tweets/status updates during unemployment:

Ate breakfast. Can’t believe how many calories are in cheese. So good though.
Staring at breakfast dishes. Knife and fork perfectly aligned. Is this plate REALLY dirty?
Thinking about clearing breakfast dishes. They look so peaceful there, though.
Can this microwavable container be recycled?
Have an itch.
Are those ants? No, crumbs. Sherman!
Where are my pants?

So, be looking forward to that.

Before too long I’ll need to find another job. I mentioned my severance was generous, and it is, but not “never need to work again” generous. Besides, even if I thought we could go for months without me working, I honestly think I would lose my mind, both from boredom and the anxiety of needing to support my family. I never thought of myself as the caveman type, but when faced with the possibility of prolonged unemployment and lack of income, with the idea that I might not be able to continue providing my children the things they want and need, I start feeling very Cro-Magnon. “Ugh. Must protect woman and man-cubs. Grg. Must hunt and gather. Mmm. Need more cheese.” They probably didn’t have cheese, I guess.

Some have already asked me what I want to do next. Truthfully I’m not sure. I’ll need to refine my ability to describe what it is I do (and want to do). Not “where do you work,” but “what do you do?” Because clearly people are hired to DO things, so there must be a way to tell people what I DO that will make them want to pay me generously to DO that thing for THEM. I’m not sure “I write emails and talk to people and go to meetings” is going to get me very far.

Is there such a thing as a job where I can be at various times focused, silly, raunchy, serious, irreverent, lazy, brilliant, dedicated, aloof, committed, creative, annoyingly specific, argumentative, fiercely logical, self-contradictory, all the while doing something that excites me while still having some time and energy for my family and my non-work life and being handsomely compensated both monetarily and emotionally? That job exists, right? Hm.

So, for now, I’m brielfy hitting the pause button on my working life. I’m thinking about what I want and what should be next, and starting to casually talk to people I know in a slightly less casual way than before – realizing all these people I know are, in fact, a “network,” and that before long I will need to “activate” them. Hopefully that isn’t grounds for divorce.

There will definitely be more to come about this nascent next phase of our lives. I hope it’s more interesting than what I had for breakfast. Though, seriously, really good cheese.

to my wife on our anniversary

badassdadblog — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:24:00 +0000

Dearest Lisa,

We’ve been married seven years today.

Seven years ago we stood up at West End Collegiate Church in New York City and pledged our love for each other in front of everyone. And we didn’t mention Jesus because I didn’t want to and you said that was OK. And then we walked/floated out of the church to the theme from Star Wars on the pipe organ. That ruled.

Seven years has gone so fast. People talk about the seven-year itch, but we cleared that hurdle by living together seven years before the wedding. When we got the seven year itch, we got married.

We’ve flown by the seat of our pants much of the time. We’ve trusted the Force, Luke. We weren’t sure we wanted kids. Then we decided we did. Owen was the most amazing thing that could ever be. He was incredible and we were happy and we weren’t sure we wanted to have more. Then we decided we did. And Nicholas was also the most amazing thing that could ever be. And it shouldn’t be possible for two things to be the most amazing anything, but they both are.

Now we look ahead. There will be new adventures. Uncharted territory. Not sure what, exactly, but things will change. They have, they do, and they will. And we’ll do it together.

I’m so lucky.

You are my best friend. You’re beautiful. You’re fiercely loyal. You like almost all the stuff I like (except Twitter.)

You’re a great listener. You’re an amazing lay (sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Kable). You’re an awesome mother to our kids.

We share things. We work together. I take the cans down to the street and you bring them back up. And it works.

I love you so much.

Happy anniversary, my love.

old school

badassdadblog — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Owen is already learning you can’t go home again, even if he doesn’t understand that yet.

We’ve had pretty good child care luck. When Owen was born in 2005, Lisa took seven months off.

(Before you get all excited and start applying for her job, this was seven months without pay. Lisa’s an opera stage manager who gets contracted per show. So basically she took no contracts for seven months. So didn’t get paid. So we lived on one income, which was not the most fun thing ever, but that’s not what this is about.)

As I was saying, we’ve been lucky. Lisa stayed home longer than many can, and the single income thing didn’t kill us

(Although I’m not super excited we may be doing it again soon. And no, Lisa is not pregnant.)

When she did go back our moms each came to help for several weeks.

(Which also didn’t kill us, though in some ways came closer.)

And with Lisa’s sporadic work schedule and piecing together babysitters here and there (that sounds like we dismembered them. we didn’t) we didn’t put Owen in daycare until he was over a year old. Having seen many friends hand their kids off to infant care at 6 weeks, we were happy we could wait, and Owen thrived (and continues to, thankfully).

When the time did arrive to start him in daycare, we found a place close to where we work in Downtown LA that we were really happy with most of the time he was there. When we did have issues, they addressed them (mostly. took way too long to get me a new keycard for the security gate.). Their hours were RIDICULOUSLY convenient (6am – 6:30pm. That is not a typo.). The location worked well for us (and was right near the train station which Owen loved). The director and staff were friendly and caring, and the teachers Owen had really seemed to love the kids and what they were doing. Oh, and it was cheaper than almost everyone else I knew was paying. I still don’t really know why, but I’m not complaining.

This is the Old School.

(We’ve always called it school with Owen, even when it was really just daycare. Also, I feel strange posting the name of the place, but if you’re in LA and interested email me and I’ll share. If you still want the info by the end of this post.)

Owen LOVED the Old School. Once he got over being left somewhere besides home, and apart from the inevitable tough days now and then, he loved it. He made friends before we knew he was old enough to HAVE friends. It was a strange experience visiting friends whose daughter was in his class and seeing they had something going on which had nothing to do with us or time they’d spent together while we were around. They were tight, and that happened all on their time, not ours. He loved his teachers, and often he didn’t want to leave when one of us showed up to take him home. How could our house compete with all these toys, kids, and a playground right outside? We saw his social skills blossom, and get this – they basically potty trained our kid for us. No kidding, one day they were like, “start sending him in underwear, he’s ready.” I felt like tipping them.

Then we got pregnant with Nicholas.

(Clearly, it was my wife who actually got pregnant, but we’re a team, so I say “we got pregnant” even though I realize she is the one with the uterus and did all the actual gestating and pushing the baby out and it makes me sound like kind of a new age parenting hippie to say “we got pregnant” but there I said it so whatever. Again, this is not what this is about.)

When we started contemplating how to handle the logistics of a second child, we decided two things: We were getting a nanny, and we were moving Owen to a school closer to home. We’ll call this the New School.

The New School is four blocks from our house (Old School: 10 miles). The New School has been lauded by friends since before we had kids as the best thing that ever happened to their kids. It’s only slightly more expensive. Having Owen at the New School would allow the nanny to pickup and dropoff (Car Talk, anyone?), and meant he’d be in school with neighborhood kids, some of whom might end up his classmates for years. Also, as Kindergarten started to loom, we wanted him to have a slightly more academic atmosphere than the Old School provided. Theirs was basically structured play, with crafts and stories and circle time, which is great for little ones, but lacked the beginning reading and math we think is important to at least start introducing somewhere around age three.

(This makes it sound like we’ve spent much more time thinking about educational theory and approach than we have. We basically play this thing by ear and try and do what Owen’s ready for. Honestly, the way notes home from his teachers at the Old School were spelled, I was not sure I wanted them teaching my kid to read, sweet and well meaning as they were. Also (and this probably bothers me the classically trained musician more than most), his teachers could not sing. I don’t mean they didn’t have beautiful voices. I mean they couldn’t carry a tune in a fucking bucket. Owen still has trouble matching pitch and I blame them. We sang to the kid, but they had many more waking hours with him in those early days, and how the hell can a kid learn Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when it sounds like there are only maybe 3 1/2 notes in the song and their relationships to each other are entirely arbitrary and vary from one verse to the next? Does that song even have verses? Whatever, you get the point. And again, this is not what this is about.)

So we decided to move Owen to the New School. We thought a lot about timing this move. Knowing he liked his Old School, we didn’t want him to associate leaving there with the arrival of the baby (fucking baby you came and I had to change schools and I hate you!), so we decided to wait and move him several months after Nicholas was born, while Lisa was still off work (she couldn’t take quite as much time off with #2, further reason why we went with the nanny option). We actually made the switch while out of town on vacation, so when we got home, Owen started in the New School. If he were older I think we’d have wanted him to have a chance to say goodbye, but at 3 we just thought that wouldn’t make sense to him. He’d probably think we were saying goodbye for the day and coming back tomorrow.

The good news is I think we succeeded in making the school move not about the baby. Owen loves his brother and has never connected his arrival with changing schools, that we know of. That said, the school move was a little rough at first. The first few days were great. He was all caught up in the novelty of the new school and the differentness of it all. We naively thought we were home free. But about a week later we heard:

“When can I go back to my Old School?”

My heart sank. Because of course he couldn’t go back. We’d structured our lives around him being close to home, not to mention paid money to the New School and given up his spot at the Old School. It was time to move on, but how do you tell that to a 3-yr old? We told him the New School was his school now, and he was going to keep going there. Thing is, I wanted him to WANT his New School, and by extension to have fond memories of his Old School without actually wanting to go back there again. Which is totally unrealistic, especially since I also have my moments of pining for my past. And I’m 35 — he’s 3.5. I’m a whole power of 10 older than him.

But those moments pass, and before long, he did get past it. Mostly. Pretty soon he wasn’t asking about his Old School anymore, and was really having fun at his new school. He made friends, he likes his teachers, he’s learning all kinds of cool stuff. And the logistics are working out great and we’re really happy about the move.

But now and then, it comes up. We see someone from the Old School – at a birthday party, playdate, etc. – and he asks about going back. But the more time that’s passed, the more his Old School isn’t really the place he knew anymore. Almost all of his friends have moved on. Most of the teachers we knew and liked are no longer there. And, of course, he’s not the same kid he was, either.

And maybe that’s the hardest thing to accept.

He’s changing.

And it’s all good. It’s what’s supposed to happen. He’s growing up. And that is both the best and the hardest thing to watch. He’s the same sweet funny cuddly charming kid, but at the same time, he’s not. He’s different every day. And that is, as much as anything, why none of us can ever go home again. Because not only is home not the place it was when we left, but neither are we the people we were then. We change. And that’s what’s supposed to happen, but sometimes we think back and sigh a little about who we were, and will never be again. At least, Owen and I do.