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Throughout the course of our renovations, just about everything has been uprooted and put someplace it normally isn't. I was putting some books back on a shelf when Robert started brandishing a small, plastic vial.
Robert: Daddy, what's this stuff?
Me: That is Astroglide.
Robert: What's Astroglide for?
Me: It's for keeping things slippery.
Robert: Oh. [pause] You mean, like, for a piston engine?
Me: Yeah, baby.
The move is done. The big bedroom--where I lay my weary, size-7¾ noggin for 15+ years (or about 38% of my life)--now boasts a crib and an awesome race-car bed. And the little bedroom--the one my roommates were always banished to--is my new home. It's a cozy existence, since there's about three feet of clearance around the Queen-size bed. It's like sleeping in one of those inflatable bounce houses you see at carnivals.
Let me also say that I am no stranger to illogicality. I am married to someone, for example, who likes to check out 15 books from the library, read two of them, and forget about the rest until she starts getting e-mails about her fines. She then goes off to the library to pay these fines ... and comes back with 15 more books.
When we told Robert that we were planning to switch the sleeping arrangements, he was ecstatic. He stripped naked and ran from one end of the apartment to the other, singing and leaping and stomping and reminding my downstairs neighbors to check the real estate listings. United at last! The brothers could talk, and play, and hatch plans for world domination without parental interference! This was to be the Ultimate Bert Sanctuary!
It all began with such promise. TwoBert had missed his afternoon nap, so even though he was unfamiliar with his new sleep-cage he passed out rather quickly. Robert was only too happy to throw himself into bed right afterward, and suddenly there my wife and I were, sitting on the couch, both kids tucked away at 7:30pm. We were geniuses.
Then Robert prairie-dogged for the first of a half-dozen times. He wasn't sleepy. Then he was too sleepy. Then he fell asleep but woke from a violent nightmare. Then he determined that his brother was the source of all ill in the world, that he never signed onto this roommate business. Attempts to soothe him in fierce whispers were futile, and we quickly spiraled to DefCon One: high-pitched whines. Then TwoBert woke up and doubled the chorus, and dogs everywhere winced in agony.
What else could we do? We waved the white flag. My wife took TwoBert into the bounce house, and I lay on Robert's floor and talked him down before sleep finally overtook both of us.
Do you see what I'm up against? Robert wouldn't countenance sleeping with his brother, then he wouldn't sleep alone because he had to wail about wanting to sleep alone. And of the four beds in our place, I didn't get to use any of them. If you look for logic in this family, you might just as well be blind.
Wait a minute. Are you telling me I spent two months sweating my ass off in the gym, dropping the weight equivalent of my one-year-old, only to find that fat guys are "in" this summer because they "know how to enjoy themselves"?
There is no limit to my social unacceptibility.
Here's an astounding fact about me: As of June 1, I have lived in this apartment for 15 years. I'd like to put that in context for you. Remember when Bush 41 barfed on the Japanese prime minister? I moved in here six months before that. Billboard's No. 1 song was by Roxette. The Dow had just hit 3,000. And my wife, then a coltish 18-year-old, sat in PSYC 101 and pined for the near-sighted grouch who would one day sweep her off her feet.
Having been so aggressively sedentary for so long has deprived me of the joys of moving. True, you can number those on one hand, but one huge perk is the inevitable need to throw out half of your crap. Pulling up stakes isn't much of an option right now; my best hope would be either to 1) find something with half the size for triple the cost, or 2) build a lean-to in the Pine Barrens and commute. So we're doing the next best thing: We're moving without leaving the house.
Every morning, the boys can't wait to see each other. So we've decided to move them into the big bedroom and let them pummel each other with brotherly love while we nestle into the bed-sized closet in the back. And in order to maximize the fun, we're treating this like a real move by considering every item, packing up what we're keeping, and chucking the rest. Consideration has been rigorous: Do I really want to move this box of papers all the way over to the other room? Because that's almost 40 feet, for Chrissakes. Life is too short.
It's just like moving for real, except you don't have to pay the kid who works in the deli $10 to watch your rental van while it's double-parked in the loading zone by a fire hydrant. And no brokers.
We had a great plan to get a lot of stuff moved around today, but it went a bit pear-shaped when the sitter called in sick. So now Robert is here, demanding to "help" with everything, and TwoBert is waddling around and bonking into everything that shouldn't be where it is.
We're going to remember this day forever. Possibly longer.
I'm on a bit of an E.B. White jag, having just finished his biography. He wrote lots of metered verse, and this poem struck me as a concise nugget of paternal advice:
Some day when I'm out of sight
Travel far, but travel light!
Stalk the turtle on the log,
Watch the heron spear the frog,
Find the things you only find
When you leave your bag behind;
Raise the sail your old man furled,
Hang your hat upon the world! ...[Boys], my tangible creation,
Happy in perambulation,
Work no harder than you have to.
Do you get me?
Happy Father's Day, to the bucolic slacker in all of us.
When the Mommybloggers asked me to write a post about Father's Day, I considered two very important points:
I wrote this piece about my dad, and his dad, and my boys, and their dad (which is me). There's also a picture, so that the world may finally behold the glory of my gargantuan eyebrows.
OK, here's the thing. Well, the first thing, anyway: I say "Here's the thing" too often. I know because Robert has chosen it as his favorite preamble for demurral:
Me: Robert, it's time to brush your teeth.
Him: Yeah, well, here's the thing, Daddy. I don't think my teeth will need brushing again until I am four and a half.
At least his reasons are becoming more creative. Evidence of a shrewd mind destined to keep me on my toes.
Here's the second thing: I’ve become dismayed by my writing process, such as it is. I dum-dee-dum off to work each day, ideas pop into my head, I jot them down. Later, I look at what I’ve written and decide that nothing is funny, nor will any of it coalesce into anything writeworthy. I feel like I’m building a railroad trestle out of Q-tips.
The unavoidable truths are that 1) writing is a lonely exercise; and 2) a man with a job and a wife and two high-energy boyspawn is rarely alone. Writing opportunities don’t come until after everything is dark and the evil force of Mattress Gravity is so strong. I got really excited the other day, when I was home alone, during the day, in a house that had just been cleaned.
My excite-o-meter needs some serious recalibrating.
So what do we do? We adopt, adapt, and improve. We decide that writing is the important task right now, and that we will find ways to shoehorn writing time into our daily grind. We resolve to post more often and fight the urge to over-write and over-edit. We refer to ourselves in the first person plural, perhaps to convince ourself that we are E. B. White, and it is 1931.
I'm happy to say that a lot of summer projects have come my way, and that I am grateful for the luxury of circumspection. My near-term goal is to be as prolific as possible, and hope that volume does not dilute the product.
We'll see where I am when Robert is four and a half, and once again deigns to pursue dental hygiene without a fight.
My wife: Do you think I have an unnatural preoccupation with baseball players' names?
Me: How do you mean?
My wife: I mean, Milton Bradley? And Albert Poo-holes? And Trot Nixon? And come on: Randy Johnson?
Me: You betcha. The Big Unit.
My wife: And that guy with the Norwegian first name and the Spanish last name?
Me: Einar Diaz.
My wife: Right! What were their parents thinking?
Me: Sweetie, I love you.
[Pause.]
My wife: I thought that might be followed by a "but..."
Me: I love your butt.
Through the course of his playground convivialities, Robert met a beautiful two-year-old girl. She was skipping about in a lilac dress covered with daisies and gripping her toy horse with both hands.
Her daddy was two steps behind: "Madeline? What does the horse say? Madeline? Madeline. Madeline? Maddie? What does the horse say? Do you see your horsie? What does your horsie say? Madeline? Ma-de-line? Maddie sweetie? What does the horse say?"
"Gee, Dad, I dunno. But I know what the jackass says." *
*OK, she didn't really say that. But wouldn't it have been sweet?
One of the main settings of my blog entries (which began infecting the Internets three years ago today) has been the playground, and a lot has changed. During the summer of '03, Robert and I were a unit. I was coping with losing a job, and he was learning how not to walk into things. We needed each other. Now, as soon as he skids his bike to a halt and carefully hangs his helmet on his handle bars (Daddy's boy, no doubt), he skitters off into some fray or other, leaving me to look up from my book occasionally and make sure no one's being strangled.
It's a fine arrangement, but I admit I miss the days when I was his chief playmate, his primary source of fun-fun-FUN. Robert may be feeling the same way, now that TwoBert is walking and sucking up so much of his parents' attention. So when he asked me to play hide and seek with him the other day, we were probably both ready to revisit the good old days.
Herewith, a transcript:
4.15 pm: I hold my hands over my eyes and count s-l-o-w-l-y to ten. Within half a nanosecond I spy Robert's feet sticking out from under the fire engine. I wander aimlessly like a furloughed mental patient for a few moments until I circle over and point him out. He is ecstatic to be found; I resist trying to instill a more competitive instinct.
4.18: Robert crouches down and counts to ten very quickly, onetwothreforfisixevneightnineten, affording me precious little time to throw my body under a bench and bark my shin on one of the legs.
4.19: Robert walks within two feet of me and heads toward the big fort with the curly slide.
4.21: I crane my neck for a look around, and Robert is by the swingset talking to a kid with a red shirt and a toy truck. I lie back and scratch at whatever is crawling on my knee.
4.22: No sign of Robert. I peer at the underside of the bench and count gumwads.
4.25: I prairie dog once again. Robert is running around at the farthest end of the park and pushing the truck ahead of him; he is pursued closely by an aggrieved Red Shirt. I debate leaving my hiding spot and persuading Robert to return the vehicle. Surely, this is the proper thing to do.
4.26: I doze off.
4.30: I awaken to nearby shrieks, none of which belong to my son. He is on the swings with Red Shirt, the truck lying on its side nearby. The boys have apparently forgiven and moved on.
4.32: I roll out from under the bench, massage my toes back to life, and take a seat. I hope that Robert will see me in plain sight and remember that we're playing a game here, goddammit.
4.35: Robert gets off the swings and walks right past me toward the fire engine. I start emitting high-pitched yelps that lead to a coughing fit.
4.36: Oblivious, Robert guides the fire engine to the 300th fire this week. How can all this playground equipment be so flammable?
4.38: I start calling Robert's name, and this conversation ensues:
R: Why are you calling my name?
Me: I'm giving you a hint.
R: I don't need a hint.
Me: Oh. I thought you were having trouble finding me.
R. But you're right there.
Me: Yes, but you walked right past me.
R: I know that.
Me: So why didn't you say anything?
R: I was busy thinking other things.
An utterly defensible gambit, to which I have no response.
Me: Do you want to keep playing?
R: Absolutely! My turn to hide!
4.45: I count to ten again, look up, and see Robert under the same fire engine but--and this is the crucial point--his position is perpendicular to the last one. I begin another Aimless Walk.
4.46: From over my shoulder: "Daddy! Do you need a hint?"
