Laid-Off Dad

Looking the part

Until recently, I thought I was one of a socially retarded minority who pay entirely too much attention to professional sports uniforms. But then I found Uni Watch, the "obsessive study of athletic aesthetics." After reading the first few entries, I praised the heavens for the blog that showed me my socially retarded minority was a lot less minor. Then I cursed the heavens for not thinking of it first.

Uni Watch chronicles just about any situation when a group of people are dressed the same way, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it's a great read for anyone who, say, spent countless hours as a kid doodling and redesigning the perfect uniforms of all four major sports (does hockey still count?), and then added his little, freckled head at the neckline to jazz up the fantasy.

Robert's well into tee-ball season, and as I've painfully established, he's decided he wants to do just about everything A-Rod does, including 1) wear the #13 jersey everywhere, 2) play third base, and 3) marry a woman of questionable judgment. For his second tee-ball game, he started to roll his uni pants up to his kneecaps--like A-Rod does (sigh)--like this: 

He noticed it didn't look quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on why. Aha, thought Daddy, the uni purist. And a few clicks later ...

Up on one knee

About a month after I joined the Boy Scouts, my patrol and I launched into a three-day camping trip in the wilds of northern New Jersey. Because there were seven of us, the three of us newbies had to sleep in a humongous, three-man Baker tent. Because it was made of canvas, with grommets of pure lead, that thing weighed somewhere between 40 and eight million pounds. And because I drew the short straw, I was the lucky soul who had it lashed to his backpack for the hike into camp.

Considering all the unnecessary stuff that an 11-year-old Tenderfoot might think he'd need for two nights in the woods, my pack weighed just a little less than I did. And when we finally reached the clearing and that pack slid off my shoulders, I floated around for half an hour as if gravity had been repealed.

That's almost exactly how I feel right now: Sweaty and breathless, but free. And only a little concerned that something will leap from the bushes and eat me.

I'm sorry I couldn't write publicly about this past year and a half, and I wish I could tell you all how much your comments, e-mails, voice-mails, DMs, IMs, Morse Codes, carrier pigeons, and smoke signals meant to me. And when I say me, I mean us. Because all four of us will have to get through this and transition to what's next. There's no "bad guy" here, as one of my wife's commenters wrote. There's just two people who have realized they're better off apart, and who above all else want to do right by their kids.

Ever since Robert looked over my shoulder and asked, "Daddy, what's 'Laid-Off Dad'?," I've tried to pay at least some attention to the boys' dignity. It's entirely possible that one day my sons will be able to read these posts, after they scrape them off the underside of some decaying server-cache-thingy. And when they do, they'll see that, when Mom and Dad split up, hundreds of well-wishers--friends and strangers alike--expressed their love, their support, and their confidence that we'll all be okay.

Every divorcing family should be so lucky.

Falling down

This post is a long time coming. I've written it in my head, phrase by phrase, for months, trying to anticipate what this week would feel like when it finally arrived. But now that the day is here, I'm as confounded as ever. So let's start at the beginning.

As you may have noticed, there's a big, beige book prowling around the left-hand margin. It's an anthology of essays about fatherhood edited by Heather, who graciously asked me to contribute to it. Heather found me a few years back, and when she links to me my SiteMeter shoots out of my laptop and punctures a hole in my plaster ceiling. So when she contacted me I figured it was the least she could do, as the money might help offset the security deposit I won't get back.

When I chose the subject matter, I struggled for a long time over whether to maintain my anonymity. But after I read it a few times, and I realized how deeply personal it is and how proud I am of it, I took the plunge and asked the publisher to attach my full name. So for the first time in its almost-five years, this blog is a lot less anonymous. And my name is a lot more Googlable.

Naturally, I didn't want my employer to find out about the book secondhand, so I met with the big boss yesterday, book in wavering hand, and explained that oh-by-the-way I'm a blogger who values his day job more than any other he's had. World A and World B slammed into each other, and my knees are still feeling the ripple.

The book is being released today, and with it is the sad revelation that my wife and I are divorcing. We've been mediating for months, and we finished our negotiations last week (on what was, strangely enough, our 9th wedding anniversary). We're at the drafting stage, and if all goes to plan we'll be living apart by the end of the summer.

I've managed to keep a rather even keel over the past few months, but now that the end is so tangibly close, all the desperate sadness from before has bubbled back up into my chest cavity. It's that same sadness that plagued me when it all hit the fan two Thanksgivings ago, and that led me to write my essay, which tries to tell my boys how much they mean to me, and that even though I'm moving out, I'm not going anywhere.

So in the past week I've seen my writing in print, taken a huge leap of faith at my job, and announced to the world that my marriage is over. The walls I've tended for so many years are crumbling inward, and I'm filled with joydread over what will rise from the rubble.

Judas Iscomelet *

* because "Eggs Benedict Arnold" is too obvious, and "Quisling Bacon" is a bit of a reach.

I may have mentioned a few billion times that I have lived here, in the only New York apartment I've ever had, for ages. How long? When I moved in, Microsoft was still tinkering with this new product called "Windows." And for all that time, My Diner has been two doors down, on the corner. Over the years, it's been renovated and expanded, bought and sold, and persevered in a rapidly upscaling neighborhood. It was a dive when I found it, but the food was tasty and cheap. Plus, George the grumpy waiter always recognized me, so I never had to see a menu. He'd see me coming, and within seconds of finding my seat, my Eggs Over, Whiskey Down, and Coffee would magically arrive.

I've been loyal to my diner for many years. I never went to that Other Place, the one down a block and across the street--out of laziness, yes, but also out of duty. And when the super-trendy pancake house moved in next door, I boycotted it. Because the pancakes were big as manholes, and you got four of them that only a linebacker or a mountain lion could possibly finish, and every weekend morning the sidewalks were choked with clueless B&T trendholes who couldn't wait to drop $14 on a stack of flour and eggs that cost 14 cents to make.

I was genuinely worried that market forces would drive My Diner out. Then, mercifully, it became less trendy to stagger away from your Sunday brunch with a distended belly and a yearning to die, and the pancake joint shut down. We, and common sense, won the day.

About a year ago, when Bagels With Butter morphed into a full-blown meal, a ritual was born. The diner knew us, we knew the diner, and every Sunday, within seconds of finding our seats, our Lumberjack with Coffee and Two Extra Plates would magically arrive.

But then came the troubles. The prices went up. The furniture went posh. The Lumberjack wasn't enough food. The pancakes went dry. The bacon withered and cracked. And then, a new waiter overcharged me two weeks in a row. So one Sunday morning, when the three of us walked out of the house, we kept on walking. To the Other Place.

The Other Place has all the charm My Diner has lost, from the oil painting of Mykonos by the owner's daughter's friend, to the Madonna-and-Child woodcut wedged above the shredded wheat, to the colossal breadfruit tree in the window. The staff are friendly, the food is better, the bar has rotating stools that the kids can spin themselves sick on, and the bathroom doesn't smell like a menthol fart. All in all, it's a much more pleasant experience on almost every count.

I am a traitorous dog.

Plink!

In the space of ten months, my son has morphed from a neophyte with an oversized Whiffle club to an obsessive Major League Imitator. He rolls up his uniform pants to his knees, like his pal. He wears his batting gloves (batting gloves?) hanging out of his back pocket. He wears cleats. When we play dingerball, he pitches from the stretch and pretends to shake off the catcher. Who isn't there.

And now, after two weeks of playing with an aluminum bat, he would very much pretty please like to have one of his own. I've thought about it and decided it isn't a problem, despite the rumors that aluminum bats are more dangerous than wooden ones, because the catastrophic injuries, though understandably devastating for the victims, have been rare, and the reports keep coming off as cheap, media fearmongering. Plus, these injuries happen with older players who've learned to mash line drives, rather than 6-year-olds who hit dribblers that barely make it out of the infield.

Besides, he already uses one every Saturday. How will owning his own bat affect whatever risk exists?

I need to research this more, in order to reassure certain other members of the family who are afraid that aluminum bats are pure evil and should all be melted down and used for Mr Pibb cans.

What's your take on this?

Yolked together

When I was in seventh grade, I belonged to the most ass-backward Little League in the English-speaking world. For a start, some of the teams had major-league nicknames (although random ones, like the Rangers and Mariners, instead of obvious ones, like the Yankees and Mets), and others did not (like the Stallions). Because some Awfully Clever Somebody thought it would be super awesome to "think outside the diamond"--which loosely translates to "enable boys on real teams to ridicule those on teams with dopey fake names."

I was one of those lucky, latter youngsters, and my team was called ... wait for it ... the Doughboys. Who might have been named after 1) the freckle-faced fighting force that licked the Kaiser, or 2) our coach, who weighed at least 300 pounds and spent our games at the end of the bench, chain-smoking and barking orders.

Adding insult to insult, our uniforms consisted of white pants and bright-yellow jerseys, caps, and stirrups, all of which made us look like fried eggs. Garish, sunny-side-up, and mortified.

You can therefore imagine my reaction when Robert's tee-ball coach reached into his cardboard box of fun and produced these:

They've got black trim, which mutes the visual cacophony a bit. But when you walk up to your kid's coach expecting a black jersey bursting with badassness, and instead he hands you a smear of French's mustard, it can spike your diastolic. Especially if you've still got a little PTSD from your ridiculous seventh-grade team, which won one game. By forfeit.

The interesting thing was the sponsor. I couldn't place it as a neighborhood business, as most of them are, so my mind went a-wandering. It was probably a nail salon, I thought. Or an Air Force battalion. Or an escort service. Or this person.

Then came all the Opening Day speeches, but during the obligatory thank-yous to the sponsors, they never mentioned "Ms. Jay." Ah, I thought. So it is an escort service.

It turns out, though, that Ms. Jay was a beloved teacher at a nearby school, and every year her widowed husband sponsors the Angels personally, in her memory. Which makes me just a little more proud to be associated with this team, eggy or not.

Not particularly uplifting, cont'd

This morning found me in a bit of a funk. I should have shaved before work today, but I didn't. Just because. And now that I have a moment to do a little writing, I'm mostly staring off into space and rubbing my stubble. Which sounds dirtier than it is.

I've recently remembered that I have a Flickr account, so I've begun to post a few more pictures to it. This one is of a once-proud (and utterly unreliable) elevator, which now lies in pieces in the building's courtyard. If look closely, you can see the cave drawings on the main cable wheel.

A commenter asked who is sponsoring R's tee-ball team, and I don't know yet. I do know, however, that the predominant uniform color is black. And since they're the Angels, I have visions of the team as Miltonian wraiths roaming the mortal coil in exile. So I think a really appropriate sponsor would be something like "Lucifer's Bail Bonds." Or a bank.

And finally, I got a press release today from a PR firm saying that Vlasic® pickles is looking to crown its Vlasic® Stork Baby of 2008. (Because pregnant women like pickles! Genius!) Among the prizes is a $20,000 Savings Bond, although "[i]f the parents of the Vlasic® Stork Baby want to show their love and dedication to Vlasic® Pickles by making his or her middle name, 'Crunch,' the savings bond value will be increased to $25,000."

My first thought was to check and see if this was sent out on April 1, but it wasn't. Which means it's probably legit. Which means some people can put a price tag on their child's lifelong humiliation. Which means if you are one of those people, you're a real Vlasshole®.

Out loud, out strong

It's 60º and cloudless outside, and you know what that means. Break out the shorts! Where's my mitt? It's a great day for dingerball, let's play two!

Except, no. I am marveling at all this joyous cloudlessness from the inside, and posting about my disconsolate son who won't leave the apartment.

This was supposed to be Tee-ball's Opening Day. Robert would dress in his new uniform (with pants!) and lead his Angels into battle with the Mets as a capacity crowd of dozens cheered them on. But even though this is easily the best day of weather we've had in '08, Opening Day has been rained out because the new sod, which was laid three days ago (?), is too waterlogged.

As a consolation, we thought, we could go meet the coach and collect Robert's uniform. But the hat and jersey weren't ready because the printers hadn't finished stenciling on the sponsor's logos. So far, this Little League operation is running like a Swiss watchband.

And now my boy, who an hour ago begged me to take him out to see the new ballyard and would have swum the East River to play his first-ever game of tee-ball, is idly sipping lemon-lime seltzer and drawing pictures of car crashes.

I am grumbling, it's true, but not that loudly. I can use a little rest after last night's karaoke night that was hosted by the ridiculously hott founders of Cool Mom Picks. Three hours became four, and three drinks became more, and I learned the valuable lesson that mimicking Michael McDonald is a true test of human mettle.

Thanks to everyone for a great evening that was replete with laughter, booze, and -- gulp -- flashbulbs. If you're trolling through Flickr or something and come across several pictures of an earnestly handsome man holding a microphone, eyes shut and mouth open, that's Pierre. I'm the better-looking one next to him.

Bunkberts

In a simpler time, the four of us in the Laid-Off Lair had at least some proximate idea of where we slept every night. And it was comforting, because each evening you could arrive in the apartment, look over at the place where you routinely lay your head, and think, Yes. Later on, I will be in that place, horizontal, and listening to city employees play pétanque with trash cans.

That all changed a week ago when we did the inevitable--and put bunk beds in the Bert Sanctuary.

I say it was inevitable because bunk beds are a no-brainer space-saver; piling sleeping children on top of one another frees up much more space for the toys that are currently overwhelming the living room. It also provides more room for the pointy, the squishy, the wet, and other banes of the bare foot.

What didn't register, however, is that bunk beds are basically a jungle gym with mattresses, and who can sleep with so many opportunities to hang like a monkey? Or stick the dismount? Or hurl yourself through the side aperture like it's the General Lee and Sheriff Roscoe is on your tail? Bedtime is still at 8ish, but the sustained thumping persists, sometimes for more than an hour.

And then comes the sticky decision of where finally to lay your head, because since the bunks arrived there have been numerous permutations. The boys started out conservatively, with Robert on top and TwoBert below. (TwoBert balked at this arrangement, but Robert lawyered up on him and invoked the instructions, which stated clearly that the top bunk was strictly for ages six and up.) But he relented, and they switched. Then they shared the bottom. Then Robert took the floor, under the bottom. Then they both camped out on the floor, as if I'd never bought the damn thing and lugged it up four godforsaken flights of stairs.

On any night, after the kids have finally passed out, there is no assurance that either kid will be anywhere you'd expect. It's a matter of time before I find one of them hanging over the side of the top bunk by his feet. Like a possum, only with NASCAR pajamas.

I don't know when or if we'll ever achieve stasis on this, but I do know that my hands are still chafed and throbbing from putting the thing together. If Mr. Kamprad ever wants to double his fortune, he should consider opening a spa that caters to distressed knuckles.

Natatory valedictory

There's been lots of good news lately for the Laid-Offspring, the most momentous being that both of my sons were graduated to the next level of swimmer's training. TwoBert, trussed up as he was in PFDs, finished his Little Dipper course and will begin next week as a Tadpole. He achieved this by demonstrating a willingness to float on his back, to dogpaddle furiously toward the shark toy with the squirty mouth, and to jump off the side of the pool onto his father's head. He also received high marks for his spirited "Hokey Pokey."

To his credit, he did swim the breadth of the pool twice, with a noodle tied around his nethers (for maximum midbody buoyancy) and a big floaty barbell in his hand. He then came home, trudged up the 68 steps, and napped for 3½ hours.

Robert is a much bigger success story, because his swimlane to success has had a few whitecaps. He's been plagued by doubts, over his stamina, his coordination, and his overall disdain for the idea of frolicking in a substance that can kill you. He's already overthinking things, just as I do; I only hope he can feel comfortable admitting his fears to me, and that I can help him confront them a bit by talking them through. We've had a few chats about risk and reward, and how the best things to get are the ones you expend the most effort for. Later on, when he dove in (headfirst!) and swam the length of the pool for the first time, it took a lot of effort not to dive in after him and hug his waterlogged brains out.

He now gets to be an Otter, if he wants, but I suspect he's happy to focus on Tee-Ball, which begins on Saturday. We finally got a note from his coach about his team (the Angels), the uniforms (which have pants!), and the schedule, which he has already transcribed onto his wall calendar. He has also made a sign that says, "THE RED SOX ARE MY FAVORITE MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM BUT MY FAVORITE TEE-BALL TEAM IS THE ANGELS SO NO OFFENSE."

I am to have this with me at all times, often waving it vigorously.