Familyhood (11 page)

The
Grmile

M
y younger son
likes to jump over, leap off, or bang into pretty much everything out there that can possibly be jumped, leaped, or banged. With the exception of having to eat a green vegetable, he's virtually fearless.

Not too long ago, we were in the car, just the two of us, and I watched him in the rearview mirror as he looked out the window, lost in thought. He looked back and forth from the window to his arms, back out the window, a glance to his legs, and then, suddenly putting together for the first time the possible linkage between cause and effect, he said, “You know . . . I get hurt almost
every day
.”

He wasn't complaining, he wasn't boasting. It was just a moment of clarity. “Hmm . . . my shin is bruised from today, there's the cut on my knee from yesterday, this thing on my arm from Tuesday . . . Wow
. . . Every day
it's something.”

And though I didn't say it, what I was thinking was “Welcome to the world, buddy.” Not that I bang my knee every day. I don't. But I do believe that between waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night, there's a good chance something will happen that'll surprise me and ultimately hurt me.

This phenomenon seems to be new. While admittedly, I remember less and less of my life pre
-
children, I don't recall having this before them. I'm pretty sure it's only since becoming a father that I've noticed these daily “pings” of hurt. It hurts me when my kids are hurt, and it hurts me when they narrowly
miss
being hurt. It hurts me when they're saddened, disappointed, frustrated, or frightened. I'm saddened when they discover something about life that I wish weren't so. It hurts me when I see them not trusting or believing someone—yet ironically, seeing them actually being trusting and believing breaks my heart too. It
all
hurts a little. And I don't know how to not feel these things. Apparently, being a father means you get
pinged
a hundred times a day.

On the other hand—and this is a huge, enormous hand—you're also going to get
pings
of unspeakable joy. Daily. Practically hourly. From the simplest things. Like watching my boys sleep stuns me with happiness. Seeing them wake up—same thing. Watching them chew a cracker? Kills me. Getting to watch them grow day by day, molecule by molecule, I feel such profound gratitude, I . . . almost can't even breathe correctly.

BUT I'VE NOTICED
that both categories—the
pings
of pain and the
pings
of happiness—both cause me to make the same involuntary (and not particularly attractive) facial expression.

It doesn't have a name, but you've seen it. If you've ever looked at your children and for a brief moment marveled at how what originally appeared on a sonogram smaller than a quarter, now speaks English and can pour itself a glass of orange juice, you've probably even made the face yourself. It's somewhere between a smile and a grimace. A “smi-mace,” if you will. Or, if you prefer, a “gr-mile.”

It's not a pretty face. Imagine holding a wedge of cheese so unreasonably pungent you can't un-squinch your face, but you also can't put it down. It makes the back of your eyeballs twitch a little and your head shake from side to side in sheer admiration of its potency.

My wife tells me I make this face all the time. Like an old guy who hums without knowing it. Now she just walks by me and says, “You're doing it again.”

“What.”

“The face.”

“No I'm not.”

“You're not? Look at your face.”

“So?”

“It's creepy. You're just staring at them.”

“But it's not ‘bad' staring—it's ‘good' staring.”

“I know, but just—”

“Alright . . .”

And I stop. But my point is that that face, and that feeling—the powerful bittersweetness, the sense of wonderment running right alongside the equally powerful sense of just how precarious that wonderment is—I get that all the time. And I know that before I had kids, I didn't.

Now trust me, I was never an “I can't wait to have children” kind of guy. The reason we originally
had
kids was because . . . well, that's just what you do, isn't it? You “get married and have children.” Because if you don't, everybody in the world nags you and pecks at you till you break down and say, “Fine, alright, we'll have children!”

AT LEAST
THAT
was
my
journey. My wife, on the other hand, originally wanted children, I maintain, mainly so she could buy them clothes. She couldn't wait to buy tiny sweaters and pajamas the size of hand puppets. We briefly discussed getting a circus chimp, seeing as how cute they look in those little suits, and how entertaining they'd be at parties. Plus, by having fuzzy animals instead of children, you cut out the whole “private school vs. public school” discussion. Just leave 'em in the yard and keep tossing those bananas. But ultimately, we decided against it and instead we made two little boys, and I have to say it's worked out much better.

ORIGINALLY, I THOUGHT
it was nuts that anyone would even let me
be
a father. My understanding was that fathers, traditionally, had to be
older
. You know, like my father's age.

As fate would have it, when our first son was born, I was the exact same age my father was when
I
was born. That threw me. I started rethinking my image of my dad and had to entertain the notion that as much as I liked to believe otherwise, my father was probably not
born
a father. There was a good chance he started out as a kid, then spent a few years as a teenager, a single guy, newly married guy . . . all the things that I myself had been. After the initial shock, I found this very liberating. I thought, “Wow,
he
probably didn't know what he was doing either.” So how hard could this be?

NOW I CAN'T BELIEVE
how much I love being these boys' father. Just hearing a sentence coming my way beginning with the word “Daddy” gets me every time. Even if what follows is unpleasant, as in “Daddy, I'm begging you—please stop singing.” Or “Daddy, I found this in my pants.”

I think more than the
sound
of the word, it's the lingering, vague hint of a question mark before the sentence continues that I love, as in, “Daddy . . . ?” There's such hope in the air there. Because as far as they know, I've
always
been a father. So when they say, “Daddy . . . ?” the implication is, “Daddy . . . ?
You'll
know the answer to this.” Which is ironic because, in fact, I don't know the answer to
anything
.

Like for example, I don't know what to do if anything happens. If
nothing
happens, I'm fine. But the possibility of
something
happening makes me very nervous.

Also, I don't know where anything is. In my own house or, for that matter, in the world. I just haven't really been paying enough attention. I sometimes say Argentina when I mean Venezuela. I don't know why, on a DVR, sometimes you can record one show while watching a different show, but other times it doesn't work out. I don't know where anyone in my family might have left whatever it is they're looking for. And—probably more important than anything else—I'm not always clear on what my wife has already said to the kids. This is key. It's imperative to know what conversations have already been had, what assurances have been made, and what ground rules have been laid. Otherwise, you're dead.

My kids not only know they can manipulate me, they
taunt
me with the fact that they know it and that, furthermore, there's nothing I can do about it.

Recently, I said yes to something I probably should have said no to, and my older son just smiled. And then, in his best “Look-how-I-can-be-cutesy-like-Shirley-Temple-even-though-I'm-a-boy-and-also-I-don't-know-who-she-is” face, he looked right at me and said, “Oh, thanks Daddy. You're the best-est daddy in the whole wide world.”

“Oh, really?” I said, smiling proudly. “How come?”

“Because you let me do anything I want, all the time, even though you're not supposed to.”

Oh. I think what I said was “Why, thank you!”

I DO KNOW THAT
the key to effective disciplining is to identify what is most important to your children, what gives them the most pleasure, and then
take it away
. Or, more likely,
threaten
to take it away. In our house, the luxuries most frequently put in jeopardy are TV time, dessert, and the chance to continue to live with us. Usually, I start with TV.

“Okay, if I hear the word ‘butt-face' one more time, you're losing TV tonight.”

That gets their attention. Then minutes later I hear something to the effect of “Bla bla bla bla butt-face.”

“Okay, buddy, you just lost TV tonight, and one more time, you're losing tomorrow too!”

Then you keep raising the stakes—a week, a month, and so on. There is a point, though, at which they're reasonably sure you can't back up the threat.

“Okay, you are now not allowed to look at a TV, computer screen, video phone, or any broadcast media till you're fifty-five, or until seven years following my own death, whichever comes later. And don't think I won't know, because I will.”

Of course, the threat of taking away what they like only works if they really like something—otherwise you've got no cards to play. It's like those old prisoner-of-war movies where cigarettes were the only currency of exchange. I always wondered about the one guy who doesn't smoke. This guy could never be gotten to. You can't take away his cigarettes because he doesn't have any, and he can't be bribed with a chance for
more
cigarettes, because he doesn't
want
any. The guy would be unstoppable.

With kids, though, sometimes it's tricky discerning exactly what it is they want and
don't
want. A few weeks ago we were all at the dinner table and my teenage boy was doing a great impression of a really obnoxious teenage boy who was raised by terrible parents. With great conviction I said, “Okay, you know what? You're going to leave the table right now!”

There was an awkward silence as my two sons and their mother all turned and looked at me with a palpable pity, till the younger brother finally complained.

“But he
wants
to leave the table. That can't be the punishment—'cause then he wins.”

I didn't miss a beat. I turned again to his big brother.

“Oh, you
want
to leave the table? Then, you
can't
!”

“Till when?”

“Till I say so. And we're taking your plate away so you will not be having the rest of your dinner.”

“I don't
want
the rest of my dinner.”

“Then you have to eat it! Wait a second—which is the thing you
don't
want?”

“He wants to be done with dinner so he can go play,” says the junior senator.

“Alright, then—the
exact opposite
is what it shall be.
More
food, and
no
playing.”

For a brief moment, I savored the sweet taste of victory. But then a thought occurred.

“Wait a second.
Unless
. . . Unless that's exactly what you thought I would say and you're trying to trick me! I wasn't born yesterday, you know. Okay, pal, now I decree it shall be
the opposite
of what I just said was going to be the opposite; now you must leave the table and go play at once! And that is final!”

As he headed away smiling, I suspected I may have misplayed the point.

I THINK THE REASON
“disciplining” will never be my strong suit is I'm always subtly rooting for my kids to win. I mean, I remember what it's like to be a kid, how good it felt to win, to get one over on your parents. Who am I to deny my own children that victory?

I remember once, as a kid, I did some dumb thing or another—I forget exactly what. I think I may have shot a convenience store clerk in Reno. Oh, no, wait, that wasn't me—that was Merle Haggard. Okay, scratch that. I think my actual crime was I lied about where my friends and I were going one night.

My father—because he wasn't born yesterday—called me on it, and I felt appropriately stupid and embarrassed. And then in a rare moment of parental candor, my father lovingly showed his cards and explained. “It's okay,” he said. “
Your
job is to try to get away with stuff, and
my
job is to try and stop you. That's how the game works.”

I had no idea that was how it worked. I mean, I suspected it, but I wasn't sure. And I certainly wouldn't have thought he knew it too. I guess it really is a game, I realized.

AND IT'S A REALLY FAST GAME,
too. I mean, not to get all “Sunrise, Sunset-y” here, but no kidding—it really does go unbelievably fast. And you'd think that knowing that in advance would help, but it doesn't. Everything—the good stuff, the bad stuff, the hard stuff . . . it all ultimately just goes away. It evaporates, with no clear warning. One day you just notice, “Hey, you're not watching that stupid cartoon anymore. I guess we've moved on. Good.”

But the things you
like
doing fly away too. One night a few years back, it just hit me, “Hey, you stopped asking me to read you bedtime books. Hmm . . . I guess
that's
over.” Or, “Hey, you don't waddle when you run anymore—you run like a big kid now. When did that happen?”

The changes are so imperceptible. But, I suppose, how else could it be? Your kids are never going to tell you in advance, “You know how I can't get off the sofa without jumping over the coffee table and banging my knee every time? I'll be outgrowing that next month. And also, how I call my brother ‘butt-face'? End of July—done.”