Ye Olde New Year’s Eve post, 2009 edition

Good-bye, 365 days of crap and despair. Don’t let history hit you on the ass on the way out the door...

Instead of poring back over the past year, enumerating and expanding upon what went fanny-side-up (almost everything) as was my initial inclination, just thinking about it is depressing the shit out of me. Time to go to Plan B and quick.

...but in the end, I couldn’t help myself looking backward, being the glutton for punishment that I am. I started to list, in my head, all the things I wouldn’t be writing about till I realized that was as self-defeating as just writing it all out. Instead, I forced myself to remember that there were a lot of good times and moments of beauty in the last year, too, sandwiched between all the sadness and ill tidings that grabbed the headlines and our lives.

And the one thing almost all my good memories of 2009 have in common is, my son was part of them. Not just present, but accounted for. Now other people were there—The Missus, The Last Boy Scout, The Best Man, the return of Leonard Cohen and Jim Cameron—for a lot of the best moments, but no one near as many, even all put together, as The Boy.

There’s the already-nostalgia-tinted memories of swimming once a week at the community pool down the block all summer long. Finally winning the potty-training wars; Yosemite and the holidays as seen through the eyes of a happy four-year-old.

Discovering that he still likes Johnny Cash and remembers his first dog, Woody, who passed away half his lifetime ago now. Reveling in his sly, capricious sense of humor and ready laugh.

And oh my gawd, the super-hero cartoons we’ve enjoyed together! I finally have the perfect cartoon buddy—we love all the same shows and he never Bogarts my stash. There are so many good Marvel Comics-based cartoons on right now, plus I have all the cool DC ones from last decade on DVD. It’s opportunity and circumstance aligning in perfect synchronization...

Watching him love “Star Wars,” but be plenty freaked out by “The Empire Strikes Back,” (Note to self—pre-screen future such entertainments for number of dismemberments per hour of screentime).

Watching him play with the remote control unit to his broken remote control car and explaining matter-of-factly, “I’m pretending I have a car.”

Best of all, though, are the smallest moments. I put him to bed the other night and I always resist saying “I love you,” because it’s already turned into the call-and-response exercise it’s become everywhere these days. Whether they’re talking to their mom or their hairdresser, everybody throws “I love you” and “I love you too” around the way you used to hear people say “Looks like rain” and “Yep, shore do.”

As a matter of principle, I almost always decline to say I love you in said call-and-response situations with The Boy. I try to save my professions of fealty for unexpected moments and noteworthy circumstances, when social custom doesn’t necessarily dictate a like response. Which is hard because I love him all of the time. So limiting myself in this area is as much an act of masochism as it is bad parenting by design.

At bedtime I usually say things like, “I’ll be here in the morning, son,” or “Have a good sleep, I’ll see you when you get up.” Give him a sense of security, assurance, without weakening him up with all that sissy love talk.

The other night, after The Missus had done all her excellent Mommying business, getting him ready for a comfy night's snooze, she came in and asked me, “Do you want to say good-night to him? You’d better hurry.”

Sure enough, he was sacked out and turned toward the wall already. I figured I had missed my opportunity but wanted to give the little bugger a kiss goodnight anyhow. It was enough for me that I knew I had done it. I leaned over and gave his cheek a peck and whispered, “Have a good sleep, buddy, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Unexpectedly he rolled over and crooked an arm around my neck, pulling my face toward his. He opened his eyes and said, “I love you, Dad,” and pulling me closer, gave me the sweetest kiss on the lips. I kissed his forehead and said, surprised, “Well, thanks son. I love you too. You have a good sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” he said and without another word, rolled back over and pulled his blanket up around him.

I mean, seriously, you can’t buy that shit. You can’t steal it. You can’t even find it on The Google. You either earn it or you miss out.

And at the end of this most horrid year—annus horribilis—I decided I should only look back and be grateful at the Good Stuff I didn’t miss out on.

(Don’t worry. It’s a short list.)

So, thank you, Sweetie. I’d be nothing without you, halved at least. One-thirded, even. To The Last Boy Scout, all I can say is, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Thanks for the songs, Mr. Cohen. And everybody who was cool to me and gave me the benefit of the doubt when my mistakes or misbehavior didn’t necessarily merit a second chance, I recognize and appreciate your generosity.

And to my son, thanks for giving me a reason to still want to hop out of bed every morning and brush my teeth first thing. I know the day will come that you’ll pull away, that my Big Boy will grow into a Little Kid who won’t want anything to do with PDAs by the Old Man. I’ll embarrass you in front of your cool skateboarder friends, then piss you off by grounding you ‘till infinity’ for doing something I probably did, too, when I was your age…

A period of estrangement and resentment will likely follow and then you’ll be a Teenager and you will communicate solely by unintelligible monosyllabic grunts, silent shrugs and over-the-shoulder baleful glares for a few years.

(In the best of all possible worlds, you will spend this period of adolescent pique learning to play the guitar and writing angry songs of rebellion that will ultimately lead to Springsteenian success as an arena-filling folkie/rocker and me and The Missus to a house on the hill with a full staff to care for us in our dotage.)

And should I live long enough: Rapprochement. Redemption! Kids of your own and the better-late-than-never realization that, actually, I really was constantly riding your ass in your own best interest (most of the time!). You’ll realize that without me around to push your buttons, you never would have had something so implacable to strive against so young; no one to teach you how to not yield to the irresistible force with one hand while still sucking your thumb with the other.

But until then, it’s enough that you know that I will always be there when you wake up. And I’ll see you in the morning.