Five years ago today, The Missus and I were getting ready to wrap up what would turn out to be a 40-hour birthing marathon. The midwives were just about to break out the jaws of life when The Boy finally popped into the world. I’m ashamed to say the first thing he saw was his father bursting unexpectedly into tears, but I suppose it was good preparation for parental embarrassments yet to come.
And for the first year, the drama continued. He was a healthy child, thank God, but the little bastard was wound just a touch too tight to sleep through the night, and when he finally did, his reveille still came around 3, 3:30 a.m.
He kept us way too tired and fidgety to pause to reflect on the changes taking place in our lives. On the plus side, he and I discovered
The Johnny Cash Show together in those pre-dawn hours that first couple years. On the minus side, I fell hopelessly behind on my chosen industry of web design and the technological advances that feed the beast. I look at websites today and am convinced actual wizardry is at work.
He’s too old now, and has too much dignity for me to discuss the other thing—beside sleeplessness—that characterized his first few years of life. So anything having to do with chronic constipation is off the table.
He started day care at 16 months. I’m sure it was too soon and I feel like a selfish bastard. I’m also sure we waited too long and have forever stunted his social upward mobility.
He loved it there and flourished. He’s loved it and flourished wherever we’ve sent him. He’s like neither one of us that way, certainly at his age.
He’s a remarkable little man, this son of ours. Reticent around strangers (bonus!), he forms attachments to kids his own size maybe too quick. Every new boy (seems all our new friends have boys about twice his age) whose parents’ house we are invited to… becomes his new best friend. I mean, ever, in the world. Yesterday it was one kid, today it’ll be another.
And because The Boy is so tall, these other kids start out under the misassumption that our kid is about their same age. So they eye his child-like behavior suspiciously at first, wondering if he is what their parents refer to as “special.” Then they find out he’s only four and they begin to understand the circular, pointless (and often subject-less) statements he pronounces repeatedly with great authority.
Like I said, he has enough dignity for both of us, which is fortunate.
"Mouse"
He’s also an artist. I’ve posted his work here frequently over the years, and have thrown in a couple of his most recent compositions to break up the damnable, endless text of this morning’s post.
He’s also crazy perceptive. Unless he’s in a mood, his bullshit detector is eerily precise. He can always tell when I’m having him on, no matter how straight I keep my face.
Ever since he started daycare, I’ve taken a weekday a week to spend with him. We usually just hang out around the house watching superhero cartoons, then we’ll run a couple of errands that end us up at a “fry place”—a place which sells French Fries, Burger King being our favorite—for lunch, then back home for more cartoons and lately, an outdoor physical activity like riding his bike before kicking it in the back yard, me with my guitar, him with his shovel and bucket (or box of percussion instruments) and the dog with an ever-increasing pile of sticks and branches to show off, chew up and have trouble crapping out.
That’s another thing, The Boy has already had three dogs in his life, and he remembers all of them, even the one, Woody, who died when The Boy was two. And I don’t mean remembered as in, “Responds affirmatively when questioned,” I’m talking about him recalling specific details and events in Woody’s life that had slipped my mind till he reminded me.
And bless his heart, even his opinions of the dogs dovetail neatly with my own. He still remembers Woody as the greatest dog ever—certainly of his lifetime—and likes the current mutt in spite of the fact that Jake the puppy is 80 pounds of unguided enthusiasm and a constant threat to every vertical object in the house, us included.
Six years ago today, I was living a pretty satisfying life. I had just talked my way into a work-from-home job, my creative hobby-type endeavors were humming along smoothly at last and I had a freelance client at the time who rendered money problems a thing of the past. Life was good. It was set. The Missus would get her PhD, the job offers would roll in and we’d be on Easy Street. Depending on what job offer she accepted, I might even be able to quit my work-from-home gig and concentrate full time on my creative efforts.
Then one day she floated the idea of having a kid. I gave it some serious consideration, then told her I was equally split; between maintaining our cushy, low-stress, low-maintenance lifestyle, and having the kid I’d always dreamed of having but had finally given up ever hoping for. I left it up to her and will be eternally grateful to my beautiful wife for making the right decision.
Because shit didn’t work out exactly as we planned. The economy went into the toilet, the job market dried up, my industry begin to shutter its doors and suddenly “hope” was only a glib, political slogan. The Missus and I have said it again and again, and meant it every time: We don’t know how we would have weathered the last few years of professional disappointment and financial discouragement if we hadn’t had our son to force us to keep our shit together, even if just on the surface.
"Mouseflower"
I don’t know if there’s any synchronicity to my Dad and my kid’s birthdays being only a few days apart. But I’ll tell you, it sure puts me in a mood. I wish my Dad could have known my son and I worry that I’ll never get to hold my grandkids—the downside of marrying and parenting late, just like my Dad—but as I’ve told him on many occasions, “Son,” I say, “I wouldn’t trade you for Labor Day or Easter.”
And he laughs, because he’s always known when Daddy is talking nonsense.
I absolutely love being his Dad, even being almost-solely responsible for the icky stuff, like the latter stages of potty-training. And booger-retrieval. Today he came up to me and asked me if I could remove a booger that was stuck way up in his nose. I had to turn him upside down and point his nostril to the open window. But sure enough, there it was, way back there, and it was huge. Its dimensions were impossible to guess, I could only see the tip. I had The Missus fetch me a tweezers and had The Boy hold very still. If he had flinched we would have spent the afternoon at the local E.R. instead of a nearby lake. But he held strong, didn’t move a muscle and I eventually removed a booger the size of Cincinnati. Yes, we took photos, but no, The Missus would kill me if I posted one.
He took a deep breath and smiled and announced, “Now I can smell again.”
Which, I have to tell you, was more rewarding than you may be able to imagine.
We’re having a little get-together today, with his once and future best friend Mason and Mason’s family, the good people who selflessly hooked us up with everything we needed to make the move to Boise a smooth transition. (A Twitter friend of my wife’s, I swear to God. The Internet is a fickle mistress; killing my livelihood at the same time as it enables what would otherwise have been a nightmarish move.)
Happy birthday, son. Thanks for everything, from the useless-but-diverting childbirth classes to the year-long experiment in sleep deprivation, all the way up to this afternoon’s booger the size of Cincinnati.
I wouldn’t trade any of it for Labor Day, Easter or all the uninterrupted ZZZZZZZZZZs in the world.
