be a better father

potty training. i feel that should sum up everything. no explanations needed. joy. frustration.

he is wearing underwear now. big kid underwear. and so very proud of it. after i picked him up from day care the other day he began telling everyone on the street that he had spiderman underwear. “See???”

i was talking with a patient yesterday about life and learning. she said she could tell i went to school. it may seem like an odd statement. such things nowadays are odd in critical discourse and post poltical correctness. what she went on to say was that education creeps in everywhere, you can’t stop it. it always finds it’s way. you can hear it. i liked that. in the same way, hope and hunger also creeps in everywhere. it’s all tied in, i think. what comes through in a voice, and more specifically in tone, is that education, and walking hand in hand with it, the hunger and hope it sparks. on a superficial level, it seems a classist statement, an indicator of privelage and place, locations of identity based on diction, based on what you know, but i disagree. education isn’t a dirty word and it has so many levels of engagement and concept. i think, or rather i hope what she is saying, was that she could hear the hope and hunger for more in my voice. as a teacher, i seek to instill that in my students. not the dates or places or times that they must commit to memory but a cognitive and critical way of thinking. a tool to engage the world.

as a father i have been lax in doing that with my son. fatherhood, parenting, has multiple meanings. it is more than surviving, more than making sure you can give your child food or shelter. that is hard but in the end it is an enduring gift.

years ago, just after my son was born i thought of it immediately and i now remember the words i wrote at the time.

Not one to quote Bono or U2, especially nowadays, but there is a lyric from their new album that I like. I haven’t really heard that much of the album. I stopped listening to the band awhile ago but I heard this song somewhere and was struck by this line:

“Freedom has a scent/Like the top of a baby’s newborn head.”

Simply, because the top of a newborn baby’s head does have a certain smell. Aside from the smell of hair salons it is my favorite smell in the world. If you corner me and press me to describe it I couldn’t. I don’t remember it. I do remember smelling Atticus’ head and having the feeling of hope. Simple as that. I don’t know if that sounds, well, cheesy or contrived but it was so strong, so vivid. evidence of the transport from another world. A short temporary residue. Much like freedom, it was quite fleeting, leaving in its wake instead everything that inevitably must follow.

I don’t know if that what Bono was talking about. but he knows that smell, hence the lyric, because of his children. Beyond the nose, the glasses and the ego (that is an American Landmark as much as is the Statue of Liberty) I can look at him and say, I know you. And he can look back, man that he is, just a man (which is nothing and everything and a lot more than you think), and say, I know you too.

Someone asked me on Sunday if I disliked his president, president bush. I said no, first off, he is my president, our president, regardless of my opinions of his policies. Second, I don’t know him. He’s never been to my house, met my family, my child, talked with me about education and healthcare and my neighborhood and what it means to be an American. So no, sir. I dislike his policies. and his actions. But I don’t know him. Somewhere, sometime long ago he held babies in his arms, his babies, and he smelled that scent. And for the tiniest moment the world opened a pinprick of light onto him and he smelled hope.

And what has followed?

and for me, for all mothers and fathers, for parents of you who are grown and looking at the world…we all came out of hope not because of intent or desire or whether we belonged here but because it was emanating from us without interference from us.

And what has followed?

driving on the highway yesterday afternoon. seeing a piece of metal on the road. running over it.

me: “oh fuck!”

atticus in the back seat: “oh fuck!”

me: “oh no atticus, shit!”

atticus: “shit”

me: “stupid stupid stupid”

atticus: “stupid stupid stupid”

michael on the phone: “look on the bright side. at least he didn’t graduate to ‘motherfucker’ yet.”

me: “oh jesus”

atticus: “oh jesus, daddy”

yesterday in a moment of potty training exasperation, in response to atticus saying, “look, daddy, spiderman” while watching a movie i said, “yes, well, you know, spiderman goes potty too, you know that?.” the response, just the look of, “OH” from him I was like, aw man, don’t use spiderman, don’t try to deceive your son.

i mean, yeah, spiderman does….well, go potty, but i felt guilty nonetheless. such an adult thing to do. i felt like a worm. go figure.

Today Atticus asked for my feet. “Give feet.” One foot. “That’s a lot of foot, daddy.” I laughed. “Yes it is.” Then the other one. “Give hands.” “Fingers, daddy.” We went through this. “Head.” I bent down and he ruffled my hair. He was taking stock of me. And then when he was done he turned around back ed up and sat in my lap. He was satisfied with his assessment.

His mom and I are no longer together so he is shuffled back and forth between the two of us and as anyone can imagine it has been a difficult process. It is joint custody and he lives with her most of the time. He is almost 3 (end of January) but he is sharp enough to grasp it and emotional enough to feel it. The night terrors are going away. We keep things respectful in his presence. There were times initially, when the separation was still fresh and new that I tried to be very hardcore about it. Oh I can do this. I can do this on my own. I can’t. I think it was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn in 2007 (and I learned a lot): that I couldn’t be a parent alone. I could, just as my ex could, if something should happen to one of us but whatever exists between the two of us, we still are committed to being good parents top him, thankfully. There are so many mistakes I make and things I f**k up in regards to him that I am always grateful that she is there also parenting him doing the same. He needs both while he has them.

I am taking stock too. Counting toes and fingers. Looking back at memories, avenues taken, mistakes played out.

I have to, out loud and in this space, say thanks to “Jenn is ready to begin again” here on 43 things for giving two nuggets of wisdom:

“As parents, our infallibility gets called into question time and time again, with each developmental stage, each broken toy or heart or each new experience.”

“I firmly believe that as parents we evolve right alongside our children, into what is needed as they grow, as long as we continue to make them a priority. Keep your eyes open.”

I cherish my friends, they are the fire in my life but I am pretty much the only parent in my group so it’s nice to connect with other parents to share even the slightest thoughts and moments. Does that make sense?

Like this one:

Atticus is discovering colors (as the child of two artists, this is a delight) and often recites them out loud as he sees them….I took my father to the doctor this past saturday and brought atticus along. He saw orange lettering on a magazine and began chanting “ORANGE ORANGE ORANGE” and then, caught by its double meaning, pretended to feed me an eat-able orange. Nice moment, yeah?

It was followed by the dropping of the magazine to the floor and a resounding, “OH SHIT, DADDY.” That one got a good reaction from the room.

You don’t always have to be parents to enjoy these stories.

“Ok, maybe a little trepidation is in order! ;-)”

i pride myself on being able to accomplish many things as a father. doing many things at once. being quick on my feet. being able to put on a coat while holding him.

but when he comes up to me when i am reading and gives me his slinky, all tangled from being played with and i spend at least ten minutes trying in vain while he is looking straight at me and i can’t, i am exasperated.

but i laugh because then, with utter conviction, he looks at me and says, “ohhh. daddy broke it.”

ha.

yeah.

I don’t know if this qualifies as being a better father but I put on some music last night while I cleaned and studied and while my son played and generally tore up the room. I was playing King Sunny Ade and some other African and reggae music and didn’t realize I was dancing along then I looked over and my son was dancing along too. So I taught him some nice moves and laughed and danced for a good part of the evening.

Songs from Burning Spear, Wire (Pink Flag), King Sunny Ade, an anthology of Sengalese music, Lhasa de Sela, Cafe Tacuba, The Shins, The French Kicks, The Smiths, Morrissey, among many others.

Such a treat when your son sings to the songs with you with such joy. I got a few years before he says, “Oh man, Dad is listening to his music again, ugh.” Heh heh.

I was originally going to post this in my “Internal Tattoo” goal in my list. It seems more appropriate here but I need to restate or reaffirm my goal of imprinting the lessons I am learning, the memories and faces and constant falling on my face and getting ups that occur maybe not on a consistent basis, but often enough that I have to take a breath and remember to remember.

I know the goal here is to be a better father but being a better parent in general is hard. Hell, being a better human is f*ing hard. There are many fathers who have entries here, single dads, family men, many who I can only guess about. One thing I can easily acknowledge is that it isn’t all stressful or all surge of divine greatness moments. It’s dirty and amazing and bang you head on the wall, so cheers to all. Fathers, moms, parents.

For some reason I found myself reading the review of Dan In Real Life this morning by my favorite movie critic, Stephanie Zacharek. She should just be listed as an essayist because essentially she addresses intricate layered themes arising from the movies she reviews.

So I am sharing two quotes, one from her review of Dan In Real Life and one from About a Boy a few years ago that I have internally tattooed, kept, filed away that make me think about being a dad and a parent and a human being.

Dan in real life

...”Dan in Real Life” is only partly a movie about parenting. It’s perhaps more accurately a story about the necessity of actually living a life even as you’re caring for your offspring, an argument for a kind of healthy selfishness.

About a boy

More specifically, “About a Boy” is about the way human beings trade information and observations and feelings with one another, and about how others can sometimes make you see your way toward being the person you didn’t even know you wanted to be. It’s also about the ways parents unwittingly cripple their own children with their love, even by doing something as seemingly small as making them wear a goofy sweater to school.

When parents tell their children (as they rightly should), “Individuality is wonderful! Embrace it!” it’s sometimes their own individuality they’re championing, after having firmly imprinted it on their kids. Without being churlish or mean, “About a Boy” shows us how hard it is for parents to grow up, too, suggesting that letting your child become his or her own person might be the final and most important (not to mention the most difficult) act of shedding your own childhood.

I guess maybe a better way of putting it is to be the best father I can. Instinctively I don’t want him to experience what I experienced but that is simplistic. It all comes down to a simple distinction for me. Years ago someone close to me said that people should raise their children for the world. I like that as opposed to raising you child for yourself. He is what I am giving to the world so what I teach him is important but it isn’t dogmatic.

Maybe a better entry title would be “Be a better parent.” I second mcfun’s entry where he says, “I just know that there’s room for improvement.”

These are things to remember at 4:30 in the morning when your almost three years old son wakes you up by pulling your eyelids open and saying, “Watch Haku, Daddy?”