That Careful Face

My son was a difficult baby to feed: he would frequently pull his mouth off the nipple and arch his back, transforming what would normally be a brief experience into a frustrating ordeal.  He was obviously hungry, but something kept him from an easy feed.  He also spit up a lot.  A lot.  Our pediatrician told us that it was likely acid reflux, and suggested we try different brands and types of formula.

Over the course of weeks, we found that some formulas turned his poop slate blue, others seemed to work without giving him heartburn for a day and then he'd return to arching his back, and yet others made no difference.  After a month of muddling through we hired a doula to spend the day with him to see if we were doing something wrong.  It was silly at the time, but when you're sleep-deprived and frustrated, you go with anything that might help.

It wasn't us, obviously.  The doula thought that our son had a problem with his jaw, and recommended a course of expensive physical therapy that might or might not work to correct the issue.  After assiduous Google searching, my wife and I found that this was a suggestion that doulas frequently made when dealing with a problem like my son had.  You've heard the expression, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," right?  Also, there was a minuscule chance that this treatment might kill him.

When we took our son to the pediatrician for his next checkup and explained what the doula said, the pediatrician's face took on a very careful, bland expression.  She said that such a thing might work, or it might not; she wasn't familiar with the treatment.  After the appointment, my wife and I talked about it and had independently come to the conclusion that the pediatrician thought the doula was full of shit, but didn't want to say it straight out.  Eventually my son grew out of whatever problem he was having and doesn't complain of heartburn of any kind, though for some reason he doesn't like carrots.  I mean, who doesn't like carrots?

A few years and several hundred miles later, I found myself in a dentist chair on Florida's west coast.  The dentist told me that I had gum disease due to infrequent flossing, and the only treatment would be Lanap laser gum surgery.  Luckily, they had a Lanap laser device right there in the office and could set up an appointment right away that would only cost a great deal of money, instead of all the money I had or could ever hope to make.

Remember: when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  The corollary is, "When you have an expensive piece of equipment you'll find thousands of reasons to use it."  With that in mind, I asked the dentist (once she'd taken the hook and mirror from my mouth), "Will my gums heal over time if I return to regular flossing?"

The dentist and the dental assistant shared a look with each other over my recumbent form, and in that moment I knew I had asked the right question.  The dentist carefully allowed that such a thing wasn't unheard of, but it would still be better to zap the hell out of my horribly leprous gums with laser fire just to be sure.  I told them I would take that under advisement, wiped the infected drool from my chin, and left to buy more floss.

Pleasantly, I still have all of my teeth, including the wisdom teeth.

Face-to-face, most people don't want to disagree with you.  They'll mask it behind that careful facade, even when pressed.  When you're observant, when you examine not just what they say but how they say it, you'll sometimes get to the truth.

Everyday Horror

Living in Florida, one thing you have to get used to is the bugs.  We have a lot of them out here, because the whole state is basically a swamp resting atop a gigantic slab of limestone.  Mosquitoes, spiders, slugs, you name it, we got it.

Cockroaches are particularly common.  We call them Palmetto bugs or water bugs, but stripped of euphemism, they're roaches.  There are two kinds of roaches: the massive black ones that are horrible to deal with and the slightly smaller brown ones that are horrible to deal with.  When we first moved out here, the house we rented occasionally burped out a big, black roach that our cats wanted nothing to do with, so I'd usually have to get rid of it in some fashion.

The problem is that if you step on one, it squirts out sickening bug guts everywhere and the disgusting hairy legs come off.  If you try to pick one up with a paper towel it might squirm out onto you because it's a boneless, wriggling monster.  There's nothing about roaches that doesn't inspire loathing.  My favorite way to eliminate them is to suck them up with a vacuum cleaner's wand attachment: you don't have to get too close to it and if you're quick and get it from behind, it won't run under something you can't reach.

Seeing one in your space is a gut check every time.  I know few men who are blase about such vermin.  Exterminators excepted, of course.

They come up through plumbing, through cracks in walls, through anything.  You can keep your house as immaculate as an operating room and you'll still find one every once in a while.

Geckos, of which there are many in Florida, will occasionally kill a roach if they're hungry enough.  I saw the aftermath once in our back patio: the gecko had torn the roach's head off and splattered its guts everywhere.  It looked like a murder scene in miniature.  Fascinating and disgusting all at once.  Hannibal Gecko Lecter and one of his victims.

When I dropped my son off at preschool today and we put his lunchbox in his cubby, one of his teachers came up to me and asked, "How good are you at dealing with roaches?"

Terrible.  I'm really, really not good at dealing with them at all.  

"Let's see what you've got," I said.

It was one of the big black stripy ones, clinging to the wall over the toilet tank in the kiddie bathroom.  Damn it.  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

I went over to the paper towel dispenser and got a wad of paper towels.  Then I looked at it, figuratively girding my loins.  Despite my fairly high comfort level with violence, I just didn't want to be there right then.  I wanted to be home.

And then, of course, the teacher said, "Oh, that's okay, I'll have Ms. C take care of it."

I knew exactly what she was doing: shaming me into action.  It worked.

I made a grab for the roach.  It fell, scuttled, threatened to escape under the fixtures.  I stomped on it just enough to hurt it but not squish its sickening bug guts everywhere, picked the twitching thing up with the paper towels, crushed it, and threw it away.

After the teacher thanked me for my heroism, I said, "Oh, that's okay.  It's actually good.  I've already done the worst thing I'll do all day, so the rest of the day'll be easy."  

I gave my little boy a hug and a kiss and sent him off to learn in a roach-free environment.

Then I went home and took a Silkwood shower.

From Truth to Fiction to Truth

This is a true story.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent...and shield the guilty.  I am at least partly culpable for what happened, and it is a sin I will bear until the end of my days.

     When I picked my four-year-old son up from preschool on a Friday some time ago, his teacher said, "Yesterday, one of the students hurt Ms. Francine's finger.  When she came in today, it was all black and swollen, so I suggested she go to the hospital to have it X-rayed."
     Ms. Francine is a classroom assistant.

     I replied, "Yeah, sounds like it might be broken or something, if it looked that bad.  I hope she's all right."
     His preschool teacher agreed.  I took my son's hand and we walked out.

     On the car ride home, I asked my son, "Who broke Ms. Francine's finger?"

     He immediately replied, "Bobby did it."

     "Really?"

     "Yeah.  He grabbed it and twisted it."
     "No he didn't."
     "Yes he did," my son insisted.

     I thought about this for a moment and said, "You wouldn't do anything like that, would you?  That would hurt someone."

     "No," my son said.  "Are we having McDonald's tonight?"

     "Nope.  Spaghetti."

     I wasn't sure what to believe.  Little kids make up things all the time, especially to fill in gaps of information.  So later that weekend, I would try to trip him up by saying things like, "I can't believe Billy broke Ms. Francine's finger," and he would always correct me and say, "No, Bobby did it!"
     "Wow, that's awful that Wilhemina broke Ms. Francine's finger like that."

     "No she didn't!  Bobby did!"

     He was very consistent about who did it.  So later I asked, "What did Ms. Francine do when Bobby broke her finger?"

     "She screamed, 'STOP!'" 

     "No she didn't.  She wouldn't scream like that."

     "Yes she did."

     He was also consistent on this point, though I found his credibility somewhat questionable.  Especially because later he told me that Bobby had bit and squeezed Ms. Francine's finger, which I was certain wasn't true.  

     Over the next few days it became a joke at our household, as such absurd things tend to do: out of the blue I'd ask him to tell me what Ms. Francine did when Benny broke her finger, and he'd first correct me that Bobby had done it and then scream at the top of his lungs in an absurdly high-pitched voice, "STOP!"  Not that we didn't feel bad for Ms. Francine, but we do have routines that we enjoy.

     I imagined that if my son had grabbed and twisted a teacher's finger hard enough to break it, if we didn't get kicked out of that school, I would take him out of it anyway.  Accidental injury or not, Bobby's parents must have felt awful about it.  I still didn't believe that it was anything other than accidental.

     A few days later I saw Ms. Francine when I went to pick up my son from preschool.  Not only did she not have a splint on her finger, it didn't look the least bit swollen at all.  I asked her how her finger was doing, and she expressed surprise that I knew anything about it at all.  

     The real story, you see, was that Bobby ran over to give Ms. Francine a hug, and she just jammed her finger at the impact.  No grabbing, no squeezing, no biting, no break.  No screaming, "STOP!"

     (Interestingly, my wife thought that Ms. Francine screaming, "STOP!" was very credible.)

     I'm to blame, in part, for how the story got fictionalized: I had asked my son, "Who broke her finger?" rather than something more neutral like, "I heard Ms. Francine's finger got hurt.  Do you know what happened?"  So in this case, I led the witness by assuming the finger was broken.  My son filled in the rest with fictional biting, squeezing, and shrieking.  I never could get him to tell me how much of the non-event he actually witnessed.

     Nevertheless, he was correct that Bobby was involved.  Under intense questioning, he stuck to his guns.  Even with the fictional stuff.

Hold On Is Live!

I'm pleased to announce that my short story Hold On has been published by Liberty Island.

It's a bit of a departure, as it doesn't involve the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural: Hold On is a human story about marriage, parenting, and loss in the not-too-distant future, when America's illegal immigration issues come to a head.

I teased Hold On a little here.  Go give it a read and tell me what you think.

Loss and Grief and Writing About It

This is a terrible story.  The Andrade family has my deepest condolences.

On the loss of his son Julian, San Antonio police officer Jose Andrade said, "It's very difficult; it's the hardest thing I think anyone can go through. I think it's the hardest thing in life. I don't think there's anything harder."

Before I became a parent, I could understand this in a detached, almost academic fashion. After all, I've been familiar with grief.  We've all lost somebody.

Now that I'm a dad, I don't think I could ever understand the breadth of the Andrade family's loss, and I pray that I never have to.

I've talked publicly about adoption before, here and elsewhere.  In those pieces, I've touched briefly on our failed adoption, where we took the baby home, cared for him for a night and a day, and got a call from the agency that the birth mother changed her mind and decided to parent instead.  The details of that experience are too personal to put in writing.  It was extremely difficult, even life-changing, and not entirely in a good way.

But it wasn't the same as the death of one's child.  I suspect it's not even close.

I did reference that experience in my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch.  To illustrate one of the symptoms of a strained marriage, I had my protagonist Hector deal with something similar.  It became a triggering event in his past, and the implications of it have stretched into the novel's sequel (which I'm still writing).  This is not to say that it is the defining moment for him; after all, he's as complicated a figure as any person, and as such is subject to many significant experiences.  But it did mark him and push him in a certain direction.

On Thursday, April 16, my short story Hold On will be published on Liberty Island.  Unlike my other material, it doesn't deal with the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural in any way, though it is set in the near future.  The story addresses themes of marriage, parenting, and loss within the context of America's current illegal immigration crisis.  As always, the intent is to tell a good story, not proselytize, and I believe I've done that with Hold On.

Sometimes, losing someone doesn't make you stronger.  The cracks don't always get repaired.  And the universe doesn't just stop when you're grieving, even though it should.

Yes, I Watch Cartoons

My preschooler typically watches about a half hour of TV a day, perhaps an hour or two on weekends.  He used to watch more.  Obviously, we try to minimize exposure to the television for several reasons, none of which are relevant here, and he'll likely end up watching more TV as he gets older.  But for now, he doesn't watch much.

Unless he's sick.  Then there's nothing else to do except watch TV.  Ugh.  I watch with him, in large part because I want to know what kind of media he's absorbing and, if necessary, put it in context and answer his questions.  What follows is a rundown of some of the shows we watch.

Breadwinners: This is, hands down, my favorite of his TV shows.  It has no educational value in either academics or ethics, which is just fine.  Full of potty humor, terrible bread puns, and horrible cartoon violence.  I love it.  It follows the adventures of two ducks named Swaysway and Buhdeuce as they deliver bread to the hungry ducks of their world, called Pondgea.  Our favorite character is The Breadmaker, the god of all bread.  You don't know funny until you hear your preschooler boom out, "Oooooh YEAHHH!" in his high little voice, trying to imitate gravelly rumble of The Breadmaker.  Every episode is a classic.  Five out of five stars.

Sanjay and Craig: This one runs a close second, and if baking bread wasn't my hobby, I might like this one more than Breadwinners.  Extremely gross and quite funny.  The friendship between the boy and the snake is actually quite nice, and its ups and downs sometimes veer into didactics (but not intrusively so).  All of the characters are brilliant, especially Remington Tufflips, whom I like to imitate when circumstances allow.  It's also not afraid to venture into some very bizarre, even psychedelic territory.  The best episode is Flip Flopas for gross-out humor, satire, and weirdness.  Five out of five stars.

SpongeBob SquarePants: What can anyone say about SpongeBob that hasn't already been said a thousand times?  The sheer number of episodes available at any time makes this program the Law & Order of cartoons.  It's clear that in the earlier episodes they were going for a Looney Tunes look, which altered over the years (and years) as digital technology improved.  There are some very funny parts to it, and despite its age, it rarely falls into repetition.  Club SpongeBob is probably my favorite episode, but there are so many good ones that it's hard to choose.  Four out of five stars.

Caillou: Every parent loves to hate Caillou, but my son just loves it.  Caillou whines, he complains, he's a massive pain in the ass, but that's what I like about the show: it deals with real stuff with a kid who's a lot like a real kid.  Other than the lack of hair.  It's extremely inoffensive and shows children how someone like them deals with typical preschooler situations.  My only problem with the show is the mom, who's the Mary Sue of children's television: used to be a ballerina, a ringette champion, a singing expert, an astronaut, etc., and is now just Mommy.  And they make the dad seem somewhat bumbling and incompetent, but that's typical of most television.  The episode my son likes the best is, likely, Rollie Racers.  Three out of five stars (my son would rate it higher).

Team Umizoomi: My son doesn't like Super Why as much as I wish he would, but he loves Team Umizoomi. Umizoomi is about math, Super Why's about literacy.  The songs are really quite good and there's a predictable pattern to the events in the program so that you know what to expect each episode.  It's for really little kids, so there's nothing in there to be concerned about.  The audience participation part is good (like Super Why and Blue's Clues), so as long as my little boy shouts out the answers at the screen, I figure he's not too old for it.  All the episodes are pretty good with no stand-outs.  4 out of 5 stars.

It's a much different TV world out there from when I was a kid watching hours of Josie & The Pussycats, Far Out Space Nuts, and H.R. Pufnstuf.

Friday Links: Pyramids, Werewolves, and Worms in Your FEET

Click the links, read the stories, fill your mind with information.  It's Friday!

• Terrorphoria reviewed The Pyramid: "The Pyramid, (because it needs a definite article so you don't mistakenly expect Donny Osmond forcing Anubis to guess a subject in a category based on vague clues), is a found footage horror film about a group of poorly characterized victims exploring a pyramid. There's a father/daughter archaeologist team whose "Luddite/TechnoGeek" conflict feels more artificial than the lead paint chips the writers ate as kids. This "conflict" is further stressed by the fact that she's dating adult Will Robinson from Lost In Space."
• At Ginger Nuts of Horror, Jim interviewed Grégory Levasseur about his work on The Pyramid: "The lighting was very important, I didn’t want this to be one of those kind of movies that had the lights around the next corner, or at the end of the corridor. I wanted to have my characters carrying the light, and we all thought it was important to have the light just where the character moves, instead of lighting the whole of the set."
• The indispensable R'lyeh Tribune described a different kind of story from a familiar writer: "Not all of Henry S. Whitehead’s stories are set on the islands of the West Indies, or deal with outbreaks of Voodoo threatening upper crust white society.  One of his odder tales, No Eye-Witnesses, takes place in New York City, in Brooklyn to be specific."
• Simon Bestwick talked about Black Static #43 with a special emphasis on the issue of  H.P. Lovecraft being the face of the World Fantasy Award: "I saw Daniel Older's petition to remove HPL's likeness from the award, and a counter-petition to keep it. I didn't sign the petition demanding HPL's removal, not least because it described him as a 'terrible wordsmith', which is PC asshattery of the worst kind - 'he was a racist, so he must be a bad writer!' But I wasn't signing the one to keep him, either, since that descended into a cretinous anti-feminist rant that like the flowers that bloom in the spring, (tra-la) had nothing to do with the case."
• Midnight Horrors reviewed the film The Town that Dreaded Sundown: "Finding out that the film was low budget so it could have the same filming style as the first made me like TTTDS even more. Though I have not seen the original I can see from the latest version that the original is a classic serial killer film."
• In Melbourne, Australia, a man had a worm in his foot.  For years: "Doctors in Melbourne found the African guinea worm, which was in two pieces and thought to have eventually died, when the man visited them due to an abscess on his foot."
• iHorror interviewed Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media about kids and the horror genre: "As a parent, it is difficult to let young children make their own choices and in most cases a good parent won’t. But when it comes to horror movies, it might surprise you to know that letting your child come to you about watching one is the best way to gauge if he or she is ready or not."
• On this site, I reviewed Nightbreed: The Director's Cut, and I talked about the lack of God in the horror genre.

Click through and read!  You won't regret it.

Anecdotes

Memory is a tricky thing.  Trying to remember something is often like transferring water from one bucket to the other using a sieve, and the older the memory, the longer the distance between buckets.  When people see us with our little boy, they always say, "Treasure this time, because they grow up so fast."  There are already things about his short life I don't remember and have to be reminded of: his first word ("kitty"), his first slice of pizza (an important event in our pizza-loving household), when he started to walk (ten months).

This post is intended to jog my memory of certain events so that they're not lost forever.  At the time they were funny or meaningful in some way.  Days, weeks or months later, they will lose their luster, and soon I'll forget them.

We were playing with Legos the other day.  At his age, he has the larger Legos (Lego Duplo).  His mother had built a little boat, and he was building a crane.  I sat and watched: there are only so many Legos to go around, and it's fascinating to watch the two people I love most in the world doing something creative.
Suddenly, he got a look of great concentration on his face.
I asked, "What's wrong, kiddo?"
He turned to me, said urgently, "I have to make poopies!" and ran to the bathroom.
We laughed about that for the rest of the day.

###

This morning, as I was putting his bag by the garage door so we wouldn't forget it when I took him to preschool, I heard him call out, "Daddy!  What's this?"  I went over and saw him in the bedroom hallway, pointing to something at the threshold of his bedroom door.
It was a snake.  A very small brown snake.  It was something that should not have been there.  Its very presence was not just unwelcome, but surreal.  I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, but you don't expect to see one indoors at 7:20 AM.
"Well," I said, keeping my voice calm, "It's a snake.  That's definitely a snake."
"Why's it there?"
"I don't know, but it's got to go."
The snake was very much alive.  Its tiny tongue flickered out, scenting.  After a few minutes of follies with my wife trying to wrangle it into a plastic container with a sheet of printer paper, I picked it up with oven mitts and tossed it outside.
Nobody knows how it got in.

###

On his Leapfrog there's a game/book thing called "First Day of Kindergarten."  It has songs and activities and such, and it describes the first day of kindergarten for four students.  One of the students is a Latina girl named Pilar.
Several months ago, as a joke, I called him Pilar, and he said, immediately, "No me Pilar!"
So it became a game, of sorts, where during a conversation I'd call him Pilar, and he would always come back with, "No me Pilar!"  Always.  Even if I said, "Oh, sorry, Pilar," he'd retort with "No me Pilar!"  Same tone of voice, same response.  Every time.
Yesterday, I called him Pilar, and he said, "I'm not Pilar."  It was kind of sad.  I couldn't get him to say, "No me Pilar."  He knows how to say it properly now.  That's over.
However, he still says, "yogret" instead of "yogurt."  So there's that.

###

There's nobody he won't say hi to.  His mother and I are introverts.  Polite, courteous, but we keep our cards close to the vest.  He's the opposite.  He needs attention, especially from strangers.
When we were at the beach, there was a young woman walking along, reading aloud from a book that wasn't the Bible.  She seemed very intent on what she was doing.  It's a little strange to see someone reading aloud in public.  If she's carrying a Bible, you automatically assume she's in some form of prayer.  If she's carrying Divergent, well, it's odd.
For reasons of his own, he got up from the mud castle we were building in the wet sand, ran alongside her, and said hi until she noticed him.  She took her face out of the book, smiled genuinely at him, and said hi back.
In that moment, she went from being a little off, a little disconcerting, to beautiful.  Then he came back, we waved to her, and she continued her walk.

Breadhead Friday: Lean Bread

A lean bread is one that has very little fat or sugar in it, if any.  Most sandwich breads aren't lean breads: they're enriched, so they contain things like sugar, butter, oil, flavorings, and other such things.  They're great, but I wanted to make the lean bread recipe from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day.

The recipe is very simple: water, flour, yeast, and salt.  You mix until everything's combined, and instead of kneading it traditionally, you do the stretch-and-fold method four times, going in ten minute intervals.  It's amazing how just one stretch-and-fold can take a rough, coarse, wet mess and turn it into a glossy, springy dough.

Shaping the dough

To develop flavor in the wheat, this dough requires an overnight rise in the refrigerator.  When you're ready to bake, you take it out, shape it, and let it rise at room temperature for at least two hours.

More shaping

Typical hearth baking is next: a pan of hot water at the bottom of the oven to create steam, and bake at high heat.

The finished loaves. We both need to work on shaping and scoring

Overall, a fun project, and one that produces tasty bread.  I achieved a few larger holes in the crumb, but the important thing is that my little boy and I did this thing together.  We'll see if he picks up the bread bug.

Robin Williams, My Mother, and Me

Like most people old enough to remember the 1970's and 80's, my first memories of Robin Williams were of his role in Mork & Mindy.  I loved the show; my favorite episode was the one where Mork, through the use of over-the-counter cold medication, accidentally shrank himself out of our universe and into a parallel one.  To a nine-year-old, this was mind-ripping stuff.

Robin Williams - Live at the Met remains one of my all-time favorite stand-up routines, right next to Eddie Murphy - Delirious.  Thank you, HBO and PRISM, for broadcasting those laughs a dozen times a day.

I never saw Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, Patch Adams, or several other of the movies that made Williams so beloved and famous.  I liked What Dreams May Come, despite its somewhat maudlin tone.  And he was quite good in The Final Cut; as a former video editor, the film struck a real chord with me.  

That's pretty much the extent of my experience with his work.  I'm really quite unsentimental when it comes to actors.  I respect what they do, and most of them live lives that are entirely irrelevant to mine.

In the wake of his death, there are renewed calls for a "national conversation" about mental illness, including clinical depression, and I understand.  We all want to make sense of terrible things (most of the time we can't), and we all want to make sure they don't happen again (ditto).  The problem is that a national conversation won't help anyone.

A national conversation wouldn't have helped my mother, who committed suicide a little over a year ago.

She had been a substance abuser her entire adult life.  Pills, alcohol, you name it.  I suffered abuse from her in ways that I'm quite unable to discuss with anyone.  When my father was dying of cancer, she would steal some of his pain and sleep medications for her own use.  That was what her mental illness, her addiction, made her into.

And none of us ever discussed it.  Not when we were kids, and very little when we became adults.  We didn't discuss it with her, my father, or anyone else.  Denial comes in many forms, and not talking about something is vastly easier than talking about it.  

Becoming a father myself and watching my wife become a loving mother to our little boy forced me to confront a lot of the unresolved issues related to my mother's substance abuse.  Mainly, I resolved to give my son a different set of childhood experiences from mine.  That will redound to his benefit, I'm certain.

About a year and a half after my father died, my mother ended her own life.  This is the eulogy I wrote for her funeral:

What my mother did to herself is a dark, terrible thing, but it would be worse if we didn’t learn anything from it.  She suffered greatly from mental illness, and a symptom of that was her substance abuse.  It was, unfortunately, one of the more significant elements of her character, and all of my memories of her are colored by it.

What made her illness all the more cruel was that she was capable of good things, and I know that she wanted to be better than she was.  She just couldn’t.

Substance abuse is very easily denied, both by the abuser and the people around the abuser.  The problem is that denying it doesn’t make it go away.  As difficult as it is, it has to be confronted and acknowledged.  Only then can it be treated.

With my mother, that didn’t happen.  

She won’t get to see her grandchildren grow up and become successful.  She won’t get to visit her husband’s gravesite and reminisce.  She didn’t get the treatment she needed, nor would she have accepted it if it were offered.  Her last days involved intolerable suffering.  

If we can learn from that, perhaps she didn’t die in vain.  

My intent here is not to bleed all over Williams's casket.  His death isn't about me or my mother.  Everyone reading this very likely has good memories associated with watching him, and that's a nice thing.  He'd have liked that, I'm sure.  But as loved a figure as he was, it wasn't enough.

My mother, who in her later years became a more and more vitriolic, divisive character, didn't stand a chance.  

I can't pretend to know what life was like in the Williams household, nor would I presume to.  But, like everything, it's vital that we take what happened and learn from it.  Don't just have a national conversation.  Have a personal conversation.

Perhaps they talked about it all day long, and Williams got so sick of it, he had to find a permanent way out.  I don't know.  Just don't sweep it under the rug.  Such concealed monsters don't stay under there, and they don't get smaller from concealment: quite the opposite.  They tend to take over the whole house.

So we'll grieve now, and for the lucky majority of us, the grief will be short-lived.  Questions of "why" and "what should I have done differently" are for others to ask, which is a blessing.  We're spared the pain his closest associates and family must feel, and my sympathies lie with them.  

Whether depressives self-medicate through alcohol or alcoholics are depressed because of their addiction is immaterial: the point is that denying a family problem never solves it.  As ugly and terrible and uncomfortable as it is, you must acknowledge it; only then can treatment begin.

Rest in peace, Robin.  I wish that you hadn't done what you did.

Charity: Having and Eating Your Cake

As part of the process of adopting a child in the United States, we had to attend parenting classes.  These classes taught things like dealing with an emotionally abused or traumatized child, parenting a child from a different culture from you, children with attachment disorder, and several other topics.

For the most part, it was a waste of time.  Much of what was taught wouldn't apply to our situation.  The agency we went through for our certification did most of their business through foreign adoptions of Ethiopian children.  In fact, we were their first domestic couple.

At the beginning of one class, while we were sitting around waiting for the state-mandated instructor to tell us that a common excuse for why African Americans don't adopt white babies is because they don't know how to take care of their hair, one adoptive parent said something extraordinary.  He said, "When I tell my friends that one of the reasons we want to adopt is because we want to do a good deed, they ask me why don't we just donate the money instead?"  The question had frustrated him, and he didn't have a good answer for it.

This is a picture of a cake I made in 2009 for illustration purposes.

The nature of the question is instructive in itself, and describes an extremely common mode of thinking: that the value of a good deed, of charity, is measured in large part by how "selfless" the deed is.  As if you're not supposed to get anything out of performing good works.

That's ludicrous.  It speaks of a mindset that values intentions over results.

There's no reason to think that one cannot do a good, even selfless act and still personally profit from it.  The two notions are not mutually exclusive.  Charitable acts don't have to be their own reward, including the adoption of a child.  One can fulfill the twin desires to become a parent and do a good deed simultaneously, without reservation.

A fed, loved, cared-for child is the result.  The intention is immaterial.

Contrast this, then, with confiscation of property by the government to achieve similar ends: this is not charity, nor is it virtuous.  When the fruits of your labor are taken from you to maintain social programs, it is not charity, because your choice to give has been taken from you at the point of a gun.  If you think this is extreme, try not paying your taxes for a while.  And talk to Wesley Snipes.

Ultimately, we live in a world of results.  Your intentions cannot be measured, nor should they be.  What matters is that you do give, not why.  Anyone seeking to determine the value of your charity by how little you personally gain from it is someone who would prefer to rely on state confiscation rather than good works to achieve virtuous ends.  In a free society, it simply doesn't work.

Adoption Stories: The Beginning

I wrote a piece for Clancy Tucker's blog on domestic adoption in the state of Colorado.  It outlines, in very broad strokes, the process of adopting a baby boy, like we did.

There's a great deal more to it, and as always, God is in the details.  (Or, depending on one's mood, the Devil is in the details.)  Future pieces will describe some of these experiences more specifically.

Unless you've done it, unless you've been there, it's not what you think.

Take a look at it on Clancy's blog.

A Small Collection of Conversations in the Car with My Three-Year-Old Son

Son: I'm gonna eat you all up like a hot dog, Daddy.
Me: No!
Son: Put ketchup and mustard on you.
Me: No, no!
Son: Num num num I'm eating you up!
Me: Oh God no, stop!
Son: Num num num num!  Urp.  All gone!
Me: I guess that's it, then.

~~~

Me: *peering out through the windshield at the rain* Nice day for the ducks, eh?
Son: Squirrels, too.
Me: Why the squirrels?
Son: They're nice and warm in the tree.
Me: What about the turtles?
Son: No.

~~~

Me: Are you gonna get tattoos when you grow up?
Son: Daddy, please sit on...ahhh...please sit on, uh...please sit on...ahhhh...please sit on...sit on MY lap. Please sit on MY little lap.
Me: Your lap's not big enough for me to sit on, buddy-roo.
Son: I have money in my pocket.
Me: Where did you get money? Can I have some?
Son: No.

~~~

Me: What did you have for your snack today?
Son: No me remember.
Me: Yes, you do!  It was an hour ago.  Can you tell me what you ate?  Was it cookies?
Son: Yes.  Cookies.
Me: You're just saying that because I said it.  Did you really have cookies?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: What kind of cookies?  Did they have cheese on them?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: And peanut butter?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: And beans?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: I think you're making that up.
Son: No me remember.

I Should Have Given Him the Gorilla Munch

As usual, Whole Foods was crowded.  I've never been in one that wasn't.  Our three-year-old son, sitting in the front of the cart, did his typical thing: asked a thousand questions, wanted everything that caught his eye, required attention as we browsed the aisles.  Nothing new.

Unfortunately, the store was woefully lacking in free samples of delectables like organic whole-grain free-range tortilla chips, organic brown rice syrup caramel popcorn, and Terra chips (also organic because, well, it's Whole Foods), so he didn't have the necessary distractions to keep him busy during shopping.  Hence, the lure we'd used to keep him relatively patient turned out to be an empty promise.  And I wasn't about to take a box of Gorilla Munch cereal off the shelf and open it up for him to, uh, munch on.  Even if it did have tasty bits of organic gorilla baked right in.  That's shoplifting.

He got a bit fractious by the time we reached the checkout line, and as the cashier rang up our organic strawberries and flaxseed-enriched organic peanut butter, I heard him bellow at the top of his lungs:

"I LIKE SPIDER-MAN!"

The entire front end of the store stared at us, and as people laughed or scowled according to their general inclinations, he added, louder:

"I LIKE SUPERMAN!"

I turned and asked him, "Are you all right?"

My wife explained, "He's performing."

"I LIKE GREEN LANTERN!"

"Well," I replied, "it needs work."

The cashier snickered, and I began to experience a vague sense of embarrassment as I became that parent: the one who can't control his little barbarian.  He's usually very good, I swear, I said in the privacy of my mind.  He never does this in public.  Etc, etc.

The bagger asked him, sweetly, "Who do you like better: Spider-Man or Superman?"

"I LIKE FLASH!" he informed her at top volume, grinning maniacally.

I paid for our overpriced (but organically delicious) groceries, and we left the store.  My son was pretty happy at that point, because he got exactly what he wanted: massive amounts of attention from everyone around.  Most of it positive (though it doesn't matter at that age: even negative attention is worth getting).  At least he didn't mention the color of his underwear, or the amount of body hair on his father's stomach.

That's what being a parent is, I suppose: mild embarrassment, nonsensical shouting, and relief that whatever happened could have been worse.

An Imagination Is a Terrible Thing

I have been reliably informed that there is a stingray in this picture

My three-year-old son and I were walking along the dock.  His mother had gone on ahead to take pictures of the stingrays gliding through the shallows.

Son: "What's that?"  *points to dock*

Me: "Don't step on that, kiddo.  That's bird poopies."

Son: *takes exaggerated steps around a massive clot of pelican poop*  "Birds pee on there, too."

Me: "Well, I don't know if they pee on there.  I don't even know if birds do pee."

Son: "They did.  Lots of time ago.  They pee on there."

Me: "Okay."

Son: "Lots of time ago birds have lots of penises."

Me: *caught between dismay and fascination* "Oh?"

Son: "Yeah.  They have lots of bad penises and pee lots of time ago."

Me: *struggling with the mental image of a multi-penised bird soaring above, micturating on the dock* "Uh, okay."  

Son: "Yeah!"  *runs to catch up to his mother*

Nobody told me that parenthood would be like this: peeing prehistoric penis birds.  Lord only knows what other strange beasts lurk in the soup of his imagination.  

(As it turns out, birds don't pee.)