But I’d call these good, solid, say, Mazdas. Or maybe Subarus. The Subarus of painted radiators, that’s what we have here — in Chelsea Gray and Kendall Charcoal, no less. A thousand bucks my ass.
Now excuse me while I go vomit up the rest of my brain cells. Spray paint? Fumes. Also, my right index finger hurts from holding down the nozzle. Stop laughing.
You know what I have a problem with? Cool people who insist that they are — or that they once were — nerds. Because, you know? Even though it’s cool to call yourself a nerd these days, nerds, by definition, aren’t actually cool. And the people who willingly admit to being nerds actually wouldn’t admit it if they really were nerds, because then, well … there is a difference. If you are actually a nerd, you don’t tend to want to announce it publicly. You tend to quietly go about your nerdy little life, playing along like you’re mostly cool and hoping people won’t notice that you really like trilobites or enjoy reading the Chicago Manual of Style.
All of which is by explaining why, until now, I have not mentioned on this website that I have never seen Star Wars.
Because, I’m sorry, but every North American child of my generation has seen Star Wars. And The Empire Strikes Back. And that other one, the return of the whatevers. And then those other three with that guy Jar-Jar and the princess played by that badass Natalie Portman.
Except me. And it’s not like I was locked inside an iron lung or something between 1979 and 1984 or so. I chose not to see them. Because they did not interest me. I vividly remember my brother and my two male cousins running hyperactively through a movie theatre parking lot as though their lives depended on seeing that movie and thinking, “Why would I bother to see that movie? I don’t care about stars and wars and spaceships.” Because I didn’t. Which put me, apparently, into a tiny minority of my friends, into a class of true nerddom. At the time, I thought it was a gender thing: it was a boy movie and I was decidedly not a boy. Except that all the girls I know saw the movie too, and loved it.
I probably still wouldn’t care, except for the fact that now Rowan, and by extension, Isaac, all of a sudden care. Passionately. Rob, who is a walking Star Wars codex (and not, however, despite his protestations otherwise, a nerd) put it on for them one day, and now, it’s all about the light sabres. Rowan skulks into rooms, wielding the sabre he has managed to procure, breathing heavily. “Hi, Darth,” I say, and he points that thing at me and says, “Guards,” or “Mom! I’m not Darth Vader, I’m Luke!” And I say, “Oh, sorry. Luke.” A few nights ago, he wrapped a towel around his shoulders and said, “I look a bit like Darth Vader in this, don’t I?” This morning, I walked in on him and Isaac on the sun porch, Rowan with the sabre, Isaac making do with a broom. “Come with me to the dark side, and together we will rule the planet,” Rowan was saying. To which Isaac replied, “Okay.”
At the risk of making a massive understatement, there’s obviously something compelling about these movies, something that captivates children and grown-ups alike, over the span of generations. Rachel, getting all lit-critty on me, calls them “sacred texts.” She may be right.
So what is so strange about me that I don’t get them? Over the years, I’ve caught glimpses of each movie, and they don’t draw me in. Other people see magic, and I see rinky-dink special effects and jerky monsters and slightly forced dialogue. The actors mumble and I can’t follow the plot. So I don’t.
On the other hand, it’s not like I’ve ever given the George Lucas oeuvre an enthusiastic chance.
Until now, that is.
People, I’m going to watch Star Wars. With my sons. I am going to watch the first three movies in their entirety, although I make no promises, yet, about the prequels. I’m going to try to watch them through the eyes of my children, to set aside my own biases (and, Rob, sarcastic comments), and see if it’s possible, at this late stage, for a lifelong holdout to convert to the church of Jedi. I’ll keep you posted on this experiment.
May the force be with— oh, fuck off.
I guess I should write a post about how this image captures perfectly what it’s like to live with children. Something about how they get the soft white inside, while I’m stuck with the crusts.
But the thing is, I like the crust. It’s the best part.
On a good day, everything works out just fine, really.
Ye gods, ha, did you think I meant me? Sweet Jesus, no. It’s just that I can’t get that phrase out of my head since watching this, by Morgan Brayton:
Unconditional love and always having someone to talk to notwithstanding, there is no baby lust here to speak of. As in, we’ve pretty much told the donor to go get a vasectomy. (The donor, by the way, is here! Now! For the better part of a month! Last night he went grocery shopping while I lay around reading the first in the Stieg Larsson series — yes, it’s come to that — and then watched the slightly disappointing season opener to Mad Men. And, as I write this, he is helping us fill in an unexpected gap in child care by taking Isaac this morning, for a fun-filled three hours that I suspect will mostly involve throwing things down the laundry chute. Two parents good: three parents better. But, alas, the same does not hold for children, at least in this household. Two is great — can’t quite get it up for three.)
For some reason though, people of late have been bringing it up, that long-ago resolved question of the third. “Are you planning to have any more?” other women (always women) keep asking. “We are planning to have no more children,” I keep answering. And then they usually sigh and say, “Us, too.”
I keep coming up with new reasons why we don’t want another baby. “If we have another baby,” I will say to Rachel, “it will be a third set of grimy, scratchy little fingers on the CDs and DVDs.” “If we had another baby, we’d have to get a minivan.” “If we had another baby, it would wake us up all night long and I would get depressed and anxious and unhinged and think only about sleep, and then where would we be?” Where would we be, indeed. Somewhere less fun that this place, I tell ya.
And then Rachel said, “If we had another baby, then we would make Isaac into a middle child.” And we both stopped and scratched our heads and said, “Oh, yeah.”
It’s not that either of us has anything against middle children, but simply that Isaac is, still, the baby. And, inasmuch as we don’t feel the need to have any more babies, we’re not quite ready to turn our latest and last baby into something else. Just yet. Or, ever.
But then, a couple of weeks ago, Isaac pulled the household copy of I’m a Big Brother! off the bookshelf — the one we got for Rowan when Isaac was born, the one where we scratched out with a Sharpie all instances of the phrase “Mommy and Daddy” and replaced them with “Mommies” — and asked me to read it to him.
“See?” I chirped at him as we turned the final page. “Babies are fun to play with!”
“I want a baby,” he said. He jabbed at the baby in the book: “A baby like that.”
(So, why do or don’t you want a baby? From the inane to the profound.)
From Rick Groen’s review of The Kids Are All Right in Friday’s Globe and Mail: “Turns out that unconventional families can be just as tedious in their melodramatic dysfunctions of any traditional clan.”
While I’m thinking that that could be a great new tagline for this particular blog, I’m also thinking, Rick, at least it’s my family — or a closer version than what I usually see from Hollywood — up there on the screen. Versions of my melodramatic dysfunctions. Which, sure, are universal and all, but also oddly specific. I can’t wait to see this movie, assuming it ever makes it to Thunder Bay. Since I haven’t yet, I won’t weigh in on the film’s particular merits, but how could it be difficult to watch Annette Bening and Julianne Moore — not to mention Mark Rufallo — for a couple of hours? (Personally, I’m just happy that the kids are all right, not alright.)
Here are some links to reviews I’d give a little more credence to this particular flick: check out Mombian and Lesbian Dad.
And that photo wasn’t even staged — can you believe it? Just a random assortment of things that made it onto our kitchen counter a few evenings ago, including the requisite stainless steel water bottles, one of the rocks the kids wanted to watch change colour under the water from the kitchen tap, some bangles, and Isaac’s penny tree — those copper disks are pennies flattened underneath real trains on real train tracks. And that Mrs. Potato Head is a real Mrs. Potato Head made from real plastic. So authentic we are.
The babysitter is on a much-deserved holiday, and that means Rachel and I are going to halfsies on child care this week. Right now, until, oh, precisely 12:30 today, it’s my half. Not that I’m counting. I will be cramming a week’s worth of work into the other half, in addition to the moments I have stolen while some DVDs are watched by some children or while Isaac naps. Oh, yes, we’ve reinstated the nap, for obvious reasons. Yesterday afternoon he slept for three glorious hours, woke up happy as a Teletubby, and went to bed at a quarter to ten. But that’s okay, because I got a shitload of work done while he slept. The day before, I managed to conduct a telephone interview while Isaac slept and Rowan watched Wall-E. It sort of worked, except for when I had to put the very nice lady I was speaking to on hold, twice, once to unstick the DVD from its FBI warnings against copyright infringement, the second to put butter on Melba toast.
But it’s not all work and pawning the children off on sleep and Pixar: I’ve been swimming, playing dreidel, teaching Rowan how to play Rummy-Q (yes!), playing chase in the backyard, reading Roald Dahl books. In the evenings, we fill two big green tubs — the kind normal people would put ice and beer in at parties — with warm water and bubbles, and the kids have “bucket baths” on the deck. Last night, after they were asleep, I snuck out and picked up hot fudge sundaes at Merla Mae, our local softserve, and Rachel and I ate them on the deck and watched the sunset.
Sadly, I can’t seem to find the time to write about the kids in much detail when I am actually spending time with them. This is a mixed gift, of course, and my project is to focus on the gift part of that mix, at least until 12:30 today. In the meantime, this is what you get: a random assortment of things that for now will have to suffice as a real composition.
Meet Fiona. Found in the babysitter’s driveway yesterday afternoon. Scooped up with a butterfly net by the babysitter’s intrepid sister-in-law, who also happened to have a spare cage in her attic.
Here are the reasons we are not, under any circumstances, adopting Fiona, why we are not even going to foster him over the weekend:
But, dammit, he’s cute. Even as I know exactly why we will NOT adopt this budgie, I can’t resist making big blinky eyes at Rachel whenever the subject comes up. I could tip so easily. So, so easily. Like, easily enough that you might consider creating a betting pool on this very subject. And, if I did, Fiona could sit just over here on my left shoulder while I typed during the day, and I could teach him to talk. And then Rachel would leave me. And I would get deaded from the exhaustion of raising two children, two cats, and a budgie all by myself.
—So, she asks, —what are you doing on June 8?
—That’s in a week or so, isn’t it?
—Yeah, next Tuesday evening.
—I’m not sure. Why? Are you planning something?
—Well, yes, she says. —Actually, I am. I put together this collection of essays with a friend of mine and we’re holding the US launch on June 8.
—Really? That’s great! Where?
—In New York, she says. —At Bluestockings bookstore and activist center. It’s on Allen, between Stanton and Rivington. 7 p.m. There’ll be some great readings.
She says this more or less casually, but also with the knowledge that this could be one of a very few times in her life — possibly the only time in her life, but she’s not quite ready to give up that dream yet — where she will be able to utter that sentence out loud: I’m having a book launch in New York. You should come.
And you should, if you can. Can’t wait.
Has it been a week? It’s been a week. I would have written something by now, except that every post I could think of writing began with the line, “I’m the only person in the house who has not yet come down with the barfing sickness.” And that just seemed like tossing fate a big, shiny red apple and saying, “Take a bite, baby.”
Three… two… one…
Okay, still not barfing. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I invited me and the boys over to a friend’s house last Saturday evening for dinner and trampolining. At about 10 p.m., I got the phone call every parent dreads: “Anyone at your house barfing yet?” No, not yet, but on Monday morning I stumbled out of bed and was greeted by Rowan, who said, by way of good morning, “Isaac was throwing up in his bed all night.” Rowan, however, seemed as healthy as an apricot, so we sent him off to school. By midmorning, however, I had arrived at the school to collect him — a miserable, slick little package of a child — from the school’s office. “He’s been very brave,” the principal called as we left. By the next day, both kids were fine, just in time for Rachel to succumb.
Next in line? The babysitter.
My current goal is not to come down with the summer cold that both boys seem to have picked up. And to catch up on the various deadlines that went whooshing by à la Douglas Adams as I pulled extra shifts on barf-watch duty and childcare last week.
Fortunately, Dana Rudolph over at Mombian is picking up the slack, with the second of three giveaways for And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families. Visit her and leave a comment (by midnight today) about how you have created (or plan/hope to create) your family, or the language your family uses to describe itself, and you could win a copy. The lovely folks at Insomniac Press will mail you a copy directly, so you don’t have to worry about us infecting you.
Good luck!
Every so often, I will look at my sons — sleeping in their carseats, say, or leaping from one hotel-room bed to another — and I will think, Wow. Casting did a really good job finding these child actors to play my kids.
I mean, they inhabit their roles so fully, these two. They’re always spot-on with their cues, their entrances and exits. They never forget a line — or, if they do, then they’re masters of improvisation. I never get the feeling that their motivations are anything less than character-appropriate, and it’s always clear that they’ve done their research. They know how to be kids — and, what’s more, they know how to be my kids.
I’m less convinced of my own performance. It ebbs and flows, but I spend some unquantifiable amount of time as a parent with some sense that I’m only playing a part, that the director could yell “Cut!” at any moment and that I could — in fact, that I will — return to my “real” life at the end of this gig.
Not that I’m sure what that “real” life would entail, although part of me imagines that it must be in Manhattan, where I live on the second floor of a brownstone and read the New York Times with my morning coffee (in this life, I drink coffee instead of tea, and live somewhere where the New York Times is available every day, ON THE DAY IT WAS PUBLISHED, no less) and write all day. (After the yoga.) Write about what, though, if not my children, or parenting, or my mother? This is a good question, and generally where that particular fantasy peters out.
It’s not like these moments of disjunct occur only during particularly challenging moments, those times when one might conceivably want to break character, break that fourth wall, smash it with a hammer, even. Actually, my mother-as-movie moments tend to occur mostly in those moments that are archetypal: Rowan’s senior-kindergarten class concert, taking Isaac to buy shoes. They happen when I mother in public, when I am surrounded by other parents, all of whom seem to be inhabiting their roles fully while I’m not quite sure how I got here, fully prepared for somebody to call me on my bluff. We crossed the border a couple of Sundays ago, and the customs agent asked me, “Are these your children?” And after a weekend of shepherding the small people in the backeat to the train museum and the aquarium and the waterpark and letting them eat hotdogs and macaroni and cheese in front of the cable television channel several days running, I had the urge to answer, “If you say so.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Rowan and Isaac, of course, don’t imagine that I could be anything other than one of their mothers, just as I know that as a child I harboured some vague notion of my parents as having only half-realized, dreamlike lives before my brother and I were born. Even today, I can’t quite shed my own childhood understanding of my parents as only having ever existed, unquestioningly, to parent, as being pleasantly surprised by their empty nest, blinking at all the space. It never would have occurred to me that they thought about their own parenting, much less the lives they might have otherwise led. I mean, look at them, circa 1972:
There they are, in the empty space of their living room, which they didn’t furnish until I was at least four years old. (That furniture, by the way, now lives in my own living room, because the past, don’t you know, repeats itself. And also because they had very nifty Danish modern tastes at the time.) And I guess I think of them as some sort of metaphor of that room, that photograph: only just coming into existence, characters on what is, essentially, an empty stage, just starting to be filled in, courtesy the children’s arrival.
Jasmin Darznik writes in last Sunday’s New York Times (which arrived at my house in Thunder Bay the following Tuesday) that “it’s difficult to imagine our mothers as women with stories and selves that exist separately from ours. So firmly do we hold on to the mothers of our memories that even as adults faced with some irrefutable proof of their lives before and apart from us, we still insist on our own versions of their lives.”
I think she’s right, and I’m also wondering if this feeling, this idea of myself as a recurring character in an ongoing series, is some kind of resistance to the idea that my sons may not see me as anything but their mother.
But, you know, I listen to Rowan’s questions about my own mother (whose death still fascinates and confuses him in equal measures), about my life and what I did as a child, and I see him trying to make sense of the idea of the idea that we existed before him. It’s still a tough concept, though: when I showed him that photograph above, for example, he initially thought that he must be the baby on the mother’s knee — he is always already the kid, after all, and I am always already the mom, not a baby.
I sometimes wonder if I write this blog so that I will have a record of the fact that I’ve thought about these things, that I wasn’t some kind of automa-mommy, some blank slate filled in by children. And yet, it’s also a record of how irrefutably my life is tied up in theirs — at least, right now, at least for this particular act. There’s the mama part, and there’s the non grata part, and, most days, the two add up to some kind of whole.
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