Burgh Dad

A constant reminder

2009-01-02T21:27:00Z

My wife and I took her 12-year-old and Sam to the home of some friends on New Years Eve. It was a nice get-together - homemade pizza, games, conversation, no alcohol. I don't think I heard one cuss-word the whole evening.

What I did hear, though, was something I'm coming to hate: "What happened to Sam's cheek?"

They were youth football friends, and we hadn't seen them since early November - before I let Sam fall on a shopping cart, strapped into a backpack, leaving a linear dent in his cheek.

Then today, I was going through pictures my nephew took at our family reunion, a three-day David-palooza. There were several absolutely gorgeous ones of my baby boy with his big brown eyes - marred by that valley carved into his skin.

I'm starting to really hate this.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about taking him to the pediatrician, who recommended we go to Children's Hospital. At that point I was worried about what they might have to do to fix it, and the scars it might leave on his memory.

What we heard at Children's was not very encouraging, though. Basically, the doctor said, there is nothing they can do surgically - there are too many nerves to cut the cheek open from the inside, and cutting in from the outside would do little good and would leave a scar itself.

Given that Sam is only just two, it could largely go away on its own, he said. But we wouldn't really know for a year or so.

His recommendation: Massage it vigorously six to eight times a day to help break up the tissue. Then see how it is in a year.

Yes, a year.

Of course, Sam went absolutely ballistic the first time I massaged his cheek. I think it's probably still sore. The second time, he let his body go limp, flopping to the floor to get away from my hands. After a couple of days of that, I pretty much gave up - it's like I'm torturing him. My wife, meanwhile, barely did it once.

So on top of the permanent guilt I have for dropping him in the first place, I now have an unpleasant choice: Do I hold him down and massage it, risking emotional scars to get rid of the physical one? Or do I let it be, knowing that 10 years from now I might be looking at this mar on my growing child and wondering if I could have done more to get rid of it?

In the grand scheme of things, of course, this could be a thousand times worse. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I had a car accident that left my child paralyzed.

It also does not compare to people dealing with special needs children, or those with dread diseases. My daughter is diabetic, and I'd put 100 scars on her to take that away.

But it hurts every time I look at it.

Brian David/Oct. 29, 2008

Will this scar heal?

2008-12-17T18:31:00Z

A month ago I let my two-year-old boy fall, strapped in a backpack, from a stack of boxes onto a shopping cart, leaving a nasty bruise on his cheek.

I wrote about it a few days later. I talked about how bad I felt but how forgiving he was. I talked about making the decision to be honest, not sugar-coating my role in the accident.

At that point, I thought it was over and done, all but a little healing.

I was wrong.

About a week after the accident, my wife came downstairs looking somber after tucking Sam in bed.

"We were sitting there cuddling," she said, "and all of a sudden he said, ‘backpack. Cart. Cheek.'"

I heard him say something similar the next day. And he's talked about it many times since. "Backpack," he'll say matter-of-factly. "Sam fall down. Cheek hurt."

My heart breaks every time. And again I tell him it was my fault, and I'm sorry, and he doesn't need to be afraid

Meanwhile, the bruise healed and the swelling went down. But it was clear that the thick wire of the shopping cart's top edge had done more damage; there was an indented line in my little boy's cheek, like a long, ghastly, unnatural dimple. I could feel the hard tissue underneath it, like a scar underneath the skin.

"It probably killed the fat cells in his cheek," our pediatrician said when I took Sam there Monday.

Would it heal?

Not likely. He scribbled out a recommendation.

And tomorrow we are taking our little boy to Children's Hospital for a plastic surgery consultation.

Yes, surgery.

"I assume they'll go in from inside his mouth, so they don't even break the skin," my wife said. "I do NOT want him going around with a big scar on his face his whole life."

Then she got very quiet.

"I just can't think about it," she said when I asked. "The idea of him lying there, getting cut open..."

As much as that bothers me, though, I am bothered more by the other scar: the one on his memory.

"Backpack. Sam fall down. Cheek hurt."

Is he two young for permanent memories? Maybe, maybe not. My older son has a flash picture of the bedroom I used when my first wife and I were separated but living in the same house, and that situation ended when he was two years and three months old. My stepson remembers the apartment he lived in when he was three, before his little brother was born.

Could this be Sam's earliest memory? Of falling and smashing face-first on that shopping cart? It would certainly be vivid enough to stick, and he doesn't talk about any other past event the same way. He almost sounds puzzled when he brings it up, like these images are in his mind and he's not used to the sensation, doesn't know what to do with it.

If it is, of course, it is. No surgeon can go in and fix a memory. There are no stitches for it, no dead fat cells to remove.

Perhaps, I think to myself, we'll be able to laugh about it someday. He'll tease me about how I scarred him, damaged him. I'll shed some mock tears, tell him that I'm just glad he doesn't remember all the beatings before that. It will be a good family joke, part of our lore.

But it's sure not funny now.

Brian David/Dec. 16, 2008

Perhaps believing makes magic real

2008-12-04T15:59:00Z

[davidheadshot]

We were at my stepson's football banquet, and Sam was wandering around, as Sam is wont to do.

He worked the crowd, studying faces. He ran to connect the dots created by the school cafeteria's colored floor tiles. He circled the empty salad bar, apparently quite taken by the view up through the clear plastic sneeze screen of the plastic vegetables decorating the structure's top.

Mostly I kept a distance, keeping him in sight but letting him sate his boundless two-year-old curiosity. But when he headed into the dark cafeteria kitchen, I moved in - I figured that would be the perfect place for him to make an unwelcome mess.

I entered the doorway to find him gazing up at a grandfatherly older man. The man glanced at me, his face crinkled into a smile.

"Sa'ta!" Sam said, pointing to some gold-wire-and-tree-bulb Christmas decorations on a counter.

"What's that?" the man said, his crinkled smile turned toward the eager uptilted face.

"Sa'ta!" Sam repeated.

"Santa," I interpreted.

"OOoooohhh!" the man said. "Well, there's an angel, and a reindeer, but no Santa."

"Well," I said, reaching for Sam's hand. "It's kind of all Santa to him."

And so it is. We've gotten out a few Christmas decorations, and Sam instantly finds the red-clad figure. "Sa'ta!" And even if he's not there, Sam imagines him. "Sa'ta!" he'll say. "Ch'ismas!"

Now, how deeply he gets the concept, I really don't know - but he knows that Ch'ismas and Sa'ta are special and exciting. He knows that Ch'ismas means lights and decorations and music; he can tell you that Sa'ta brings presents, though I'm not sure he knows what presents are. But it's all red and green and gold and shiny and happy and good, and that's all he needs.

And I have to say, I'm looking forward to this Christmas more than any other in years, maybe since my own childhood. Living it through him, seeing it through his eyes, gives it an innocent glow that I had almost forgotten.

The reason is, of course, that Sam still believes in magic - or rather, he has not yet learned to impose non-magical logic onto his mysterious and delightful world. When he's hungry, food appears. When he's thirsty, water appears. He doesn't know that the food appears because Mommy and Daddy went to the store, or that they bought it because they have jobs and make money. Our home is, to him, a fairy castle, not a mortgage.

So the thought of a jolly elf in a flying sleigh giving toys to children is not foreign or silly or illogical to him - it is a natural and fully believable extension of a world full of people who love him and care for him, a world where his needs and wants are understood, accepted and (mostly, anyway) met.

Now, it's been a good while since any of the other kids - now 17, 15, 14 and 12 - believed in Santa at all, and longer still since they simply and unquestioningly embraced the concept the way Sam does. On top of that, this is the first time in 13 years that I've gotten to live with a little child day-to-day through the season, and the last such Christmas - in 1995, when my daughter was four - was shadowed by the death throes of my first marriage.

During that time, I have been, like so many other grownups, a rather grumpy critic of the over-commercialized Santa-reindeer-spend-yourself-into-the-poorhouse aspects of Christmas. We've tried to keep that stuff simple and set aside time for the deeper, religious aspects of the holiday. Our kids have largely embraced that, and we've had wonderful celebrations.

But the glow in Sam's face has me looking at things a little differently. I'm seeing "Sa'ta" not as a polyester-garbed marketing ploy but as a symbol of joy, of the love of children, of the loving of giving. I'm seeing lights in the darkness of long December nights, and happy homes and stores as places of warmth in the cold - symbols all that connect quite nicely to the idea of the Lord himself being born into our world, bringing us light, warmth, love and joy.

And if right now Sam grasps the symbols better than he grasps the underlying meaning, well, isn't that the whole point of symbols? I see him gasp at the magic, and know that it will be that much easier to connect him to the real magic beneath it all.

And frankly, I see him gasp at the magic and I tend to gasp at the magic a little bit more myself. I find myself warming at the idea of Santa Claus. I want our tree up NOW; I want the lights and the decorations and the music so I can watch him get excited and can get excited myself. Somehow, he's sharing the magic with me.

And I find myself wondering: Perhaps there is something magic about magic. Perhaps if you believe in magic, then magic is real.

He believes, and it sure feels real.

Brian David/Oct. 29, 2008

Yes, Dear, I did drop the baby

2008-12-03T17:36:00Z

My personal meat thermometer popped after a half-lap of the store. I was in a heavy sweater with Sam in a backpack, and had already walked a brisk 10 minutes from the car dealership across the street -- I was making heat like one of those boil-water-in-90-seconds stovetops.

So I unstrapped the backpack and lowered it awkwardly to the floor, a process that involves swinging it by one shoulder strap while the priceless 30-pound bundle inside dangles helplessly.

I stripped off my sweater, took Sam out, took off his jacket and tied both garments onto the back of the pack. Then, anticipating further struggles putting the pack back on, I set it on top of a stack of boxes, so I could back in and get both arm straps on at once.

I set Sam in, strapped him up, then let go so I could turn and get my shoulders in.

Whether I heard the backpack tip, saw it or felt it I don't really know, but I whipped around just in time to get this indelible flash-photo image of my little boy, on the day before his second birthday, smashing down face-first on top of the rail of a shopping cart, which was sitting next to the stack of boxes.

Perhaps my memory will discard that image one day. I hope so. But I doubt it.

Vaguely aware of the gasping shoppers around me, I snatched him up. There was a white line where his cheek had hit the metal rail and a little punture mark where a nub from one of the wires had dug in. As I watched, the puncture wound started welling with blood.

"I'm so sorry, Sweetie; I'm so very very sorry," I started telling him, pulling him from the pack to cradle him as the howls began.

A store manager hustled up with gauze and a bandage. "He'll be fine," I said shakily, mopping blood from his face. "He'll be fine."

He kind of had to be, I realized as I assessed my situation.

We were using the backpack in the store as the result of a chain of circumstances that started when some mass of cold air and some mass of warm air got together and decided to go all winter on Western Pennsylvania.

This had caused my wife, who was at work, to think of the bald tires and missing windshield wiper on my car. She had called me to alert me to the coming storm, and I had called the car dealership. Since the only time they could get me in was at Sam's nap time, I decided on the backpack as a way to keep him amused.

So as I studied the wound on my crying little boy, my car was on a high-lift on the far side of the highway getting new rubber -- or so I thought. I couldn't take Sam home, and I couldn't run by the emergency room for a just-in-case look. I couldn't see calling an ambulance -- he had hit down square in the fleshy middle of his cheek, and I couldn't imagine it had broken any bones or teeth.

So I bandaged it up, smothered him with kisses and put him back in the backpack -- on the floor this time. I sat on the floor myself, wiggled my shoulders into the straps and staggered to my feet.

The next 45 minutes were long ones. Sam got quiet in front of a display of cartoon figures strewn with Christmas lights, and was briefly mollified by a cheap green tractor (I de-packaged it right in the aisle and carried the box with me so I could pay for it later), but spent most of the time crying. I spent most of the time leaking guilt like a cheesecloth bucket.

Finally, the dealership called my cell phone. I could escape!

"Well," the service manager said, "we didn't have the right size tires, and we didn't have the windshield wiper in stock. We did put your old wiper back on."

Golly, thanks!

There are, of course, several lessons that can be taken from the event. First and foremost, if you're using a backpack to carry your child around, be careful! They are wonderful things -- Sam and I go tramping through the woods almost every day -- but they are not very stable sitting on their little stands with kids inside them. And only a complete idiot (yes, that is my hand you see raised) would try to perform this function atop a stack of boxes.

But the second lesson was a bit deeper.

Sam was asleep when my wife got home. I knew I had to tell her something, but what would it be?

An out-and-out lie was not really an issue; it's not in my nature. But some subtle shading, a bit of selective emphasis would perhaps make me look a bit less foolish and negligent. Besides, it was not even just my wife who would hear the tale - I'd have to tell me step-kids, my kids, my parents and likely to any number of others. How embarrassing! And how easy it would be to just tweak the truth a bit!

But after some frantic internal struggling over that question, I harked back to one of my cardinal principles of parenting: Don't lie to your kids.

Now, obviously, that's not as simple a rule as it looks. There are aspects to my divorce, for instance, that I will simply not discuss with my kids. Nor do I feel compelled to offer pointless details about my personal life. "That's a conversation I'm not going to have" is an honest answer to a potentially harmful question.

But in this case, the only reason to avoid the truth was to avoid embarrassment, and that's not a good enough reason.

So I owned up. I told the story flat-out to my wife, and bluntly accepted the guilt. She was very forgiving (of course, Sam was asleep at the time, so she had not yet observed the damage). I told all the kids, my parents, even the nurses and doctor when we had him checked out the next day.

Everyone was very nice, very understanding about it. And I hope it was an example to the other kids, showing them the honor in owning up to your faults and mistakes and taking responsibility.

Most heartbreaking of all, of course, was that Sam forgave me, crawling up into my arms just like always.

I'm not sure I deserved it, from him or from anyone, but I'll take it.

Brian David/Oct. 29, 2008

The joys of special needs children

2008-11-26T21:26:00Z

Don Hammonds / Nov. 26, 2008

"Puh-ple!"

That word came out loud and clear from my 2-year-old the other day; Aidan and I were absolutely overjoyed.

You see, Aidan is one of our four special needs children, and from the day that my partner Joseph and I brought him home from the hospital, he has had special challenges to overcome.

Not long before this much-awaited outburst from Aidan, he finally began to respond to music with dancing. We were in the Whole Foods store here, waiting in line when the song "Save the Last Dance For Me" blared on the radio. He perked up and started rocking, and I joined in, and there we were, dancing in line at the store to the laughter and smiles of people around us.

It was a wondrous, happy thing for both of us. Joey and I had been trying to get him to respond to music and dancing since he came home for the first time, because we know how important music, stimulation, rhythm and touch are to infants and toddlers. Besides, music and dancing are an important part of our lives and we wanted Aidan to be able to enjoy both.

But every time we tried, he'd get furious with us, and one time he gave a loud yowl and whacked me. So that little moment in the store was one that I'll cherish forever.

When you have a child who has special needs, every small accomplishment or victory is one to be celebrated and remembered.

Thankfully, except for his speech delay and some vision problems, Aidan's a normal, happy, gorgeous kid. His brown eyes and his incredibly straight, thick strawberry blond hair and brown eyes make him look like Andy Warhol. When he gets his glasses, the resemblance will be even more pronounced.

But close monitoring will continue. I know that some of my child's behaviors suggest he may have some issues down the line. Probably he will be just fine - but you never know.

We have a team of doctors and nurses in place who carefully monitor our children's development, and if anything is noticed, we instantly seek specialized services, including many that are offered with in-home care and therapy.

There's not a moment that goes by when I'm not thankful and grateful that I live in Pittsburgh. The array of services and programs in this town are nothing short of stunning.

And Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh? I'm not sure where we'd be without them. One of our other children has a seizure disorder, and we've been there so often that we are now on first-name basis with so many of the people there.

When my 4-year-old was a tiny baby and had a seizure, rather than making him sleep alone in his bed, they allowed him to snuggle up next to me and sleep at night on one of the chairs that converted into a bed. They knew how important it was for him to have my comforting, my touch and my soft singing to him as he slept - and how much I needed to hold him at the time.

And I have to say something about the hospital's Family Care Connections program. They've provided wonderful in-home services, monitoring, special activities, training for parents, and for our 4-year-old, a Montessori preschool. My son's development has skyrocketed since being in their program.

There are things that I've learned from raising four special needs children. Some of these may prove helpful to others:

First, be prepared to fight - and fight hard for your child. It took us many meetings, days worth of research on curriculum and heaven knows what else to get an individual education plan written for our 12-year-old. And he's now a straight A student looking to go into law someday.

We've spent many a night on the Internet doing research, finding tips, programs, books and all kinds of tools for our children.

Often, special medications are needed, and not all pharmacies have them. Then there are times that insurance companies don't want to cooperate. Life has become one battle after another.

Look for support groups that can help you. You can't do it alone. And commiserating with others who are going through what you are experiencing can help you, reassure you, and make you realize you're not crazy for feeling some of the things that you do.

Next, try to find some agency or service that can walk you through the maze of programs, therapies and offerings that are here in Pittsburgh. If you don't know where to start, call a hospital social worker or any of the local adoption agencies to get started.

But perhaps most important, be good to yourself - and to your spouse if you have one. The tensions and fatigue that build up can really damage a relationship if you aren't careful.

We have a baby-sitting cooperative, so Saturday nights are reserved for Joey and me. Hugs, snuggling on the couch after the kids go to bed, and just being together are so terribly important to any relationship, but especially one in which you are caring for children with special needs.

All in all, though, I wouldn't trade my life with my incredible kids for anything in the world. I love them dearly and deeply, and they all know that daddy's here for them when they need me.

Watching them drive away

2008-11-26T13:55:00Z

I said good-bye to my kids at the door, then went to the window and watched them walk to the car.

My son - long, gangly and incredibly teenager-ish at 14 - walked to the passenger side. My daughter - 17 now, but in my mind's eye still my little baby girl - walked to the driver's side.

They got in. The car backed out. I waved, and saw my son's hand through the window. Then they pulled up the road and were gone.

"How was THAT for ya?" my wife asked.

"Bizarre," I said. "Truly bizarre."

Those two kids disappearing up the road were four and 18 months when my first wife and I separated.

In the dozen years since, I have moved no less than six times, struggling to balance work, the desire for a social life for myself and the desire to have a home with them.

In the dozen years since, I've had three different jobs, each successive one offering me more money but taking me farther away.

In the dozen years since, I've had a number of relationships, inconsequential at first but leading eventually to a second marriage. And my marriage, for all its wonders, brought my kids more changes - two step-brothers, a step-mother, a new baby brother and a host of things competing for Dad's attention.

In a way, time in the car was one constant through all those years and all those changes.

One of the first things I started doing with them was driving into Pittsburgh for church on Sundays - an hour each way. I'd pick them up to stay with me on weekends, drop them back off at weekend's end - even when I lived an hour away. Once a week I'd pick them up and go to Burger King (it had a play zone) or to my parents' house. Then I'd drive them back.

We always had fun. We'd play the alphabet game, "I spy," other word games. As they got older, we started singing, doing harmony to church songs. And we talked - goodness, we talked! Both of them to this day remark about how much that time in the car, the three of us, has meant to them over the years.

In fact, time in the car has been probably more than just a constant - it is like a symbol of my commitment to fatherhood, an assurance. No matter the circumstances, they knew that I would be there, would get them, would take them with me, that I would travel to the ends of the earth for them. And as long as we were together we were, in a way, home.

And then poof! It was gone. They were off in the car, by themselves, without me. My commitment was no longer necessary. My symbolism was drained of its force. No longer was it about me coming to them; now they could come to me - or not. The power shifted; an era ended.

Which is OK, of course. Eras are supposed to end. Our kids are supposed to leave us. And they're not supposed to understand the depths we feel, the true meaning of our commitment - it would suffocate them if they did.

But it's not like we have to like it.

"It really is nice not to have to drive," I told my wife, still standing at the window. I imagined my kids in that car, talking, laughing, feeling the same kind of freedom and power I felt at the same age.

My wife put a hand on my shoulder.

"They'll be back," she said.

In some ways, yes, they will. But in some ways no, they won't.

Brian David/Nov. 26, 2008

How to be a grandpa someday

2008-11-13T21:21:00Z

I came down the stairs with Sam still in his jammies.

"Mommy?" he asked.

"Yes, Mommy's here. And someone else is here too," I said.

We came down the last flight, and there was Mommy, waiting. And there was Grandpa, waiting too.

Now, usually when I bring Sam down and Mommy's there, he wiggles from my arms to get to hers. He likes me just fine, but Mommy is Mommy.

But not this time. This time he sat in my arms, looking back and forth. Mommy, Grandpa. Mommy, Grandpa. Then he kicked to get free, and when I set him down headed straight for his little fenced-in play area.

My wife, my dad and I looked at each other. "I think he wants you to go play with him," my wife said to my dad.

So off my dad went, and in a moment we could hear Sam's little voice, remarking on one of his books. "Birds! Sky! Leaves!"

"Yep, there are some birds up in the sky," my dad's low voice followed. "And there are leaves blowing in the wind."

"What are you, a potted plant?" I said to my wife.

"Yeah, really!" she said with a laugh. "Here I thought he liked me."

And he does, of course. At not quite two (his birthday is the 21^st), Mommy is still the all in all.

But Grandpa is very special.

Since Sam was born, my dad has been coming over about once a week just to spend time with him. At first he would just hold him, coo at him, walk with him. Last summer he would spend patient hours letting Sam hold his fingers to practice walking. Nowadays he gets down on then floor in the play area and looks at toys and books, or goes outside with him if it's nice.

He comes after breakfast. He leaves before lunch. He chats with us a little if we're around. He chats with Sam a lot, asking questions, answering questions, always mild, always calm.

Sam adores him. And why not? How often can Mommy or Daddy take two or three hours and lavish the time on him?

It was, of course, the same for me with my dad. He was working full time, traveling on occasion, serving on the school board and building three additions to our house during my childhood. He was grounded in his faith and rock solid in his sense of who he was and what he expected from us, and our family was built on that foundation. I was absolutely in awe of him. But the times we got to out-and-out play with him were rare enough to be treasured.

They are also, perhaps not coincidentally, some of the best memories of my childhood. Having him throw the football around with my brothers and me was incredibly special, and to this day we all tell stories about his occasional entries into our make-believe games.

And that is most likely how my older kids feel about me, and how Sam will feel about me. And it's fine - probably exactly what a father should be.

But watching my dad, I think I know the kind of grandpa I want to be.

Brian David/Oct. 29, 2008

Step-It Down, or is it Steppin' Down?

2008-10-28T20:44:00Z

My wife was lying against the side of the bed, covering her face and giggling like mad. I was spooning her from behind, with my arm braced to protect her from above.

My 14-year-old son was lying on the edge of the bed above us. Little Sam, almost two now, was behind him, pushing.

"Harder!" he said as he pushed, making his voice sound like he was straining mightily. "Harder! Harder!"

Then my great gangly long boy rolled off the bed, across my arm, over my shoulder and onto the padding behind me. My wife howled and shook with laughter, which got only worse as Sam appeared, in his full naked glory, standing on the edge of the bed.

"Step-It Down!" he called out, and jumped from the bed onto the pile.

"What does that even mean?" my older son said as Sam clambered back onto the bed and we all started untangled.

Who knows? In fact, we're not even sure "Step-It Down" is even the right name. That's what it sounds like to me, but others argue for "Steppin' Down," which would make more sense, though still not all that much.

Only Sam knows for sure, and he's not sharing.

It's a game that started a few months ago, growing from the expediency that holds sway in our bedroom.

The room has a sloping ceiling because it's up under the eaves of the house. To maximize space, we simply put the box springs on the floor so we could have our heads under the slope and still sit up.

Then, during a bout of back troubles in January, I abandoned the bed in favor of a slab of foam robber on the hard floor. It works so well that I'll never go back. I have my foam "mattress" pushed up against the edge of the bed so my wife and I can be in the same ZIP code, but there it is.

The creates, for Sam, a perfect playground.

"Step-It Down!" he'll say as we head upstairs at the end of the evening.

"Yes, Darling, we can Step-It Down."

This involves climbing on Mommy's bed, throwing all the pillows onto Daddy's bed, jumping off Mommy's bed onto Daddy's bed, doing somersaults on Mommy's bed, getting Daddy to lie down on Mommy's bed so he can be pushed off onto his own bad (accompanied by a strained-sounding "harder! Harder!"), then jumping on Daddy for some wrestling and tickling, then doing to the same to Mommy, to whatever siblings are on hand, even to the occasional friend of a sibling.

After a few minutes of that, he goes in the bath - then gets out, brushes his teeth, and does it again naked!

Now, I miss being in bed with my wife. And she says she misses me. We've talked about getting a bed with a hard half and a soft half ("I feel like I'm sleeping on a cloud!" she always says of her marshmallow-pouf mattress), but who has money for that? I have vague mental carpentry plans for a platform what would raise my foam slab up to bed level, so we could at least sleep on the same vertical plane.

But you know what? I could never sleep on that platform, knowing that never again would my naked little boy come dive-bombing off Mommy's bed. And what's he going to do, roll me "harder! Harder!" onto the floor?

"Step-It Down" will end on its own, and all too soon. They all do, the silly fun little games that spice up childhood. A couple of blinks and he'll be 14 like the other one, looking me straight in the eye and singing bass.

Then I can build my platform. There's no hurry now.

"Baby cry!" he said

2008-10-16T20:54:00Z

Sam weathered it OK when his mother left, just a droopy lip and a pathetic little "Mommy?"

"She's just going to football," I said. "We'll see her soon."

She was taking my stepson to a rival school district for a scrimmage. I was going to feed Sam, pick up my other stepson from his cross-country practice, then go meet up with her.

It was a lot to do in a short time, and I had just finished work and felt a little harried. I started some water for noodles, plopped him in his high chair, cut up an apple and filled his cup with milk.

Then, just as the noodles were almost done, my stepson called from cross-country practice. So I turned the water down, pulled Sam from his chair and headed to the car.

Now, Sam was hungry, and wasn't thrilled to leave - and this was on top of Mommy leaving. But he was quiet on to 1.8-mile ride to the school and happy when his brother got in.

Then we headed home.

"Foo'ball!" Sam yelled. "Foo'ball! Foo'ball!" And he started crying.

I sighed. "He thought were going up to football practice," I told my stepson.

Sam is the prince of football practice. The other moms and dads there dote on him. A couple of teenagers with brothers on the team play with him. And there are several other younger kids too. He loves it.

He cried the whole way down the hill. He cried when I put him in his high chair. He cried while I got noodles and peas into a bowl for him.

Then he stuck his fingers in the bowl. "Hot! Hot!" he said.

I was hungry myself. I was already late for the scrimmage. The crying was driving me around the bend. But I took a breath, picked up the bowl, blew on the contents, mixed them around with a fork.

"There!" I said. "It'not too hot now."

In went the fingers. "Hot! Hot!"

I took another deep breath, swallowed my temper. I blew on the noodles again, and again gave them back.

In went the fingers. "Hot! Hot!"

I snatched him out of the high chair. "Fine, then! Don't eat it! Just don't cry about it anymore!" I said, plopping him on the kitchen floor.

That, of course, just made him cry harder. He walked out of the kitchen sobbing, "Hot! Hot!" His steps and sobs receded beyond the wall.

Guilt washed over me as the mayhem eased. I picked up the bowl, drained off a little more water. I put on a little more margarine, stirred it around, blew on it some more.

Then the little footsteps returned to the kitchen.

"Baby cry," Sam said, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes.

"Yes, the baby was crying quite a bit."

"Baby cry," he said again. I lifted him back into the high chair.

"It's hard when you cry so much," I said.

"Baby cry," he said a third time.

"Yes, Darling," I said. "Do you think you could eat your dinner without crying anymore?"

He looked up at me with a solemn little face - a look I'd never seen from him before.

"OK," he said in a sad, small voice.

I gave him his food. I kissed him. I hugged his little head. I got a little misty, it was so sweet.

It was such a non-baby moment, such a mature experience for him. He realized that I was upset, and that he had done it. He was sorry, genuinely sorry in a way that is not part of baby-hood. And he came back to make it all right.

It's a moment I hope to remember - a real step in his long journey to adulthood.

Why kids don't drive

2008-09-08T02:24:00Z

My first wife and I separated 12 years ago. For two of the intervening years, I lived in a tiny little box of a house down the street, so the two kids I share with her could actually walk back and forth between the two homes. For the other 10 I have lived at least 20 minutes away.

Making some rough estimates, that means I have driven some 62,400 miles over those years going back and forth to see them or bring them to my home (figuring four 30-mile round trips weekly for 10 years, which does not account for the ever-increasing numbers of extra trips to take them to parties and football games and play practices).

As those years were adding up and those numbers were mounting, I began pondering how different life would be when my daughter could drive.

"Ah!" I thought to myself, "how nice that will be! They will just show up at my door! They'll be able to come and go as they please! And no wrangling over needing rides to parties!"

At first, I was just zeroed in on that 16th birthday. I knew it wasn't that simple, but when your kid's, like, nine, the details surrounding 16 don't seem too relevant.

As it got closer, I had to accept the fact that it takes six months to get a license after that magic 16th birthday. So OK, I could wait.

And now 16 has come and gone. The six-month mark has come and gone. In another month she'll be 17 (!!!!!!!!!!!). She's had her permit forever; she's been driving all along. She's good to go.

But no license.

I've lived in my current home for more than four years now. I have two primary routes I take to go get the kids, and a couple of other alternatives that make for amusing drives if I'm not in a hurry. Still, I am bored to death of the en route scenery, and with $3.59 gas (and that looks good compared to a month ago) I face the maddening reality that I burn twice as much going to get them as they would coming to me (since it would be one-way for them, you see).

I am really REALLY ready to depart the chauffeuring business. So why? Why no license?

Because it costs $100 A MONTH TO INSURE A TEENAGER! $100 a month! I was shocked by that -- who can afford an extra $100 a month? Not me. And not my ex-wife. My daughter's working, but $100 a month would be most of her earnings and she also pays for her cell plan.

Now, I could be the tough-love type, tell her that if she wants to drive she needs to at least share the insurance cost. But you know what? She doesn't care all that much if she drives or not; most of the places she wants to go are around town.

In essence, what I'd be telling her is that if she wants to come visit me, she's going to have to pay to do it. What kind of father does that? And even if I were that kind of father, what do I do when she says, "OK, I'll just hang around Mother's house and spend time with my friends." What then?

To add to the stress, I can't help aknowledging an irritating truth, that my parents paid for my car insurance when I was a teenager. I feel like I should somehow do this for my own daughter.

But $100 a month? That's what it costs to insure both my wife and me, and we drive a bazillion miles a year.

Meanwhile, my stepson will turn 16 in January. Buy insurance for one, ya kinda hafta buy it for the other. That's $200 a month -- more than the rent for my first apartment in 1986. And my son just turned 14. Two more years, that's $300 a month -- almost the mortgage on the house my ex-wife and I lived in when these pricey little people were born.

I don't know how other parents do it. I really don't.

Winning fights by not fighting

2008-09-05T20:16:00Z

I was sitting on the couch. Sam was on my lap.

I had my right arm around his chest, firm but not too tight. My left arm was coming up from underneath, controlling his legs so he couldn't whack a heel into my groin (something we dads have to think about, and yes, it has happened, several times).

Sam was in a full-blown, howling, Linda-Blair-spitting-pea-soup rage. He was fighting me with every muscle in his little toddler body, kicking my thighs, pushing at my hands, straining, growling, snarling and spitting out "Mommy! Mommy!" in a demanding shriek.

"Mommy's right there, Sweetie," I kept murmuring in his ear. "She is ready to love you, but we need you to calm down."

When he paused for breath I could feel his little heart rabbiting along, pittery-pittery-pittery. Then, sensing some slack in my grip, he'd throw himself back into battle, like an animal attacking the wire of the cage.

"It's not going to work, Sam," I would murmur. "You're very strong, but I have 200 pounds on you. You're not going to win. But we love you, and if you calm down you can get down."

And even if the midst of the fray, I couldn't help thinking back to the fall of 2004.

My wife and I were, in early November, a few weeks from getting engaged. I was working election night, and was to meet a candidate near my wife's home. So I stopped in to say hi to her and her boys.

I could see instantly that her then-eight-year-old was in a dark, steamy mood - a common state for him - so I grabbed him and pulled him onto my lap, trying to tease him out of it. "Give me a hug!" I said, wrestling him around.

I might as well have teased a Michael Vick's pit bull. His scowl deepened and he immediately tried to yank himself loose. I hung on, still thinking that a smile was just beneath the surface.

I was wrong.

He yanked again, growled when I wouldn't let go and spat out an order: "LET! ME! GO!"

Now, I don't know about all of you out there, but I'm not really big on taking orders from kids. Maybe it's some outsized male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing, but, well, it's just not happening.

"Ask me nicely, and I'll let you go."

There was a problem with that, though. My eight-year-old eventual stepson had a rather sizable male pride alpha-dog peeing-on-bushes thing himself. He emerged from the womb that way, so my wife tells me, furious from birth. To ask nicely would be to lose, to yield, and yielding... well, it was just not happening.

So we sat there. He moaned, snarled, argued, fought, then started back at moaning again. I kept telling him, over and over, that I was not trying to offend him by hugging him, was not being mean to him or hurting him, and that he had had no reason to be angry in the first place. I deserved better treatment, I said, and I insisted that he ask nicely.

I was quiet. I was polite. I was not emotional. But I told him that not only was I bigger and stronger than him, I was also more stubborn.

My wife, meanwhile, sat at the table with a troubled look. I could tell she hated what was going on, and was not entirely sure she was in support of what I was doing. She took my back, though, telling her son that he should, indeed, simply be polite.

After an hour - long enough that I was getting worried that I would have to give in or miss my assignment - he finally complied, mumbled a begrudged "would you please put me down?"

I'd like to say that it was a seminal moment, that from that moment he acknowledged my leadership and didn't try to fight me anymore. It would be a lie, though. He is stubborn and tempestuous still, and that night was not the last time we engaged in such a battle of wills. But on some level, I think he does know that he's not in charge, and cannot control his mother and me through the force of his anger. And I think that is a very good thing.

And what of my wife? "I was going to let you do what you thought you had to," she said - a lukewarm endorsement at best. "I hated seeing him so frustrated, and I don't him to hate you."

So as I sat with Sam - frustrated for sure, and in his toddler way probably hating me with great fury - I wondered what her thoughts were. I had a strong sense that I was doing the right thing, but would she approve? Would she agree?

Finally Sam either gave up or simply ran out of energy. I kept my standard for "calming down" relatively low - five deep breaths and down he went.

My wife answered my questions a few minutes later, over coffee at the kitchen table.

"I love what you're doing," she said. "You're being firm, but gentle, not getting upset. You're showing him that he's not in charge, and this his anger will not do him any good. It was wonderful."

Made my day, that did.

So much of what we do as parents is by instinct - it certainly is for me, anyway, even after almost 17 years in the business. And sometimes I don't know if my instincts are right.

But I think about that moment, and it seems like what was coming through to Sam was a very simple message: That I love him but he's not in charge, and that nothing he does will change either.

And that, I would submit, is not a bad general statement of what parenting is all about.

A Splash of Freedom

2008-08-20T18:11:00Z

“Ducks!” Sam said, and rushed to the side of the little pool.

Yellow bathtub ducks were circling in a blue plastic pool. The water was a worrisome gray-green color, and the ducks looked a mite moldy themselves. Sam didn’t care; he grabbed one of the floating toys, shouted “duck!” (which could have been either description or warning) and fired it back into the water with a splash.

“How about a prize for the little guy?” the carnival barker said. “Everyone’s a winner.”

Sam grabbed again, shouted again, threw again. The barker leaned in conspiratorially, as though Sam would understand what he was saying. “Basically, it’s how much you want to spend,” he said. “The prizes hanging up” – there were inflated plastic bats and figures and whatnot clipped to the pole in the pool’s center– “are $5 and the ones in the bin” – a wire mesh cage on the ground – “are $2. They pick a duck, and they win.”

I pondered. Should I just say “no,” or should I launch into a diatribe on my philosophic objections to the Barney-ized, self-esteem-driven “everyone’s a winner” approach to life, which has yielded a generation which believes the world owes them a car, a cell phone and pocket money?

Then I realized I hard a better excuse. “I don’t have any money,” I said. “My wife has it all.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I have a wife too.”

Sam was still throwing ducks, crying out in triumph at each splash.

“You mind if he plays with the ducks?” I asked.

“No, that’s fine. Maybe it’ll drum up business.”

So for the next 10 minutes I stood watching humanity stream by in its bulgy, sun-burnt glory while Sam threw ducks and celebrated. And it did seem to drum up business, with other children wondering what the curly-haired not-yet-two-year-old was up to.

It was, in a way, an act of surrender.

My wife and I had taken Sam to the fair with visions of him laughing through the kiddie rides, petting bunnies and horsies and goats, bouncing on one of those big inflatable moonwalk things, and generally soaking in the sights and sounds.

It had not quite been so.

He tolerated the carousel. The bouncy moonwalk thing cost extra, and I’m cheap. We did, however, buy him a pony ride for an extra $3. He tried to escape halfway through, clinging to me as I tried to hold him on the saddle.

So we headed toward the animal barns, only to be waylaid by a display of tractors. Sam climbed on a little John Deere and perched in the bright yellow seat. “Tractor!” he said, bouncing, then clambered back off to climb on a bigger John Deere.

I could have stayed there a while, dreaming of a beasty little tractor with a front end loader and a backhoe – toys for boys, I’m telling you – but my wife was committed to the bunnies/horsies/goats vision, so we dragged him off toward the barns.

Now, the barns at the fair are mostly long low sheds, designed for single rows of cows. The cows are tied facing in toward the feeding troughs. So when you go “see the animals,” what you mostly see is row after row of cow derrieres.

Ick.

The horse barn was a bit better. Sam got up close with a couple of noses through the bars of the stalls. Then he apparently startled a big draft horse, which spread its lips and bared its teeth. It’s lips were about the size of Sam’s entire head and its teeth were all yellow and crooked and horror-movie-looking, and that was the end of the horse barn.

He was briefly intrigued by a caboose sitting on a stretch of rail. “Thomas!” he called out. But the caboose lacked Thomas the Tank Engine’s gentle personality, and that didn’t last long either.

Finally, realizing that I could not predict what would catch Sam’s fancy, I just put him down and followed him while my wife was off in search of funnel cake.

He wandered through the crowd, staring up at people and sometimes saying “hi!” It was fun to watch them laugh, then look around for the attending parent. Seeing me, they would laugh again.

Then Sam found a dusty driveway, sat down and started pouring dust on my shoes. That got boring (for me) after a few minutes, and I nudged him along until he found the ducks.

I got different looks from other parents at the duck pool. They would watch Sam splashing in the water (he was soaked when we finally left), then look up at me with an expression of vague disapproval.

Then they would hand Willie (by this time we knew the barker’s name) their $2 or $5 and send the children off to choose prizes. Sometimes they did not even bother with the picking-up-a-duck part.

Then off they’d go, with the children looking back at Sam with expressions that said, “I’d rather be doing what he’s doing.”

And it struck me as I stood there that maybe in my desperation to keep Sam happy I had actually done the right thing. Rather than buying him a prize, I had let him enjoy himself. Rather than forcing my idea of fun on him, I had let him show me what his idea of fun was. And rather than reflexively saying “no!” to the splashing, and I had asked instead what harm it could do (other than exotic diseases from the water, of course).

And you know what? Contrary to what the T-shirts say, in this case freedom really was free.