Category: Fatherhood

With the Clementi case in the news, the shooting at a high school in Ohio, and the latest episode of Glee highlighting how bullying leads to catastrophe, I asked myself what it takes to actually bring positive social change into the lives of kids today.

You see, the adults have no idea how to react to a digitally connected world. I’m sure horrible things happened before MySpace, but I don’t know if they were nearly as viral or long lasting. On top of that, I think kids are just getting meaner. We are, so as not to hurt their feelings, being too nice to our kids. Their reaction is to be mean in return. It’s a bit bizarre and disheartening.

I’m glad that shows like Glee try to take on issues such as coming out of the closet, the lack of arts education in schools, and societal expectations of gender and roles. But I’m just not convinced that a 43-minute episode does enough to keep the conversation moving. We see it; we think to ourselves what a tragedy it represents; and then we move on to the next week’s episode.

Somehow parents need to be empowered to engage their children in difficult conversations. We should start when kids are much younger before they are overburdened with puberty, confused about their own identities, and struggling to make a place for themselves in the world. Young children are much smarter than we give them credit for, and I think challenging them with reading, writing, and arithmetic needs to be supplemented by making them aware of how we are different, and why those differences make us a better society.

I want my children to understand there is poverty, and that a middle class upbringing is not a right. I want my children to understand that there is race, and that because of it we stereotype and do harmful things to one another. I want my children to understand that someone can have two mommies or two daddies, and that that’s okay.

But I want my children to be kids, and to be naive as long as possible. And I think that’s the wall that stops us from having those conversations.

Between now and then, it sure would be nice to find a way to make it happen. I guess it’s one more thing to add to the to-do list.

Related articles

• Parents: Gay Suicide Victim Had No Close Friends (abcnews.go.com)
• Last week’s ‘Glee’ inspires record traffic for The Trevor Project (cnn.com)
• Motherlode Blog: Shootings in Ohio School Provide Another Opening to Talk About Guns (parenting.blogs.nytimes.com)

We’ve just spent an amazing weekend on the shores of Capitola, CA. It’s a really great, quiet, little beach town in Santa Cruz County.

We made a full weekend of it. On Saturday, we swung by the Monterey Bay aquarium. While we were there, I heard a mother screaming at her child about the value of a bottle of soda, and why she asked for it if she wasn’t going to drink it. It was a horribly adult conversation, and the 8-year old had no idea how to react. There was no framework for the kid to understand a budget, the value of a dollar, or even why they shouldn’t consume frivolously. There was just a mom yelling at her daughter.

It was just a horrible experience for everyone involved. The mother and the daughter yelling at each other. The two friends who were awkwardly stuck at the table. And me for eavesdropping, wishing I hadn’t, and then not being able to break away to see how it all ended.

It made me mentally note to never have that fight with my kids.

From there, we made our way back up to Capitola to check-in to our little beach house. Our next door neighbors were having a massive 35-person birthday party, and it was quite fun to watch all the kids run around. You notice kids, and their behavior, a lot more after having kids.

I kept thinking to myself, holy shit how do I prevent Amelia and #2 from being like that one over there? Or, wow, that girl is so kind, I wonder how to make sure my kids are kind? The one I kept coming back to that proves I’m officially an old man is, there’s no way in hell she’s ever wearing anything that looks like that!

I’m not great at a lot of things, but I will give myself credit as a strong pattern matcher and observer. I’ve learned the value of listening over the years, and have found that a large part of the equation of being a strong listener is being strong with your eyes as well. With all of that said, I still can’t find the pattern that distinguishes the girl getting yelled at for buying a soda she wouldn’t drink, and the kind girl on the beach who helped her sister/cousin when she bumped her head.

I think it’s going to take a lot more pattern matching before I can figure this one out :-/

Micky and I are pregnant a second time.

I know, it’s shocking. We were shocked too. And so has everyone been who has heard so far. But it’s going to be amazing!

Today we went to the pre-natal folks to get our last ultrasound. To say we were nervous is a massive understatement. After Amelia’s oemphalocele, there hasn’t been an ultrasound machine that hasn’t made us nervous. As fate would have it, we were in the same room with the same ultrasound tech who found the problem with Amelia. Too many coincidences to really get comfortable.

Amelia was with us, and we were giving her a play-by-play of what her new sibling was showing off. We started with the spine, and worked through to the heart, various organs, 10 toes, 10 fingers, and then we shut our eyes so we wouldn’t see the sex.

We wanted to know everything was okay first.

Dr. Goldberg, with whom we’ve been through a lot, came in, and told us that everything looked great. We then excitedly, the three of us, got a peek at the little guys boy parts. And we smiled. And now we’re going to be four.

And it’s going to be amazing 🙂

I came home today, and took Amelia to the ocean. We watched the sun set over the Pacific as the low tide took the ocean away from us and towards the horizon.

There’s a break about 40 yards out where the waves climb up as if there’s a ramp that blindly throws them in the air only to leave them with a long fall on the other side that wasn’t expected.

When you sit on the beach and look through those waves at the setting sun, there’s a calming effect. It’s a moment I wanted to last forever, but as quickly as the sun sets the moment disappears with it.

Every time I look at Amelia I realize just how ethereal everything actually is. Her entire life can be summarized as a series of moments built on top of each other but simultaneously forgotten as soon as the next one arrives. There is no need for memory. Only for experience.

I’ll remember every single one of these moments, and she’ll remember not a single one. Our first kiss. Our first sunset over the Pacific. The moment the doctor told us it was a girl. The first time she held my finger.

And when she does begin to remember, it will come from her own eyes, and her own world view. That’s a beautiful thing, but something that is solely hers. I don’t know how to share those moments with her. Maybe time will teach me, or maybe I’ll always be an outsider, but regardless of the outcome the fact still remains.

Through this series of moments, I am just a flicker. But the sun set was beautiful.

Watching Amelia Rose grow up is a fascinating exercise in humility. We are truly brought into this world in as useless a form as is possible. And yet, we immediately challenge the world around us to explain itself. First through sight, and then through some combination of touch and taste.

The phase we’ve just entered with Amelia Rose is mobility. Explore the world through a sense of mobility which enables independence and a sense of adventure. And so enters the age old adage that one should learn to crawl before they attempt to walk.

It turns out that that adage is misleading.

You see, it’s entirely possible to walk before you crawl. Amelia Rose is doing her darndest to do just that. Given enough help, she’ll definitely get there. So why all of the emphasis on learning to crawl first?

The danger isn’t that she learns to walk. It’s that she never learns to catch herself when she falls.

So my job is to catch her when she needs a net, but to let her fall when there’s a lesson to be learned. And somewhere in between she might learn to crawl, but I know she’ll find her way onto her feet and into the next adventure.

Oh baby, the places we’ll go!

I tried to give Micky a bit of a break this past Saturday, and so Amelia Rose and I went to the local library for story time.

We were the youngest ones there by about 6 – 7 months, but it was still lots of fun. We did a few songs, including the “Itsy-bitsy spider”, and then got to hear about Spot’s first day at school. At that point all the 7+ month olds decided to just play, and so they brought out the toys, and they had at it. Amelia Rose and I ran upstairs, and kept going with story time. We read seven more books, and somewhere between four and five, she actually fell asleep. So it goes 🙂

After the seventh book, Micky showed up, and we headed to the De Young museum. There’s a Picasso exhibit, and it’s quite an amazing collection of work. They won’t allow strollers in the exhibit hall, and so I had to carry Amelia around. It made me the center of attention as everyone came up to look at her. She loved the attention for about one and half rooms, and then fell asleep. The Picasso exhibit was amazing for the fact that each room seemed to show a different decade of Picasso’s life, which if you know Picasso loosely translates to the various periods of artistic style through which he moved. The exhibit really emphasized to me that Picasso spent a lot of time understanding a piece before creating it, and that Picasso spent a lot of time re-imaging the same theme over and over again.

It was a really amazing experience, and one I think folks should definitely get to if they can. I would not however suggest carrying around an 11 pound baby for an hour while there 🙂

Amelia Rose was just amazing, and it was fun to have daddy/daughter time together. The first of many to come.

The children of the NICU are amazing. They fight for a world filled with anguish, horror and despair. They fight because life in its most basic form simply wants a chance. The lifecycle of a NICU baby is defined by loss. One either loses tubes, wires and IVs or loses the fight. And yet the moment of victory is very simply defined by relief. Leaving is almost never the end of the journey, and so in the absence of champagne and cheers, the staff, parents and baby simply let out a sigh of relief.

The heroes of the NICU are the nurses who become yhe support network that the family desperately needs to survive. They cry with us; they laugh with us. The nurses are vehicles of the machine above them, but in their brilliance they become the kind hand of hope connecting you to that sigh of relief as you walk your baby out the doors.

For us there were two very special doctors who saved the day. They fought for us. They believed in us and Amelia, and they got her home to us faster than we could have imagined.

And our fellow NICU parents were the late night, early morning warriors who fought this battle alongside us. Not a club we wanted to join, but one whose shield we now proudly bear.

We’re going home now. Thank you to the wonderful staff of CPMC, and to all of the heroes who helped us bring our daughter home.