Saving Face

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

On a break from jury duty, I pay for a tuna wrap that I’m beginning to regret when I get a text message from my wife. It reads: “In ER. J OK but needs stitches on face. Have an appt with plastic surgeon at 1:00.”

The stomach that sandwich was intended for drops to the floor. I speed-dial Wendy.

“Jacob got attacked by a dog at the animal shelter,” Wendy says, trying to keep her voice steady.

“The dog bit through his cheek and slashed his arm.”

“Oh, God,””I mumble as horrific images twist madly through my mind.

“We’ve been trying to reach you for two hours,” Wendy says wearily.

My head rings as guilt hastens my exit from the café.

“The jury room is in a basement and there’s no cell reception,” I stammer as I head toward the parking lot.

“I’m fine,” Wendy assures me. “Take care of your jury duty. Your dad is with us.”

“No, I’m coming,” I say, shoving aside anxiousness about the legal ramifications of shirking civic responsibility. I don’t care. I have to see my boy.

“I’ll put Jacob on the phone,” she says.

I try to breathe, bracing myself.

“Hi, Daddy,” my 6-year-old speaks into the cell. “I’m OK. Don’t worry.”

I squeeze my watering eyes tight, relieved to hear strength in his voice.

“I wanted to pet the dog and he jumped at me,” he explains.

I draw back, as if the animal had leaped at me.

“Who helped you get the dog away?” I ask.

“Benjamin yelled for Angie,” Jacob responds proudly about his older brother. “If it wasn’t for him, I would be more hurt.”

“Were you scared?” I say, poorly focused on driving out of the parking lot.

“Yeah,” Jacob says, “but I think the dog was more scared. That’s probably why he attacked me.”

In the midst of his own crisis, my son has greater concern for the canine than himself. This is why he had gone with Angie, our babysitter who works with dogs, to the shelter so he could pet and feed the lonely creatures.

As I race to meet my family, I am torn up by jagged thoughts. Why did I let him be in harm’s way, even though I want him to care for other beings, even though I do not want him to live in fear? Why didn’t I go with him? Could I have been the hero and prevented the attack?

In the plastic surgeon’s waiting room, I gather Jacob into my arms. His left cheek is heavily bandaged, blood smeared beneath the gauze. His left arm is similarly wrapped around the forearm.

In the exam room, the surgeon gingerly undoes the bandaging. On Jacob’s cheek are puncture wounds from the canine teeth that clamped down on his face. One gash reveals muscle tearing. I wince, but Jacob needs me to look fearless.

After an initial anesthetic shot proves too painful for him to bear, it’s determined that Jacob will be operated on in the hospital later that evening.

A few hours later, we take Jacob in for his surgery. He worries it will hurt. I tell him the Bill Cosby story of “Tonsils,” in which young Bill gets the gas to make him sleep, then awakens to buckets of ice cream. Jacob likes that prospect.

Wendy and I send our little guy into the capable hands of the surgeon. We wait with Benjamin, who has insisted on joining us for every step of Jacob’s ordeal. Our youngest is with my mom, being kept happy on an impromptu sleepover. My dad and step-mom sit with us, providing comfort and food.

More than an hour passes before the surgeon emerges to announce that Jacob did well. He explains that we were lucky the dog opened its mouth before releasing from our son’s face or else the cheek might have come off. I can’t get this fact out of my mind, despite the doctor’s prediction that, as long as infection is prevented, Jacob will heal without complications.

More than a week passes. Jacob has had to take it easy, avoiding his usual running and jumping. His recovery has been enhanced by an endless outpouring of calls, visits and gifts from our family, friends, pediatrician and people we know only a little.

Generally, Jacob is in great spirits, unconcerned about the marks that will require he wear a bandage on them for another eight months then take years and further surgeries to fade. He loves his dog and remains unafraid of other animals, though he won’t volunteer in a shelter anytime soon.

Wendy and I are the ones floating in a strange, achy place, wishing we could have controlled fate. Wendy has cried a lot, unable to sleep for the first days following the incident. I feel a bit dazed at times and hug Jacob so often it annoys the heck out of him.

And yet, we are so thankful. Deeply grateful that our son’s face still reflects the energetic, creative and compassionate person that he’s always been.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Health, Parenting Stress | Leave a comment

Odd Man In

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

“Jacob’s got to do his morning pee,” Wendy says, zipping up a lunchbox and grabbing waffles from the toaster.

Eyeing the clock, which shouts “You’re gonna be late for school,” I shepherd my five-year-old to the toilet.

“I can’t do it,” Jacob whimpers.

“Relax,” I tell him, using a voice so strained a Zen master would feel nervous.

Benjamin (age eight) runs in, nudges Jacob aside and takes a leak, putting even more pressure on my middle child.

After Benjamin skidaddles, I cheer Jacob on, “Let’s go pee!” when little naked Ari pads into the bathroom. I assume he’s there as a spectator so I forget about him.

“Go pee! Go pee! Go pee!” I chant and — sure enough — pee fountains out. Warmth bathes my foot. Giggling wafts to my ears.

“Ari!” I shout as my toddler showers my shoe with a firefighter’s gusto.

Feeling the wetness reach my socks, my frustration melts into laughter. I turn from Jacob, who finally tinkles (in the proper receptacle), kiss Ari’s proud face. The way my littlest child sees it, anything the big boys can do, he can do better.

One of my worries for my third child was that he would get left in the dust of the older kids. For much of his early life, Ari was schlepped to the other boys’ activities and restrained by a high chair or stroller as his siblings caromed around freely. Adding to his helplessness, he got sick a lot. In between countless incidents of cold and flu, Ari endured a hospital stay for a respiratory infection and surgery for ear infections.

But, in the half-year leading up to his second birthday, Ari developed into a family superstar. Armed with a head of cottony blonde hair (in a family of darker-hued tresses) and vibrant blue-green eyes, our smallest child does everything louder, faster, and funnier than his siblings did at the same age.

When he wants to be noticed at mealtime, Ari wears his bowl on his head. If his siblings fight over the remote control, he snags it, squints at Mommy or Daddy – in his attempt to wink – and tries to tune into his own show. Should he get bored at a concert, he wanders around, hugging strangers (under our supervision) with the gusto of an uncle who’s just come over from the old country.

Being the littlest person in a family of five never daunts Ari. In fact, the bigger the group the more he shines. At a minor-league baseball game, while a dozen other children begged sweetly for practice balls, Ari high-fived every pitcher in the bullpen until he got a ball. Having no idea what kind of cool souvenir he earned, he was just pleased to have outsmarted the other kids.

In true youngest child fashion, Ari imitates everything his older brothers do, then improves on it. If he notices Jacob fighting us to put on clothes, Ari grabs an outfit and attempts to dress himself. When I ask a reluctant Benjamin to scrub his teeth at night, Ari scrambles to the sink to use a spare toothbrush. Seeing Benjamin and Jacob whine as they don school bags, our little toddler disappears into a closet and emerges with a backpack, properly strapped to his shoulders.

Although Ari thinks he’s ready to join his brothers at school, he does have to work on one particular aspect of his big personality. He’s kind of a thug. Despite being in the fifth-percentile in height, he steals his daycare friends’ toys and shoves kids down during play. While this behavior works well when he wants to retaliate against a roughhousing brother, he comes off as a kind of “ant bully” among his peers. Making matters worse, he does all of this with a smile that’s more “This power thing actually works” than “Get out of my way, you worthless knave!”

I’ve seen a lot of nice, quiet third children who go about their business, resigned to their last-place finish in the family race. And while we’re working on re-channeling his daycare intimidation tactics, we couldn’t be more thankful that Ari chooses to take his place alongside his brothers.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Siblings | Leave a comment

A Little Inspiration

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Weeks into the torment that middle-of-the-night crying causes parents of newborns, my wife and I prayed that our baby, Jacob, would find his thumb to soothe him. Night after night, we lay in bed, deciding if we should feed him, rock him, stick him out on the porch, or let him wail it out. Yet, if he could simply suck a finger or two, as his older brother Benjamin had as an infant, Jacob would cut down scores of painful wake-ups.

Alas, Jacob never did, though he tried. On several mornings in a row, we would fetch him from the crib and find scratch marks all around his mouth. The little bugger was making the effort – he just had bad aim.

So we gave in to stuffing a pacifier in his mouth and, after his suck grew strong enough to keep the thing in place, we were granted more consistent shut-eye.

Oh, what consequences we suffered for giving in to our shallow lust for slumber. For the next several years, Jacob relied on the brightly colored soothers to sleep. However, he frequently misplaced his pacifier during the night, losing it under his blanket or dropping it out of the crib altogether (with parental bionic hearing, we winced upon hearing the plastic smack the wood floor). Whenever this happened, he’d shout for us to find it or, when he switched to a big-boy bed, run into our room to get a replacement from the stash we kept in a night table.

Nighttime “pacie” sucking wasn’t enough for Jacob. He needed one for car rides, TV watching and trips to the movies. If we didn’t have a pacie, he would often freak out, having become addicted to it as if it were toddler Valium.

After Jacob turned 3, we campaigned to abolish the pacie. We tempted him with rewards, offered a ceremonial burial of the little suckers and appealed to his maturity. But the pacifier played on … Until one shining night, just before his fifth birthday, when Jacob announced, “I don’t need my pacie anymore.”

Wendy and I looked at each other in disbelief. We hadn’t discussed ending the habit with him in weeks. After watching other signs of Jacob’s evolution since he began a new pre-kindergarten class, we tingled with the possibility that the binkie era was over.

Sure enough, Jacob survived the night. And the next night. While he slept on the third evening, Wendy created a certificate of completion from the “Pacie Fairy” and put it under his pillow along with a few dollars. Jacob arose the following morning with a huge grin. He really had quit the pacie – on his own terms – and he was beside himself with pride.

As much as we felt proud of Jacob, we experienced pangs over our baby’s growing up. In his force of will to surrender the pacie, Jacob shunned his beloved blanket, stopped petting our hair during evening cuddles, and even eschewed his mattress, choosing to fall asleep on the floor. We told him he didn’t need to chuck all of his soothers, but his resolve was firm.

And, for the first time, Jacob was an example for his older brother, who had done everything “first” before him. Benjamin (8) hadn’t given up sucking his fingers to fall asleep, which, as the dentist explained, was preventing his front teeth from fully extending. Needing some orthodontic work done as well, Benjamin was fitted with a “palate expander,” which had to be tightened each night to enlarge his mouth to accommodate future teeth. The metal contraption made finger sucking impossible.

Sad at the loss of a longtime comfort and struggling to relax at bedtime, Benjamin found a cheerleader in Jacob, who told him, “If I can do it, you can, too.” This certainly helped my oldest boy, who can now fall asleep without those fingers in his mouth.

In this month of resolutions, during which I have my own challenges of giving up procrastination and late-night comfort foods, I am humbled by the determination of my sons. Along with the happiness they usually bring me, my boys have become inspirations as well.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man | Leave a comment

Let’s Hug It Out

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

When I was 15, one perfectly fine day was ruined by a hug. As I was running out the door to meet my morning carpool, my mom stopped me with, “Did you forget to hug your mother?”

I relented, fighting all the uptightness my adolescent attitude exuded, and she embraced me with the conviction a person usually reserves for airport departures. Having just recently applied her perfume, Mom not only planted a kiss on my cheek, but also transferred four ounces of Ralph Lauren fragrance to me.

From the carpool until I reached my first class, I suffered intense teenage anxiety over the prospect that someone would think I intentionally spritzed myself to smell like a fresh bouquet of roses. Considering that I attended an all-boys’ school, the stakes were pretty high. I tried relentlessly to erase the aroma, wiping my face with my hands, even resorting to spitting on my palm to neutralize the aroma.

Everything went fine until we had to write an in-class essay. In the quiet, Steve Weisburd picked up his head and sniffed the air.

“Is that Lauren perfume I’m smelling?”

I sank into my seat, hoping to melt into the plastic of the chair.

I survived that day without detection, though I still can’t forgive my mom for turning me into a department-store perfume counter. What I can’t fault her for was the hug. Because of the hugs of my mom and other relatives, I was blessed with an extra measure of love and security.

Today, I don’t transfer cologne to my sons, but I do hug them a lot. From the time of their births, I have held them, kissed them and pinched their chubby legs. As they’ve grown, I’ve cherished the times they’ve come up to hold my hand while walking, climbed onto my lap when tired, or run to me for a bear hug upon my return home at the end of a long day. My wife and I have also let the boys crawl into our bed for morning cuddles (it’s gotten more crowded with five of us and they fight to be next to at least one of us).

The general love standard in our home has our boys hugging and kissing each other when they say goodbye in the mornings, reunite in the evenings, or whenever the spirit moves them. With extended family and friends, affection can sometimes be tricky, depending on my kids’ moods or familiarity with the person. They’re outlining boundaries that may insult a few people on occasion, but I know they need the space to figure it all out.

For my part, I am given to occasional concerns about the boundaries of affection. My wife’s expressions of adoration for my sons have come easier because she’s a woman. Coming from a generation whose fathers often saw physical warmth as unmanly, I fight the lingering feelings of discomfort at showing love as my children mature.

With my oldest almost 9 years old, he’s gotten to that point when he doesn’t want a big hug and a smack on the cheek before he goes off to school. Sometimes he just dashes to the bus, forgetting to do more than wave goodbye. I feel like such a wimp in my disappointment. I want him to grow up, but not at the expense of familial closeness.

The good thing is that, at night in front of the TV or while reading books, he still snuggles up to me. This is great, but then I wonder if I’m allowing him to be too much of a little boy. The feeling is mostly due to my social self-consciousness, which asks, at what age is it not OK to cuddle with my son? Will he still lay his head on my shoulder when he’s 16 … 21 … 40?

My hope is that he will. No matter what my kids’ ages, I will never revert to handshakes and slaps on the back. As my children grow older, I will keep hugging them, kissing them and throwing my arm around them, because they will always need more than just the words of Dad’s love.

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Motormouth Mom

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

While ladling three-ingredient Chinese soup for my sons, my wife reports on the day’s events.

“Benjamin forgot to turn in his homework, but did well on the spelling test. Ari hugged Amaya till she cried. And Jacob made 11 hearts out of construction paper.” She says all of this without taking a breath before I momentarily interrupt.

“What does Jacob want in his soup?”

“Nothing but chicken and rice,” she blurts before rattling off details of her work meeting.

I listen as I serve the boys soup. Jacob makes the “ewww” expression and yells, “Who told you I wanted chicken?!”

I point at my wife, willingly snitching on her.

Jacob yells again and cries, “You always listen to Mommy! You always believe her! You think she’s pretty and you like talking to her!”

Wendy and I try not to laugh. We manage to solve the soup problem, but two truths emerge from Jacob’s statements: I do think his mommy’s pretty. And I do like talking to her.

In my first phone conversation with Wendy, I felt my usual nervousness over being able to sound smart and entertaining enough to win a date. I feared the dead spaces that sometimes happened in talks with other women. But Wendy took care of that. She filled every conversational pothole with bubbly comments about her studies in special education and blunt questions about my dating history. Despite a history of over-thinking my dialogue with girls when I was a teenager (I used to pre-script, like some kind of romantic telemarketer), I kept up with Wendy’s verbal pace.

We went on lots of dates in those early days, spending much of the time jabbering about everything from favorite amusement parks to people we knew in common. Even after parting, we’d phone each other and yak some more – for hours. When my apartment mates complained about my low voice filtering through the walls, I’d just move the receiver into the closet and talk from there. I have no idea what Wendy and I said to each other, but we never seemed to run out of words.

My love for my wife began with all that talk, and continues largely because of it. Although we’ve lived together for more than 15 years, we still burn up phone lines and cell towers. We email during the workday, which is how my columns began since we typed our thoughts about being new parents when Benjamin (now 9) was just a tot. In perhaps our most nauseating display of communication, we sometimes IM each other from different rooms in the house if we’re working late at night.

Between the two of us, Wendy hogs the greater percentage of the sentences. Much of it is because she talks at a rate the Road Runner would envy (ask anyone who’s tried to decipher one of her phone messages). But because Wendy never quite shuts up, I hear all of her feelings, her complaints, her fears, her plans, and her love. With all the syllables, there is no mystery – just honesty.

Our sons have inherited Wendy’s gift of gab. Sometimes, all the talking gets my kids in trouble. Benjamin continues a record-setting pace for getting N’s in self-control because he can’t resist conversations with friends though they might be across the room. Jacob compels preschool teachers to take turns talking to him when he’s in a particularly verbose mood. Ari keeps his daycare compatriots from sleeping because he wants to chat about getting snacks.

Most of the time, their verbal skills help them because they can hold their own in discussions with both peers and adults, especially with my motor-mouth wife. She’s so proud of their articulation, she actually stops talking to hear them! Honestly though, and to her credit, Wendy listens to her sons – and to me – as well as she speaks. She’s an equal opportunity gabber.

In our family, talk is frequent but hardly cheap. We have my wife to thank for that because the words she inspires help us to be understood and to understand others. It’s something I value in the mother of my children, even if she wishes I had focused this Mother’s Day column on why I think she’s pretty.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Mother's Day | Leave a comment

Sarah’s Garden

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

We have this 70-year-old wooden chest that houses bundles of our memories. Inside are photos we have yet to press into books and a handful of art projects from our sons’ early childhoods.

One of the pieces is a handmade photo album of Benjamin (now 9) during his daycare tenure. Glued to the fading colored construction paper are pictures of him showing off his superhero underwear with his toddler friends, building sand castles as if real people were preparing to move into them, and dancing in the middle of circle time. On the cover of the album is a picture of a chubby-cheeked boy and the painted words, “Good-Buy Benjamin.”

The misspelling of “goodbye” is what makes me most wistful, especially now. English is the second language of Sarah, the daycare teacher who assembled that album and helped stack the building blocks of each of our three boys. For the last eight years, she has been the third parent to our sons. With the last of our boys heading off to preschool, I attempt to craft words of gratitude and admiration with melancholy tugging at every keystroke. I do not want to tell Sarah goodbye, no matter how it’s spelled.

We came to Sarah in 1999, after weeks of struggling to find the right care for our precious firstborn. As working parents, we had cobbled together maternity and paternity leaves, grandparent assistance and babysitting options for as long as we could. And finding one nanny sunbathing in our back yard while our son cried his eyes out in his crib was our last straw. Besides, Wendy and I believed in the socializing powers of daycare, so we researched every facility we could before we found our match – less than a mile from home.

From the start, the almost 6-foot tall Israeli was Benjamin’s tower of security at the daycare. She led our son and his United Nations of friends (the children hailed from El Salvador to Trinidad) in arts-and-crafts activities that rivaled those of the best preschools and in imaginative play on a sprawling yard most day camps would envy. Although her prices were modest, she had a tendency to dig into her savings to outfit her place with the latest equipment and for visits by that rock star of the preschool set, Mr. Al.

A year after Benjamin left Sarah’s garden, our middle son joined her band of merry kids. Sarah had to raise her accented voice a bit more with our pinball of a boy, but she and her honey-hearted assistant Efrat channeled him into painting and gymnastics. Adding to all the developmental benefits to our son, Sarah allowed us the flexibility to bring Jacob late if we had a morning off and her keen observations gave us insight into the complexities of Jacob’s nature.

Not long after Jacob’s graduation from daycare, Ari became our youngest child for Sarah’s tutelage. By this time, Sarah was so comfortable as the third parent that she peppered our older boys with familial questions, about their schools and friends, whenever they joined me to pick up their little brother. For his part, Ari walked around daycare like a grinning prince of his mini-kingdom, along with his fellow royal cousin Aaron.

Sometimes, Sarah drove us crazy with her persistent advice about tempering Ari’s tendency to push the other kids around, but we always knew she was hardest on us because we’d become so close. And it didn’t hurt that Sarah brought in the ebullient and funny Ziva to help keep up with our mischievous tike.

Sarah has given so much to our children. She’s taught them and protected them, nurturing them like her own. We are humbled by the fact that, without her, our kids would not be quite as proficient at friendships or manners or even singing (despite Sarah’s famous penchant for warbling off key). Although we will continue to visit her and have her over for dinners, I feel a dull ache as we adhere the last memories into the album of Sarah’s daycare. So, we will delete the “bye” – or even “buy” – from our farewell, because what remains is the “good.”

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, School | Leave a comment

Evil Dad

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

I don’t enjoy seeing car wrecks, reading about celebrity break-ups, or learning of the latest politician caught doing something illegal. But I do like witnessing other children behaving badly. I know it’s sinful, a little evil, even. That doesn’t stop the twisted inflation of my ego resulting from other parents having a similar or worse time than I usually have. Honestly, I do not wish misfortune on any parent — I just want to be there when it happens.

I didn’t always know I had this character flaw. For most of my fatherhood tenure, I’ve been too preoccupied to notice it while my own kids went through phases of throwing breakable items in grocery stores and telling friends that Santa Claus doesn’t really exist. My youngest boy, Ari, may be my biggest troublemaker. At an amusement park, the other day, he thought it was hilarious to randomly swat other grown-ups while I carried him through the crowd. I’m pretty sure he would have laughed harder should I have been punched in the nose by one of his surprised victims.

Although I know that all children misbehave at times – and that pushing boundaries can be healthy, especially when the stakes are low at the younger ages — I worry about the judgments of others who might see me as an ineffective parent. I sometimes fantasize about turning into a Dickens character, pulling my kids by the collar, and growling at them in a cockney accent, “Mind your manners, my urchins. It’s not wise to make your father look poorly.” (Actually, I did that once and my kids laughed at me).

But a recent conversation has allowed me to embrace my vampire-like desire to feed off other parents’ misery. During a basketball game for my oldest son, I watched a father on the sidelines, trying to give advice to his eight-year-old kid, who responded with, “Why should I listen to you, Daddy? You stink at shooting!”

Then, my friend Adam, a master of the witty aside, leaned toward me and said, “There’s a column for you. Write about how much fun it is to see other parents suffer.” We spent the rest of the game recounting tales from the parenting dark side. When once, as younger men, we might have shot the breeze about girlfriends, pro sports, and bad job experiences, we were now reduced to cackling gossips.

I told the story of the panicked mom who scoured a zoo in search of her missing son. When she finally found him in the dimly lit reptile center, in which she had looked twice before, she screamed, “Why did you go in here alone?” The child responded with the classic, “I don’t know.” As Mom launched the rest of her tirade, I tried to conceal my grin as other people escaped the house of snakes and the nearby baboons screamed along with the poor mother.

We talked about the father who leaped out of the stands to accuse the opposing coach of letting his players hit baseballs at his son on the pitcher’s mound. The agitated dad was just trying to be protective, but the tantrum stood out during a tee-ball game among five-year-olds who could barely tap a stationary ball. We took glee in the pain of the dad who, after overhearing his child refuse to share any of his toys, announced, “We’re really nice people. Please don’t judge us by our son.” And, in one of the more ugly examples, I noted the wicked thrill of seeing another parent get chewed out because his son bit my son, and not the other way around.

I am not proud of my primal need to feel better about my own failures by recalling the difficulties of others, but it does remind me of how absurd it is to try living up to the expectations of calm and wisdom most of us place upon ourselves. As this Halloween approaches, I won’t need a costume or candy. I’ll be the Evil Dad, feasting on the treats supplied by parents trying in vain to keep their kids in line in the dark of the night.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Halloween, Humor | Leave a comment

Frozen Peas

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Sitting in bed with a bag of frozen peas in my lap, I was in heaven. Never mind that I was enduring a steadily pulsing pain in the middle of my body. My wife was catering to me. She served me food, allowed me to nap for much of the day, relinquished ownership of the remote control, and gave me long looks of adoration. For the first time in eight years — since my wife got pregnant with child #1 — I was the center of attention.

The secret? Four little syllables. Va-sec-to-my.

In my proud state of convalescence, I had grand visions. Mostly, they involved variations on the following dialogue:

Wendy: “We can’t have sex tonight. I might get pregnant.”

Gregg: “Of course we can. I got a vasectomy!” (Insert image of me in superhero spandex, bearing a giant VM on my chest for Vasectomy Man!)

Certainly, my vasectomy would not preclude the other excuses of “I’m tired” and “honey, the kids are playing Candy Land™ in the next room.” But this new state of male harmlessness would put me in the driver’s seat on all other occasions.

I must admit that more readily accessible physical activity was a motivator for getting snipped, though it wasn’t the only factor. My wife and I had reached the point of child saturation. Three boys were enough to keep us happy and busy. Also, after years of primarily relying on Wendy for the contraception, it was my turn to take the responsibility.

So, four months after Ari was born, I made a pre-op appointment for my little procedure (please don’t take the word “little” the wrong way). In Dr. Leff’s office, I felt a bit funny. It wasn’t just because the urologist was a family friend whom I knew since I was 12. It was the thought that, upon getting vasectomized, I would no longer be able to create children. I knew I would still be a man, but this was an alteration of my identity.

Then, as Dr. Leff explained the procedure, I realized this was one of the most grown up things I could do. It’s one thing to decide to have children. It’s another to close the chapter on creating kids and concentrate on raising them.

A week later, I found myself in the surgical chair, ready for this new chapter. Dr. Leff politely asked if I wanted to watch the procedure. I passed on the observation part (I was confident but not THAT confident) and opted for a verbal play-by-play.

“Last chance,” the good doctor said, as he prepared to snip.

“Let’s do this,” I chuckled in my vulnerable state.

With that, he cut, cauterized, and tied off the vas deferens in less than 20 minutes. The only evidence was two small red marks.

At the end, a scene from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask popped into my head, the one in which the sperm prepare for lift-off. In my sequel to this vignette, “workers” assemble for a big speech from the boss, who says, “We’ve closed the factory.”

Yep, my “boys” had officially retired. Barring a $10,000 surgery that could restore my baby-making ability, I was a new man. As Wendy drove me home, I announced, “Let’s go for lunch to celebrate.”

“Will the Novocain last?” she said.

“I’m fine,” I said with bravado. “I feel — oh, that’s a little sore. I need to lie down.”

At home, I applied the bag of frozen peas to reduce the swelling, but the pain never rose to the level of serious pain. Maybe it had something to do with all the wonderful service my wife provided during the day and the loving hugs of my sons who came home later (I decided to leave out the details of Daddy’s doctor visit and opted for a “Daddy strained his leg” explanation), but by the next a.m., I felt tender but not uncomfortable.

I managed to coach my oldest son’s basketball game that morning and, aside from some ill-advised jumping up and down to protest a bad referee call, you would never know I was nursing my lower anatomy.

About six weeks later I was pronounced sperm free. Today, I feel no difference in my body. Mentally, I’m rather proud. I’m even part of a club of friends I never knew had had vasectomies. Like so many other intimate details, most fellas don’t discuss getting clipped. Perhaps it’s because, physically, it isn’t as big a deal as it may have been for generations past.

As I prepare for this month’s Father’s Day, I’m happy to report that, while I’m no longer in the baby business, I’m ever more focused on just being Dad – and hearing a few extra “yes’s” from my wife.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor, Vasectomy | Leave a comment

Lovers and Fighters

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

My second-grader has grown seriously shaggy hair. He thinks he looks cool. His karate instructors call him “Shaun Cassidy.” His four-year-old brother calls him “easy pickings.”

That’s why, when the two get in a scuffle, Jacob goes straight for the locks, grabbing a hearty handful in his little mitt and tugging with the expression of a cowboy rasslin’ a rodeo steer.

Often, Benjamin screams in pain, “Help! He’s pulling my hair again!” He doesn’t hit back; he just takes it until my wife or I show up for the rescue.

Jacob thinks it’s funny to see Benjamin cry. He doesn’t realize how lucky he is that the older brother who’s twice his size doesn’t rearrange his face, Picasso style.

Both my boys love more than they fight, but Benjamin’s extremely patient. Perhaps it’s because he studies Tong Soo Do martial arts and maybe it’s his in-born temperament, but this kid has the tolerance of Gandhi.

He’s the kind of child who, when told it’s OK to shove an opponent out of the way in soccer, asks, “But can I stop and tell him ‘I’m sorry’?”

Now Jacob’s different. Sure he’s charming as hell and, as he matures, is learning to channel his burning emotions into monkey-bar athleticism and an ever-increasing vocabulary. But, man, no one wants to be within ten feet of a ticked-off Jacob for fear of meeting his fists of fury.

That’s not to say that Jacob doesn’t have his reasons for wanting to belt Benjamin in the kisser. Even when all Jacob wants to do is scribble with a crayon alongside Benjamin while he’s doing homework, my eldest son isn’t shy about dishing such classic brother lines as, “You’re so annoying!” and “Get away from me!”

Then there are the times when my Zen-master of a son just loses it. This happened the other day as Jacob dared to pick up Benjamin’s much-beloved GameBoy in the middle of record-setting Pokemon game. My seven-year-old shoved Jacob to the floor. Jacob yelled like a howler monkey and barreled his head into his big brother’s stomach. Benjamin roared back and threw his little brother back down before I decided to break it up.

While watching this unfold, part of me was dumbfounded – maybe a little entertained (even one-year-old Ari found the whole thing hysterically funny) — at how it went down. Part of me was proud of Jacob for being unafraid of Benjamin. Another part of me was OK with Benjamin showing some toughness against his younger brother’s aggression.

Once I apprehended my two “extreme fighters,” I realized I wasn’t disappointed in them. It was a mixed-up feeling, given that I do espouse the use of talk over the deployment of violence. However, I couldn’t shake a primal reality – all siblings beat the crap out of each other.

This sibling rivalry thing has been around so long the Bible credits the first brothers with starting the whole trend (with less than preferable results). Looking into my own history, there are knockdown battles I had with my poor younger sister who finally developed a Bionic Woman leg kick to neutralize my Olympic half-nelsons. The fighting is just something all parents have to deal with since siblings naturally get jealous of each other because of perceived preferential treatment and get punchy because of the sheer volume of time they spend together in homes and car backseats.

We bemoan our children’s failure to abide by our values of nonviolence. We fret in embarrassment that public displays of discord reflect our own failures. But where would we all be if we didn’t throw our siblings into a few hallway walls?

Experts say that fighting helps children learn to resolve conflicts with peers. Because of the relative safety of battling with a family member who will generally love him no matter what, a kid can develop the right way to settle differences. Another benefit of the rivalry: realizing that the world is contentious and often not fair. Through sibling wars, children accrue a sense that they have to live with some injustices and move on from them to other matters. While we must instruct our children to resolve their differences with words, we should also let them struggle among themselves, just as they will need to do in the big, bad world beyond us. That way, when a viciously insulting boss socks them in the gut, they have a reservoir of sibling-fed feelings to help them choose the right reaction.

Given our many goals for family harmony, it’s worth noting that having a houseful of scrapping kids is rather healthy. It better be, because my three sons are only getting bigger and the fights gradually becoming nastier… and, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear Jacob yelling that baby Ari has him in a headlock.

Posted in Child Development, Columns by Family Man, Siblings | Leave a comment

Grosser Than Gross

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

Before I had my first child, one of my biggest fears was taking him to the bathroom at a sporting event. While other men worried about midnight feedings and dropping a baby on his head, I fretted over a trip to one of the satellite offices of Germ Industries.

Flash forward to Benjamin’s first pro baseball game. With the sun shining and the home team winning, I was in heaven as I sat with my three-year-old, cracking peanut shells. In the eighth inning, Benjamin finished his lemonade, jumped up, and did the “pee dance.” My stomach dropped.

“If you can wait, we’ll be home in a half-hour,” I lied.

Benjamin’s eyes nearly crossed as he held it all in. So I walked him up the stairs as if approaching the door to Linda Blair’s room in The Exorcist, and entered the eighth-level of hell.

As we moved through an oppressive crowd of beer-drenched guys, Benjamin bee-lined for the urine “trough” and was about to reach his hand in to play with the deodorizing cakes when I pulled him back with enough force to make him cry. After calming him down, we got in line for a toilet, and waited an eternity in the hot, pungent room.

Once inside a stall, Benjamin was awed by the double toilet-paper dispenser, the sanitary seat covers, and the cool oval-shaped toilet seat.

“Don’t – touch – ANY – THING!” I bellowed, startling him again.

“OK, but I have to go poopie,” he said pitifully.

With every obsessive-compulsive alarm shouting at me, I cleaned the puddles off the seat with toilet paper. Disgusted, I pulled him out of the stall to quickly wash my hands, and returned to find another man using our toilet. He soon left, but I went back in to find — the seat newly sprayed!

At this point, I lost all sense of decorum. I wiped the seat, pulled out a tissue cover, and sat my son down. Frankly, Benjamin could care less about the microbes attacking us from all sides. He just did his business, asking questions about baseball, monkeys, and hot dog condiments.

When we finally left, only a half-inning had expired, but I felt strangely different. I realized no one was going to die of bacterial infection and there was a ballgame to watch with my son.

Parenthood has changed my attitude toward a lot of things I once considered too disgusting to handle. Now on my third infant, I barely notice yellowish-brown poop splotches on my sleeve and wear spit-up like a badge of honor. The cheesy white stuff on the back of my black T-shirt says, “Nothing grosses me out — I’m a father.”

I used to wince at seeing adults clean boogers with flimsy tissues, but now I willingly offer my sleeve to wipe my kids’ noses. My wife goes one better. In the middle of a charming musical performance at school, Jacob (3) let out a sneeze that would’ve made the old whale in Pinocchio proud. And there, for all to see, was a drooping trail of snot that had the parents in the audience repelled and giggling. Without hesitation, Wendy ran up to the stage and wiped her little guy’s nose clean with her bare hand!

All that mucous is nothing compared to my pre-parenthood fear of long-tailed, disease-ridden rats. I had nightmares of having to climb through infested attics to change traps and meet angry rodent relatives. Well, a few weeks back, I was pulling into my driveway when my sister, visiting with her family, waved to me from the front door. Not realizing that she was warning and not greeting, I rolled into my parking spot — right over the carcass of a dead rat. The popping sound alone was enough to make me cringe. Worse was having to clean up the carnage without looking like the total ninny that I felt like.

My brother-in-law, Tim, himself a little shy about rat entrails, volunteered to help me dispose of the unfortunate creature. His bravery had the same motivation as mine. We wanted to show our kids that things like this just happen and can be handled without freaking out like some weak contestant on Fear Factor. So, Tim scooped up the deceased while I held the body bag and hosed the remains down the driveway.

Before children, I would have hired a specialist to get rid of a dead rat and called a Hazardous Materials team to change a diaper. But I’ve changed for the better. By handling guts and germs without publicly cringing, I’m teaching my kids not to fear these little disgusting parts of life. I’d rather they fear strangers, oncoming cars, and hot stoves than microorganisms and natural body functions. Yeah, I’m one tough daddy now — just don’t ask me to clean a high chair. Now THAT’s gross.

Posted in Columns by Family Man, Humor | Leave a comment