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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

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

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

My Three Sons

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

After my third son popped out, my wife smiled through her pain and said, “I’m surrounded by penises!”

Indeed, baby Ari joins what is now four-fifths of a boys basketball team, including Jacob (3 years old), Benjamin (6), and me. While we are more than the parts that make us guys, Wendy endures the actions and comments that shout out the differences between her and us.

 A couple of years ago, Benjamin made a colorful drawing, then startled family members by asking, “Do you want to see a picture of my penis?” Judging by his innocent face, we chalked it off as natural pride and chose not to draw more attention to it by laughing — in front of him.

A few weeks ago, Jacob sang an unfamiliar lyric to a previously squeaky-clean song, “If you’re happy and you know it, hold your peee-nis.” Because Jacob has a less naive personality, we suggested saving the anatomical references for the bathroom. Hearing this, both our sons went to the bathroom and promptly shouted the word “penis about a hundred times.

All of this only strengthens the reality that Wendy is outnumbered. In the weeks following Ari’s arrival, Wendy has bemoaned what the future holds: years of kids forgetting to put the toilet seat up and peeing all over the floor (mostly due to morning grogginess), a lifetime of male competitiveness (including rough-housing that will result in various injuries), and scores of violence-oriented toys (whether they start that way or are transformed into such).

A little girl would have shored up my wife’s side of the gender battle. Wendy would have someone to shop with, play dress-up with, and roll her eyes at the boys with. Yet, as outmanned as Wendy is, she also revels in being the mother hen among the roosters. She knows that she’ll always have us to look out for her and do the stereotypical male things, such as lifting heavy objects and taking out the trash.

Wendy also sees that, for all our testosterone tendencies, her boys have a sensitive side. I take some credit for this because of my habit of crying during romantic movies, willingness to let my wife do the home fix-it jobs, and penchant for interior design. With my warmth-expressive qualities and Wendy’s own insistence on teaching communication and feelings, we help our sons go beyond traditional male boundaries.

For instance, Jacob, who is the most rough-and-tumble of the bunch, has an obsession with hair. He strokes the long tresses of every woman he can, be they babysitters or Mommy. While this may get him into trouble one day (I can just picture him coming on to a girl in a college bar, asking, “Let me touch your hair,” before the girl’s boyfriend shows up), it highlights his inclination to show affection, something less usual for the male half of our species. Jacob even strokes Ari’s wispy hair to comfort him and, when I’m tired, pets my head while singing me a lullaby.

Jacob also has an interest in understanding what a woman goes through. He recently asked Wendy, “I want milk in my boobies, too.” Now that’s empathy.

Equally fascinated with the breastfeeding experience, I jealousy look on…No, wait, what I meant to say is that the other day, Benjamin watched Ari snuggled close to Wendy and said to the baby, “You have a great mommy.”

Benjamin frequently goes beyond verbal nurturing as he enjoys holding Ari in the rocking chair and using baby talk with him. At just six, Benjamin even knows how to change positions — from cradling to upright against the shoulder — to ease Ari’s fussiness.

As a father, I recognize how much I do incorrectly, some of which is typically male. I sometimes sit on my butt to watch a ballgame while my wife cooks and I often disappear from nighttime kid meltdowns to my porcelain throne. My boys will probably learn some of these traits from me and will certainly pick up more from their friends. But I also pride myself in helping to teach them to bridge the gender gap, to be in touch with their feelings, to connect with the wonder of babies, to listen to what girls think and respond to them the way they want to be responded to.

In this way, I hope my sons will grow to understand women more and know how much better life is when they look for ways to share rather than isolate. It may be that, by the time my boys become fathers, they will bear the babies and breastfeed the infants themselves. Bad Arnold Schwarzenegger movies notwithstanding (remember Junior?), I feel confident that my three sons will make the women in their lives as happy as they now make their mommy.

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

Advanced Parental Age

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

A year-and-half ago, I wrote a column called “To Three or Not to Three.” In it, I aired out the debate my wife and I had about having a third child. Wendy felt that she wouldn’t be complete without kid number three. I was pretty much done at two and feared, among other worries, that I’d be stretched too thin if we went from “man-to-man defense” to “zone.”

Well, my wife won out. I knew she would. She frequently (always) does. And she’s often (definitely not always) right. She’s the one to see the big picture, to recognize that the shorter-term pain is worth the lifelong gain. That’s how I came to see her vision of our family life.

It did take time, though, to rise to Wendy’s commitment level. Of course, the opportunity to have regular sex didn’t hurt the decision to at least attempt conceiving. But I gradually became interested in baby names and the possibility of adding a daughter to our litter or another son to form a true boys club. After months of trying (with a couple of false positives mixed in), my wife emerged from the bathroom with that little blue line shouting out a definitive result. I felt excitement swell my chest, not to mention pride that the old man still had it.

Speaking of old, the issue of age is one of the new wrinkles we’re dealing with in our third round of pregnancy. We didn’t start our family till our early 30s, which seemed young to us in this modern era of working parents. Now that we’re pushing 40, we’ve jumped to a different level. At our first important OB visit, there on the video monitor, just above the miraculous image of the tiny embryo was a label next to my wife’s name – Advanced Maternal Age.

As if our family expansion didn’t have enough issues, now this machine was categorizing my wife as elderly. Maybe that’s OK for medical students or insurance people, but it ain’t OK with me. Nobody tells me that my wife is an “old mom.” More importantly, what does that make me – “Death-Risk Paternal Age”?

We’re still reeling from the label and Wendy talks about how this baby’s making her more tired than the first two did. I just think it’s the weight of a life made more full by two kids, a mortgage, and a husband concerned that he’ll be the odd one out once the baby comes. But what keeps us positive is our two sons, who will soon gain another teammate with which to terrorize us when they get older.

When Benjamin (our 6-year-old) learned he would be a big brother for the second time, he was over-the-moon. I’m not sure if his glee was enhanced by thinking he would catch up to his friends who had multiple siblings, or if he was thinking about the justice involved in knowing Jacob (2-1/2 years old) would have to contend with his own younger sibling. Whatever the reason, Benjamin has since settled into an old pro attitude, so secure with his position as the first-born that he doesn’t talk to us much about the baby.

Instead, he talks to his friends. The other day, his buddy David asked him, “How did your mom get pregnant?”

Benjamin shrugged and said, “It just happens. You can’t control it.”

“How do you know she really is pregnant?” David went on.

“You start to feel it tickling and you get sick,” Benjamin reasoned.

Since he seems certain of how pregnancy works, we’re letting him feel like a know-it-all for a while. It’s Jacob who appears to be on less firm ground about being supplanted as the baby of the family. While he has played a little more with the doll and stroller he got last holiday season, he has also done a lot of climbing on Mommy’s stomach, looking for a cuddle and a way to discount the bump in her belly. When asked how he’ll feel once his sibling arrives, he said, with his nose scrunched up, “I want to fight the baby.”

We’re not worried that he’ll perform jujitsu on the infant, but we’re doing a lot to assure him that he’ll still have lots of time with us and that he’ll be able to teach the baby all he knows about favorite songs and somersaults.

While being a brother might be an involuntary mystery to Jacob, Wendy and I have chosen to be in the dark about at least one thing. After a couple of ultrasounds, including an astonishing (and a bit surreal) three-dimensional glimpse of our growing baby, we maintain our gender ignorance. As I said before, a girl would be nice and a boy would be wonderful too. But all we care about is a healthy child, especially now that we’re of Advanced Parental Age. Despite all this mystery, much is very clear to me. Whether boy or girl, this child will be loved and entertained by an amazing mother, two funny and caring brothers, and a dad who’s thrilled to have more content for his columns.

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

The First Adolescence

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

My son is going through a grumpy stage. And a selfish stage. And a tantrum stage. He has enough sulks, brooding looks, and dagger I am going through a stage myself. It’s called the I-am-a-weak -minion-of-a-3-year-old stage.

What chance do I have against a boy who can be so confoundingly difficult and so darn adorable at the same time? Every request I make is met by a “no,” or a creative alternative. Take this classic episode from “Scenes From the Dinner Table”: “How ‘bout some more broccoli,” I encourage. “No,” he fires back. “You used to think it was as good as dessert,” I respond. “No, I didn’t,” he says, giving me his best “You’re tearing me apart!” Rebel Without a Cause impression. I then try to explain to him that,  “I am your father and I distinctly recall that you preferred broccoli to cookies when you were younger.” “Well, I don’t like it anymore. It sticks in my teeth,” he offers, indicating a green sprout with his tongue.

Then I try getting mad, “You cannot leave the table until you eat something healthy!” I say, pounding my fist on the table. How does he respond? He laughs himself off the chair. How else do you respond to a pushover who tries to act tough?

All of this is a result of what some of those smug, know-it-all child development experts (my wife included) call the “first adolescence.” This is the time toddlers/early preschoolers bombard their parents with an arsenal of defiance, manipulation, and emotional see-sawing that rivals that of teenagers. All of this is in the name of gaining dominance and independence.

It’s a valiant battle for power, and he is really good at it. Take this little nighttime conversation for example: “Let’s brush your teeth,” I say. “OK, let’s do it with the tube of toothpaste,” he says as he ingeniously saves time and effort by rubbing the Tom’s of Maine Silly Strawberry tube over his baby teeth. This time, I laugh, and thereby lose all credibility as an authority figure for at least a week.

I constantly teeter between bemusement and frustration in the face one-liners that any teenager would be proud of. “It’s not fair” is a favorite he uses. It’s the utility fielder of sayings that comes in handy whenever he’s not allowed to watch any more <i>Land Before Time #148</i> or told he needs to wear a jacket because it’s colder than ice cream outside.

There’s the “I’m not tired/I’m tired” combo platter. This involves saying he’s not tired when it’s 10 at night (don’t ask how he gets that far). We especially love it when he says “I’m not tired,” then promptly crashes into slumber like a KO’d heavyweight. He uses “I’m tired” when he doesn’t want to put away his toys. He also uses this excuse to try to stay in bed late (a time-honored sign of a teenager). And then there’s the now-famous “I’m tired of taking naps at school.” Try to untangle that one, why don’t you?

Other links between the age of 3 and 16 are his fussiness about his wardrobe, the way he struts like a tough guy around the girls in his class, and his repeated cry of “I don’t want to go to school” (my wife and I have visions of him cutting from circle time to go shoplifting in the candy aisle at Ralphs).

Lost in all of this are my feelings. I’m the one who feels like throwing a tantrum when I offer to put on his shoes, only to be pushed away. “I want to do it!” he says. Patiently, I watch him struggle for a couple moments. Then he says, “You do it, Daddy.” So I start putting them on before he barks,  “Not these shoes. I want my <i>other</i> shoes.” And that’s not to mention the bruised ego I suffer when my little angel rebuffs me whenever I ask him how his school day went, “I’m not going to tell you.” Ouch!

But while teens are on their way to the adult world, where power and independence are vital to survival, a 2 to 4 year old is on his or her way to the playground. So the experts recommend that parents be “firm in a gentle manner.” But what exactly does that mean? It sounds like they suggest I whisper when I say, “Don’t poke your baby brother in the soft spot on top of his head.” And, should I give him a snuggle while I warn, “Sit on your tush in that chair or you’ll fall and break your arm”?

For the most part, I follow the experts’ advice (toning down the violent imagery) and have modest degree of success, despite my occasional meltdowns into immaturity (“Fine, if you won’t sit still for this picture, I won’t color with you later!”). What’s important is that I see my son for what he is — a little boy who has a healthy quest for independence and the most glorious giggle for me when I come home for dinner.

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Traveling Solo

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Family Man

By Gregory Keer

The Amtrak Surfliner is very late, which means I’ve spent the last hour trying to manage Benjamin’s alternating excitement/disappointment.

“Here comes the train,” he says as he rushes toward the oncoming freightliner.

I have to dash to shepherd him away from the tracks, while balancing a 300-pound “survival” backpack of food, books, games, and (hopefully) enough extra underwear to survive the rest of this two-day experience as a “single” father.

The train finally arrives, gleaming brighter than Thomas the Tank Engine could ever hope for. We board and sit down in a nice bulkhead-like spot. The train lurches San Diego-bound and Benjamin gets giddy, “We’re going, we’re going!”

We have three-and-a-half hours before we meet Mommy, who is at a child-development conference. Sometimes, I coast a little when Wendy is around to share the parenting load. In times like these, I’m focused and notice how much he looks like his Mommy and appreciate more comments, like “Can trains fly?”

For part of the trip, we snack on healthful peanut-butter pretzels (“Daddy, you eat them”) and cookies (“These are for me”). I try to teach him checkers, but he creates a new game (“I just want to hold them”). I point out the sights visible from out window: abandoned homes littered with scrap metal, drab warehouses. Not much to see until we hit the jackpot — a parking lot for cranes! It’s all Benjamin can do to point out each one. I never knew cranes could come in so many sizes and colors. I never knew I would ever care

Then, a young woman sits down across from us. She’s heading down to a small town in the South Bay. She’s a single mother taking a break to visit a friend. She’s friendly and nice to Benjamin. She doesn’t want to talk much; she’s just enjoying some quiet time before disembarking for a night out with her old friend.

The gentle, perpetual motion of the train beckons me to sleep. I try valiantly to stay awake for Benjamin. But he soon drifts off against my shoulder. This is indeed a little slice of heaven, sitting back as the sky darkens over the industrial landscape, me and my son.

When we awake, a new person is sitting across from us. A young girl. She has candy. She gives the candy to Benjamin. Quiet time is over.

Despite my grogginess, Benjamin starts to wrestle with me on the seat. “I’m going to get you.” I pretend to go down in repeated defeat, then draw the line at, “Let’s hop on pop!” A crowded train is one place where Dr. Seuss is not helpful.

I try to curb the sugar rush with offerings of a light dinner, including cheese and carrots. He snaps off a piece of carrot, “I’m all done now!.” So I offer a walk. It’s hard enough to follow a three-year old without the wobble of a train ride. We manage to walk around a bit, annoying/entertaining other passengers before going downstairs.

He climbs on an empty seat and discovers the emergency lever. I tell him not to touch it. “Why?” he asks. “Because it makes the train stop.” He thinks about this, “I want to get off, now,” he sees, reaching for the device. I lunge for the lever and explain, “Other people don’t want to get off.” “Why not,” he asks. Normally, at this early-evening hour, I would have my wife around to spell me from this persistent challenge.

We go further up the train car and meet a very nice group of people. A woman offers Benjamin one of those foam dinosaurs on the end of a bendy wire. He picks it up and becomes absorbed in it. I get to talk to an adult for a while. She was rather cute, too, and very impressed at my fatherly abilities. And, yes, the cliché of how helpful a kid would’ve been in my single days did occur to me.

But then the inevitable statement. “I have to go potty.”

After potty, we go for another trip around the train, all the while reviewing the reasons why we cannot get off the train just yet. Finally, the train pulls into the station. Benjamin can’t wait to see Mommy. And neither can I. He still has one last question for me to wrangle, until she arrives to meet us.

“Where’s San Diego?” he wants to know.

“We’re here,” I say.

“I don’t see it,” he opines, trying to make sense of the fact that a train station cannot possibly be all there is to the city.

I’m wiped and thankful that Wendy has the station wagon she drove down the other day. We drive off to pick up our friends Nicole and Joel and go to a late dinner. I try to remain nonpartisan as Wendy takes her turn parenting, as she works on feeding our picky eater.

Then, Benjamin needs to go potty again. Feeling guilty that I have shirked all duties for the past hour, I volunteer to take him. We go in and it is then I discover something horrible — he has already gone in his clothes. And its not…exactly…tidy. In fact, it’s a Defcon 4 alert untidy.

Exhausted, distressed, and trying mightily not to let him see me sweat (we mustn’t say anything to cause a regression in the potty training), I proceed to unpeel his clothes.

Exhausted, distressed, and not at all afraid to cry, he says, “I don’t want to be naked, now!” I try to console him while I pat him down with several rolls of toilet paper in this public bathroom. A man walks in and starts to giggle, watching me try to clean up my poor son.

Then, Joel walks in. The search party. “Are you all right?”

“Does it look like I’m all right,” I say, looking fairly untidy myself.

Joel tries hard not to laugh. I tell him to tell my wife, “She owes me – big time.”

Joel leaves and I ponder the desecrated Blue’s Clues undies. I decide to throw them away. Benjamin is not happy about that, but I’ve lost the ability to reason. I shove his pants back on (though still a bit untidy) and burst out of the restroom with him under my arm. I return to the table and there they are, laughing hysterically at my predicament. Benjamin laughs with them. And I say to my wife, “I am done parenting for the rest of the weekend.”

It didn’t stop there, actually. Wendy had to work at the conference the next day and Benjamin was all mine for most of that Saturday. It turns out he had a stomach virus (the obvious cause of the bathroom fiasco) and I felt like a complete failure because I couldn’t get him to eat or have fun at the kids’ museum.

It was all of 48 hours, but in that stretch of time, I tasted a morsel of life as a single parent. It was chaotic. It was precious. It was exhausting. It was character building. Could I do it on an ongoing basis? Yes, because I treasure my son and would do everything I could to help him grow up happy and strong — in spite of untidy occurrences.

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

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