Mother's Day

Every year since high school, I would call up my friend, Dave, and wish him a Happy Mother's Day. A different kind of mother.

This year, my wife, my best friend and best human I know, Carly, celebrated her first Mother's Day. A little over ten months ago, she qualified for this holiday by laying there full of drugs while highly-skilled technicians cut her open and pulled Jackson Wolf D-B from her guts. I watched. It was awesome. Sorry, Dave, I forgot to call you this year. I'll make it up at Father's Day, because I think we've matured a little (just a little).

Carly has been the best mom I could have had for our kid. She QUIT HER PERFECTLY GOOD JOB FOR THE SECOND TIME to take care of the Wolf and follow me to another goddamned city for my career. In standard Carly form, of course, she got a better job than I did and gets paid more. But that's another thing.

When I was a kid, maybe 12 through 17, I called on a number of women as "Mom." My relationship with my own mother, at that time, wasn't great. I was struggling with my identity, she was struggling with lots more. We didn't have much time to talk about it. We fought sometimes (I pushed her down once when she came home drunk and started on a tear about how I let the dogs on the couch), and we ignored each other sometimes (I informed her of my whereabouts only when I needed a ride). Since I had a bit of a disconnect with my actual mother, all of my friends' mothers filled in the role in some aspect.

I am sure that at some level I was an awful leech. I know I overstayed my welcome at times. I know that people got sick of feeding me. I know that my insistence on calling someone "Mom" who wasn't my mother was a bit more pressure than most wanted, but I was a self-absorbed shit JUST LIKE ALL OF YOU. I did get a broader perspective of family life, and I came to accept a lot of things that mainstream society had been ignoring for decades. Single moms (Brock's mom), dysfunctional families (Ben's mom), absentee parents (Leo's parents), weird hippy parents (Chaz's folks), and appearing painfully normal moms (Josh's mom) all lent a bit to my world view. I got to know the dynamics of so many lives, and I didn't judge them (much--I was a right bastard when it served me--I told Leo, "fuck your family" once just to hurt his feelings), so I learned to be flexible.

I've tried to keep that perspective when I think about how to raise my kid. I'm terrible at it. I'm a judgmental bastard, really. But Carly always goes back to the internet and her friends' Facebook feeds, and comes back with some hippie goddamned idea that she works into the weekly kid-raising routine. It usually becomes apparent when I ask, "what goddamned blog did you read that told you to do that?" The kid hasn't choked to death, so I guess we're OK. I gave him a bit of inflated tubular Amazon packaging today to play with. He LOVED it.

Where was I? I don't remember. My wife. Carly. She's really the best. I keep saying, she's brilliant. She's one of the smartest people I know. The only thing she's done wrong is stay married to me. At this point, she has enough knowledge she should know better. But she keeps on keeping on.

Over 36 years ago, my mother was lying there under heavy sedation when they dragged me out of her guts. She's the reason I've been around long enough to write this thing, and she deserves the most respect of anyone I know. Her life hasn't been easy, not one decade of it. I hope, on balance, that not drowning me along the way has been worth it. I hope I've been entertaining on some level. She'll probably tell me I'm all right.

My mother gave me the perspective to appreciate and want to have a kid. She really appreciated the things I did through the years, from artistic to academic achievements, and I could tell that I surprised her on occasions. She kept me around to make her life more interesting, and I think I delivered on that. She still plays Warcraft for fuck's sake.

It's almost midnight. I've kind of lost track of where I was going with this. But I want you all to know that I love my wife, mother of my boy, and my own mom, mother of her own boy. We're of a kind, us, a thing.

Tempus Fututionus Fugit

TIME FUCKING FLIES.

Ten months. TEN! My kid is ten months old. I barely remember what it was like before him. In my memories, there's a duck-fuzz blonde kid bouncing on his haunches in the background. So weird. This is evolution: it makes you think that the baby is everything.

I've found out that I'm a pretty good dad. I like my kid. We hang out. It's a good time. When he's fussy, I take him and walk him around. I feed and change him about half the time. I get up and plug him (insert pacifier) in the middle of the night when he needs it. I spread ointment on his mandrill-like red butt when it's like that. I don't complain about it, I don't dread it, and I don't warn people away ("Don't go there! It's the plague!"). Nope, I have become a dad.

The kid started yammering "DA DA DA DA DAAA DA DA" this week. Totally on his own, I swear it. We were hanging out in the bathroom, looking at The Baby in the Mirror, and he just starts jawing out, DA DA DA. We practiced a little and I caught it on camera (youtube video to follow). When Carly heard him say DA DA DA the other night, she just melted. Poor thing, she's doomed. Wait until he learns to say MAMA (right now, "MMMAAAAA" is reserved for when he's mad).

This week, Carly was out of town for some work stuff, and I was a single dad. Every morning, I'd get up, wrangle the dogs, feed the kid, and drag him off to daycare, then go to work. In the afternoon, I'd go home and walk the dogs, then collect the kid and spend the next few hours entertaining him and stuffing him full of food before he'd crash and I put him to bed. All in all, a deeply exhausting experience. But not a daunting one. The Wolf and I had a good time watching cartoons and hanging out.

Now, I've had a bit of wine and Carly is napping on the couch, so I don't think I'll wax philosophical about how I hate the way that dads are portrayed in commercials and how it's hard to find a book that's cute and reassuring about babies and dads, because I'm quite okay with whatever the world does to ignore how I actually interact with my kid. It's all worth it because of this thing here: