Car seats

Hiatus abate us! I'm relatively certain that makes no sense but it rhymes and has a nice meter so, we're going with it. The point is, I have a distinct lack of will when it comes to writing on this blog with anything approaching a fiber rich diet.

ANYWAY, we've moved and are relatively settled. Life has attained some sense of normalcy which means it's about time for something to go wrong. So, I'll just sit here and wait until then. Just kidding. I'll sit here and wait and drink my whiskey with diet Mountain Dew (because when you're drinking who needs all those empty soda calories). Besides, I'm never going to be able to write a blog for a living. I have neither the time nor ability. Instead I'll continue pooping out these little nuggets of wisdom like a trail of breadcrumbs through the maze of parenting and life. Note my sacrifice.

Car seats: essential for raising your child in modern America and a sore spot in the parent-child relationship. Yes, safety and all of that. Blah blah blah, I get it, but also the tantrums and screaming. These little space-aged polypropylene wonders are great for preventing your child's death in a car accident, and that is not to be dismissed, but they are also a disturbingly common scene for some of the greatest meltdowns in child-rearing history. You have before you but a smattering of the experiences in which I have played some roll first hand. Godspeed.

The Boiling Lava Feint

The Problem: In this scenario, your child will act as if the mere movement of its person in a direction approximating the general location of their car seat will scorch their delicate smooth skin like a red hot nickel ball through memory foam. It is not uncommon to experience this phenomenon at the mere mention of a car seat or going anywhere. If you're child is a telepath with a voodoo-like sense of something about to happen they'll just creepily bring their magic telepathy hand to their temple like Professor-X and glimpse that thought right out of your fucking skull.

The Solution: I don't know, planned ignoring? I think that's a concept I learned somewhere along the way. I grew up with a father whose go-to disciplinary technique was "planned ignoring". As we got older he imparted said wisdom to us with the sage retort, "Just ignore it." The only thing I ever heard when he said that was my blood boiling. But I digress. I've simply learned to walk around with Magneto's helmet on 24/7. I have raging back issues from trying to sleep in that thing, but at least my child can no longer telepathically sense the car seat a' comin'. 

The Plank of Protest

The Problem: If you were unaware, children come pre-programmed for planking maneuvers. Tens of thousands of years of evolutionary development has seen fit that upright walking comes with the development of musculature strong enough to support said upright walking. Now, I have no idea if that's how locomotion actually works or why it works the way it does, but I am relatively sure that your child has gone rigor mortis stiff when attempting to be placed in their car seat. In accomplishing this task they have become the third side of one of the world's strongest shapes, the dreaded triangle.

The Solution: Tickling, and hopefully your child reacts to actual tickling. There's no easier way to release the tension in your child's core than by tickling. Apparently I'm not the greatest tickler. Kelly? Oh totally. Adryn laughs and laughs and laughs with her when it comes to the tickling. Why? No fucking clue. I literally do the same things, in the same places, with the same faces and sounds and I get a pity giggle followed by an emphatic, "More, mommy."

The Twist and Shout

The Problem: No, it's not 1962 and your child is not a member of the Isley Brothers, but 9 out of 10 babies spring forth from the uterus able to perfectly mimic this classic dance craze. I'm not even sure it was a dance craze but I'm a historical revisionist so I make it a point to not let things like primary source material and facts get in the way of my writing. Regardless, The ole' twist and shout maneuver, while loud and somewhat ridiculous, can at least provide some moments of entertainment as it is not out of the realm of possibilities for your child to end up in compromising positions. Small victories folks, small victories. Plus, you know you're going to have to fill that senior open house scrapbook with something.

The Solution: So long as you can weather the battery to your auditory nerve, just let it happen. At some point you'll end up with a child head down, feet up, on the floor of your vehicle. Natural consequence is a great teacher in these semi-controlled moments; no chance for serious injury and all the possibility in the world for a great photo-op. Just let it come. Take a nice long pull off your flask while you wait and prepare your phone for a quick pic when things literally go south for your child. I live for these moments.

The Death Roll

The Problem: This antic passes into the realm of "quite possibly possessed" because it's silent. Eerily silent. And your child is able to summon some inexhaustible level of energy, most likely from the gates of Hell. Verbal protests are replaced by perfectly timed rolls that continue to confound the physical laws of the universe. Newton ain't got nothing on this shit.

The Solution: If you're trying to wait it out you've most likely been sitting in the same parking lot for the past three hours. Much like a frog dissection, you're looking for multiple points of ingress in order to plaster your child to the seat and find some way to clasp something...somewhere...for the love of Hades just let me clasp something. Clasped the wrong thing? Doesn't matter, your first task is to stop the rolling. Child's arm is now somehow pinned to their crotch? Hopefully that will give you some leverage. You can fix it once the rolling has stopped. 

The Bloody Murder

The Problem: Pure, unadulterated, screaming. For the aurally sensitive among us, this may be the end, and mind you this is no joke. Some kids have the pipes to rend your ear drums in two and others, like mine, have a stubborn streak born of two parents' genetics honed over generations of evolution. They could scream cry for days if they so choose.

The Solution: Ear plugs are your only hope. Yes your ears are still bleeding even with that heavenly dampening of sound, but you can at least get on with your day. Hopefully your car trip is short otherwise you're also going to need a morphine drip. Yes, even with the ear plugs. Yes, even though I called that a solution. Listen, you have to think of contingencies here. Who knows how long this scream cry can last. You might have just ruined the rest of your day, possibly week. Your in the tall grass now, aimlessly wandering through the dark without a flashlight and finding you've become a veritable smorgasbord for hundreds of ticks. Months later, when you emerge from your wanderings you'll find yourself gibbering nonsense sitting in your doctor's office being diagnosed with Lyme Disease. Just hope those antibiotics take care of it, otherwise you're fucked.


You might be thinking to yourself, "geeze Jake, the last one escalated quickly." It didn't, trust me. That one escalated exactly how these situations do. Listen, I've heard descriptions of the contraptions people used to use in their vehicles to keep their children safe (we're literally talking about suspension cables here) and if you're like me, sometimes you have to put your money on the long game. Cars have only been in any widespread use for like, a hundred years. Car seats for kids only a fraction of that time. I'm guessing at some point in the near future some scientist in their science lab will develop a super-material that you can just spray on your child and throw them unceremoniously into the cab of your vehicle without worry. Until then, have your ear plugs handy and don't forget to get tested for Lyme Disease. Nobody wants to deal with that shit.

Raising A Son

I've never felt very confident about raising a son. If I'm completely honest, there is a level of fear and trepidation that I've carried for years when faced with the idea. Growing up, I didn't really fit the mold for the male archetype (I didn't really fit the mold for anything). As a boy, afraid of my difference, I spent large swaths of my youth in one of two modes: avoiding confrontation and close friendships with other boys out of fear of being labeled different, or seeking physical altercations in order to hide behind my anger in (what is a completely fucked up world, I know) the comforting embrace of violence or at least the threat thereof. Raising a son means revisiting that stuff and, quite possibly, reliving those experiences. How am I supposed to do that?

Boys are tough, they don't cry (they barely have feelings for that matter), they relish competition. So, I acted tough, I didn't cry...a lot, and I tried to really like sports. The totally fucked up part of this whole machismo patriarchal culture in which we all came of age is that it's insidious. Like racism, patriarchy is this institutionalized piece of our culture that I can easily avoid thinking about or challenging precisely because I have a penis and identify as a man and the system privileges that. I wish I didn't have to raise my son in that sort of culture.

I recently read an article by a columnist on RockPaperShotgun (it's a PC gaming blog, I'm assuming most of you don't read it or care but). Robert Florence does a column on board games and in this piece enters into the fray of Cards Against Humanity creator, Max Temkin, being accused of rape. He writes, "I’d like to point Temkin to a part of rape culture that actually hurts everyone – this constant bullshit that there is any grey area around consent." I cannot count the number of conversations I have been in with other men about rape and women in general in which there is a very specific effort given to alleviating men of any responsibility when it comes to their own actions. It is mind-boggling. And then it's infuriating. And then it's incredibly sad.

This is the stuff I'm talking about. Debates around rape and rape culture are so beyond excruciating because the impetus is on obfuscating, straw-manning and blurring arguments for the sake of maintaining a cultural order that privileges power over personhood. Consent is a straightforward concept, you don't get to play devil's advocate around questions of consent. If an adult who is in full control of their faculties says yes, then it is consent. If that person says ANYTHING else, it is not consent. If that same person decides to change their mind about their consent, it is no longer consent. If, for whatever reason, that person is no longer in full control of their faculties, actions are no longer consensual. If you are confused by this, you are probably male.

I don't know, maybe all of this sounds a bit heavy for a one-year-old birthday post for my son, but this is the stuff that I see in the future. These are the things that scare me about raising this kid. I want him to be able to enter the world as he is and enter the world allowing everyone around him to be who they are. So, I do my best refusing to allow him to grow up in a house that says he can't cry when he needs to or can't be what he wants to be. I resolve to make damn sure he knows whether he is gay or straight or bisexual,whatever his gender identity, he is my child, and I will love him precisely because of who he is not in spite of who he is. Because being a white American male of Northern European descent, it is important for him to learn to hear the voices of all people as loudly and vividly as he will undoubtedly hear and see the voices of people who look and speak like him for most of his life.

There's a lot to work on, raising a son. There's this omnipresent sense of urgency that seems to weave itself through our everyday interactions even at this age and it's been helpful keeping things in perspective. It's helpful to remind myself that fostering a loving, caring, accepting human being starts with providing a loving, caring and accepting family life. It's beginning to dawn on me that maybe the basics of raising a child, regardless of their reproductive organs or emerging gender identity, are the same. That's helpful.

Watching him dance when he hears music, moving however he wants and not stopping for an instant to check who's in the room, that was when it hit me how much cultural and personal baggage we drop on our kids. This kid is happy dancing and moving and unconcerned with your judgment. He is inquisitive. He climbs stairs and people and chairs even though he can't walk. He cries when he falls (usually because he's scared himself). He's a crappy sleeper and a fantastic cuddler. He loves planes, trains, and dogs. He hates peas. He is blissfully unaware that their is a whole world of crap he's going to have to wade through as he grows up and finds himself. I guess my job is perhaps a lot simpler than I've concocted in my head. Love him, support him, teach him, I think that should cover it for now.

In the final count, I aim to raise a feminist. I think the world will be better for it.

Order and Chaos

Having spent the better part of this last year as a stay-at-home parent raising my son I've learned a lot about control and chaos. Things come and go like seasons changing; blurry, erratic, and unpredictable. In any given week a day can be as different from the last and as different from each other as you can imagine. Then a week comes where I could set my watch by his schedule. I spent a lot of time and energy in the beginning agonizing over discovering his new schedule when there wasn't really a schedule to find. But when I had found it (read: thought I'd found it) I felt triumphant. I had won. I had accomplished something! Except, it would unravel the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that.

There's nothing wrong with accomplishment, but I've noticed in my own life that blind devotion to a goal tends to create in me an unpleasant, unsatisfied, and deeply frustrated existence. I miss all of the important experiences and relationships and learning that takes place on the getting from here to there. In short, I'm not present to the present. I lose my grasp on life, and perhaps more importantly, I lose touch with the people around me. After a month of chasing some sort of order to the chaos I decided, instead, to learn how to live in the chaos of everyday life with a baby. That didn't mean things miraculously calmed down, or some sort of magical peace laid itself like a puke-stained blanket over our lives, it just meant that I was beginning to let go of the illusion of control I was so desperately clinging. You don't find order in the midst of projectile vomit-soaked clothing whilst changing a diaper as your hand so carelessly lands in the pile of viscous poop you are trying unsuccessfully to clean up. [Important side note: Do not google image projectile vomit. It is not worth it. Trust me.] You find chaos there.

I've been asked a number of times what Taoism is, or what someone might read to learn about Taoism and I'll confess, I don't read a lot about Taoism. In fact, I actively try and avoid books about Taoism because, at it's heart, Taoism is about being. I realize that word has become loaded, but I'm using it in the most elementary sense. There is no trick to this stuff, no special chanting or meditation or prayer one can speak in a moment of desperation to invoke peace or tranquility. Attempting to suppress those moments of chaos is exactly what Taoism tells me NOT to do. Accepting them, learning from them, feeling deeply that utter lack of control and fear is the process. Being in it, is the point. Sometimes literally in the case of puke and poop. I act after I become aware of the present circumstances, feelings, and relationships that inhabit a given space. If reading is a helpful tool for you, I would suggest A Walk In The Woods, by Bill Bryson (an author that seems on my mind lately). Unorthodox, yes, but I've found that's where spirituality tends to live for me. Here he's describing his larger experience of hiking the Appalachian Trail:

Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A Mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.  

Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It's quite wonderful, really.  

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, "far removed from the seats of strife," as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge. 

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter. 

It's a surprisingly accurate description of the aim of Taoist practice. The trick, of course, is learning how to live that in one's everyday life where the tranquility and boundlessness of the woods doesn't inhabit your every waking step. And yet, being a stay-at-home parent has given me a perspective similar to that boundless woods, though, perhaps lacking some of the tranquility. The difference, for me, has manifested in marveling at the incredible lack of predictability rather than wallowing in the incredible lack of predictability. I'm not always successful at the former because, damnit, sometimes I need to feel sorry for myself. I think it's a defense mechanism, or an evolutionary instinct that reminds me to step back and settle the fuck down. It would be helpful to hear that more often, "settle the fuck down". If someone would just like to email that phrase to me regularly, or PM me, or text, or post on my facebook wall, I'd be much obliged. I have precisely zero problems fabricating things to freak out about.

The kicker is that a lot of Taoist literature idealizes the state of being of a baby as a sort of pure state, a state in which they act without conforming to any cultural expectations. Babies excrete when and where they want. Babies can cry, for hours, without abate. Babies like naked. Babies yelp and screech and dance and move however they feel whenever they feel. What the Taoist literature overlooks in its zealotry for babies is that those things are usually done on top of someone else. A convenient oversight Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, convenient indeed. Or perhaps, that's the point, a little philosophical joke if you will. How cute.

All of that being said, there is something beautiful and energizing about all of this chaos. It's forced me to remember to pay attention to him, rather than try and control him, the ironic piece of which has resulted in a child who now wants to be on a schedule, like clockwork, and will completely fall apart when he's not. Because, ya know, life. We'll see how long it lasts. Perhaps this time I'll be better equipped to marvel rather than wallow. But more likely I'll be doing both at the same time. I know, I know, "settle the fuck down."

Wording

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. He manages to construct prose that is simultaneously profound and utterly irreverent. I envy him. He writes in his book The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, 

People don't talk like this, theytalklikethis. Syllables, words, sentences run together like a watercolor left in the rain. To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response. If what we say is suitably apt and amusing, the listener will show his delight by emitting a series of uncontrolled high-pitched noises, accompanied by sharp intakes of breath of the sort normally associated with a seizure or heart failure. And by these means we converse. Talking, when you think about it, is a very strange business indeed.

I aspire to be the same sort of keen observer. I don't always succeed but I feel like it's probably a good sign when I can at least recognize when I don't succeed (most of the time). Anyhow, I offer this definitive but by no means exhaustive list of words in homage to a brilliant wordsmith.

THE GOOD

Fred Rogers agrees with me.

Goggles - You put them over your eyes, the body part with which you ogle things. This is just sense-making at it's finest. What would I call the things I put over my oglers? Gogs? Gogglers? Drop the "r". Ah yes, goggles.

Bumfuzzled - Confused is so very utilitarian. Sure, I get it, but for the truly mystifying that doesn't actually enter into the realm of supernatural and breezes past mundane street whilst taking in the aroma of fluster, this is your go-to. Your standby. Your Cronkite.

Kerfuffle - An altercation to be sure, but one that could possibly include pillows and the gentle jabs of a friendly tussle. These are the arguments you have with friends over the best flavor of Starburst (pink, because apparently that's a flavor) or who bakes a better cookie.

Buzzard - This is not a Vulture. It is a Buzzard. Vulture is far too menacing a name for these dopey ass birds. Also, it sounds like Voltron and Voltron is neither a scavenger nor dopey. Voltron is the defender of the universe. A Buzzard, so clearly, is not.

Not a Vulture, or Voltron.

Fart - Clear, concise meaning. Onomatopoetic, managing to capture both the guttural and airy emanations of flatulence. Simple, yes, but powerful.

Comeuppance - A reliably pedestrian phrase that, while lacking a certain panache, dispenses with notions of frivolity that bring to mind words like "fate" or "destiny". This is the shit that happens to you after you've been a dick.

Wee bairn - I'm currently learning my native tongue from a family member who has quite happily ensconced herself in the motherland. When we converse I am treated to a smorgasbord of colloquial phrases and honey-dipped words. This is one of those. It's not a child or baby, it's a wee bairn.

THE BAD

Fred Rogers does not agree with you. Also, that
is one fantastic middle finger.

Abscond - It is not a slinking away in the case of a criminal quietly leaving the scene of a crime. Clearly this was meant to be the name of a subtropical fruit that people commonly misidentify as a berry, emphasis on the first syllable.

Haberdashery - Supposedly a men's "clothier". It has largely fallen out of use in the U.S. (which, finally we do something right) and, truthfully, was never an appropriately used word. The wasted potential here is staggering. What we're hearing and looking at is actually a far better name for a Hash Bar.

Clothier - Does not pass the pretentiousness sniff test. Sounds too French. Lacks imagination. What the hell is this word and why is it used?!

Jocular - I find myself in a bit of a conundrum here because jocular refers to joke-making which implies laughing. The word certainly tickles as it lends itself so readily to jokes, the problem being that the jokes it brings to mind are at it's own expense. The word obviously refers to the male reproductive region as a whole and unfortunately (fortunately?) becomes a caricature of itself. For its lack of self-awareness, it gets shunted into the bad section. Someone redeem it.

Jocular Region

Barbiturate - I'll concede that "scientific" words are more difficult to deal with as the system in which they exist and are created tends to be better ordered than most other language areas, but here's the thing, the cold hard logic of this word could at least serve a dual purpose and also refer to a person who works in both the salon and funeral industries. To wit, "I really need to get my hair done before Great-Aunt Tula's funeral begins. I'm so glad we have the barbiturate in town."

Undoubtedly there are much and more with which to fill this post. All in good time my children. For now, know I will be here to light a lamp on your twisted path through the thick forest of words, sentences, and paragraphs which you navigate daily.

As always, you're welcome.

Baby Development

Disclaimer: This post is in response to the myriad "parenting" (if you didn't know, only women are parents) websites and their helpful guides to baby development. They are woefully incomplete. I will provide a service and fill in the gaps.

Months 1-2: You've welcomed home an amoeba. Enjoy as it slowly destroys you.

What it is: The journey to Mt. Doom. An entire group of people are hanging around trying to make sure you're cared for, fed, and protected so you can get a handle on your new life of total exhaustion. Except, this fellowship lasts a couple of weeks at most and then your shit up a creek with your partner who will simultaneously provide you with the strength to keep going and fuel a raging fire inside of you that will cost your sanity. A slow inexorable descent into squalor; you will breathe, eat, and sleep. That is it.

Feelings: You're tired, and mostly too tired to be or feel anything but tired. You'll vageuly recall moments of joy when looking longingly at your amoeba and then shocked back to fatigue as you realize two hours have passed and you have no recollection of what has happened. You won't be in the same room or in the same clothes and you'll have a headache. You did not just wake up from an all-night bender. Also there will be frustration. Oh my god will there be frustration.

Lucky number(s): 1, 18; you're realizing that this will be the longest year of your life and looking fondly into the future when you can legally kick your child out of the house.

What it isn't: Bliss.

Months 3-4: A Large paperweight

What it is: A goiter. Your child still requires you for everything which, by now, is probably taking its toll on your joints and muscles. But here's the thing, your kid is smiling now, and not just while in the throws of a nap on top of your chest. I've conducted my own scientific study on the correlation of baby cuteness and baby annoyingness and my conclusions are clear. Babies have an innate sense of the level at which they are taxing your everyday existence and have the ability to employ a "new trick" with as little effort possible in order to mitigate your increasing need to toss them unceremoniously into their crib for the rest of their lives.

Feelings: Yes, you're first two months were a blur, but as you begin to figure out, this thing is growing, at a somewhat rapid and alarming rate. The good news is that you sort of acclimate, or at least life keeps on whether or not you're keeping up and people tend to be relatively gracious about not commenting on your general lack of coherence. You feel used, and yet, somehow, your okay with it. Must be the smiles.

Lucky number(s): 11; the number of people your child will smile at before you.

What it isn't: Magical.

Month 5: Whence diaper changing becomes World War III.

What it is: Elevn Larpers Larping. Mild protests and crying are not an uncommon diaper changing event. And yet, suddenly, your child can moonwalk off of the changing table and his or her hips don't lie. Your child is in greater control of their faculties than ever before. Depending on the diaper you are using this can become increasingly problematic. I've found that disposables, while destroying the world one poop at a time, are infinitely easier to maneuver on a wriggling ass than the cloth diapers we use. In our situation, if he shifts just right the insert gets pulled all wonky and he ends up getting snapped into his diaper shell with his penis hanging out the side or his asshole completely uncovered. Which then, repeat, because no one wants to deal with the eventualities of that situation. You will simultaneously admire the sheer volume at which your child can now project it's voice and wince at the pain of your bleeding ears. Expect your eardrums to burst at least twice while making it through this phase.

Feelings: Disbelief reigns as you really thought you were getting this whole parenting thing down. And then, bam, back to square one. You will use every distraction technique available and experience moments of confidence as you hit on something that works followed shortly by a deep depression as your baby throws stuffed pookie bear across the room. Do not hesitate to call for back-up and don't feel bad when the only reason your doing so is to weasel out of changing the diaper (unless you never "have" to change diapers, in which case your partner gets to never do anything ever again).

Lucky number(s): 2; the number of diaper changes that will go smoothly during any given week.

What it isn't: So much fun.

Month 6: Baby voodoo and other magics.

What it is: A low-level priestly functionary. In this new world you are a cupbearer and your child is the high priestess of lights and fans. It is far easier to acquiesce to this new role and make sure to stop at any and all lights and fans in order for your child to take it's time staring and squealing and smiling. In their delight you will find yourself drawn in by the excitement of the moment and therein lie the seeds of madness. You'll be sitting enjoying a meal at a restaurant (and by enjoying I mean simultaneously corralling a fidgety child, holding down conversation with your partner, and attempting to successfully navigate food from a plate to your mouth hole) waxing eloquent about how your child was always such a good sleeper and your partner will look utterly bewildered. Why? Because your child was never a good sleeper. The first two months of your life was spent alternating between two hour chunks of holding him while you rock back and forth and holding her while she sleeps. Black magics are at work. They befoul your memories in order to prepare you mentally and emotionally to have more of them. It is an interesting and effective evolutionary technique. Darwin would be proud.

Feelings: The fervor with which your child searches for and stares at lights and fans is astounding to the point of amusement. You will experience joy as it's little eyes light up with fascination and peels of laughter find it's melodious tones warming your heart. Do not let it. This is the time to steel yourself against their conniving ways and prevent the oh-so-subtle takeover of your autonomy. Also, resistance is futile, because those little fuckers can be quite adorable.

Lucky number(s): 47; the number of minutes out of every hour you will spend pointing out lights and fans to your child.

What it isn't: A good idea.

Month 7: Naps and the world ends.

What it is: The source of about %75 of the shaming going around the parenting world. Napping. You will have your own battles uniquely suited to your own child and decisions, but what you'll find is everyone else will have an opinion about what you shouldn't be doing and how you are ruining your child forever and ever. Other parents are just as opinionated, which is annoying because we're all in this together, right?! RIGHT?! Nope, you're on your own. Suck it up, I guess, because this isn't about support. This is about being right. And we all know I'm right and everyone else is wrong. Allow me to not-so-gently toss you down a flight of stairs in the correct direction.

Feelings: Rage moving towards acceptance with a dash of "I can't give a fuck about this because I'm literally keeping my shit together with twine and scotch tape."

Lucky number(s): 40 Gagillion Billion; the number of opinions you'll learn to not give two shits about.

What it isn't: Helpful.

Month 8: Mobility, or the lack thereof

What it is: Doing your best not to laugh when your child unceremoniously pitches forward and faceplants. You either are living with a child that is mobile and breaking everything in your houses and pining for the days of simple sitting or still carrying around your goiter with a raging case of tennis elbow and hoping beyond hope that your child takes an interest in anything other than your arms. My child? Oh my child is perfectly content to sit in one place for 5 minutes while I bring him shit and then scream in protest when that time is up and he would like to be held again, thank you, right now.

Feelings: While you may have suspected in the past you're being used you could easily chalk that up to your own over-reactive imagination because it's a baby. That suspicion has passed and you're now absolutely certain you're being used. Like the diaper around your child's nether regions, you are now on the receiving end of their destruction or constant need to be brought something new to play with.

Lucky number(s): 13; the number of aching joints and muscles or broken things you find daily.

What it isn't: Exciting.

Month 9: Hands are not for hitting

What it is: A bloody nose. Your days now begin with hands exuberantly exploring your face, be it eyeball, nose, or mouth. They will all be found and pinched, squeezed, and whacked by 7am. Sometimes it will involve blood, others a quick trip to the medicine cabinet to begin your daily regiment of acetaminophen. Your life has now become a broken record of "no thank-you's" and labeling the things your child is slamming his hand, foot, and/or head into. Because, as you know by know, if your child is not walking talking and spelling by year one you're not only failing yourself and your baby, you're failing the world. It's time to pick yourself up off the ground, leave your broken tooth there you no longer need it anyway, and get to making sure this kid doesn't turn out to be a criminal, or worse, mediocre.

Feelings: It's not really the emotional piece so much as the painful piece. Your neurons are very capable of sending those messages to your brain center except the whole fight or flight response thing is kind of out the window. Grin and bear it is not just a poor man's Farside, it's also what you're expected to do.

Lucky number(s): 0; there will be zero days in which your child will not inflict pain upon you in some way.

What it isn't: Cute.

This is all I got, cause my kid isn't that old yet. This is science though so I'll be sure to fill in the gaps later. Until then, you're on your own. It really is a magically blissful experience filled with so much fun and excitement. Really.

Year Two

As April 14th approaches, I always find myself in a sort of writing rut. I have about 25 different post ideas started and waiting, most of which will remain that way. My writing (my everything really) is twisted up in this post. The yearly post. The one in which I try and take stock of another year of experiences and thoughts and feelings that orbit the life and memory of a small child that didn't quite live 12 hours. I'm realizing now that this is my New Year's Day. Perhaps that's a bit odd, or smacks of an inability to let go, but letting go has never been the point for me.

Last year Kelly and I spent most of the day outside planting in Rhys' garden. Adryn was in utero. It's a fitting memory at this point because year two has been an experience in life with a child physically sharing our space and monopolizing our time. Our plans are similar this year except, of course, Adryn will be on a blanket alternating between playing with some toy, staring at birds, and enthusiastically reacting to something that will end in his pitching in a certain direction unexpectedly and either face-planting, belly-flopping, or rolling gracefully onto his back. You never can quite tell how it will end up. But we'll be out there, removing the arborvitae that didn't make it through last season and planting a new bush or tree that will bring more life to Rhys' little corner of our world. 

Something we've discussed many times is what life would be like, had Rhys been born full term. It's a conversation we've had with friends who've experienced losses of their own. It's such an odd thought for those of us who have living children now because you quickly come to the realization that the children who are living and sucking the life out of you now probably wouldn't be here. And then you wonder, what would that be like? What would it be like to have never met this one? Would I be happier? But I would have memories of life with the child I loss. I would know him by more than name and birth weight and length. He would be more than Rhys Arthur who lived 11 hours and 54 minutes, who squeezed my finger, who was helpless. It's a completely warped and fucked up world that these are normal passing thoughts in a day. That this isn't a cause for institutionalization is probably a startling and disconcerting thought for someone on the outside of this world to hear, but it's totally there. 

Adryn's being here doesn't erase Rhys from our lives. It doesn't make that experience easier to deal with or fix what happened. There's nothing to fix. Death isn't a fixable condition. I'm not sure why that escapes so many. What Adryn's being here does is complicate, intensify, and invoke new and ever widening dimensions of emotion. He is not a replacement. There's never been anything to replace. And so, it's been a year of puzzling through how we want to be a family honoring all of our children while raising our youngest. It's been a year of sharing with Adryn our memories of Rhys, of acclimating our family life to an environment that openly addresses who Rhys was, what he meant to us, and how he changes us. And It touches on a piece of the cultural rhetoric around infant loss that bothers me. The, "babies are angels," you, "celebrate their angel-versary," or the ever popular, "they're in heaven, you'll see them again." I want to preface that by saying, I'm totally fine with someone connecting to their loss in that way, It's just not how I do. The frustrating part is that it's the assumed point of connection. Instead of honestly connecting to people in these situations and asking them how they're managing and feeling it becomes another one of those, "I'll tell you how your supposed to feel," moments. Instead of existing in a world where babies do and have died, you can conveniently look right past that and focus on a bright, cheery, beautiful future. 

I'm posting this xkcd comic because it is emphatically not that and also because I read it at least once a week while thinking about Rhys. By virtue of being Rhys' younger brother, Adryn will know of death at a young age and I think that's a good thing. Much of the culture that I live in is woefully inadequate at explaining grief, loss, and death. Grief is not getting over or a process for moving on. There is not a formula in which, at the end, you will have met certain benchmarks, become proficient in different areas and feel better. Grief is the process of allowing change. It is the shifting of the locus of one's world. At some point you recognize that all life is this. Change, shift, move, dance, cry, laugh. Life is grief. Dictionaries would have us believe that grief is deep sadness. No doubt sadness is part of that, but so is anger and joy and fear and every other emotion in any capacity one can imagine. The kicker for me is this. My oldest son has always been more than Rhys Arthur who lived 11 hours and 54 minutes, who squeezed my finger, who was helpless. It just takes time to figure through all of that, to feel the sadness deeply and completely, to sit honestly with all of the fears and anger that conjure themselves up in various ways. It takes time to get to know those new reasons for those feelings, to accept them as an integral part of who I am and be able to place them back into my life and allow them to shape the person that I am. 

In Taoism, there is an emphasis on studying the natural world because it provides us with hints at understanding Tao. While this particular xkcd comic takes a bit of license in sentimentalizing the science behind ophrys apifera the thought has been a poignant reminder for me in this second year. Memory is my connection to my son. Memory will be what I pass on, the lessons I've learned because of my remembering will be Rhys' gift to his younger brother. Eventually, I hope, those lessons will be shared by Adryn with the people in his life as he grows and undoubtedly those lessons will be changed and morphed and grieved into something new and different as well. It is, for me, the height of what it means to be a sibling; that our lives and lessons and memories are shared and changed and influenced by the others. And that, at least, is something I can help my sons to share.

Life & Other Profanities

Sitting beside Kelly's head facing a large blue curtain was how I met both of my sons. It was in the exact same room, undergoing the same procedure, having just come from the same triage room in which we were first told of the circumstances of Rhys' impending birth. The hallway was the same hallway. The smells were the same. I was just as nervous and confused; just as scared. In the wake of Rhys' birth, no one was confused or alarmed by my general quietness and displays of sadness. That was not the case when I displayed those same feelings after Adryn's birth. There was a common refrain from others telling me how excited I should be or how wonderful all of this was, and the reel that keep playing in my head was the night we were told we had lost Rhys' twin just a few months after finding out our IVF procedure had been successful.

We were looking forward to that new year. We were finally pregnant, with two, the shock and joy of which was lost on neither of us. The entire day following we sat in a sort of stunned silence. We were excited but it had quickly dawned on us the amount of work and money two at the same time was going to cost. And after all of the needles and ultrasounds and doctor visits we had undergone to get there, even in spite of those things, we were happy. Which made sitting in the ultrasound room with the ultrasound tech taking pictures of what we had assumed would be two healthy growing babies all the more difficult and heart-wrenching.  It was painfully obvious something was wrong, painfully obvious that one baby was big with arms and legs flailing and the other wasn't. There wasn't any joy in that room. I saw the healthy one, I watched it move, I knew it was there but the only thing I felt was the empty stillness of the other one. And it's not like I didn't try to be happy. After I realized what was happening and allowed myself to say it in my head I tried to look at the other one and search for some relief or happiness or something in the situation that would make it feel better, but it never came. It still doesn't.

In the weeks that followed, replaying that moment in my mind, I spent a great deal of time dwelling on my feelings in that room, trying to justify and rationalize my inability to feel happy. As if this was something I could run probabilities on and explain with some mathematical equation. That exercise eventually wore itself out thanks, in part, to choosing to listen to my feelings rather than be ashamed by or rationalize them. At that moment, in that room, happiness couldn't be the important part of my experience. The important part was rooted in sadness watching one baby punch and kick and roll while the other one didn't. That place of sadness brought healing and growth.

The similarities and differences of Adryn and Rhys' births sit as starkly now in my memory as they did the day they happened. Until I heard him cry on the other side of that blue sheet in the operating room I couldn't fully believe that Adryn was going to arrive without problems. Something had to go wrong, that's how these things worked, but he came; loudly and bloated, he came. When Rhys was born the room was full of medical alarms and silence. Adryn managed to enter life in a relatively routine c-section, Rhys's was rushed. I followed Adryn into the recovery room to help clean him up a little for Kelly before she was closed up and moved over to join us and I followed Rhys down a different hallway into another room where even more doctors and nurses continued to work on him for hours. We brought Adryn home with us and we made a decision to take Rhys off of life support so we could hold him while he died. When I met Rhys, it was heavy and painful, just like the day we found out his twin hadn't survived. When I met Adryn it was joyous and still heavy and still painful. Most people aren't interested in hearing that, but there it is.

I don't have a problem with happiness in theory. I categorize it, generally, as a helpful and productive thing. There is, however, a part of me that is both exhausted and confused by the notion that happiness embodies the pinnacle of human experience, that we should always want and strive to exist in a state of happiness. There are myriad theories, ideologies, and theologies that pedal those wares and I've never been able to be anything more than skeptical in those types of conversations. This is not to say that I dislike happiness or happy people or am unable to celebrate my own joy and that of others, it's just always hit me as artificial. I don't like that life gets boiled down to a pursuit of happiness. Doesn't living mean we try to be present in all moments of life?

In my experience, all of this emotion stuff is indicative of a culture that is incredibly insecure about anything that isn't easy and outright hostile towards things that challenge, upset or even dare to change the status-quo of happy is good and sad is bad. Sad equals depression. Sad equals a deficiency in one's basic ability to be a human. Sad means you're not trying hard enough to see the good in life or not thankful enough for the blessings in one's life. Again, I think happiness is a helpful thing. But so is sadness and anger and even fear. I think we do ourselves a huge disservice when we seek to exist in a single state of emotional being. When happiness is the only way we allow ourselves to approach the world we miss a great deal of the actual stuff of life going on around us.

I believe, wholeheartedly that humans are spiritual beings and by that I mean we derive meaning from the events of life. We are driven by more than instinct. There is passion and heartache and love; there is sharing and learning; there is loss and gain; there is hate and death and pain and hurt; all of which is felt and remembered and passed on in the stories we tell and the lives we live. The holidays have come and gone. They were busy. They were full. They were colored by the memories and experiences of a happy healthy son who, seemingly over night, became very vocal and interested in the world around him. And they were colored by a son who died. Both of whom continue to color the experience of life and both of whom continue to teach me more about myself and the world around me. In the end, I've learned that it requires far more energy and effort to act happy than to live my feelings honestly. I'm sad that makes some people uncomfortable and I'm learning to be okay with that.