The Hope I Can Afford

You are two and a half now—two and eight months—and our life together in this home is warm and full even as the world turns dark. It’s a hell of a thing to raise a child at this moment when the culture is rot, when so many around us are selfish, hateful, shameless, and ignorant. I cast my vote for you, and for mom, and for my students, and their families, and for our friends and loved ones, and for the history I teach, for decency, for democracy, for the world I want for everyone, not just for myself. I am not sleeping well. Neither are you, it seems. Each night, after you fall asleep in your crib, with either mom or me on the floor next to you, reading to you with a book light in the dark, each night you wake at some point and want to come into our “big bed,” to curl up between us, with Apricot at our feet. And then when I wake up with a start, at two in the morning, or at four, in the dark and the cold, when it feels like it’s just me and the owl who lives over on Old River Road keeping watch over the earth, I feel dread. I feel at a loss, I think of you in the years ahead, in a place that can be so unkind. We are failing you.

Of course, you don’t know any of this now. Two nights ago you were petting Apricot on the couch, and you looked up at me and mom and said, “I love her tail. It’s so beautiful.” Then you gave Apricot a hug. “I’ll make you feel better,” you said to her.

You don’t know any of this now. Instead you just read your books. You do your 48-piece jigsaw puzzles, intently. You make jokes and make us laugh. Your vocabulary is vast and growing. You sing songs and improvise the words. You play with your friends at the park. You ride your lil’ racer, Geoffrey the Giraffe. We draw together. We kick the ball together. We listen to music together. We have dance parties in the living room and the three of us skip across the floor to Taylor Swift. You like your Spidey and Paw Patrol and Mickey Mouse and Miss Rachel. You want to read your big book of Daniel Tiger stories again and again and again. We play, every day. We play and through your eyes I see this world of beauty and discovery, innocence and adventure, building and making, hugs and I love you’s, singing and laughing, and every day I cling to those moments, one after the other. It is a better world than the one I see in the dead of night.

In 2002, when I was living in Austin, there was a song I listened to a lot called “The Beauty in Store,” by Beaver Nelson. It appeared on KGSR Broadcasts, Volume 10, an annual collection of live recordings by different artists made in the studio of the local radio station. The song is aching, rough, vague, and it moved me for precisely these reasons. There is a sense of longing, and separation—“one lone child sitting on a see-saw, Spending all the hope he can afford”—and of someone trying to help, to be there in all this pain and confusion, to go first and maybe light the way. The refrain: “I beat down the door, Tried to prepare you for, The beauty in store.” What is that beauty, though? The world in this song is blue and “black as the ocean floor,” a world of pain and joy, of eyes that never make contact, of gold in the dirt and blood staining your shirt. It is a “helping hand that’s been blistered raw.” Was there beauty on the other side of all this? Or was the loneliness and pain just part of the beauty? I was thirty two years old then, trying to write a dissertation, depressed and anxious, adrift, insecure. The country was at war, and spoiling for another war, and the culture was marked by division and hate and violence. I wouldn’t meet your mom for another fourteen years. I saw no beauty in store, for me or for anyone. Beaver Nelson sang of that beauty, but there was a twinge in his voice, as if he wasn’t so sure, either.

I think now that I probably banked that song at some point years ago, filed it away, perhaps waiting for it to reappear and make more sense. “That feeling you got that you can’t give a sound,” sang Nelson. “And every thought too fast to write it down.” A few days ago I put on that KGSR Broadcast CD in the car. I don’t know why I did. I hadn’t listened to it for probably a decade or more. “Beauty in Store” was the fourth track and… I just keep playing it and playing it. I’ve since learned that Nelson wrote the song for his young son. I did not know this back when it spoke to me in Austin. As a father now I understand what it means to try to prepare you for the beauty in store. Even in a blue and black world, I would beat down the door to prepare you for that beauty. Spending all the hope I can afford. Maybe with a twinge in my voice. Maybe with an ache, though an ache that’s different from twenty years ago. For all that beauty in store. In the meantime, you are not yet three, and we will continue to play and sing. And maybe other songs will return. You will hug Apricot and make her feel better. You will prepare me, too. You will call things beautiful, and I will try to make it so.

Routines

We are sitting on the front porch waiting for the garbage truck to come. You are eating fruit and I’m drinking coffee. It is cloudy. “Cold weather,” as you like to say. Every Monday night you help me roll the garbage and recycling bins to the end of the driveway. And every Tuesday morning we wait for the trucks to come. You like to watch the mechanical arms pick up the bins, raise them high in the air, and empty them into the truck. Then you applaud. The driver waves at you and honks the horn and you say, “bye bye truck.” Life is mostly these routines. Our rituals. Things I never gave much thought to that are big events to you. You and mom water the vegetable plants out back every day and you talk to them. You come to campus with me when I need to get books from the library or return them. You love riding  the elevator there. Pressing the up button. On Sundays, you and I go out front to get the newspaper. You carry it inside to Mom. “It’s heavy,” you say. Every day—even on Sundays—you insist we check the mail. You put the key in our mailbox, turn it, open the door to see what came through the slot. When you wake up, you say good morning to all of us, even Apricot. Every night you give me a kiss and a high five and a fist bump and say, “see you in the morning, daddy. “

There are routines, and there are surprises, too. All the time. You are talking so much, new words, more complex sentences. You are drawing a lot now, and coloring, and doing puzzles, and reading so many books, and playing with your stuffed animals and your Lego action figures. Everything you do amazes me. 

Sometimes you are a challenge. Sometimes you cry and scream and you don’t seem to know what you want. You can be stubborn about naps. You lead me around by the finger and try to take me to the park when we don’t have time to walk to the park. But none of this is hard. It’s just more surprises. Riding the wave. Improvising. Changing the routine. 

You are two now. And I just had a birthday. We are each getting older in different ways. I’m trying to bank all these moments. I want to remember the routines. When I think back to my youth and young adulthood I mostly just remember the big things, the accomplishments or failures, the moves to new towns, the decisions I made at all the crossroads. I don’t remember the day-day-day, my mornings, my commute, when I checked the mail or took out the trash. But these days, it all looks different with you. The stuff of life shines in unexpected ways. Now we clap for the garbage truck. 

Flannel

You wanted to wear my dad’s shirt. You pulled it off the chair and dragged it across the floor and held it up to me. I draped it around your shoulders. You shuffled down the hall, wrapped in flannel. Green. 2XL. Made by a brand called RedHead, of all things, apparel for men, since 1856. I wear that shirt when I take Apricot out back late at night. I wear it when it’s cool in the morning and I’m making coffee. Sometimes it covers me when I take a nap in the recliner in the study. Most of the time it hangs in the closet or stays on the back of a chair for days and days. A green flannel shirt. It’s big on me, too. These are the ways we remember. This is how we try to make present in our lives what is past. We hold onto a thing. Your grandfather was wise and I miss his advice. Your grandfather was an adventurer and I miss his stories. Your grandfather was an animal doctor and I wish he could guide us with Apricot. Missing and wishing, wearing and watching you wear.

It is four in the morning. Full moon. My sleep is off. Air through the cracked open window. Cars in the distance. Always cars in the distance. Snoring dog at my feet. Tired and awake. Remembering. Gaming out. Remembering. I’m a boy, in the back seat of the car, driving home from the airport, it is night, AM radio on, we picked up my father, he is in the passenger seat, he is telling us the story of his trip, each day, from start to finish, the people he met, the mountain, how it was cold, how it was windy, how he camped and climbed, how he waited and waited, how he finally found what he was looking for. I’m a boy in the back seat. Headlights in the rear window. Cars passing. News radio. All the trips. All the mountains. All the stories. They blend and fade. Into the dark and the wind. All those years ago. It’s how the memory feels that keeps.

It is five in the morning. You are asleep again after being awake. The house is quiet. The shirt is downstairs, in the kitchen maybe, or someplace else.

Giving Thanks

I am thankful for you. For all the ways you surprise me. For all that you’ve taught me—that selfish is boring and work is not identity and giving is not a sacrifice. I am grateful for your health and my health, for long runs and low cholesterol, for salmon and oatmeal, for health care and wellness. I am grateful for your mom. For our home. I am grateful for the mistakes I’ve made that will help me guide you better, for the losses that remind me of all that is fragile, for the regrets that correct my course, for the unkind people who show me who not to be. I am thankful for movie talk and book talk and music talk with friends, for texts and phone calls and visits with family. I am thankful for the years I had with my father. For the years I had with my grandparents. For the wisdom of my teachers. For Apricot and all the ways we’ve rescued each other. I am thankful for words on the page and a mind on fire. For the joy of learning. For the chance to feel goodwill and seek to be big-hearted. I am thankful for your smile and your laugh. For the way you wonder. The way you connect to people. The way your whole soul is out there in the wide brilliant world. I’m thankful for the park and your little squad and our new neighbors on this lovely street. I am thankful that in this lifetime I can know what it’s like for you to fall asleep curled up at my side on the couch. Endless gratitude, every day, your every breath, this fine life, mono no aware, warm like the sun.

Greenbelt

I run alongside you in the park. We chase each other around a tree. I pick you up when you fall and wipe the dirt off your hands. You sit on a stump and I sit on a stump next to you. I take pictures of you with the sun setting behind. I make sure you don’t get too close to the slope that leads down to the rocks and the stream. I throw a ball high in the air and you watch it fall to the ground. I remember you in your lion costume. I remember you when you were very small in my arms on the couch at three in the morning. I remember holding you in the hospital. I remember your mother and me walking the streets of Rome. I remember your mother and me eating breakfast at Sunset Junction. I feed you a fig bar. I give you a sip of water. I help you into your denim jacket and button you up. I talk to you about the trees and the ants on the trees and the knot in the tree. I text photos to your aunt and nana. We look behind the green fence at the playground being built. We watch a man playing soccer with his two boys. We say hello to our neighbor walking his dog. Across the street is the elementary school you will attend. The clocks have changed and it is getting dark. The water in our pool is cold. The winds are picking up. The holidays are coming. I wonder if I am doing enough for the people I love. I am intensely aware that these are the best years of my life. That the years before were not always good, but they were mostly fine, and most importantly, they got me to you. Memories come and go. Remorse, fear, phantoms, joy. Nostalgia. Scenery, sounds, awkward exchanges, the feeling of my body in motion, of my hands playing music on the piano in my parents’ basement. The poet speaks of the kosmos. The afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. In the mornings I run here, slowly, with aching knees, listening to songs that make me feel immediate and alive, or at least less rickety. I run like I’ve always run, forty years of running, one step and another. Out and back, or a loop, or many laps. I leave home and go for a run and come back home and on another day I go for a run again. It helps me think and it tightens my belly and it feeds my soul. In the mornings before I run, I go downstairs and make coffee and let Apricot out. Sometimes ideas come to me, words and sentences. Sometimes I sit on the couch and read. Some days I just sit and wonder, or I sit and worry, or I miss people. Mostly I am very tired. Some days I don’t even wake up before you. Some days you wake me and say hi and hug me in the bed. Here at the park I think about your morning smile. I put you in your stroller and strap you in. You want to help buckle the buckles. I release the brake bar and off we go, across the grass to the path. You make random sounds and I talk to you as if we are having a conversation. We head home in the near dark. Across the bridge, down the sidewalk, to our street, by now cast in shadows. Through the front gate of our house, to the doorway, under the porch light I forgot to turn on, home again, home again, home again, home.

The Top of the World

We are driving home from Laguna Beach and you have drifted off to sleep in the back seat. The sun is setting and the late summer sky is a hazy soft blue. Tom Petty is singing about square one and Louisiana rain and how when you dance I just go right with you. Mom keeps saying how happy she is. I keep saying this was a good day. We are driving home after meeting Mom’s cousins from Canada. First we met them at the Top of the World, the lookout point in Laguna Beach where you can see the hills and the coast and the sea and the houses in the canyons. We took a picture there. Then we all went to the beach. The Canadians wanted to go in the water. You walked on the sand and watched the tide come and go and you pointed at the pigeons walking on people’s towels. It was not too hot and there was a breeze. I slathered sunscreen on your back and arms and shoulders. I held your hand near the water and once or twice the waves washed over my shoes but I picked you up just in time. Mom held you on her hip and the two of you looked out at the ocean. You ate some string cheese and sliced tomatoes. Then the cousins had to leave but we decided to stay in Laguna a little longer for dinner. We ate outside at a bistro. Somewhere nearby a woman was singing and playing guitar. Wonderful Tonight, Landslide. Mom had crab cakes and brussels sprouts and a glass of wine and I had salmon and asparagus and a diet coke and you had more of the snacks we packed. You said hi to everyone sitting around us. Then you said bye-bye when we left.

Now we are on the freeway and there is traffic and we are eager to get home to Apricot. Mom is admiring the setting sun, lower and lower in the sky, fire, orange. I say something about California being beautiful. B.B. King comes on the radio. The deejay tells us King would have been 98 years old this weekend. He made it to 89. I start thinking about how we measure lives in years but a lifetime is not just a number. You are sleeping, and you will sleep almost the whole way home, but I want you to know that while you were asleep Mom kept saying how happy she was, and I kept saying this was a good day. We met family and you got to swing in a park by the beach and we ate a delicious dinner at a restaurant and together we set our eyes on the horizon from the top of the world.

Climbing

You are climbing. Everywhere. You climb onto the coffee table and you stand up and walk around. You climb up into your stroller when it’s parked by the door. This morning you climbed onto mom’s vanity in the bedroom from the chair next to it. You are trying to climb up the bookshelf in your bedroom. You are also trying to walk up and down stairs now. Crawling up the steps will simply not do. You are in perpetual motion, upward. Agile and unafraid. You want to soar and explore. Test gravity. Anywhere you can, you leverage yourself, find hand grips and toeholds, raise your knee and hip, ascend. I don’t necessarily want to stop you but I can’t always let you and I’m afraid of what you’ll try when I’m not around. The parent’s dilemma.  

The days are good. It is the end of summer, slow and warm. Mom and I laugh a lot in the house. You too. I am working on my book and I am not teaching this year. I am swimming a lot and reading and writing. I take you to the park and the playground and we go for walks around campus. You come with me in the car to Sam’s Club and HomeGoods. I put on records and you dance. You put on headphones and I play songs for you on my keyboard. I chase you around the kitchen island. We go to your room and snuggle our faces against stuffed animals and fill the piggy bank with coins and drape towels over our heads. You feed Apricot her treats and dental chews. You imitate me when I stretch or when I swat a fly. Together we explore the trees and the flowers in the backyard. You smile when you see Mom and me hug. The days are magic. These moments together in the cosmos. Autumn, my daughter, scaling the mountains of your world, while holding my hand. This year will be wondrous and close.  

Second Summer

It is your second summer in the world and so much is happening I don’t know where to begin. You started walking on June 15th. Mom and I were there and we even caught it on film. And you haven’t stopped since. You move with assurance and surprising balance. Bold and strong. Curious about things out of your reach. You run. You fall and get up. You launch yourself down long hallways, hands stretched out, hollering happy sounds. You are in motion, making choices about direction. Free.  

You are in a new house. We moved in July. You love the space, the light, the patio, the pool, the play corner. You like the vinyl record cabinet we bought, always trying to open the doors and take out records and turn up the volume on the receiver. You like the wall of bookshelves, maybe too much, always removing books from the lower shelves and strewing them around the room. It’s a bigger home and a big change but you’ve adjusted quicker than any of us. We are a block from a park, where I take you for walks in your stroller in the morning after I get back from a run or the campus gym—which is now a half mile from where we live. We have neighbors who are friendly and kind and who have children your age. This is a dream on a cul-de-sac and mom and I are grateful.

One thing you don’t like lately is your bed. You start off there, but you wake unhappy in the middle of the night. When this happens we take you to our bed and then you sleep like a log (minus kicking us and turning upside down and all around). Right now, for us, this is easier than staying up in the middle of the night trying to get you to go back down in your crib. I’ll be honest, and I speak for your mother, too—we also like having you there between us, with Apricot at the foot, fan turning overhead, quiet and dark, family in repose.

It is sometimes at night in our bed like this that I think about what lies ahead, all of the ways you will grow, all that you will encounter and love and be challenged by, and I am overwhelmed but also in awe of this life you will lead, and the work I will do as your father to hold you steady and high. It can be scary, having these thoughts. So big, so substantial, with so much unknown and unknowable. A parent’s worry about what might be—we become great storytellers in the middle of the night. But then morning comes, with light and singing birds, and you stretch and smile, and mom and I take you downstairs and have coffee on the couch with you, and we all start another day together, basking in the present.  

The Red Lid

I wrote this for a class I’m currently teaching on creative work in American Studies. Inspired by our reading of Sherry Turkle’s Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (2007), I asked students to write about an everyday object in their life and trace the associations it has. I did the assignment along with them.

My daughter sits in the kitchen and bangs the Tupperware lid against the floor. The lid is square and red, with just enough give. It is red like a fire hydrant. She waves it in the air and claps it against the kitchen tile. The tile should be cleaner. The refrigerator hums in the background and my daughter is surrounded by cabinets, which I’ll need to baby proof soon. In the kitchen she likes to splash her hand in the dog’s water bowl and she likes to stand up against the oven and pull down the dish towels that hang from the handle. We spend our mornings in the kitchen, my daughter and I. At around 7:30, I make breakfast for me and my wife, an omelet every day packed with veggies and tofu and beans. I must watch my cholesterol. I am 52 and my daughter is not even a year yet and I want to be around for as close to forever as possible. I cut up a zucchini and a tomato and I look down at her. What does the world look like from where she sits? What does that red lid mean to her? It seems as if everything exists for her to see and touch and taste and incorporate into her reach, to assimilate, gaze upon, play with. I encourage all this but I must also take care she does not hurt herself. The lid is safe. The fireplace, the electrical outlets, the computer cord attached to the laptop on the table, the wine bottles on the wine rack, these things are not. I add tofu and pinto beans to the skillet. Then I add egg whites. I hear my wife upstairs listening to a podcast while she gets ready. I have had that Tupperware set for a while now. That red lid covered many leftovers, covered many meals I carried to work, all before my daughter came into the world, before I even met her mother, all before I ever knew what joy fatherhood would be. On most mornings, I play some music while we make breakfast. I dance in front of her, which I like to think is dancing with her, and she waves the lid in the air and then slaps it against the floor. There is almost a rhythm, a beat to get lost in, something we are making together.

New Lights

It is your very first Christmas and my first as a dad and the air is just extra magical. The usual lights hang on the banister and the garden window and the back patio, but this year their shimmer is not the same. Everything is brighter, more alive, this holiday world reflected in your eyes. Your tiny hand reaching out to the twinkling tree. Sitting on the floor in front of presents in the morning. A playlist of yuletide crooners, singing as if for you. Candy cane pajamas. A baby red Christmas dress. Family photos. Greetings from friends and relatives. Mom’s cooking—bruschetta and salmon and penne alla vodka and pumpkin pie. Plus a special treat for Apricot. It's a wonderland here in our small, humble home in snowless California. I lift you in the air and nuzzle you and wish you a merry everything and a happy always.

And so this year comes to an end. The year you were born and our world changed. I pause to reflect and look ahead and I just want more of this magical now. This joyous fatherhood. To continue to live this lovely, one-time life with grace and wonder, and to do some good while I’m here. To spend my days nurturing our family, holding your mom in the light, caring for you, nosing Apricot. To create, connect, adore, explore. To see new light in the everyday trappings and trimmings, the world in your eyes, merry and bright.

Dad 2022: Fall Mornings

In the morning you join me in the kitchen while I cook breakfast and we listen to music. You bounce in your bouncer and I dance in my slippers. Lately, it’s been lots of Beatles and Kinks. Then we sit at the table and I put on your bib and mom comes downstairs and we eat our omelets and we feed you. After, Mom clocks in for work. I pour another cup of coffee and I play with you on the floor. I stand you on my chest and I lift you in the air and we roll around the carpet. I’m greedy for your giggles. I give you a bottle and then I take you outside for a walk in the stroller and try to get you to nap. And that’s our morning, these days. You are almost eight months old. You are teething, and it’s hard to see you in distress. You need a lot of attention. Mom and I try to soothe you and distract you, even as we’re in awe of the denticles springing from your gums. You are changing, every day.

It is fall now and there is a slight chill in the morning. I like feeling the cool air when I walk Apricot early. It brings memories of my father, of me as a boy, us walking in fields at sunrise, our English Setter, Patches, running ahead, sniffing out pheasant. My father in his big orange jacket and hunters cap, his slow and steady gait, the two of us moving across the frosted ground in late November. My father sharing something he loves, sharing this place of solitude with his son, these woods his haven, even if this sport isn’t for me. I am still half awake, shuffling along in my oversized boots. The two of us and our dog. The outdoors make for some of our best times, father and young son, him pointing out tracks and droppings, bird calls and skunk cabbage, brush lines and bushy groves, a cattail slough. Grassland. Raw wind from the valley. Wool gloves. We talk and he tells me stories over hot cocoa and pancakes in the booth at the diner on the way back home.

Dad 2022: Weekend Books and Sounds

Saturday night Mom and I read to you as you fell asleep. I went first. I moved the rocking chair around to the front of your crib and I read Frog and Toad and watched as your eyelids grew heavy. Then mom tagged me out. She sat in the chair and I left the room and she read Matilda to you until you dozed off completely. Then Mom and I went downstairs to watch a scary movie. You woke up twice during the movie, but instead of bounding to your side, we waited, and—wonderfully—you soothed yourself. And then you slept for eleven hours straight.

Sunday morning mom set her alarm and got up early and made coffee and sat on the big blue chair in the bedroom with a book. She cracked open the sliding door and read with the cool morning air coming off the balcony. Then I got out of bed and poured a coffee and read a book downstairs on the couch. After, mom walked Apricot and I went to the gym and on the way home I stopped and picked up bagels. We all ate breakfast at the table, you included, with the Sunday paper around us and Apricot stretched out at our feet. This was our weekend. We try to have many weekends like this. No work, no emails, no worries. Just us, you, Apricot. The family, doing what fills us up and brings us joy. There is a steadiness to it all. A pursuit of delights.

Speaking of delight, you have discovered a new syllable. You proceeded to utter that syllable all weekend. The syllable is “da.” Sometimes you say “da,” other times you say “dadadada,” and still other times you say, “dada.” As in, dada. Once in a while I swear you even say, “hi, dada.” I don’t know that you know what you are saying, that you know what you mean, signifier and signified and all that. I’m pretty sure you don’t, not yet, anyway. But hearing you give voice to a syllable that sounds just a little like dad—well, that made this a very happy weekend, indeed. I haven’t been able to say “dad” to my own father in over a year, now that he’s gone. Of course, I still have conversations with him in my head, many a conversation, many about you. But I miss calling him dad, and I miss the way he would hug me whenever I’d come to visit and he’d say, “Hello, my son.” Dad, son. Syllables, signs. Sounds, people. I miss saying dad out loud. So whether you mean it or not, whether “da” is just the latest vocal discovery of yours, like a raspberry or a gurgle, I want you to know that I am listening, I hear you, and I’ll take it, my daughter. Hello to you, too.   

Dad 2022: The Present Now

This morning you and I listened to Bob Dylan while mom was at work. You bounced in the bouncer and Apricot lounged on a bundled up blanket on the couch while I assembled your high chair, with a little help from some YouTube videos. A lot has been changing. You turned six months two weeks ago. You sleep in your crib now, in your own room, by yourself. And you sleep for ten or eleven hours a night. Also, you are making all kinds of sounds with your mouth. You are a vocal extemporizer extraordinaire. You’ve discovered how to blow raspberries with your lips, and sometimes you and I will blow them back and forth at each other. I have to say that mom is not the biggest fan of this particular game. You love the jumperoo and the baby walker that our friend Alison gave you. You steer the walker around the kitchen and the hall, and you swing the jumperoo to and fro, up and down. You have discovered your feet and you grab one or both whenever you can. You are alert, curious, fully engaged, a role model for the rest of us. You smile and giggle and sometimes fuss and sigh. To me, and to others, you seem a happy soul.

Dylan sings that the present now will later be past, and I feel this in my bones. You have given me the gift of being wholly in the now. I am the most present I have ever been with you, laying on the floor beside you, staring at you, communicating as we do, fully content and in the moment, in that glorious moment. Enchanted, inhaling, living. I am present with you and also with mom and also with my thoughts and my feelings. I am present in my body and my breath. I am present on the phone with friends. I try to be present even in stress, of which we’ve had our share of late, though I sometimes give in to revisiting what I should simply let go. Mainly I just try to feel the stress and name it and then turn back to you (and mom always helps me think it all through).

I am present because I know that the present now will later be past. I want to savor the minutes before they move on. I want to make choices that set me down face-to-face with our family, with you, with all that matters and is goodhearted and true. In 1963, Bob Dylan wrote a big theme song, about history and politics and a mutable world, but he also wrote about the inevitability of change. Every single now is already fading, rapidly, so we may as well choose how to inhabit it. And, my smiling, vocal, foot-loving daughter—I choose you. 

Dad 2022: Summertime

This summer so far we have taken you to the pool and the park and San Diego bay. We went on vacation together and we ate at restaurants in Seaport Village and the Gaslamp Quarter, and we pushed your stroller down long hotel hallways and rode the elevators. This summer, your Nana came for a second visit. This summer, you met other babies at a birthday party. You passed fourteen pounds and you outgrew one set of clothes, which we gave to someone who could use them. You learned how to roll onto your side and now it seems you are always in motion. You look so big already, this growing wonder of a human being. This smiling bundle of good fortune.

It was a year ago that we found out about you. We heard you were on your way and that was the start of all these happy days. The passageway unfolded. The start of this journey through so many moments, big and small, all joyful and new.

Mom is back to work again, working from home, helping people like she loves to do—like she’s good at doing. I watch you when she’s on the job at the desk upstairs, and then mom and I tag team each other and I write my book for a little bit. Our home is pretty busy sometimes, calm and easy other times. Through it all, you roll on the floor and bounce in your bouncer and hug your bunny. You nap and suck your fingers and I show you the Monsters, Inc. movies. Mom talks to you in Italian and you FaceTime with family and you are read to. You join me in your stroller on long walks outside. You give Apricot strange looks when she licks my face. You make sounds with your mouth and I echo those sounds back to you, and in this way, we have deep conversations about life.    

Our family likes the summer in this house, and we want to stretch it out as far as we can.

This summer, Beyonce has been inspiring the rest of us: “I’m on that new vibration, I’m building my own foundation.” And this summer, Metric has been singing about time, “flying on a path, moving through the sky, I don’t ever want to land.” And this summer, I swear Johnny Marr is speaking to me when he belts out, “it’s been so long coming, to be someone.” Because for me, it has been a long time coming. It’s been so long, and now I feel like a new someone—I’m your dad, your father in our first family summer, building our foundation, gurgling with you about life, flying on our path. And I don’t ever want to land.

On This First Father's Day

I’m your dad and there’s this big world around you and I need to know how to shield you from it because the news is not always good these days. You are now so sweet and still and full of smiles and I can’t bear to think you will ever come to know that such a world exists. If I had magic powers or a genie’s wish, or if I were a superhero or a master of the universe, I would shut it all down, all the darkness and hurt and the hate, and I would build you a road to the future lined with love and accord and song and people who always do the right thing and people who are as generous to strangers as they are to old friends. And I would fill the air with hope and honesty and imagination and the smell of lemons and lilacs and clean sheets. And I would light a path for you to follow so you can know joy and connection and moment after moment of sublime encounter with the cosmos. I’m your dad and I’m sad to say I don’t have such powers. What I do have, however, is heart and will and all the minutes I have left on earth to try to prime you for a culture that can be both beautiful and base, charming and fiendish, vibrant and unkind. And I will do what I can within my small orbit to make it just a little better for you and the rest of us.

This is my first Father’s Day, and the first without my dad. I am here and near, I always will be, and he is never far. There is a big world stretching out ahead of you, and through all of the coming brightness and haze, I will be a comfort and safeguard, my best attempt at a north star.

To the Bookstore

You visited your first bookstore and this brings us much joy. Your eyes were closed for most of it, but still—you were among the walls of shelves and the many bookcases and the piles of books on tables. As we wheeled you up and down the rows of fiction, I hoped you might smell the pages. I hoped you might feel the hum and buzz of all those words and thoughts, so electric in the air. Your mother and I perused and wandered, enchanted. We filled our arms with books. We brought them all to a table. Mom got a coffee from the café and we read while you dozed in your stroller. We took in the first words of each story and made hard choices and daydreamed about summer reading plans. We stayed an hour or more. Sometimes you smiled in your sleep. At last we left, with Elizabeth Strout and Grace D. Li and Una Mannion and Elena Ferrante and Taylor Jenkins Reid. It’s not that we don’t have enough books at home—we do, and then some. But there’s something about choosing new books for a summer just unfolding. Carrying them through the front door after an afternoon out, feeling their heft, their promise, their allure, and setting them down gently on the table by the couch. A book is a journey, an escape, an education, a meditation. It offers a chance to encounter beauty, to peer into yourself, to expand your world. It offers a chance to revel in artistry and story and character and place, and the pleasure of knowing you carved out a moment in your day to simply read. For me and for your mom, books are a way of living.  

The next morning we woke up and mom made a big pot of coffee and I cooked her a butternut squash avocado omelette and we lay feet to feet on the couch and read our new books. Apricot sprawled on my lap and you stretched out in the baby lounger on the coffee table next to us. That morning you turned 12 weeks old and you weighed eleven pounds. You’ve been smiling more than ever before. Your coos have been sweetly melodic. It was the Sunday of a long weekend and it was a great new day.

Mother's Day

On Mother’s Day we all sat on the back patio in the afternoon and listened to Mozart’s piano sonatas. Mom and I had mimosas at the table and Apricot lounged in a patch of sunlight on the sofa next to the fountain. I read the newspaper. Mom read from her mother’s diary. Nonna Paula kept it when she was a teenager. For nearly ten years the diary was buried in a box in a storage locker in New Jersey. Last fall we finally emptied that locker and had everything shipped to us here in California. Fifty boxes, and there were lots of hidden treasures. That diary was one of them.

On her first Mother’s Day, your mom really wanted to hear her mom’s voice. She read some excerpts out loud, but for the most part she quietly took in page after page. Meanwhile, you looked up wide-eyed at the faint clouds and the blue. I listened to Mozart dance around in my head. There was a cool breeze. There was a vase of flowers on the table. On mom’s first Mother’s Day, your nonna was here with us, while the fountain bubbled and Apricot lazed and the mimosas flowed and the sun moved across the mid-day sky.

At one point I said to you and your mom, this is what life’s all about. And it’s why we’re only on this earth for a certain amount of time. So we can appreciate moments like this. On days like this, it all seems fantastically simple.

Dad 2022. Time and Love and Dinner Dancing

You turned seven weeks old on Sunday and today your mom and I are celebrating our third wedding anniversary. And by celebrating, I mean we are continuing to revel in this life we have created with you. To mark the occasion, we got ourselves a picnic basket and we subscribed to a prepared meal service. Yes, this is how we party.

Your mom and I have been married for three years and together for nearly six, so today I think I’ll say a few words about love.

Your mom and I met in the summer of 2016 at a writers conference at Yale, when she was still living in New York City and I was here in California. We met on the first day of the conference while we were both walking to orientation, and we haven’t stopped talking since. We had a long distance relationship for a year, mom moved west in 2017, we got married at the Old Orange County Courthouse in 2019, and suddenly, somehow, six years have gone by, during which you and Apricot have both graced us with your magical presence. There are many facts to fill in on that timeline, places we traveled and your mom’s master’s degree (she’s brilliant) and the friends we’ve made and the adventures we’ve had. But love often blurs the details. It can muddle time and just subsume you with a general warm feeling about life.

Love is perspective and grounding. It’s comfort and strength. Love is laughter and inspiration. Love is lazy on the couch and love is thrilling escapade. Love is knowing how they take their coffee and getting to the train on time. Love is the most right choice you’ve ever made. It’s every crossroads you’ve come to together, knowing you reached the best decision because you didn’t make it alone. Love is saying everything will be okay and knowing everything will be okay.

It took me a long while before I finally found this kind of love in the summer of 2016. Love comes when it comes, and it can’t be forced, or part-time performed, or conjured out of straw. I hope someday you will know love true, in whatever form it takes. Love can be found with romantic partners and it can be found with real friends. On the rarest of occasions, those two overlap. Today I celebrate three years of marriage to your mom, who I’ve known for twice as long. How did all those minutes and hours go by? It’s a blur, but I can say that my life this whole time has been warm and right, through and through.

Last night we ate salmon and green beans and sushi rice at the dining table, and you lay next to us in your little nest on the high chair, and we listened to Bruce and Bob and the Stones and Stevie, and then Talking Heads came on, and it was “This Must Be the Place,” and mom stood up and took you in her arms and danced with you all around the room—"home is where I want to be,” “you got light in your eyes”—and my whole heart melted on the floor. And this is love.

Dad 2022. Smile and Shine.

On Sunday you turned six weeks old. That afternoon I had my feet up on the coffee table and you were propped between my bent legs and I was feeding you with a bottle while Apricot licked my face. We were listening to Simon & Garfunkel. Their music is melodic and introspective and they sing about wandering and love and wanting to feel connected, to be of help to someone and to not be alone. I sang to you, one tune after another, until a particular line from one of their songs suddenly absorbed my thoughts and attention: “I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.”

That idea, so simply said, just seemed to capture my life with you now. Each day, I’ve got nothing to do but smile. Is that soppy? Sure, but I don’t mind. As Paul also sings in that song, hey, let your honesty shine, shine, shine. (“The Only Living Boy in New York” is really a kind of goodbye song from Simon to Garfunkel, appearing on their final studio album before they split up, but what songs are about as opposed to the way certain lines can resonate with us personally—well, that’s part of the magic and mystery of music, and you will discover this some day).

I had lots of reasons to smile on Sunday—you on my lap, Apricot by my side, music playing, the California sun gleaming, and mom glowing the way she does. But I was also thinking of the week we’d just had. You had four different visitors at our home. And I was smiling because I was grateful for all the friends who came to see you. You met your godmother Christina, mom’s dear friend from college, who flew all the way from New York to hold you and dote on you and to also cook us dinner, which was a supreme act of kindness. She loves you and she even wrote a letter to you that you will get to read some day. Then you met Alison, our kind and giving friend who teaches with me at the university and who just had a daughter of her own last summer. She wanted to cradle you and tell you how special you were and she also brought us food, including some adult beverages, which we appreciated beyond words. You also met mom’s beloved friend Kyle, the writer, who visited us from L.A. with her boyfriend and brought us dinner (yes, I recognize that food is a theme here…). She is moving back to New York soon, but first she wanted to take you in her arms and make eyes at you and hug your mom tight. Finally, you met Bryan, who is one of my oldest and best friends. You’ll be hearing a lot about him. He and his wife and his daughters live in New York but they were on vacation in California and they made a point to come see us—to see you. We all picked up lunch across the street and ate it here on the back patio. Bryan’s two daughters cherished you. In fact, his seven-year-old really couldn’t get enough of you. She sang to you and warmed your toes and made sure the binky stayed in your mouth. You are six weeks old and you have so many fans.

I’ve got nothing to do today but smile, because I recognize and value the friendships we have, the people your mom and I have kept close over the years, these ties that bind. The people you have seen, and the people you will eventually meet. These friendships are about generosity and care, compassion and consideration, interest and effort and the pleasure of company. I feel lucky to have such good souls in my life, and I want to give back whatever I can to all of them. They are deeply decent folk who shine, shine, shine, and with each new visit you make ties with them, too.

Dad 2022. That Inner Might.

I sit on the stairs with you on my lap, your spine against my belly, and I lean back so both of us can look up at the skylight. It is late afternoon and there is music playing in the house, an REM mix, the song about happy people. I don’t know how far you can see just yet, but we are both looking at that window in the ceiling above us, you with a little lion pacifier in your mouth, and me repeating, in a whisper, you are strong.

You are strong. You were strong in your mother’s belly, and you are strong out here in the world. Your arms, your intention, your eyes, your grasp, your bodily squirms—there is something charged and bold in you, and this is a very good thing. There are lots of ways to be strong, and you are off to a good start. Strength is something I will try to teach you, but it’s also something you will find inside, and sometimes it comes by surprise. Strength is resolve, it is the ability to withstand, to persevere, to speak and act and be buoyant in a storm. There are many moments in life when we need it, that inner might. I’ve needed it when I’m running the last mile of a race, and I’ve needed it when I’ve had to say I’m wrong and I’m sorry. I’ve needed it when I’ve had to finish difficult things, and I’ve needed it when I’ve lost people that mattered. I’ve needed it when I’m scared and I’ve needed it when I’ve been ill-treated and I’ve needed it when I’ve had to be there for other people who are hurting. Truth be told, I haven’t always found it. There are times when it’s eluded me. But this happens to everyone now and again. We can’t always be strong, and that’s okay, too.

I suppose the most important thing I’ve learned about strength is that it’s possible to surround yourself with people who make you stronger. People who supercharge your courage and resolve, so you can find strength and your voice more often when the occasion demands. Your mom makes me stronger. I’m a superhero now compared to the man I was before she and I met. My own parents have made me stronger. My friends make me stronger. And in your own way, you have already made me stronger. Each new day, in so many ways, I discover more strength inside, and sometimes it comes by surprise, like here on the stairs under the light.