be happy
If I were a stay at home dad, I would not have a blog. Here is what I would have:
A crack addiction
An intervention
A relapse
Not necessarily in that order.
* * *
Alex is away for the weekend, on her microversion of Sideways, stumbling from one vineyard to the next throughout the Willamette Valley, known in particular for its eclectic fusion of Pinot Noir and Bourbon varietals. I can only hope that when she and her sister get picked up by a tandem of amorous fellows that she gets stuck with the ‘insecure soul-searcher.’ Or the wingman.
Which means for the second week in a row, I am babysitting, when by all rights I should be researching my novel. Well, more of a novella, really. Actually, half-way between a shortstory and a novella. A shovella, titled ‘A Queue of Ducklets.’ I know why the caged bird sings, I said, but how can I get them to have more sex? It’s central to the plot of my shovella.
Any of you who have pets know that at some point in the middle of a long day of ignoring your animals, you have to put down your whiskeys and address the anxiously wagging tails and say, ‘Okay, let’s get in the car so we can DRIVE TO THE PARK FOR A WALK.’
In that same tenor, I stood up from the computer and walked to the truck. The children shortly followed.
WE’RE GOING ADVENTURING.
YAYYYY!*
*Note that this is an ominous yayyy! You should know, if you choose to keep reading, that this will turn out badly. Here’s an excerpt: ‘At that point I turned to my dear children, the fruit of the fruit of my looms, and screamed, WHY DO YOU HATE ME?’
* * *
We have a favorite place for adventuring. It is a creek fed by the lake near our house, a hidden, rocky place sheltered by cedars, alders and cottonwoods. This creek feeds a wetlands known in our community simply as ‘The Meadow.’ In the late summer, the creek drops to such a level that you can follow its rocky course to the beginnings of this meadow, where without fail, a wild animal trail or two will lead you out into its heart. It is a lovely place, whose only evidence of civilization is a solitary patch of mint, the leaves of which we usually chew before overturning the stones in search of crawdads, climbing the lower branches of the alders, and then making our way into the tall reeds and cattails.
I usually have to carry Naya through the meadow, since there is no ground of which to speak. In essence, we are walking atop the rootballs of dense grass, and water seeps through the footprints you leave behind. Tristan started to get a little too far ahead at one point, and I told him to stop. Something didn’t feel right. I scanned the meadow wondering if we were alone.
Naya begged to be put down, to chase after her brother. Eventually I complied, setting her right next to me. The texture of the ground, so unfamiliar to her feet, her body far too light to weigh down the grasses into a suitable walkway, caused her to fall. She started crying, and at first I thought it was from the humiliation of the tumble, but you can tell cries apart just as easily as colors on a palette. I dropped to my knees immediately and lifted her up, knowing that I would see yellowjackets.
I grabbed them all off of her, crushing the ones I could get a hold of, somehow only getting stung one time in the process. I told Tristan to go back because there were bugs, and I took off with Naya. I noticed a wasp on her jacket, futilely stinging at the fabric and wiped it away. Tristan was in a panic behind us, begging me not to leave him, unaware that he had nearly already passed me on the way back to the creek bed.
I set Naya down and patted her clothes, then tried to find out where she had been stung. I saw a solitary pinprick just below her left lower lip, which was now noticeably swollen. She was crying, but not so loudly as if in mortal pain. I asked Tristan if he had been stung, and he said no, but he wanted to leave. I remember an incident a few years back where he took a stinger in his left eyelid, and his eye swelled completely shut for two days, only gradually returning to normal after a week. It was a pity, being as how this was the first summer in 8 years that I had not been stung by a hornet or a scorpion. Tristan’s had nearly as poor a record, but as far as I know, this was Naya’s first time.
Past the patch of mint, Tristan started screaming. A wasp had apparently gotten into his jacket, and only now, so far from the meadow, had it finally found a penetrable surface. Tristan pulled off his jacket and started running around in circles, screaming. I had to grab him and tell him to calm down, because he was panicking Naya. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
* * *
Back at the car, Tristan screamed, “I’M NEVER GOING TO BE A SCIENTIST NOW!”
I rolled my eyes and imagined my 28-year-old son, coming inside for dinner after performing odd jobs around the neighborhood.
I tried to offer a trip to the store for ice cream, but both kids were yelling so loud that the chip in my windshield had expanded to a full-blown $200 fine under Washington State traffic law prohibiting obstructing cracks.
But I found no haven inside my home. In my rusty Romanian, I think I might have accidentally told Alex's mother that we had all been attacked by a basilisk, and would soon pass into the next, hopefully quieter, astral plane.
Naya’s lip had now swollen to 1,000 times its normal size, going from Cute to Novocaine to Botox to Silicon DDD to Hoppity Hop in a matter of minutes.
And I’m convinced the only reason she continued to scream was because both Naya and my mother-in-law grayed-out each time they looked at her face, VUT DEED YOU DO TO CHEELDREN?
On more than one occasion, I was forced to yell at everyone, ‘WHY DO YOU HATE ME?’ Both dogs wisely cowered beneath the couch.
* * *
It was so much easier when I was growing up in the era of the original SAHDs (Stay Away from Home Dads).
There was no adventuring, no concerns that your dad wasn’t doing enough to assuage your pain, no useless explanations that the benadryl was actually going to help you and for the last time I’m not trying to poison you into silence, and here, for the love of god, Daddy will drink another spoonful (8) just to prove that I’m not giving you ca-ca and poo-poo and yucky.
In fact, it took me years before I understood what non-custodial actually meant. In class, when we all talked about what our fathers did, my answer was always. ‘I dunno. I just know he’s not a janitor.’
And dads back then were always so much wiser. They taught us that crying out in pain only led to more pain, the so-called ‘Reasons to Cry.’
Which might explain why our favorite game back in the day was something we called ‘Shhh! Be Very Quiet!’
* * *
After a few hours of children’s cartoons, a hefty dosage of ice cream laced with orange-flavored ibuprofen, and a six-pack of Molson (Hey, I was stung, too, you know. And my tears were silent and internal.), the erstwhile racket had softened to mostly whimpers.
Some scars remain. Tristan was afraid that every room held a splinter cell of hornets, and refused to go into the garage to get me a beer.
I had to do it MYSELF.
Likewise, he did not want to get ready for bed.
“But I’m scared to take a bath by myself!”
“Would you like me to email a senator?”
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