(Started at least three months ago)
Zinnie is starting pre-school next week, two mornings--Mondays and Wednesdays at La Puerta de Los Ninos. Jenn is partially in mourning, and, I suppose, so am I. I've been feeling my limitations as a father--really as a person, lately, and with each failure, I mentally add another month of therapy for the kid once know as Baby Z.
Our daughter's latest obsession is this song from this surprisingly hopping video clip (cut-and-paste into search box): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RxTSoiqXg0 If it doesn't open, Google "Joyous Noise" and look for the clip, "Man in the Mirror." Zinnia insists on correcting me when I sing "mirror."
"No, that's not how it goes. It's 'mirrah.' "
Lately I've been struggling with Graduated Paternal Failure. Z. soaks me unexpectedly with a squirt bottle--cold water, computer in general vicinity--and I make a deal of it; I put some chopped olives in a bowl for her, and instead of eating the proffered condiment, she starts grabbing them by the fistful off the cutting board and stuffing them in her mouth. I make a deal of it; Zinnie hilariously yells a line from one of our favorite Mo Willems kids books--"Get those maps!" in a crowded restaurant--and I make a deal of it. The morbid reality check is that, if I'm lucky, I mean really lucky--and the planet continues to spin on it's axis and, if not exactly thrive, then at least survive the current global environmental crisis and wave-upon-wave of Republican naughtiness--then, best case scenario, I'll be alive another 35-40 years. That I am aware of, none of my relatives (to date) have lived long enough to breathe a single nonagenarian breath, although I have an aunt that is about to turn the corner on her ninth decade.* (And yes, I had to look up the word for it so I could go Latin on your respective asses.) My point is that, in the grand scheme of things, my absolute sweetheart of a daughter cramming her cheek pouches with salty, medium-sized black olives is not worth even a scintilla of distress. Decidedly not. Will I upset myself over similar mundane goings-on in the future? You betcha.
Jenn has been a good teacher for me around this ... this parenting stuff, but in my middle age, and with the passing away of both my parents, I seemed to have developed a bit of an edge to my personality, one that I struggle to mute. In the counseling room, my straightforward, un-sugarcoated delivery seems to be (for the most part) appreciated. However, to the mind and heart of an-almost-four-year-old,** there is a certain sharpness her papa has that could perhaps benefit from a little rounding off.
The man I'm training with in couples counseling, Terrence Real, talks about "Losing Strategies." He enumerates six of them, I've added three, which makes at least nine ways we start acting like kids when feeling stressed out. A huge one for me growing-up was walling off, which means that when I got angry or hurt as a kid--and I remember being mainly angry--I would go off to my room and bury myself behind the pages of one super hero comic after another, and then, as I got older, perhaps age 9 or 10, I lost myself in actual novels, as well as late-into-the-night-with-the-volume-turned-down-low comedy albums played on a mini-turntable/radio that i kept under my bed for comic relief during those sleepless hours.***
Walling off is still one of my strategies when I get triggered, and it requires an act of will and, I hesitate to say, courage, to lower my angry inner child's "Your-Dead-to-Me-Now" wall and re-engage. I don't give Zinnie the cold shoulder exactly, I just kinda go cold inside, generally for not more than a few minutes, and often less. I have a friend who pointed out what I already knew, but it felt good to hear it externalized: That I get to heal the wounds of my childhood through my own parenting, and in the process, I get to face every boondoggle, every shadow, every unhealed owie I have ever tried to avoid.
My mother was the stuff of my nightmares. Literally. Reoccuringly. Inescapably. They started around age four or five and continued until age eight or nine. Maybe a little older. In these dreams, I would be alone in our dark house, running from some approaching evil. I could sense her approach, hear her footsteps, feel the venom in her voice. I would quickly push out the screen to one of the second story windows and climb into the frame, pausing, afraid of the fall. I leapt just as I felt her hands clutching at me from the dark. As I plummeted to the ground, my vision would suddenly go black, but even though I couldn't see, I could still hear the ugly screech from above, feel her frustration that I had escaped, but also knew she was still determined, still unrelenting. And rather than wake-up when I hit the ground (as, even in my dream state, I half expected to do), I would land with a thud!, still blind, rolling and thrashing around on the grass, wanting to get away, unable to get up, terrified that a set of hands were about to grab me in frantic cruelty. Small wonder I gravitated towards walling off. It felt, at the time, a matter of life or death.
Often, now, at least weekly, sometime more, I wake up to the sound of Zinnia laughing in her sleep. I think we are doing something very right.
*She didn't make it. My beloved Aunt Natalie died about 12 weeks ago. Very sad.
** As of August 4th, now four years-old. It has become a mainstay of her introducing herself to people: "My name is Zinnia Rain Bender and I just turned four and we have five chickens and two cats."
***Wow! Asterisk Central here. This one involves both a bit of sadness and more than a bit of disgust. One of my main go-to's during that time, the man who helped me get through many a frustrated and sleepless late night, was none other than Bill Cosby--now alleged drugger and rapist of many, many women. It has been years since I held him up as my comedic hero, and, in fact, I hadn't really thought of Cosby in any meaningful way since I saw a few reruns of "The Cosby Show" sometime in the nineties. Now--Holy Christ!--what a way to round the home stretch of one's life: Outed as a total sleazeball and sexual predator, his comic legacy tarnished forever. Triple blech!
Friday, October 9, 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
Babies Talk Alot
(Started in February, 2015)
Hello my friends. After many, many requests via email, phone, and text to resurrect my blog (thanks, Jenn), I have decided to once again take computer in hand and see what sparks may fly.
Zinnia is now 3 1/2 years old. She was six months old just a butterfly wing ago, but I blinked, and here we are, living with a delightful, funny, head-strong, kind, creative being who melts my heart on a daily basis. Yesterday, we had the most blusteriest snow storm I've seen since my days in Wisconsin. To Z, a snowball fight means not only hitting me with a snowball, but having me make it for her as well. (She doesn't quite get the whole competition thing.) At least once every snowball war, she takes aim, smiles, and lets loose, only to have the snowball roll off her fingertips mid-throw, go straight into the air, and land on her own head.
Recent lifetime highlights: Jenn and the artist Formerly Know as Baby Z. had just returned form spending X-Mas in Portland with Jenn's dad. I was waiting for them behind the "Do Not Enter" cordon where excited greeters are forced to wait in this post-9/11 era as we crane our necks in an effort to catch a glimpse down the wide hallway on the opposite side of a trio of revolving doors. At last, Jenn and Zinnia rotated through. Z. was clearly looking around for me.
"Zinnie!" I said.
She saw me and ran the 20 yards between us straight into my arms. I scooped her up and we melted into each other in tearful embrace. Z. kept leaning her head against my chest, stroking my cheek and saying "Papa, papa." I've never been greeted with such love and open enthusiasm before and don't expect it again ... at least until the next time Jenn and Z. take a trip. Fingers crossed.
Last weekend it was my turn. Jenn was out of town, and in the deluded belief that Zinnia had to be occupied the entire time her mama was gone, we went out to breakfast, perused the bookstore across from the breakfast place where we read not one, not two, but three Dr. Seuss novels while sitting on a beanbag chair. (And man, are those things fucking long. As a kid I loved them, and they were the perfect length. As a parent, some of the Seuss books feel like the kid equivalent of "War and Peace.")
When it was time to go, Zinnie didn't want to leave (since goodbye's can be so tough), and she melted down right there on the bookstore floor. After the tears stopped flowing, we went the library to get some new kid books. Z. decided she wanted "in" with a group of older boys who were running amuck through the stacks of the library. They didn't notice her until, in a desperate attempt to get their attention, she said: "I have to poo." (It worked.) Then it was time to leave again, after, of course, the requisite melt down. Next we went bowling, where Z. bowled three games and averaged 72 per (with the help of gutter bumpers and a steep ramp that kids use to send the ball flying down the alley). After Zinnia's "I-Want-To-Play- Three-More-Games" EPIC melt down, we went home for lunch, watched two episodes of "Super Why," and then lied down for a nap. It didn't take, so I turned toward nap time's evil cousin---"Quiet Time."
Quiet time, of course, consists of Zinnie lying or sitting in bed or crib and seeing how far she can push the boundaries while trying to distract and charm her parents until she can "legally" get up to play some more. She might, for example, realize at these times that she really, REALLY needs to give her mama kisses or that her happiness, nay, her entire world, depends on having a certain stuffed animal that she hadn't thought of or seen for weeks, but now she suddenly cannot live without it.
Because Jen was in Portland, we had pre-arranged for her mother and mother's husband to come to town to help out with Zinnia on Saturday evening and Sunday, while I went to work. They arrived as quiet time was ending and regaled Zinnia with the usual heaping scoops of love and admiration before leaving for Costco and to a movie. Z. and I went for a bike ride, with the plan for me to pedal us to the food co-op for some coconut water and a lollipop (respectively), but a wind started to blow, and we ended up cutting the trip short when we rode past a playground and decided to stop.
All in all, a good and exhausting day. Not sure what i was thinking with all this beyond, Don't want to be sitting at home and I want my kid to have a good time. Maybe just a tad of the Disneyland dad syndrome, which is ironic because you'd think i would have gotten the message following her 25th melt down. When she started to wail when it was time to leave the park, I had had enough:
"Really, Zinnie?" I said a tad sarcastically. "We have to do this again? Is this really how you want to end our time here?"
I don't approximate this tone very often, so when it pops out, I kinda trust it. Zinnia looked at me, sniffled one last time, and decided no, she didn't want to end our time at the playground with another meltdown. Instead, on our way home and as her papa heroically battled the sudden brisk drop in temperature and semi-howling wind that had just kicked up, Z. decided she had an uncommon number of questions. To flesh out the image a little: we have a Chariot bike trailer--top of the line--with a plastic window one can pull over the mesh window in front so the kid can still see out but not get wind-blown. Now Zinnie almost never talks to me on our rides. If anything, she puts up with them until she finally says through her boredom, "I want to go to park." However, on this day, with her papa wearing a tee shirt and shorts as he pedaled through the cold and bluster, Zinnie decided she needed to point out various things she was noticing along the way.
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"
I turned my head but kept ridiing. "What's that, Zinnie?"
"Papa, "Mumphll ubba ghuggds?"
I tried to ignore her and kept pedaling.
"Papa!"
No Answer.
"Papa!!"
No Answer.
"Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa!"
Her tone was picking up an urgency. I pulled over, dismounted, and detached the plastic cover from the trailers front to un-muffle her vooice. "What is it sweety?"
"Did you see that bird?"
I looked at her slightly amused, but also a bit narrowly. "No, baby."
"It was a pigeon."
"Thanks, sweetheart. Okay, now we're going to keep going. Do you need some water?"
"No."
"Okay, here we go."
I pedaled about half a block.
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"
"What's that Zinnie?"
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa. Papa! Papa! Papa!"
I braked, and it would not be an overstatement to say "yanked" the plastic cover up from its Velcro hnge and unzipped the mesh door. "What?!"
"What are those things you put your feet into?
"These?" I said pointing.
"Yes."
I started laughing. "They're called toe clips, honey."
I leaned over, my eyes welling from my daughter's utter innocence and complete dearness and loveability.
"Oh. They're very shiny," she said, smiling.
"Yes they are sweety. Yes they are."
Hello my friends. After many, many requests via email, phone, and text to resurrect my blog (thanks, Jenn), I have decided to once again take computer in hand and see what sparks may fly.
Zinnia is now 3 1/2 years old. She was six months old just a butterfly wing ago, but I blinked, and here we are, living with a delightful, funny, head-strong, kind, creative being who melts my heart on a daily basis. Yesterday, we had the most blusteriest snow storm I've seen since my days in Wisconsin. To Z, a snowball fight means not only hitting me with a snowball, but having me make it for her as well. (She doesn't quite get the whole competition thing.) At least once every snowball war, she takes aim, smiles, and lets loose, only to have the snowball roll off her fingertips mid-throw, go straight into the air, and land on her own head.
Recent lifetime highlights: Jenn and the artist Formerly Know as Baby Z. had just returned form spending X-Mas in Portland with Jenn's dad. I was waiting for them behind the "Do Not Enter" cordon where excited greeters are forced to wait in this post-9/11 era as we crane our necks in an effort to catch a glimpse down the wide hallway on the opposite side of a trio of revolving doors. At last, Jenn and Zinnia rotated through. Z. was clearly looking around for me.
"Zinnie!" I said.
She saw me and ran the 20 yards between us straight into my arms. I scooped her up and we melted into each other in tearful embrace. Z. kept leaning her head against my chest, stroking my cheek and saying "Papa, papa." I've never been greeted with such love and open enthusiasm before and don't expect it again ... at least until the next time Jenn and Z. take a trip. Fingers crossed.
Last weekend it was my turn. Jenn was out of town, and in the deluded belief that Zinnia had to be occupied the entire time her mama was gone, we went out to breakfast, perused the bookstore across from the breakfast place where we read not one, not two, but three Dr. Seuss novels while sitting on a beanbag chair. (And man, are those things fucking long. As a kid I loved them, and they were the perfect length. As a parent, some of the Seuss books feel like the kid equivalent of "War and Peace.")
When it was time to go, Zinnie didn't want to leave (since goodbye's can be so tough), and she melted down right there on the bookstore floor. After the tears stopped flowing, we went the library to get some new kid books. Z. decided she wanted "in" with a group of older boys who were running amuck through the stacks of the library. They didn't notice her until, in a desperate attempt to get their attention, she said: "I have to poo." (It worked.) Then it was time to leave again, after, of course, the requisite melt down. Next we went bowling, where Z. bowled three games and averaged 72 per (with the help of gutter bumpers and a steep ramp that kids use to send the ball flying down the alley). After Zinnia's "I-Want-To-Play- Three-More-Games" EPIC melt down, we went home for lunch, watched two episodes of "Super Why," and then lied down for a nap. It didn't take, so I turned toward nap time's evil cousin---"Quiet Time."
Quiet time, of course, consists of Zinnie lying or sitting in bed or crib and seeing how far she can push the boundaries while trying to distract and charm her parents until she can "legally" get up to play some more. She might, for example, realize at these times that she really, REALLY needs to give her mama kisses or that her happiness, nay, her entire world, depends on having a certain stuffed animal that she hadn't thought of or seen for weeks, but now she suddenly cannot live without it.
Because Jen was in Portland, we had pre-arranged for her mother and mother's husband to come to town to help out with Zinnia on Saturday evening and Sunday, while I went to work. They arrived as quiet time was ending and regaled Zinnia with the usual heaping scoops of love and admiration before leaving for Costco and to a movie. Z. and I went for a bike ride, with the plan for me to pedal us to the food co-op for some coconut water and a lollipop (respectively), but a wind started to blow, and we ended up cutting the trip short when we rode past a playground and decided to stop.
All in all, a good and exhausting day. Not sure what i was thinking with all this beyond, Don't want to be sitting at home and I want my kid to have a good time. Maybe just a tad of the Disneyland dad syndrome, which is ironic because you'd think i would have gotten the message following her 25th melt down. When she started to wail when it was time to leave the park, I had had enough:
"Really, Zinnie?" I said a tad sarcastically. "We have to do this again? Is this really how you want to end our time here?"
I don't approximate this tone very often, so when it pops out, I kinda trust it. Zinnia looked at me, sniffled one last time, and decided no, she didn't want to end our time at the playground with another meltdown. Instead, on our way home and as her papa heroically battled the sudden brisk drop in temperature and semi-howling wind that had just kicked up, Z. decided she had an uncommon number of questions. To flesh out the image a little: we have a Chariot bike trailer--top of the line--with a plastic window one can pull over the mesh window in front so the kid can still see out but not get wind-blown. Now Zinnie almost never talks to me on our rides. If anything, she puts up with them until she finally says through her boredom, "I want to go to park." However, on this day, with her papa wearing a tee shirt and shorts as he pedaled through the cold and bluster, Zinnie decided she needed to point out various things she was noticing along the way.
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"
I turned my head but kept ridiing. "What's that, Zinnie?"
"Papa, "Mumphll ubba ghuggds?"
I tried to ignore her and kept pedaling.
"Papa!"
No Answer.
"Papa!!"
No Answer.
"Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa!"
Her tone was picking up an urgency. I pulled over, dismounted, and detached the plastic cover from the trailers front to un-muffle her vooice. "What is it sweety?"
"Did you see that bird?"
I looked at her slightly amused, but also a bit narrowly. "No, baby."
"It was a pigeon."
"Thanks, sweetheart. Okay, now we're going to keep going. Do you need some water?"
"No."
"Okay, here we go."
I pedaled about half a block.
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa?"
"What's that Zinnie?"
"Mumphll ubba ghuggds, papa. Papa! Papa! Papa!"
I braked, and it would not be an overstatement to say "yanked" the plastic cover up from its Velcro hnge and unzipped the mesh door. "What?!"
"What are those things you put your feet into?
"These?" I said pointing.
"Yes."
I started laughing. "They're called toe clips, honey."
I leaned over, my eyes welling from my daughter's utter innocence and complete dearness and loveability.
"Oh. They're very shiny," she said, smiling.
"Yes they are sweety. Yes they are."
.
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