Dad Entry #52

On Sunday, Meggie looked out of her car window and said, “Daddy, I wanna touch a cloud up in the sky.” Like Hugh Jackman said about his kids in a magazine article I read, “It’s frightening how much we love them.” Honesty, I was admiring the sky too when Megan made her almost poetic announcement. Of course, Michael corrected her and said, “Well, you can’t really touch them, they are like fog, so maybe you just get your hand wet is all.” Yes, Michael is sometimes quick to burst Megan’s bubble. But I told Meggie I agreed with her, I would love to touch a cloud, and in fact we could fly through them in an airplane, and she probably did when we all flew with Papa Mike to Minneapolis. But Megan is observant; it was a gorgeous sky, a nice mix of blue and the intense white of Megan’s clouds, which were fat and full and lit up by the sun.

“Daddy, does looking at cake make you want cake?” Michael asked me recently. He was looking at a miniature plastic piece of cake that was part of a “Littlest Pet Shop” toy. I think it quite mature of him to sort of step back and observe his own mind. He identified a trigger (the cake) and was curious or intrigued by the fact it caused a physiological response, it caused him to feel hunger (for cake). He observed, and therefore separated himself, from his own thought process. Is he a Yogi? Or the youngest Zen master ever? Probably neither, but I won’t be surprised if he lectures me soon on the mind / body connection, or the psychology of things like stimuli, desire, attention, appetite, advertising, and marketing. I answered, “Yes,” to his question about cake. He said, “Me too, I think that’s the deal with everyone.” Maybe sooner than later Michael and I will discuss how we are not our thoughts. And yet we should take care to control our thoughts; we need to control the focus of our consciousness. This more than anything will determine the quality of our life. But we can also momentarily detach, and observe ourselves and our thoughts - like Michael did with the cake - because we are separate, we are not our thoughts. And in this way we have a tool, a buffer that dampens emotion like anger and fear and sadness. I will tell Michael to try this when times are tough, to be a little calmer and more level-headed to deal with things, pilot his ship, make decisions. Michael will counter and say, "No, we should never detach to ‘observe ourselves’, never, not even for a second. We should always be present and passionate and spontaneous. Because that’s life!" "Sure," I'll say, "But what if the chips are down?" And he'll say, "Then I'll be even more passionate." And I'll say, "Yes, you will be." Then he'll say, “We can withdraw when we die.” To which I’ll say, “I was young once, too.” Perhaps you are rolling your eyes, but here’s the deal… Michael will engage in this crazy conversation with me. And he will only be like nine years old!

Jim, Deb, and Greg were joking over the weekend about how well-spoken and sharp Michael was as a 3 to 4 year old. Specifically, they remember Michael telling them about dinosaurs and whales at a level of clarity and scope rivaling the average narrator on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel. Now that he’s six, they assume he’s a flat-out genius. And honestly, he still talks a good game! Indeed, he’s bright, and he loves to learn (and teach), but maybe Greg is exaggerating when he says things like, “I called Michael last week, I needed to know real quick how much interest I'd pay if I amortized a 25k loan over 48 months at six percent on a quarterly payment schedule with fees at half a percent rolled in” … and so on.

Dad Entry #51

My children are insatiable consumers. And I don’t mean at the dinner table. I mean at the store. Five minutes after a toy is purchased with gift money at Target, we are instantly plotting our next purchase (for which we do NOT have any money left). Can’t we enjoy what we just bought for, say, one day at least?!

Megan is a little bike-rider now. Her bike is small and pink. Very cute. She has a helmet and pads with velcro straps that we put around her elbows or knees. While I was putting them on her knees today, Megan blurted out, “God gave me those to protect my body.” Maybe she sensed I was kind of surprised and touched and amused by her comment because she added, “But God is not in our human body world, you silly, he’s in space.” Of course, kids say these things – interesting, funny, bizarre, cute – all the time, but we don’t jot them down immediately or remember. Although, now I’m thinking, I hope Megan doesn't join some mothership / space / god cult... I think they exist.

Megan is writing her name now. It is so adorable I about burst with admiration for my little Stephen King as I watch her do it. M – E – G – A – N she writes, each one scribbled sort of laboriously at this point, pretty shaky but all clearly distinguishable except maybe the E. It kind of looks like those TV antennas mounted on the roof of every home before cable and satellite and internet video and all the multimedia whiz-bang stuff we have now. How did we survive only 5 channels of network television? (I guess we did other things, like live life.) Now we have 500 channels. In HD. On demand. On 50 inch flat screen LCDs. No one even remembers the pre-MTV / pre-ESPN era of only 3 decades ago. At Michael’s age, I recall watching only one movie on TV; there were no VCR’s yet, no DVD’s. It was the “The Wizard of Oz”. I watched it without blinking.

Although some teams are still playing in the postseason, of course the Cubs are done. For over 60 years other teams have played longer than the Cubs – their last World Series was in 1945 against the Tigers and my Grandpa wrote home from Germany during World War II saying he thought the Cubs would win it. No kidding, I have the letter. Hopeless optimists even then. My Grandpa was a Cards fan when I knew him, perhaps he switched after decades of Cubs futility. Now we have centuries of Cubs futility. Well, maybe I’m bitter, but it doesn’t matter to Mego yet, whenever she sees any sport on TV – baseball, football, you name it – she perks up and says, “Look, Daddy, the Cubs!” Good girl. And I realize now it kind of makes sense; the Cubs kick it around on defense (soccer), and collide and drop it (football), and the other team often hits it a long, long ways into the crowd (golf).

Field Trip

Here is Michael with his future wife Sam and someone almost young enough to fit into the category of possible contender, his teacher. We went with approximately 6,057 kids downtown on the train today. I *might* be exaggerating.

Attack of a Cute Monster!

This is Meg trying her best to be a cover girl.

The Question

What do you want to be for Halloween?

Michael: A Bakugan guy.

Megan: Michael.

Just kidding, although that would have been far more honest. That girl would morph into him if she could. Instead she will have to settle for being a Bakugan guy, too.

Friends Fuh-evah

Meggie and Mia all butterflied out and being cute at the Long Grove Apple Festival.

Dad Entry #50

I missed the kids terribly while I was in Europe. I started thinking about the Moms and Dads in our Armed Forces. God bless ‘em, they leave for much longer than 10 days. And then, well, they’re not exactly on vacation. In Rome I saw Michelangelo’s Renaissance masterpiece called the “Pieta” at St. Peter’s. I had never heard of it before. So I think I will comment on that in my 50th blog entry. Sorry, no funny anecdotes today. The Pieta. To me, it is a remarkable symbol or reflection of the beauty, and also the depth and power and commitment and, for lack of a better word, the price of being the mother – or father! – of another human being. It’s sad, of course, the scene depicted, a mother holding her deceased son. But there are some interesting things going on in the sculpture. First of all, according to experts, Mary is ‘unusually youthful’ and ‘in repose’, which is to say calm or at peace as opposed to sorrowful. We are told these twists are intentional. In addition to the Christian significance, the peaceful Mary, to me, says that regardless of what happens, it is a fathomless and amazing and immeasurably fulfilling gift to be a parent. Parents adore their children, and that is its own reward. The chronologically impossible or historically inaccurate young Mary (she is perhaps too young to be the mother of an early-thirties crucified Jesus) speaks to her perfection – more Christian theological meaning – but to me, it also touches on the reality that parenthood is a lifelong responsibility, or rather, it has lifelong relevance. It is timeless. It is relevant from our first day to our last because even when we are young, and have yet to enter into the various phases of parenthood, we are accumulating experiences that will hugely feed into the role (and its many phases as our own experiences predate some of the same milestones or occurrences in the lives of our children… but not all; undoubtedly we encounter events, challenges, highs, and lows with our kids that are new to everyone involved). And another point about the intentionally sculpted young Mary…… mothers are beautiful. They are beautiful and perfect and very needed in the eyes of their little children (maybe some of that in the eyes of their big adult children, too). Psychologists make careers out of this stuff but I know nothing! Although, I would add that maybe we can sort of replace ‘mothers’ with ‘fathers’ in my statement above about the needs of kids (although, I wouldn’t call fathers ‘beautiful’). And no doubt mothers and fathers have similar and strong – strong to the point of overwhelming at times – feelings about their children.

Commercial Kid

Yesterday Michael got out of the car and on the way into the house noticed something on the garage shelf.


Michael: Oh. My. GOSH. You bought OXY-CLEAN?!

Me: Well, yes, apparently I did.

Michael: That gets out the HARD STAINS!

The Big Oh-Four

She finally made it. After a year of lying about her age, one day made an honest girl out of Meggie. She's four now! She had a cute little butterfly party with all her "little frennies" complete with butterfly crafts, wings, stickers and cupcakes. The girls were all adorable, of course. And Meg was Queen Adorable.