Tag Archives: childhood

Back in the Saddle

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Write. Every day. Whatever. No matter what. Write. Write every day.

Apparently, once I fall of the wagon, I fall hard. I’ve had numerous ideas for posts in the last couple years, even started banging out early drafts of a few of them, and never got around to finishing them. I’m looking at them just below the box I’m typing in, wondering if any of them are worth finishing at this point, since they’re largely dated. No idea. May go back and give each of ’em a once-over just for the sake of it, and maybe save anything promising.

Write. Every day. Whatever. No matter what. Write. Write every day.

I carry a notebook around with me most of the time so I can jot down thoughts and ideas, nuggets of inspiration and whimsies, and, since most of the time my hands are full of baby these days, the notebook doesn’t get much use. The spine, stiff from lack of stretching, desperately in need of some book yoga to loosen it up, get it feeling like a BOOK again. I used to be really good at scrawling random musings in a notebook. Even had one where I played with the format of HOW I wrote all the time, writing upside-down, solely around the edges of the page, spiraling into the center. The kind of shit you do in your twenties that you think makes you “edgy”.

Write. Every day. Whatever. No matter what. Write. Write every day.

I spend more time writing posts on Facebook, ranting about politics (which I did this very morning) or making amusing comments on the latest Onion article (a venerable, worthy institution, one for whom I would love to write someday if I could only remember how to be that funny). I do, apparently, make several friends’ day with my efforts, so it’s not a total loss. But I’m not really saying anything, not generating any thoughts of my own.

All that’s about to change.

Don’t worry, I’m still gonna post articles from the Onion, because they’re funny as hell and some of the most painfully accurate satire there is these days. Can’t live without that. But I’m losing my own voice, and I can’t have that. So that’s why I’m repeating this little mantra.

Write. Every day. Whatever. No matter what. Write. Write every day.

That’s my challenge to myself. Whatever it is, write it. This blog. Plays. Screenplays. Prose, Poetry. My own brilliant satire, whenever I come up with some. Turn the goddamn TV off and write. Put the kids to bed and write.

Oh yeah, I have two kids now. Pretty much anyone who follows this blog is already aware of that. One’s asleep in his crib right now, and the other is outside playing with his dart guns, so I’m stealing a few minutes to get to it and write. I love my boys so much it hurts, but they’re a lot of work, and it makes it hard to do the other work that matters to me, too. But

I’ve always tended to be pretty stream-of-consciousness when I write; too much structure up front stifles me, and if I know exactly were I’m going at the end, I often lose interest in getting there. But, I live in Los Angeles now, and scripts need to be tight, well thought out, and usually of a certain length. I ain’t too old to learn new tricks. So, my professional work is gonna be tightly plotted (with room for improvisation and inspiration), and the other stuff – like this blog – is gonna wander.

But I’m still gonna talk about the things that inspired this whole blog-like thing: I’m a dad, I’m a men, I’m a lot of things, and I’m gonna continue to explore them and write about them. Fatherhood, manhood, guns, movies, fart jokes, books, Star Wars, sex, comedians, politics (once in a while, if I can keep the vitriol down). Anything and everything. and beer. DEFINITELY beer. I’m turning this blog into my little notebook that I thought was so cool. And, I’m gonna start writing in that notebook again, when my hands aren’t full of baby. Damn, he’s big.

I ALSO wanna take a moment to recognize all the new fathers I know from the past year. Whatever was in the water, we all drank it, and DAMN, there are some amazing new creatures in the world because of all of us gettin’ naughty. Congrats to Eric, Dan, Kahlil, Colin, Jonathan, Joey Bag-o-Donuts. I know there’s more, and I apologize for not being able to remember your names right now, but , as you all know, baby brain ain’t just for women anymore. Welcome to the brave new world of raising a responsible human being. You’re about to earn your grey hairs.

I ALSO wanna open up this forum to all the dads I know, new and old, and invite you post your own musings on manhood with me on this page. Basically, let’s start talking about it together. I’m happy to moderate, if anyone’s interested. If not, I feel ya, I’m tired all the time, too. But I’d love to hear from you. No rules on content, format, whatever – you wanna write a play about being a dad, bring it. I’ll post it. Whatever’s on your mind. If you’re so inclined, this is a place to let it all rip. I’m sure you’ve got something to say, so let me know if you want to say it here.

Write. Every day. Whatever. No matter what. Write. Write every day.

If we keep it up, sooner or later we’ll write something worth reading.

 

P.S.: Next time, I’ll write about my new baby boy. Stay tuned….

Father’s Day

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So yesterday was a good day. We’re currently back home in Tennessee, nearing the end of our annual grandparent visit. It just so happens this year that we were here for the weekend of Father’s Day, and we celebrated by having a backyard grillout and a day-long rotation of friends and family stopping by to visit and to marvel over the little man. The weather was mostly cooperative, and it was hot but pleasant all day long.

I’ve also been catching post after post of people celebrating their fathers and sons on Facebook all day long, and posting a few congrats and happy wishes to fathers that I know and especially to a couple of brand new dads and one dad-to-be who is waiting on his son to be born any day now. Exciting stuff, and it amazes me how excited I now get whenever I hear that someone is going to be a parent. I remember when we were waiting on Ryder to be born, and while we were anxious and terrified and trying desperately to prepare ourselves, everyone around us was ecstatic. Loads and loads of hugs, smiles, and all the love you could ever imagine raining down on us from every direction. It was a little overwhelming, and honestly took us by surprise. We thought, “Wow, everyone else is soooo excited.”

Now I understand why.

Becoming a parent changes you. I talked about this with the above-mentioned expectant father a while ago, and it’s not exactly news. Of course, becoming a parent changes you. But, not in the ways you expect. You are still you – the essence of who you are is unchanged. You still like the same dirty jokes, you still love beer and pizza (even if your kid doesn’t – the pizza, that is), and you probably don’t feel any more like an adult than you did before you had a kid. But there is now something more. Something else to worry about, something to clean up after, something to snuggle up with, something to chase around the yard, something to make eat his vegetables, something else to love. You become more. It makes you care more about different things, and it makes you stronger in ways you could never imagine.

I’m gonna refer back to my last post about Man of Steel just for a moment – no spoilers, just a general reaction to a specific element in the film. The scenes of Kal-El’s childhood with his human father Jonathan Kent were, to me, the heart of the film. Every single scene was a moment depicting the love of a father for his son. It makes me feel that love itself is more than just an emotion – it is its own thing. This love contains so many emotions that it cannot be considered simply an emotion in and of itself – pride, fear, disappointment, anger, and so many more. It truly makes love itself a living, breathing entity, something that descends upon you and grows within you at the very moment that your child is born, and it becomes the scaffolding for the growth of this new human being. And, along the way, you continue to grow with it, becoming more and more every day, as your child needs you to grow. And as I watched the movie, every time Jonathan Kent spoke to young Clark about who he is and who he will be, the tears welled up, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

Every father wants to see his son grow to become Superman, to become a beacon of hope and nobility. And they look to us to see how to do that. In his son’s eyes, every father is Superman. And the love for your child is exactly the source of the strength a father needs.

So Happy Father’s Day to every Superman I know out there – the fathers of Aiden, Denton, Charliemonster, Ammon, Ivey James, and Austin, Ryan, and soon-to-be-welcomed Dash. You are stronger than you know. May your sons’ capes blow proudly in the wind, and may they always see the capes on your shoulders. May they soar into the sky, and may they always look back and see the man who grounded them well enough to allow them to fly.

The Nap

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I’m lying in bed with my son as he sleeps. It’s late afternoon (he’s a late napper), and he’s had a busy, energetic day. He’s trying to refuse naps lately, but he obviously still needs them, so we lie down and take one every day. Yesterday he played so hard that he fell asleep in the car on the way home for naptime, and I had to carry him in and change him from underwear and jeans into a pull-up diaper (potty training proceeds apace) while he was sleeping. Thankfully, he never fluttered an eyelid.

It’s really something else. My wife sleeps in bed with him most nights, and I can understand why. I was against it for a long time, mainly because he had been sleeping on his own since he was a month old and it was working great. He got sick last year, tho, and she brought him into our bed, and from then on he didn’t want to sleep alone. I made my peace with it and have learned to enjoy my own solo time in bed – a queen size all to yourself is nice and roomy – and in general I try to let him sleep alone during naptime.

All of this goes out the window, of course, if he wakes up mid-nap in a panic, screaming for me. Then, as any good dad would, I bolt into the room and lie with him to calm him down and soothe him back to sleep. I usually finish the nap with him after that (and let’s face it, that’s most likely what I was doing on my own, anyway. He’s not the only one who needs a nap).

However, today I had decided pre-nap that round two of coffee was a necessity, and so when the time came to fall asleep with a book on my chest, instead I read fifty pages (Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World) and tossed around some. Just then the familiar cry came from Ryder’s room, the bookmark went in, and I climbed into bed next to my boy.

Ryder often half-wakes like this. Moaning, eyes still squeezed shut, standing on the bed. I speak softly to him, and he lays back down, squirms and moans a little more, eventually makes contact with my body somehow (two days ago he held my nose for five minutes), and sinks back into sleep. So it was today, as he found my side with his feet and stretched out diagonally across the bed. I scoot him around a little so I can actually keep my body weight on the bed an not hang in limbo over the edge, and I settle down to try to snooze with him.

No good. Hence the post. But as I lie here typing into the nap’s best friend, the iPhone, I’m watching Ryder sleep. He’s not as deep in as some days, a little wriggly, but still out like a light. And it’s on days like this that I appreciate why my wife likes to sleep with him every night.

The peaceful look on a child’s face as they sleep is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Completely serene, calm, unconcerned with anything else at that moment. Granted, he’s unconscious, but it’s a wondrous thing to behold, because it reminds me that, for him, the world is a wondrous place, to be explored and claimed and conquered, and every day is met with bright eyes, enthusiasm, and glee.

That’s the face my son shows me every morning when he comes into my room to wake me up. It makes me smile just thinking about it, and it reminds me that, despite all of our problems, our bills, our anger, our defeat – despite all of the shit that we as adults have to deal with on a daily basis to provide the things that he needs, it’s worth it to give him the opportunity to explore this world and to make it his own. And you need lots of rest to go forth and conquer like that.

So naptime is essential. And during that time, I find myself at peace, calm, serene, unconcerned – I reach that same state of Zen that my son lives in, a joyous celebration of the Moment, the Now, and I cherish the fact that I get to share that with him every day.

Then, he shoves his feet into my spleen.