Monthly Archives: January 2012

This miracle will require smelling salts

Two things in life can leave a man utterly shell-shocked. One is war, and it is called a stain upon the fabric of humanity. The other is childbirth, and it is called a miracle.

With the arrival of the new baby growing near, I find myself harkening back to arrival of the last baby—that magical day when my wife squeezed every last drop of blood out of my hand.

It is rumored that childbirth hits the mother even harder than it hits the father. On the birthing day, it was easy for me to believe this. Later, when my wife was making plans for the next one while I was still huddled in a corner, shivering and swatting imaginary flies from my face, it seemed like maybe her scars were more physical than psychological.

Even after it was all over, you can still see the effects of the trauma in my vacant eyes.

The pain a mother endures at the birth of her child is not to be discounted. Nor should the sights a father must bear be shrugged off as insignificant. The sounds that assail the father’s ears are worst of all. It is much easier to avert one’s eyes at a crucial moment than it is to clamp a hand over each ear. It is also more effective, and less moronic.

My big moment of trauma came at the administration of the painkillers. My wife had made the nobly ridiculous decision to forego drugs during delivery. Instead, she planned to rely upon an organic system of pain transference: whenever the pain became intense, she would grab hold of the most conveniently available part of my body and squeeze her pain away.

This plan worked through hours of contractions. Just when her Kung-Fu grip was beginning to make me resemble a wallpaper print of red hand on white background, her fingers tired themselves out. She broke down and called for the epidural.

My wife had previously instructed me on the dangers of the epidural. If they missed by just one inch with the needle, she could be paralyzed. As she explained this, she held her index finger and thumb about a millimeter apart, but she called the space between an inch because she doesn’t go in for those hoity-toity French units of measurement.

I was relieved to see two anesthesiologists enter the delivery room. Ah, I thought, they have weighed the gravity of this moment and have sent their two best men. I helped the nurse pull my wife up and swing her legs over the bed as the two men set up for business behind her back.

The nurse enlisted my help in holding my wife while the drug was administered. It would be crucial, the nurse told me, to hold her very still, in spite of her pain. Though much of the blood had been squeezed out of my arms, I felt confident, now that a team of experts had set to work around my wife’s spine. I was strong, the man of the family. If the woman could take a needle in the back, the man could certainly hold her still.

I held my wife close, pressing my head against hers. I couldn’t see what was transpiring behind her; unfortunately, I could hear everything.

What I had imagined to be two highly-skilled specialists turned out to be one full-fledged anesthesiologist and his trailing apprentice. I’d rather have had a mature second opinion in the room, but as long as there was one well-trained professional at the helm, it should be all right. I didn’t mind if the trainee stood quietly to the side and watched. They have to learn somehow, right?

I had just settled into this conclusion when their voices convinced me that the actual anesthesiologist had handed over the needle to his boy sidekick. I know these can’t be his actual words, but this is what I heard the anesthesiologist say to his little helper: “Here ya go, Skip. Why don’t you give it a whirl this time?”

I started panting. This kid’s virgin jab was aimed at the spinal cord of the love of my life. If he had acted with self-confidence, I would have made it through the ordeal. But he started right in asking questions. Again, this might not be verbatim, but when your loved one’s future is at stake, you hear “Right around this spot, maybe? This side, over here? What’s that, a bone or something?”

It’s difficult to hold someone perfectly still when you are shaking like a leaf. I was squeezing my wife harder than she was squeezing me, which is saying a lot. Why did they have to practice on my wife? Couldn’t that kid go learn someplace else?

The final straw came when the anesthesiologist coached: “No, over a little, a little more. No, that’s too far. Now, up a little. Steady.” And this part I’m not really paraphrasing. I would have protested except that there were too many black dots forming in my vision. They distracted me from what I was about to say, then they began to distract me from standing upright.

I had 10 seconds to leave my feet voluntarily, before they left me. Rather than being macho, and dragging everyone down with me, I did the honorable thing. I turned to the nurse and calmly explained, “I’m about to faint.”

Three months later, and the boy was still concerned that I looked a little peaked.

The stalwart nurse took over my burden. I fell into a chair. Luckily, the apprentice had guessed close enough to the spot and the procedure was over. The nurse eased my wife back into bed before pushing the intercom button. “Man down. Man down,” she announced to the nurses’ station.

The outside nurse understood perfectly. “We’ll send in some juice for the father,” she replied.

Six cups of juice later, my son was born. Manly man that I am, I was back on my feet by then.

My kid is really sharp . . . and I’m running low on bandages

My son can’t stand to see me lying down comfortably. He seems to have some sort of instinctive need to keep me on the lookout for invasions of my personal space when I really just want to relax for a minute. Perhaps this is some holdover from evolution. Maybe lions and cavemen would all have been wiped out by sneaky foes with pointy sticks if the young of the group had allowed the older males to close their eyes and let down their guards for a minute.

Whatever his ancient justification, my son views the sight of me in any kind of reclined position as an invitation to climb all over me. I should say, when I am fortunate he climbs all over me. This is the gentle treatment. When I really need a good bruising, he climbs to the top of some piece of furniture, from where he leaps at me. So far, his strategy has been successful, as we have not yet been driven from our home by a sneak attack of creatures bearing pointy sticks.

Like millions of old lions, I suppose I could grow to live with this helpful effort to keep me ever vigilant, except that the lions must have had softer offspring. My son is the sharpest object we have in our house, and that includes the steak knives. His elbows, knees, and heels never touch me without making me wonder if we have a whetstone for such joints hidden somewhere in his room.

Some of these are almost as sharp as my son's elbows.

And, of course, a boy is going to use his sharpest parts when he needs to dig into the cliff face of his father’s mid-section. I swear I still have dents in my ribs that perfectly match that boy’s elbows. I’ve got two good knee prints in my back, in case the doctor ever needs a map to where my kidneys used to be.

I could probably even write off the dings in my ribs and my back as the occupational hazards of housing a three-year-old. But these are not my most vulnerable parts. I suppose my kidneys can shift over and shack up with some of my better-protected organs for a while, but I’ve got some extremely vulnerable parts that have no place to go. For better or worse, they are planted where God put them. They can’t run and they can’t hide. Together, we all live in fear of that ice pick my son uses for an elbow.

They always take the blood out of the cartoon versions.

I’ve learned to sleep with my hands cupped into a strategic dome of defense. Someday soon, I may start awake to a dislocated finger, but considering the alternative, I will chalk this up as a great victory for both fatherhood and the adaptive genius of evolution.

This peace offering is for the birds

Last fall, while I was doing some yard work, my three-year-old son and his friend were playing nearby. They came over to show me something they had found in the dirt. “Look,” the friend explained to me, “we found a worm.”

“That’s a mighty fine-looking worm you’ve got there,” I said, or some such words intended to placate them, so that I could get back to my work.

“We have to protect him, so the birds don’t get him,” the friend said. He seemed righteously concerned for the fate of his worm.

“That’s a good idea,” I said, making movements with my yard tools to indicate that the time for talk had been superseded by the time for me to get back to my work without further interruption.

The boys took their worm carefully back to the place where they had been playing. I returned my attention to the work I’d been doing, giving no more thought to worms.

A few minutes later, I saw my son running around the yard, his cupped hands held high, calling out, “Birds! Here, birds! We have a worm for you!”

His friend was chasing him around, trying to convince my boy to quiet down and give the worm back to the protection of his own hands.

Maybe because he buys into all of our “sharing” propaganda, or maybe because the birds didn’t seem very enticed by a loud, young human offering them a treat, my son eventually gave the worm back. To my knowledge, nobody ate the worm, although you can never be sure with three-year-olds.

My first, society-tainted thought about this spectacle was that I had been blessed with a sociopath for a son. Where the other boy’s instinct was to nurture and protect, my son jumped right in to the hard facts of survival of the fittest and the rites of worm sacrifice.

I might have been slightly dismayed by this, except that I quickly figured out that this was not what I had witnessed at all. My boy is not a sociopath; he is a forward-thinking diplomat. He was presented with an opportunity to offer a gesture of friendship to either the worms or the birds. He measured the pros and cons of each carefully and made the informed decision that an alliance with the birds would likely be of more use to him if ever came the day when the animal kingdom were divided by strife.

On balance, I have to say I think he made a wise choice. Birds hold the potential to become dangerous adversaries. They can fly; they have sharp talons; they can peck your eyes out. Birds are loud and jumpy. They are not likely to have the patience to sit quietly through long peace negotiations.

Nobody really knows what worms can do. They appear to be no match for birds in single combat. They don’t have much of a record of pecking eyes out, and it is probably easier to mend fences with them than it is with birds, if it comes to that.

I have to agree with my son’s logic on this one. The world may see the other boy as a caring nurturer, but let’s see how far that gets him and his little worm friends when the skies are filled with angry birds.

Stand up and lie like a man!

We all want to make sure that our children don’t grow up to be liars. We go to great lengths to instill within them a sense of the value of the truth. We even agree to mitigate punishments for their transgressions if only they will come clean and confess the truth. “The truth will set you free [from time out],” we tell them in so many words. We lead them to resist the temptation of the lie in every way, except by example.

If our children knew how often we lie to them, and how easily we do it, they would never tell the truth again. In fact, we manage our children largely through deception. We do it without batting an eye, and without the tiniest pang to our consciences. I wonder how often we even know we are doing it.

Raise your hand if you’ve never told your child that the store with his favorite toy department is closed at 1 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Good. Now, who hasn’t tried to pass off some kind of vegetable on your child’s plate as just a different variety of some food that he loves? We brag up and down about how bright our child is; then, in the privacy of our own home, we secretly hope he is dim enough to buy a Brussels sprout as a green Chicken McNugget. It’s time to load up on some Vitamin Gullible, son.

You’re kid wants you to stay in his room with him until he falls asleep, but your favorite TV show is about to come on. “Lay down, Junior. I’m just going to put on my pajamas; then I’ll be right back.” Sound familiar? Do you always keep your pajamas in the TV room? It’s okay; if he doesn’t fall asleep before he comes looking for you, you can just throw out a couple more lies to cover your tracks. It’s easy. You don’t even have to break a sweat coming up with lies good enough to thwart your children.

I lie to my son a lot, and I will continue to lie to him at this pace until he becomes more reasonable. Those are my conditions: when he becomes a person who can be reasoned with, I will curtail the lying I do in order that I don’t have to go insane trying to negotiate with a three-year-old rogue state. Until he understands that we are not entitled to a treat every time we want one, I will continue to devise fictitious barriers, all beyond my power to overcome, that stand between us and the world’s treats.

Whether he believes me or not is another story. He often does not believe me when I am telling the truth. For example, the library really is closed at 10 p.m. What is my child doing up at 10 p.m., you ask. Simple, he’s bugging me about taking him to the library. And he cannot go to sleep because he is convinced that I am lying to him when I tell him it is closed. It’s very frustrating for an honest man to be disbelieved.

I’ve decided that it’s probably hypocritical for me to expect my son to always be truthful. If he’s going to grow up to lie, which of course he is, the least I can do for him is to help him develop into a competent liar. Right now, his lies are ridiculously childish. Anybody could see right through them. He needs to learn how make them plausible and then really sell them. His weak, baby lies won’t cut it in this cruel world. He needs to step up and lie like a man.

I think there is a lot he could learn from me. I see a lot of great father-son bonding moments ahead.