Tag Archives: Sons

Dad, can I have a Sugar Mama?

When I talk to my son, I try not to give him stereotypical parent-speak in reply to his questions. My hope is that he will learn to put thought into his words rather than repeat the things he hears most often, just to keep his voice prominent in conversations. This is the goal, but sometimes it is difficult to avoid backsliding. Sometimes, I find myself uttering phrases to him that are so hackneyed they could have been written in Hollywood.

We had a few people visiting our house. They were all unmarried, young adults. Our guests discussed among themselves the topic of whom they each were, or were not, dating. Since my son and I had little to add, we played while the grown-ups were talking. I didn’t think my son was paying any attention to the discussion, which means he drank in every word of it.

The next day, we had to drop my wife off at the home of one of our erstwhile visitors. After my wife exited the car, my son asked me, “Who lives here?”

“Jill.”

“Who’s Jill?”

“Remember the blonde-haired lady who was at our house yesterday?”

“Oh. That’s Jill?” There was short pause, followed by, “Daddy, do you think I should date her?”

After picking my jaw out of my lap and replacing it onto my face, I told him, “No.”

“Why not?”

This was my fatherly moment of truth. I could have used it to have an intelligent discussion with my son. I might even have taught him something. Let’s examine the options.

Intelligent thing #1 I could have said, but didn’t:

“Do you know what it means to date someone?”

This might have produced a meaningful discussion about relationships. Once he learned that dating has been known to lead to kissing, he would have thrown himself into reverse.

Intelligent thing #2 I could have said, but didn’t:

“Because four-year-olds, even if they are four-and-a-half, don’t date anyone.”

This would have allowed me to explain that, at his age, playing in the dirt is so much more fun than dating would be. Moreover, even as an adult, he would have dates when he wished he could just walk out and go fling himself into a dirt hole.

Mud puddle crew

“Wha’d’ya say fellas? Should we go back to our dates or fling ourselves into this hole?” (Image: John Vachon/U.S. Farm Security Administration)

And the winner is . . . . .

Trite thing I blurted out without thinking:

“Because she’s old enough to be your mother.”

Every grown woman on Earth is old enough to be his mother. That doesn’t concern him because the boy has no idea what age has to do with dating. He doesn’t know the difference between dating and saying hello. I might as well have told him not to say hello to Jill because she’s old enough to be his mother.

It made that much sense, and yet I said it.

And he accepted it.

“Who should I date then?” he asked.

“Someone your own age, when you’re much, much, much older,” I said.

And we left it at that.

Mending pants

Don’t get tangled up with an experienced woman. She’ll only string you along.

Baby’s first television theme song

Our one-year-old loves music. He’ll ride in the car and sing along to the radio in his baby way. You can’t understand any of what he’s saying, but you get the idea that he’s attempting to express himself musically. To my 45-year-old ears, that makes it a lot like Hip-Hop.

Music has been useful in soothing both of our children. When he was a baby, the big boy used to respond well to the soulful blues of Luther Allison. Somehow, my wife supplanted Luther with Robin Thicke this time around. I’m not thrilled at this development, but if it keeps the baby happy, so be it. The Wiggles will probably take precedence over everything in a few months anyway.

Babies are geniuses at mimicry. This explains why the baby loves to sing. I mentioned previously that we have a new cuckoo clock. They baby loves to mimic this too. He points at the clock and says, “Uh-oh, uh-oh,” which is not exactly “cuc-koo, cuc-koo,” but he has the inflection down perfectly. The baby’s impersonation is that of a cuckoo who has spilled his juice all over the carpet precisely at two o’clock. “Uh-oh, uh-oh!”

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

“Oh no, I spilled my juice! By the way, it’s two o’clock, if anybody cares.”

Mimicking simple sounds is standard fare for babies. When they put enough sounds together, it can blow your mind. The other day, the baby was sitting on the floor playing with some toy, or maybe it was a strand of cat fur – who can tell with babies? What mattered was that he was quiet and content.

I was working on the computer. From somewhere behind me came the soft melody of the theme to the 1960s Batman TV show. I turned very slowly as my mind ruled out possible sources of this music: the TV was off; the big boy and his mother were out; the cuckoo only knows two notes, and he was nailed to the wall in the other room anyway; and the cat can’t carry a tune to save his life.

I steeled myself to face a cheesy-TV-show-loving housebreaker, but there was no one there. There was no one except an unusually self-contented 14-month-old. The baby looked up at me and crooned, “Soba soba soba soba sot, YAN YAN!”

Okay, the vocals weren’t all that discernible, but he’s a child of his musical era. The melody was dead on.

Batman gets his goat

Just imagine how many evil-doing goats he’d be able to apprehend, now that he has a baby brother to sing his theme song.

His big brother likes to watch old Batman reruns on Saturday nights, so it’s not a mystery where he got the tune. The thing that blew my mind was that we had missed the last couple of Saturdays. It had been nearly three weeks since we’d heard that theme. The baby sat on those notes all that time so he could pull them out of his diaper weeks later and give Daddy a good shock.

Since then, we constantly goad him into singing the Batman theme for the amusement and amazement of our friends and acquaintances, because, to the best of our knowledge, that’s how parents are supposed to garner attention by exploiting the talents of their children.

SEAL Team Four and a Half

Over the past school year, my son developed a fascination with all things military. He shares this interest with a number of his preschool friends. As I recall my own youth, I find that it is not so unusual. I played “army” regularly as a child, as did most of my friends.

A consequence of my son’s military phase is his desire to wear camouflage clothes. Camouflage pants weren’t so easy to find in size 4T when I was a boy, or I probably would have been bent upon getting a pair to go with my plastic army helmet.

When my son first began his collection of camouflage fashion wear, it was cold outside. He was either indoors or playing in snow the entire time. The kid in the Camo jacket or pants stood out against painted walls or people dressed in winter clothes. It made him easy to spot.

Then something alarming happened. That sneaky outdoors got to looking very much like summer.

In summer, camouflage clothing does that horrible thing it was developed to do.

Two weeks ago, my wife took the boy to his preschool’s end-of-year picnic. Still in her winter frame of mind, she let the boy convince her that he should wear Camo from head to toe. It would make him easy to see among the other children.

And maybe it did, except the park had lots of other things besides children. These other things are known as trees and bushes.

Odd branch.

Who knew? Trees make such stylish fashion accessories.

My wife called me from the picnic. She laughed as she explained their miscalculation. “Oh my Gosh,” she said, “he’s playing over by the tree line and I can hardly see him. Now I have to pay even closer attention.” This was not part of the plan.

It was a disappointing development, because my wife is a good talker. She would much rather be chatting it up with the other moms than trying to follow the one tiny bit of human foliage around a park filled with vegetable foliage. It’s difficult to be an engaging conversationalist when you can scarcely lay down your binoculars, making it toilsome to spare an eye for your speaking companions.

Struggling with tree

Get out of here, kid! The tree doesn’t want to have to watch you either.

But my wife would have made a good soldier too. She’s a problem solver. If she had trouble tracking the object of her surveillance,  she’d find a marker. “It all worked out in the end,” she explained later. “His friend, John, had a bright red shirt on. I made him play with John all afternoon.”

“Did he want to play with John?” I asked.

She shrugged. “As far as I know, he did.”

Let that be a lesson to the boy. If he wants to wear Camo to the park, he’s bound to be the best friend and playmate of the kid with the loudest clothes.

You kids can’t have nice things

I grew up in a big family. As one of the youngest, I lived under whatever reputation my older siblings had created for us, no matter how poorly I fit that reputation.

The reputation that became firmly attached to us was that of being destroyers of all things pleasant, carefully crafted, or well-intentioned. It didn’t matter that I cared for my toys and did not try to break things merely because broken was the natural state in our world. I was a cemented piece in the group, you kids, as in “You kids can’t have nice things.”

My only relief was the hope that when I grew up I could surround myself with things that were not broken and people who did not shake their heads at me with the sad knowledge that it was only a matter of time.

Fortunately, I was never able to afford the expensive sorts of nice things. The nice things I collected as a young adult were modest. My possessions were not impressive, but they were not broken either. Against all odds, I proved that I could have nice things.

For a while.

Then came children – two boys who love to use all the strength possessed by their little fingers to affect change. Everything they touch is altered by their hands. I’m learning to think of these objects not as broken, just different than they used to be.

Playing with cat and bus

Younger children sometimes labor under the misapprehension that upside-down is adequately broken. It is not. His big brother will teach him how to thoroughly break things.

At first, I tried to move things out of the reach of active, little hands. But there is only so much space up high. Some things must be left to take their chances. Consequently, I now have a fine collection of CD cases that don’t stay shut, filled with ripped paperwork and the wrong CDs, which are all scratched to hell. It’s a good thing only old people use such ancient media anymore.

The boys’ aunt gave us a German cuckoo clock. The clock is too beautiful for us. If we had any gratitude, we’d buy a better house to move the clock into. The boys, unused to seeing such fine things in our house, were overcome with the desire to handle it with their inquisitive, spasmodic hands. I quickly hung it high on the wall, much to their mutual disappointment.

Reaching for the cuckoo

A scene from the baby’s fantasy, in which he can reach the clock and straighten out that crazy bird once and for all.

Every hour, a bird shoots out of the clock to renew their disappointment. If only they could get their paws on that clock for two minutes, what happy boys they’d be.

Yesterday, I brought sleeping Little Brother in from the car as the clock struck one. The cuckoo popped out and did his thing. The boy woke and pointed at the clock. “Ooooh,” he said, before dropping back to sleep. For those not fluent in Babyish, “Ooooh” has many meanings, depending upon the context. Here, it means: “That bird is adequate. One day I’ll get up there to yank on him, and then he’ll be perfect.”

Don’t get the idea that I resent my children’s object-altering hands. I adore those four hands. I wasted years running away. Those hands have returned me to my roots.

I can’t have nice things.

I’m home.