Nov 21, 2007

Lost&Found Moments


I spend many of my waking hours avoiding moments of truth.

Which is pretty understandable. I mean, I’m a father, husband and my business supports my family. Which means like my wife I’m overworked, underpaid and perpetually tired.

So I live in a constant state of flux. Work deadlines blend in to family deadlines that merge with stress and ricochet off of all the caffeine in my system.

So who can blame me for missing a few seconds here and there of moment-to-moment life?

Funny thing is, my daughter and I were at a local java-hut the other day and I witnessed someone not avoid the truth.

Next to our table there was a father who in one arm carried his screaming two year old to the cashier while his five-year-old girl sat next to us with her hot chocolate.

That she immediately lost control of and splashed all over the floor. It was pretty spectacular, actually. Paper cup kind of flew out of her hands, arched over the corner of our table and formed this instantly endless milk-chocolate reservoir that just kept spreading.

Her dad came back and picked up the cup, as his son continued screaming. A moment later the manager, a middle-aged Indian man came over and started mopping up the choco-lake.

Dad looked over and offered his apologies but this manager was totally cool~he just said “No, no please these things happen”.

Which was just such a refreshing and often unseen reaction to this kind of thing. Then the manager goes “Sir, what did she have?”.

Dad was kind of surprised and goes “Oh uh, hot chocolate…”.

And a minute later, this manager returns with a new drink for the little girl.

Then he cleans off their table. Then, he actually grabs a new paper napkin and dries off the table so they don’t have to rest their elbows in that thin film of water.

Okay, so now I’m impressed.

Or maybe I’m restored to what people are capable of when they don’t avoid the obvious.

So dad gathers up his newly chocolated daughter, his screaming boy, smiles to us and jets.

And I tell my girl, “Ella did you see what that man did?”.

Then I explain how the man brought the little girl a new hot chocolate and Ella asks “Why did he bring it?”.

And honestly, part of my is asking the same thing. Which happens if you live in New York and you forget to exhale every once in a while.

Instead of seeing moments as possibilities you see them as annoyances.

But that part of me that is still capable of exhaling explains to Ella that sometimes people are capable of caring for others. And sometimes you can just give someone a new hot chocolate if they spill theirs.

At the mention of free hot chocolate, Ella seemed to really get interested. So as we’re leaving I pick her up and detour by the cashier. The manager has his back to us and I ask “Excuse me...are you the manager?”.

He turns, sees us and walks over, a little flash of concern painting his face.

“Yes, sir may help you”.

“Well, I just thought that was a really gracious gesture on your part. I’m a father and I know what its like to always feel like you’re overwhelmed and making a mess everywhere you go…”.

And suddenly and pretty effortlessly, this kindly Indian man just starts beaming light.

I mean like, Della Reese “Touched By An Angel” light.

And I’m holding Ella and he’s beaming us and we’re all lit up like big shiny human-stars and he gestures with his hand and says

“This store is my baby. I am the owner and my customers are family to me. I am blessed to have this place. God-blessed so thank you for such nice words”.

And it felt like Ella and I were looking down the barrel of this long, golden tunnel of light and she felt feather-light and my voice sounded like barely an echo of itself and I managed to say something like “Well god-bless you for your kindness…”.

And then like instantly, the tunnel-beam closed and we were just in this tiny coffee shop on the upper west side and I was walking away with Ella and she goes “What happened?”.

And I didn’t really have an answer. I wasn't sure what happend. As I was putting her in the stroller random thoughts just crisscrossed my mind, like what if that guy beamed us so brightly we had half-face tans like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind?

And would Ella sometimes not answer her cell when her dad was calling just hoping to hear his little girl's voice?

And why does six ounces of hot chocolate in a cup somehow triple in volume to 18 ounces when it spills on to a horizontal surface?

I snugged Ella's coat around her, realizing you can’t keep little girls from growing up. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's how we can rescue the truth from obscurity. By just exhaling and realizing that we can't package moments so they aren't messy, or painful.

We can just try and be present for as many truthful-moments as we can stand, even when its right in front of us, on the floor covered in hot-chocolate.

Nov 16, 2007

Control Your Fluids


Sometimes my friends (and by friends I mean people who still have lean bodies, date like field-bunnies and spend their Saturday’s buying clothes not decorated with licensed cartoon characters) ask me, “So what’s it take to be a good dad? Love, money, patience?”. Actually, there’s a much simpler answer~control your fluids.

Yep, it’s that simple. You control the fluids, you control the chaos.

Do the math.

You’re at dinner. Your fluid is wine. It must go in to your mouth. Repeatedly. Easy.

Trickier is your three year old who has within arm’s length a glass of milk, a glass of water and of course, your wine.

Lose control of any one of those three glasses and its game over. Liquid finds its own level. Which means it flows under and around your paper napkin, the plates, the stem or base of any glass and eventually, off the sides or end of the table.

What’s left is a table coated in a base of fluid and any number of saturated napkins. In other words, you’re now trying to eat dinner in a swamp.

Time to get the check, dinner’s over.

But if you can manage to deftly wield fork-bites of 1500° flesh-searing pizza in to your mouth, while chugging glass after glass of house wine and using one arm to keep your child from leaping off their chair and on to the table next to you in a full-out body-slam while you use your other free limbs to keep every fluid-filled glass vertical and your table dry…

…then winner winner chicken dinner, enjoy your night out with the family.

And if you do manage that minor miracle of fluid control, then you get to move on to the master class.

Controlling your tears.

Because even more difficult than keeping water glasses from tipping over is managing your own emotions as a parent.

And I use the term “manage” here loosely.

Controlling your emotions is more like trying to catch hummingbirds with your bare hands.

Because after you get home with a water/wine/milk soaked shirt, peel off your clothes and jump in the tub with your screaming toddler who refuses to brush her teeth after ‘tubbie, then towel her off, spray her hair with organic detangler then wrangle her in to bed before your wife fills out divorce papers, something funny happens.

You miss your child.

You snuggle the blanket around their little body, sneak off the bed as stealthily as a cat burglar, close the door quietly behind you then burst in to tears.

You’re exhausted, fried like a donut, smell like pizza and can’t wait to hold your baby again.

So you open the bedroom door, and tip toe back to the bed. Just to make sure they’re safe.

And they are. Sleeping as quietly and safely as a lamb. Their faces are perfect. Angels don’t look this flawless.

Their tiny chests move gently with each breath like little ocean waves, in and out. They lay quiet and secure. Theirs is the most righteous peace of body and soul.

They don’t know war, or catastrophe, or loss. Or any myriad number of the world’s sharp-edged realities upon which they’ll cut themselves in years to come.

They only know they are loved. And they are safe. And for now that’s all they need to know.

And yet, somehow for some unknown reason you think to yourself wordlessly, “what if?”.

What if I lost her?

And you feel a heavy weight slowly crush you from the inside out. The weight pushes out the last of the air in you, pushes tears to the corner of your eyes that paint your face.

And you feel light, like you could float away. And you watch her little body, so still.

You reach across the space of your own fears and with your weightless body touch her face.

You can feel her breath move through the diagram of your fingerprint and in to your heart.

And you stand there. Unable to move.

And somewhere beyond your control the world’s most frightening question continues to echo right through you.

What if?

And you know the honsest answer is, you don't know.

So you do what you can. You go to pizza dinners. And you drink bad house wine.

And when she reaches for your pizza and knocks over your glass you smile while you mop up the mess.

And you order another glass of wine. And you hear the world in her joyful laugh and the world says “You can’t control the fluids”. And you know its true.

And liquid will find its own level anyway.

Whether its bad house wine, or good house tears.