He was tired. We had miscommunicated. It was a long day: music homework... music class. Every good boy, etc., etc. A stop at the library. A large Star Wars book among his booty and an intriguing Mexican novel about immigration my sole demand of the library. Cell phone shots of him playing in the library. Commuting through the city as the colour and grit of the city prompted inquiries about the homeless we'd crossed paths with. On our way to the last train home, he was resisting comfort and not even a cherry sundae failed to re-energize him enough to bear comfort or conversation.
I'd strode ahead a bit, glancing back with obsessive compulsive frequency to ensure he was nearby and still moving. On the last glance, he was racing to catch up, ready to dissolve into tears. He bumped his head and bit his tongue. I could picture the pout pulling his chin down and his glance to the floor. He banged his head on an angled pillar. The fatigue and frustration that encased him in a stubborn solitude was, for the briefest moment, dented.
I knelt before him and engulfed him as he quietly sobbed for a few moments. He explained his bumps and I held on for a few moments. Again we are paused for this public moment of privacy that I would rather keep to myself. He spent the day observing the pain of strangers, the tumult of domestic F-bombs on the train platforms and the moments of childhood with the friends he has in music class are but the briefest moment of childhood calm.
A woman turned as she walked past and called out, "Good Dad." I wanted to ask her, "Do you know what I've done?" My focus was on him, rather than rebuttals, however. I just whispered to him, to ease his mind and assure him that I understood how much he hurt. I wanted to cry too, but I've been more prone to mist up when I'm wistful, even joyful rather than in pain. That, I engulf and snuff as I look for beauty in my day again.
I wonder what I could have done differently through the day to have prevented that, or through my month or year or life, but only for the briefest moment. Instead, I treasure him straddling my knee and ponder the generous heart that he has and before the night ends I tell him that the socks we bought today I would have overlooked if it were not for him and his school's campaign for one of the city's homeless shelters. I am awed by how this generation of kids is going to bring the best out of its parents.
I still grimace at the praise for that single moment's embrace but I heed that there were other things that I did well. The conversations that came from out of nowhere, but found a meandering path for a while rather than crashing into a version of mute detachment. I am prone to the efforts to impress that most men fall into, but I have strived to accomplish rather than acquire and in my version of the trap I strive to accomplish something as a father by talking it through, likely ad nauseum, rather than gritting my teeth and revising the moment.
Perhaps in that tangent of time, in my recognition that I had to comfort him there and then, that I earned that praise. Was it that he knew he could come to me rather than having to bury it? Was it the day of conversations and the experiences we absorbed and shared through the day and the year to this point?
Okay.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Unforgettable
I was still cobbling together a routine of sorts with my son. There was a prevailing tentativeness but a parcel of energy to throw into everything, no matter how unfamiliar it was. I tried to introduce my son to penny hockey and managed to hold his attention for while with that. When he expressed an interest in drawing of all things -- I have long joked at my own expense about being the only father who would pressure his son to go to art school and he further entrenched the joke by demonstrating his preference for the sciences and math -- I went along with it and supplied him with the sharpie, paper and how-to videos from YouTube (which may have been the main draw). He did express his frustration with his ability compared to that demonstrated in the video, and i assured him that practice and taking it slow would bring him along with time.
Our camp-out life on the floor was proving to be decent for the first few hours. He got a little fussy about attending his Saturday afternoon music class and after the time to get to class had come and gone, we decided to head out for a while. It was a snowy afternoon, but we still went to the playground. He played on the swings for a while but before long we decided to venture inside in quest for a hot chocolate. He found the one we purchased not to his liking despite my efforts to take the edge off the bitterness with water and milk. We deposited his hot chocolate in the garbage and headed out.
"Can we go in there?"
Don't do it, don't, you know better, you're gonna pay for it, no, don't, watch it. You've been to this movie.
He doesn't have anything to play with.
"Okay."
So we headed into a toy store for a browse. We went through the story and we were fascinated with the items that were in there. There were the futile turns down the aisles such as when he was perusing the toys for 12 month-olds and my own wistfulness at a Lawren Harris jigsaw puzzle. We scanned carefully, exhaustively actually and my son proposed that he come up with three options for me to choose from. I pointed out a STEM themed toy for him to put together various items and sensors that he could use to trigger alarms and such. Agreed. Settled. Finito. Our conversation overheard, the manager of the store gave a knowing look and a slight nod. A prickle of stigma and empathy touched my back and I tried to shrug it away.
At the cashier's counter, there was a resplendence of other toys, smaller items to mess around with and get familiar with. Most were novelty items. Coinbanks that absorbed their coins in certain ways, little machine and suctioned toys that danced and popped and sprung with surprise. And a cube. The cube held the cashier in its thrall as he played with it to idle away his own time moreso than give it the sell.
STEM kit bagged, my son fell for this item and had to have it. The slide to despairing desire was quick, precipitous and I had to carry him out of the store to keep the reaction from spilling into embarrassment with a captive audience. I managed to get him to stay with me for half a block until we had to stop. I sat down on the ledge of a low window and tried to look him in the eye. He was sobbing with rage at the possibility that he would never see the cube again though it was etched deeply in me already that it meant a great deal to him. I was conscious of giving in, of trying to extract a promise of future behaviour when I knew how those deals had rarely, if ever, worked out.
No matter what I tried to say to assure him that Santa was on it, that he was looking down and noting this, my son hung on to the same question, "What if he forgets?" The questions was pressed with variety as it would apply to every person I could come up with who would remember. His mother, my best friend, Santa (again), friends who knew of my prodigious capacity for recall, there was the risk that this gift or his desire for it or, essentially, he would be forgotten. A word alone would not ease this, least of all mine on this occasion. We were stuck in this loop for about 45 minutes, perhaps a full hour as I surveyed the sympathetic looks of passers-by who had their own backstory for what I hoped was playing out more privately than it was.
I ran out of strategies to ease his mind about being forgotten and tried to bring him back to the calm that had been absent since he saw the toy and fixated on it. I did not want to assuage him with this toy. I did not want to set the precedent, but on this day, perhaps it was the only option I had. I hated the thought of giving in or bribing or inching toward the habits of the weekend dad. During a moment of calm, actually to negotiate a moment of calm I told him that he had to promise me to remember something.
He he took a deep breath and I tried to make it clear to him that time together and connecting were more important. I did not try to cite the fun we had in the morning drawing and playing penny hockey but tried to give him the sense that this was an opportunity for him to have something to remember how important he was to me and that he carry it with him as a token of my remembrance and my attention no matter where he is. Has a precedent been set? Quite possibly, and the questions will remain for a while about the strength of memory, the value of presence and wounds that a parent can inflict with any decision or action.
Our camp-out life on the floor was proving to be decent for the first few hours. He got a little fussy about attending his Saturday afternoon music class and after the time to get to class had come and gone, we decided to head out for a while. It was a snowy afternoon, but we still went to the playground. He played on the swings for a while but before long we decided to venture inside in quest for a hot chocolate. He found the one we purchased not to his liking despite my efforts to take the edge off the bitterness with water and milk. We deposited his hot chocolate in the garbage and headed out.
"Can we go in there?"
Don't do it, don't, you know better, you're gonna pay for it, no, don't, watch it. You've been to this movie.
He doesn't have anything to play with.
"Okay."
At the cashier's counter, there was a resplendence of other toys, smaller items to mess around with and get familiar with. Most were novelty items. Coinbanks that absorbed their coins in certain ways, little machine and suctioned toys that danced and popped and sprung with surprise. And a cube. The cube held the cashier in its thrall as he played with it to idle away his own time moreso than give it the sell.
STEM kit bagged, my son fell for this item and had to have it. The slide to despairing desire was quick, precipitous and I had to carry him out of the store to keep the reaction from spilling into embarrassment with a captive audience. I managed to get him to stay with me for half a block until we had to stop. I sat down on the ledge of a low window and tried to look him in the eye. He was sobbing with rage at the possibility that he would never see the cube again though it was etched deeply in me already that it meant a great deal to him. I was conscious of giving in, of trying to extract a promise of future behaviour when I knew how those deals had rarely, if ever, worked out.
No matter what I tried to say to assure him that Santa was on it, that he was looking down and noting this, my son hung on to the same question, "What if he forgets?" The questions was pressed with variety as it would apply to every person I could come up with who would remember. His mother, my best friend, Santa (again), friends who knew of my prodigious capacity for recall, there was the risk that this gift or his desire for it or, essentially, he would be forgotten. A word alone would not ease this, least of all mine on this occasion. We were stuck in this loop for about 45 minutes, perhaps a full hour as I surveyed the sympathetic looks of passers-by who had their own backstory for what I hoped was playing out more privately than it was.
He he took a deep breath and I tried to make it clear to him that time together and connecting were more important. I did not try to cite the fun we had in the morning drawing and playing penny hockey but tried to give him the sense that this was an opportunity for him to have something to remember how important he was to me and that he carry it with him as a token of my remembrance and my attention no matter where he is. Has a precedent been set? Quite possibly, and the questions will remain for a while about the strength of memory, the value of presence and wounds that a parent can inflict with any decision or action.
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