Five Stages of Grief in 68 Minutes

This afternoon, the optometrist, or opthamalogist, I'm not inclined to quibble, turned her back on my wife and I to have a one on one with the dude: "Gabriel, I have to tell you that your eye is broken."

A moment before, she had let us know that something was up while Gabriel occupied himself with eleventy bajillion dollar equipment she uses for eye exams. She showed us the scans of his eyes and the accompanying data on each eye. One measured something with a 1.50 and the other a 6.75 - a stark discrepancy. "Broken," though, for its simplicity to the ears and experience of a four-year-old sent palpable chills through mum and dad. I gave into to the urge to caution him to stop playing with the precision equipment, only to have the opto-expert chide me with, "Chill out, Dad," soon to be reused by my preschooler with some regularity, I'm sure. We booked another appointment to confirm the issue while I tried to recall the occasion where his reluctance to use his left eye presaged his efforts to get his right eye out from the shield she used for today's single-eye tests of his vision.

Mom's face reddened and eyes moistened. I was stoic and tried to joke about it. There is expectation that it'll correct itself with the proposed intervention of eyeglasses and further hope that he will take to wearing his glasses as I do. 

The walk home was somber and I pondered the restaurants we passed as a respite to stop and change the atmosphere. I passed, conscious that my appetite for sushi - the first option to present itself - surpassed that of my fish-phobic wife. I was not in the mood for the daily ritual of pulling Gabriel by the hand and running as hard as I could to drag him and his scrambling legs in my wake. It was only after some insistence that I relented and tugged him along. Even Mum trotted along. 

It is not the first time we have had a medical issue that sent us reeling to worst case scenario. Before he turned 3 months old, we learned that there were concerns about how his hips were aligning and he spent several months in a hips brace that kept his legs splayed until there was confidence that they were settling into their sockets the way they should. We know it could be worse and we ponder that aloud in first world problem terms as we acknowledge that we caught it and can intervene, and that elsewhere in the world, children do not have opto-experts near at hand and insisting on annual visits.

Gabriel is oblivious to his issue as far as we can tell. I moved his Toys R Us Lego catalogue to his left side so that he might use his weaker eye a little more. I also recall Gabriel's first evasion of his left eye. When I first introduced him to the SLR camera last month he peered through the viewfinder with his right eye and repelled my efforts to get to his left eye, the more balanced posture with a camera. It was of little comfort to recall that. 

The rest of the night unfolded as it usually does and I mustered the goofiness to try to read the first few pages of book to Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" until the cadence mercifully veered away from that melody. Gabriel demanded that I keep singing the book that way there was nothing resembling the chorus. (Whew.) If I write a children's book maybe I'll set it to the melody of "Everlong."

We have, for the moment gone from grief to acceptance and we'll return to the opto-expert next Wednesday to flirt with denial and bargaining for a few moments before our charming little daredevil becomes bespectacled.

Dilemmas on Movie Night

Yesterday, Gabriel cracked the code.

Nadine and I were spelling "movie" and he had asked as if that was what we were talking about. The bit of progress aside, the recent institution of family movie night has raised some challenges as we ponder what types of movies he is ready for.

We have watched movies off and on for quite a while, making cautious selections from our collection of animated films and each time carefully confirming that a movie is rated-G and then going a step further to check on IMDB to review what parts of the films cause concern. There are instances where language, behaviour, violence or some other combinations of events and scenarios in a film cause parents some concern.

Given Disney's propensity for killing off mothers, I have had my own experience trying to cover Gabriel's eyes during the start of Finding Nemo where Coral and Marlin encounter the barracuda and have been wary of how he has dealt with deaths in the movies that he has seen so far.  He has not been particularly scarred by any of those events, especially if it occurs to the villain in a movie.  A few weeks back when he was watching The Princess and the Frog he remained rapt as the villain of the movie met his fate at the hands of some shadowy and threatening New Orleans-themed voodoo ghost types who sought mafia-variety payback. He slept to bed that night without interruption or drama.

He was not shaken by the scene nor by other deaths or peril that he has seen in the movies that he has watched.  If I recall correctly, and my mother would be the only one to correct me on this, I was not that particularly troubled by the death of Bambi's mother when I saw it.  I haven't seen the movie since it made its rotation in the Disney catalogue at that point of my childhood in the early to mid-1970s but while I remember the scene spoiling the mood of the movie, I ultimately was able to accept it as part of the course of events.

Gabriel, however, is particularly sensitive to the movies that he watches and can get caught up in what he is watching. When we took him to the cinema for the first time, for Inside Out, he was particularly emotional when Bingbong was left behind in the memory dump... (oops, spoiler alert?) and we assured him that Bingbong was not really dying, not in the literal sense of the word. He has been quick to point out when he is relieved to have a happy ending or when the bad guys were particularly unpleasant, as was the case in The Minions.

As we make the movie viewing more of a routine, we are that much more conscious of what we choose to show him and I find myself that much more sensitive to what he has already seen.  Apart for my aversion for the character product purchasing mania that the Cars movies have induced, I find myself looking that much more critically at the violence in the second instalment's James Bond tribute. After holding off on The Incredibles, despite its G-rating, and concluding that the Star Wars series is going to be years down the road, I'm conscious of already introducing him to, oddly enough, G-rated violence that has influenced him more than I would like.

I am not making him watch My Little Pony for the next ten years, but I feel more compelled to carefully vet my choices for all of those little things that I ought to be conscious of rather than simply contenting myself with my appreciation of a film's quality and artistic merits. I've been conscious of things that peeve me, but there are so many other things to bear in mind. The movie nights will continue of course and I look forward to the occasions when, years from now, I'll introduce him to my favorites. In the meantime, I'll try to ensure that we talk about the movies that we watch rather than rush him off to bed at the end of the show.

Memories As The Lad Turns 4

There are moments of my son's life thus far that well up from out of nowhere to grace me with memories that I never imagined I would have.  In and of themselves, they are too brief to fill post of their own, but perhaps together they add up to more than passing anecdote. At this point, as he turns four, they are among the things that I will tell him about himself to give him some sense of his character, his talents and narrative. The question is how much the stories will amount to as time goes on and he forms memories through experiences I will not witness or document.

The first fond moment is from when he was barely 10 weeks old and the milestones were supposedly a bit further down the road... steps, words, sentences, commando crawl... but on the evening of January 21, 2012 - a number numerologists would probably drool over - his first gurgle of the laughter. I have heard it since in so many forms, including forced, vaguely maniacal and downright heart-melting.  On that night, it was a simple, pure peal of joy that moistened the eyes.  And so I started compiling the highlights of his life to report back to him to bridge these early years when his memories slip away rather than form and I wait to pass them on at a time when he is more autonomous and he compiles memories and evolves with less and less of my storage and memory.

There are some things that could remain evident without much intervention and I hang onto them as points of pride. Whether I tell him or not may have little bearing, especially if it is an innate thing that he is hard-wired for.

For instance, his first indication of a precocious connection with music is a eureka I pass on as sign of talent that has been handed down or skipped a generation.  After a few attempts of subversively slipping some jazz into his musical diet thanks to a video that featured a train, he called out "train" upon hearing a completely different acoustic arrangement of the same song while we were in the car.  That may be one of those unique things that I will not have to tell him about but can trust.

There are other moments that I simply hang on to as a joy of fatherhood. This summer, while I was coming home from work, I checked my phone to fire up the audiobook I was listening to. Before I got to it, I noticed that there was a text with an image from my wife and was puzzled by the solid black form that appeared with the image she sent. I opened it and was treated to a drowsy rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" without any performance anxiety and his voice catching earnestly throughout as a profound reminder of the innocence and the delicateness that define even this robust boy at age 3.  I immediately replayed it again and again on my way home.  When the time comes I'll play it back for him and his embarrassment at the poignancy may mellow with the passing of time and the realization of how early he was generous in this way.

There are those embarrassing moments that we will remind him of, such as his first encounter with wasabi, which we warned him about to no avail.  He threw a sizeable dollop into his mouth and suffered no end of pain.

However many memories I accumulate of him, there will still be gaps as he leads his own life and he accumulates stories to share with friends as he grows older, forms his personality and creates his narrative going forward. There has been an independent streak from a very early age. When I first dropped him off at daycare three years ago, I hung around for about 15 minutes to ensure that he knew that I was leaving him behind and sure that he was aware enough to not panic and wail when he finally realized I was gone. The last thing I wanted to do was make him reliant on strangers during such a moment of anxiety, no matter how professional and experienced they are in addressing those moments in life (and they are.) Instead, he sat indifferent to my farewell waves and I only gave up and got on with my day when he toddled over to a new schoolmate and started playing with her. They still play (and play well) together most of the time at daycare and she is among the guests attending his fourth birthday party in a few days time.  As soon as he started playing, I got the feeling that it was safe for me to go.

From that moment, I have never had much trouble acknowledging, though not necessarily accepting, that I am not going to be there for every moment of his life as he grows up. I still beam at the second-hand account of one occasion at daycare when he relieved one of the staff from the challenge of consoling one of his classmates.  A girl was sobbing into the arms of one of the staff at the daycare when Gabriel approached and extended his arms for a hug. The daycare worker regarded it as an "I need one too" gesture at a moment when her attention simply wasn't available to him. He was brushed off for a few moments, but stood his ground until the staff interpreted the gesture as "Let me help," instead of "my turn." The daycare worker let go of the crying child and Gabriel gave the girl a hug and calmed this classmate.  After the hug, she gambolled off, her troubles eased and forgotten. He then extended his arms to give the day care worker a hug. He wasn't even two years old. That account of his compassion is another reminder of the innocence and sensitivity that children possess.

There are other secondhand accounts and other bits of data that will find their way to me as time goes on and less and less that I will compile on my own for him. Accounts will differ and conflict or I will give a more detached version of events than he will at times. I have no idea when the secondhand stories about him will come to me or what they will amount to, but they will each be a part of a life that he will control in a way that will enchant me, make me weep, beam, burst out laughing, or recall with embarrassment how much he is like his father. But I will never quite control it. The best I can do is bear witness to as much of it as possible and occasionally fill in the gaps for him when the story or the self at stake are unfamiliar to him.

Halloween

Apart from the haunted traditions of the day, Halloween is also an occasion where I recall the countdown, as it were, to Gabriel's arrival four years ago. He was due on October 31 and, though we have dodged a lifetime of costumed birthday parties, it still prompts reminiscing and reflection as we prepare for his non-Halloween birthday party next week. Among the recollections is the regular checking in with close friends who were due around the same time. The possibility that the boys could have been delivered at the same time did not occur and Gabriel and our friends' son are actually 2 1/2 weeks apart.

After appearances as a heavily padded beaver (2013) and the Scooby Doo (2014) for his first two Halloweens, Gabriel turned himself out in a fireman costume and headed out on Halloween night full of excitement and patrolled the neighbourhood with abandon for 2 1/2 hours. There were a few houses where he was rendered timid by the more ghoulish decorations, but for the most part he dashed from door to door excited to accumulate as much candy as he could.

The acknowledgement of his fireman costume was consistent with the sardonic, "Here to put out the fire?", comments from those passing the evening by their fires with a potable of some warmth or strength able to bring a smirk of amusement to my face while Gabriel was too preoccupied with the reception part of the tradition to respond to any variations in the ritual. Those adult gatherings around a cozy fire was just one of the many differences that have indicated how Halloween has changed since my childhood. Despite the post-Tylenol caution that we have adhered to since 1982 and the consciousness about the sweets that we are ever-vigilant of, Halloween has gone off the scale for its scope.  The level of Halloween decoration continues to elevate each year and is starting to challenge Christmas. I suspect that there is a crew of factory workers somewhere in China huddled around their Saturday evening drinks puzzling over why exactly they had to make the plastic limbs that they were churning out for so many front lawns this year.

Throughout the evening we stayed at the end of the sidewalk, my eyes straying to to hockey game to get an update on the score, and prompting Gabriel to say "trick or treat," "Happy Halloween," or, most importantly, "Thank you," while he stood alone with stranger after stranger for these encounters. There were a few times where he seemed to forget what to say, but just as many where the hosts at the door called back to us, "he did," to our admonitions if we thought he forgot. He lasted much longer than we anticipated based on everything else he had done throughout the day, including a terse moment or two at his morning music class when he noticed that other kids in fireman costumes actually had a whistle as a part of their ensembles.

His night ended with a climactic moment that left him gobsmacked as a passing fire truck, having spotted him by the reflective tape on his coat, slowed down and flashed its lights while the crew waved to him.  He was truly starstruck and disoriented by the flash and wave and seemed uncertain if he was supposed to join them or not.

There are still things about the tradition for him to learn.  We did our best to teach him not to eat his candy until we got home and he has a very trusting tendency to walk right in an open door wherever he visited.  Hopefully we will break him of that habit by next year. By the time we got home, Gabriel was ready for bed. His haul included six pounds of candy and chocolate and we have not troubled ourselves to weigh the chips.  However, two days after his haul, Gabriel has not expressed any interest in or desire for the treats.

Name Games

In preparation for Gabriel's fourth birthday party - sure to be a future post - I have had to distribute handwritten invitations to daycare friends that we do not have email addresses for.  I took care of that last week and the RSVP's have come in accept one. Last night, Gabriel mused about there being two boys with the same name at day care. With names trending the way they do, it would not take much for that to happen.  Given Gabriel's certitude that there are two boys that have the same name and the slow or completely absent RSVP, we had to weigh the possibility that I gave the wrong boy the invitation and that he and his parents, nonplussed by the invite by a boy he hardly knows, disposed of it.

After pondering our options, we decided to send the older boy - okay his parents - a letter indicating that we may have goofed with the invitations and given it to the wrong boy. We didn't wish to uninvite the child, but we kindly request an RSVP one way or another.  If we got a response indicating that the boy was not going to attend, we would be able to invite the boy that Gabriel had wanted to invite and had not yet RSVPed.

Convolutions galore?  Hang on.

I penned a light-toned, cordial note to the older child's parents with a self-effacing apology for any confusion and my aforementioned request for an RSVP.  We wanted to be able to confirm who was coming and, if possible, invite the same-named boy that I may have overlooked before it was two late. (I am already mentally writing the apologetic, sorry for the late notice introduction to any replacement invitation we issue.) I head to the daycare early, without Gabriel because it is his day off, to drop off my note. I stopped shortly inside the door trying to appear nonchalant and purposeful for my solo visit to the daycare to drop off my note.  I nodded confidently to parents I knew who were dropping off their kids while I hovered in a room other than Gabriel's looking for the name of this boy that we were convinced there were two of.

No such name.  After scanning the list four or five times to make sure that my bleary pre-dawn grasp of reading material and focus without my glasses was not completely failing me.  Finally, I gave up as my confidence in justifying my presence evaporated.  However, given the circumstances that brought me into the daycare with this note, I thought it best to spare anybody the trouble of bringing their morning routine to a halt to sort out what I was actually trying to explain with the birthday invites, the confusion over two kids with the same name and our need to get an RSVP and you have a sentence that is getting a little too long.  At 7:08 in the morning, it is hard to justify postponing someone's date with their morning coffee to describe and collate the layers of confusion that had fallen upon me and brought me to the daycare without my son.  In the face of that, I just feigned confidence that I knew what I wanted to do and that could possible, somehow achieve my assigned mission. The letter that was in my hand, hovering above the class list started making its way back to my pocket because there appeared to be no child to give it to. For confirmation, I asked one of the staff at the day care if there were two boys of this name. Nada. I turned for the door well after I gave the staff the wrong impression of me.

As I headed on to work, I was convinced that I had fallen victim to my son's first relationship with an imaginary friend.  We tried to sort through the mystery and discovered that it was simply a matter of Gabriel giving the name to a boy he did not know. He decided, on what grounds or formula I do not know, to just call this other, bigger boy that he regularly played with "Big H-----," after the younger boy, that I can confirm I did indeed invite.  He just has not RSVPed yet. If this older boy is at daycare tomorrow, I'll try to figure out what the boy's name is and take the opportunity to sort through the inner workings of Gabriel's mind to figure out why he reused the name on this other boy.

The party should be easy compared to this.

The Band-Aid Treatment

The humble band-aid has always been subject to no small amount of disregard and humour.  I cite Richard Sanders' continual use of bandages throughout his performance as Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati and our denigrating use of the phrase I use as the title of this post as two instances of the disregard with which we regard the bandage's place as childhood placebo. However, as one who has limped through the past week with some foot issues and longing for an ample, substantial fabric Elastoplast bandage to keep the blistering and more from getting any worse.

Throughout my brief struggles with the severe blistering and worse my foot has gone through, I've had to chug along with two thin bandages from a Winnie the Pooh set adorned with a tiny imprint of Piglet on them to keep my toe issues from worsening.  My point (at this point) is that band-aids seem to be part and parcel of childhood more than anything else and I'm sure that any parent who really needs a bandage for a real cut is probably wandering around with a kid's version.

Gabriel has a couple of owies on his fingers at the moment - miniscule, of course - and is in urgent need of a regular covering to ensure the proper healing.  They are still part of a healing regimen with Mom's kisses and occasionally Dad's if mother is unavailable, but the mercurochrome smiles of my youth, that added smiling talisman of love and healing, has all but disappeared from childhood recuperation.

This morning, however, as Gabriel determined that his two-day old Hulk band-aid needed replacing with, if it were at all possible, a Spiderman bandage.  The request left us sorting through the supply that we have.  All of the various character sets we have - save the Winnie the Pooh set that has been residing in my bathroom since long before I needed them for some reason - are mixed together so we spent a few minutes trying to see through the wrappers to determine which was the required Spiderman plaster to hurry along recovery or provide the appropriate talisman for the remainder of his healing.  The Muppet band-aids with Kermit's eyes and Beaker's "meep meeps" exasperation were in ample supply.  (I would like to digress to add that Beaker's ailments regular surpass anything that a mere Band-Aid were to address and that there is an irony in a Beaker band aid that I will try not to dwell on too long or trouble myself to unlock.) As we went through the band aids and tried to distinguish the Planes and Cars bandages from the Marvel comics and other Muppet versions I wondered if Gabriel would ever subject us to a precise choice of character were he in a more urgent situation.

Ultimately, we abandoned our search for Spiderman settled on a Captain America bandage. As we affixed it, we struggled to explain who he exactly was without denigrating him too much, a challenge for me as I spent more time reading hockey books than comics.  I anticipate the occasion when he is ready for comic book movies and I remind him that hero X was actually someone that he had a band aid of and see his face contort as the ultra-trivial contribution to his association with a movie he is about to watch. As with any of these encounters with pop culture, I am surprised at how Gabriel gets exposed to it and seems to know it so well. His grasp of the Star Wars series, strictly through the ether and passing conversation with school mates astounds me at times. Tonight, he sleeps with his band aid clashing with his Spiderman pajamas without the least amount of concern.

This time.

Growth Spurts and Tough Talks to Ponder and Forego

One of the highlights of each fall has been "school" pictures of Gabriel that have been taken at his daycare.  The proofs from this year's efforts sit in front of me and in the place of the unconscious playfulness from the sets when Gabriel was on the cusp of 2 and then 3 years of age there are two options to choose from which are a stark contrast from those previous sets.

Apart from the fact that there are merely two carefully posed shots instead of a set of nine which were enchanting with their spontaneity, there is the suggestion that Gabriel has stretched out and that there is a leanness which indicates baby-fat has been shed and there is that boyishness seemed to be looming, but now is clearly evident.  In previous years the shots included moments of closed-eyed laughter and an impish smirk that suggested a bit of interaction with a photographer who knew how to capture the age group before them in all their innocent beauty.

Self-portrait, feet. Gabriel Hanlon, October, 2015.

As Gabriel approaches 4, the suggestion in the pictures is that he is more ready to engage with people and take direction - albeit from a photographer.  The poses show more evidence of a cue or request being acknowledged than a playfulness that was deferred to when he was younger.  The shots seem a little stiffer and no where near the poignancy of the shots from last year and the year before.  These shots, commemorating 2015 and his fourth autumn mark a different phase.  Much of what has happened seems to indicate that as well.

Two days ago when I spoke to him on the phone there was an attentiveness to the conversation or a clarity to his train of thought that made me think that time jumped ahead a year rather than a few hours since I had dropped him off at daycare.  Apart from that, he flipped the bird for the first time during Thanksgiving dinner, an indication that his surroundings are not as insulated and certain as they used to be. As he approaches school age, there will be more and more occasions where his peers initiate him to those less innocent skill sets and the hard conversations begin.

There are other hard conversations to weigh as well and with those the reminder that he is still a few years away from memories that will stick with him. One of my rituals with Gabriel from as far back as "the bucket stage" has been to take him to pizza with friends on Saturdays.  He has graduated from the bucket to his own place at the table and a pizza of his own.  Earlier this week one of those friends from that Saturday ritual, Mike, a stoic retired train engineer who particularly bonded with Gabriel, passed away after a few years of health struggles and informing us each Saturday that he was tired.

As I ponder breaking this news to Gabriel, I am inclined not to bother.  During Mike's final illness over the last few months, Gabriel never expressed concern about his absence and I wondered if it was a case of him not recalling Mike in his absence.  As I lean toward not sharing the news with him, I suspect that he has already forgotten Mike, though I hope there may be some trace recall of the particular fondness that they had for one another and an occasion where Gabriel asks after him and allows the opportunity to recall a friendship and discuss a simple reality of the passing of time.