The Kind of Man I Want To Be

I know. It's a cheesy title. But it is necessary. We're not allowed to have opinions about others anymore. That's labeled as "judgmental." So, I'm not allowed to say what I believe is "proper manly behavior," because that implies things that we are no longer allowed to believe, like, for instance, that there is a difference between men and women or that, in fact, there is a such thing as "man" and "woman" at all. 

But I have a sense of what it means, for me, to be "a man." I'm not saying you need to be like this or that anyone else needs to care what I think. If you define being a man as standing in a field with a with a propeller beanie on your head and hitting 600 baked potatoes a day off of a tee, have at it. For me, though, there is a combo of stuff that I have seen and respected in men who have influenced me over the years and those things have guided me to where I am today, whether the Interweb groupthinkers like it or not. 

Crying

"Big boys don't cry," some used to say. "Sure they do," people of good sense responded. "Well, they don't cry in front of others," some said. "Well, it all depends," people of good sense responded. 

While my dad was a fan of the John Wayne brand of machismo, he was also a composer. I watched him unashamedly break into tears while listening to Ravel. I saw him wipe tears away during powerful emotional scenes in movies. When my grandfather (his dad) died, I can still see the image of him standing in the twilight-dark kitchen, looking out the window, drinking a glass of milk. His face looked wet. He didn't hide it, but he didn't bawl in front of his son. He didn't sensitivity-signal. 

That's the kind of man I want to be. 

Courage

Back to The Duke: He's been credited as having said that courage is not about not being afraid; it's about getting "into the saddle" even when you are scared out of your mind. Sometimes it's about putting youself last. 

My wife and I have been watching a pretty good show called Longmire. Walt Longmire is a real "throwback" kind of sheriff in Wyoming; cowboy hat, the works. In a recent episode, he decided to go on foot, up a mountain, alone, after a snowcat vehicle full of armed convicts who were holding an FBI agent hostage. When he was told he was crazy for doing this, he said, "If I was a hostage, I'd want to know someone was coming after me." 

That's the kind of man I want to be. 

Chivalry

I treat women with deference; I treat them differently than I treat men, in some ways. I respect them, even though I go out of my way to hold doors for them. (I know that seems impossible, since all of the suspicions point to the fact that this is just cog in the wheel of an insidious plan to keep women feeling as if they need men, but bear with me.) Sure, I hold doors for dudes, but, I might throw the door open wide behind me so they can easily catch it and then say "thanks man" on the way through, but I'd never do that to a lady. I'd stand there and let her go through. 

Why? Not because I don't think she can hold the door, but because I don't think she should have to. What did she do to deserve this? Women, for me, have always represented an ideal that we power-hungry, chest-beating men would do better to imitate. Women have a strength of spirit we only wish we had and that we historically have pretended to have by shooting others by and making labyrinthine rule-systems. Women are the source of life, literally, and they are no less than the bedrock of civilization. 

Least I can do is let them go first through the door. That's the kind of man I want to be. 

"Head of the Household"

I don't want to boss my family around, but I want them to feel like they want to turn to me when things get hard. I want my boys and my wife to see me as a source of courage and strength; of rationality and reliability; of safety. I want to be the captain to whose ship all of the sailors want to be assigned, not the one who is just known for running a tight ship. 

Bringer of Balance

I want to be confident enough in my manliness to be able, occasionally, seek comfort from my wife when things overwhelm me. I have learned to ignore stupid machismo markers like "the man should always drive" and to, instead, focus on doing the things behind the scenes that keep my family happy and healthy --  to expect or desire exactly no credit for being a dad and a husband. As I once heard a mother say on a call in show, I want my children to "take me for granted." My thanks is their respect and healthy develpment, not attention for broadcast-actions of empty toughness. I don't want to spike the ball in the endzone, as if what I did was a big deal; I want to casually toss it to the ref as if I never broke a sweat. 

That's the kind of man I want to be. 

A Frightened Boy, His Dad, and the Night Sky; Summer, 1982

I just traveled back to a night from about thirty-seven years ago. At least, I can see it projected like a movie onto the dense trees behind my house. The air smells exactly the same as it did that night; it's the kind of wonderfully cool evening air that carries a spectre of fall and floats through the door like an unnoticed arrival to a formal Victorian party; the kind of cool that can only feel the way it does after weeks of intense heat.

As I said, the night was the mirror image of this one. I was about a week away from heading to high school for the first time and I was nervous and very reluctant. I never said anything, because I was that kind of a kid; somehow I always reacted to fears by turning inward, concentrating like someone trying to untangle  twine. And though I had two approachable, caring parents, it never occurred to me to go to them. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was just my teenage thinking locked onto the rails of some rusty, individualistic instinct.

And while I wouldn't have openly talked about my fears, I would routinely seek out the comfort of company, especially the company of my dad, when I felt troubled. He had a way of making me feel I was standing on solid ground when I felt a quake coming.

This night -- decades ago but still tonight -- found my dad and me lying on the deck of our swimming pool in our suburban neighborhood, hands behind our heads, looking up at the stars. We'd do this from time to time, talking or not talking...just being there. Just feeling the moment. ("Don't think about the next thing you want to do; think of now and take care of business," he would always say to me when I, for instance, rushed through cutting the lawn.)

When we talked, it was usually because he'd throw philosophical puzzles at me (some of them repeats). He was well-aware they were repeats, by the way; he just liked them enough to run them at me again.

One of his favorites: He'd have me look at the moon and he'd say, "You see the moon? It's Truth."

He'd never explain. He'd just let the idea hang there like the great white orb itself: bright against the black of Everything Else. I could almost feel the synapses connecting and creeping like ivy across my brain.

This night, with the lovely chill on me, and the fear of a new experience creeping up my spine, I was hoping for one of the old ones; one of his comfortable, familiar repeats, but he asked me a new question. Just as he asked it, I remember smelling someone's fire -- a marshmallow-toasting pit or a bonfire in the neighborhood.

"What do you think about U.F.Os?" he asked. "You think they are up there?"

"You mean space ships? Flying saucers?" I giggled a little.

"What's U.F.O. stand for?" he asked.

"Unidentified flying objects?" I ventured.

"So, what's not to believe in? Don't you think they see things up there they can't identify? The government has tons of cases of pilots seeing things up there they can't identify."

"So...like, starships?" (If you are a long time reader, you know I grew up on Star Trek.)

"Or...anything unidentified that flies. Bottom line, if you go by the definition, U.F.Os are real. Period. There are things that have been seen flying around up there that are unidentified. Keep looking long enough and you will see something."

Impending, scary newness was obscured for me at that moment. School didn't exist; or, at least, it just didn't matter much in the vast stretches of a lifetime. As we looked at the sky, I was somehow aware of the span from that day to this one, thirty-seven years later. I was aware that some day -- today -- he'd be gone, but that he would always be with me, because of the seeds he planted in the fields of my mind.

But my dad didn't plant trees; he planted beanstalks.

His U.F.O question still resonates with my like a over-wordy koan. Of course he was right, but what it means that he was right is still more of a setting off point for other explorations than an answer to be captured.

They say one forgets the face of his lost loved ones. Sometimes I think it might be true, but, from one musician to another, a voice is never lost. I can still hear my dad's voice; I can hear his tone harmonized by the cars hissing by on the street in front of our house and the leaves moving above the pool. It's a chord of memory. Tonight, I hear my dad again, in my heart, in my ears and in my head, and I look at the stars and I swear I see things moving around up there.

I just can't identify them...I hope I never will.

Goodnight, Dad.

On Leaving Children to Die in Hot Cars

A long time ago a friend called me, excited. He'd finally found a reason why he couldn't learn to play guitar. He had schmigglie proclastic stiglination. I made that up. I have no memory of the term he used, but he claimed he had found a "condition" that made him unable to learn the guitar or to sing in tune.

I responded: "Yeah. It used to be called: 'no talent'." He got angry for a moment, but worse insults pass between on a regular basis, so life went on.

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with psychology. First off, I don't like its inherent paradoxes. For instance, things like this hypothetical: if you hyper-discipline your kids, they will be rule-following, well-adjusted adults or they could become violent criminals. (That helps me, how?)

The second thing I dislike, which is the focus of today's ramblings, is a mixture of psychologists and the general public: the confusion of behavior explanation and condoning said behavior.

We had a humdinger of a kerfuffle over on my personal Facebook page last week. Another case occurred, very near my home, of a parent locking his or her child in a hot car all day. The poor baby died and I had the audacity to post this:

A baby died in a hot car — it seems; no autopsy yet — at Lindenwold station. Here come the people to explain how we shouldn’t judge parents who “make a mistake” and how “it could happen to anyone.” Not to me. Ever. And I can be plenty absent-minded. If you do that, it means one thing: there are things in this world that are more important to you than your own child. That is all it means. This makes you the exact opposite of a good parent. If we are going to bring back standards, this is a good place to start.

(I found out today, she was two. Not a baby. That's even harder to do. Updated info on this case says it was not the father -- he is a convicted criminal without parental custody -- who did this. But, many a parent has done this, so the principle remains the same.)

The overwhelming majority of people reacted as I did, with anger, "likes," and agreement. Some people who wrote on my thread were pretty...energetic (more than I was comfortable with) in their condemnation of such a heinous mistake. Some made fun of recommendations about leaving one's cellphone in the backseat so as not to forget one's child; others of cars with warnings about checking the back seat...

This prompted an exceedingly intelligent and deeply valued friend of mine to more or less come in with guns blazing against the idea that some (including myself) were saying it "could never happen" to us. He shared a video in which a newscaster said, "If you think it couldn't happen to you, you're wrong" and in which a neuroscientist talked about the conditions under which it "could happen to anyone." My friend said that making fun of tactics and warnings is foolish and saying that "it could never happen to me" is "hubristic". His arguments were not without merit.

That said, I maintained there and will state here: It could never happen to me. (People all over the globe just cringed... "But...the saying...") I could never, under any circumstances, have left on of my babies or toddlers in a car. Never.

Those who love platitudes will roll their eyes. (I always think of Frost's "He will not go behind his father's saying/And he likes having thought of it so well/He says again, "Good fences make goodneighbors.") But people do love platitudes, even if they become irrelevant or questionable.

While "never say never" applies perfectly to saying "I can smoke...lung cancer will never happen to me," it does not apply as neatly to "I will never eat liver." Or, indeed, to: "I would never forget my kid in a hot car."

My friend argues that a certain set of circumstances could lead anyone to lock his or her child in a hot car all day and forget. (So, too, it seems, does the neuroscientist.) But my question for psychology is this: Why is it that behavior modification therapy exists? Don't some overcome their natural psychological tendencies through therapy? So, doesn't that mean that these mental "glitches" are surmountable? If so, why do we talk as if they are not? Maybe because it is safer that way. I get that.

For me, though, strength of will and priorities are powerful things. I stand by my post.

But just as we have to avoid seeing diagnoses and psychological theories as excuses for failures (and what else but a failure is leaving one's child in a car to die?) we have to avoid condemning people as people because of these failures.

Yes, I think someone who locks his kid a car is the very definition of a bad parent. That does not, however, mean the person is a bad human being. Skewed priorities don't make one evil; stupidity does not make one evil; being easily distracted doesn't make one evil; not having a strong parental connection to one's child doesn't make one evil. But all of these, sure as anything, can make one a bad parent. (Hat tip: Jesus. He said it way before this. This is what He meant by not judging others. He didn't mean we shouldn't have standards.)

The fact my emotions make me want to beat the stuffing out of a parent who does this cannot affect my reasoning.

If I cared enough -- if it were enough of a real priority -- I would keep my weight down to 195 pounds (my fightin' weight). I do okay, but I don't work hard enough for 195. I have a psychological and conditional (I get busy) tendency to eat lots of food. Sure, it adds to the challenge and explains my issue. But guess what: Fate will take me earlier if I stay where I am. He's not going to give me a pass on, say, diabetes because I had a "condition" or because my life was so busy I simply kept forgetting to watch what I ate and to exercise.

My kids? Nothing has ever come before them, not in my head and not in my actions. (Between you and me, it's why I am 51 and just launching a viable career in music composition. Next to my family, music is the most important thing in my life. Next to my family.) So don't tell me never to say never, please.

(And in case you are wondering, my track record -- in terms of my "watch" -- with my kids in terms of serious injury or allowing them into potentially life-threatening situations is exactly zero. They are teenagers now. Now it is becoming their responsibility; but I still remain focused.)

Should we have warning bells and strategies for not forgetting kids? Yes, we should. Most of us parents don't need them -- and I do believe it's an overwhelming majority of us -- but some do, and saving kids needs to come first. It's sad but true.

Our Uncomfortable Young Women

The First Feminist(?)

I have noticed a very meaningful paradox in the young women of America. Many of them (if not most) seem to feel compelled to embrace "sexiness" but they also seem completely uncomfortable doing so. This, I think, is one of the many negative results of the media-driven world.

Young women are taught (by example, in music and the media) that overt sexuality equals power; a kind of Wife of Bath-ish feministic statement. They are almost, I would argue, sent the message that it is their duty to be sexy; to wear certain revealing styles. I'm told by my young female students, in class discussion, that every young girl has, at some point, received at text from a boy that says "send nudes." The shocking thing here is not that boys want to see naked girls but that those boys seem to think they have a right to see these pictures; or, maybe worse, that getting pictures like that is a matter of course in their relationships with girls. The other thing I am told is that may girls comply because "they feel like they have to."

What I see in daily life is a lot of young women wearing clothes that "show" more than I ever, as a young man growing up in the 80s, saw. What I also see is how uncomfortable most of these girls seem to be in those revealing clothes. They seem constantly to be adjusting and trying to cover up.

It kind of breaks my heart to see that; to be witness to the profound and moving struggle between innocence and experience playing itself out in mannerisms.

To be clear -- and I don't mean this to be funny or ironic in any way -- I have respect for a confident woman who is comfortable both in a with her own skin; who is not ashamed to be sexy. She has every right to "strut her stuff" as they say; I (and the rest of us fellows), of course, still have an obligation to be gentlemanly toward her. But there is a great strength in a woman who is comfortable with her body and who is not ashamed.

That's all great, but, what if one is not ready for that? -- or what if one simply is not that person? This is what makes me sad, because it comes down to the usual thing: people being crushed by the weight of a media-connected, group thinking world.

I wasn't blessed with a daughter, but, if I had been, I would have done my best to encourage her to find her own "look" -- to be herself, without shame whether sh had chooses to dress minimally or conservatively. But I also would have tried to teach her that "sexy" isn't just about showing skin. It all has to be her choice to make, how she dresses; but every girl needs the independent spirit and confidence to really make it her own choice.

One thing I do know is that it really shreds a little bit more off of my already thinning soul every time I see a young girl who is obviously uncomfortable with the way society has dressed her. I don't blame her. I feel bad for her. Sadly, her only option is to take up arms against the ocean waves. Hopefully she has family and friends willing to support her in the fight.

Joseph, 2018; Guiseppe, 1618

So many little things are so profound but we spend so much time fixated on the wrong aspects of those things.

My sixteen-year-old son got into the car yesterday, having been sent into the school office to take care of a little piece of business. He got it wrong.

I found myself lecturing him: "You need to stay focused on the thing you're doing and not on the thing you are looking forward to doing. I know you want to get done and leave, but..."

Within seconds, I saw myself sitting in the passenger seat, in 1984, being told the same thing by my own agitated father. Immediately, I smiled to myself and told my son that I had been in his seat, both quite literally and quite metaphorically, many times. My dad had told me the same, exact thing (over and over).

In that moment, I felt deeply connected to my dad again. I also felt overwhelmed by the profundity of the truth -- what I really think Keats meant by "Beauty" (not aesthetics but the profound) in his famous "Beauty is truth, truth, beauty" line.

This particular truth is that life is a continual rewrite of our past and of the past before our past. We look at the work our parents did and we separate the good from the bad and try to improve on the bad and to capture the good in what they did for us. We try to evolve into better parents -- and people -- than they were, no matter how good they were. (I know I want my boys to be ten-times the man I am.) We go one and on, generation after generation, era after era, doing this.

It is also true that what we so often comically write off as "I sound like my mother/father" is really the echo of an epic story that goes back to the beginning of every family line, back to the first sea-fleeing slime the was to evolve into our ancestors. (In my case, probably slime with glasses and too much affinity for bread.)

So, yeah, I sound like my dad sometimes because my sons often sound, act, succeed and fail,  just like I did. And that is powerful.

It is so powerful, that it makes me realize how unimportant it is to dwell on sentiments like "Oy, kids today..." when their sometimes annoying traits are really profoundly beautiful and really proof to me that the spirit of the Matarazzo roots going back to the very beginning of it all. Somewhere perhaps, in Renaissance Italy, a Matarazzo and his son were in the cart, the boy -- with dark eyes, mysteriously like my own son's -- looking sheepish and the father looked at him and said, "Devi rimanere concentrato sulla cosa che stai facendo..."

Powerful.

But here's the rub: The kid still needs to learn to take care of business. Not dwelling on the mundane in the face of the profound is wise, but letting your kids become irresponsible is profoundly wrong. It just ain't the end of the world, though, when your kid leaves his socks on the floor. So many things in life are like this. Problem is, the more one realizes this, the more people look at him (we'll call him "Chris") like he's crazy.

The Slow (Horrifying) Death of Innocence

Note the evolution of Pennywise, from the old film...

I was awakened, late in the night, by my son, who is thirteen. As his shadowed form stood over me, he was actually wringing his hands. He has had that habit since he was a baby, whenever he was nervous about something.

When I asked what was wrong, he told me he had just had an awful ("like, a really awful") nightmare. When I asked him what happened in the dream, he said it was "just random scary stuff." I gave him the usual unhelpful adult advice -- read a book; think pleasant thoughts, etc. A pat on the shoulder and a hug and he went back to bed.

A few minutes later, he was back, wringing his hands again, and he told me the contents of the dream. I won't recount them, for the sake of his privacy, but it was truly an awful dream. It gave me chills when he was telling me.

I thought about the dream for a while. It took me until he next day to realize what bothered me so much about it: it was the kind of nightmare I never would have had as a thirteen-year-old, because I had never been exposed to the level of intensity that was necessary to generate it. Because, back then I was a child, we still protected (in fact, could protect) our kids from things for which they may not have been ready.

I know what generated the dream: It was a YouTube clip my son showed me (earlier that night) from the movie It. In the clip, the clown guy, Pennywise (I haven't see the movie nor read the book), is talking to a boy by the sewer and he pulls in the boy's arm in and sinks his flayed and super-animalistic teeth into it, biting the arm off at the elbow. The boy crawls away as blood runs into the rainwater that is rushing by in the street and, then, the clown pulls the boy into the sewer to his doom.

My son found this on YouTube. If someone is naked in a YouTube clip, the warning about being eighteen pops up or the video is removed. No warning for this one. "God forbid," says the lingering ghost of out Puritan continental roots, "a kid see a pair of breasts or a rear-end, but, intense scenes of bloody violence? No biggie..."

That said, my kid can find anything anytime: videos of any kind of deviant, violent, sexist or angry sexuality are just waiting to be discovered as are images, videos and texts filled with hate and prejudice and general stupidity. No protection; no walls; no oversight.

...to the new film.  And available to any six-year-old
who searches Google for "clowns."

Like every parent, my only recourse is to teach philosophies about morality and appropriateness and to monitor use the best I can. But, before this easy access to things both wonderful and horrifying existed, things were much easier for parents. To see a film that was rated R, before VCRs and "pay TV," a kid needed to sneak into a theater, which was decidedly harder than clicking a link. Porn? Maybe an uncle had Playboy hidden in the bathroom; maybe your friend found a tape and you watched it at a sleepover. But you didn't have sleepovers every night, twenty-four hours a day, filled with wall-to wall porn. And, maybe, you never saw porn...either ever or until you were a young adult.

This is not meant to be a "golden-age" piece. Some things "back then" were handled better. Some things were not. Some things were better more as a result of accidental circumstance than because of a "more caring" general society. I just know that, in the circumstance of growing up in the late seventies and eighties, I was allowed to be innocent a lot longer. (However, I will not leave this paragraph without noting that, in the interest of making things easy and profitable, virtually no consideration is being made, today, about what is "out there" and at our children's fingertips. Maybe something negligent about our society that was always there is just oozing out more readily now.)

The fodder for the kind of dream my son had the other night was not in my proverbial wheelhouse. I was chased by mysterious shadows and taunted by pale faces of Disneyesque witches. I wound up in school in my underwear and I woke up palpitating and sweating, having dreamed the death of a loved-one...but images of intense gore and sentiments of sadism and naked evil were not an ingredients in my mental stew.

Let's not be too happy about the availability of information and the freedom of unfettered expression the present age gives us. In so many ways, it is the slow (horrifying) death of youthful innocence.

Why Biting Your Children and Offering them Cigarettes Can Be a Good Idea

Dan: I can't kill him! [Lord Lambourne] brought me up! Just like a father.
Yellowbeard: Oh, you mean he's beat ya and kicked ya and smashed ya in the teeth?
Lord Lambourn: Yes...
Dan: No!
Lord Lambourn: No.
Dan: He's been kind and gentle.
Yellowbeard: What kind of a father is that? Kill him!

 -- Yellowbeard, 1983

Being an effective parent is a matter of perspective, really. I am reminded of the absurdly comical scene above by memories of my mother, who both bit me and offered me a cigarette before I was ten. It was, in both cases, "good parenting."

The first scenario was simple. I bit her. She bit me back. I never bit her again. Years later, my son slapped me. I slapped him back. He never did it again. Was it wrong for us to do these things to our kids? Isn't hitting wrong? (For the record, I never, not once, hit my kids as discipline, outside of that scenario.)

As did many people of her generation, my mom smoked. She knew it was not good for her, but at the time she started, as a teenager in the fifties, word was not that strong, regarding smoking. She started and she was addicted... When I was little, I asked her what it was like to smoke. She said, "Wanna find out?" and offered me her cigarette, instructing me to "breathe  in deeply."

I nearly coughed myself into a seizure. I never touched a cigarette again. (She quit, a few years later -- "cold turkey" [what the hell does that really mean, anyway?] -- when I came home from school after a lesson on the dangers of smoking and begged her to stop.)

In the age of judgmentalism and public shaming, we set inflexible rules. We watch each other. What if a neighbor walked past my house today and looked in the window and saw me offering a cigarette to my eight year old son? -- or if I were walking home after picking my eight-year-old son at school and I employed my mom's perfect technique? Someone would call the division of family services and I would be in danger of losing my kids.

Dangerous times... Big Brother is not watching... We all are watching each other, fingers hovering over various buttons...

The World a Stage; Our Kids the Clowns?

Boy, do we put pressure on our kids. We do it in a million ways, in terms of serious stuff, but we also do it "for fun." I just saw a video of numerous people announcing to thier kids that the mother was pregnant again. The results were kids getting upset -- crying, slamming things down, etc. Ha. Ha.

Why do we feel the need to come up with clever ways to do everything? Why do we "announce" things to our kids and record them on video? Why, most importantly, do we put our kids in the position of feeling pressured to act a certain way, under the scrutiny of a camera and/or of a huge group of family? Why are we surprised when this "overloads" them? More frighteningly, why are we amused by it?

And I don't see it as cute or funny. I never have seen embarrassing kids or putting them in an unfair position as entertaining. Not once did I ever laugh at my sons when a crowd of loving relatives thought it was appropriate to break in to hysterics when one of them said something "cute" in complete seriousness.

Everything is a show. Everything from asking a girl to the prom to "graduating" fifth grade has become an event of grandiose proportions. It's stupid.

I don't even remember how we told our older son that he was going to have a brother or sister. That's cool with me.

Two Boys, "Tom Sawyer" and a Hobbit: Dad Dreams Realized

Rush, in all their clownishness. 

When my youngest son was born, I was joking about anticipating the day he would become the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and simultaneously hold a position in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. My wife laughted, but then she said, leveling a serious glance, "So, what if he doesn't want to teach Shakespeare? What if he becomes a construction worker?"

My response: "As long as he becomes a construction worker who reads Shakespeare."

As I age and accrue (I hope) wisdom, it becomes increasingly apparent to me how rare real happiness is and that one's greatest wish for one's kids should simply be that: true happiness. That's a tall enough order without imposing our dreams on our children. If we do what we love, we should let our kids do what they love; if we don't do what we love, we shouldn't see our kids as that last effort to get a piece of what we never "went for"ourselves.

Still, I am often tormented by the desire to see my kids pursue those things that brought me so much joy, like music and literature. I need to be careful, of course, not to cross the line above. But when they do find their way into the  things I loved as a kid, there is -- I admit -- much inner rejoicing...

The Professor

My younger son loves Tolkien. He and I recently finished reading The Lord of the Rings together and we are (backward, I know) reading The Hobbit, now. Tolkien set me on the path to a life of letters. The other night, my other son, who goes up to my little music studio every night to sing along with his favorite music, was singing along to "Tom Sawyer," by Rush. Rush, and especially the drummer/lyricist, Neil Peart, had a musical and literary impact on my life that is second only to the influence of my dad. (Though, if you know Rush's music, you might share my apprehension about my son trying to sing along with Geddy Lee...)

I'll admit that I always thought they would find their way to a similar path as mine. And, sure, they may branch out into their own paths -- in fact I am sure they will. The fact remains, though, that, in a world in which people are singing along to Nikki Minaj/Beyonce...

(Feelin' myself, I'm feelin' myself
I'm feelin' my, feelin' myself
I'm feelin' myself, I'm feelin' my, feelin' my, feelin' myself
I'm feelin' myself, I'm feelin' my, feelin' myself)

...it's good to hear my son upstairs singing Rush's "Tom Sawyer":

"Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant
His reserve, a quiet defense
Riding out the day's events
The river..."

And in a world in which kids tend to sit in front of screens watching over-sexualized shows and stereotype-reinforcing things, it's good to read about a homebody of a hobbit with just enough "Tookishness" in him to drive him out to an adventure...

I admit it. It feels good to see my boys treading on the fertile ground that helped me realize that life is more than meals and paychecks. I just have to be careful not to force things...

A Clump of Kids

My wife was visiting a friend for the weekend. Friday, I had a clump of kids at our house. (That's the new term, at least for me. You know: a flock of birds; a school of fish; a murder of crows; a clump of kids.) There was going to be a sleepover. The girls were not invited to stay for the sleepover with the boys, in case you were wondering, but I did invite them to stay for dinner.

Pizza, you know... You just have order another one. I like simplicity. (I also drink "Afternoon Tea" in the morning. I'm crazy that way. Carpe Teaum.) Also, I like that the guy at our local pizza shop actually calls me "Goombah."

As the kids gorged themselves on besauced and becheesed carbs, I retreated to the adjacent room with a few purloined slices to watch a TV show. They were loud. Very loud. The presence of girls who are my sons' friends -- and who are delightfully rough-and-tumble with the lads, woods-tromping and ball-throwing and all that -- can really crank up the ambient decibels, let me tell you. I put on the "closed captioning" so I could follow the peril of Captain Archer's Enterprise without yelling at the kids to, as they say in Bugs Bunny gangster cartoons, "shet ep."

Yeah, it was a tad frustrating. They were really loud and I felt like a bit of a prisoner in my own home, but they were having a great time being ridiculously silly. And loud. Not sure if I mentioned how loud they were being.

As they finished demolishing the pizza and they were moving the party out to the back yard, one of the girls said to one of my sons, "Your family is really nice."

After dark, out in the yard for a marshmallow roast (read: waving around of flaming sticks in the dark), it hit me again, as it often has: being a parent, in the eyes of those who are committed to never being parents, seems like too much sacrifice of personal space, time and silence. It is a sacrifice of all of those things. But I am not the first philosophical type to point out that sacrifice can pay a fee to one's heart: The next day, after their friends left, my sons said, in unison, "Thanks for the sleepover, Dad." Hugs followed.

And it's not too shabby to hear one of your sons' friends say, "Your family is really nice." I want my sons friends to want to hang out at our house, now and into the future. If you have to ask why, you don't keep up with the news...

How to Raise an Unhappy Child

Yesterday I saw a video of a child -- maybe seven or eight -- throwing a tantrum in the back seat of his mother's car. I won't post it, because it enrages me when parents intentionally violate the privacy and dignity of their own children. (I've visited that idea before.)

What struck me about the post -- it was on Facebook -- was the responses that took such a harsh view of the kid; comments that said he needed to be smacked and put in his place with a good beating for being such a little brat. Now, it's true -- the kid was completely flipping out and pulling his mother's hair and even grabbing for the wheel. I understand the reactions people had, but what bothers me is that no one had the initial reaction I had: It's his mom's (parents') fault. The discussion under that video prompted this post, from me, on Facebook:

How to raise an unhappy child: Allow child to get away with bad behavior over and over; then, finally put your foot down; then, when he flips out in frustration that his usually successful tactics aren't working, hit and humiliate him so that everyone admires how you "laid down the law."

(Ego among peers can lead to so many parental mistakes...but that's another post.) 

Tantrums worked for this kid, probably all his young life. In this video, the mother proclaims, weakly, a few times, "I'm the mom..." as the boy gets more and more riled up. Talk about a clear illustration of your ineffectiveness; to have to say that...and to threaten posting his behavior on YouTube... Awful. 

It is not fair, to the kid, that his mom, out of nowhere (and very likely prompted by the awareness that a video was being shot) decided to finally be firm with him. Of course, this was a convergence of things; it seems, in the video, that he is going somewhere he doesn't want to go -- maybe to the doctor's or to school. Now, the mother is forced to not give in to a tantrum, even though she has done so in the past. 

So the question remains: Does "the little creep need to be smacked"? Maybe or maybe not; it depends on your philosophy on hitting kids, first of all. But, if he does "need to be smacked" I would submit that it is the fault of his parents that he needs to be smacked. I think we all understand that but hate to admit it...

There is a treacherous line between personal responsibility and parental responsibility for a child's behavior. One person on Facebook said "he chose to act this way." There does come a time when one has to stop blaming his or her parents for his or her own flaws. (Some people never stop doing that; I know a few.) What we sow as parents grows, though. There's no denying that. But this is a little kid, still. He chose to act that way because he has been rewarded for acting that way. 

As for tantrums...if you want your kid to keep having them, let him "get away with it;" or, worse, still: give him what he wants because of it. But don't have the audacity, later, to throw up your hands and act as if it is a circumstance beyond your control; because, if it is beyond your control, you allowed it to get there. (I can list many things my sons do that are my fault. Now I am correcting those things; I would not have had to if I had done the right in the first place.) 

I know one thing: Never, ever use humiliation as a "parenting" tool. You will pay for that, later, I guarantee you. 

Taken: Sublime Simplicity

Last night, as a result of my older son's beseeching, we re-watched the movie Taken, with Liam Neeson.

Only limited spoilers coming, so don't worry. You know from previews that Neeson's character is a retired special agent and his daughter is taken by sex traffickers while she is on holiday in Paris. Neeson (now famously), tells one of the abductors, over the cell phone:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career -- skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you; I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you; I will find you, and I will kill you."

It occurred to me, last night, how good it is to watch a film whose morality is so black and white and whose protagonist is so perfect at what he does. When he delivered those lines last night, I found myself welling up. 

If you do it the right way, it is hard to be a "real man." Being a real man is defined many different ways and, as you might expect, my definition contains a lot more than being able to go around -- as an Amish woman in Witness describes it to Harrison Ford's character --"whacking people," but that definition of mine does contain toughness. But, to be able to have full and unfaltering confidence in your ability to "whack people" who try to hurt your child...? That's just sublime. 

Sure -- to be that guy is a fantasy. It's a movie after all...but, what a fantasy. It's a Rocky thing: an ideal of traditional manhood stripped to the primal. All dads want to protect their families from harm. The difference between all dads and Neeson's character is that all dads have doubts and weaknesses. It's nice to wade in the pool of total confidence, if only for two hours.

It's also nice to watch a film in which the character is not conflicted or morally questionable. Again, it is an escape from reality; real people are morally conflicted and questionable at times and my fiction writing teachers spent years reminding me not to write characters who are all good. I suppose, also, it can be argued that anyone who kills as many people as Neeson does in that film can't be all good, but, when he steals cars or kills people, it is in order to stop his daughter from being sold into forced prostitution. That's a pretty good argument for "crossing the line," if you ask me. 

When I watch Indiana Jones shoot a guy who is showing off by flipping around a sword he intends to kill him with, I think, Hmm. That was questionable, if very darkly comical. When I see Liam Neeson electrocute a guy who abducted, drugged and sold his teenaged daughter, I smile the smile of the guiltless and I sleep just fine.  

Taken is a heck of a dad-catharsis. We need stuff like that from time to time. Not everything  can be Pride and Prejudice, nor should it. 

Ten Characteristics of Flawed Parents

Parental perfection. Bull pucky.

1) They read lists to try to figure out how to be a good parent.

Okay. That was mean. Sorry. 

2) They go on "dates" with their kids. That's just creepy.

Seriously -- just spend time with your kids. Do we have to get all Oedipal about it? That's got to do some damage somewhere along the line... 

3) They read articles instead of "reading" their kids.

Articles can be good, but nobody but you can really see what you kids needs from you. But you gotta think. Nobody can hand you insight. 

4) They think that because they survived doing asinine or ignorant things that kids today should do the same. 

Just because you went out without sunscreen and sat on the roof of a moving pickup truck and survived, by chance, it doesn't mean we should throw away years of accrued scientific study so that our wimpy kids tougher. So quit it. Toughen them up without pushing stupidity, if you must. 

5) They believe it when one psychologist says every established bit of wisdom about being a parent is now -- all of a sudden -- wrong. 

Just because this guy comes along and say punishing your kids for bad behavior is the worst thing you can do, you are going to buy it lock, stock and barrel? Stir it into the stew of consideration, but don't just gobble it up.

6) They think that everything lower than a B is "unacceptable."

I get it. Motivation. But how wrong is it to teach your kid he or she can be perfect, in anything? I have taught kids who have gotten nothing but As during their entire school careers. Can that be a true assessment? Is that a fair standard to carry into life? Many of the most successful people in life have been C students...or worse. Maybe it is because they felt they had some country yet to discover... Back off, Patton. 

7) They treat their kids like they are the center of their world.

Your kids should be the center of your world. But they shouldn't constantly be aware of it. That's too much pressure for anyone to take and you are going to lay it on a ten-year-old? 

8) They exemplify what they will later complain about.

Put the cell phone down. Read books. Stop complaining. Don't yell and roll your eyes. Eat well. Spend time with your family. Don't talk about your friends behind their backs. Or, just shut up later. 

9)  They're afraid to apologize.

Just say it, once in awhile: "I overreacted" or "Sorry I yelled" or "That was unfair -- I drew the wrong conclusion." You're flawed, okay? What were you?  -- a straight-A-student?

10)  They're flawed.

We all are. Even windbags like me who might appear to think they know it all. I don't know .00004% of what I should, but that might be .00001% more than parents who spend their lives on auto-pilot. This gig's work. The one thing I do know is that you don't punch out at night for at least, like, twenty years.

Now, go forth and screw up as little as you can and forgive yourself for the rest.

Swingers on the Parenhood Pendulum

God forbid that we, as a human race, should maintain anything close to a rational and un-affected perspective on anything, or that everyone's perspective not be dangling on the end of a pendulum...

It all started with people gently reminding married couples not to "lose the romance" when they have kids; to remember one's self during the selfless years and through the selfless instincts of parenthood. Very good advice. But I have seen this to the extreme when, in a conversation about education with a friend, he said that the idea that "family comes first" is one of the worst things that has happened to our society.

Not everyone is as extreme as this, but I have noticed a lot of articles that now lean away from "leave some time for yourself" and toward "you are more important than your kids." This is bad.

When one has kids, one needs to put them first. The job one signs up for is to prepare kids for the world in which they live. Doing this requires attention to that child that supersedes one's attention to one's self. (This, of course, does not imply that parents should sacrifice the essentials -- we're no good to our kids if we are dead.)

People like my friend would argue that, in the old days, parents were less focused on their kids and it was better for society as a whole. I would argue, however, that parents focused on different aspect of parenthood, but they still focused on their kids. The ancient hunter trained his kids to hunt; the farmer taught them how to bring in the crops; that warrior taught his sons to fight... All of these parents were preparing their kids for the world they would need to enter. In this way, we are the same as they were: we are to prepare our kids to. someday, function in the outside world without our help.

Parents, in modern times, are preparing their kids to venture out into a raging tempest of varied moralities and ideas and beliefs all driven by a raging, constant flow of information, both good and bad. We are preparing their kids to find their way through a world that offers them innumerable choices of ways in which to live their lives. It's no longer a question of eking out daily survival or of passing down the village blacksmith shop. Preparing modern kids for a modern world requires us to be constant teachers, in terms of helping our kids learn how to deal with myriad uncertainties. This means we need to watch our children; to interpret how they deal with a playground confrontation; to instruct them on manners and mores; to help shape them into sane, rational creatures who make good decisions and follow societally beneficial paths.

My paternal counterpart in the Celtic tribe focused on preparing his sons to defend against the neighboring tribe's attempt at a cattle raid, but he still focused on his son. He needed his son to be fierce, strong and relentless. This was focus on family -- just a different kind of family. It was an internal focus that resulted in a benefit to the tribal society. In strengthening the family, many have said, we strengthen the society -- in this case, things become quite literal.

In not-so-extreme terms, the father who owned a shoe repair shop in 1915 focused on fixing shoes, bringing in money and, perhaps, training his kids to repair shoes in order to keep the business going... This was still focus on family.

Our parental jobs, today, are more complex but no less vital. If we turn out kids who are lost and ineffectual in the world, we have failed. We need to focus on them until they are ready to leave and stand on their own.

What people need to do, though, is to stop giving themselves up completely for their kids. I have known and still know parents who give up every free moment by going to kids' games and various other activities. This is the opposite side of the pendulum swing from my friend's perspective. Cheering at a game, however, is no substitute for talking and spending real time together... I

In the end, our kids can be our focus without completely erasing their parents' lives. By sometimes not focusing on my kids, I give them an opportunity to understand that everyone deserves his own space. I also give them an opportunity to watch me in action and to learn from that.

When I leave a comfy house on a winter's night to go play with the band, my boys see that their father is continuing with his passion and that he is willing to work hard to pursue it -- something I want them do do for themselves. When I say "not now" to one of my sons because I am reading a good book, it shows them how important books are...etc. How can they learn by my example if I'm always following them around? How can they watch me do stuff if I never do stuff? -- if all I do is watch them do stuff and criticise them for how they did stuff?

But, when my sons truly need me, I forget myself -- I drop all consideration of what I might rather be doing...

My kids might displace my personal time, but they certainly won't erase it, because, when they grow up and move on, where will I be? If, on life's personal journey from point A to point Z, I had stopped at, like, J when my first son was born, how am I going to, after my boys move out, make it through K-Z? Given the choice, though, I'd rather croak at W than live through Z knowing I turned out a couple of ill-adjusted, self-centered, entitled boy/men.

Potential (A Parable)

Once, there was a boy whose father took no crap. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was his favorite Bible quotation.

Father forbade Son to waste his time with video games and with television and with other empty boyish pursuits. The boy, at that young age, hated his father.

Father knew: "Someday, he will understand and appreciate what I have done."

Father "pushed" Son to achieve, and Son hated that and Son hated Father more with each post-game critique and with each drill and re-drill of sports skills.

Son hated that Father would force him to lift weights and to run. The boy had to run in grade school. He had to run in middle school. In high school, Father made the boy run before school and after practice -- even on game day; even after games.

In the car, Son never spoke. He just wore his earbuds and sent phone messages to his friends. But Father knew: "Some day, my son will understand."

Father "wanted more" for Son than Father had had as a child. One only achieves greatness through hard work;  you miss one-hundred percent of the shots you don't take; character is what you do when no one is watching; winners never quit and quitters never win. Son was simply too immature to see his father's wisdom.

For years, the boy hated Father for being so hard on him... For years, there were endless trips to "travel games" with not a word spoken -- until after the game, when they would argue about an at-bat or about a play or about a missed opportunity to pin an apponent.

"Some day," thought Father. "Some day he will realize and someday I will be proud."

Then, high school ended and, soon after, the boy graduated college.

Son was in great condition, but he had blown knees; he had no professional sports contract and he had earned a degree in business with no promise of a job, not to mention piles of student debt because he had gotten no significant sports scholarship. (Father knew this was because Son just didn't work hard enough -- neither of them had. This made Father feel ashamed.)

Then, one day, years later Son son thought about it as they say together at Thanksgiving dinner. He looked at Father, the wrinkled face still hard and determined-looking. Still the face of a competitor as Father stared down at the fork poking peas, one to each tine; four peas to a bite behind the leathery lips. Son thought of all those mornings running in the fog, Father pushing him to reach his full potential; all those days on the field and in the gym....

...and Son's expression changed; Father saw this and he looked at Son.  "Today," thought Father, anticipating, hopeful... "Today is the day... Thanksgiving."

And all these years later, Son finally realized it: He still hated his father. Son's face went dark.

Father looked down at his peas, halfo of them spilling their lighter green guts onto the plate.

A Wish For My Sons

Wisdom is not automatic, no matter what the old-timers might imply (or outwardly state) about themselves. Learnable moments appear and, sure, some lessons are hard to avoid learning. If one steps on button and a rock falls and hits one on the head, as a result, one learns not to step on that button again. Laboratory rats have learned similar lessons, though, so no glory there.

But real wisdom takes work and commitment to the quest. Inevitability, the "youth is wasted on the young" aphorism comes to mind, because once we acquire certain nuggets of wisdom, we want to share them with those who have not found them yet. Parents try earnestly to do this for their children.

Of course, the most important job of a parent is to teach his or her kids to think clearly and logically, not what to think. Still, the most important lessons we have learned carry with them certain truths. Although we know our kids must walk certain paths in order to truly understand, we hand them what might well be irrelevant trail maps, expecting them to truly know without ever putting their toes in the dirt.

William Blake's "mind forg'd manacles"

It's hard to resign to the ineffectual nature of this desire to teach. Can it really be that all of the wisdom the hard-working thinker acquires is useful only to himself? On one level, I like the idea; it affirms the importance of individuality. On the other hand, as a member of a social species, it makes it all seem like a bit of a waste -- not a total loss, but contrary to the sharing instinct I, and most of us, have.

For me, the things I have learned to see clearly are revelations that I want to share with my sons. If I could just get them to see how unimportant some things really are -- things that the world would convince them are essentials; if I could just take unnecessary burdens off of their shoulders that are doing nothing but adding difficulty to the already ridiculously challenging task of growing up; if I could just steer them away from the negative pulls of the social tides and away from the common practices that drive wedges between friends and that, although they might feel powerful, are actually impotent struggles for temporary and useless power that result in discord...

A Parental Temptation: Forcing Joy

"No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is suppose that they are like himself." -- Steinbeck, from The Winter of our Discontent. 

A parental mistake?

When I was in fifth grade, I read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea for the first (of many) times. I loved every word of it; hung on each of the old man's thoughts. Something in me immediately attached itself to the beauty of the work and to the quest of the old man to simply keep being who he was, despite his age; to his wise and humble inner pride; a pride that required (and would get) no external validation. I wouldn't have put it quite that way as a boy, but I understood on an instinctual level.

My sons have to read a book per month in school and do a quiz and a few projects on each book. I recommended it to my seventh-grader, who is both a reader and a thinker. I thought it would be right up his alley.

He didn't really like it. In fact, over the course of a month, he didn't manage to finish the ninety pages.

Part of my reasoning in recommending the book was that, even if he didn't like it as much as I had, he could easily polish off ninety pages. He has read 300 page books in that time allotment.

Apparently, he disliked it so much that he couldn't keep reading. He made an attempt to finish it the night before it was due, but, alas, fell short.

Am I disappointed? Yes. Not "in him" so much, but that a book that meant so much to me simply didn't mean much to my son. Which is okay. He's allowed not to like what I liked. And here is the parental crossroads between wanting my son to be happy and wanting him to be what I want him to be.

My Lifelong Role Model: Rocky Balboa

When I was eight, I saw the movie Rocky. Intellectuals like to trash the film, but the American Film Institute places it at number 57 on the list of the greatest movies of all time. I think it is a wonderful film, both on the intellectual and emotional levels. Sure, I am biased. I saw it when I was eight; I'm an Italian American; it was shot in Philadelphia, where I was born... But the more educated I get and the older I get, the more I like the movie and the more I see the beauty of Rocky Balboa, the character.

The metaphor is perfect. Rocky was never a movie about boxing. Rocky Balboa is all of us, "fighting" to prove one thing to ourselves: that we are worth something. But the real philosophical merit of the story is that Rocky never wants to be famous; he just wants to remain standing at the end of fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion. And that's what happens. Rocky doesn't win the fight; he stays on his feet (with a little help, after the bell, from his beloved Adrian [which is perfect, too]).

Then came the middle movies: Rocky II, through V. Maybe not what you would call masterpieces -- not on the level of the first one -- but one thing never changes: Rocky refuses to quit and Rocky never stops being a good-hearted, vulnerable and passionate person. He fights people he has no prayer of beating and he beats them. It's a bullet-proof formula, even in what is maybe the weakest of the movies, Rocky V. They are all good popcorn movies, but, no matter the shell, Rocky Balboa manages to remain both a metaphor and a person.

I'm not going to try to "save face" through cynicism. I'm not going to equivocate about Rocky. There's no "but seriously" coming. Even the legendary Roger Ebert saw something in young Stallone, saying the young actor reminded him of a young Brando. (Ebert also gave Rocky 4/4 stars.) I think Stallone has proven he can be a great filmmaker, in his own right, and I think he was nothing short of brilliant in the last Rocky film, Rocky Balboa.

A Rebellion in Socks

My boys are both in middle school. They are both in a few activities. Both of them are in the chess club. Both of them are in the band. One of them is in choir. They have also done things like "Lego Club" and they both earned quite a few belt-levels in karate. They come home from these activities and they "knock out" their homework. Then, we all eat dinner together.

Yes, you heard right. All four of us at the table, talking and eating.

After dinner, the boys will play their allotted video game time. My wife and I might read or watch something on Netflix. I might go up to my studio and work on some music or practice my guitar. On some nights, we will all watch a movie together in the living room.

Near the boys' bedtime, my younger son and I almost always go upstairs to read a chapter of The Lord of the Rings together. By then, it is time for them to go to bed.

Once the boys are in bed, I usually go up to bed and read until it's sleepy time for me. Karen, who may have been finishing up studying for a class comes up soon after.

The Tides of Morality

Over the last few years (while I wasn't paying attention, apparently) certain things that were once considered almost absolutely wrong are now considered admirable. Among these things are bragging, suicide, self-made and self-distributed pornography and incest.

I have heard each one of these behaviors, in print and elsewhere, defended at least once in the past year and, in those defenses, the behaviors above were not just defended, they were praised.

How I feel about these things is irrelevant. The important thing is that these changes serve to convince the active observer of societal trends that when it comes to morality, it really is now just a question of the tides in thought; concrete touchstones of what is "right" no longer exist; it is all a question of what the majority speaks up for. And when one has as many people (as much water) as we do, the movement of the ideas (the currents) is that much more apt to sweep people's thoughts along.

In the past, people were willing to accept absolutes. If God or if the king or if the law said it was wrong, it was wrong. Sure, some didn't think that way, but most did. Authority was something they were used to. Obeying was something they were compelled, either by force or by convention, to do. If, say, the Church told people not to marry their own siblings, they mostly fell in line. Those who did not fall in line were considered "sick."