Like Charlie Sheen in Platoon, I'm a dad who actually volunteered for this. Now I just shut up and take the pain. My wife is like a sexy Keith David, catching that last helicopter out to work every day, leaving me in the chopper dust of two warring mini-sergeants, Bub and the Priestess, fighting for possession of my soul. And that makes you grandma. Consider this blog my letters home to you. It really helps if you've seen the movie.
'Why are we smiling again?' "Dunno, but you won't be smiling when you see what I stuffed your stocking with."
To totally flaunt my ignorance
here, I did not know that Jews did not celebrate Christmas for basically half
my life. It’s not that my parents tried NOT to expose me Judaism growing up in
Springfield, Ohio. In the same way that I would not hear of pho for years to come, there was simply
nothing of the sort to expose me TO. No temples, no menorahs or kosher grocers.
Think Springsteen’s Your Hometown; it
was like The Town that Judaism Forgot.
It wasn’t until several years of
assimilating that I learned what adorns a seder plate, what the high holidays
are (hint: Hannukah is not one) and what a bris is (though I could have done
without that one). I learned by straight-up infiltration. I married in.
To say my wife was brought up
conservatively would be, well, conservative. My in-laws are lovely people. Very
lovely, very observant Jewish people. They walk to temple on Saturdays and
forgo electricity and cell phones and other conveniences. Their house itself was
like an homage to Judaism: bookshelves full of Judaica, Kiddush cups and Shabbat
candle holders on display, mezzuzahs on every threshold, and art from or of The
Holy Land.
Having been raised in this
environment, it should come as no surprise that my wife has no love lost for
Christmas. She hates peppermint stick ice cream, which is odd because it’s ICE
CREAM. She had never seen A Christmas
Story, she only knows the Batmas Smells version of Jingle Bells, she never had a tree ornament or a stocking to hang,
and never got anywhere close to figgy pudding. And the coup d’grace? She finds
colored lights to be just plain “tacky.” Ouch.
She helped me get it, though, the
Jewish perspective. Christmas is brash and annoying and all up in your mug before
the Halloween candy is even gobbled up. Trying to avoid Christmas is like
trying to avoid chlorine in a hot tub. Christmas is as about as subtle as a
wrecking ball smashing a cherry red Ferrari. On fire.
But maybe I got it hammered in
there a little too well. Over the years, I started to question my own loyalties
and motivations. I’m not in it for the baby Jesus, so what exactly AM I
celebrating? Gratuitous interior lighting? The awesome music? I was beginning
to internalize her Grinchy-ness. I had become a Christmas apologist.
Now, with Jewish kids asking more
than four questions, I feel doubly as though I have to justify, or at least
clarify, my fandom of Christmas. And it’s this: I CAN’T fully explain it, and
I’m finally okay with that. It’s mostly fuzzy nostalgia and a warm feeling I
get, but I love the whole corny mess of it, and I’m not ashamed. I love picking
out a big mother tree and adding new ornaments to it every year. I love
stuffing stockings and watching National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation again. I love that people give and share and
smile just a little extra. I love peppermint stick ice cream, damnit. I crank
Wham’s Last Christmas every time it
comes on. And I’m in no way ashamed of that, either.
Christmas has always been about
family and creating traditions. I realize now that that is what was missing in
those B.C. (before children) years and why we struggled to make it our own. I
had my own ideations of traditions that I simply tried to impose rather than share.
She was largely uninvested and it was my fault. Let's just say I was hanging my own mistletoe, so to
speak.
So how do you create family
traditions? You do them. You try lots of things, keep the ones you like. Like
the rest of parenting, it’s trial and error. This year we implemented a new
tradition (suggested to us by a rabbi, oddly enough) of baking gingerbread men
to put on the tree. Bub got up on his chair and helped me make the dough. Mommy
rolled it out, poked holes for the string and put them in the oven. When they
came out, Mommy strung them, and Bub got up on his chair and helped me hang
them.
And in doing this it dawned on me
that traditions are not about repeated acts. We always do this, or we have to
do that. They are about the process behind those acts.
Growing up Jewish, it’s
impossible to say what my kids will make of Christmas over the years. My
brother and I grew up with the same Christmases and he is very ehhhhhh about
it. But
love it or hate it, celebrate it with their own families or not, I can only
hope they look back at their own with that same warm feeling that I do, and
create their own traditions as they see fit.
“Why do you want to see my poop?
Make your own poop.”
“I just wanna see YOUR poop.”
“No.”
“LET ME SEE YOUR POOP, DADDY!”
HP: “Eat. Eeeeeeeat.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat!”
(Perhaps she was hungry)
“Do you see my balls here, Daddy?”
“I sure do.”
“This is my BALLBAG, Daddy. Do
you like my ballbag? It’s nice, isn’t it? I said, it’s NICE, Daddy. Isn’t it?”
THE MONOLOGUE
(I’m not too up on my
Shakespeare; perhaps it’s from one of the comedies.)
Mommy, do you want to play with crayons?
Mommy, the crayons are out. THE CRAYONS ARE OUT, MOMMY! Ohh, let’s see if she’s
out. Let’s see if Mommy’s out. Let’s see if she’s just unloaded. (moves to
kitchen, whispering now) Mommy is not ready for crayons. Mommy is out of here.
Mommy is OUT of the lead! Mommy is unloaded.
I'm quite average-sized things, thank you very much.
Uncle Matt and Aunt Michal were
over a couple weeks ago. Bub lights up like the parking lot before a Phish show
every time they are over; he loves showing them EVERY SINGLE THING he can do.
Sometimes he shows them so much stuff that he runs out of stuff to show them.
Then he has to come up with new stuff. Like this:
“I’m NO PANTS MCGEE!”
We were
innocently segueing into the bedtime routine, which includes him going into the potty and
re-emerging all jammied up. Or naked as the morning is early.
We of course lost our shit. I got the
same reaction last time I walked into a room with no pants on, too. Different
reasons, perhaps. This of course resulted in us hearing his new moniker 87 times
in a row. Then came the variants.
“I’m No Shirt McGee!” He had a
good thing going here. Like any good comedian, you ride that shtick till the
wheels come off. “I’m No Socks McGee!” Etc.
Anyhoo, another facet of the bedtime
ritual also includes putting his tiny things away. No, his other tiny things.
What exactly are No Pants McGee's tiny
things, you ask? It all started with his mini Domo, his first “machine” score.
Then he threw in some random game pieces, a 4-sided die he stole from my old
dice bag. The other day, a tiny eraser mysteriously joined the tiny things
party. They all live inside Domo’s little half-egg and only come out when HP is
sleeping. They are eclectic, they are fun, they are choking hazards. They are
the tiny things.
Bub came up with that handle.
Tiny things. I like it. Makes me think of Darby O’Gill. And it’s led
to some pretty awesome conversations around the house:
“Daddy, have you seen my tiny
things?”
“No, Bub. Seriously, I’m not
looking for your tiny things again.”
“Oh, here they are. They’re on
the table, Daddy!”
“Bub, please keep your tiny
things off the dinner table.”
“Bub, HP can NOT have your tiny
things, do you understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Seriously, if I see her holding
your tiny things, I’m gonna put them on the big shelf again.”
“Okay.”
“We keep our tiny things to
ourselves in this house.”
“Daddy, can I play with my tiny
things now?”
“Sure, Bub, just don’t put them
in your mouth.”
“Bub, time to put your tiny
things away.”
“Why?”
“Because your sister will be
awake soon, and I don’t want her to see your tiny things.”
“Daddy, you wanna play with my
tiny things?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got my own.”
“Daddy, if HP sees my tiny
things, she will probably try to grab them.”
We’ve kind of hit the proverbial
bathroom wall recently in the realm of potty training. We got off to kind of a
shaky start, then it finally caught on (and by caught on, I mean Bub stopped
shitting his pants), and now we’ve kind of plateaued. And by plateaued, I mean:
“Daddy, you wanna check my
pull-up? It’s DRY, Daddy.”
“Okay, great…yeah, no. This is
wet, Bub.”
“Ohhhhhhhhh.” Like he just mis-spoke. Like dry and wet
are like marinade/marinate.
“I’m afraid that’s not going to
net you a gold star, my friend. You wanna tell me why you peed in your
pull-up?”
“Because I LIKE to!”
You can see what I’m working with
here. Like a classic Shakesperean actor playing Dirty Harry:
“What thou must posit of thyself
is dost thou feel fortuitous? Well, dost thou, punk?”
And that’s pretty much it, the
pith. Don’t have to be a child psychologist to see the root of the problem
here. The kid likes to sit in the warm afterglow of his own urinal pleasures.
We’ve tried various methods,
varying greatly in severity and orthodoxy. I put him back in diapers once, I
was so frustrated. Yes, I did tell him once that he smelled like a urinal
trough at Soldier Field at halftime.
Yes, it was also I who compared him to the
only other boy in his class:
“Does Charlie wear pull-ups?”
“No.”
“Wow, I bet he really loves
wearing his big boy underwear.”
“Probably he does,” he shrugged. Like
there’s something wrong with THAT creep.
I’ve played the age card:
“You’re three now, Bub. You’re WAAYYYY
too old to be peeing your pants.”
“Yeah, I just like to, though.”
Again with the shrug. Like I keep offering him broccoli when he’s sitting on a
big, fat oatmeal cream pie.
He has a crush on a girl at
school. Yeah, I went there, too.
“You know, Bub, the smell of a
clean pull-up is a known aphrodisiac.”
“I don’t know what that means,
Daddy.”
“It means Caroline seems like the
kind of girl who would go for a man in some dry pants.”
“Ohhhhh.” Like Caroline would
just have to get off her hygienic high horse and embrace the sog if she wanted
to get with this. F-in snob.
I’ve tried pestering him. Do you
have to pee now? Bub, you need to go potty? How about now? C’mon, I have to
pee, too; let’s simul-pee. And so on.
I’ve tried letting him come to
me. Guess how that went.
We’ve questioned his motives, his
physical capabilities and his commitment to Team Underpants. We’ve tried the
Jelly Belly machine, intimidation, reason, apathy, bribery and full-on begging.
Why just today, this happened:
“Okay, Bub, no school today. It’s
raining. So let’s really focus on keeping a dry pull-up, okay? I think you can
do it, what do you say? You’re one gold star from some Wii time…”
“Yeah, I want to. I just can’t do
it, Daddy.” He sounded so sincere. That’s what makes him so dangerous.
This has been going on so long now
that we initially bought him some rad new Elmo underwear to try and lure him to
The Dry Side. Made a big to-do about it, went to Target, he picked em out, I
actually used the word “awesome” to describe a pair of tighty whities with
Elmo’s face adorning the ass side.
And there they sit, lowly as the
leftover s’mores marshmallows. We’ve tried letting him sport them around the
house as a privilege on two occasions. They lasted approximately 18 minutes.
Combined. It was an extreme privilege to hose down hapless Elmo. I’m so over
you, Elmo; I can speak in the first person now.
And that leaves us here. Still.
Continually. Perpetually. Waiting, hoping, experimenting. Any theories? He’s
all proud of himself because he stands when he pees now. It would be a lot more
impressive if his pants weren’t still on.
