Our 5 year old likes to say that a lot when he gets on a roll telling us about something he’s excited about. It could be science facts or recounting a fun outing or his latest playground escapades. He’ll sprinkle it in throughout the story, which shows he’s both excited to share and keen on building some suspense into the telling.
Oh and guess what? It’s so endearing.
Today our youngest turned one year old. He and I are often outside together like in this picture because it’s what makes him feel better when he’s upset. Walking around while holding him will get tougher as he grows and begins to walk, so I’m trying my best to cherish these moments before he goes off to make shadows of his own.
Happy birthday, A!
One of the many clichés you hear as a parent of littles from older parents is something to the effect of: “Cherish every moment—they grow up so fast.”
It’s something I’m also tempted to say to newer parents because kids do indeed grow up fast, and when you look at photos from when they were younger it’s easy to get wistful for those times.
But it’s also true that not every moment can or should be cherished, not when it’s full of screaming or sleep deprivation or pacifiers that need to be cleaned yet again. Sometimes you pine for that seemingly mythical future when the kids are older and life is easier and you can do things without a diaper bag or tantrum.
There are a few names you could call this phenomenon of living in the moment while longing for another:
Whatever you want to call it, the idea of two conflicting states existing at the same time strongly resonates for me. It’s OK to acknowledge and accept whatever phase you’re currently in—newborn, toddler, teen, single or multiple kids, etc.—while also wishing you were in another. “Yes, I’m here right now. And I will be over there sooner than I realize.”
This perspective doesn’t erase or invalidate the (many) frustrations embedded in child-rearing. It merely helps you see and appreciate the good stuff in each phase, even when you’re deep in the trenches. It’s a reminder that life is fleeting, that each phase has its good and bad, fun and hard, and none of it lasts.
Rachel Ringenberg on homeschooling and raising children:
This brings me to wonder how I reflect on the person who in 2019 homeschooled a 2nd grader and a kindergartener, and had a three year old, and a baby. Was that easier? It was definitely not easier; but time was different to her. More expansive when it needed to be, and nearly glacially slow. If the little kids got sick that cancelled almost all of her plans immediately. How everyone slept the night before determined more than seemed fair about the day ahead. It was easier for her to smooth things over when things didn’t go anywhere near how she had planned; now four pairs of eyes watch me reproachfully. She didn’t try to serve a ‘good dinner’ most nights—carrots and pasta and a bit of chicken stirfry perfectly sufficing day in and day out. She read more novels to balance out the joyful jabber, mostly because she could on a kindle, while sitting and holding the baby…
Anyway, the point is it’s all wonderful, and changing all the time. “How you spend your days is how you spend your life” could not be more inaccurate when it comes to raising children!
There’s a quote I discovered floating around Instagram Reels that people use as narration for clips of their little kids:
You have little kids for four years. And if you miss it, it’s done. That’s it. So, you gotta know that. Lots of things in life you don’t get to do more than once. That period between 0 and 4, 0 and 5, there’s something about it that’s like a peak experience in life. It isn’t much of your life. Four years goes by so fast, you can’t believe it. And if you miss it, it’s gone. So you miss it at your peril, and you don’t get it back.
(I was surprised to learn the speaker is Jordan Peterson, whom I’ve never read or even heard speak before. Not interested in litigating Peterson as a whole, just taking this quote for what it’s worth.)
I was talking with an older coworker about kids and how mine recently turned 4. His are all grown now, he said, but he would do anything to have just one day when they were 4 again, to do bathtime and all the other kid things that fill your life so intensely for a few years before the kids grow into other phases.
It’s a sentiment I’ve heard often, usually in the form of parenting clichés like “The days are long but the years are short” and “They’re only young once.” The annoying thing about clichés is that they’re usually both trite and true, and I’m grateful for when they tap me on the shoulder at just the right time.
A recent example: I was sitting with my 4 year old playing with his Carry Around Robot Town as (who else?) The Okee Dokee Brothers were on in the background—this time their 2018 album Winterland. He was immersed enough in the game that he actually let the album play through instead of wanting to jump to his favorite tracks, and that allowed me to enjoy some of their quieter, more reflective songs he’s usually not interested in.
We got near the end when on came “New Year,” a beautiful tune in the form of notes back and forth between two friends inquiring about their lives and children.
Here’s the lyrical exchange:
Hey say, Happy New Year
Have you had much snow
And how’s that new baby boy of yours, JoeHappy New Year to you
The snow’s still deep
And he’s our little roly-poly
I sing him to sleepSay how’s the weather
Have you had much rain
And can that new baby sing your refrainThe weather’s changing
It feels like spring
And as he falls asleep
We can hear him singHave the leaves changed
Where does the time go
And now how old is that son of yours, JoeLeaves blow away
Time goes on
He’s all grown up now,
singing this song
Perhaps you can now see why the combination of this song and the moment—cozied up next to that son of mine while he cutely played—made me tear up: I envisioned the time that has already passed in my life with him and how in a snap more time will pass and he’ll be all grown up and singing his own songs, only I won’t be cozied up next to him.
It was a moment of mono no aware, a Japanese phrase I love that indicates “the awareness of impermanence or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.”
That concept cuts both ways. Everything in this stage—and in life—is impermanent: the good moments, the hard times, the drudgery, the occasional euphoria. “Nothing gold can stay,” wrote Robert Frost. And that’s why it’s so important to love them at the age they are and every year they grow, because they’ll never be that age again.
There is one workaround for this: have another child. Our second is due in late May, so I’ll get another chance to start at zero and bask in this unique time once again. And you better believe I’ll be working extra hard to enjoy bathtimes while they last.
As parents of littles know, going to the library with kids is a very different experience than going solo. (“Traveling with young kids is not a vacation, it is a trip.”)
When in chaperone mode, if I’m lucky I can wrangle the three year old for just long enough to let me quickly browse the new movies and grab a book if I know what I’m looking for. After that, he’s off to the kids area and entirely unconcerned about how I’d like to use the library.
On the rare occasions I’m able to go on my own, it’s an luxurious experience: slowly scanning the new books and movies and CDs for anything eye-catching, venturing into the book sale room. It can help sand off the jagged edges of the day and become therapeutic for an introverted library lover like me.
Which made me think: libraries + therapy = librerapy. Don’t know if anyone has capitalized on this concept yet, but it’s just sitting there…
The best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten was from my own parent. Per my mom:
When all else fails, lower your expectations.
Runner-up is from my other parent. Per my dad:
Kids spell love T-I-M-E.
In his year-end summary of reading, Seth Godin wrote: “Books are an extraordinary device, transitioning through time and space, moving from person to person and leaving behind insight and connection. I’m grateful every single day for the privilege of being able to read (and to write).”
I read 18 books in 2020. For some people that might be a lot, but for me it’s an all-time low and a continuation of a downward trend since my peak of 80 books in 2016. The global pandemic had something to do with it, as once I started working from home I lost the time I had previously spent reading during my daily commute and lunch break.
But that’s OK. Like Seth I’m grateful for the privilege of being able to read at all, let alone whatever I want. Of what I was able to read this year, here (in alphabetical order) is what stood out.
While I’ve been a fan of Dazed and Confused for a while, I knew next to nothing about its making aside from Richard Linklater’s freewheeling filmmaking style. This book is a good mix of context-setting commentary from the author and contributions from everyone involved with the movie. (The funniest part is everyone dumping on one insufferable actor who thought he was the next Brando.) Rewatched the movie after reading and appreciated it anew.
Choice quote:
Every few years, as a new crop of high schoolers graduates, new generations discover Dazed. The fact that it doesn’t really have a plot means it holds up better with repeat viewings. You aren’t watching for the story. You’re watching to hang out with the characters.
I took the online Jeopardy! test back in March after I started working from home. It… didn’t go well. But that made me appreciate the show and its contestants all the more, along with how televised trivia has managed to remain not only relevant but beloved for so long. This book digs into all of that and more with a combination of concision and panache that Alex Trebek (RIP) would appreciate.
Choice quote:
The real Jeopardy! is not the machine. It’s the show, the thirty minutes of pleasant syndicated reassurance that the machine produces five times a week. Jeopardy! isn’t in a chilly California soundstage; it’s in your home, as you yell answers at the TV screen or furrow your brow during a tense Daily Double. … The real Jeopardy! is the illusion of simplicity: Alex Trebek, three contestants, roughly sixty answers and sixty questions. The real Jeopardy! is the magic trick.
Set in a dystopian future, this short novel follows a man and his daughter forging a lonely existence in the wilderness. What begins as a rugged, sparse tale soon combines with elements of magical realism, and that’s what really made it sing. Makes me eager to read more Krivak.
Choice quote:
The wood you burn to cook your food and keep you warm? The smoke that rises was once a memory. The ashes all that is left of the story.
Jacobs’s writing is very influential to me. His blog is a constant source of bemused, no-bullshit commentary about politics, religion, culture, and the life of the mind. His latest book seeks to make the case for “temporal bandwidth”—the idea of widening your understanding of the present by engaging with old books and ideas that provide an “unlikeness” to your own assumptions. This means accepting good things about the past along with its baggage. It’s a short but punchy book, the third in a trilogy (along with The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction and How to Think) that together puts forth a commendable vision of intellectual engagement.
Choice quote:
If it is foolish to think that we can carry with us all the good things from the past—from our personal past or that of our culture—while leaving behind all the unwanted baggage, it is a counsel of despair and, I think, another kind of foolishness to think that if we leave behind the errors and miseries of the past, we must also leave behind everything that gave the world its savor.
Nestor’s previous book about freediving really spoke to me, so I was eager to see where he went next. His immersion journalism takes him into the surprisingly deep terrain of respiration, especially timely this year given how central breathing is to Covid-19 transmission. Obviously breathing is important to your health, right? But it’s fairly astounding how just breathing deeply through your nose can improve your overall well-being. This book taught me a lot, but mostly it made me more attentive to the aspects of our humanity we often take for granted.
Choice quote:
Everything you or I or any other breathing thing has ever put in its mouth, or in its nose, or soaked through its skin, is hand-me-down space dust that’s been around for 13.8 billion years. This wayward matter has been split apart by sunlight, spread through the universe, and come back together again. To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and give pieces of ourselves back out. Respiration is, at its core, reciprocation.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and The Village meet Home Alone. Though I read Brooks’s previous book World War Z, it didn’t stick with me nearly as much as this one, which treads similar realistic sci-fi territory. Because the main event is right there in the title, the dramatic tension builds so exquisitely throughout the book. It was one of those stories that delightfully defied prediction, and managed to end on a tantalizing yet satisfying note.
Choice quote:
They all want to live “in harmony with nature” before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.
One of my favorite authors, Johnson nailed it again with this riveting historical epic that weaves together 17th-century seafaring, the surprising culture of pirate ships, the dawn of the multinational corporation, and much more. Johnson’s magic trick is being able to stuff so much fascinating information into a crisp narrative without making it seem stuffed. It really feels like a rewarding reading journey.
Choice quote:
Ancient history is always colliding with the present in the most literal sense: our genes, our language, our culture all stamp the present moment with the imprint of the distant past.
This laugh-out-loud hilarious cartoon collection is a short, sweet, and stunningly accurate depiction of the small moments and observations new parenthood allows. Though mostly geared toward the experience of mothers, so much of it resonated with me. Really glad to have stumbled upon this at my library’s New Graphic Novels shelf.
Choice quote:
Dude, I love you so much… but could you *please* stop discovering the infinite wonder of the world for, like, two minutes?
The book tells two primary, interweaving stories: how the information-collecting missions of the Library of Congress, OSS, and Allied forces conflicted and aligned before, during, and after the war; and how individuals engaged with those missions on the ground. I found the parts about the people much more engaging than the broader institutional machinations. But if you share my interests in librarianship, archives, history, and World War II, you’ll dig this.
Choice quote:
The war challenged these librarians, archivists, scholars, and bibliophiles to turn their knowledge of books and records toward new and unpredictable ends. The immediacy and intensity of their experience tested them psychologically and physically. Whether soldier or civilian, American-born or émigré, these people’s lives changed as they engaged in this unusual wartime enterprise. They stepped up to the moment, confronting shifting and perplexing circumstances armed only with vague instructions and few precedents to guide them.
For Filmspotting’s latest poll, they ask which of the provided movie failures you are the biggest cheerleader for. The criteria: “These are movie ‘failures’ that paired well-respected, ‘auteurist’ filmmakers with existing properties—and high expectations—resulting in significant disappointments critically and (usually) at the box office.”
Check out the poll for all the options. I’ve only actually seen two of them, but there was only really one answer: Steven Spielberg’s Hook.
Sure, as a ’90s kid there was a little bit of nostalgia that influenced my vote. But it wasn’t nostalgia alone. I’ve rewatched it as an adult and found it to be a superbly directed, campy, and effervescent reimagining of a classic story, with a dynamic Robin Williams performance and jubilant John Williams score.
And as the father of a toddler, the part that really hit me on the rewatch was what Peter’s wife Moira said to him after he snaps at his kids:
Your children love you. They want to play with you. How long do you think that lasts? Soon Jack may not even want you to come to his games. We have a few special years with our children, when they’re the ones that want us around. After that you’ll be running after them for a bit of attention. It’s so fast, Peter. It’s a few years, then it’s over. And you are not being careful. And you are missing it.
There’s a post by Jason Kottke I’ve thought about almost every day since he wrote it last year. He links to an animated version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, then reminisces about reading picture books with his now-older kids:
We’ll likely never read any of those books together again. It reminds me of one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard about parenting: one day you’ll pick up your kid, put them down, and never pick them up again…and you won’t remember it happening.
This is why I never, ever get tired of picking up Mr. 20 Months. He’s only getting taller and heavier (though his weight has plateaued since he’s so freakin’ active), but I will continue to pick him up as long as possible, if only to smooch him yet again. I mean, how could you not want to scoop this up:
I recently rewatched The Patriot for the first time in a long while. I was big into this movie as a lad, so rewatching it as a thirtysomething dad was something of an experiment to see how my adolescent tastes hold up.
There’s good (John Williams’ score, Mel Gibson as likeable movie star) and bad (how benign slavery is depicted in colonial South Carolina, a lot of the writing and acting to be honest).
But there was one aspect of The Patriot I appreciated completely differently than before, and that’s the depiction of fatherhood. I also noticed just how much the movie shares in common in that regard with an entirely different movie: Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi epic Interstellar.
(Here be spoilers.)
There were two moments in The Patriot that kinda breezed past me before but totally annihilated me this time around.
The first act finds Gibson’s Benjamin Martin as a kindly if emotionally distant father butting heads with his oldest son Gabriel (Heath Ledger), who joins the Continental Army against Benjamin’s wishes, and his second-oldest, Thomas, who’s eager to join once he’s old enough.
When the British kill Thomas and capture Gabriel, Benjamin enlists the younger sons, Nathan and Samuel, to ambush the British unit and rescue Gabriel. All three sons survive but then witness, a bit stunned, their father’s repressed brutality unleashed in a fit of rage and grief for Thomas.
Benjamin and his sons respond to this differently. Gabriel rejoins the war effort. Nathan expresses pride in the ambush. The younger Samuel withdraws into a post-traumatic cocoon. And Benjamin succumbs to shame: for failing to protect Gabriel and Thomas, for subjecting the younger boys to the terrors of war, and for letting his violent past overcome him.
Yet the ambush earns him a serendipitous (for my purposes) nickname: the Ghost. It’s fitting for his subsequent militia fighting style, with its emphasis on guerrilla tactics and ability to evade capture. But it also signifies his presence—or lack thereof—in his children’s lives.
He carries all of this and more into the climactic battle, where he finally avenges the deaths of Gabriel and Thomas at the hands of the ruthless Colonel Tavington. Before heading home, Benjamin says goodbye to his friend and fellow soldier General Burwell (Chris Cooper), who tells him that his wife recently gave birth to a son.
“We named him Gabriel,” he says. It’s such a simple moment, elegantly delivered by Cooper, that manages to avoid mawkishness and serve as an emotional capstone to Benjamin’s long journey, which included losing two sons and his home.
Back on the daughter side of the Martin family, Susan is the youngest child and most distant to Benjamin. She refuses to speak to him, whether due to her still grieving the loss of her mother or being resentful of Benjamin’s long absences. Even after he visits the family while on furlough, she continues to stonewall him.
But when he sets off yet again, she finally lets go:
Papa! Papa, please don’t go. I’ll say anything. Just tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it.
Reader, I cried. It’s a wrenching moment of a father and child equally longing for connection before yet another separation. I couldn’t bear to consider such a moment ever befalling me and my son—now a rascally and wondrous 18 month old.
It didn’t matter to Susan that Benjamin was riding off to avenge his sons and fight for a political cause. Her Ghost was disappearing again, and she finally had something to say about it.
And this is where Interstellar comes in.
(Again I warn of spoilers.)
A key motif in Christopher Nolan’s near-future, time-bending space drama (a recent subject on Filmspotting’s Oeuvreview, a series I helped coin) is the “ghost” that young Murphy claims is haunting her room and sending her messages in Morse code. Her pilot father, Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper, is leaving on a mission that will take him decades in Earth-time to complete, but the despondent Murph insists the ghost’s message is telling him to stay.
In a heartbreaking scene, Cooper comes to her room to say goodbye and offers a bittersweet reflection on parenting:
After you kids came along, your mother said something to me I never quite understood. She said, ‘Now we’re just here to be memories for our kids.’ And I think that now I understand what she meant. Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.
Cooper’s prophecy comes true when he completes his mission and then, in another heartbreaking scene, watches years’ worth of messages from his kids, who bitterly rue his absence:
We also discover that the ghost in Murph’s room was actually Cooper himself, trying to communicate with Murph from across spacetime.
And that’s where Benjamin and Cooper—an 18th-century soldier and a 21st-century astronaut—also have now magically linked across spacetime: as fathers desperate to return to their children, and not merely as phantoms of themselves. They even share their goodbyes:
A Hollywood cliché? Maybe. Would I say it and mean it to my own child? Absolutely. Which is not something I would have predicted as a youngster.
Perhaps that’s the benefit of rewatching movies at different life stages. As Roger Ebert wrote about why he loved La Dolce Vita so much: “Movies do not change, but their viewers do. The movie has meant different things to me at different stages in my life… It won’t grow stale, because I haven’t finished changing.”
Having been working from home since mid-March, I’m incredibly lucky to have had more time with my son that I would have otherwise spent away at work or on my commute. “Kids spell love T-I-M-E,” my own dad has said. It’s an insight that The Patriot and Interstellar have made ever more resonant.
Hat-tip to Austin Kleon for the above snapshot of his journal entry: “The true gift of children is they destroy what you think you know and provide the opportunity for healthy not-knowing and growth.”
Children aren’t necessary for achieving healthy not-knowing and growth, but they’re a hell of a good catalyst.
See also: “The rules are there ain’t no rules.” and Baby Comello
There’s a scene in Grease where Leo, the head of the rival Scorpions gang, says to Travolta’s Danny Zuko before they drag race: “The rules are there ain’t no rules.”
It’s one of the many random lines that has stuck in my head from a lifetime of movie watching. I think about it a lot now in relation to parenthood.
Bun (as my wife calls him) is almost one year old and my main takeaway from that time is that there is no normal. How he eats, how he sleeps (or doesn’t), how he develops. How we teach him, what we teach him, how much screen time we give him.
There ain’t no rules. And Leo wasn’t slinging empty threats. He repeatedly rams Danny’s car and gashes his side doors with spiked hubcaps.
All Danny (and we) can do is hit the gas and hold on.
Related: this tweet from Colson Whitehead:
Generally I take a liberal stance towards unsolicited advice. You never know when you’ll get something worthwhile, and you can always just ignore the bad stuff.
We’ll see if that stance changes once people start chiming in about particular parenting choices. So far I haven’t had a problem.
In the meantime, Lifehacker’s Offspring parenting blog asked people for The Best Parenting Advice You’ve Ever Received. As I’m just 3 months into this parenting thing my capacity for advice giving is quite limited, but I appreciated hearing from more seasoned parents with maxims like:
More here.
As the due date of my first child approaches, I’ve tried to account for and appreciate things I can do now, pre-parenthood, that won’t be quite so easy soon. Quiet nights reading, hassle-free dining, uninterrupted sleep, and keeping a tidy home come to mind. But chief among these activities is moviegoing, one of my most cherished traditions.
Here’s my typical moviegoing routine:
(Who says there’s no such thing as a free movie?)
My wife and I saw The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part on Friday. As I expected, it wasn’t quite as good as the first one (one of my favorites of 2014), but still had the same manic, joyful verve and heavy meta references. It’s also probably the last movie I’ll see in theaters before the baby arrives. My moviegoing days aren’t over, of course. But it does feel like the end of an era.
I can certainly sympathize with the people driven away from the theater due to high prices or bad behavior. I remember the guy who took a phone call during Children of Men. I remember the old woman’s smartphone playing opera in her purse (unbeknownst to her) throughout the previews and the beginning of 12 Years A Slave. And I remember the lady behind me expressing her every dumb thought and question during Gravity.
For me those incidents are few and far between. I just love going to the movies, and I hope my child will too. Because far more often, I emerge from the theater refreshed or challenged or bewildered or overjoyed, or sometimes dismayed or disappointed. Regardless, my aforementioned moviegoing routine isn’t special to me only because of its combination of thriftiness and good fortune. It’s special because it tells my mind and heart to prepare for something extraordinary.
The late, lamented Sam Shepard called the movie theater “a dark room where a bunch of strangers sit down and watch huge images of other strangers who somehow seem more familiar than the people they know in real life.”
A funny thing happens in the dark with those strangers on and off the screen: life feels a little less strange.
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk.
In my library, one of the information desks sits in a high-traffic area where all the activity from the entrance, auditorium, elevator, and stairs to Youth Services converge. One result of this configuration is that whoever is at the desk (and anyone in the nearby Periodicals area) can hear everything that happens in the cacophonous cement stairwell that leads to Youth Services. Sometimes it’s a toddler’s tantrum or a boisterous conversation. And sometimes it’s a parent who doesn’t realize strangers are listening.
The other day it was a mother frustrated with her son, probably a four year old. From what I gathered, the boy had not been a good listener and they were leaving this library trip in a bad mood.
“I do this for you,” the mother said as they emerged from the stairwell and walked out the door. “I could be home, doing nothing. But I’m nice. I actually care about you and want you to read good books.”
In one interpretation of this scene, the mother is the villain for snapping at her child. But she wasn’t. Her tone was part frustration and part disappointment, without animus or aggression. Since I didn’t see what had happened before their departure, I can’t judge the son for his behavior or the mother for her reaction to it (though from his lowered head and lack of protest I’m guessing he deserved the rebuke).
Despite not being a parent myself, I deeply sympathize with parents in public with their kids. Planes, parks, restaurants, stores, and other public spaces offer ample opportunities for kids to misbehave and beckon the judgmental glances (and even comments) of other adults.
But unless it’s the parent who is egregiously misbehaving, I usually side with the adult. Especially one who brings her child to the library when she’d rather be at home, doing nothing.