dad

[Read the first part Present, In Line]

Patiently, the wee Bairn and I stood with the other families waiting to make our own pinewood windmill for Mother’s Day. I held her little hand and we talked: what would do when we got to the front of the line; what plants and flowers should we look for; should I get a new Weber gas grill.¹ Even so young, it is one of the great pleasures of Fatherhood for me to watch the Bairn observe the world, people, and parents, create unique thoughts and ideas and state them. Our conversations make me smile and laugh and appreciate this tiny person next to me.

We’re not alone, obviously, so I’m on edge because, while the line is moving, and quickly, it’s chaotic and loud and there’s only one person holding back the tide of eager and aggressive parents and she’s either gonna get knocked over or run out of supplies before we get into the classroom. We should go elsewhere, I think, to Michael’s to get our own project, or pillage my home scrap pile.

We don’t. We stay. The Bairn likes people. A peek at my phone and I know that we had only been there a few minutes since we started at the back and the line halved. So what if they run out? I was enjoying my time with my daughter.

When we stepped in line, I saw that many kids had their own tiny Home Depot smocks on. When I registered the Wee Bairn (which I gather that no one else had done) the confirmation suggested she’d get one for attending. I asked the woman two places in front of me (because the guy just in front of us had shut off the world for his phone; more later) if A) we were in the correct line for the project, and B) if kids got the smock at the front. She looked at me, zero expression, said ‘Yes’ and then pulled out her iPhone. Conversation done.

The other families were the usual mix I’ve come to really appreciate in our East Coast Elite Bubble. Watching them was a little like my own version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

At the very back of the line was a Dad and son, white, dressed like they had just come from the back nine. He was loud (so loud), shouting, to no one in particular, about how long the line was and wondering why nobody was paying attention. Anytime a gap grew in the line, he’d point it out. “HEADS UP!” No one listened. “WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING!” Obvious to everyone else: he held no authority. His paycheck, dick, and skin-tone didn’t rate in that line. People were paying attention to their own kids. Trying to tune him out, like me. Eventually he announced his attention to pick up some wood from the cutoff pile and build their own project.

Disappointing his kid to own the libs, as they say on the Twitter machine.

There were many mothers in line, with friends and all of their children. When loser to the front, Dad and their older kids joined, swelling the line.² The parents asked questions in Spanish; the kids answered in English. I wondered if they were the wives of construction workers and home builders, minding the kids while their husbands shopped for tools and supplies and checked out at the contractor line. Their kids were quiet and exceptionally polite. I’m not a big family guy, but I wish the Bairn lived closer to her cousins.

Everyone checks their phones.³, trying to tune out the noise of the store, the line, the creeping doubt about whether it was even worth it. Their children.

The father directly in front of us was scratching around gems in a Bejewelled-clone on his phone and holding for too long any place he could comfortably rest his ass, even as the line moved forward without him (HEADS UP THE LINE IS MOVING!, shouted the guy at the back before he split in huff). The kid spun in place, silently, in tight circles, while Dad zoned out.

Kid weaved between shopper’s legs. Shoppers with lengths of carpet, tiles, handsaws.

He tripped over a woman’s feet.

He knocked over 10′ lengths of wood trim.

Dad: nothing.

Only when the kid started pounding on the metal door to the classroom did Dad look up. A Mom shouting “Who’s son is this?” He grabbed the kid by the arm, pulled him to his side, and went back to his game

All of this happened within less than 5 minutes. No time at all. And meanwhile, my kid, my Bairn, stood next to me with her hand in mine, also watching the people, asking about and waving to other kids, talking about what we were going to build and what we were going to do after.

If I had spoke to that father, if he had asked (it’s not my place to put pressure on another Dad; as I don’t believe any woman has the right to question how my wife mothers) and only if he had asked, I would let him know how much improved my life has been from just talking with my wee bairn, spending some time in my day to see the world from three feet small.

There are times when she lays out flat on the floor of the Giant Supermarket. When I’d like to pick her up, put her in the car, take her home, and lock her in her room until dinner time. But they are nothing compared to the sheer joy of watching her be excited by nearly everything that’s happening around her. The Bairn was excited, frantically so, to go with her dad to the Home Depot on a beautiful Saturday morning and make a present for her mama (which, incidentally, she kept for her self, so it was a good thing that Dad had many backups). And I was excited to hear the hilariously bananas ideas that come out of her little mouth.

We built the little windmill planter. No paint, but all of the stickers. I did most of the building; she held the hammer, too, while I tapped nails into place. The Bairn got a smock and a pin to take home. We planted some beans in the small planter cup and watered them. They sprouted, but didn’t make it to July.

***

A new mother mentioned, on line, how grateful she was when her husband came home from work with an iced coffee and took their child off of her hands for a few minutes. I wondered if the bar for successful fatherhood was really that low; that doing the bare minimum is worthy of ebullient public praise?

I guess the answer, at least sometimes, is yes.

Men can do better.

The answer was ‘Yes,’ so I did and SWMNBB was very, very excited that grilling would no longer include time to get the damned charcoal lit. ↩
The cranky, privileged version of me can get burned up at this sort of thing. But, really, would it be better to have all 10 family members in line at the same time? No. ↩
I’m not immune from this disorder and even with 1001 really good and observant questions coming @ me from the Bairn, I slip. ↩

Maybe you don’t know, but you should. My sense of humor is this: I got my Ford Focus to say “Keep Fucking That Chicken” every time I queued up that playlist on the car’s stereo system.

“Keep Fucking that Chicken” is a master playlist I “maintain,” a filter on the 25000+ audio files I have on my PC. That’s 120GB and roughly 30 days of audio. 65% of it is either Christmas Music or Horror sound effects records I – a-hem – found on the Internet in it’s wild west days.

It’s a work in progress. Variations have existed, on audio tape or binders full of CD-Rs, but never A to Z. That’s one entire iPod’s worth of storage, or 1000 CD-Rs

I don’t collect music with the same enthusiasm as some, but music is one of the things that makes being a sentient being worth the trouble. I buy one or two (mostly) physical discs and burn them to 320kbs MP3s monthly. High School would have been far more intolerable if I didn’t have INXS’s Kick, the Black Crowes Shake Your Money Maker, or my obsessive and quixotic search for the entire Queen catalogue, including the Flash Gordon Soundtrack.

My approach to most projects is top down: throw every word, every file, every thought at a piece of work and then whittle away the excess. A sculptor with marble is the cliche. It’s how my father taught me how to write and was supported by my more academic classes in school. Collect all of your thoughts and pare them down to the ones that stick. Absorb as much as you can, create a thesis, and then use notes, research, highlights, quotes from films to defend or disprove that thesis. Works really well when you’re limited to 1000-10000 words. Or you have the time.

I have tried over a long weekend, or a random free Sunday, plunked down a the computer, fire up MusicBee and my Audio Technica M50 monitors, plow through the Chicken list. It’s a fools job; an hour in and I’m bored or distracted. It’s a job for one of those kids in LCD Sound System’s Loosing My Edge, but definitely for the 40 year old with a mortgage and chronic lower back pain.

Now I just chip away at the big block, an album or artist a day. I don’t (or try not to) let in that little angry man in when I miss a day, or a week, or a month. I won’t let him tell me to give up the shit and watch “Midsommer Murders,” because it’s 14 seasons and it’s on Netflix and who really gives a shit, man.

I do. I just keep fucking that chicken.

***

In college, I wanted to make films. I learned to appreciate the classics with my Mom. I fell in love Hitchcock when my parents gave me a VHS copy of Rear Window, research for a school project. I’ve watched that movie nearly once a year since I was 16; I learn something new at every viewing and I’m a little overdue for another screening.

My first screenwriting class was run by a visiting instructor who had had some minor success in LA and NY making independents, long before serial predator Harvey Weinstein monetized small movies. I don’t remember his name or work. I do remember that he styled himself as a dollar store Jackson Brown: home bowl cut, redneck tan from his off-season, pick up work in home remodeling and construction. His writing process was top down: a few weeks heads down at the keyboard hammering out a screenplay rough draft, followed by weeks or months of rewrites. Nothing else. Fully blinkered.

A friend, he said, would take the opposite approach. She never took work on spec or script doctored. Instead, she would write just one page of original content every day. One Page = One Minute. After 6 months, she she’d have a full 180 minute draft. The next 6 months she would spend in revisions until she had a tight, salable screenplay. In the afternoons, she lived life or taught the craft.

***

I learned to write from my father. To rewrite and rewrite. His PhD was 20 years in the making and defended after I left high school.

Writing, creation, takes time. I remember coming home at the end of the school day and finding him in the same place I left him in the morning: in his recliner, Waterman pen in one hand and a yellow legal pad in another, marked up pages curled around the perforated top (another habit I’ve learned from him; can’t stand gum-topped writing pads), thinking critically and writing on how to improve community colleges and the students they served. He took his time. That was his job.

My job is to support the software that I work to create along with a large team of dedicated, hardworking people. One piece of the larger product I’m responsible for is User Documentation, including User Guides and training outlines. It takes time to explain, thoughtfully, how a person must complete a compliance document they must get right or suffer an steep penalty. I spend as much time on that as I can, not as much time as I want.

That’s what I’m paid for. I’d like to spend the same amount of time on creating my own work. Writing my own story. But there isn’t enough time for the 21st Century man or woman to sit in a comfortable chair, fountain pen in my hand, and plot a world where two people can overcome all obstacles and carry on in the face of adversity. And do it in 300+ pages.

***

You know that’s not true. I know that’s not true. There is enough time; it’s just in bits and pieces, covered up by one layer of real life, and a second, even thicker layer of social media sludge and Netflix binge. But that shit is sticky and after a 9 hours of work, even a brief commute in Maryland’s extremely stupid traffic, caring for the Wee Bairn, for SWMNBB, for myself, there’s almost nothing I’d rather do than drink a bottle of Rye, get angry at the injustice du jour, and watch the latest season of X Files. Only, I don’t drink any more.

Wanting to tell stories with words on paper is all I’ve ever wanted to do. Writing stories is the one thing that I’ve consistently avoided for most of my waking hours.

***

I got to keep fucking that chicken.