Category: Parenting

  • Honest Realization

    (*Note: This was written on 11/1/19)

    This has been a very difficult week for us.

    I had no idea how paralyzing the feeling of helplessness would be when it looked like we might lose everything in a wildfire.

    The move to California, which happed a year ago now, has been a huge challenge for us, and I think we are both coming to the conclusion that it might not be the right fit.

    I have contemplated, and I keep wondering if it is the passing of Ma, and the depression that has followed, which is making it hard for me to accept the new situation we are in? I don’t feel happy, and I am just sad all the time. Is that her death affecting me, or is it that we live in a place where I cannot accomplish the things that I want to do?

    Deb coming home every night, just vomiting the hate that she has for her place of work, hasn’t help anyone. We both hate our jobs, but seemed to be trapped in them. We got into so much debt on the move out here, and with me being unemployed for three months, only made everything worse. We went from $40k in debt, to $80k in the space of 6 months. There is such a burden on us, that we can’t really see a way out of it.

    And then the fires hit, and luckily, we had a place to go, even though it was all the way down in Los Angeles. As we tried to land for a few days and plot our recovery, we started wondering if maybe, just maybe, if the fires went through town and torched our jobs and home, that we could pick up and return to New York. Wouldn’t that be funny?

    What was funny, was how excited it made us to think that we could return to New York.

    That’s when we knew we really were in trouble.

    We weren’t enjoying living in California. The move hadn’t made us happy, and now we were half a world away from our friends and family. But we also had to admit to ourselves that we were stuck, and couldn’t pick up and go.

    Yet, that is exactly what we want to do.

  • New Star Wars Trailer

    My kid is crazy into Star Wars right now. I hope it lasts the rest of her life, but I will take the enjoyment that we are both getting out of the movies. And books. And cartoons. And TV shows. And all of the other things that Disney wants to release.

    Just as it happens, last night I was watching a documentary on the making of the original trilogy, so seeing he new trailer this morning just made everything come full circle. And here I am, watching this new trailer that seems to be an attempt to tie all 9 movies together as one giant narrative. Regardless of how the last movie is, and it doesn’t really matter – we will all go and see it – there are now nine movies telling a story that everyone can’t seem to get enough of.

    Why do I keep coming back to Star Wars? Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I ever saw in the theatre at five years old. I can still remember the excitement and fear, and thrill of sitting in a packed theatre with my dad and brothers, sharing that experience of witnessing that movie. What I took away from that movie, and still take away from it, is that you always go to bat for your friends, and you have to face your fears.

    Loyalty and courage.

    And here is the new Star Wars trailer…

  • Habits

    I am trying to break my old habits, and see if I can create some new ones.

    The kid is the person who is indirectly influencing me to do this reexamination. I am concerned that I am not engaging enough with my kid to try and avoid screen time. (For most people screen time refers to phones and computers, but here I want to include the tv as well.) Right now, I say that we are doing about two hours a day. I think that is a pretty good number, but something keeps poking at me in the back of my head, so I think that number is too high.

    When I think back to my childhood, the tv was always on, and I turned out fine.

    Right?

    What I remember is watching tv in the morning when I got up, most likely about a half hour. Went to school and was home by 3pm, and that was when Jeopardy was on. But I would say that I was home for about an hour watching tv and snacking before I went outside to play. Parents were home by about 5:30, and they would watch the news, about an hour. Dinner time, and then we would watch about another 3 hours of tv. So, I think I watched about 4.5 hours of tv a day growing up.

    So why do I feel guilty about our two hours for the kid?

  • Blackout: Learning Experience

    Yesterday, very powerful and disruptive storms hit us on the west coast. The rain wasn’t any worse than a bad thunderstorm in Texas around late May, but whereas a Texas storm is done and over in about thirty minutes, the rain yesterday lasted for over twenty-four hours.

    As the storms were tapering off in the middle of the evening, just as we were about to start making dinner, we lost power, and got plunged into darkness. Luckily, we have a large collection of Yankee candles thanks to our many trips to outlet malls, and we quickly had light in our apartment.

    As we sat and waited for the power to return, the wife and I thought about the last time we were in a power outage. For me, it had to be at least 20 years, back when I was in Texas. My wife was in New York for the blackout of 2003. For our daughter, this was the first time she had experienced no electricity.

    We explained to her what was going on, and that nothing would work in the home. I know she heard us, and understood, but it was cute to watch her go from room to room, trying light switches, and then ask if we had extra electricity in the apartment to use. Like a battery, you know. We even opened the front door, so she could see the complex and the whole neighborhood cloaked in darkness.

    It was interesting to watch her learn. She had been given information, but she still needed to experience it for herself; to touch and see. She questioned why this happened, and how does rain make electricity go away. She wanted to know what we could do to fix it, and when I told her there was nothing to do but wait, she didn’t like that.

    If there is a problem, then we have to solve it.

    Waiting is still a lesson to be learned.

  • The Unexamined Life Sucks…

    Which I think is a more accurate translation from ancient Greek.

    I watched a documentary on Freud last night, and it didn’t help me sleep. What struck me in this program was that it claimed that in moments when Freud was stuck and frustrated by his own theories, he would apply them to his own life to see if they stood up to objective scrutiny. Depending on how you feel about Freud, you may feel that he succeeded or failed.

    It reminded me of Socrates’ quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I know that he said it, or supposedly did, at his trial, choosing death rather than exile. Now, my interpretation is that the ancient world was about examining the external, and the modern world is about examining the internal.

    I remember wanting to write books from a very early age. I remember wanting to have as many books around me as possible. I can even remember memorizing the books my parents read to me, so I could act like I was “reading” them. (My daughter has started to exhibit the same behavior now.) I remember “scribbling” with wavy lines on paper, like I was handwriting a story. When I did learn how to write, this might have been when I was 9 or 10, I asked for and received a child’s typewriter for Christmas. I also remember wanting to tell stories; make them up, read them, perform them, etc.…

    But where did this come from?

    I understand the nature/nurture dynamic, but it can’t be all nature, can it? Being given books by my parents clearly had an impact, but is that it? Did books give me a feeling of power? Were books my “friend” when my older brothers left me alone to do older brother things? Was it playing by myself in those situations where I was forced to use my imagination to create my own stories as I did not have the interaction with another child? Or is it just something that is in me that was inevitable?

    I’m not sure if there is a clear answer here, or even a need for an answer, as in, what does that answer really “give” me? I am who I am, and I don’t regret it.

    But…

    As I mentioned above, my daughter has exhibited one of these behaviors. Is that coming from me, genetically, or from the example I set?