Breaking the Silence
Clearly I need to find some way to break this writing drought. I wish I could say it was only in this venue that I’ve fallen silent, but that is sadly not true. As much as I’ve been able to muster lately are my typically snarky and “nuanced” (read “spin-doctored”) comments on the blogs of others.
I could write about my attempt to enjoy a ballgame with a couple of guys from work on Friday night. Beautiful evening, tickets waiting under my name at will call, creeping along the viaduct toward the 1st Ave S exit, fully in the midst of gameday traffic and just blocks from the stadium when the transmission begins to slip. And then, nothin’ but revving, no power. My momentum just barely carried me to the top of the off ramp, and I coasted down to an hour-long wait for the tow truck, followed by a long truck ride to the auto shop, all of which rendered it impossible for me to get my or anyone else’s tickets. An evening fairly typical, if to an extreme degree, of my luck these days.
Or I could write about where I was five years ago tomorrow, though there was little special about it. My wife, then just the woman with whom I lived in sin, was in California for the week for work, so I was likely hungover. My mother-in-law-to-be called me around 7am, I wondered what she was babbling about and went back to sleep. Eventually woke to find the whole world gone crazy. Smoked and played chess in Discovery Park watching the jets circle Seattle and a frigate pull into Elliott Bay. But, if I wrote about that I’d digress into a story about WWF Smackdown two nights later in my favorite family pub and how much more caring and human and reasonable the messages from the wrestlers between bouts were than anything the talking heads were spouting on cable.
I could even just go off on Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which I just read for the first time, and which was the second satisfying fantasy story I’ve read recently, along with Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, that fell apart with ridiculous resolution in the final pages. L’Engle’s dash from mortal danger to I-can-win-with-love-oh-there-I-have-Papa!-Mama!-TheEnd in six pages was the most ham-handed conclusion to an ambitious and engaging work since young lit phenom Nick McDonell had a maniac walk out of the bedroom with an uzi four pages shy of the end. And, please, Ray, you’re a fucking genius, you could have come up with a better way to destroy the darkness than laughter. Why does it seem like you are ripping off Peter Pan?
But, what is really at me right now is Livvie starting preschool. We joined a preschool co-op nearby, which I am already beginning to fear may be as noble and doomed an effort as Communism. The thing about the kind of people that join co-ops in Seattle is that they are progressives who are very proud of themselves for being progressive. They are the root of my anger with “should.” For secular humanists, they are very Christian in their condescension at times. And where my little girl is concerned, I just don’t take kindly to being told how it should be, much less when it is passive-aggressively inferred.
Yeah, I think it is safe to say that I have built up some ridiculous fears and prejudices going into this experience.
And, really it is more about me than them. I’m incredibly hard on myself as a father. I’m sure I’m doing a terrible job more often than not, and that really isn’t a cry for affirmation, I swear, because I wouldn’t believe you. I worry about giving too many treats. I worry about not giving enough. I worry about finding the line between listening to my daughter and being conned by my daughter. I worry about giving her enough access to things that will help develop her wicked smart brain, getting her enough exercise, shielding her from acquiring my anti-social tendencies.
And I’m really worried that suddenly exposing myself to a community of other parents is going to needle every one of those vulnerabilities.
Of course, I’m also going to get a couple hours to myself twice a week. I shouldn’t be bitching, which just makes it a little more pathetic that I want to.
She starts tomorrow morning at 9:30. And thereafter September 11th will be known as the day our whole lives changed.
I could write about my attempt to enjoy a ballgame with a couple of guys from work on Friday night. Beautiful evening, tickets waiting under my name at will call, creeping along the viaduct toward the 1st Ave S exit, fully in the midst of gameday traffic and just blocks from the stadium when the transmission begins to slip. And then, nothin’ but revving, no power. My momentum just barely carried me to the top of the off ramp, and I coasted down to an hour-long wait for the tow truck, followed by a long truck ride to the auto shop, all of which rendered it impossible for me to get my or anyone else’s tickets. An evening fairly typical, if to an extreme degree, of my luck these days.
Or I could write about where I was five years ago tomorrow, though there was little special about it. My wife, then just the woman with whom I lived in sin, was in California for the week for work, so I was likely hungover. My mother-in-law-to-be called me around 7am, I wondered what she was babbling about and went back to sleep. Eventually woke to find the whole world gone crazy. Smoked and played chess in Discovery Park watching the jets circle Seattle and a frigate pull into Elliott Bay. But, if I wrote about that I’d digress into a story about WWF Smackdown two nights later in my favorite family pub and how much more caring and human and reasonable the messages from the wrestlers between bouts were than anything the talking heads were spouting on cable.
I could even just go off on Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which I just read for the first time, and which was the second satisfying fantasy story I’ve read recently, along with Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, that fell apart with ridiculous resolution in the final pages. L’Engle’s dash from mortal danger to I-can-win-with-love-oh-there-I-have-Papa!-Mama!-TheEnd in six pages was the most ham-handed conclusion to an ambitious and engaging work since young lit phenom Nick McDonell had a maniac walk out of the bedroom with an uzi four pages shy of the end. And, please, Ray, you’re a fucking genius, you could have come up with a better way to destroy the darkness than laughter. Why does it seem like you are ripping off Peter Pan?
But, what is really at me right now is Livvie starting preschool. We joined a preschool co-op nearby, which I am already beginning to fear may be as noble and doomed an effort as Communism. The thing about the kind of people that join co-ops in Seattle is that they are progressives who are very proud of themselves for being progressive. They are the root of my anger with “should.” For secular humanists, they are very Christian in their condescension at times. And where my little girl is concerned, I just don’t take kindly to being told how it should be, much less when it is passive-aggressively inferred.
Yeah, I think it is safe to say that I have built up some ridiculous fears and prejudices going into this experience.
And, really it is more about me than them. I’m incredibly hard on myself as a father. I’m sure I’m doing a terrible job more often than not, and that really isn’t a cry for affirmation, I swear, because I wouldn’t believe you. I worry about giving too many treats. I worry about not giving enough. I worry about finding the line between listening to my daughter and being conned by my daughter. I worry about giving her enough access to things that will help develop her wicked smart brain, getting her enough exercise, shielding her from acquiring my anti-social tendencies.
And I’m really worried that suddenly exposing myself to a community of other parents is going to needle every one of those vulnerabilities.
Of course, I’m also going to get a couple hours to myself twice a week. I shouldn’t be bitching, which just makes it a little more pathetic that I want to.
She starts tomorrow morning at 9:30. And thereafter September 11th will be known as the day our whole lives changed.
posted by JJisafool at 9:21 PM
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