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- Something I’d never have thought I’d have to say: “Emma, don’t hang from your drawer.”
- Also, I never considered I’d have to explain the difference between boy potties and girl potties.
- Finally, I never imagined I’d have a perfectly charming conversation about big toots and little toots while my daughter was sitting on a potty in a men’s room at pre-school.
So it’d been a restless night, we didn’t have anything pressing going on this morning, so I was laying in bed, waiting for Emma to wake up. The Cat was meowing - hungry, I suppose, or had forgotten how to get from the living room to the bedroom. (I have to cut him some slack. He’ll be 17 years old this month.) I was ignoring him, or trying to.
Would I couldn’t ignore, however, was the sound of dry cat foot being placed in his bowls. This I had to get up to check out.
So I went to the kitchen and surreptitiously peeked around the corner. She’d carried the big bag of dry cat food to his bowls, and was putting a few handfuls in each bowl. Then she carried it back to where she’d gotten it.
Finally ready, she called The Cat into the kitchen. “Here TC! Here’s some food for you boy!”
How sweet is that?
“Emma, are you tired?”
“No, I’m not tired.”
“Emma, do you want your duck?”
“No. I don’t want my duck.”
And yet…
Once a statue is finished,
It is too late to change the arms.
Only with a virgin block
Are there possibilities.
It’s not easy to to raise a child. You have to set an example all the time. Sometimes it is important for both child and guardian to understand that a child should not do certain things that the adult does. This is not hypocrisy. It is wisdom.
There was once a child who responded to his father’s admonitions by saying, “You do the same things.” The father took his son to a carver of temple figures. In the yard were great blocks of camphor and rosewood. Inside the studios were deities in various stages of completion, from gods still with fresh chisel marks to brightly painted and gilded masterpieces.
“I am older than you,” said the father. “So I am more like one of these finished statues. I have my accomplishments, and I have my faults. Once this figure has been carved, we cannot change the position of its arms.”
“But you, my son, are like the pieces of wood in the yard, still to take shape. I do not want you to have the same faults as I do, so I do not let you do certain things. Look at me. Yes, you say I still do certain things, but doesn’t that show how hard it is to undo a mistake once it is carved into you? Don’t copy me, and don’t make the same mistakes that I did. Only then will you become more beautiful than I.”
Ming-Dao, Deng. 365 Tao: Daily Meditations. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. 281.
Nice little “Barney Bomb” they leave for us unsuspecting parents. Bring the kid in from pre-school. Kid wants to watch “Clifford.” We’ve got it DVRed. Turn on the TV.
Awwwww kuh-RAP! It’s on PBS because we were watching Frontline last night (or Curious George this morning), and they are airing BARNEY.
UuuuuhhhnnnnngggggAAAAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAAHHHHH!
Before my lovely bride and I got married, one of her neighbors had a child. We stopped by to give our regards, and a discussion on being a parent ensued. The father suggested that being a parent is like being in a club. Many things become clear once one has a child of one’s own. Parents are able to nod knowingly at one another, and are able to weather the whithering stares of the young and unchilded. The thought is usually a variant of “they’ll understand once they have a child of their own.”
I recently received an e-mail from an acquaintance, and he opined that he didn’t know what he’d been missing before he and his wife had their first. But upon having their second child, he felt a measure of sadness that there are others who choosing not to experience the additional joys that a second child brings. His aim was to do his bit to convince us to have another.
But we’re not planning on having a second, for a number of reasons. I guess I’m a little sad too, since we’re apparently still not members of “Club Parent.”
My son, my executioner
Donald HallMy son, my executioner
I take you in my arms
Quiet and small and just astir
and whom my body warmsSweet death, small son,
our instrument of immortality,
your cries and hunger document
our bodily decay.We twenty two and twenty five,
who seemed to live forever,
observe enduring life in you
and start to die together.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Update: Ha! a friend of mine asks “Uh, everything OK?” When I think it’s because I haven’t had my IM client on in several days, he says “No I mean the about death poem on your daddyfu blog.”
So I sent him this snippet that I sent to a pal of mine earlier today, when we had a short discussion on mortality:
I’ll tell you, as bad as it is hearing about someone younger than you kicking it, having a kid sure puts a fine point on one’s mortality. Don’t bring up that to an e-mail list full of stay at home dads. They all think you’re dying or something. Like living isn’t terminal.
He chided me: “Living’s terminal, but when you have a blog about your kid and you post a death poem… dude… that’s not nice to other people that read it and have… empathy. 
Especially when you haven’t been on ICQ for like a week.
DaddyFu proper coming soon to this website…as soon as I get it imported!
Gahhh!
