We Play Hands and Feet

I like to play games with my daughter. We play, "Guess the Mustard, " in which she, using the contents of her diaper, guesses which kind of mustard I am thinking about. Also, "Touch the Weasel." In this game, she tries to lash out and strike the "weasel" played by our xoloitzcuintli, Prince Valentio Ignatius Momerath who is a dog. He frequently sniffs Tallulah to ensure she's still breathing, and, as his whiskers tickle her face, Lu will start in a violent whack towards the offending itch. It's fun.

But my favorite game is "Hands and Feet" where we hold said limbs and repeat "Hands!" or "Feet!" depending on which corresponding body part we hold. I have to interpret her squeals or spit ups as answers, but so far she is one hundred percent correct each and every time we play. I have a genius daughter. Her mother's genes, presumably.

Tallulah smiles alot. The books say not to interpret these facial features personally, but rather as a sign of a bowel movement or random facial ticks. I say "phooey". She smiles at our faces, continually. Not in some random fashion, but at my jokes, or when she poops on my hands. She laughs when regurgitated milk is the predominant pattern on Felicity's blouse. Good sense of humor, our kid.

She has sullen moments, too. But these don't last long. She doesn't cry but for a moment at a time, peppering her wakefulness like little sunspots. The sunlight is all you see. She is not fussy. We are blessed.

She is sleeping in my music studio as I play her music from Deep Friar, one of the best, least known beat masters in all of the world. Deep Friar is a musical polymath, able to make a noise on any instrument known to exist. His website, http://www.myspace.com/deepfriarme is all it will take to convince you of his excellent mastery of the bizarre and poly rhythmic.

I am Deep Friar. Don't tell my daughter. She thinks he's some handsome, young, unapproachable star. She'll find out sooner or later, and I would like to preserve the mystery if for only a few years. Meanwhile, I'll distract her with Hands and Feet.

In Living Color

Due to unprecedented popularity, here is a small compilation of Lu's latest moments...


Much Love,

Five Happiness

May Your Mouth Be Filled With Morton's

I am emotional. I cry easily. President Obama's inauguration speech....I cried. When I hear music by Fleet Foxes, or a Bach fugue, I cry. When my daughter stares into my eyes, I cry.

I often wonder if I am over-sensitive, or under-expressed, or, as John Irving wrote in The World According to Garp, I have "unsobbed sobs in my chest." I think of myself as an intelligent man, if somewhat prone to childish self-centeredness, who empathizes with the majority of humanity. I don't know the source, but there is a wedding blessing that hopefully wishes, "When one of you cries, may the other taste salt." My mouth is filled with Morton's.

I attribute my sensitivity to a generalized artistic temperament that has gotten me in more debt than it has gotten me employment. The term "artistic temperament" is often substituted for terms like "deadbeat" or "goodfornothing" less than "sensitive" or "undiscovered genius who just needs to be given the opportunity to prove himself, as well as a million dollar grant." Nevertheless, I will continue to be this bizarre combination of masculinity and wimpish sniveling cad and sculpt these disparate elements into the best imitation of a father I can.

I wonder if I can be the strong parent who can stand up to the inevitable tides of pain and anguish my daughter must endure. It is easy for me to watch others' misfortunes and stoically exclaim my indifference, though when a child skins its knee, I cringe, my armpits stinging like snake bites.

This antipathy is more evident when I'm faced with the prospect of labors and I'm tired, or we're all hungry and I just want to order out. I have to begin to make more deposits into this bank of energy than I make withdrawals. I return to my artistic temperament. When I am fed artistically, I have a limitless reservoir of energy and enthusiasm, as do, I imagine, others who work in fields defined by their joys and love.

Quincy Jones, the composer and creator of one my favorite tunes, The Streetbeater, has recently called upon President Obama to create the post of Secretary of the Arts. I endorse this idea, if for no other reason than to begin to ensure a reservoir of energy and enthusiasm for future generations of artistically inclined deadbeats like myself. Who knows, maybe my daughter will have the same problems. May her mouth be filled with Morton's.

Reframing...A Little to the Left?

The week spent laboring on windows several hundred feet off solid ground comes to an end. My tired body hurts all over again like a spiteful, mocking re-run of my first days as a window cleaner, though this time older and dusty. On the plus side, carrying two hundred pounds of lead ingots up flights of stairs to the building's roof to use as counterweights costs significantly less than 24hr. Fitness. In fact they pay me to work out.

Lemons, lemonade, Meadowlark.

Those non-Harlem Globetrotter fans may pick up frame of reference right here.

I am adjusting my perceptions to realign with necessities, rather than preferences. Call it a new preference. By using my day's labors to "work out", I feel better about myself and my earning a good wage. By seeing middle of the night diaper changing sessions as another opportunity to be with my little girl, I have fun. It's like this great Tich Nat Han exercise; while washing dishes, pots, and pans in the sink, imagine you're bathing the Buddha. The same care, respect, reverence, and dignity that comes with an experience like that is available at any level of service. It's just a matter of re framing your perception. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem.

That is harder to do than it sounds. Believe me, I fail to keep out my indignation at the mere prospect of dishes, but now, somehow, it is in service to something greater. And that is a real freedom.

Recently I spoke at length with a friend curious of my spiritual back ground, but we ended up talking about his religious beliefs. They are very strong and upheld by an experience he once had while in college. He was transformed during an act of prayer and, as he says it, "came to the lord." This experience guides him to this day, and he is in his sixties. It proves to him, without a shadow of a doubt that the Bible is sourced from the word of God. I listened respectfully.

Amidst our discussion were obvious shields proffered to ward off any attacks of prostelization. We remained respectful of the slowly revealed morass of differences and began to retreat. At once he quoted scriptures providing dialogue that self-referentially insists it is anathema to questions. How can you question that, much less prove it? That, to me, is a discussion ender.

But I was most moved by my friend's conviction and the resulting behavior it has carved from his life. He is a good man. Generous, kind, forgiving, earnest, and hard working. He is a father, a husband, and now caring for an ailing mother in law. I see nothing in this man's behavior to suggest that his spiritual life is at all counter to what I believe is the correct way to live. Quite the contrary.

So we're really talking about the same things, just giving them different frames. A little more to the left.

And Today...

"We are born knowing how to eat, but we must learn how to roast" - Francois Rabelais

What did we learn today? Perhaps that sitting babies upright makes burping easier, or to wait a beat or two before completely removing a soiled diaper. I learned the world does not disappear if you close your eyes.

Bills! Those forlorn reminders of our duties to our utility lords are piled high upon the desk in unopened envelopes. Sifting through the heap, I realized that I must return to work next Monday. I have lost muscle and brain in this two week tender trap of my infant focused life. I have forgotten how to wake up at five am. I have forgotten that I am now the sole provider for my family. I feel as though I am a superhero with no powers.

But I have some new skills: A keen sense of purpose; the unfailing drive to provide; the knowledge the each day will find me arriving home to a house filled with my favorite things, (read: people.) That is motivation enough.

Last night was awful. I felt like Tallulah was angry with us. Screaming, fussy, over-tired, and simply not willing to accept it. Felicity and I took turns sleeping and overseeing the fussybug. I finally gave her a terrific swaddle and tucked her under my arm and went to bed with her lying next to me. She was asleep in moments.

Small miracles do happen. I am satisfied by such little victories. Some part of my idealistic, grandiose childhood has perished in the wake of my girl's arrival. But I still yearn for mountains to conquer, and lands to explore. They wait for me, but my little family cannot. This mountain, though movable, is my adventure for now.

The Little Things

"Kiki" holds Tallulah for the first time.

A full week or more has passed since my last post. Tallulah has visited the doctor twice now, leaving both times worse than when she arrived. First the dreaded heel stick, the nurse squeezing my daughter's heel to transfer blood onto a sheet of paper. Then a hepatitis B shot yesterday. The awful delay between the needle puncture and the impending cry was heart wrenching, though I have become more stoic in my regard to Lula's experience of pain. "Tough love" I believe it's called. More like callus pragmatism. I know that if I begin to wince with empathy at her pain now, its likely to be a slippery slope and I'll never stop crying until I'm dead.

Lu is a "beautiful baby" in her doctor's words. "They're not all like that, you know," he admits. Do all parents get that, or are there exceptions in which the doctor comes into the room and throws up his hands in disgust?

"You want me to work on that?"

"Gadzooks, that's one heinous child you've made"

But they would still say congratulations upon their exit. And so they should. Our pediatrician is renown for his excellence in care. He also speaks faster than a tobacco auctioneer on speed. Felicity is a nurse, used to hyper-intelligent physicians who use shorthand for English. She understood him perfectly. I thought he was Greek at first. It took me a good thirty seconds to realize that he was speaking in a New England dialect, but also starting more sentences than his mouth could comfortably hold. I began to imagine the exam room as a kind of stage for doctors. They should have a warm up act precede them:

"Ladies and gentlemen, and you there, little girl. Hold on to your ears. You're about to see the greatest doctor in the city; he talks fast, he moves slow, he makes jokes that take a second to get. He's not Greek! You'll love him, (except you, little girl,) heeeeeerrre's Dr. Blah!" In bursts the wry ham.

I have utmost respect for good doctors. I, who am squeamish beyond the pale, could not handle the trauma of dealing with sick people, much less children. When I performed as a clown at Children's Hospital, we began in the terminal ward. Thank god I was only wearing a plastic clown nose, otherwise my makeup would have run down my face. Simultaneously staring into death through the eyes of life was harrowing. But the spirit of a child is buoyant and only knows what it is given. These kids ranged in age from 4 to 18. They were all dying and they knew it, in whatever degree of abstraction they were capable. And they did all they could to retreat into any shred of normalcy available. Humor was a saving grace. They all laughed when I made prat falls, or bumped into nurses, or simply made faces from behind the bed. It was like the most fabulous torture I could imagine.

One child, perhaps nine or ten years old, lay in an isolation room. He could only watch me through the glass separating his fragility from the invisible hoard of spores and germs floating all around me outside. I had to keep ducking out of sight to wipe my eyes, but each time I came back to the glass his face shined with a grin that defied the death seeping in. I sat in my car for an hour sobbing before I was able to drive away.

Now I am a parent and I am terrified for my child. But that is not what I will give her. I will give her my courage, my humor, perhaps my knowledge, or at least the admittance of my lack thereof. Someday I might admit to her my fear of our awful fragility, our human condition. But that will not be until she can openly admit and witness that terrible beauty for herself. Until then, we build a mighty fortress with the little things.

Happy New Life!

Tallulah stayed up to ring in the new year. No one told her it was a new year, or that one rang it. She simply decided to avoid sleep. Not cranky, just blinky.

Blinky is a new state of consciousness in which she is calmly observant, taking in the world through her big, slate blue eyes, blinking long and slow blinks. It is beyond adorable. It might be a punishable offense in cute starved corners of the globe.

My mother Carol is here. Her friends in North Carolina have decided that instead of being called "Grandma" or "Granny" she'd be known as "Kiki". I didn't know what to make of that. I was a bit uncomfortable with it at first. The name conjured up memories of Elton John duets and (for some strange reason,) fat old ladies in loud mu mus. Yet, after her arrival last night watching her say "Kiki's here" to her granddaughter, I think it has a wonderful and calming ring to it. I can't wait to hear Lula say that word for the first time.

There are a lot of wonderings going on at Five Happiness these days. Bold speculation may be a more accurate term. Who is this creature going to be? Will she rock climb, or knit, or dirt bike, or surf, or program, or invest, or spend, or study, or all the above? The most important question is "Will she pay our medical bills after we are infirm?"

•

I had a miraculous ringing in of the new year. Much to be thankful for. My friends, soaking in a hot tub with me, took turns telling me what they most loved about me. It was a generous, heartfelt, vulnerable moment that left me thankful that I can surround myself with wonderful people, talented and happy, satisfied and intelligent, silly and contemplative, who not only carry a high self esteem, but also fortify others with the same optimistic bricks and mortar. We have such a plethora of possibilities in our peers. Alliterate that!

For now, I am most thankful for my family. All of them. Certainly not too numerous to mention, but I will save the naming for another time. They know who they are. And to them I wish a Happy New Life. Today is the first day of the rest of it.

-B