This is the happening : 2023
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November 2
Do we get a functioning heating system up and going again? Or do we get through the winter with green wood, a splitting maul, and a leaky-roofed shed? C’mon Marcus, help us figure this one out…capacitor?
November 1, 2023
This is what I asked them to respond to in their journals:
One thing I learned today
One thing they love about their Aunt Lanessa
Advice for a 3- or 5-year old
One thing I enjoyed in particular
The Olders help out with the Youngers; thus the age 3 and 5 question (they are senior each of these years by a year, so they are passing along the wisdom of their relative years). We read these journal entries aloud afterwards as a family. There is much cackling and laughing. The 13- and 16-year old?…
…oh, I am as curious as any parent to know what’s contained within their journals. But, as I told our oldest recently: it doesn’t matter whether you leave your journal out, and you’re not around, and you wouldn’t know, etc etc. This contains your thoughts and impressions; what is in it is yours and we respect that. So perhaps some day, there will be opportunity, on their terms, to share their impressions of these ages as contained within their journals. But until then? They are theirs.
Except for the 4- and 6-year old. Theirs are ours to share for a little bit longer. :)
October 26 Stuff I need to deal with or pick up or figure out today
Bath lights compressor for heat pump and furnace bit for spider screws galvanized sheeting for shed bark chips fuse for heat pump concrete pillars and…space heater from Costco since our house heat is out? Oi vey.
October 12
House update: got some trim around the window, 75% percent done before air compressor went out. Older kids took a solo trek up north, which included friends, pizza, and Subway, and they made it back safely. Becca got a bunch of. groceries, picked up Home Depot stuff, took boys to story time, and left me with a couple hours to work here solo. That was honestly…really nice.
October 10
Rain, so much rain. Alt-J at the end of a long day, a Spike Lee movie about a certain terrorist organization’s infiltration, boys with their mom, long theater rehearsal, lot of coffee and class and four-year olds journaling and tooting before bedtime. Also, family catch and memorizing Psalm 23.
Matters of note on September 11, 2023
A 4-year old hugs his mom with all his might before she leaves for work. His full-body hugs, tight and firm, are something I experience on a less-frequent basis than her, but I both cherish them when I am the recipient and when I see the deepest love contained in his embrace of her. It is beautiful.
Four children eat cereal together, bantering and overlapping dialog that Robert Altman would have been entranced by. Two brothers do yoga after.
We watch, together, a pair of videos on September 11; a day that has become less and less familiar for many kids. We talk about it; I was in this very room, watching live when the second tower was hit 21 years ago.
As a boy saunters and leaps throughout the day, stripes and suspenders flashing, occasional glimpses of his undergarment pop out from underneath: his precious camouflage shorts; a part of his wardrobe recently that he tries to incorporate into every day, sometimes ostentatiously, sometimes surreptitiously.
There is school. Maths, About Me posters, drawing, three brothers wrestling. I have some Thai lemongrass tea. Boys head outside to sort rocks and shells. An 8th grader helps his 1st grade bro practice reading BOB books. A 4-year old helps me assemble pita, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese for lunch.
July 08 : summer of relax
I spent May trying to enjoy the present, but also looked anxiously at the calendar. Once summer rolled around, I counted up the time I would have, the ability I would have to finish (or start) home projects, work projects, weekend outings and camping and new trails and treks and swimming in different bodies of water multiple times a week and starting the Amor Towles’ novel I haven’t yet read, and…
…and then it happens, it’s here, and somehow it’s an avalanche of small necessities and happenings that soak up everything. The time is gone. It disappears, and in its place are plenty of good moments and little memories, but it’s still hard, really hard to do the work, the foundational work, the stuff that has to be done and the stuff that has to be paid for and the stuff that just…you know, like when a water heater goes down, it’s theoretically a choice, but realistically, pragmatically not a choice to choose whether or not to replace it. You replace it. But there’s a cost. A financial cost in this case, and the cost means it affects other plans and other things. And when you have children, even when you try and raise them with some sense of fiscal understanding, it’s still hard because you gotta make up the shortfall somehow, some way, and you pay the piper and shove it down the road to deal with later. But that’s a cost, a price. It’s not gonna go away, kinda like student loans.
You keep on making memories amidst jumbled up plans getting dumped sideways and you…keep going. Sometimes with a bouncy step or skip, sometimes with a trudge and keeping your eyes on the ground because you’re just tired, so tired, and if you look at the ground maybe you’ll see some flowers or a cool bug, and you’ll tunnel vision yourself into having the fortitude and resilience to keep moving, because you gotta keep moving, but you can’t look at bugs and stars at the same time. There’s beauty in looking up and beauty in looking down; beauty in looking ahead and beauty in looking behind. But sometimes the hardest is finding beauty in the present. It’s something I fight for, and try to fight for. It’s not always easy and I don’t always win that battle. I’m gonna go make coffee.
July 2 : Sundays, oh Sundays
We sit and sip coffee at 8am, adjacent at our bistro table, me reading Terms of Service and Becca working her way through James Nestor’s Breath. The children watch Looney Tunes; a sometime-Sunday joyful ritual, until our two boys decide they can’t go another minute without coming outside to hug their mom. They do so in all their underwear, shirtless glory. Soon we make breakfast together, a messy, messy ordeal, and retire to the living room to watch Season 9, Episode 21 of The Middle. “The Royal Flush” is the episode. We are coming to the end of this series that has brought our family great Sunday morning pleasure for several years now. Could not every Sunday continue in this manner?
No, it can’t. Or it won’t. Some transition to LEGO-building and wrestling and snuggling with their mom again and chess. A 13-year old takes his dragon outside for some sunshine, a pair of lads build various climbing apparatuses to get the highest apples from our trees; apples that are not ready for consumption but will be consumed anyway.
Sundays are tough, but sometimes the act of writing these things down helps to curate, to crop, to remember the best moments of a day. That is a big motivating factor: we remember the best and remember the worst when we should; we crop out the middle yet try to also grab little pieces of it to savor for the future. That’s what I’m doing.
A 3-year old falls asleep while his mum reads aloud. His big sis crawls in bed with him and carefully, aggressively, wraps his little arm around her neck while she snuggles in also. A 6-year old sits at an empty dining room table and assembles a LEGO creation from either his memory or imagination.
Two boys beg and beg - and this is something I give in on - to “build something.” Their ideas are massive and ambitious, their ability to execute these ideas…less so. Nonetheless, I stick hammers in their hands and surround them with a pile of nails and wood and they go to town, thundering away, reverberations around the mountain. There's a break for ice cream sandwiches, a birthday ritual done days-late involving running through a gift-wrap covered door, and later, the watching of a Tom Hanks remake about a crotchety old fellow. There were good things on this Sunday. I will remember some of them. Were there bad things? I don’t know. I don’t remember.
June 27 : little things on a Tuesday
Two boys on a foggy yet sunny beach; a combination of elements that perhaps describe some of us sometimes: a couple normal things packaged together in unusual or interesting ways. They dance, play, cavort, splash, snack, sometimes acknowledge my presence but mostly revel in each other, and finally end up in underwear and 3.2 trillion grains of sand crawling on every surface of their body right before they climb back in the automobile.
Two siblings with their aunt teaching a summer theater class to a group of kids. What an experience, what a time, what an education for all involved. They smile and giggle and shake their heads at shenanigans and try to breathlessly tell the tales of what happened, but of course if you’re not in it then you can’t totally get it, and I smile and love it.
A portrait of our four children, and then my little sister jumps in and adds another continuum of interest.
A boy on the precipice of a new phase of life. I have loved this boy-man so much, and he will always be my boy, our boy. There is none other like him and I love it.
May 30 : 5 things that brought me small joys
I got to spend an hour with my brother Jamey at a coffeeshop, unexpectedly. We drank iced beverages and talked of various things. I intended to inquire about the Celtics-Heat game 7 from last night. I intended to watch a basketball playoff game at some point in the last month, but kept forgetting to do so. He is my lifeline to current sports and helps me know what to think.
I listened to 2015 Kendrick Lamar in the brief period I had to myself driving earlier.
My father, despite being afflicted with an anonymous affliction, is alive. I hope this state of existence continues. Not the affliction. The being alive.
I had a wonderful conversation while driving with our Olders about their upcoming auditions. I am proud of their self-confidence, and I am so proud equally of their grace and willingness to bring their best, but also recognize that should things not go exactly how they want, that they will proceed with aplomb and grace. These are things I care deeply about.
Meta hit 266. My sell point. I believe in Apple as a company. I believe in a handful of others. I do not believe in Meta. Yet I have hung on to them and have waited for this point. Now I began selling.
May 26 by the numbers
Thanks for leading the way, Nvidia, this week. Up $85 overnight after blowout earnings, courtesy of AI hype and hope. And today: Microsoft up to $333. I remember back in October watching a $16 plunge to $233 after earnings, digging my heels in, and waiting for something like today: crossed $333.
In other numbers, a boy is over 1300 ELO on his second officially-approved Chess.com profile.
In other numbers, a 3-year old apologized after getting home because “…I accidentally checked out five books at the library and you said I could only check out four. Sorry Daddy.” Author’s note: this sounds authoritarian and draconian, and yes, I’m chuckling and happy and all that; but that being said, choosing a number of books for each library visit is basic survival. At any given point, we have somewhere between 40 and 70 books checked out as a family, so having some sort of cap on per-book checkouts keeps things sort-of manageable.
The play has been announced: Aladdin.
May 24 : 5 things
Hide and seek outside. Multiple rounds throughout the day into the evening. A 6-year old enthralled with the cat-and-mouse.
Drawing illustrations of Elton John outside in the sunshine is almost as good as writing poems about the forest, in the forest, in the sunshine. Good thing we did both.
The feeling of a 3-year old wrapping his little arms around mine as I read books with him and his brother, and his sister comes over to join as I open Strega Nona. “I remember that one!”
Ice cream bars and Person of Interest, season 3, episode 2, with Becca and Olders. Finishing the last l2 minutes of a thrilling Tehran episode (S2E5) with Becca.
Prayers, hugs, and massive support for those we love as they embark on new terrifying and necessary journeys.
May 23
Two ideas I’ve been on a high horse about recently within our family dynamics:
When you make your family’s life easier, you generally make your life easier too.
Do what you need to do first.
May 11
I work mobile for a morning and listen to some Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. A girl gets out of history class early to go with her mum to check on the status of freshly de-braced teeth. She goes attired as a certain N. Dynamite and showcases an impromptu dance in the office. I am not there but I am shown evidence, and my heart thuds with pride. She and her mom go prom dress shopping and make good memories. I take boys to skate park, where there are many people on a hot afternoon, and sadly there are late-teens cursing amidst a variety of younger kids and sadly, I do not have the heart for battle on this day. We head to library, and eventually are forced to get ice cream cones and go to the park because it seems like we should. We get home. Previous to that, a 3-year old explains to his sister’s former teacher that “I’m a big boy now because I go poop in the potty.” She concurs. Later, we FaceTime with people in Singapore. Two boys play chess on a Simpsons board, another plays online, aiming for 1200 ELO. I head down to field to clear brush after my F-I-L graciously offers to mow. Finally, we close out the day. It is a long one. There are hugs.
April 30
Cleaning laundry rooms and moving washers. Cleaning furnace and water filters. Filing quarterlies. Fixing chainsaws and hauling brush. A 12-year old works on a Uranus poster for science. We enjoy an episode of the last season of The Middle together. I take our daughter out driving to practice backing up and parking. Sunday. What’s not to love?
April 27
The sun was out and the heat was hot. There were grilled cheese sandwiches eaten on the river and fierce debates over whether found rocks were of the sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic types. A boy sported cape - “so I can fly” - all day long. A 6-year old learned to ride a bike; he explained later that I wasn’t actually the one to teach him, rather “…all Daddy did was let go and I just started riding.” So yeah, basically that. He should be proud. A mom spent all day in formal education alongside her children, then looking at prom dresses with her daughter and friends, accompanied by a 12-year old and his chess pastime. There was lots of reading and lots of memory game. The day was rich and it went on and on and on, and now it is 10.34 and I am tired.
April 25
The sun is out after many moons of rain. Our daughter is driving. A hard drive is having troubles and a mom took her two boys walking and cycling this afternoon while I wrote in a coffee shop and two Olders went with theater mates to see a movie about Super Mario. There was spaghetti later, a memory game that I finally won, and a really good episode of Scrubs. That would be season 1, number 4, in which they learn to deal with death. So much comedy, so much gravitas all swirled up. So good.
April 12
It’s difficult to extricate yourself from an ‘it’s not fair’ mentality at any age. But parenting offers many juicy opportunities for hypocrisy, and one of them is occasionally leaning into the unrighteousness and unfairness and cosmic wrongness of some days. Like when you have kids getting sick, snow coming down, and combinations of cars, appliances, and house falling apart simultaneously while you’re trying to get taxes done and bills paid and a little work done.
April 10 Driver’s Ed, first day
I sat, off-screen, as the instructor D—— and his cohort S—— walked through expectations on Zoom. Notable:
He opened with a discussion of traffic accidents. 33,000 fatalities nationwide, 437 in Washington State, primary causes usually impairment, speeding, distracted driving. I did not note what recent year these were from.
He talked about his sons and daughters. Daughters were fine, but his sons needed to “…be babysat through class.” One of them - his sons - would not listen. He knew he would die in a car crash. And that’s what happened. Two and a half years ago.
He emphasized no cell phones. Not just for driving, but for the driver’s ed class. “This is a singular activity,” he warned, “parents, do not be afraid to take away their phones. We will disconnect students who are on the phone or doing something else.” (note: he followed through on this throughout the course).
“This is our biggest problem in class. We’re not dumb. We can tell when you’re on the phone.”
I peeked on-screen and tried to illustrate the dozens of first-day students. I didn’t get far. A smattering:
He wears Nike hat with American flag in background, in shadow, with his dad
She looks blonde cheerleader, with dad in living room
He’s solo, chewing nails, looks a little like one of the friends on Stranger Things
They are male, I think, with mom in living room, in hoodie
The co-instructor is a sharp-tongued, middle-aged short-haired stern-carrying presence
She’s athletic brunette, hair piled up, with twin mom in study
D——- the instructor continued: “Invest in your teens. Most parents do not invest in their teen and in spending enough time practicing driving.”
Finally, he closed: “I actually have a GREAT sense of humor.”
April 8
I have memories of Saturday morning growing up; many of them amalgamated and blended together. Growing up, Saturday was Sabbath; a day of rest and recuperation from the business of the previous six days. As I am still growing up, I still call it Sabbath or Shabbat, and as long as I am growing up, I likely will. The main difference is that my Shabbat memories from childhood were from the perspective of a child. Now they are that of a parent. I no longer have my dad to flatten down my hair and cinch my pants up my belly as we prepare for church; now I am the dad and sometimes we go to church. That church is sometimes a building and sometimes a forest.
As I watch multiple children’s opinions on their clothes and hair preparation - oh, the hair, this family possesses a great deal of it - I can do little but offer mostly-empty words here and there of advice, comfort, feedback, and occasional admonishment. Switchfoot and Johnny Cash run in the background, master mixing into a score and soundtrack also filled with Veggie Tales and the beautiful clamor of multiple voices rising and climbing atop one another in angelic choruses of praise and harmony. Basically what I’m saying is that it’s super easy and not chaotic at all. I watch our 6-year old carefully twist and turn his hair in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, trying to get his hair just right (“I don’t like the plump in front”) as he grins with delight and self-consciousness, and then both his older and younger brother come up demanding the brush, and their sister groans on looking at the tangly mass of blond her 3-year old brother has frizzed out in a self-driven attempt to make his hair look more beautiful like his mother; the dress she’s wearing is from her mother that came via her aunt and she looks stunning and quite not dissimilar to her mother a quarter century ago and still a bit now.
This is Sabbath morning, and it is loud and since I will love it someday, I’m trying to love it now. But first I need to clean up avocado toast off the floor, reheat my coffee, and perhaps sneak in a chapter of the book I’m reading about Mary Magdalene not wearing eyeshadow. Mazel tov, a joyous Shabbat, live long and prosper.
April 6
I wait in line to pay for three large fries.
A screen comes on asking for tip amount.
I resist. Why?
But why should I ask the why, why should I have to ask the why?
I’m paying $13 for fries being handed to me, and I’m resistant to adding 18% to that. What kind of person am I? Is this weird? Is it bad? What is normal? What should our baseline for such things be?
March 21
A car goes out. Another car goes out. Becca waits and waits with two children while the price tag goes up, up, up for wheel bearings gone wrong. The sun beats down. I drive her car. It goes dead. Battery issue. A half dozen folks later, I finally get a jump. Cold coffee and a little writing, finally. I speak to Jonny and feel better. There is rehearsal. Play mobiles at home and tired boys. An older boy has the internet go down right as he’s winning an important chess match. This happens as I’m working on a car. I feel I am empathetic and kind. I hope so. It is a long day.
March 17
Theater ad hoc rehearsals; scheduling shenanigans and rescheduled band concerts lead to upheaval a week before curtain goes up. In the meantime, some boys and I picnic at the skatepark, read a half dozen books at the library and pick up four times that to take home, and meet up with the Countess, whereupon she takes them to Costco for groceries and ice cream. They appear to be in heaven. Previous to that, our daughter struggled with the pronunciation of “peculiar,” and it was hilarious. I am generally the errant word-pronouncer in the family. I had some vigorous discussion with a couple high school seniors, W- and E-, concerning Navy SEALS, Army Corps of Engineers, Nassim Taleb, and summarizing versus synthesizing. Becca had homemade pizza and salad waiting when we arrived home.
March 13
Waiting in rain, post-vegetarian hot dogs at a big box Swedish store, post-rain-soaked micro-hike, post-add another two dozen books to the mix library trek; two boys and a dad in a foggy white old vehicle with clouds dropping tankfuls on a Monday post-Oscars. My eyelids drop.
March 05
Sundays are tough. They provide plentiful opportunities for see-saw emotions, goals set and goals missed, and colliding visions of what balance of productivity and leisure a family of six might do with their time on the day before a hefty Monday. But it was decent. And cold. Had help from three outside for the morning, trimming, pruning, and using his beloved pocket knife. Watched a couple Oscar nominee animated shorts - The Ice Merchants and The Ostrich.
February 24
I got to help out with opening arguments for a mock trial coming up - and when I say ‘help out,’ what I mean is that I provided some feedback and minimal suggestions. Got Becca off to work and down a frozen mountain. Some Greek and Latin with my oldest boy. Talked about two qualities of every argument: a conclusion and a premise. Played some chess, did some sledding and snow battles, had some monologic diatribes about how everyone needs to pick up and put away stuff when they get it out, and…let’s see, yep, it was a Friday.
February 17
These weeks dance like Gene Kelly, though not with the same consistent panache. Got Moby and Pacific Void Choir going on a Friday night as all slumber in various rooms; three of whom are in the living room as Phil Glass plunks in the background. Reviewed some times tables, threw our Friday go-bags together, hit the library and East Fork Lewis, gathered rocks and books, listened to a 3-year old soprano sing Annie songs as the sun set, returned home to sweet potato curry hot and ready from the Countess, enjoyed a FaceTime with Jonny as he informed me of upcoming memorial plans and our involvement.
February 13
The sun was murdered by the deluge dumping down upon the fern-filled forest of Yale Lake, as some amongst us searched for salamanders and minotaurs on this gray day immersed in green. I write this with a steady diet of Kings of Leon running. Jonny is just calling to say goodnight as he’s walking in snow, in sandals, to get the mail. My father-in-law joined us for dinner.
February 09, 2023
There was crispy sun on a winter day, and I helped out in mathematics, and spoke to multiple people for short interchanges. I did some writing at a coffee shop. Becca picknicked outside with some boys and met up at the river for walking and talking and throwing rocks, before heading home for leftover borscht soup and finishing Wakanda Forever, which we are not overly impressed with.