MetroDad

Golden Handcuffs

Sometimes I think being an overly self-aware insomniac book nerd is more trouble than it's worth.

While reading in the wee hours of the morning, I recently came across passages in two books that made me pause and reflect on the path my life has taken.

Don't get me wrong. I like to introspectively examine my life as much as the next person. At the same time, I believe that too much introspection can frequently become a masturbatory exercise in self-absorption.

To tell you the truth, I often think it'd be better if I slept more and read less. 

Anyway, here are the two passages.

The first is from James Frey's "My Friend Leonard."

"Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to return, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work."

The second is from Nick Hornby's "Juliet, Naked."

"I have a thing for Dickens. I'm reading his letters at the moment. There are 12 volumes of them, and each one is several hundred pages long. If he'd only written letters, he'd have had a pretty productive life, but he didn't only write letters. There are four volumes of his journalism. He edited a couple of magazines. He squeezed in an unconventional love life, and a few rewarding friendships. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah: a dozen of the greatest novels in the English language. He's pretty much the one guy whose life you could look at and think, man, he didn't mess around.

But there aren't many people like old Charles. Most humans don't get to do work that's going to last. They sell shower curtain rings, like the John Candy character in that movie. (I mean the rings might last. But they're probably not what people talk about after you've gone.) So it's not about what you do. It can't be, can it? It has to be about how you are, how you love, how you treat yourself and those around you, and that's where I get eaten up."

Regarding the above, I know only four things. All are related to one another (the first two are probably inversely related, the second two perhaps a little less so.)

(1) My daughter means everything in the universe to me.

(2) Quite honestly, there are moments when the thought enters my mind that caring for her has removed options in my life that would possibly otherwise make my life more personally fulfilling.

(3) I have a job that pays well, provides little intellectual or emotional challenge, and does not require much effort. However, this job not only ensures for my daughter's well-being but also allows me to spend an inordinate amount of my free time with her (which is partly what attracted me to it in the first place.)

(4) I have never defined myself by what I do.

Before we go any further, let me just say that I am acutely aware that even having these thoughts is a luxury of which I am not unappreciative. This blog has always been a place where I sort out my thoughts in written form.

Shit, if my health insurance covered therapy, this site probably wouldn't even exist.

All I'm saying is that, regardless of one's station in life, I think it's healthy to sometimes visualize or fantasize about the life that you want to live. Frequently, this forces you to make extremely tough decisions that seem painful but may ultimately make you much happier.

On the other hand, this is also probably the kind of thinking that made John Travolta turn down the lead role in "Chicago" THREE times so he could focus on his real passion project..."Battlefield Earth."

Look, I'm not going anywhere or enacting any serious life changes anytime soon. At the same time, I sometimes make mental lists of alternate lifestyles I fantasize about living if I didn't have a child. 

Here's the current short list:

• Living in a small studio apartment in Paris with a girlfriend and spending all our free time reading and writing together in a dingy cafe in the Latin Quarter, where we would both wait tables just enough to pay the rent.

• Apprenticing with a top sushi master in Japan and then opening my own restaurant in the East Village that would only seat 6 people at any given time.

• Moving to Colorado, being a ski bum in the winter and a fly-fishing bum in the summer.

• Working as a foreign war correspondent alongside Christiane Amanpour.

When I shared these thoughts with a buddy of mine, he told me I was having a mid-life crisis and that I should just shut up and buy a Porsche.

This led to a very in-depth conversation that ultimately provided great insight and incredible perspective on my future professional life and emotional well-being. I couldn't believe that after 40 years on this planet that have involved much soul searching and professional therapy, I had finally figured out in this one conversation what I would truly enjoy doing with the rest of my life if I didn't have a child.

I'd be Batman.

Just kidding.

Kind of.

In all seriousness, do any other parents out there fantasize about how your life would be different without kids or a spouse? If you're single or childless, are you living your life how you'd imagined? Why or why not?

An inquiring insomniac wants to know.

Family Dynamics: New Roles for Dads

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time talking to my therapist about my family.

Now, I'm not going to start publicly pulling skeletons out of the family closet. After all, let's face it. Most families are weird. Most families have their own issues. And most families are capable of leaving all of us with our own unique set of baggage.

Personally, I think I’m pretty lucky. I escaped the unique weirdness of my family with very little psychic damage.

As I think back upon my childhood, I realize that although my father was the strict disciplinarian who never hesitated to take off his belt and give us a proper whupping, it was my warm-hearted mother who forced me into all those embarrassing situations that caused the lion’s share of traumatic childhood memories.

Why was that?

When I speak to my friends, it’s clear that almost all of us were essentially raised by our mothers. Times were different back then. Even if both parents worked full-time, it was mom who always made the decisions. Dad was the working stiff.

In my case, my mother was a newly-arrived immigrant. Therefore, I'm not quite sure whether her cruelty stemmed from ignorance of prevailing social norms in America or a penchant for embarrassing the hell out of her children.

How else to explain the fact that she bought me a girl's bicycle for my 6th birthday?  While all my friends were sticking baseball cards in the rims of their Huffy or BMX-style bikes, I was cruising the streets in a sunflower yellow banana-seat bicycle with a white wicker basket and a cute little bell out in front.

And did my mother really not know how to make a bologna sandwich or did she think it was going to be really funny to send me to school with densely-packed bowls of stinky Korean food?

Did she truly think that orange corduroy pants with bell bottoms and plaid vests were normal attire for 8-year-olds?

And don't even get me started on the haircuts! While our family wasn't always flush with cash, she certainly could have afforded the $5.00 to have my hair cut by a professional.

Instead, she always insisted on cutting my hair herself. Unfortunately, her home haircut kit consisted of a pair of meat scissors and a wooden bowl. She'd always finish and say "well, how does that look?" I'd say, "Looks great, Mom. Because in case my school does a stage production of Sling Blade, this haircut makes me look like Karl's stupider friend who couldn't get laid if his life depended on it."

"Now, where are my orange corduroys? I have to ride that girl's bike you bought me to my piano lesson."

I wish I could say that things changed as I got older but then I think about that time in college when my parents took me and my girlfriend out to dinner and my mother regaled her with stories about how difficult I was to toilet train.

Aaarrggh! Mothers!

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my mother very much and these are certainly not the issues that I've been speaking to my therapist about.

It's just that the whole process makes one realize that the mother-child relationship has always been a complex one, fraught with more ambivalence and misfires than American politics. Mothers can work a 30-years-gone umbilical cord like Roy Rogers working a lasso.

In some ways, the relationship between a mother and a child never changes, and that's because your mother still remembers when you were three and shoved all those Cheerios up your nose.

Do you know why cult leaders always force members to cut off all contact with their families? Because they know that their spell will be broken and all the mind control will disappear the instant you hear your mother saying, "And I suppose that just because your new thetan friends are hooking their testicles up to a cattle prod so they can go on the spaceship, you have to do it too, right?"

I’ve been thinking about all this lately because recently I’ve been interviewed by several journalists and authors about how this generation of fathers is so much more involved in raising their kids than previous generations of dads. While studies show that children benefit greatly from having their fathers involved in their lives, I find myself always pondering the impact of our increased involvement.

See, even though my wife and I work full-time, my hours are much more flexible. So frequently, I'm the one getting my daughter dressed for school. I'm the one cooking all of her meals. And I'm the one picking her up in the afternoon and taking her on playdates.

Holy crap, I'm like a mom!

If that's the case, I can only wonder how I’m psychologically scarring MY daughter.

Will she be ostracized at school because I always pack Japanese eel and rice in her lunch box?

Will she look at old photos and be mortified that I let her go to school in red tap shoes, green corduroys, and a Mets jersey?

Do you think she'll hold it against me that I like to kill two birds with one stone so I sometimes give her and the dog a bath at the same time?

Will my daughter grow up with a weird sense of gender dynamics because I sometimes yell, "Alright, kiddo. You're in big trouble now. Just wait until your mother comes home!"

I don't know. At the end of the day, I guess none of us ever know how our parents impacted us or how we're going to impact our own kids. Whether it's the mom who runs the house or it's the dad who stays at home, do we ever know exactly how much we're influenced by each parent? Like I said, all families have their own weirdness. And so I guess part of the fun is in seeing how it all turns out.

As Dennis Miller once brilliantly said, "Families keep everything in perspective. You can grow up, get out in the world, become a big success. You can control fortunes, corner the market, forecast financial trends, steer your company into the 21st century and beyond, but you go home to your family and you know who you are?"

"You're the kid who got tricked by his brothers into drinking a glass of pee."

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Your turn now:

What's the most embarrassing childhood memory caused by your parents or family?  Or what's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done to your own kid?

Special prize to the winner who makes me laugh so hard, I snort Diet Coke out of my nose!

 

Cinderella Dolls & the Disney Industrial Complex

All my daughter wanted for Christmas from Santa Claus was a Cinderella princess doll.

I have to admit that, for quite a long time, I contemplated not getting one for her. As a modern dad who considers himself fairly progressive when it comes to parenting, I don't like subscribing to outdated notions of gender stereotyping.

Besides, I felt conflicted about buying into the whole "Disney Industrial Complex." If I succumbed and got my daughter a Disney doll, was I enabling her lifelong entry into a global cult of materialistic fantasy aimed at the perpetual separation of me from my hard-earned dollars?

Sure one day, it's a princess doll. But the next thing you know, I'm on an overpriced Disney cruise ship throwing down martinis with Donald Duck at Club Mulan while my daughter plays shuffle puck with Bambi. Screw that!

Now, most of you know I don't get too riled up over the various parenting "controversies" that seem to divide people and cause heated exchanges on parenting boards, mothering forums, or PTA conferences. I'm generally a "whatever floats your boat" kind of guy.

Want to home-school your kid, breastfeed him until he's six, and raise him as a vegan? Go right ahead, MoonUnit. Let me be the first to stand out of your way.

Think your toddler is the next Stephen Hawking and needs to learn 4 languages, play three instruments, and memorize the Fibonacci sequence so he can get into Harvard? Go for it, dude. I'll be over here teaching my daughter the finer points of how to properly fart on the dog.

So if I'm so nonplussed about what my buddy James likes to call "high-class problems," why did I find myself tormented about buying my daughter a Cinderella doll?

Because I discovered that giving your child anything Disney or Princess-related can be somewhat conflicting and surprisingly touches on our individual beliefs more than one might imagine.

Anyway, free-thinking father of the new millennium that I am (warning: sarcasm alert,) here were some of the concerns that rattled around in my pea-brained head while I debated whether to buy her a princess doll or not...

1. Disney Princesses are terrible role models.

This was, by far, my biggest issue with the princess dolls. Look, I know that it's absurd to think of a plastic piece of crap as being a role model for my daughter but the fact is that, in Disney's case, the doll is a representation of a character. So let's take a look at those characters.

Most of them spend half their time in captivity or in a coma, waking up only when a prince comes along and kisses them. The only ones who are exceptions to this are Mulan and Pocahontas. Hell, Mulan has to dress up as a boy to fight in the army and Pocahantas lacks full princess status.

Also, many of the princess tales celebrate the ugly duckling scenario of overnight transformation. That, in and of itself, would not be that big of a deal. The problem is that none of the princesses actually "work" to achieve their transformations.

Sleeping Beauty is a victim. Snow White's greatest feat of courage was dusting. And as someone once said, Cinderella essentially gains all her power through the good will of a magical floating Angela Lansbury look-alike.

Now, I'm no feminist but it's pretty clear to me that Disney princesses tend to belittle the efforts that women have made in terms of achieving gender equality on their own terms and with their own efforts.

2. The Princesses create unrealistic body images for young girls.

The princesses are invariably tall, thin, and buxom with perfectly coiffed hair and impeccably plucked eyebrows. Whereas the average American woman is 5' 4", weighs 145 lbs., and wears between a size 11-14, if Cinderella were a real person, she'd be 6' 0", weigh 100 lbs., and wear a size 4. Her measurements would be an incredible 39-19-33.

This argument really didn't resonate with me. I have a hard time thinking that giving my daughter a Cinderella doll would produce unrealistic body images for her and lead her down a lifetime of anorexia and bulimia.

After all, that's what the media, the advertising industry, her peers, and women's magazines are for!

3. Girls shouldn't be forced to play with dolls. Boys shouldn't be forced to play with trucks.

We have never bought the Peanut a doll so I honestly don't know where she got the idea that she absolutely needed to have a Cinderella princess doll. I'm guessing that it came from one of her friends at school, probably the same one who taught her how to say "fuck" and whom I imagine will be approaching her in a few years, asking whether she wants to try stripping for crack money.

The reality is that we never know where or how our kids pick up their various influences. Just as we never bought the Peanut a doll, we also stubbornly refused to dress her in anything pink. Shit, she's a New Yorker! If she wants to fit in here, she's going to have to learn that, aside from black, the only acceptable wardrobe colors are grey and white. Besides, I didn't want my daughter walking around looking like a bowl of cotton candy.

Needless to say, despite my best efforts, my daughter can't get enough pink in her life.

4. Disney is an EVIL EMPIRE.

Despite the fact that we live in a free-market capitalist democracy, I dig the fact that people feel threatened by any massive consumer company with the power to dictate our social mores and limit our freedom of choices.

On the one hand, I like to think that we're all free to make our own decisions, right? Nobody's holding a gun to our head. You don't like Wal-Mart? Fine, don't shop there. Despise ExxonMobil? Ride your bike to work. Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything they don't want.

On the other hand, Disney's sheer size and the influence they exert over children today should be a concern. The business of princesses is a HUGE business. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the princess craze six years ago by packaging its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. “Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created but also well on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Little scary, isn't it? Where does it all end? Seriously, I'm waiting for the day when I go to Home Depot and see that they're selling $6,000 John Deere Cinderella tractors.

5. Disney is RACIST.

BossLady and I often cringe when we watch old Disney movies. The jive-talking crows from Dumbo? The gibberish-speaking monkeys from The Jungle Book? The Native-Americans in Peter-Pan? The Siamese twin cats from Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers?

Man, no matter how you look at it, that is some seriously straight-up racist stereotyping.

Now, I'm firmly opposed to political correctness. And there is a part of me that wishes that Disney's poor history on racial characterizations could be attributed to an earlier time in our nation's history that predated a sensitivity to dealing with various ethnic characters.

Sadly, I think Disney's modern characters are just as racist and insulting as they were in the past.

Did you know that the opening musical sequence in Aladdin had to be re-edited due to protest from Arab-American groups for implying that the Middle East was a barren wasteland where the justice system was based solely on limb-removal? A place where people get their "faces torn off?"

Meanwhile, in The Little Mermaid, a Jamaican crab teaches Ariel that life is better "Under the Sea," because underwater you don't have to get a job. (Up on the shore they work all day. Out in the sun they slave away. While we devotin'  Full time to floatin' Under the sea!) Why the lazy man got to be Jamaican, mon?

And what about Mulan and Pocahontas? As I said earlier, Mulan has to dress up as a boy to fight in the army and Pocahantas lacks full princess status. Heck, I can barely watch Mulan because of all the ching-chong fortune cookie prose and revisionist history bullshit. Meanwhile, Pocahontas looks African-American and is dressed like a Disney-style sexpot.

Clearly, Disney still has far to go when it comes to being racially and ethnically sensitive.

AT THE END OF THE DAY...

It was clear that I was over-thinking the whole issue. After all, at the end of the day, it's just a fucking toy.

Look, we live in an age where a child can be left unsupervised in a trailer with "American Gladiators" on the TV and a book of matches within easy reach. I'm not saying that we shouldn't think about all the things that influence our kids. However, I am saying that maybe we don't need to get our panties (or boxers) in a twist over each and every single thing. Some battles are worth fighting. Some aren't.

My daughter is a wonderful kid. She's courteous, polite, empathetic, and treats everyone with a huge amount of respect. She doesn't beg me to buy her useless shit and few things in life make her happier than simply being with her friends and family.

BossLady and I promised ourselves that we would never spoil her and agreed that, for Christmas, we were only going to buy her a single gift from "Santa."  Ultimately, after all that internal sturm und drang, we decided that if the Peanut wanted a Cinderella doll, that's what we were going to get her.

You should have seen her face light up when she unwrapped her Cinderella doll on Christmas morning. Hell, had I known she would have been so completely overwhelmed with happiness, I would have bought her a thousand Cinderella dolls. At that precise moment, all my yuppie concerns about giving her that doll disappeared in a nanosecond.

Want to hear the funny thing?

Four weeks later, we have no idea where the Cinderella doll is. However, my daughter is still having a hell of a fun time playing with the box!

Oh well, at least it wasn't Barney.