As seen at your local maternity ward.
Pay no mind to the fact that this isn’t, in fact, an infant, but rather world’s smallest man. Forget that he actually died today. (Yes, I’m a dick.) Reaction to this photo should be the same as to any newborn-with-parent:
Isn’t he just precious!
Cheap joke. But still funny.
JP: Avoid this in later life.
My post yesterday about why we shouldn’t hate Mommybloggers who strike it rich comes from an honest source: me.
My financial woes have taken up considerable space aboard the DadWagon (and with a tightly edited and curated site like this, how dare I be repetitive?). I won’t trouble you good folks with any more of it. Times are tough all around these days.
My paranoid side reads the recent news that the economy has in some way recovered merely as evidence of the strong taking advantage of the weak. Seems as if so many solvent employers have used the downturn to rid themselves of valuable but high-priced employees, or to use this moment as an opportunity to degrade already bad wages. The creative industries, such as they are, have fared as badly as any.
Which, finally brings me to the–admittedly minor–point of this post. Would I want JP to follow in my footsteps?
All fathers, on some level, would like their sons to view them with admiration. That’s pretty natural, and I see it in myself in small ways. When JP is scared by monsters in the middle of the night, I don’t try to convince him that there are no monsters, or even that he could take on the monsters himself (maybe I should). I tell him not to fear–monsters are afraid of daddies, and he can rest easy. He tends to sleep better after that, and the value to my ego shouldn’t be underestimated either.
But to make his way into the writing world? I’m primarily an editor these days, but my first love was fiction writing. I have the shoeboxes filled with (justifiably) rejected novels to prove it. God forbid JP should ever take an interest in something as painful, unrewarding, and increasingly reviled as coming up with stories and setting them down on paper. In fact, I may preemptively ground him now–at age 3–to get that idea out his mind.
What then, you ask? That’s easy. It’s the finance life for him–oh wait, not that. That’s dead. He’ll be a lawyer! Uh, that’s not too good either. Doctor? My son the doctor? That’s gotta be good. Except they’re not faring so well either. Well, then, it’s settled.
The lottery it is.
City Mouse and Country Mouse: that’s how my friend Kevin put the differences between my son and his (both are closing in on two years old) when we visited them over the weekend in their beautiful little town on Tomales Bay in Northern California.
I had commented on our cultural differences before after our last visit. I was particularly concerned because my son Nico seemed terrified… of grass. Seriously. Their yard is pretty well maintained, and the lawn is hardly feral at six inches high. But that’s a lot higher than our green-suited friends keep the grass in Central Park. And judging by his response, Nico seemed to think the lawn might swallow him whole.
Unlike me, my kids don’t pretend to be anything other than city kids. When we went camping along the Appalachian Trail last year with the same family, Dalia–then 3 years old–woke up, walked out of her tent and smiled: “let’s go for a walk around the block!” This delighted the assorted Virginians, of course, because that’s exactly the kind of rube-ness they frequently get accused of.
But there’s more than just kids saying the darndest things. As the woman who married me pointed out on the drive down to LA yesterday, traveling is important in part because it reminds us of other ways of living, other lives we might be leading. We never intended to be New Yorkers. My wife, despite not being white, had a dream to own a horse and live an upscale ranch life straight out of a J. Crew catalog. I had a dream to raise my kids, as two generations before me have done, on the sun-blasted rock known as Key West. It was a dream that involved a lot more weed and noontime beer than currently populates my life.
So we got a little misty about the idea of living rural this weekend. We went to beaches. We breathed some remarkably fresh ocean air. I nearly rented a board and got surfing again. Who needs rats the size of kittens, gray snowbanks pocked with mastiff turds, screeching killer subway cars?
Besides, don’t country mice turn out haler and more grounded? Perhaps. Kevin is a stay-at-home dad these days, and an incredible one at that. He used to work with horses, and you can tell he’s a kid-whisperer too. He took Dalia through the ice plant to pick the purple flowers. He helped Nico climb a sandstone rock. If this were a democracy, my kids might have voted him Dad at the end of the weekend.
But not every small-town kid has a Kevin. On our long drive, we stopped for pizza in Paso Robles, a lovely California town, with aggie roots and a boost from wine dollars. But as we were leaving the pizzeria, I had to wait for a very long time in line at the restroom for a young junkie to finish doing his thing (to all our junkie/former junkie readers, can someone tell me why it takes so very, very long–do you have to wait out the whole frigging high in the can?).
Instantly, I remembered something I had forgotten this weekend: some of the most desperate souls I’ve ever known have been country mice. City mice aren’t the only ones with problems.
And the opposite is also true: Raise ’em right, and good things could happen (though they don’t always). That’s true no matter where you are.
Rock on, Mommy bloggers
Enlightening article in the Times last week about the wonderful–and crazy lucrative–world of Mommy Blogging. “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand,” is a classic example of reportorial undermining. Starts out like a boring little trend piece (thank you, Chris–I can’t get them out of my head now): loads of Moms are blogging, venturing out into the “blogosphere,” sharing feelings, dishing dirt, being sensitive, and generally making the world safe for anxious maternalism. God that’s boring.
But, wait, there’s more! You see, the article isn’t really about the advent of parental blogging at all. It’s really about evil mothers forgoing writing to make a quick Internet buckaroo:
Last summer, one blogger organized a weeklong public relations blackout in which bloggers were urged to eschew contests, product reviews and giveaways and instead get “back to basics” by writing about their lives. Another blogger replied that she couldn’t do so because the blackout fell the week of her daughter’s first birthday party, which she was promoting on her blog. With sponsors and giveaways.
Horrors! Don’t these women know the first rule of journalism, either in print or on the Web: Thou Shalt Make No Dough.
I mean, come on. What became of the Mommy Blogger’s sense of isolation, cynicism, and total rejection by mainstream culture? Who knows–maybe she lost it here:
According to eMarketer, advertising on blogs will top $746 million by 2012, more than twice the figure for 2007. There are perks, too. In just the last month alone, popular mommy bloggers have been sent to the Olympics, courtesy of Procter & Gamble, and to the Oscars, courtesy of Kodak; and road-tripped to Disney World in a Chevy Traverse, courtesy of G. M. Canada, to help raise awareness about Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy.
For those of you who think I’m just jealous of these successful women-bloggers, you’re right. Point me in the direction of the Internet gravy train, and I will be a considerably happier man. Why, you ask? Isn’t just finding an honorable forum in which to express my deepest feelings (and put out my best bad jokes) enough?
Or to borrow a line from Robert Townsend, inventor of the Winky Dinky Dog, and famed director of The Hollywood Shuffle: “Ho’ gotta eat too.”
