What Almost Made Me Cry Today in Fatherhood

The daily Google News summary of fatherly doings is typically full of death and misery—a machete murder, a snowmobile accident, Marky Mark producing a fourth child—but at least one tidbit today is topical and, with a bit of imagination, inspiring.

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a New Zealand girl was found alive underneath the dead body of her father in a collapsed building. The 2-year-old is “pretty badly injured,” said the girl’s mother. “She’s bruised and she’s got at least one broken leg and maybe the other one as well.” Okay, so this isn’t really so great: Dad’s dead, and the girl’s two sisters are still missing, and there are no aid services or rescue workers or embassies to help out. Actually, it kinda sucks.

But, well, I like to at least imagine that dad’s last moments: A sudden realization that something was wrong, a quick hunt for the baby, an instinctive sheltering of her body as the building came down, a final last hope that, even as he died, the girl might still somehow survive. It’s not much, but in the face of tragedy on an unimaginable scale, we’re free to cope however we can. I choose to do so by inventing minor moments of heroism.

Anyway, it’s either that or read news that David Beckham helps his kids with their homework over Skype.

Update (8 a.m. Friday): Apparently, there truly is no good news coming out of Haiti. It turns out the girl was not found under the body of her father. The information was based on some kind of miscommunication. *sigh*

Bad Dads We Love: Hair pulling and the hooscow

pulling_hair_outOkay, let’s be honest—I’m going bald and I’m none too happy about it. I mean, what kind of sick fucking cosmic joke would cover my entire body with hair but not my head? What exactly did I do to deserve that? Is it some sort of punishment for being Jewish?

Perhaps that’s why I reacted so strongly to this article, which I found on Strollerderby (the mother of all parenting blogs—blah, blah, blah), about a father in Chicago who took his children to jail (all right, the police station) for pulling his hair while driving.

Now according to the blog post, the father was just “trying to teach his children a lesson.”

Perhaps. Or maybe he was just trying to see that justice was served. Who knows? But if there is one lesson I would like JP (who would have no idea what I was talking about if I brought it up) to take from this entire sordid episode it would be this bit of witty doggerel from the immortal Samuel Goodman Hoffenstein:

Babies haven’t any hair:
Old men’s heads are just as bare;
From the cradle to the grave
Lies a haircut and a shave.

Nine Fingers Should Be Enough, Right?

Lovely, high-risk decor.
Lovely, high-risk decor.

I’ve talked before about babyproofing our apartment, but as we work our way around the place, bolting things down and tying up power cords, I’ve come to realize that a couple of things simply can’t be done. That floor lamp that’s a little top-heavy? We’re just going to have to keep him away from it. The bowl of cat food on the floor? Well, we’ll point him away from that. And then there are the electric fans.

Let me explain. I am a relentless collector. Given my druthers, I’d furnish my apartment mostly with stuff made before 1960, apart from the odd 21st-century incursion involving Internet access. (Since you were wondering: My wife is a tolerant and sane soul, who has a gentle way of talking me out of some of the dumber purchases I’ve considered.) Most of my music is on LPs; quite a bit of my radio listening takes place on a Philco vacuum-tube console, built in 1938.  And on warm spring days, we open the windows and run an electric fan in every room. Most of those fans are early-20th-century models, with cast-iron bases, powerful and heavy motors, and gleaming metal blades. The one in the photo above was built in 1907, and moves a ton of air.

I used to look at these things and say, “What a lovely piece of antique technology—one that still works.” And now I look at them and say, “Quickie amputation.” They’re not powerful enough to take off an adult’s finger—I’ve gotten dinged a couple of times when repairing them—but a baby’s is another matter. Eighty years ago, there was no OSHA; the thinking was “You don’t want your fingers slashed? Don’t poke the fan, kid.”

For now, they will go on high shelves and counters, with their power cords snaked behind the furniture. And after the first close call… well, maybe my wife will have a good idea.