Guys Club at Park 09

Message to Boys from Phoenix

Sarah: Probably more annoying than interesting but special message for Otto at 1:18, for Paco at 1:52 and for Q at 4:52.

Trip to Phoenix 09: Time Sucks

I flew in with a conversational baiter. She wanted to talk to me so badly, and I'm usually that guy who will speak to anybody regardless of the detriment to me and others around me, but today, I stood my ground. My airplane neighbor, her largess spilling onto me, would spout little trinkets of conversational curiosity. "I went to Mardi Gras once and didn't like it. I didn't like it at all really..."

She lay out some meat and waited for me to walk into her steel jaws. It was hard but I didn't ask why she didn't like New Orleans. I looked out the window and down at the Afghani terrain of southern Arizona.

"A lot of people are so crazy for New Orleans, but I'm not," she proclaimed, going for pride but kind of sounding lonely.

I'd already been trapped once and by this very woman. Earlier on the flight we hit turbulence, and a lot of it. She grabbed her husband's hand and closed her eyes. The husband, feeling a little self-conscious with the drama, said, "she needs medication just to fly." I felt bad so comforted her with, "I don't know how the wings stay on these things."

From behind her clenched lids she exposed her husband. "I know he's scared too, I can feel the sweat in his hand."

And dryly he replied, "Honey, that's your sweat."

So there the door was opened to dialogue, and the discussion went from airplane safety to god. I call it Born Again Magic: The ability to take any conversation back to Jesus. The King of Kings, it turns out, saved my seatmates' business. She and her husband recycle electronics for a living and a year ago they were down to their last thousand dollars. Well she prayed, convinced her husband to pray, and even implored their employees to pray, and upon hearing all that chatter God tripled their profits. I thought that was great. Except I hated thinkng that people are dying in Bangladesh because God is distracted by the metals market.

From there I just wanted not to talk. I didn't know if we'd all end up in a vigil and feeling each other's sweat.

She set the trap again.

"Everybody sure thought Obama was going to be great but..."

And I looked towards the window and inhaled. It's like she knew exactly what would get me. Politics and a naked conjunction. I held fast and very nearly prayed for strength

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The trip to Phoenix is an hour and a half, much of that just up and down, but I'm still not sure what time it is. Sometimes we're the same time as AZ, and other times we're not. If we travel back and forth can we actually stop time?

I hope so.

My friend Jason pointed out that kids born the year we started college are now going to college. Jason is a prick.

I don't know for sure yet, but I think children, at least in the short term, help you forget time.

With kids you live in events, not hours and minutes. You're worried about things like potty training, which has no fixed chronological denomination, and time sneaks on by. Potty training should be a unit of time. Maybe something much longer than a month but not quite a year.

"How long were you in Nam?" A full potty training.

The same could be said for pregnancy. "It's been a human gestation since the Broncos last played!"

As parents this is how you live, not an hour of class with a thirty-minute lunch during a three-month semester. All these events, pottying, learning the alphabet, covering when you cough rack up real time until you're just a menopause away from retirement. If we put numbers on these things we might keep better track of time. I'm afraid it won't be long before I wake up and say, "Seems like yesterday Quin was just in diapers!" Now I could try to defy time and keep him in diapers into his twenties, or just be a better steward of time's presence. I guess this can be done by paying a whole lot of attention. I'm talking Ritalin attention. Taking in every detail and noting every change. Which might be impossible. Because in four weeks and a few days, a time frame I'll refer to as an "Otto", our newest kid has completely changed. And I don't know when it happened.

Otto looks at us now. He's waking up to the world and he definitely fits the bill as an "old soul". Or at least "an elderly person upset with the service at Denny's." Occasionally he lights up. He'll be staring at the ceiling fan and I'll say "Otto..." and it startles him. He's got this "who in the hell are you" face that cracks me up. I'll be holding him, cooing at him and bouncing him on the pilates ball (Lord bless this gift from angels) and he's shocked I'm there.

The good news is that he's sleeping better. He still makes a lot of squeaking noises, and with the strength of a hundred babies can rip out of his swaddle so he can swat at his head. He's really got a problem with punching himself in the face. And the pacifier only causes more problems. He gets mad at it and starts chomping and flailing and by then all you can do is get him out of the crib and go work on your core. Sarah may have rebounded so well with Q and Otto because she spends several hours a day balancing on an inflated sphere.

It's a lot of changes and fast. I worry one day Quin won't be the most loving person on the planet, but I'm sure he'll want to pull pack on the hugs and kisses some time soon, hopefully for him before he joins the football team.

I always thought it was weird and maybe a sign of instability when someone grabbed a child and growled, "I just want to gobble you up," before actually gnawing on them. But a horrifying reference to cannibalism seems to be the best way to vent the frustration of change and time and love. I mean I want to get a marsupial pouch for each of my boys and maybe if I spend every waking second monitoring them I won't come to one day to a houseful of teenagers and wondering what in the hell happened to our children.