Lights out

I think I'm going to wrap things up here at ol' Clarity.  When I started this blog in January 2005 I wanted to create an outlet where I could write and try to record the significant and small moments of life that seemed worth remembering.  Through 550 posts, that idea carried me through law school, getting engaged, getting married, having two careers and having two babies.  I am so thankful that I've had this record of the changes that occurred from age 24 to 32 -- it's hard to imagine a more momentous period of my life.

Things change, though, and for a number of reasons I think it's time to wrap things up here.  As more loved ones began reading the blog I felt compelled to change the way I wrote or what I wrote about.  I began to feel pressure to memorialize everything that seemed significant.  And perhaps most importantly, the blog began to feel like a source of guilt rather than an oasis.  Now I just feel guilty about about not writing or posting more.  

Maybe it's just a function of life with work and two kids under three, but it's hard to muster the energy to think and to write a lot of the time.  Of course, in the last few days I've been thinking about what to do here, and new things to write about seem to appear all around me like shiny coins on the sidewalk: Barrow smiling at me the other day as we sat on the couch, a moment of union and synthesis that in some ways feels like the beginning of my fatherhood of him; my great day on Friday, when I picked up some stationary and the Best American Short Stories 2012 at the bookstore and then entered Chipotle to hear a song I love on the sound system.  Also the fact that I feel more aware than ever of a certain stratification among my friends as all of our careers and life choices seem to push us in different and undeniable directions.  Not to mention what I read this year (the "Game of Thrones" books, the latest LBJ volume by Robert Caro, and not much else) and what I listened to (Drake, Frank Ocean, a lot of dance & pop music).

If I continue writing this blog, I'll feel guilty about not writing more; if I stop writing this blog, I'll feel guilty for stopping.  Because of course, a blog I began in 2005 should continue in perpetuity.  I feel guilty Barrow won't have as many posts as Alice.  I don't know.

So with that in mind, I'm turning out the lights for the time being.  I will certainly find another outlet to write when the time comes, but I don't know if it will be here.  But maybe it will.  

One last thing: over time L and I have developed a silly nickname for each other, "blabe," which comes from one time when I meant to say "babe" but it came out "blabe."  This is like how George W. and Laura Bush call each other "Bushie."  When Alice was in the womb we started calling her "Little Blabe," or LB, which we still sometimes call her.  And when we first started talking about the idea of Barrow, we identified him as "Baby Blabe."  A while back L and I were talking about those six-word biographies that are popular these days, and she asked what mine would be, and I responded: "Blabe, blabe, Little Blabe, Baby Blabe."  

What a life.  So much to be thankful for. 

Misadventures with Barrow

Sometimes I forget that Barrow is here. We'll all be sitting around the table eating dinner, L, Alice, and me, and I'll think, "Ah, my family." Then I look over and see him sleeping in his chair on the ground, and I feel a little guilty.

I have accidentally used female pronouns to refer to him. That's because I'm so used to dealing with Alice as a baby (as well as her partners in crime, Naomi and Pen Pen), it can be hard to remember that babies can be male too. This is probably not good in terms of gender identity.

Now that we are more than two weeks in, he is still flashing some deep and mysterious blue-gray eyes. Will they change to a more predictable brown? Where did they come from to begin with? What is this kid, a winter?

The other day I walked into the family room, saw Barrow swaddled up and sleeping on the couch, and for a second thought he was one of Alice's dolls. Then I looked at him again and realized, basically, "That is not a doll. You have a son now. And that is him."