Good things from today

1. Last night I went to bed early enough that I woke up feeling clear and rested. 
2. At work they upgraded my computer to Windows 7. I had this at my previous job but took a little step backward when I took on this role in July.  It made me incredibly happy to have all my old fonts and settings back. 
3. I had lunch with the kids at Five Guys, Alice's favorite. It was her idea for us to have lunch and I could tell it meant a lot to her.
4. At work I continued this weird new pattern of being extremely productive from approximately 4-5 pm.  This had never before been a good time of day for me, but it's working out right now. 
5. Our wonderful nanny told us she'll be staying with us for the foreseeable future, which is a huge relief. 
6. Our Christmas cards came today -- I am basically the chair of the Christmas card committee in this apartment, and they turned out really well this year. 
7. L gave me a special dispensation to go to the gym tonight, so I did one class and really worked hard and it felt good.
8. Nice quiet evening with L and "Survivor."
9. And that's it -- more than enough. 

Barrow is 1

 When we were waiting for Barrow to be born, the one thing I was sure of was that he would have brown eyes. When he finally emerged, a year and two days ago, he had the same bright baby blues he wears today. It was a reminder that life will always surprise you and that genetics are a mysterious and still unknowable thing.  And yet, on a very basic level: baby, boy, Barrow, blue.  It made a strange kind of sense. 

In the year since, he has created and fulfilled his role in our family.  Now he is the perfect complement to our previous trio and I can't imagine our household without him.  Having a second kid was challenging in many ways. I felt like the romance and sentimentality of infancy often gave way to pragmatic concerns very quickly: how do we manage two children, how do we make sure the basic needs of everyone are being met. I often felt guilty that I wasn't writing more about Barrow, or spending time reading to him in a cozy and quiet room, or scribbling in the baby book that is still (shamefully, so very shamefully) still mostly empty. 

I also had forgotten about the reptilian existence of very young babies.  Their needs are basic and they are not cute very often. Personalities remain unformed.  But in these last few months there has been a real blossoming, and Barrow has really come into his own (as much as someone can when they can't walk, talk, or poop in a respectable way).  

He is showing signs of a personality that makes me feel like he will carry himself well with the goofy name we strapped him with.  He is curious and flirtatious. He is so happy and quick to smile and laugh. He moons over his big sister and looks to her constantly. He is physically affectionate and loves the feel of scruff on his cheek or kisses on his neck.  He bounces up and down with enthusiasm and gnaws on the bars of his crib. He likes to nap and gratefully sinks into his crib with a soothie and his love.  Right now he has approximately six teeth, large and asymmetrical, poking along his gums.  And always, always, the lone dimple: the heartbreaker. 

With both kids, I was so excited when they learned to move themselves on their own. I like seeing where they will go of their own volition. Barrow doesn't like to be alone and will come trundling around the corner to see who's coming in or out the front door. He doesn't want to be the last one in a room.  

And so now he is one, and we all continue to grow together. Happy birthday, little man.

Justin Timberlake is getting old

I.

One of the coolest nights of my New York life took place on August 29, 2003.  The Video Music Awards production had consumed Radio City Music Hall and most of midtown.  As the night began I was with new friends (all of whom, with one exception, now lost in time) in an apartment on the Upper East Side, watching the show on TV.  Later that night Justin Timberlake was giving a semi-secret after-show concert at the Roseland Ballroom, and my friend (the one who endured) had somehow found out about it and procured tickets.  That afternoon I had gone to a thrift store near my apartment on Columbus to buy a cool new shirt.  I was ready. Around one in the morning we hopped in a cab to head downtown and joined the long line of people curving around the block to get in.

Inside we stood on our tiptoes and stared at the center of the world. He performed with Timbaland, Pharrell, John Mayer.  Relevant-at-the-time celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Cameron Diaz glowed in the balcony as cameras flashed before them.  The music was familiar and driving, giving us life.  Hours later we emerged into the darkest hours of the morning, exhausted and wide awake.  We were in New York City, young and broke and unstoppable.

It was almost a perfect night.  On the way in security guards had confiscated the disposable camera I had brought, and as we were leaving I realized I wouldn't be able to recover it -- they had thrown it away in the trash.  The camera had photos from a friend's recent wedding, and I was wracked with guilt and fear that the pictures were lost.  My friends implored me to get into a cab and leave, but I ended the night by myself sorting through garbage bags outside of Roseland, looking for a camera that of course I never found.

The pathetic ending, though, is necessary to demonstrate the reality of that spectacular night.  A better conclusion would have required flights of make-believe.

II.

Of course, that was now ten years ago.  And when I saw Justin host SNL a few weeks back, I thought, for the first time, that he looked kind of ... older.  Not that he looked objectively old or haggard, but that he no longer looked young.  He used to be the Justin Bieber of the early aughts, and now he's too old to get away with something as unabashedly silly (yet awesome) as "Beauty and the Beat."  He is in a different space now, ceding the teen-pop ground and moving on to a silkier, more mature R&B tradition.

One funny thing about my job working with college students is that I feel acutely aware of the passage of time, as I become older yet the cohort of people I work with remains static.  I see their experience of music become more and more estranged from my own.  When they find out I listen to JT or Maroon 5 or anyone like that they are often incredulous, as if I should be at home watching Lawrence Welk.

As a result I follow Justin Timberlake through music with the confidence that I can go where he is leading.  He is my spirit animal.  And the new album is fantastic: warmer than the last and with solid through-lines connecting its songs to the tracks on the 2003 album, "Justified," that was my soundtrack to those incredulous years ("Nothin' Else" to "Strawberry Bubblegum," "Last Night" to "Tunnel Vision"). 

Pop culture is a force of the young.   Maybe he is still doing those midnight shows, but I'm sure not going to them -- that particular moment has passed.  Now we dance in the kitchen with our daughters, cleaning dishes in the evening.

In the black box

Today's my birthday, and now I'm 33.  The Jesus age.  Still young enough on an absolute scale, but old enough that I should have things somewhat together.  I think this is about where I am.

Oddly enough, yesterday the New York Times featured a Motherlode blog entry entitled "A Birth Mother With the Right Regrets."  Part of it included this:

I remember exactly what I was typing the day my birth-mother lenses fell off my face and shattered. It was the same thing I’d said again and again in describing my experience, except this time, I said it to my friends who had been adopted: “The adoption of my son was the hardest decision I had ever made, but I don’t regret it.”

It was their collective response that changed it all: “Promise us that if you ever do meet your son that you won’t say that. Don’t say that you don’t regret giving him up. For an adoptee, that means that you didn’t miss him. That it was O.K. not seeing his first step or knowing who he is. Don’t say that. It will hurt him.”

The post generated a lot of angry comments about the ills of the "adoption industry."  People talked about the exploitation of "first mothers," a phrase I was unfamiliar with, and the inherent pain and damage caused by adoption.  "Babies belong with their mothers."  Adoption was presented as a wholly unnatural, horrible thing.  The woman who wrote this piece eventually found her 19 year-old son through the internet, made contact via MySpace, and waited three years until her child was "ready" (the author's quotes) to meet in person.  And then at some later date the writer was able to create family photos including all of her biological children, not just the ones she had raised. 

When I take an inventory of my life and think about these things -- especially on days like this -- I think I'm ok with the idea of my biological mother not regretting putting me up for adoption.  I don't regret being adopted.  I can't imagine a happier, more fortunate life or a more loving set of parents.  Yet the whole concept of adoption involves a great deal of pain and sacrifice on all sides, and an almost unbearable set of questions that may never be answered.

As a child one might fantasize about biological parents (perhaps she's Princess Diana!) as a set of fairy tale and escapist scenarios.  But time passes, though, and one becomes more comfortable with ambiguity.  The dawn of sex during the teenage years makes one aware of the fear/horror of the idea of unintended pregnancy.  The choices we face as adults -- in love, in family, in education and career -- makes one appreciate the gravity of that fundamental, life-changing decision.  The anticipation and joy of an expectant father opens up new depths of love and devotion, emotions so difficult to channel into this kind of sacrifice.

And ultimately, as an adult, one learns to accept the fact that not all questions have answers.  The fact of adoption is not Chekhov's gun -- there is no guarantee or promise that the mysteries established at the beginning of one's life will be revealed or explained later.  It's all right to leave room for ambiguity, for grace, for gratitude to a stranger.  There is pain in this, of course, but also an unexpected wellspring of love -- for the ones who chose for you rather than for themselves, for the ones who fought for you.

Who knows how my thoughts about this may change with time, but right now this is where things are.  Inside a black box, with no need to seek an exit.

Before my children were born I thought that having a biological relative would change everything.  At times I longed to see someone who looked and acted just like me.  And now my daughter is a lot like me, physically and temperamentally.  When strangers note our similarities it makes my heart ache in a beautiful way.  But ultimately, it doesn't matter very much, and I know that.  She is her own person, as mysterious and inscrutable (at first I wrote "unscrupulous" - heh) as any man or woman on the street.  This is true even if she has a face like mine, eyes like mine, that certain curve in her cheek and jaw like mine. 

If there has been one lesson in my life, it's that biological ties don't matter very much.  I was thirty years old before I had a blood relative.  Reading this article, and its attendant comments that provoked such bile about about the very idea of adoption, really bothered me.  This is the institution that gave me my life, my family, my identity.  I could never ask for anything more, and that's why I'm content to leave these questions unanswered.  There is a balance in my life that doesn't need to be upset. 

The best part of my birthday happened this afternoon, when I was walking to lunch with colleagues.  I happened to see my children and our nanny walking up the sidewalk towards us, over near 113th Street on the east side of Broadway.  I saw them before they saw me.  My daughter was holding the nanny's hand with her other hand in the pocket of her stiff red jacket, and she was looking at all the shops and the people along the sidewalk.  Her hair was in a ponytail and she looked like any young woman you might see on the city streets.  My girl, strolling up Broadway.  I moved to stand in her line of vision and a few seconds later she saw me.  She turned to look at me and her eyes brightened and she said, "Daddy! Daddy!" She let go of the nanny's hand and ran towards me, hurrying up the sidewalk to find me, running up and into her daddy's arms.

Ok, who am I kidding, I'm back

So much for that.  Over the last two months I've found myself really wishing I had a place like this where I could write.  Now that I've taken my little sabbatical, I feel like I can begin things again with a slightly different frame of reference.  No more pressure to make this blog a pictorial timeline of my life (and more importantly, my children's lives).  No more guilt-posting.  Instead, whatever efforts I can make to record the moments and ideas that strike me -- that was the goal of this thing all along, before the existence of my own family made the whole idea seem a little silly and frivolous. But it isn't, really, and when it all boils down I'm still as selfish and jerky as I was pre-family, and that's who I will remain.

Here's what I was thinking about recently:

First, I found myself harboring a really weird and really intense jealousy for friends who are doing very well financially and professionally.  This was completely irrational and had nothing to do with their lives or mine -- I just found myself fuming at paths not taken, degrees earned or not earned, salaries not received. Rationally I could tell myself that this was stupid and that I wouldn't trade my life and circumstances for anything, but I felt like my insides were curdling.  An inchoate rage against  myself, the world.  I felt like all of my problems could be solved with -- what, maybe 60K?  I would take more.  I thought about how I could monetize things.  What's so bad about male prostitution? Surely I could find some kind of market, the Internet's a big place.

Eventually, this weird black balloon deflated and the fever broke, before I cold really explore the prostitution idea.  I was able to take a step back and think about why I was worrying about money, and what could be done about it.  I read some great short fiction by George Saunders that taps into these kinds of economic fears and we met with our retirement planning representative, which was reassuring in some ways.

The second thing I thought about were some longer term ideas: cash out retirement money to get a down payment on a place!  Buy or lease a car so that we can recover some freedom!  These ideas seem necessary to help us make sure we're moving towards something. Otherwise it just seems like us in the New York squeeze of money, real estate, and schools.  It's a game we won't win, most likely, and really I just want to make sure we don't back ourselves into playing it through our own inaction.  If this is our lives, it should be at our choosing.

So that's what I've been thinking about.  Money, jealousy and dread.  But aside from all that -- things are good and will only get better. Tomorrow's my birthday and it will be a good one.