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.

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. 

Nighttime routine

It occurred to me that before everything changes I should record one nice little rhythm we've fallen into with Alice.  At night L puts her to bed, and then Alice usually reads and putters around her room for about half an hour.  Then she says, quietly and insistently, "Daddy, I need a clean diaper!," over and over until I pad over and knock on the door.  Having waited at the doorway she opens it immediately and looks out to see what fun is happening in the family room.  Then I pick her up and change her diaper, and we chat a little bit about her poop or her books or what have you.  Then we take all the books that she has gathered on her bed and put them in a neat pile by her bookshelf.  Then I tuck her into bed and we sing three songs, her choice.  Lately we have been watching "Mary Poppins" clips, specifically "Supercalifragilistic..." and "Spoonful of Sugar."  Consequently I have grown to despise these songs.  I have had "Super" in my head for weeks now, boppy and unending.  Although the movie clip retains a real charm and energy, the song itself seems long and interminable, especially when Alice insists that I include one of the Dick Van Dyke verses and the "um diddle iddle iddle, um diddle aye" refrain.  Other popular songs include "I Love You, You Love Me," "You Are My Sunshine," and "Zip A Dee Doo Dah"; we touch our shoulders when we reach the part about the bluebird.  (Also, I've noticed that when I'm singing Alice often seems to be watching my mouth move, so I try to enunciate really well.)  After three songs she's usually ready for sleep.  We say good night, love you, sweet dreams, close your eyes, and then close the door.  This is something I don't want to forget.

Waiting

Come on, little man!  Come join us.

I have been winding down my work to take some time with the baby.  L just had her last day at work yesterday.  As a result I feel an odd mixture of calmness and stress, waiting for this thing to happen.  The part that makes me nervous is that trip to the hospital -- making sure someone is here to watch Alice -- navigating the journey itself -- and then finally feeling secure and ready at Mt. Sinai.  I am really excited to meet this kid, to name him, to bring him home, to see him as a younger brother, to see our girl as a big sister.  I can't wait to know what he will look like and who he will be.  The miraculous surprise of Alice was that she was immediately her own person, not necessarily a combination of L and me, but so clearly her own being.  I can't wait to see who we get to introduce and welcome into our family.

Come on, little man!  Come join us.  We have been waiting for you forever.

Beauty girl

Whining

I've been too busy to think lately. Work has been madness since late August, as the new year began and I started working with a new set of responsibilities and challenges. L started a new job, and so our household has been leaning into the chance for her to make a great first impression, especially considering that she'll be on maternity leave soon. Alice has started potty training and is copping new attitudes and new sets of vocabulary -- today she came back from kiddie yoga and told us, in all seriousness, "NAmaste" -- and all the while the new kid in L's belly becomes all the more comprehensible. There is more to come.

I've realized, in the middle of all of this, that I really miss a few things: reading, exercise, writing.  I feel like a fat slob.  I haven't been able to sink my teeth into a book for a while. I'm dying for some new music. I recently retread John Williams' Stoner, a novel I first read in 2006 and immediately adored. It struck me as one of the most perfect, best novels I ever read, even with its flaws.  Reading it again it maintained its power and inspired me as a writer, a feeling I haven't had in a while.

Throughout my adult life, there have been things that I was so excited about -- I would shape my weeks by thinking about them, anticipating, considering, and the afterwards, reflecting and hoping for the next time.  It stated with improv class, then the gym, then hip hop, and then my writing class a few semesters ago. I miss those things. Now I think about the time commitment and the things I would miss -- time with Alice, family dinners, holding up my end of our domestic bargain. I miss that casual selfishness that made early adulthood so exciting and free.

So I'm trying to do something about it. I rejoined the gym at work and I'm looking for classes. I'm trying to carve out more time to be thoughtful and purposeful. But I still have that nagging fear, that this is the time when we put childish things aside -- passions, exploration -- and disappear into the daily routines that become the engine and the sum of our days.

The summer

2008

2012

It was the summer of "Call Me Maybe," a song that I didn't know but seemed to like anyway.  There were downsides, of course, like the drug-related triple-execution that took place in a car parked a few blocks away from our home, but the evenings were so long and sweet that we could often stroll through the neighborhood after dinner, taking note of the flowers that had been duct-taped to a tree in memoriam of the three murdered drug dealers.  As the days multiplied the flowers began to wilt and droop in the remembered heat.

I would leave work on Fridays at 1 and then head to Lincoln Center to watch movies and eat popcorn in the solitary dark.  In the afternoons at work I would take a break to walk down to Chipotle to buy a Coke Zero, a concession to time and metabolism that I told myself I enjoyed.  Each day we waited for our nanny to give birth to her baby, but she usually didn't and so life continued normally. 

One Saturday I had to work for much of the day, and when I was finally released into the weekend I went to Five Guys to eat a burger and drink a real Coke and read a New Yorker article about the President's early years.  As a college student he had been no less self-serious than any of the rest of us.  Later we all went to the playground, where Alice enjoys dangling from any horizontal bar she can find, holding her feet in front of her.  Sometimes she and I hang simultaneously from the bars, myself well aware of the embarrassing effort required to maintain the position.

We all went to a Thai restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, testing fate by actually dining at a restaurant rather than scurrying home with our meals cooling and congealing in their styrofoam.  The menu featured text in Thai and grainy photos of Thai markets.  Looking at it, smelling brief pockets of aromas from other people's entrees, brought me close to the memory of what it had actually been like in Thailand, those four years ago.  I was on the verge of remembering something real about it -- the sweat, the confusion, the happy blind confidence, the age -- but it disappeared before I could grasp it.

No time for reflection.  On the way home we stopped at Columbia so that Alice could clamber among the steps and the fountains, resolutely independent and insistent that we keep our distance.  As the day dissolved around us we returned home.  When we walked by their street I thought of the men who had been murdered there weeks earlier; the street where their ghosts remained, where their ghastly car was long, long gone.  

Good things from tonight

A really good evening with Alice.  First, when I went to pick her up, I found out that she had had a  painful poop that interrupted her nap -- this was unfortunate.  The silver lining?  When Mel the nanny went in to check on her, Alice was asking for me to come help her!  Huzzah!  

Second, we had a really nice dinner at Chipotle, where she sat across from me like a big girl and we enjoyed some lively conversation regarding what she did today (played with mommy, read, sang, pooped).  

Third, after we came home we spent some time sitting on the stoop of our building, at her insistence.  Alice would play in her little orbit around me -- climb up the steps, climb back down, jump from the last step to the pavement.  I was singing songs, counting to three for her to jump, clapping my hands as she made it to the ground.  At one point she put her hand on my shoulder and said: "Please stop talking."

(A few minutes later she fell down the steps and earned a large knot on her forehead, but she's ok.)

Fourth, I was giving her a bath and I sneezed loudly.  She looked at me.  "Oh," she said.  "...boy."  And it was funny.

Fifth, on "American Idol" last night some contestant sang Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me."  (A song that lives on through my marriage, when we often tell each other, "don't patroniiiiiiiize me.")  After we read books we sat in the dark for a few minutes and sang songs.  After the old standbys ("Happy birthday," ABCs, "Doe a deer," "Twinkle, twinkle," etc) I sang "I Can't Make You Love Me."  She leaned against me and just listened, and when I finished she pulled back to tell me, "I like that one."

My girl.  These are the moments.  The scary thing is that I can feel my memories blurring already; it's hard for me to distinguish 12-month Alice from 18-month Alice.  So I write it here in the hope of preserving a few of the remarks, the laughs, the songs she enjoys through the night.

32

 

 Today is my 32nd birthday! L and A brought me a morning bagel, we went for a nice chilly walk through Central Park, and we made our way to Chipotle, the Gap, and yes, TJ Maxx. (On this day, we are rich.) Tonight L is taking me to see "War Horse" at Lincoln Center and we might try to go out for dinner as a family beforehand at the new ramen place on our block.

The last year was a very good one. It was focused on the rhythms of family and work. Nothing really changed much last year, so I'm looking forward to 32 as an opportunity for change, progress, and growth. The word that keeps popping into my head is: catalyst! It's time for me to catalyze, unless it's time for something else to catalyze me-- I don't even know.

I like birthdays as a chance to reflect on life and consider the many ridiculous blessings I've received. It's a very good day.

Night rhythms

Tonight, after Alice and I finally got home, after Alice took her bath, after we attempted to FaceTime with L in Atlanta while Alice was in the tub, resulting in an anguished Alice reaching her soapy hands towards L's face enclosed by the distressingly small face of the phone, after reading books and kissing goodnight, after watching the debate, after doing some work and agonizing over the unkempt state of my inbox, after looking around the quiet apartment, I remembered that something good had happened today.  I had been worried about something for a while, and got a phone call in the middle of a meeting this morning telling me that things were okay.  When my phone started vibrating, I knew immediately what it was, and I was able to stride out of the conference room with the unquestioning confidence I can never seem to muster when I really need it.  I got my good news and came back into the meeting, taking that idea and folding it neatly and placing it in my pocket.

And then tonight I discovered it again.  To celebrate I decided to pour some Sambuca for myself and add three coffee beans.  As Alice slept and the city lay dark and still outside the windows, I cleaned the kitchen and listened to music, washing tupperware and making sandwiches for tomorrow, gathering all my ingredients for morning oatmeal, portioning my carrot sticks for lunch.  In the shadowy kitchen I let my iPod be my guide, gliding through the night with the slow, true old songs made for evenings like this. 

Ever since I was in high school these late hours were made for music and quiet.  Singing low in my night kitchen reminded me of the solitude that I don't often experience anymore, for great reasons -- but what joy there was to be found in those old slow songs, a voice worn and lowered by the length of the day, a clean kitchen ready for the morning, a glass of sambuca at hand, patient and restorative, and the memory of good news to absolve the day of worry.

Shake Shack

The other Friday night the three of us headed down to 79th Street to have dinner at Shake Shack.  It was a cold night on the Upper West Side, the kind of night that reminds me of my first year in the city, when I would walk down to the Loews theatre on 68th Street to watch movies by myself on Saturday nights.  It's the feeling of being wrapped up in a hat and scarf, carrying a book, and knowing you have everything you could need for the moment.

Shake Shack was its usual riot of children and strollers, but we were able to find a table by the wall-length windows.  The glass was cold and dark to our touch, but we were warm and comfortable.  The food was delicious.  Afterwards we walked eastward back towards the train.  Alice acquiesced to wearing her hat and mittens, and we made our way by playing "One-two-three-RUN," in which the family counts to three and then runs for a bit.  She was flushed and beautiful.  I carried two half-drunk milkshakes in my hands.  It was a good night.

December/Christmas

 Ah, December.  Where are we.  Our Christmas tree this year is a thing of beauty.  It's taller than last year's, and Alice seems impressed by it.  We have rituals during the day when we plug in the lights and turn the tree "on," after the fanfare of Alice's countdown (parents: "one..." Alice: "two...three!"), and she and I have a ritual at night of watering the tree (both of us kneeling on the ground, an incantatory "pour pour pour," following a similar counting exercise).  We have taught her to treat the tree gingerly -- after a few early ornaments made the ultimate sacrifice -- and now Alice eyes it warily, an object of beauty stricken with risk. 

I'm trying to compile my lists of my favorite songs of the year and the best books I read, so it's time to take stock of the year.  When I look backwards I see a lot of great things.  In chronological order: I took an amazing writing class; we went to Spain; we went to Rehoboth; I ran a marathon; we cooked Thanksgiving dinner.  Throughout the year I felt good about my work professionally, and I've had a good semester with my students.  Alice has brought an absurd, abundant measure of joy into our lives.  We worry about money, but we sleep well most nights. 

In some ways, though, I also feel like this year has been affected by an undercurrent of exhaustion, or compromise.  There is never enough time or energy to do what I think I should be doing.  Time spent pursuing my own endeavors -- exercise, running, writing -- often feels like time taken away from my family.  After spending much of my work day staring at a computer and pinging back emails, I struggle to want to come home to write for pleasure, or to write the personal emails that I should be sending to maintain important ties.  After a workweek spent sprinting through our precarious routines, I can't find it in myself to get up early for the gym on Sunday mornings.  It just doesn't make sense right now.  And yet there's always time for garbage television.  But I'm trying to revise my internet consumption to get away from the things that don't really excite me -- no more Gawker, less Facebook.  Less time wasted, hopefully.   

I think as 2012 begins I want to try to be more purposeful about the decisions I make, how I decide to expend my time and energy.  Because this was a good year, and I think a great one could be around the corner.  It feels good to put words together.  I want to do more of that.

More to come in the next few days.

September 11th, ten years later

For the last couple of days I've been immersing myself in a lot of the immediate coverage that followed the terrorist attacks ten years ago.  It's hard not to watch the footage without a rock in my stomach.  The newscasters' fumbling narration in real time, the background whine of sirens that seemed so feeble in the face of such destruction. 

When I think about my life, I tend to believe that the Modern Era -- that is, adulthood -- began when I graduated college and moved to New York in 2002.  September 11th occurred during the first few weeks of my senior year at UVA.  My memories of that day are stark and clear, and many of the people with whom I experienced that day are still deeply involved in my life (most especially, my wife).  When I arrived in New York months later that experience was still burned onto the short-term memory of the city.  Every summer hordes of young people arrive in the city determined to start their lives, and I felt proud to be part of the first wave of new arrivals following the attacks.  Yet I also felt like an interloper -- someone who skips the funeral but attends the reception afterwards.

Living in the city has given me a new intimacy with the events of that day, a new understanding of the geography of grief.  I used to run by Ground Zero all the time when we lived downtown.  My wife's old workplace was near the scene of a major staging area for the first responders.  The same hospital where the victims were sent, where Cardinal Egan stood outside administering last rites to the dead and dying, is where my daughter was born.

Today L and I took Alice downtown to get out of the house and go eat at a burger joint from back home.  Impromptu memorials had been established all around the old neighborhood, in front of firehouses, along the chain-link fence where people have hung dozens of ceramic tiles commemorating that day.  On the subway we saw many law enforcement personnel in dress uniform.  We saw people who had come from the major memorial service, relatives of the victims, including someone who wore a badge identifying them as a reader of the names.  I felt frivolous sitting there in my shorts with my soda, frivolous and irreverent in the face of their grief and the tragedy this city -- now my city -- endured. 

And yet life goes on.  Just like ten years ago, this weekend felt like one of the last vanishing weekends of summer.  Today Alice enjoyed her french fries and milkshake, and she was smiling and chatty for her momma and daddy.  Events that were unthinkable ten years ago have somehow been folded into our understanding of ourselves and our home, and we all move forward, more or less, with an even keel.  Resilience and grief, change and memory, ever forward, ever forward.

The vise

I have been uncharacteristically worried lately about the state of things in our life (and that's saying something).  L and I have had some big talks about our family, our careers, our home, and our finances, trying to find the best way to manage everything in a sustainable way, a way that will keep us on a good path to prosperity.  In some ways I feel like the same few questions are constantly swirling around us, and each passing day pushes us towards an answer.  Can we stay in New York?  Can we stay where we are?  Does our life require changes, large or small?  (The questions are more specific in my mind, of course, but they thunder down to the same basic propositions.)  I worry about making a choice.  I worry about not making a choice -- that our inaction will lead us to an answer in itself, an answer we may not want. 

Sometimes I wonder if we are somehow being selfish, living in Manhattan and raising a family here.  Is it stupid to try to do this?  Does it matter that we still live in New York, since we are not exactly regulars on Broadway or at the museums?  Are we trying to accomplish something best left to the financiers and their dowager mothers-in-law?  Perhaps worse: are we the last ones left at the party, still toughing it out in Manhattan while so many of our friends have cycled in and out of the city?  And yet so much of our life is grounded in the structures of urban living -- walking to playgrounds, enjoying the parks, living in a certain kind of community.  I fear that if we lived someplace surburban, we would enjoy the luxuries of the 'burbs for a few months until we woke up in horror one day, realizing: I am bored.  And then it would spiral downwards, Revolutionary Road-style.  (Not to say that city life is inherently better or more exciting; just that it has clearly become our preference.) 

If I think about these questions hard enough, it feels like the floor gives way under my feet, and all of the structures we have created to organize our life - the jobs, the childcare, the commute, the apartment, the friendships - are ripped to shreds in a single thoughtless moment, and the stark precarious nature of this balance emerges.  Yet does life ever become more solid than this?  What exactly could I expect someplace else?

I hit the point a few days ago where I just grew weary of worrying.  We had a good talk with my folks about things, and I feel like we're doing the best we can.  We are not sitting back passively and letting the circumstances of life dictate our fates; we are doing everything we can to best protect and support our lives.  Beyond that I don't know what else can be done, besides work on my patience and serenity.  Like I was saying to L tonight:  I'm worried something will happen.  And I'm also worried something won't.

At some point, I have to take a breath and just stop worrying.

Photo: my favorite monkey at the Manhattan Children's Museum.

Harry Potter

Today I saw the last Harry Potter movie.  It was excellent, and I greatly enjoyed it.  I read the books as they all came out, but I am not an expert in the intricacies of wand lore and things like that.  I came to the movie as a mere novice, but that was enough.

I was surprised at the strength of the movie's emotional impact.  The overall story has unfolded in enough time and with enough stateliness to allow it to gather some real heft and meaning.  This is ultimately the story of an orphaned boy and his long, painful process of understanding his parents and the world they lived in.  The passions and jealousies that animated them and their peers. 

What's strange to me now is how much I relate to the parents.  Seeing Harry's ghostly parents promise him, in his hour of greatest danger, that they would be with him -- that they were always with him -- struck a deep chord.  Ever since Alice was born I have been grappling with this new emotional force, the instant and primal love that propels so much of what I do nowadays, in one way or another.  My mom told me, "You will kill for your kids," and boy, was she right.  (Mrs. Weasley cursing the witch who was attempting to kill her daughter, moments before she dispatched her nemesis into the great beyond: "Not my daughter, you bitch!"  Now I understand.)  It's interesting to me to track my own experience with Harry Potter over the last decade or so, watching the easy, thoughtless narcissism of adolescence slough away, later to be replaced by the sweet, gnawing ache of parental love.  It is about Harry and his gifts, but it's also about the ones who placed him there.  The whole story changes. 

State update: Massachusetts

I spent most of last week at a conference in Boston, a city I haven't visited in an extremely long time.  It was unexpectedly lovely -- amidst the usual unpredictable cruelty of Massachusetts weather, we enjoyed a beautiful summer evening on my first night in town.  I went for a run on a route traced out for me by the hotel: from Boston Common along Cambridge Street, across Longfellow Bridge and along the Charles River, then crossing back over on Harvard Bridge and running along the Esplanade back to Cambridge -- a nice four-mile loop.  As I ran, I kept thinking, "I am not in New York, these are not New Yorkers, this is another city where people live.  And it is beautiful here."  Sunset over the water, sailboats bobbing along.  Brilliant office towers reflecting the orange-yellow light.  Running blindly and confidently.

One evening I abandoned the conference program to visit with my grandparents and aunt in nearby Beverly.  I was proud of myself for navigating the commuter train and making it to the Beverly Depot, where I had a great summer dinner with my aunt and grandfather (steak, grilled out in the spitting rain; salad, potato salad, sliced tomato (first good one of the year), brownie and ice cream, Bud Light) and then went on to the hospital where my grandmother was unfortunately checked in.  It had been five years since I had seen this side of the family, and being with them again felt easy and familiar.  I saw unexpected glimpses of my dad in my aunt's features or my grandfather's gestures.  Their home was full of pictures of my sister and me, Alice and L.  I felt like I had discovered some kind of reservoir of love, and I felt horrible and strange about letting so much time pass between visits.  It was wonderful, but it came with a certain ache, too.  I called L when I was standing on the dark, rainy platform, waiting for the train to arrive to roll me through the night back to Boston, but we could barely talk before the flashing lights and clatter of the train roared into the station. 

Another train ride and a few days later, and now I'm back at home.

Happy birthday, Alice

Yesterday was Alice's first birthday.  The main festivities took place on Saturday, when we somehow wedged about 30 people into our apartment (the crowd included six or eight children).  Alice, looking like a confection in her pink sequined birthday dress, took it all in stride.  We ordered a box-full of Chipotle burritos and hung up some pink and green streamers.  There were balloons.  Everyone who came was really nice and excited to see the baby.  Before we had birthday cake I gave a little mini-speech about What It All Means, then we sang and Alice devoured her first bites of chocolate, quickly developing a dark brown goatee of frosting around her lips.

After it was all over -- after the guests had left, after our family members had decamped for their hotels in New Jersey -- we were exhausted.  We were consigned to eat leftover burritos for the next six meals or so.  A fitting coda to the night: Alice throwing up her cake and continuing to vomit sporadically all evening; an unopened bottle of wine somehow falling out of the refrigerator and shattering on the kitchen floor.

It's hard to believe it's been a year since Alice came into our lives.  My memories of that day and the days that followed are so vivid, I can't believe we've gone through a whole year of seasons, changes, holidays.  Like a friend told me today, with children the days are long and the years are short.  I feel like my whole orientation towards life has changed since she was born -- what I consider important or meaningful, how I value my time, where I want to direct my energy and resources. 

If it's hard to believe a year has passed, it's also difficult to overstate the joy she's brought into our lives.  Tonight at dinner we were playing a little game where we were feeding each other Cheerios.  I would open my mouth in an exaggerated way and say "aah" so that she could place the Cheerio inside.  She opened her mouth to mimic me, and said "aah" in the exact same tone.  She had never done that before. Then she would touch my finger with her finger and we would spend a few moments considering fingers.  All of these little tiny doors opening, connections being forged, ideas linking together.  It's like you can see her memories sharpening, her smiles becoming more genuine, her sense of herself and our family becoming more clear.  It's still miraculous.

31

[I'm actually writing this on March 4, but I'm posting it under 2/25/11 for the sake of posterity.]

On February 25 I turned 31.  As I've said before, 30 was an extremely good year for me.  The first part of this birthday was spent on the night of the 24th, celebrating on a boat called the Calypso Queen toodling around Tampa Bay.  I was having an unexpectedly pleasant evening with colleagues -- cans of Bud Light, a DJ playing fun and laughable songs, the sun sinking far off into the Gulf.  The Electric Slide.  At one moment I was standing alone on the top deck, looking at the sky framed between two gaudily-decorated plastic palm trees, as a reggae song bounced in the air -- and for the first time in my life, I kind of liked reggae!  For that brief moment, it made sense at the time!

Much of my actual birthday was spent in transit from Florida to home.  We had a nice dinner at home, L made a delicious cake.  On Saturday night we had a fun night at Nectar, partying like we were childless (almost), and then rushing home so we could stop the clock on the babysitter.  When childcare costs loom over you just like the threat of a hangover -- that's what 31 is like, so far.