Facting and Purging

Of course, this piece of wisdom only applies to real quicksand. If you’re in metaphorical quicksand and you raise your legs, you’ll just land on your back like an idiot. Thanks a lot, Gravity.

However, there is another kind of quicksand you might find yourself avoiding: imaginary quicksand.  That’s right, imaginary. And I’m not talking about the stuff that glops up your imagination; I’m talking about the stuff that pools in the carpet of your living room. You know, the stuff that’s spreading across the carpet, making it harder and harder to get around, so you have to climb up on the couch, then jump  from chair to chair, possibly climb on the table, hang from a door frame and eventually land on the tile entry only to realize you’ve left the crystal skull under the computer desk? Yeah, that quicksand.

What do you mean you don’t know what I’m talking about? Were you never a child? Please. Everyone was a child, as evidenced by the pubescent amnesia some of us have. Even if your childhood sucked (and, really, how could it?), I’m sure you have some memories of living in created spaces.

Fortunately, my childhood existed almost exclusively in the landscapes of my imagination. And, now that I’m an adult, I’m capitalizing on it. Yes, as a fiction writer, I use my imagination every day. I can’t help it. But, right now I’m still talking about the quicksand in my living room.

In the land of Dad, there’s no shortage of danger, adventure, heroism or the unknown. The real world is a difficult place for grown men to live wild. Work, stress, poor sleep habits, poor diet habits, financial uncertainty and inevitable, irreversible, untenable responsibility rip into the grown man and go after the stabilizing blocks of his identity. The world commands provision, protection, and masculinity. These things are so ridiculously, inconsistently defined. Just because I have testosterone, I’m supposed to be (fill in the blank)? Awesome. What about my choice?

I never claim to speak for anyone but me. My choice included fatherhood. Parenthood is not for everyone. Some people should be moms, some should be dads, and some should just be content going after whatever drives them. My imagination drives me. My insatiable need to create, to teach, to lead, to go after the unknown.

Nothing is more unknown to the new father like fatherhood.

I’ve never been a macho man, never a man’s man, never the big guy, the fighter, the bully, or the jock. I’ve always been the creative, the artist, the sensitive, understanding, easily offended and forgiving (but probably never forgetting) guy. Sure, I have testosterone, but not as much as “The Dude.”

Fortunately, I produce limitless amounts of Dad-osterone. Yep. I said it. It’s a lame play on the word. Is there actually a hormone my body produces that makes me a fun, engaging, eager and exceptional father? I don’t know. Does it matter how it works? It just works. For me. For my wife. For my son.

And, especially for our living room. Brighton and his future siblings will always have forts with Dad. They’ll have unnamed games, invisible worlds, monsters they can beat, and missions they can accomplish.

And, as long as they need it, they’ll always have a ride across the quicksand.

And presses the snooze button on his/her alarm clock three times in the morning.

Only three? Really? I’m happy to report that I’m above average on both fronts. According to a recent sleep study (had one in May, but that’s another story), I fall asleep in just under six minutes! Staying asleep is the impossibility. And, after a night of restlessness and ridiculous dreams (also, another story), I seem to sleep best, albeit very little, in the early morning – a perfect time of day to hit the snooze button seven or eleven times. Snooze is a great tool and a great distraction. Why not just get up? Because my bed feels great when I’m groggy and the suction power of my pillow is at its warmest setting

Fortunately for my future, there’s too much on my plate right now, and sleeping until 7 AM isn’t viable. Even “snoozing” till 6:30 doesn’t work. I have to be out of bed by 6 AM at the latest, between 5 and 5:30 if I can muster it. There’s never anything urgent requiring my puffy eyes and matted hair; it’s just the best time to start the day if I want to get everything accomplished. And, I usually do. Being a father, a husband, a full-time worker, a writer, a student, and a volunteer means time management is the means to survival and thrival (I don’t care if it’s not a word…you know what it means, so respect the rhyme and artistry in the syntax).

To maintain on five hours or less of sleep a night, I need a partner in routine energy provision. Boy do I need it. Not as much because I can’t function without it (I can), but because I like it. I really, really like it. Am I addicted? You bet I am. Am I proud of it? Eh, I’m ambivalent. I don’t think I have anything to defend. If people want to judge me (or you, dear reader, coffee fiend that you may be) for enjoying every cup of coffee I imbibe (wisely…I choose not to waste my taste on bad coffee), let them. When they’re gone, I’ll raise my cup of joe and toast their cold, unroasted, jitter-free lifestyle of pointing fingers, finding flaws, and distracting themselves from what’s really bothering them: themselves.

Since we’re getting things out there: I like beer and wine, too. I like R-rated movies. I like McDonalds french fries. I like laughing at Jackass. I like blue jokes. I like literature. I like a lot of stuff that a lot of people really like. And, I like a lot of stuff that a lot of people don’t. I honestly believe that coffee is one of the last things (thank you fair trade and organic practices) one should militantly reject.

However, as a fan, I can be militant about loving it. That’s the freedom of fandom. I like my coffee best right away in the morning. If I’m going to break up with my alarm clock, I need a recovery shot of caffeine to so that I can face myself. I’m a disappointment to sleepers and a snooze-tease. I can live with that, as long as I have a slug of dark roasted brew in my favorite mug.

It just got even easier.

Instant coffee, I think we can come to consensus without a show of hands, is nasty. But, what about near instant?

For my birthday this year, I received one of the most thoughtful gifts a bean-juicer could hope for: A coffee maker. Not just a coffee maker: an individual, ridiculously quick, looks-so-sexy-in-our-kitchen coffee maker. The Keurig B-70. If there’s water in the reservoir, and coffee in the K-cup reusable filter cup (or pod for even easier coffee), a cup of coffee – in any one of five sizes ranging from demitasse (that’s French for tiny but effective) to travel mug (French for “Big Gulps, huh? Alright…”) – can be brewed in as little as fifteen seconds. Fifteen!! That’s less time than it takes me to even find the snooze button on my alarm clock!

Now I can stumble into my day more efficiently than ever. It might be too easy to enjoy more than I should, but, hey, I’ll raise my cup to that.

And, if you’re average (c’mon, you know you probably are…), it weighs more than twice as much as your brain!

And, it’s the only one that truly regrows itself. Naturally, as part of its system. It’s remarkable. Just try not to think about the things living on your skin helping take care of the waste.

My skin’s always frustrated me. Well, not always, but it has for the majority of my life…at least since the onset of my formative, pubescent years. Overabundance of acne as a teen meant unflattering patterns of scars as an adult. Mercifully, I was never teased. The brooding, sensitive, intelligent, awkward boy-becoming-man probably couldn’t have taken ridicule. At least, not for my face. I got enough of that for being smart, skinny, and socially out-lying. But, scars, both emotional and physical, mean “thicker skin.”

However, there are some things for which your skin will never be thick enough.

On September 19, 2008, we learned that our daughter had died in my wife’s womb. That evening, Kenna was induced into labor, and on Sunday morning, September 21, we delivered Bennett Taydem. She was only weeks away from joining our family. I would have sacrificed every square inch of my skin, every organ or bone in my body, anything or everything that keeps me alive, to have kept her alive.

Perspective shift is unfailingly accompanied by change. In our case: tragedy.

In an instant, everything that had mattered no longer did, and everything we’d never considered, never thought about, never even imagined, was possible. How do you recover from something like that?

You don’t.

You learn, in time, to deal. You value love and life in a way few can appreciate. Some days are easier than others. Most are difficult. All are lonely. Recovery is not returning to what you were before: it’s adapting to who you are because of what’s happened.

On Christmas day that year, we learned we’d conceived another child. We were terrified. We’d been ready to be parents…of Bennett. Of a little girl. We should be waking up to open presents on her first Christmas. It was a strange gift on a melancholy morning. It was months before the reality really settled in. The pregnancy offered cycles of excitement, fear, guilt. We saw our doctor every week, visited the labor and delivery unit as often for monitoring.  Were we ready for a little boy? Would it be better for us to parent a child fundamentally different than his sister would have been? Life was tense.

After nearly two years of pregnancy, we delivered Brighton Tanner. Healthy, happy, and over eight pounds even at two weeks early. After a week in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (a  story for another day) in Boise, he was cleared to go home with us. Three in a family of four. The fear, the guilt, the angst orbiting Brighton’s arrival evaporated at his arrival. Unprecedented love thanks to unfair perspective.

And, somehow, perspective shifted again.

Bennett would have turned two this September.  The week of her birthday, we traveled to Spokane, Washington for Kenna’s college reunion. The roots of Kenna’s and my relationship are in Spokane. Every time we visit, it’s kind of like going home. It was fitting that the pain I intended to endure for Bennett’s memory would be there as well.

Having visited the shop once before for anniversary tattoos (a ring on my left ring finger and my handwriting inscribing “yours” on Kenna’s left wrist), I was familiar with the atmosphere and artists. The Missing Piece is a stand-up shop: clean, professional, and sensitive. They know, regardless of the impetus, a tattoo is at once symbolizing and life-long.

My skin is scarred, and every scar is a memory of pain. But, each scar is also thicker skin and a reminder that I live on, despite. Bennett’s name and footprint scar my skin now, a physical reminder that she was with us, she is with us, and she will be with us again.

Because, if one were able to, it would suck its eyeballs backward into its body, resulting in a vacuum style loss of pressure in its eye sockets that would offset the balance of atmospheric pressure around the globe. This simple, TINY event would set in motion a chain of similar tiny events in turn creating a snowball (metaphoric) of catastrophic proportion, the conclusion, of which, would be the earth, surrounding solar system and entire galaxy (of course, followed by the universe) “winking” out of existence instantaneously, being replaced by a black hole. And, it’s a scientific fact that, when this happens, the only sound that one could hear (if one were still in existence TO hear) would be a single “ribbit.”

Fascinating.

I don’t know about you, but if I were to be winked out of existence, I’m pretty sure being swallowed by a black hole would be the most agreeable method. One second you’re matter, and then “poof” you’re anti-matter…or, really tightly packed matter…or, zipping through alternate levels of the universe what scientists call a “worm hole.” Worms holes are like the tubes at the bank, only you’re that funny cylinder that whooshes away from your car. (And, like at the bank, you want to make sure your loose change is tightly stowed before a foosh through a worm hole…trust me.)

This morning, on the Swiss-French border, physicists (a type of scientist–the name comes from Greek origins and means “observer of the stuff smashing into other stuff) from around the world waited eagerly (some for two decades (that’s over 50 years for any of you that struggle with math and want to punch Albert Einstein for inventing it)) for the first test run of the LHC (or, Large Hadron Collider). The potential for this machine might show them what existed billionths of a second after the big bang. The first tests include shooting sub-atomic particles (protons) around the 17-mile track buried in the earth. Supposedly, they have the ability to send these guys wizzing around the track almost 11,000 times a second…that’s approaching light speed. (Electrons, other sub-atomic particles, are the orbital pieces of atoms. If it helps to picture them like little lighting bolts, please do. They circle the nucleus of an atom (comprised of neutrons and protons) 15 billion times a second. They’re the original Lance Armstrong. It’s kinda like seeing light speed at the atomic level.)

Then, after testing the LHC by sending protons in both directions, they’ll start sending them in both directions at the same time, forcing them to collide. Kind of reminds me of that question, “If you’re driving at the speed of light, what happens when you turn on the headlights?” Only this time, they’re not accelerating the protons from each other near the speed of light, they’re crashing them into each other.

Bang.

Not big bang, like we think happened 15 (ish) billion years ago, but little bang (no crass humor from me on this one…at least, not printed, this is a family community). This little bang might show them (the physicists) what kind of goo came flying out of the big bang. If they can determine that, they say they can more definitively conclude how the universe was created.

I’m not a scientist, but I’m just as curious as the rest. Some speculate a huge breakthrough. Others criticize the machine and the effort as a gigantic waste of money (in the billions). Doomsdayers think that the machine, running balls to the …er…full steam ahead, has the power to create a marble sized black hole that will, not unlike a Dyson vacuum cleaner, suck the earth and everything around it through a HEPA filter and into oblivion (or, worse, drop us at the business end of some cosmic worm-hole). The physicists say that if anything goes wrong, the only thing that will be in danger is the machine as the beam will likely just shoot into the rock surrounding the tunnel.

So much for drama.

But, if they know what could happen if something goes wrong, why are they spending time building this machine to do something that none of them really understand? They can predict what will happen if the machine malfunctions, but they’re all eagerly awaiting some huge surprise that might happen when the machine functions? Huh?

What if, and this is a big what if, the original Big Bang was the successful end to physicists trying to recreate another original Big Bang? What if we’re on a 14 (ish) billion year cycle and this is our scientific glass ceiling? Of course, I don’t believe that, but, it sets up one hell of a story, right?

And, now, the really fundamental question: when is one of these physicists going to try using this proton accelerator to shoot something else? When will it be available in hand-gun size? You think two protons smashing into each other near the speed of light is illuminating, try shooting a Dr. Pepper can off a fence post 60 feet away. What kind of bang would that be?

While the world is watching, waiting for the beginning of the end to take place in Switzerland, cows around the world are releasing more greenhouse gasses (methane, CO2, etc) into the atmosphere than all the cars, planes, boats, lawn mowers and politicians combined. I love beef, and I’m not about to sacrifice my love of tenderloin (don’t think about where tender loins come from) to help reduce my carbon footprint. If we can re-create the immediate after-effects of the Big Bang, why can’t we harness methane escaping bovines world-wide? (Escape is one of the many PC versions of the word “fart.” Other PC synonyms include “cut the mustard,” “squeeze the duck,” “release the hounds,” “liftoff,” “getting ready to unload the truck,” and several others I can share if anyone is curious.) Gasoline and methane, though in different forms, share many of the same combustion properties. Until we can really grab significant energy from geo-thermal, solar or wind power, I think we should seriously consider the efficiency (and comedy) of cars that go “pthbthbthbthb.”

Both heifer release and subatomic particle acceleration/collision have the potential to adversely affect our quality of life on Earth. When you realize the air is getting more and more flammable and you start to feel gravity’s pull more substantially, you can’t argue that we’re not living in exciting times.

Whether it’s the combustion of cow farts or protons smashing at nearly twice the speed of light, bring on the bang!

Large Hadron Collider

But it doesn’t mean your not special. You’re still the only one conceived by your parents 9-ish months before your birthday delivery. Unless you’re half of twins. Or a third of triplets. Either way, maybe a little less special. But, still you.

I can’t stand hyper-opinionated people. It’s probably the reason I don’t like the mirror. I know, I know–lots of people have said something along the lines of “the flaws you see in others are the flaws you refuse to admit you possess.” Actually, reminds me of Jesus talking about the speck and the plank.

I’ll be the first to admit…okay, not the first, but I won’t (always) deny that I’m stubborn, strong-willed, opinionated and egotistical. And handsome. Sometimes clever. Almost always only barely tolerable.

My world is changing.

If merits were awarded for dealing with irritating or obnoxious people, my beautiful bride would receive one every August on our anniversary. Our wedding vows were sweet, but hers should have simply said, “I’ll deal with him till you take him, God.” I’m not a jerk, I’m just steadfast. In my ways. The right ways. You see?

Humility is a rip-roaring force. Embarrassing moments instill a sense of humble, albeit temporary. Mistakes, if broken into a series of still shots, reveal absolute humiliation. Again, temporary. You learn from your mistakes. Unless you’re perfect. Like me.

Until now. Discoveries are made when one is searching for something. Revelations are had when one experiences a revealing of truth. The all-powerful “Ah HA!” is achieved when one achieves realization.

Humility accompanies the “oh shit” feeling of inadequacy. (Pardon the language. As a good friend once shared, “Vulgarity should only serve to add color to a chromatized language palette.”) Embarrassing moments and mistakes, as observed, serve a slight and fleeting dose of humility.

Perpetual humility can only be earned…really, it’s more like you’re thrown into a sticky vat of the stuff and the lid is welded on…through the news of impending fatherhood.

To a little girl.

A little female combination of Kenna and Lee. (Yes, that is the first time I’ve used italics…that means serious emphasis)

I will never have control again.

Truthfully? I don’t think I’ll miss it. There is honesty in the school of thought regarding flaws in others = flaws in self.

Besides, I’m trading in my flaws for a whole new set come the end of November. Good bye stubbornness, ego, righteousness and good taste in clothing. Hello overprotective father, enduring nerd, sappy goof. I feel like the Grinch must have felt at the moment his heart broke through the view frame.

Perspective is a ridiculous gift. Gift because we have the freedom to develop it in reaction to our experiences. Ridiculous because it changes without our permission. Nothing like a shifty contingency to keep us on our toes.

My shift has encouraged empathy–again, polar to my typical self. For instance: yesterday I witnessed (and was later accosted by) a young lady (20-ish?) strolling the streets of downtown Hailey. That’s not the atypical part…stick with me. She had on: black combat boots, two different color striped knee socks, black and baggy cropped pants, over sized black shirt with what I can only describe as “arm stocking-tights” (which were also black). Her hair was dyed black, but had light roots showing (it was, as you pictured before I said this, greasy). Her face was decorated with Marilyn Manson’s personal line of make-up for the undead. There was metal, but I’m not certain how much…I was trying not to stare. She carried a cardboard sign: “FREE HUGS.”

She rushed me with the sign in front of her like I was a cancer patient and she was eager with the cure. “Free Hugs!” she actually growled at me as she said it. I had to back away and put my hands up. “No, thank you, absolutely not.” Unkind to add the last two words, but they were out of my mouth as if I’d urked them. She walked away, smile gone, almost dejected.

Old Lee (in head): “Yikes! Good riddance.”

New “Soon-to-be-Daddy” Lee (in head): “Jeez, that’s someones daughter. She was once someones little girl. What could have possibly happened to make her act this way?”

No, I didn’t stop her, didn’t try and talk to her, didn’t apologize. I pitied her from a safe distance. After all, “Daddy” is still more heavily cognitive at this point–still a transition from “she’s coming” to “I’m at your service.”

The swing of perspective affects not only me, my hardened heart and my ability to be right all the time: it’s very probable that it will erode Kenna’s steadfast empathy and flighty nature. I become empathetic, soft and, most likely, always wrong. She’ll be Mom–which actually means “boss” in several languages.

Sure, I’m humbled. I’m unprepared. If I’m left alone long enough to ponder, I freak myself out.

A mixture of Kenna and my little girl suddenly owning discipline and authority in my house. Mildly unsettling, yes, but it sounds ultimately liberating.

I’ve spent my entire life growing up so I can have a child teach me how to be young. I can’t wait.