DadCentric

A Mother's Arms are Made of Tenderness and Children Sleep Soundly in Them

Heat, as an extreme, exists only in a relative sense.  It is the hottest thing they have ever known and therefore it is the hottest thing ever known.  I tell them that it is not, that my coffee is actually hotter, but that doesn't soothe them, it only makes them question my sanity as they slowly dare a second sip of their lukewarm chocolate.

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My back hurts.  I've been carrying too much for too long.  For six weeks I've been living as a single father - a single work-at-home-dad.  It has been incredibly hard and surprisingly easy.  I am better for it and I am tired and I am badly beaten. 

My work has suffered.  My 70 hour work week has been cut to less than forty - compiled from a series of minutes torn apart from hours and tucked between goodnight kisses and the taste of warm whiskey across my lips.  The clock moves always forward.

Chores once shared have become mine alone.  All nights are long and lonely.  All mornings are early and full of songs and frustration.

I do not believe that I have achieved anything worthy of praise or pity, only reflection.  Others face obstacles greater than mine on a daily basis.  They make the most.  They do their best.  They are stronger than I ever thought I was and when I sip from my glass the toast is to them.

But this is not their life, it is mine and while I was prepared and up to the challenge, it was unexpected in both timing and time.  From the frying pan to the fire is not a lateral move.  The heat is extreme and it is all relative.

Tomorrow my wife comes home after six weeks sitting at the bedside of her ailing father.  Six weeks of tears and whispers and shouts in the night.  Six weeks of walking in the shoes of a girl much younger.  Bedside seats are lessons in love and fear and the art of turning fond old memories that weren't. That is a chapter not yet closed.  Those wounds are still open.  He will still have a beside in need of sitting and she will carry her thoughts accordingly.  Her back will hurt.

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They do not expect her.  They have grown accustomed to the missing of their mother.  Six weeks is a long time gone and a father doing the best he can is still just one kiss goodnight no matter how much laughter fills the day or how much work is left to the forgotten.

Tomorrow will seem but another day to them, the routine of living with some parts missing.  They will be safe and loved and slightly lost.  She will be on a plane six weeks delayed and her dreams will be of little boy kisses grown wet with salt and the slightest linger of lukewarm chocolate.

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The title of this post is a quote from Victor Hugo.

Ford, the Inflatable Rear Seat Belt, and the Mechanics of Lifesaving

Ever been to a press conference? It's weird. There's a podium and stage lighting. TV cameras. Boom mics. And there are journalists. Real journalists. Next to you is a guy from the New York Times, on the other side of you is a guy from Fortune. They have digital voice recorders and degrees from Columbia and deadlines. You were the editor of your high school newspaper (for one year, and that was 20 years ago) and your pen - the one the Ford PR people gave you, thank God, because you forgot to bring yours - doesn't work. The only thing you have in common with any of them is that like many of these seasoned pros, you are hungover and cynical. 

I'd flown out to Detroit - Dearborn, to be be precise, home of the Ford Motor Company's World Headquarters -  the night before, the sole male member of a group of bloggers invited to cover this event. Ford would provide transportation, food, and lodging. We'd be privy to a big announcement: Ford would be unveiling a new safety innovation. We'd also get to have breakfast with Ford executives, and get a tour of the Safety Lab. The Safety Lab! Images of cars being smashed and crash test dummies flying through windshields danced in my head. Breaking stuff is cool. Of course I wanted to go.

The New Nissan Sedans - A DadCentric Review

I spent a recent weekend hanging out at Nissan's San Diego headquarters driving fast and taking chances.  I had to sign waivers.  I think.

The good people at Nissan flew me to San Diego, put me up at the W Hotel, fed me some fine grub and invited me to test drive their new line of sedans.  No money changed hands.  I didn't even tip the bellhop.

Let me preface this review with a bit of personal history: My dad was a Datsun man and that led to his becoming a Nissan man because something happened behind the scenes that we weren't privy to, possibly someone named Datsun dying at the hands of someone named Nissan followed by maniacal laughter and lots of files being sealed. Possibly.  Or maybe there was a buyout.  What the hell do I know?  The point is, I spent many a chore behind the wheel of a Nissan truck and I resented them accordingly.

Secondly, I used to have a Sentra back in "the day" and in said Sentra I had some of the best car "dates" ever.  It was epic.  Submarine races in a starlit desert.  My old cassette player should be bronzed.  My old back seat should be in a museum.  Old girlfriends should friend me on Facebook.  My Sentra experience canceled out a youth spent loading and unloading exercises in futility.  

I took Nissan's offer knowing damn well that we were even.

Summer Lessons

It's the day after Labor Day. Kids in school; wife at the corporate grindstone; dog at the groomer's being sanded down from two weeks of skirting tropical depressions and jellyfish. Me, I've assumed my usual position here while finishing the last known helping of Sierra Nevada Summerfest in town.

Beyond my front bay window, the tulip tree is shedding in the weakened UV.

The season is gone and I missed it.

Hit rewind, I say to my 12-ounce friend, be it digitally enhanced, left in scrawl on scraps in and under my desk or simply riding the wild synapses between gray spots in the brain:

Our Side of the Mountain

My boys like the complaining.  Car rides are too long.  Walking hurts legs.  This Chateau LeBlanc is supposed to be served slightly chilled, not room temperature.  They never want to go anywhere.  Once they are there they never want to leave.  They never want mustard on their burger unless you make it without it.  They want interest on any money I may borrow. You know, all the standards. It's kind of pathetic.

So it was against all things better judgment and common sense that we took them on a hike.  Their first hike.  A long hike.  A hike filled with switchback trails and steep paths.  A hike that many adults have complained about.  Actually, it was kind of an accident.

Do you know what the boys said?

Rocky Mountain Highs, Cheap and Otherwise

The experienced trekker believes in bad omens: mine were car-related. The Xterra needed a new catalytic convertor; oh, and the exhaust manifold has a leak, which means that the cabin might flood with carbon monoxide, which would cause us all to pass out, which might lead to the SUV soaring majestically off of a mountain road and into the thin Colorado air, which would be bad. The Audi might need a new water pump: the service manager said that his guy found some "dry residue" on the engine cover which might be indicative of a coolant leak, which might lead to the trusty A4 sputtering and dying in the Utah badlands, which might lead to my and the fam experiencing something like this. Somehow I knew that my decision to drive the family to the Rockies would come with a price. 

Legoland: The DadCentric Review

Conundrum: what does one do when nice marketing folks offer you a day at a big amusement park, complete with a behind the scenes tour AND a free breakfast, in the hopes that you'll write nice things about their park on your blog...and you really don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about the big amusement park, and you feel sorta bad about that?

You hold your nose and write on.

Friday we got the VIP treatment at Legoland. Backstory: we live about 10 miles away from Legoland, and prior to Friday we'd never been. Simple logic behind that, really: Lucas is Spacially Aware, and having a big amusement park ten minutes from one's house means "Can we go to Legoland? Can we go to Legoland? Can we go to Legoland?" on a daily basis. My friend and UpTake colleague Kim Prince did some wheeling and dealing, and lo, there we were, with a few other bloggers at the Legoland entrance, bright and early, ready to partake in some Danish plastic brick-themed excitement.

Nightmare at 34,000 Feet

Portrait of a frightened man: Jason Avant, thirty-nine, husband, father, and writer on vacation. Mr. Avant is what they call a "nervous flyer", which is a polite way of saying "flyer who requires several glasses of something strong and several handfuls of something stronger to prevent himself from having a nervous breakdown every time the plane shakes or makes a course". Tonight, his flight home will be like something out of an old episode of a TV series known as...The Twilight Zone.

Let me just say this about flying with 17 month old toddlers...oh, that's right. Zoe is now a toddler. As in "one who toddles". As in "one who started walking on her own the day before our flight to Florida, and who discovered that she really enjoys walking on her own, and getting her to sit still on a 5+ hour plane flight after she's discovered that walking is fun HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's a good one, God or Whatever Name One Choses To Give To The Force That Runs The Way That The Universe Unfolds; you're an asshole, you know that?" Anyway, flying with 17 month old toddlers is something that should never be done ever. In fact, I'd recommend not flying with a kid under 5; it will be a cold day in Hell before we do it again. I discovered this as soon as we took our seats on that flight home from Florida; a flight that became a voyage of nightmarish discoveries.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood

My life is spread across Craigslist and packed tight in so many boxes.  Every breath is a dollar spent and every memory a melancholy moment.  We are moving to pastures greener, literally- the greener part, not the pasture. 

We are leaving Los Angeles in a matter of weeks and I'm already over it.  Our corner of the county is for cowards and meth labs, hate crimes and crimes of hate.  This isn't the life of movie stars and swimming pools.  It is a life unfiltered and the daily grind has left us stained and lethargic.  

Say goodbye to Hollywood.

Any Other Man Stops and Talks

He's the walking man
Born to walk
Walk on walking man
Well now, would he have wings to fly
Would he be free
Golden wings against the sky
Walking man, walk on by So long, walking man, so long

I doubt James Taylor was singing this song for Dan Hughes, which makes him the only one not talking about Dan and his band of merry men.  I like to think that JT would be cool with it.  Does Sweet Baby James read DadCentric?  He should, he's got kids.

The internet has been abuzz with tales of Dan, a blogger and a gentleman from the U.K. (All That Comes With It) and the quest that he and nine friends have undertaken to support a cause close to all of us.

The lads are walking 78 miles through the countryside of England in six days to raise money and awareness for the Joseph Salmon Trust.  As a matter of fact, at the time of this writing Day 1 is already in the books and I assume that their collective feet are soaking and beers are being savored.  So far, so good.

If you are unfamiliar with "The Walk" or the charity they are supporting, then here is what you should know.   The Joseph Salmon Trust has been set up to help parents bereaved of a child.

Joseph Salmon was a happy and seemingly healthy 3-year-old little boy, no different than the two small boys sleeping down the hall from where I now sit. No different than your son or your daughter. No different than we ourselves were so many years ago.

In the words of his parents, Neil and Rachael Salmon, "Joseph was a happy, healthy three year old who loved life. He enjoyed playing with his toy trains, his cars and his pretend kitchen. He had a busy social life, with lots of friends from nursery, friends who lived nearby and his little sister. He enjoyed cooking with his mummy, going on trains and buses with his daddy, and playing outside with anyone who would join in. Joseph had a passion for books and had just started to ‘read’ them to his younger sister.

"It felt like his life was just beginning."

Joseph died on April 1st, 2005.

He died from streptococcal pneumonia. "It’s very rare and it took him, although suddenly, very peacefully," said his mother. "When I went in to him in the morning it was obvious from his posture that he’d just gone into a deeper and deeper sleep and never knew anything about it. This too is what all the medical personnel associated with him told us. There are not many (if any) consolations when you lose a child, but at least he didn’t suffer. And as a parent, it’s one of the things you want most for your child isn’t it?"

Chances are that if you are reading DadCentric you are a parent, and if not there is an even better chance that you are someone's child.  This isn't a charity based on hope and cures.  This is a charity for those that have lost more than anyone ever should.  It is a charity for remembering.

On behalf of DadCentric, thank you, Dan.  Thank you to you and your friends, and best of luck.

For more on "The Walk" including information on donations and daily updates please visit All That Comes With It.

Also:

The Joseph Salmon Trust

The Dales Walk

Ordinary Dads Walking for an Extraordinary Cause

Video Diary