We longed for nothing.

We long for (more) sleep: morning theft.

We awake with two between us. Let us be bookends, let us be bridges, let us be connecting and connective forces to one another and the social systems around us. But…let’s not all, always wake up in bed together. We can build bridges in other ways.

My brother Jeremy sends me a picture of himself drinking a pot of coffee. Literally, chugging a big glass freshly-brewed pot of coffee. A 15-month old lingers in the background, watching, observing, waiting to strike with mischief afoot. She is her dad’s daughter, and her mother’s daughter. It is such a good thing: to have so much good come from both your parents.

Later:
The Olders took the Youngers to the track. This is a simple sentence to write. But such a surreal one to experience in the present: my daughter drove herself and three younger brothers to the track to run and workout. They came back, intact and happy-ish, albeit plenty of banter and fairly-cheerful tussling.

They left. They came back. What happened in between? I know bits and pieces. I just want to know that our relationship with them will always be the same ritual: the bookending of leaving and then returning. Going away, coming home. Always home.

But is altruism really dead?

Becca, bless her Ma Theresa heart, is covering for a colleague today. Again. I am home, chilling, relaxing, trying to decide what to fill the time with. Video games? Online shopping? Virtual poker? I guess I know how to do the second one. Or…wait: there’s children here. I’ll hang with them.

The wisdom of wariness regarding nostalgia : Song of the South.

Some of my favorite films are from the 1980s. Karate Kids I and II. Witness. Predator. I’ve seen all of these in adulthood and they still hold up well. Really well. Others should have stayed buried in the decade. Yes, we need to be careful of the presentism that comes with judging past events through the lens of our modern understandings, but even at that, some ideas have trouble passing a litmus test.

Where does 1983’s Michael Keaton vehicle Mr. Mom factor in this question?

It’s got plenty of heart. Keaton’s a dad who ends up swapping roles. This being the ‘80s, that means she goes to work and he stays home to manage house and raise children. Of course, it’s supposed to be believable-ish, so this switch is intended to be temporary. And, of course, he is woefully underprepared to handle any kind of domestic duties, until he brings in his masculinity and chainsaw to balance out the femininity of his current role.

There’s charisma, there’s chemistry, there’s laughs, there’s some funny setups and some very uncomfortable ones. Is it prescient and forward-leaning, or archaic and treating the idea of a dad running domestic life as little more than a joke vehicle?

Maybe both. In the meantime, in this family, we raise children and work and perform domestic duties as needed. Sometimes in tandem, sometimes in parallel. There is a twin mantra instilled in me from a young age:

Wherever you’re at, make yourself indispensable,

and

Take the initiative.

Those two things will serve you well. I may not have made it to a C-suite or Academy Awards. I do, however, have a healthy, vibrant family with a life that is rich in numerous ways. And it takes both of us, all of us, jumping in to do what must be done and moving on from this is your job, not mine.

Thus is the day, another day, one of many days, with our children. I will bring laughs and hugs and discipline and creativity and fun and admonishment and patience-lost and patience-rediscovered. It will be a rich array of many emotions and experiences, just like every other day. I will do well and I will make mistakes and I will help make memories and I will grow.

I will grow. To change is not a choice. To grow is.

The death of what?

Didn’t sleep much last night for various reasons. My greatest understanding is that the majority of sleep experts recommend turning on your phone when you have trouble slumbering during the night. I am a steadfast believer in trusting experts when it confirms my belief, so I watched To Live and Die in L.A., William “Exorcist” Friedkin’s 1985 neo-noir action thriller with a manic William Peterson as a cop arguably worse than the guys he’s chasing. Eventually sleep found me again.

Later, I received assistance from our youngest in watering our many flowers and trying to give them a little extra end-of-summer life. He followed up his help watering greenery by watering our floor with breakfast cereal spilled all over, while Peter, Paul & Mary’s 1967 classic 1700 blared from our record player. It’s hard to get too irritated when PP&M is soundtracking a day. Yet somehow, I find a way.

We longed for nothing and were satisfied.
-Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan’s Song

Small pleasures (longing intermission).

Soup and salad outside for lunch.
Boys combining LEGO bricks and G.I. Joes.
A late afternoon swim at the grandparents.
Burritos outside for supper.
Apples, apples, apples: we inspect trees, alongside deer who are enjoying the summer feast available for the plucking.

Matters to which one must attend; that one being me (I long to not do them).

Work on getting vinyl siding up again.
Finish caulking garage window and installing trim.
Paint second coat of exterior window trim
Finish fixing J-channel on front door

A 15-year old with his younger brothers.

He has been expecially…thoughtful this week with them. It’s hard, it’s impossible to state what a gift this is. It’s not to imply he isn’t other weeks. He is a kind and hilarious and involved brother. But this week has been especially neat to see the ways he’s included them - 8 and 5 - in various dialogues and activities.

I longed to not have some of these things in the day: spills du jour.

A boy spills breakfast cereal.
I spill cold coffee.
Someone breaks a glass jar. The person who broke it does not want to take responsibility for breaking it. It was one of the people who spilled the coffee or the breakfast cereal.

Shoot. Come clean time. It was me.

The Cove.

We continued watching The Cove together. It’s a documentary Becca and I watched together when it came out in 2009, and is impossible to forget upon seeing. It follows a crew as they try and video evidence of dolphins being captured for marine parks and slaughtered in a Japanese cove. It’s a thriller and brings up many launching pads for discussion.

Yes, we watched with an 8- and 6-year old. Is this appropriate? Like many issues in the world today, the answer is…it’s relative and nuanced and in our case: yes, it was appropriate. How much do you expose your children to difficult or challenging content?

Our two youngest are huge naturalists and animal advocates, so this was a subject close to their hearts. The film is illuminating, chilling, saddening, and brought forth many emotions. One of the ongoing dialogues we’ve had in this era of casual cruelty and callousness is how do engage in healthy ways with people who have regressive and/or reprehensible views?

I have made a huge deal about separating a behavior from a person’s identity. Is it a fundamental good to be honest?

If a person lies, are they a liar? Or did they lie? There is a difference. A huge difference.

One is a characteristic that embodies a person. Something done habitually, ritually. It’s climate. It’s their identity.

The other is an action or behavior done once. It’s a mistake, an outlier. It’s weather. It's not their identity. It’s something they did, and they can grow from it.

Are the fishermen in The Cove horrible people? I say No. They are a reflection of many things, including their history, culture, and point of view.

What we see in this documentary film, although I like it, is a reflection of many choices made, of cuts and angles and context included or left out, of a single perspective given in service of the main message: the horrific treatment of dolphins.

This is the difficult aspect to bake into how we look at the world, but I think now, more than ever, it is important: the world is not filled with Good and Bad, or Good and Evil. The world is filled with a lot of Good, quite a lot of Bad, some Evil, and a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that’s Gray; that’s needs context and conversation and discussion and dialogue and understanding.

Understanding is not the same as tolerance, acceptance, or submission. It’s seeking to empathize and hold a different perspective intellectually, emotionally in order to have a clearer picture.

At what age do you “teach empathy?”

This is a world in which even the word itself has been telegraphed as one the Far Right is coming after: a negative. The feelers are out there; it’s not just the way the word itself is disappearing from that political segment’s messaging, it’s the way it’s being tested, quietly in ways to frame it as something undesirable, in the name of “calling evil evil,” et cetera, in the pursuit of moving everything to the fringes.

So…if this is what our children, collectively, are faced with from adults, how and where and when do they soak in these characteristics, these ideas?

They have to start somewhere, sometime. Difficult conversations about the Gray.

We could start Yesterday or Tomorrow. Or…

…we would start today. Today’s a good day to start something hard. To dream of a better world and simultaneously long for nothing. These are the contradictions we hold aloft inside.