From the other room, I hear one of my spawn murmur, "oh my god."
Top Management looks up, concerned. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine," I reassure her, recognizing that precise tone of voice, one the people in the family only ever—but also always—use whenever take their first bite of one of her special dishes, in this case, her fried potatoes.
Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@maxim_tajer?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Maxim Tajer</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/burning-wood-x3S1aGQNgro?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a> and not actually an example of Top Management's culinary artistry
In our house, it is the obligation of each person to go through their pockets before putting their jeans in the laundry. I check anyway, almost every time, and if I find money, it’s mine. (I mean, I’ve never followed through on that, but they don’t know that…for sure.)
But as with many other things, the rules are different for my good lady wife, for a variety of reasons. The first is that she works easily twice as hard as I do, and maybe thrice. and I work, conservatively, 5x as hard as the rest put together. So different sets of standards on different things apply.
Also, I simply love her more than I love them. So.
So. I didn’t expect Top Management to empty her pockets before I washed her jeans tonight, because I’m the one who grabbed them and brought them down. But I went through her pockets anyway.
Did I find money? I did not. Did I find pens? I did not. Did I find gum? I did not. (Semi-suprisingly.) Did I find love letters to or from her to another man, known by our offspring as The New Guy? I may or may not have.
Did I find peanuts? In both front pockets? I most certainly did. Quite a few peanuts? You betcha.
Why?
Because, of course, she keeps peanuts on hand at all times.
As no doubt every one of my 193,428 readers remembers, we have a long-standing (4-year-old) unbreakable tradition (this is the second time) of creating a lemon pig. It went over huge and made us all very happy until we realized, several months hence, that it had given birth to a few thousand fruit flies but hey omelets, eggses, all that.
On the bus over a few days ago, The Bean was assaulted by a lemon. Which is to say, one was rolling down the aisle and she picked it up and screamed, "who the hell does this damn lemon belong to?! Answer me now or as the FSM is my witness I was STEAL it!" Shortly thereafter, she arrived with a lemon for our venerated tradition.
Which we then forgot to do. Until New Year's Day! Which is close enough, I have been reliably informed by absolutely no one.
The Golden Weasel and I worked together for hours (nearly three minutes) to create this majestic and nigh upon if not quite entirely sacred beast.
The Weasel decided our photos were not quite capturing the innate power of the lemon pig, despite being between the toaster oven and the butter bell and where else is embued with such gravitas, outside perhaps Weathertop?
So we spruced up the atmosphere just a tid.
Satisfied at last, we sent the photographic evidence to the pig's original procurer, who promptly turned around and somehow against all odds did the impossible and made it even better.
I have never been so excited for a new album to drop in my life.
The lemon pig, of course, is meant to bring good luck to the year and I now think back upon it, we did the first one just before 2020 and COVID and oh my god what have I done?
So I'm in my office and I realize that as I'm looking at my computer screen I'm murmuring “oh, aren’t you pretty? You are so pretty. [sigh] No. But...you’re just so pretty, though…”
And then I realize Max has come downstairs and passed by the door and it's possible she heard me whispering sweet nothings. And for a moment I worry before I decide that, yeah, she probably has a pretty good idea of what I'm looking at.
Of course they're silly and unnecessary. But...but...when I was 9 years old, see...
So Top Management is discussing a Mary Oliver poem with the Golden Weasel and the Brawn and, as so often happens, she mentions something Joyce Carol Oates once said about the writings of James Joyce and how that tied in with Virginia Wolfe which led to Marcel Proust and it just goes to show that if you give a writer a poem to discuss she's going to want a cookie.
So Top Management walks into the kitchen and starts telling The Rose, The Bean and The Golden Weasel about how when we were kids Pop-Tarts came in a box with 8 Pop-Tarts, 4 pouches with 2 tarts each. And how when there were three kids in the family, this meant the tarts didn’t divide evenly and therefore someone was going to get more than the others.
And then she says, “this shirt doesn’t fit me.”
And holds out this:
The shriek that instantly erupted from three sets of vocal cords nearly shattered every piece of glass in the house.
So we're done watching our nightly television show and are just reading quietly. There's been silence for maybe a minute and a half when suddenly Top Management says, “What?!”
I laugh. "Sweetheart, no one said anything."
Without moving, she says, “The Rose said, ‘I’ll start with the good news: bed bugs’ — bed bugs is not good news." There's a very brief pause before she adds, "Dreams are weird. One part of your brain is telling another part of your brain stories and neither part knows about the other or that it's just a story and not real."
So I say something almost verging on mildly humorous to Top Management, something fully deserving of the patient and somehow still fond look it consequently receives.
"Ah..." I murmur, "I'm the best."
"You are!" the Brawn agrees from the other room.
"Hey hey! You hear that?" I ask my good lady wife. "Your youngest just said that I'm the best! He thinks I'm better'n you!"
There's a brief pause, and then the Brawn answers, "Mom's better than the best. I thought that was universally acknowledged."
A few days ago, as I got up from the table to go downstairs to my office, I made a sound that slightly alarmed The Brawn. Top Management explained that the sound in question was one grownups make when they have to go to a meeting to which they didn’t wish to go. We said we could pretty much guarantee he’d make the same sound himself someday. He was, understandably skeptical, and suggested we check in with him in 10 or 20 years.
So I just sent email reminders to myself to do just that.
So. If gmail’s still a thing in 5, 10, 15 and 20 years, I’m going to get an email from myself with the subject “Brawn reminder” which simply says
Ask him “did you make the noise grownups make when they have to go to a meeting yet?”
It was really, really trippy to schedule an email for October 25, 2027. But not nearly as trippy as scheduling one for October 25, 2042.
And, of course, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll even be around for all--or even any--of them. Will whoever inherited my email account be surprised to get an email from long-gone me? Will the AI which has long been in command of the earth metaphorically nod, now able to check this one thing off its list?
"I am so strong and capable and if my parents cared about me less I could show it off sometimes." — our poor self-sufficient daughter, suffering under the unbearable weight of helpful parents
So Top Management mentioned that she'd read a study which indicated that how often a couple laughs together is an excellent predictor of how long they'll stay together.
"Well, dammit, there's our problem right there," I say. "So all we have to do is..."
We look at each other. And burst out laughing.
"Great," she says. "There's another week."
Now whenever we laugh at something, one of us says, "Great. Now we have to stay together one more week."
"Hey," I say, heading downstairs. "It's 8:15, so almost time for the boys to get ready for bed, so I can read. Tonight we get to the part where Strider kills Pippin!"
From behind me I hear girls shriek "Daddy!" in perfect outraged three-part harmony.
There are so many people living in our house that just now I started laundry—all pinks and reds, as I pretty much always have so much to wash that I can very strictly separate out by colors—and thought, huh, small load today…because it "only" contained 7 shirts, in addition to a half dozen pairs of socks and about as many underwears, as well as a hand towel, two washcloths, three cleaning cloths and a kitchen towel.
It's possible my perspective is ever so slightly skewed.
So we're doing Film Club. We've watched several silent films—The General, City Lights, a few others—and Duck Soup. Now we're starting the Westerns section of Film Club, and this in some ways the key to Film Club, given the importance of the western to the history of American cinema and, for that matter, the American contribution to art in general. We're starting at more or less the beginning—I thought about showing them The Great Train Robbery and might at some point but for all its historical importance, it is one incredibly long 12 minutes—with Stagecoach. Great introduction to John Wayne and John Ford and the western; with the benefit of hindsight, it really is remarkable just how many themes and motifs and tropes and even visual standards are introduced in this early classic (including what I swear is a rough draft of the famous framing shot from The Searchers).
One of which, of course—though not unique to the western, by any means—is the Hooker with the Heart of Gold. And indeed Claire Trevor is wonderful as Dallas, the woman run out of town at the beginning. There are so many good characters, quickly sketched, superbly acted. And the vistas—good lord, but some of those Arizona panoramas can just rip your heart out with their majesty.
But there are a lot of characters and the audio was sometimes a wee bit dicey, so I checked in with the youngest two a few times, just to make sure they were following. And with the exception of understandably not knowing what a whiskey drummer was, they did great.
Except for one key bit.
"Why are they all being so mean to her?" The Brawn asks. Referring, of course, to Dallas.
"She's a woman of low reputation," I say. I get a blank look in return.
"She's a lady of ill repute," I say. More blankness.
"She a prostitute," I say.
"Oh," he says. "What's a prostitute?"
"Someone who has sex for money."
"Oh," he says. And turns back to the screen.
Welcome to the Peterson Homeschool. Come for Film Club, stay for Intro to Sex Work 101.
"Is it?" I ask. "Is it though? Or does being with such a person simply make it impossible for the, say, husband to ever win an argument against, say, his good lady wife? I'm asking for a friend."
So the Golden Weasel and I have, on several occasions, watched videos such as this:
Apparently, being in the room while something like this is happening is an astonishing experience, as one feels as much as hears the sound. It's sometimes called a sound bath or, more specifically, a gong bath. We have expressed how very much we'd like to experience something like this in person.
So when this ad went up on Craigslist the other day, I showed it to her. "I found the perfect present for your next birthday," I said.
She looked at my phone and gasped. "Yes!" she hissed.
Naturally, the Brawn was nearby and, naturally, he was intrigued. "What is it?"
I started to angle my phone so he could see. Before his eyes could even focus, she quickly added, about the hypothetical future gift which is never actually going to be acquired, "you're not allowed to touch it."
So The Brawn and I have been making our way, slowly, through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of several projects the various spawn and I have started as a way to get through the pandemic. We're now up to the greatly underrated Doctor Strange and, as if more proof of his intelligence were needed, The Brawn absolutely loved it, justly reveling in its visual sumptuousness.
But that wasn't the only thing that resonated with him. During a scene during which the magnificent Chiwetel Ejiofor questions another character's morality, the titular hero argues, "She was complicated."
Beside me, from the darkness, I hear a voice quietly respond, "Aren't we all."
I grab my cup of coffee and head down to the basement to get to work. The Bean is lying on the sofa, curled up under a blanket, in a shaft of sunlight, reading. It looks so cozy I am moved to say for perhaps the first time in my life, "Bean, I have thought about it, and I think you should know that I love you."
"Yay!" is the perhaps somewhat expected but still gratifying response.
I take a few more steps and then hear: "I'll get back to you on how I feel."
I am luckier than most parents in that most of my kids are pretty unpicky when it comes to foods. The problem is that there are so many of them, so that some will love a given meal, some are okay with it and at least one dislikes it. And because I am the most sensitive of souls, I try to avoid making my children unhappy. I fail. I fail every single day, many times. But I try. (I just hide that I try.)
Which inevitably leads to scenes such as this:
I like to think it's a bonding moment. Because what brings kids together like sneering at a sibling who's being good?
Top Management and I step outside the house for our daily walk, or our Daily Staff Meeting, as we refer to it. (And which it kinda is.) It's a lovely day, mid-50s, cloudy, only the tiniest hint of a breeze.
Suddenly, the clouds disappear and we find ourselves in blazing full-strength sunlight, not a shadow in sight.
"What the hell's with the sun?" I say, shocked.
Top Management laughs. "That's the most Portland thing I've ever heard."
Top Management sighs the sigh of the deeply and justifiably exhausted.
"Man," she says. "I ate so many frogs today. I ate all the frogs today."
I look over at her. "What?!" I say, not unreasonably.
She looks surprised that I'm surprised. "You know, the Mark Twain thing."
"What?!" I again say, still not unreasonably.
"You know, his thing about how if you're served a plate full of things you have to eat and you like all of them except there's also a frog there and you have to eat it, you should eat it first?"
Top Management and I are watching the second season of a very good show. It's near the end of the first episode and so far it's good, maybe even very good. We're both intrigued and up for continuing.
Until the end of the episode. When there's a twist and Top Management suddenly sits up straight.
"Wait a second," she breathes. "Is this...is that place...a cult?!"
And suddenly "intriguing" just morphed into Must See TV.
Sometimes I wonder about the various Roads Not Taken. And sometimes I'm very, very glad they weren't took.
It's a weekend morn and we've been lazing in bed, reading. And for an hour, we've been going back and forth, saying we need to get up, it's time to get up, we're hungry, we're starving, we should really get up.
Finally, after an hour my very deep need for coffee gets the better of me and I roll out of bed and shamble towards the door.
I catch a glimpse of my good lady wife and there's a look of utter betrayal on her face.
It's something they never tell you ahead of time. Or maybe they do and you just can't really understand it until you experience it for yourself. How sometimes you'll be looking at your kids and your heart will physically hurt from how much you love them, how lucky you feel you are, how undeserving.
And then other times they'll do or say something—or many somethings—and you think, yeah, that guy had a point.
I've finished reading the bedtime story to the three youngest—my fourth, I think, and final time through The Lord of the Rings, he said sadly—and I finish with the family ritual my late, great brother John introduced me to, which is asking each of the kids to say something good about their day; Johnny had his boys list three things each, I believe, but I've got way more kids, and their lives are apparently exponentially less rich, because they sometimes struggle to come up with a single good thing about their day. (To be fair, if I allowed The Brawn to list video game-related stuff, he'd never have any problem listing a dozen good things about his day.)
They each cough up a good thing about their day, and then Max—who's taken to sitting in on our evening's reads–adds hers. I call into the blue room (which isn't blue) to ask Bean for her good thing about the day, as usual, and she chimes in. I don't bother asking the Rose, because although I can't see her, she's always got headphones on at this time of night and can't hear us anyway.
As we're wrapping up, the Brawn does something that annoys the Golden Weasel. "Please don't," she says, the words polite, the tone sharp, and although I didn't see what happened, I saw her twist her body in a way that would indicate he'd probably poked her in the back with a toe.
It's late, I don't feel like getting into it, since I'm heading downstairs and he's about to sleep and she's going to sweep the first floor, so I push the parental guidance off for a future date, another day, hopefully when his mother's on duty. But without even really thinking about it, I find myself humming the bassline to MC Hammer's best-known song (said bassline, of course, having been...let's say "borrowed" from Rick James).
Suddenly, from the blue comes a surprising voice yelling "Can't touch this!"
There's a stunned silence as we process what just happened.
Then I yell at the Rose, "You can hear us?!"
There's another pause, briefer this time, then she bursts laughing. "Four years of pretending I couldn't hear you so I didn't have to come up with a good thing of the day down the drain! 'Can't Touch This' is just too powerful!"
"Hey," I ask, as I occasionally do about assorted things, "can I buy [this wicked expensive thing I really want but absolutely do not need in the slightest]?"
"Of course," Top Management replies, as she always does. Perhaps because she knows I virtually never actually do buy the thing in question, no matter what the thing is this time. (Although it's pretty much always musical gear.)
I shake my head. "You're an enabler."
She shrugs. "You're more realistic and sensible with money than I am, so I figure, if you think it's a good idea, then it probably is."
We look at each other for a long moment.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Because I thought you were the one who was realistic and sensible with money."
We stare at each other in mounting horror.
"Well, the good news is, I think I just figured out where we've been going wrong all these years."
So a few months back, Top Management suggested that we try seriously revamping the way our day is structured for the first time in decades. I had mentioned several times over the years that I seem to work best late at night. She pointed out that now that our kids are all old enough that none of them—not even The Brawn—gets up at the crack of dawn anymore. And even if he does get up hours before any of the others, now being a (GOOD LORD) 12-year-old, he can obviously take of himself just fine.
So I tried it. After watching an hour or so of television together, she heads off to bed and I head down to my office in the basement to work.
And work I do. I guess I had thought I might be a bit more productive, but a bad night's work now is generally more productive than a really good day's work used to be, and there have been nights where I've gotten three or four times as much work done in one late-night shift as I used to accomplish in three or four decent days. It's a bit crazy.
It was only after we'd been on this new schedule for a few weeks that it occurred to me that virtually every paper or story I wrote in high school or college, I wrote late at night. I always chalked it up to procrastination, and I'm sure there was plenty of that mixed in there too. But mainly I think it's that the writing part of my brain only really truly comes alive after midnight.
So it's been great. There are downsides, obviously, including the fact that I think I'm always at least a bit sleep-deprived, but since the primary symptoms of that are fatigue, irritability, mood changes and difficulty focusing and remembering, who can tell the difference?
At least I thought that was the main downside. Until tonight. When I discovered that the real problem with working crazy productively at 2:47 in the AM is that you might suddenly get an insanely itchy itch right in the middle of the back where you can't reach it and despite there being 7 other people in the house there's no one to scratch it for you.
So we're sitting around the dining and living room, listening to baroque brass music, as is our family's tradition on Sunday mornings, thanks to a book I read in college called Who's Afraid of Classical Music, by Michael Walsh, which stated definitively that the only time one would wish to hear a baroque trumpet concerto—from which it naturally followed that one would nearly always wish to hear baroque brass during Sunday mornings. So for years we've been listening to various baroque (and classical, an era on which I am otherwise am somewhat lukewarm) horn and trumpet concerti.
But sometimes I'll switch it up slightly. So last week we listened to a brass arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's magnificent Art of the Fugue. And this week I first put on Jason Vieaux playing lute works by Bach, arranged for classical guitar.
Then, when I switched to trumpet pieces, also by Bach
I heard someone behind me actually say, "whoo hoo!"
I looked over and saw The Bean sitting on the couch, reading on her phone, and asked if she'd really just "whoo hoo'd" the trumpet.
She gave me a puzzled look and said, "well, yeah."
So it's all fun and games when you're working in your basement studio shortly before midnight and your 22-year-old comes down with a question and the two of you find yourselves watching a cool video and laughing until the next video autostarts and this one is a giant spider and you instinctively and frankly quite reasonably yell "no!" and apparently wake your good lady wife out of a deep sleep and it's clearly all the kid's fault as usual.
It's such a strange thing. Thanks to FB—one of the few things that truly evil entity does which is not, as far as I can tell, actively attempting to institute fascism—I know that I have at least six friends who all have birthdays on December 17th: three colleagues from the world of comics, one from homeschooling circles, one of my best friend's little brothers, and, oh, yes, my good lady wife. Not to mention post-punk musicians Bob Stinson and Mike Mills. As well as Bill Pullman, Eugene Levy, Pope Frankie, Sarah Paulson and, of course, Bob Guccione.
All of which leads one to wonder: what the hell is in the air/water every year nine months earlier?
And then I did the math. And I realized that what all those parents clearly had in common was an absolute refusal to beware the Ides of March. (Either that or a rather satyric carpe diem attitude.)
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