Follow-up to Poop, Pee, and Destruction

I told M-ito he couldn’t sing the Barney song anymore. We went to lay badmitton at the park and were resting in the sun after an hour of swatting birdies at each other, most of the time missing and laughing. No more stabbing, or cutting off heads, or crushing the purple dinosaur in song. He took it with a nod of his head. Okay.

Mom-ita added on the banning of the Monkey song – which went something like this: I had to pee. I couldn’t find a tree. So I peed on a monkey and the monkey cursed me. She said this in the car a few hours later. He argued it a little but gave in quickly. Mom-ita’s word is law.

My idea of just letting the two boys get this out of their systems in the first five minutes of the car ride just didn’t feel right. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But not in execution. You got to trust your gut. Some of their wordplay I do find funny (a problem in and of itself). I’m a sucker for toilet humor and slapstick. Still it doesn’t feel right to hear it come for 7 and 8 year olds. So much of a 7 year old’s world is about these kinds of things. Violent slapstick can be funny. Toilet humor always big for belly laughs. But when is it okay for them to repeat it or make it up themselves? My gut told me to stop it. Mom-ita took action way before I’d taken mine. That moment in the car brought me up to speed. No more monkey song. Now the decision is easy. In order to stay in line with what Mom-ita has decreed (No toilet humor or violence) I’ll just say no. I can’t wait to try this out this week when I drive M-ito to school. Gulp. Oh the trials of fatherhood.

What Do 2nd and 3rd Grade Boys Talk About?

It starts as soon as we get in the car. I’ve only driven the boys (M-ito and his friend Austino) to school (or picked them up from school) a handful of times but it happens each time. They get in the car and start talking about poop, pee, and destruction. Here’s an example.

“Poop, poop, poop, poop,” Austino says as soon as they close the car door and buckle themselves in.

“Poop and pee, poop and pee, poop and pee,” M-ito adds in. They are both hysterical with laughter. I smile back at them through the rear view mirror.

“All right you two,” I say, “that’s enough with the poop and pee.” I know once they are in school none of this will be allowed. I figure it’s better to get it all out now so when they don’t stop right away I let it go on for  a few minutes before I veer them towards another subject.

On Friday they both were singing the Barney song but it went a little like this: “I hate you, you hate me, we’re an unhappy family, I’m gonna take a saw and cut off your head, then Barney will soon be dead.” Writing it down it doesn’t sound too good. I know, I know. But in the car, riding home after a full day of school, being good, following the rules, not using any toilet language, being gentlemen, a little letting loose can’t be bad. Can it? Variations of Barney being taken out went on for a good ten minutes with the two boys laughing and giggling at each other’s humor. Eventually I told them that enough was enough and asked them to change the subject – but they only sang louder. I should have figured that wouldn’t stop them but I’m slow at these things. Regardless, I liked to hear them laugh and didn’t want to crush their creative work directly, just channel it somewhere else. So I started word games with them. How many words can you name that rhyme with red? Then I spy with my little eye. It worked for a while, but poor Barney the purple dinosaur eventually got knocked off a few more times before we got home.

This trend towards violence and not understanding what it means disturbs me. It’s not real to the kids. But, do I want it to be real for them? Do I want them to have seen people get killed for real? Dead bodies, for real?  I’ve seen enough violence and the results of violence in my life and I’d rather not have them see any of it even when they’re older. On the other hand, they don’t take it seriously. It’s like a movie or a video game to them. And so it’s funny.

I remember a number of my friends in High School used to enjoy seeing the George Romero films like Dawn of the Dead. They laughed at the gore and violence because it was so over-the-top to them. I couldn’t watch the films. They terrified me and it all looked way too real. I couldn’t laugh at the horror of what I saw on the screen. I was not made to see horror films.

My son does not see violent films – he barely gets to see PG rated animated films and we hand-pick his films very carefully. He still hasn’t watched the third Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith because I think it’s just too violent. M-ito couldn’t sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua last year because it was “too scary.” He get’s scared easily and we don’t want him to have nightmares. Yet when he plays Wi Lego Star Wars what is the purpose of most of the action? Well… it’s to kill all the other characters. You get points for taking their hearts. “Take out your light saber and kill them,” is commonly heard during play. It makes me cringe. What do parents do about this desensitization?

M-ito told me a story on Friday about his school. Three 8th graders had to do some public speaking at assembly last week – it’s an assignment each of them has to complete during the school year – and one of them tried to be funny in his speech. M-ito explained it to me like this.

“One boy told us he was describing his trip to Japan and said, ‘I was looking out the window of the airplane and saw three torpedoes fly out at a building and blow it up. Then I saw people jumping off the building, wait, no I was only kidding!’ That’s what he said, ‘I was only kidding!” M-ito laughed – I sensed feeling sophisticated because he got the humor. He thought it was funny – as funny as talking about poop, farts, or pee.

The first time I heard him tell this story, we were in the car on the way home from school and Austino was in the car too. They both thought it funny. I smiled but felt a little sick to my stomach – a little disturbed. I was on the 16th floor of Tower II the day the Trade Center’s came down and the story just rang differently for me. I didn’t say anything to him about it. I smiled and listened to them laugh. The second time he told the story it was to Mom-ita a few days later and I was listening while sitting next to him at dinner. I looked at Mom-ita after he’d finished and neither one of us talked for a moment. M-ito was giggling again.

We both finally looked at him and said, “You know it could be that people will think about the World Trade Center when someone tells that kind of story. They might not think it funny. People really got killed there – a lot of people.” But M-ito was working on only 8 hours of sleep and as soon as I got serious he tuned me out. Of course I said two or three sentences more and had to have Mom-ita tell me to stop, “He’s not listening to you anymore,” before I finally did find silence.

I liked it when M-ito thought Oswald was the best TV show. There was no violence. There was Big Banana day. There was a picnic in the park. There was lunch at the local diner meeting friends. Now my son is growing up and the volume is being turned up too.

When it comes down to it, if I have a choice between laughing at violence or poop and pee, I’ll take the poop and pee any day.

Hobbit Tales

I’m reading The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien, to M-ito. I’ve been waiting to read it to him forever. Well, since I read it when I was ten or so. My friend Joe showed it to me and I read it and fell in love with it’s total sense of adventure immediately. I’m a sucker for a fantasy story. Dwarves, dragons, elves, hobbits, hero’s wizards – you can’t beat it. Since then I’ve read it twice but it’s been over ten years since the last time. I’ve told myself it would be great to read it to my son or daughter one day. Now that I have a son, I’ve been eyeing it each year, and looking at M-ito to wonder if it was time yet. This year since starting school he read How to Train Your Dragon by Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (traslated from the Norse by Cressida Cowel) and a number of other books on his own that speak of adventure and new worlds, swordplay and dragons. With Hiccup under his belt I thought it was time for The Hobbit. It’s dark and there’s lots of danger and the tone is menacing, but so far he’s loved it.

Reading it has been hard, though, bitter-sweet to be exact. My friend Joe, who told me about the book after he’d read it, had been my best friend since we were both in 4th grade together. We met the first day of school – a new school for me – I left my lunch box behind and Joe took it home with him. He lived down the block from me. I went to his house to retrieve it and so a friendship was born on a sunny September day. We saw each other every day until, when we were both in seventh grade, maybe a month away from the end of school, he was killed. It was a freakish accident. He walked home from school early without letting anyone know. There were torrential rains. Crossing the rail road tracks he was hit. I can still picture the black sky, still hear the downpour against the school roof while I sat in math class. They announced his death over the loud speaker just before school ended.

So many things I do as a father remind me of my own childhood. I watch my son and watch myself as a child, or I watch my son and think of what was and what could have been. I have to remind myself, like so many other parents, that he is not me. Now that’s a challenge they never told me about in the school for parents.

The Hobbit is a wonderful book and I love the way my son pulls the covers up closer around him while I read to him about the three Trolls arguing about how to kill and eat good old Bilbo and his dwarven companions. He peers over my shoulder, snuggling in close. At the scary parts he covers his ears with his hands and closes his eyes. “Don’t read anymore!” He says, then takes his hands off his ears and asks me to read on. “Which do you want?” I ask. “Read on!” he says. I love being able to comfort him, being able to be his warmth when the story makes him shiver.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says, “Hold the sadness and pain of smasara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the Great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.” I try to remind myself of this, when my heart aches. I try to see the beauty of my son’s smile.

Today M-ito told me he wanted to write a new book of his own. In school they’re writing stories now – fiction. They’ve moved on from non-ficiton memoir and he’s thrilled because he loves to tell stories. “I’m going to write a story,” he says, “about a character I’ve had an idea about for a long time. His name is the Sizzler.”

All I can think of is the restaurant chain called The Sizzler, but I tell him to go on – to tell me about him.

“It’s about a Sizzler that has never had any adventures but he gets dragged into a bunch of them and all kinds of things happen.”

Now I can see the Great Eastern Sun.

I Help People Who Help People

Friday last week was Community Worker day at M-ito’s school. I’d scheduled an hour in the morning to attend and talk to the kids in the second grade about what I did for a living. Poppi, my father, was coming too. He’s an animal rescuer and rehabilitator, liscenced (not certified as he would be the first to remind me). He specializes in ducks and geese, uses the moniker, Duck Man. In other words he was set up to be a real hit with the kids.

I’d just come home from a trip to North Dakota where I got to run a 3-hour workshop for 100 judges, lawyers and drug treatment workers. I spoke right after the governer of the state and the supreme court justice spoke. They got ten minutes each and I got the rest of the day. Knowing that made me smile. What I hadn’t really thought about was how I was going to explain my work to a group of second graders. What is it that I really do?

I remember when my son first explained my job to someone else. He was four and said I was an officer because I worked in an office. Once he said I was a fencer, because he saw me fence once. I liked both of those answers. Now he knows I travel, teach yoga, teach other subjects like public speaking to judges and lawyers, and do other public health work with people who have diseases of some sort or another. But… he d0esn’t really understand the public health part. I’ve left it at that for the moment.

I sat down at a small desk with my knees hitting the underside. Poppi sat down and spread out his handouts at another collection of desks – his station – he’d made some copies of a how-to about how to take care of a baby bird or wounded bird if they ever came accross one. A mom who was an orthodontist had packages of lip balm, tootpaste, toothbrushes, small toys, glittering things (this was the third time she was doing this) I had… nothing. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring anything. And what would I bring? Condoms or syringes wouldn’t go over very well.

M-ito was in my first group of kids. He came over to me and gave me a big smile and hug. He rarely does that at school. Usually he just presents me with the top of his head for a kiss on his crown. But I got a hug, a real hug. That pretty much made my day right there, even without anything to give to the kids but words.

So here’s what I learned about myself when it comes to my work.

1. How do I describe my job: I’m a public health worker. The kids could spell it easily because it was written on my name card. It took me two groups to figure this trick out. I tried different ways to explain public health. I settled on working with people who work in hospitals, clinics, and treatment centers. I’m pretty sure hospital is what stuck in their heads. I left HIV/AIDS, drug treatment, Sexually Transmitted Infections, Methadone, Mental Health Issues, and Hepatitis C out. I wanted to come back next year. I heard my dad tell the kids he was a rehabilitator – then, when he realized they had to spell the word – told them to just call it rehab. “Your teacher will allow that,” he told them confidently. With some groups I added that I was a boss and a teacher also. That didn’t need any explanation. I left out writer. It would have been too complicated and, well, I just haven’t been feeling very writerly lately so I left it out. It made me sad for a moment but I moved on, letting it simply be.
2. When second graders interview you and they have to take notes on what you say – long sentences are out. Bullet points are in. “Just give us the bullet points,” a colleague of M-ito’s told me in the first group. From then on I adjusted all my answers to one to three words, keeping them as short as possible.
3. What are the tools of my trade? Computer, LCD projecter, my voice, and my body. I think they understood the first tool best – everyone knows what a computer is. Some associated the projector with the smart board used in their classroom so that worked too. I’m not sure what they thought of my voice and body answer. I tried to explain a few times but gave up after the fourth attempt.
4. What do I like best about my job? To teach. But I told them my favorite courses to teach were yoga, public speaking, and leadership. Three bullets – three answers. They understood yoga. I told them public speaking was teaching someone to speak like Barak Obama – which seemed to work. I told them teaching leadership skills was teaching someone how to be a boss – bingo.
5. Finally… how does my job help the community? I kept trying to figure out a way to explain it but I didn’t have a lot of time – mere seconds before I had to come up with something. So I ended up with this. I help people who help people. “That’s people twice?” One boy asked looking up from his clipboard. “Yes,” I responded. “Yes it is.”

My Dad drove me to the train station later and we sat and had coffee while I waited for the train to come in. I let two trains go by, sipping coffee and catching up with him. He walked me from the coffee shop to the train the way he had my brother so many times before when we were younger and my brother lived in Manhattan. My brother died almost twenty years ago, dually diagnosed with schitzophrenia and chemical dependancy (he used one to treat the other) murdered for little real reason. What reason could ever be sufficient? The moment echoed for me. I’m sure it did for my father too. He gave me a big hug and a kiss before the train doors closed.

Later that evening I told M-ito how great it was to have the three of us in the same classroom, three generations all together for a purpose. “What’s a generation?” M-ito asked. “It’s every twenty years or so,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t be good enough. “I just liked having all three of us together,” I added. M-ito nodded and smiled.

Birthday Boogers

I woke up this morning with my son beneath the covers next to me. His eyes were open as if he’d been waiting for me to wake up. I had  a yoga class to teach so I closed my eyes, hoping in my fantaasy world that he would go back to sleep. He leaned over, smiling, and said, “Happy birthday,” then closed his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep.

I rolled out of bed, my body achy from a cold I’ve been fighting off – that and too many late nights/early mornings this week tteaching and travelling. M-ito came out a few minutes later. “Dad-dito,” he said. “I want you to know I didn’t put any boogers on you last night. It’s your birthday so I put them on me instead.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s a very thoughtful gift.”

“Today,” he continued, “we’re going to do all things you like to do. So if you don’t want to watch Pokemon tonight (a bit of an evening ritual we’ve been following these days) you don’t have to. We’ll watch what you want to watch.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But… if you want to watch Pokemon, the movie we still haven’t seen, you know, that’s all right with me too.”

“Good.”

Then he hugged me as we looked at each other in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t so long ago he couldn’t see himself without standing on the step-stool. Now he almost fits under my arm – almost. He’s a beautiful combination of Mom-ita and me.

Then we went out to the living, me to my yoga practice and preparation for the class I had to teach in an hour, and him to watch some TV, Phineas and Ferb to be exact. Usually I don’t let him watch TV while I do my practice. But it’s my birthday, so I figured if he could put the boogers on his own arm instead of mine, I could let him watch a show while I did my practice.

In-school Bardo

Bardo – Buddhist term – an intermediate state. The term usually refers to the term between death and rebirth. The Wisdon of No Escape, Pema Chodron.

My son is in bardo – the place between comfort in his old school and his end destination of fitting in at his new one. I’ve heard a little through M-ito but mostly late at night or via phone calls while I was away in New Orleans and then Lansing Michigan – working. But the picture is pretty clear to me. My son is in bardo. It’s a hard place to be, but it’s a place of growth. My son doesn’t want to hear that, though. He just wants to be out of bardo and on the shore of fitting in.

M-ito made his first friend during his first week at school. He called them aquaintences up until then. He named his first friend, Jacito, a boy from the other 2nd grade class. They played tag together with some other boys. Tag is one of M-ito’s favorite games. He laughs when he plays and his laughter is a sound that makes you and anyone around you smile. I thought, from my hotel room, listening to Mom-ita tell me of his adventures, that things seemed to be moving along. The process of forming with a new group had begun. I had expected it to be rocky but so far so good.

After he made his first friend, he told Mom-ita that he waited for the other class to come out for recess the next day. He waited by the door. I have this picture of him waiting for the other class to come out. “Will they come out today?” he told me later  he wondered. “Are they out sick?” Two days a week the two classes did not have recess together. He learned this while waiting for them to come out. Then on Friday, M-ito’s friend changed the game of tag to bullfight tag. A different game – out of my son’s comfort zone. He was still in bardo. He didn’t want to play. I know some things about my son and one thing is he likes to have mastery over games he plays. He doesn’t like games that he thinks he’s not good at – especially games that he’ll look bad playing. Embarrasment is a big factor even for 7-year olds. I understand this.

He sat on the fence watching the kids for two days. Mom-ita didn’t know what to do but she waited it out. She bounced her ideas off of me but she knew in her heart what was right for her son. I listened and agreed with her. M-ito’s teacher came to Mom-ita at the end of the second day and said, “I’ve been watching and waiting too. Other kids have asked him to play games bu he’s saying no. I’m not going to let it go on much longer.” The next day she asked M-ito to sit by her so he wasn’t by himself again. Some kids asked him to play bull fight tag then and he said yes. This time he got the rules down and played better. Perhaps the choice of sitting next to the teacher, whom he seems to like, or playing tag pushed him to play. In any case it worked.

He’s played other types of tag since then and played soccer yesterday. He played goalie. He says it’s easy and he likes it – with a shrug. No one else wants to play goalie so he steps up. He found a place from which to participate. I give him a lot of credit. Bardo is not an easy place to be. It’s so much easier to stay in your comfort zone, so much harder to step off into a strange land.

As a father I have found the whole process to have a hint of the unreal about it. I’m experiencing much of it second hand – through Mom-ita. M-ito is close to her because she drives him in and picks him up. She is his lifeline to see at the end of the day. I am the guy he sees most evenings at 6pm – regular time, usually coming home while he’s in the middle of his homework. He doens’t ask me for help, that is Mom-ita’s domain. Even trying to make one day a week driving in with the two of them – it’s still hard to stay part of things. Drop-off happens so quick. Mostly, like so many Dad-ditos these days, I try to catch up on the weekend. You see, I’m in my own bardo too. I’m adjusting to change and allowing this new aspect of our relationship to grow also. It sounds good on paper but it sure is hard to do.

Meeting Your Edge

A Buddhist story related by Pema Chodron goes like this.

A group of travellors gets ready to climb a mountain. After a few hundred feet a few can’t go up any higher so they stop. As the group goes up higher others stop, unable to go further. Finally a few reach the top. Those that stopped along the way, met their edge. They reached a place where the word “no” rang so loudly in their ears that they simply had to stop. The key is that the ones who made it to the top are not the winners. They had no fear of hieghts or had it but it was bearable. The ones who had to stop along the way are not losers either. They simply met their edge and could go no further. Meeting your edge means you have something to learn about yourself, that you need to open your heart to the experience, be kind to yourself and recognize that you have something to learn. Those who made it to the top will meet their edge on some other expedition. Everyone meets their edge, sooner or later in life. Engaging in life means you go up the mountain, you show up for the expedition, not knowing how far you will be able to go.

Sunday I watched my son meet his edge. He’s seven so he meets it often. But I’ve never seen it so viscerally before. A classmate whom he has only just met, had invited him to his birthday party and M-ito went. It was at a rock climbing gym out on Long Island. We’d been there once before on a reconnaissance of the place. The first time we went M-ito climbed half way up. The second time a quarter of the way up, then two thirds of the way up and finally a quarter of the way up, four different lines. I still can’t believe he kept at it even though it was clear that he was not enjoying himself.

At the party I saw all kinds of edge-meeting going on. Some kids did not come so they met their edge in their minds. One boy didn’t put on a harness, though he came for cake and pizza. One boy put on a harness and tried to climb only once, making it up half way then coming down, his arms and legs shaking. Several boys made it up half way and came down. Some made it to the top. One boy left in tears.

M-ito watched and when a few had stopped at the halfway point he gave it at try. He made it a few feet up then stopped. I watched as he tried with all his abilities to make his hand reach up for the next rock. It shook and trembled reached up then down, up then down. It was so painful to watch. Finally he looked down at us and asked to come down. He tried to climb twice, the second time with the same results. He sat down next to me afterwards, angry with himself, his arms crossed across his chest. He wouldn’t let me speak to him.

“You did great,” I said.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“You really did your best. It’s only what you could do today. Tomorrow will be different.”

“Be kind to yourself, you did great.” I’m afraid of heights but I can climb in spite of it. Still I know how hard it can be to keep going up. But it didn’t matter what I said.

He walked away from me with a scowl on his face. Mom-ita got him to speak to her by talking about something else. Then he settled in. He recovered about fifteen minutes later and seemed to move on. I had to watch while he processed and dealt with his damaged ego. It broke my heart to see and not be able to do anything about it. But my son is resilient and he seemed to be able to move past it. I wish I could have helped but I’m also glad Mom-ita was there to be of help.

Sometimes it just works that way.

As Pema Chodron says, meeting your edge means you’re showing up for life, you’re engaged on the journey. Practice loving-kindness to yourself and you open to life’s possibilities. Well, it’s something to shoot for.

First Day of School

Who’s more scared? Parents or kids? At a new school for the third time in my child’s life I think it might be a tie. Mom-ita and I drove M-ito to his first day of school last week and I took two days off to be there for the whole first day and for the one hour intro to school the day before. The commute was fine, not to much traffic, but lots of nervousness in the back seat and the front.

Mom-ita cried and I found tears coming to my eyes also as we gave him a hug before he was lead off to his classroom. M-ito’s first day was well planned out by the school he’s going to. They welcomed new students by name, with a handshake and gift from an upper classperson, in a morning assembly that all parents were invited to. We ate lunch with our kids then took off and did some food shopping while we waited. It was something to do. It was a day of waiting and of reflecting and shopping was a nice concrete something to do. We had about four hours to wait – on and off during – that first day in between meeting his teacher, seeing his classroom, being told by school administrative staff and the headmaster that “everything will be okay,” over and over again. Sure – easy for them to say.

I was surprised at how strongly I felt about sending him to school. This was truly the summer of transition from one school to another, from one set of friends to another, and for us as parents from one set of parents whose kids M-ito knows, to another. We are in the midst of meeting all these new parents, just as M-ito is in the midst of meeting all these new kids. Each of us is having to manage new relationships like crazy. I have to put my hand and my “self” out a lot. I have to say hello and introduce myself, try to remember which kids are which and which go with which parents. Mom-ita has been doing it all summer and I’m still catching up. Now I’m putting faces to names I’ve heard and trying assign kids to them.

What has caught me a little more by surprise than these difficulties is how watching my son go to school has reminded me of my own going to school when I was his age. It has brought up deep feelings of loss and sadness for what was. I changed schools and homes when I was going into fourth grade, M-ito is changing schools in 2nd. I remember leaving people behind and meeting new kids, best friends-to-be, none of which I’m still in touch with or becuase they have died long ago. I remember getting a new father and house to live in. I can feel this viscerally, in the tingling in my fingers as I type away. What a mix. Seeing this kind of history spread out in front of my son overwhelms me. But it’s my past not his.

At lunch after the assembly my son came over to me, so that Mom-ita wouldn’t be able to hear, and said, “I want to go home.”

I looked at him with my heart breaking. “Can you last for a few more hours?” I asked him, looking deeply into those brown eyes of his.

“How many hours is that?” he asked.

“Two.”

Then he nodded and hugged me. I didn’t tell Mom-ita about this until later.

When we came back to pick him up at three o’clock he was happy and seemed fine. He’d had science last period and he loves science and so his whole experience was framed by what he did there. His teacher had told them to pick a kind of scientist they would like to be – M-ito said paleontologist, of course – and to draw a picture of one on the front cover of their science notebook.

From the back seat of the car M-ito said, “I tried to be small in the class, but they wouldn’t let me be.” Mom-ita smiled while I drove. In his last school M-ito could “be small” and not noticed – not get attention – if he was quiet and followed the rules. He could “dissapear” if he wanted to – which I think he did a lot. In this school they introduced the kids to each other, asked them to play games with each other in recess (stopping cliques from arising – or at least attempting to) and seemed to try and notice what kids were doing and not doing. Small classes, good teachers. So far so good. But it meant that M-ito had to be more social than he was used to being. He is a shy kid who takes time to warm up. He must have been exhausted from all that kind of work. I know I was. I said hello and shook many hands in the parent meetings, at the coffee shop where I saw more of the same parents hanging out – just like us – and when we picked M-ito up. I had to force myself. I learned new names and forget them all within a matter of moments. Still, it’s part of the job of a parent. At 47 I have to tell you it’s not easy to go out and make new friends. I don’t necessarily want to put in that kind of effort but it comes with the territory. I guess I like to “be small” too.

After not talking about school for a few hours – even though we pestered M-ito left and right about what he did, at dinner time he finally gave us the whole run-down.

His second day I went to work with a knot in my stomach.

It’s his third day today, this beautiful Monday morning, and his first whole week of school. I’m doing my deep breathing exercises, trying to stay present, and not slip into the past. Mom-ita and M-ito left 45 minutes ago. I’m heading out too. I find I have to remind myself, this is his school experience, not mine. And this is my parenting experience, not his. The idea, I think, is to try to keep things that way. The challenge is in making it so.

Lanyard Tricks

Here’s a great website that teaches eight or nine different stitches – Lanyards.com. The videos are easy to follow, clearly filmed, with good verbal instructions.

M-ito learned the box stitch in about an hour then taught a friend two days later. The box stitch is a good one to start with. I remember lanyard from camp when I was a kid. It’s still the same thing and still pretty cool to do – very focusing, very zen. Over, under, over under. Wash on, wash off. Keep the lanyards in line. That and some finger dexterity is all you need. It sounds simple but does take practice. We bought some lanyard out in Greenport so city folks will have to look at Michaels Craft Store to get theirs. That’s where I’m getting my next batch. It’s been added to my bag of tricks and especially uyseful when waiting for dinner to be served.

Learning How to Ride a Bike in the City

Step 1: Figure out your child (I’m still working on that).

Step 2: Figure out how your child learns dangerous tasks best. This I actually know.  When M-ito learned how to walk he held on to tables, chairs, and sofas, not letting go of anything or anybody until he could walk without falling. He took a long time to do this and my back is still complaining from the process. But when he walked he didn’t fall down.

Step 3: Training Wheels. Knowing your child is like M-ito – cautious, careful, determined – get him a bike with training wheels. For us the training wheels lasted about two years, perhaps a bit longer. Then M-ito said to take them off. Peer pressure kicked in. At the age of 6 and a 1/2 a good number of his friends were already riding without training wheels so my son said, “take them off.”

Step 4: Pad him up. We bought knees guards, elbow guards, and hand guards, padded him up and set out for a park, expecting to be riding without any problem by the time we got home.

Step 5: Find a park. We used the Bulova park on the other side of our hood because few people go there and there’s a big open b-ball soccer area in the back usually with no one in it.

Step 6: Make a few trial runs. I held on to his seat and ran with him four or five stretches, letting go for a few yards at the end. My son yelled, “Dad-dito, don’t let go!” after each run. He kept his gaze down and had a hard time coordinating his movements and balance while a voice in his head was probably screaming “I’m going to die!” It’s a tough multi-task. Sweat pouring off him, and me, we gave up – him dissapointed in himself and me in myself. What kind of father was I? This should be easy. Two of M-ito’s friends learned in 1 afternoon. They took off and started riding – no pads, no trial runs, nothing. If you don’t understand how this could happen then just go back to step 1 & 2 above.

Step 7: Have a personal aside about your own process when you were a kid. I learned to ride with my brother who was a year older than me. What I remember of the experience was sketchy but contained the following: 1) my brother was there and he already could ride. 2) my brother was a part of the process of helping me to learn. 3) someone (might have been my brother) pushed me down a long driveway while I pedalled like mad. 4) the someone let go and I went a few yards without any help. 5) I knew I could ride on my own in those few seconds because I found my balance. 6) I then crashed and got a few good scrapes on my legs and arms. 7) I crashed a lot but seemed to have gotten the hang of it after that first run. Note: I don’t remember training wheels or instruction – perhpas there was more but I blocked it out.

Step 8: Try again and again. We tried the same process two more times at a closer park – each time we made fewer and fewer runs until the fourth overall attempt (one month later) brought us to a standstill. My son’s downcast gaze told it all. We were both defeated. A leap of faith and skill was needed and neither one of us could provide it.

Step 9: Talk to Mom-ita. Why you might ask? Because Mom-ita knows these kinds of things – or at least how to solve them. So she googled and found an article that gave us the clues we needed.

Step 10: Come up with a plan. We developed a plan. Well, Mom-ita did which she explained to me, which I then implemented by doing the technical work of changing what M-ito’s bike looked like. I was glad to be of use.

Step 11: Tell your child. We sat M-ito down and said we had a plan that would help him get up and going. We said he needed some help and we had just the help he needed. It made him smile with renewed hope. He said he’d try it – meaning what-ever we came up with.

Step 12: Lower the Seat. So we lowered the seat first so his feet could touch the ground easily. Just like those bikes that all the three year olds have now – not available at the time my son was that age – that are made of wood and just glide – they have no pedals. They’re brilliant.

Step 13: Practice. Then we rode everywhere – and I mean everywhere – with the seat lowered and it was better but… we needed to take one more step.

Step 14: Take off the pedals. Oh yeah. That did the trick. With the pedals there were no bruises on the ankles, grease marks on the calves, or scrapes from the pedal’s traction grips. He rode everywhere. I jogged alongside him or walked. He practiced his balance and mutitasking. I could tell the voice in his head that said, “I’m going to die!” while he rode was getting softer.

Step 15: Have patience. This lasted two more months. I think it could have lasted longer but fate intervened.

Step 16: Go somewhere with lots of down-hills with friends who already ride without training wheels. So we went on vacation with friends who have two kids older than M-ito. We camped a few days as part of the vacation. On the campground the dirt roads and down-hills allowed M-ito to go fast and forced him to look ahead, not down, to multi-task making decisions of balance, speed, and brake-power very quickly. After two days, he was ready. One of his friends said, “M-ito, put the pedals back on. You can do it.” That afternoon he came to me and said that he was ready.

Step 17: Put the pedals back on. So the pedals were put back on. I stood next to my son and he pushed off, wobbled at first then went down hill, found his balance and braked after about ten yards. He looked back up the hill at Mom-ita and me and smiled. Within five minutes he was riding everywhere. I guess you could say he learned how to ride in a few minutes. Two years, four months and a few minutes.

Step 18: Put on your running shoes. Now, of course, you have to keep up.