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My earliest Halloween memory is of the year my mother cut two holes in a white sheet so I could be a ghost.  I donned the sheet but immediately took it off because I was afraid of myself.

Lately the sunlight has been beaming its way around the sides of the window blinds, making it hard for me to get back to sleep after Leif’s early morning feedings.  It occurred to me that I could fold up a bandanna and tie it around my face to block the light…but the mental image of myself lying in bed with my eyes covered all hostage-style just creeps the hell out of me.

A despicable heat has descended upon Boston, with the result that Leif and I have drastically reduced our time spent outdoors.  Today this was making us both restless, so we went for a drive around town, reasoning that it even if it wasn’t exactly better than being stuck in the house, it was at least different.  Midway through our trip he started to protest, so I pulled over into the parking lot of a Dunkin Donuts and discovered that his diaper was wet.  I then set about the harrowing task of changing him in the backseat of the car with my ass sticking out of the open door, hoping the guy in the box truck next to us wasn’t planning to back out anytime soon.  After performing this task, I was dripping with sweat, so I packed Leif back into his carseat and decided to go through the drive-through for an iced drink.  As I started the car he began to wail.  Thinking quickly, I queued up some music, and within ten seconds the intro to “Night Moves” had lulled him back to a state of calm.  The notion of my sweet little baby finding comfort in a crass tale of emotionless teenage screwing is pretty hilarious.

On a related side note, for the first few weeks of Leif’s life I would try to sing him lullabyes to get him to nap, but two things kept happening: 1) I realized I don’t know the lyrics to any lullabyes and 2) literally the only song I could think of, every single time I wanted to sing, was “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by The Band.  If that weren’t stupid enough, I couldn’t even remember the lyrics in sequence, so I would just sing him the same few mangled verses over and over.  He seemed to like it well enough, but what the hell?  I guess the fog of new parenthood had temporarily disabled the very large portion of my brain normally reserved for song lyrics.

In any event, it’s reassuring that he already shows a clear preference for rock and roll.  Though it’s weird that, with any luck, a lot of the music he’s into when he’s older will be stuff that came out not just before he was born, but before his parents were born.

If you can stomach my high-pitched nonsensical babbling, this video will allow you to hear one of Earth’s funniest sounds:  Leif’s goofy, gutteral chuckle.  Jared and I are happily learning about the many ridiculous things that people are willing to do to get their babies to laugh.

This morning I accepted the fact that Leif’s newborn-sized clothes plain don’t fit him anymore, and moved them out of his dresser drawer into a storage box.  The effect was similar, I imagine, to that of stabbing myself in the heart with a steak knife.

From here on out it’s just going to be a long, unbearable string of moments like this until he eventually comes of age, leaves me, and moves in with some whore who’ll never love him like his mama does.  OH GOD.

What do you do when someone dies and leaves behind an incredibly divisive legacy?  Admittedly, I don’t know or care that much about the good things Robert Byrd did, but I recall from Ted Kennedy’s death that lots of people thought it was distasteful to mention that he killed a woman since he had also done a lot of great work in his life.  Is it distasteful?  How can you reflect honestly on someone’s life if you’re willfully leaving out the ugly parts?

In Byrd’s case, I’ve already read some prattle about how you have to view his membership in the KKK through the lens of the time and place where he lived.  That’s such a load of steaming bullshit.  Throughout history, wherever evil is the norm, there are always dissenters, always good people—and in this case he wasn’t one of them, end of sentence.  He later realized he was wrong and talked openly about the remorse he felt.  That’s laudable, and it’s fascinating.  But it doesn’t change the fact that he willingly joined and participated in a terrorist organization that tortured and murdered people because of their race.

On this topic, Byrd once said, “It’s a lesson to the young people of today, that once a major mistake has been made in one’s life, it will always be there, and it will be in my obituary.”  Yeah. It will.  It doesn’t mean the good shouldn’t be celebrated.  But if you want to pay tribute to this man, realize that perhaps the most admirable thing about him is that he learned from a mistake.  To recognize that goodness in him, you must necessarily acknowledge the evil.

We drove up to New Hampshire yesterday to visit some friends, and on the way back I forced Jared to play 20 Questions (or, really, Infinite Questions) with me to pass the time.  It took him several dozen questions to guess that I was thinking of a golf ball.  It then took me less than ten questions to guess that he was thinking of South African actor Sharlto Copley.  Jared’s analysis of the situation was that Sharlto Copley was “too easy”.  Easier than a fucking golf ball?  Feh.  Full disclosure:  We have a bit of a running gag involving Sharlto, but STILL.  I am the best at 20 Questions, or at least notably better than Jared.

At some point there was also a discussion that ended with us singing “I found my thrill on Hamburger Hill“, but the less said about that the better.

Execution by firing squad is more humane than lethal injection.  Although, who cares about humane when it’s a murderer?  Well, because we act unethically when we brutalize others, no matter who those others are.  The state should not be in the business of murdering people anyway; if the state can kill someone legally, why can’t the family of a victim legally take revenge against a murderer?  Well, that’s not a great solution either.

One of the shooters in the firing squad is firing blanks; no one knows who has the blanks because this protects the shooters from knowing who delivered the fatal blow.  This is lame; if you’re not comfortable shooting someone to death, don’t sign up to be on the firing squad.  But is that logic as inhumane to the shooter as a slow, painful death is to the prisoner?  Who deserves more consideration here?

So the state shouldn’t be murdering people, but if they’re going to, the guillotine is really the best way to go, and that guillotine should be operated by someone whose emotional and mental health are regularly assessed.  I guess.  What do you think?

I hit a rough patch shortly after Leif was born; I wouldn’t call it post-partum depression, because I don’t think hormones had anything to do with it.  My family was being terrible towards me.  My friends, on the other hand, were wonderful–coming to visit the baby and loving him instantly–but their goodness threw my family’s awfulness into unbearably sharp relief.  All day my predominant thoughts were “No matter how hard you’ve worked, no matter what anyone tells you, you come from shit, don’t ever forget it.”

Then there was my little medical mystery, there was adjusting to being unemployed, and trying to study for classes while taking care of a newborn.  There was the guilt of my good fortune, and the resultant anger at myself for not being able to enjoy that good fortune.  I can’t really find the words to describe how I was feeling.  I would look at my son, and instead of feeling joy and reveling in his beauty, I simply felt a profound, excruciating hopelessness. I’ve been low before, but I’ve known few experiences as cruel as that.

It got better, for various reasons, and on the balance things are great.  But last night my father once again violated the estrangement that I have tried to maintain for the past nine years, and I lost it.  After a very brief conversation, I was not just shaken but literally shaking with rage.  I punched the nearest door for a bit, then collapsed onto the floor and wailed, and then, in an instant, realized how many minutes and hours and years I’ve spent feeling this way because of him, and I stopped it.

Leif wasn’t in the room to see me freak out, and of course he’s too young to remember things yet.  I know he’ll see me get angry and he’ll see me make mistakes, but there’s a certain line that should never be crossed with children.  Children should not be made to feel afraid that their parents have lost control, or that their safety and security are compromised by a parent’s anger.  That leads to a kind of pain and fear that never, ever goes away, and knowing that truth as well as I do, I would die before inflicting it upon my son.

Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll go crazy one day, that the genetic odds are so stacked against me that it’s inevitable.  Sometimes I wonder what the ratio of nature to nurture really is, and if I can keep Leif from inheriting the family curse.  For the most part, I believe in the concept that other people can’t make you feel this way or that way, and that you are responsible for your own reactions.  I’m not sure if that entirely applies in the case of an abusive parent-child relationship that spans decades, but let’s say that it’s up to me not to become violently enraged no matter what my father does or says.  I can’t.  I’m not a good enough person.  In that way, I carry on his shameful legacy.

So the solution is what it was nearly a decade ago when I left his home:  to cut off contact completely and permanently.  Many times, my pity for his dismal situation has lead me to see him or talk to him, to question my decision to cut him out of my life.  But as the years keep passing, he’s not changing and neither am I.  There’s an idealized notion that with enough time, all wounds can heal; that you can ultimately let go of the past.  I can’t let go.  I can forgive and gain perspective, but I can’t let it go.  What I can do is try my damnedest not to perpetuate it, despite the terror and self-loathing, and do what everyone claims they’re going to do and give my child a better life than the one I was given.

I blather at length so there’s a public record, however meager, of my intention to try my hardest every day, forever.

Yesterday I had some business to attend to in South Boston.  Afterwards, on a shuttle bus back to the subway station, three young women started having a loud, bothersome conversation about how men don’t understaaaaand and god knows what else.

(Side note:  if you have to complain like that about the opposite sex, it’s generally because you’re only capable of attracting lame members of that sex.  So remember that when you bitch about how all women are ditzy golddiggers or all men are uncaring slobs.  They aren’t.  The good ones just don’t want you.)

They prattered on, and at one point one of them mentioned that her mother was picking her up from their destination.  “She was like, don’t you dare walk home from Davis Square!” she reported.  (Which–what?  Why not?)  The shuttle dropped us at the train station and we stood near each other on the platform.  The outbound train arrived, and before I could intervene*, one of the girls said, “I was confused.  How could we be going inbound if we’re already in the city?” and they hopped aboard.  Oh, how I laughed.  Actually, I didn’t laugh, but I did find it pretty gratifying as the train whisked them away.

*I totally would have helped if I could have, even though they were my sworn enemies.  And full disclosure, it’s been a long-ass time since I rode the red line so I also had a moment of, if I took the inbound train to get here then why am I also taking the inbound train home? But I figured it out with my super-smarts, so I still get to make fun of them.

A few people have asked me what it feels like to experience natural childbirth.  Obviously, pain is extremely subjective, and everyone’s labor is different, so it’s a difficult thing to describe.  I have two general thoughts on the matter:  1) If you are very lucky, childbirth will be one of the most painful things you ever experience.  2)  In context, it’s really not that bad.

There’s a weird backlash to the natural childbirth movement, where the argument goes “You’d take pain medication for a broken leg, wouldn’t you?” which is just so patently misguided.  So I’ll simply paraphrase Chris Rock, as is my wont, and say:  You’re not supposed to break your leg!  I.e. the pain of childbirth is part of a normal, natural, incredible process, and it’s best not to dull that pain or interfere with that process.  (Obvious disclaimer:  this entire discussion assumes the absence of legitimate medical complications that necessitate interventions, blah blah blah.  Obvious sub-disclaimer:  American birth is grossly over-medicalized and many, if not most, interventions are not actually needed and frequently lead to more interventions and bad outcomes.  Sub-sub-disclaimer:  This debate is so fucking tired that even a slight rehashing of it is boring the crap out of me.)

Anyway.  It hurts.  It hurts like the worst period you’ll ever have, combined with really awful intestinal cramps, combined with a peculiarly intense lower back pain.  Lots of women say that the crowning and delivery of the baby’s head causes a severe burning, but I didn’t feel that part.  After Leif’s head came out I could feel the contours of his body and the cord, but the pressure of his head effectively numbed “the area”.   (This will all be described in glorious, gory detail in the second part of his birth story, to be posted soon!)   There were moments where I started to think, “Ok, fuck this, it’s getting really hard,” but I never actually wanted pain relief.  If anything, the psychological aspect was much more daunting than the physical.

I think there were a few reasons the pain was relatively easy for me to bear.  I prepared like crazy.  I read books and hundreds of birth stories.  I stayed in shape to a reasonable extent.  The fact that my labor occurred in fits and starts over two and a half days, rather than in one continuous span, probably made it much easier.  One of the most crucial things, honestly, was that I have a chronic pain disorder and have spent decades of my life anticipating and coping with pain.  In that respect, I was lucky.  Hell, in every respect I was lucky because I wanted a natural birth and I got a natural birth, end of story.  I don’t kid myself that I was able to do this because I’m just better or stronger than anyone else–I was truly fortunate that the labor proceeded in a normal, healthy fashion, which is not something to be taken for granted.  I’m proud that I did it, but the pride centers on my body’s strength and my son’s health.

Going through this experience did not give me a feeling of invincibility or some fundamentally changed sense of self, which is something the more hardcore natural birth proponents talk up.  Immediately after the birth I had this profound moment where I thought that the experience had toughened me up and thus better prepared me for motherhood, but a couple months later I think that life is what toughened me up, and if anything the birth was a reflection of my already-established coping skills.  I don’t know.  It hurt, tremendously at times, but it was definitely not the worst pain of my life and I wouldn’t have changed it.  Going natural meant that I was alert and actively involved throughout labor, that I was able to move around and work with the pain to help my body do what it needed to do.  Most importantly, it was the healthiest and safest choice for me and my baby, and it was a fantastic experience for which I am extraordinarily grateful.  But so as not to end on such a cheesy note:  yes, it hurt like a motherfucker.