From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIV

Introduction

This is the fourteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, and Volume XIII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, and/or not at all.)

What are bits and bobs? In the context of albertnet, they’re mostly excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before blogs were a thing. Read on if you’re too tired to watch TV. Better yet, read this aloud to your pet or your plants.

February 2, 1990

I spontaneously decided I was through wearing old bike race t-shirts etc. Among these were the polo shirts I got from being a media liaison at the Coors Classic, and some other polo shirts (the bright red ones) that Mom got from somebody who’d marshaled at the Coors Classic. It’s a ton of shirts. Simultaneously, my art studio roommate, C—, whom I call Dithers (for reasons I don’t myself understand), and who calls me Dithers as well (ditto), decided he was tired of wearing nothing but grey and black (which was, and probably still is, the unofficial uniform of the starving artist). So I offered him virtually my entire wardrobe, and that is all he wears now. Buzzard to peacock literally overnight. Naturally, the fact that every single garment promotes cycling, in which he has zero interest, has not escaped him; I guess you could say he wears the shirts ironically. Every so often he complains to me about some nerdy cyclist type who quizzed him eagerly about his involvement in the Coors Classic, and who was disappointed when C— replied, “I was never a marshal for anything and I don’t even know what the Coors Classic is.”

January 19, 1991

[Reminiscing to my brother.] And so, a job at a factory. Underwear. Cans. Crates. Cardboard. Time clock, big bell that rings for break, picnic tables and vending machines. The factory like a giant hive, hundreds of sewing machines going at once, turning out underwear. You and I sticking endless size/color labels on the cans, crating them, stapling wooden lids, packing boxes, filling out shipping forms, noting on invoices where an order—seemingly every order—is short because the factory cannot sew underwear fast enough.

You speak fondly of the experience. Fighting together against the oppression of our (rightfully disgruntled) factory floor colleagues, underpaid immigrant laborers. After-hours hijinks. You and I singing “G— W—” [the factory owner’s name] to the tune of “Richard Corey.” Disabling the safety mechanism and firing the high-powered compressed-air staple gun out over the factory floor. You grin, laugh, reminisce, and what do I do? I sit back, real cool like, maybe mumble a little bit. Do you know why? It isn’t because I don’t cherish those memories. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it. It’s that my ambitious preoccupations are censoring me from admitting to having enjoyed a factory job. Yeah, god damn it, it paid the rent. No it wasn’t a stepping stone. Yeah I did it but only because I’d been unemployed. No brass plaque from that one to hang on the wall. It wasn’t a part of my plan. But these are all only delusions of dissatisfaction. I was afraid to admit that I enjoyed it. Afraid I might never transcend it. Gotta getta outta here. Gotta move on. Drive, man, drive.

I have this vision of driving that ‘52 Ford, the closest thing the factory had to a work vehicle, down to the warehouse, unloading all P’s and G’s personal shit because they were too cheap to rent a storage locker. This is not important company business. This is something others are too lazy to do. No talent here. But we were talented in a way, weren’t we? We taught ourselves how to enjoy it. I took half an hour rolling down the screwed-up window so I could coolly hang my arm out and try with one hand to steer that horribly misaligned truck in a straight path down the driveway of the factory, all the time checking out the tits ‘n’ ass of the girlies in little round pictures mounted on the dash. You’d have a book of human sexuality on your lap (found among P—’s stuff), reading aloud with fascination at all this scholastic explanation of the carnal. Written by experts.

But at the factory, we were the experts, making it all a big joke, stumbling through our work recklessly, giddy like little kids left with a babysitter who lets us cuss. Fuck, shit, god damn. Look at my crazed smirk when I say that. Hey G—: fuckin’ shit bitch hell. Laughing so hard we’re dribbling spit down our chins which we wipe away with the back of an arm. After a while the babysitter says, “Hey, quit cussin’, it sounds like shit,” and we are back on the floor, rolling with laughter. Laughing so hard we can’t even make our lips shape the next obscenity. That was our factory life, in all its true glory. It was like a science fiction role-playing vacation, not Westworld or Futureworld, but Factory World. We knew it wasn’t our life, it wasn’t our destiny, but a few months of living paycheck to paycheck, no lofty ambitions, standing in line to punch the clock behind a fat ‘n’ sassy waistband technician. It was like a vacation. But now I’m in dangerous territory. I better shut my trap before I say something stupid like “I’d like to go back.”

April 3, 2000

Next week we’ll be putting an offer on another house, also in Berkeley, that’s ugly on the outside but really groovy on the inside. We should have a bit better chance on it, I reckon, due to its ugliness. (How far we’ve fallen since we started this seemingly doomed house hunt!) It’s on kind of a sketchy street—generally nice, but with a couple of totally derelict houses. One of the houses is abandoned, and the other ought to be condemned whether it’s occupied or not. It looks like it would collapse if you blew hard on it. There’s this big old truck out front that looks like it was driven through the fires of hell. It has a really bizarre mural painted on the sides and back, that looks kind of cult-y. We asked a neighbor what was going on, and he said, “Oh, that’s Mike The Mover. He’s been here since the dawn of time and always will be. He runs an illegal moving operation out of that house.” Fingers crossed … Mike The Mover could become my new neighbor!

January 16, 2001

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of the Stinking Rose, and in fact I ate there once. It’s somewhat famous, probably because of its name and its gimmick (which is, of course, gobs of garlic). It was written up in a “Smithsonian” article on garlic (and is probably mentioned in every other article on garlic as well). It has a prominent location on Columbus Ave, not far from House of Nanking. E— and I took a couple of friends from out of town because they specifically wanted to go there. It was a bit overpriced, and they didn’t really do anything fascinating or brilliant with garlic other than, well, using too much of it. They also had these order-placing devices that looked like phasers, so they could shoot your order into the kitchen rather than walking there. Neat idea, and fun for the diners, but it seemed to actually slow things down. The most memorable part of the evening was when our gay, bald waiter said to me, sternly, “What’s your name?” I told him and he said, “Dana, let’s get one thing straight. I would kill for your hair. Kill!” (My hair was shoulder-length at the time.) Anyway, if they had a Stinking Rose in Phoenix I might go there during a business trip, but you can certainly do better in the Bay Area.

April 26, 2001

Quick question for you. Any tips on child care? E— is due in September and we’re having a hard time finding good day care. Some of these places fill up a year in advance (I guess the couple gets on the list before even trying to conceive) and we don’t want to end up having to settle for one of those places where a chain-smoking ex-hippie sits forty-five kids down in front of the TV, puts her pit bull in charge, and then heads into her bedroom to work a psychic hotline.

I think you guys said you had a nanny back when C— was a toddler? Gosh, that brings me back to a nanny my brothers and I had. I didn’t learn her name until years later but the whole time she watched us, we called her “Darlin’” for reasons we ourselves probably didn’t understand. Probably she called us “darlin’s” and we got confused. We actually thought that was her name. Not that we thought it was her first name—we would never call an adult by her first name—but more like she was a Cher or Madonna type who had only one name. Darlin’ was a very old lady, and very cool because she would let us watch “Adam 12,” and would occasionally give us Trident gum. The only downside was, she absolutely forbade us to suck our thumbs and would always threaten to cut them off if we persisted. In fact, once she chased me under the bed with the kitchen scissors. I remember peeking out from under there, terrified, watching her stick her head down under the bed and say, “Stick out your thumb! I’m going to cut it off!” Such an exciting lady. We always looked forward to having her over. Reading over what I’ve just described, it doesn’t appear that this was top notch child care, but in fact it really was.

Is having a nanny way expensive? Day care places are running about a grand a month and that’s what we’re expecting to spend. It seems impossible anything could be more expensive than that but then you’re probably already laughing at my naivety.  I’m thinking I could just drive down to Fourth Street and find one of the nameless workers that gather down there to get picked up for day labor. For $5 I’m sure a laborer would find childcare easier than digging trenches or putting up sheetrock. Of course, if I suggested this to E— our daughter would end up being raised in a single-parent home (assuming E— beat the murder rap). So I’d appreciate any advice you could give.

September 4, 2001

Thanks for the advice about strollers, particularly the bit about how newborns can’t ride in them because their heads will flop around, frightening Mommy. Someone advised I start with a pram. Near as I can tell, a pram isn’t a terribly useful device, as it only gives the baby a view of the sky. There’s probably a lot to see up there, but not as much as if the kid is facing forward. We’re borrowing a “Baby Bjorn,” which is some kind of frontal baby seat that you wear. Our birthing and bondage coach insists that they’re terrible for the baby’s back, and we should use a sling, but with a sling the kid can’t see much of anything. What do you think? I’ve always had a terrible slouch, giving me a “vertebrae be damned” attitude, so I’m not completely sold on the Baby Bjorn prohibition. I’m tempted to ignore the birthing teacher’s advice simply on the grounds that she’s a radical post-hippie alternative type, but I’m anxious to get the birds-eye low-down from people who know such as yourself.

I was trying to remember what model of Maclaren stroller youse guys had there in the Netherlands. If you’re still using the original one I saw when we were out there, and that you brought out when visiting us, that alone speaks volumes for its durability, as does the fact that you can get replacement parts for it. I also like the British in the web-page descriptions, particularly “colourway.” Some of these look incredibly fancy. Needless to say I won’t be getting the titanium one; if I don’t have a titanium bike, my daughter’s not getting a titanium stroller.

January 21, 2005

E— and I took the youngsters to House of Nanking on Sunday, and in the midst of L— detonating and doing her best impersonation of a fish out of water—in fact, an alcoholic fish out of water having the DTs—no, make that a fish out of water having the DTs combined with a generalized spaz attack—a guy at the next table noticed my Gaastra pullover and got all excited. (Only once before did somebody recognize the Gaastra brand on this garment; it was my friend D— who does a lot of windsurfing, and he asked, “Why do you have that?” to which I replied, “Why, whose is it?”) Our dining neighbor was a kind of nerdy, kind of . . . well, European-looking guy, and he asked, “Hey, are you into kites?!” It was all I could do to keep L— in my grasp—she was on the verge of launching herself out of my hands, and as I was standing up, she could have landed right on the guy—and so instead of having him on, which I might have been tempted to do (“What makes you think of kites?” / “Your Gaastra pullover. They make kites.” / “Is that what they make? I thought they made that heartburn medication!”), I only stammered that I don’t have a Gaastra kite, but rather a brother in Holland. The guy was crestfallen.

January 23, 2009

You asked about the wounds on my finger. They’re from a farming accident—my arm got caught in this big threshing machine we call the Mangle. Oh, wait, that’s how I lost my arm. The finger cuts were from a freak dishwashing accident.

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From the Archives - Journal for my Daughter

Introduction

A few days before my first daughter was born, I started keeping a journal about her life. This was inspired by those baby books, where you put in footprints, stats about size and weight at birth, milestones, etc. As far as actual use goes, those baby books are surpassed only by exercise bikes and crock pots in unfulfilled good intentions. Usually the first couple of pages are diligently filled out, and then the new parents get overwhelmed and the rest of the book is blank. I vowed to do better. The result? A mammoth 450-page document, spanning my daughter’s entire life thus far, which I presented to her last week when dropping her off at college.

A note on the text: it’s written in the second person (i.e., “you”) because its real audience is my daughter. I’m just offering you albertnet readers a taste. Not because you care about my kid’s childhood, but because as a parent, or a recovering kid, you might relate to some of it.

December 11, 2002 (age 1)

It’s too early to tell for sure, but you may have your first word: No. You have said this many times when someone does something you don’t like, such as taking something away from you. You cry out, “No no no no no!” The problem is, it sounds a lot like generic baby babble, and “n” is one of your favorite consonants anyway, so it’s not for sure yet. Of course, given your willfulness it wouldn’t surprise us a bit for “no” to be your first word.

January 13, 2003 (age 1)

As I’d theorized long ago, you have settled on your official first word: No. You say it very clearly and distinctly, in proper context. You even point as you say it. For example, on New Year’s Eve, as your mom was nursing you with a bottle (an early foray toward weaning you), you kept pulling back from the bottle, pointing at her, and saying, “No. No. No.” After much wracking of my brain, I have finally figured out a) why this is your first word, and b) why you often point as you say it.

The “why” question arises because your mom and I seldom say “no” to you. We’re real pushovers, actually, reserving “no” for when you’re doing something dangerous that you need to be warned about. The rest of the time we just distract you (as from the ointment tube that you want to suck on, or the milk bottle you want to drag around with you to paint things with). The answer finally hit me when I saw you scolding Misha, our cat, pointing at her and bellowing “NO!” just like I always do. Ever since you were born, the poor cat is constantly misbehaving to get some attention. She shreds the sofa with her claws, jumps in your crib, or tries to reach your high chair. Something about scolding a cat requires pointing, because they’re so good at tuning out humans. So your “no,” like mine to the cat, means both “no” and “That’s right, buddy, I mean you!” You say it constantly. If your mom or I offer you something you don’t want, you push it away and say “No!” or “No no no no no!” If the cat is sitting there, minding her own business, and you want to assert your place in the family hierarchy, you point at her and say “No!” It’s practically a refrain for you. It’s really the perfect way for you to express the essence of your personality.

February 8, 2003 (age 1½)

You now use the word “no” with incredible skill, imparting myriad subtleties of meaning, just like how a Southern Californian can say “dude” to indicate alarm, surprise, pleasure, disappointment, and so on. Of course “no” always means no, but you can also convey a variety of other notions: “Aw, c’mon, get real, no”; “Absolutely not”; “Leave me alone!”; “No thank you”; “Get this out of here!” and so on.

November 15, 2003 (age 2)

You seem to love day care. Sometimes you protest when we announce we’re taking you, but I think that’s just an inertia thing: you don’t want to stop doing whatever you’re doing. It’s often hard to get you to leave there in the evening. I think in your perfect world I would stay there with you and play, because when I pick you up you often want to engage me in some toy or puzzle. But you clearly like the other kids there, and they seem to really like you.

Sometimes the other kids seem to revere you. For example, when we show up, they gather around you to say hello and good morning and to ask you questions. And the other day, everybody was watching “Sesame Street,” and Nahid [one of the nannies] asked you, “What color is Cookie Monster?” You always have an answer for everything, and it’s always delivered with complete confidence, even if you’re grasping at straws. “Green,” you said authoritatively. “No, he’s blue,” said Nahid. A moment later, she said, “Zachary, what color is Cookie Monster?” He instantly replied, “Green.” What are the odds that he made exactly the same mistake as you had? Pretty slim, I’d say. I think he simply trusted you over Nahid. So if you end up being the leader of a company, a platoon, or a country, we can track your leadership qualities and command presence all the way back to the beginning.

April 5, 2004 (age 2½)

On Saturday we went to a Mexican restaurant in Alameda. We set you up in a high chair—you’re always excited to sit in a high chair, probably for no other reason than you associate it with tasty food—and then I went off to wash my hands. I came back and, on a lark, decided to sit next to your mom, across from you. This was the first time you’d ever eaten in a restaurant without one of us sitting right next to you. It was a busy, loud place, and it was a big table (I seem to remember it was a picnic-style table, though the precise memory is already fading), and you looked very far away. Frankly, it was kind of a bittersweet moment, seeing you all the way over there and yet knowing it was okay. I asked you if you liked sitting all by yourself, just in case you didn’t. But you did, and in fact seemed to relish your independence. You behaved beautifully throughout the meal. You carefully drank your water through a straw, didn’t play in it like usual, and didn’t spill it even after the waiter refilled it to the brim. Your mom made you a burrito, which you carefully ate, like a burrito, instead of dissecting it on the table and scattering its innards to the four winds. Between bites, you even wiped your mouth with a napkin. And perhaps the most heartachingly diligent thing you did was to periodically rearrange, with great care, your fork and knife on a pristine, folded paper napkin. The pleasure you were getting from your “big girl” behavior was quite evident. As pleased as I am with your new abilities—of which I’m suddenly keenly aware, as if for the first time, since it’s been such a gradual progression—it heightens my awareness of how quickly you’re growing up, and I want to cling to you just as you are. As much as I look forward to every new development, every new phase of your life, I can already tell that every new minute will be packed with longing for every minute of your past. The emotional impact of raising you is difficult to describe.

June 1, 2004 (age 2¾ )

Some time ago, I was lying in the bunk bed waiting for you to take to your nap (you’d begged me to stay: “Bunk bed five minutes!”) and you asked for a song. So on a whim, I trotted out an old Bruce Springsteen number from the eighties that I’d somehow inadvertently memorized. It’s from “Born in the USA,” an album your Grandma Judy bought shortly after she divorced my dad. I always interpreted that act as an attempt to suddenly become younger and more hip, more date-worthy. After that phase was over, my mom stopped listening to the tape, and I kept it, even though I’d never really liked it much (finding it embarrassing, frankly).

Anyway, I started singing “Downbound Train,” adjusting some of the lyrics. I figured it has a train, a car wash, and crying in it, all of which are things you have strong feelings about, and sure enough, as soon as I was done, you asked for it again, and it’s become a staple. Your mom has pointed out that just about all of the lyrics in that song (indeed, the entire Springsteen canon) are simple enough for a two-year-old to understand. There isn’t a single complicated word in there. So you can sing along now. Mainly what we do is this: I get to the end of a line, and pause to let you fill in the last word:
              “I had a ...”
              “Job.”
              “I had a ...”
              “Girl.”
              “I had things going, mister, in this ...”
              “World.”
              “I got laid off, down at the ...”
              “Lumber yard.” (Note that through this song, you now have a general sense of what layoffs are, so you can relate somewhat when I talk to your mom about the massive layoffs my employer is perpetrating.)
              “Then I’ll admit, things got...”
              “Hard.”
And so it goes in this vain, until the climactic scene, where I sing, “And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and...”
              “Cried!” You deliver this word with the depth of feeling that can only come from a literal crybaby. You even hang your head as you utter it. It’s a beautiful thing.

August 10, 2004 (age almost-3)

Your force of will continues to amaze me. Whatever we want, you instinctively go for the opposite. For example, a bit ago I tried to put a diaper on you before bed. “No want the horsey!” you screamed. This was in regard to the animal depicted on the diaper. To what extent should we indulge you? I err on the side of indulgence, having had my own wishes routinely ignored as a kid. “What kind of diaper do you want?” I asked. “Um . . . how about a . . . raccoon diaper,” you replied. I grabbed a raccoon diaper, then theorized that you’d change your mind again, and grabbed a squirrel diaper. I finished putting it on you, and sure enough, you cried, “No want a raccoon diaper, I want a squirrel diaper!” I replied, “Well look, Alexa, that’s what I put on you!” You craned your neck to check. You looked at me in disbelief, unable to fathom my sleight-of-hand.

December 15, 2004 (age 3)

I got a nasty electric shock from the Christmas tree lights the other day. I’d been lying on my back, lazily lolling, [our cat] Misha on my chest, while your mom was getting out the ornaments and lights and such. I started unraveling two twisted-together strands of lights, which were plugged in and showing signs of defectiveness: half of each strand was out. Suddenly it seemed as though the cat were attacking me, sinking a claw deep into my neck. Even after she jumped off my chest, I could still feel her claw in my neck; sometimes a cat’s claw gets stuck. But when she was at least four feet away and I could still feel that claw, I realized something else was going on. A bulb was stuck to my neck, shocking me! Your mom pulled the lights off of me, and I jumped up, cursing. You started bawling. It really shook you up! You comforted me for awhile, continually asking what happened. Very compassionate. A day or two later, you asked who shocked me. “It was an accident,” I said. You replied sternly, “A shock is never an accident.” So I guess you’ll grow up to be a personal injury lawyer! (I realized later that you were paraphrasing your mom telling you, “Hitting is never an accident!”)

May 15, 2005 (age 3½)

I asked you if you were hungry. “Yeah, my stomach is a bit low,” you said.

June 8, 2006 (age 4¾)

Yesterday evening I was very tired and lay down on my back on the floor of the living room. Lindsay [age 2] lay down next to me for awhile, and then (in my half-asleep state) I came to realize she was now up, standing near me, arguing with you about a toy. I was trying to wake the rest of the way up and will myself upright when I heard you exclaim, excitedly, “Look, Lindsay’s vomiting!” I thought you must have been joking, but you weren’t. She was vomiting on the rug, making bright pink puddles in three or four different places. I told her to try to vomit on the wood floor, not the rug. Hearing this, you immediately ran off. I became aware of what you were doing when you asked me how to spell “vomit.” You had drawn a picture of a child, and with yellow ink had added a bunch of scribbles down her front. “That yellow stuff, that’s vomit,” you explained. You wrote “NO VOMIT” and then (after getting the spelling from me), “ON RUG.” Then you asked how to spell “allowed.” I pointed out that you didn’t have much room to write it. To my surprise, you recovered from having started in the wrong place by writing backward, from the right edge of the page back toward the left. Not only did you spell the word backward— “DEWOLLA”—but you wrote each letter backward. I held it up to the mirror: “ALLOWED.” Perfect. You finished the picture by circling the vomit-covered child and putting a slash through the circle.

February 13, 2007 (age 5)

I have only recently noticed you saying “animal” correctly. I think I’ll sort of miss “aminal.” Eventually you’ll say everything correctly, and next thing I know you’ll be out of the house, grown up, and on your own. Sniff.

September 5, 2007 (age almost-6)

This morning I took you to school, with Lindsay in the stroller. We got a bit of a late start (surprise, surprise!) and it didn’t help that we fell in behind a pair of chatty moms who either didn’t notice or didn’t care that it was almost 8:30 already and we still had a pretty long stretch of Santa Fe Street to go. One of the kids was in your class, and seemed as oblivious to the time as his mom. Eventually I decided we had to pass them. This was tricky because one of the moms was also pushing a stroller. I saw a patch of navigable land next to the sidewalk and said, “Okay Alexa, now!” You busted a move down the side and I followed you. To Lindsay’s delight, I was running behind with the stroller (front wheels popped up so it wouldn’t get speed-wobble). The mothers must have thought I was absurd, or insane, or perhaps rude, but hey, it’s not good to be late, especially when your kid already seems a bit anxious about school. Anyway, to my delight, your classmate (the one with the chatty mom) construed this as a race and started running. He’d almost gone by you when I yelled, “Go, Alexa!”

Nothing like a race to get your kids to school on time. Now, here’s the remarkable part: you dug deep, and ran really fricking fast. And you took the guy! You didn’t even resort to the weaving you used to do, instinctively trying to take your opponent into the gutter. It was fair and square, and you really opened up your lead on the school’s wheelchair ramp toward the end. You’d shrugged your backpack off—I half expected you to ditch it entirely, but you hung onto it—and you cruised around the corner pretty nonchalantly. We got there right as the bell rang. You got in line, and as I scanned down it for a familiar face I thought, wait, what if we’re at the wrong door? Of course I know what the right door is, but I guess those old childhood anxieties die hard. I recognized one of your classmates and was reassured.

May 7, 2009 (age 7½)

I have a BlackBerry, which is a “smart phone” that does e-mail and stuff. You seem quite intrigued by it. I was riding you to school on my bike recently and could hear it beeping in my pocket, and I commented that it was probably going to phone somebody up by accident. You replied, “Daddy, which BlackBerry do you like better: the kind you have, or the touch-screen kind?” Much surprised, I asked you how you know about the touch-screen kind. “You know, from those ... bulletins along the highway.” (You meant billboards, of course.) As much attention as you pay to advertising, I’m really glad we don’t have TV at home.

September 6, 2011 (age almost-10)

Your mom and I have considered putting you in Girl Scouts, and you’ve gone to a couple of their camps, but there is no troop with any places left. Your mom has taken some steps to help start up a Brownie troop, and we’ll see where that goes. Anyway, on the way to a camping trip this past weekend I said to your mom, “You should learn how to pitch our tent without my help, given your new Den Mother role.” I had a cold at the time, and what you and Lindsay heard was “dead mother role.” After the predictable surprise, confusion, and clarification, you commented, “‘Dead mother roll sounds like a new kind of sushi.’”

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