From the Archives - Journal for my Younger Daughter

Introduction

Around the time Lindsay, my second daughter, was born, I started keeping a journal about her life. (I did the same for her older sister, and you can see an excerpt here.) My journal project was inspired by those baby books where you put in footprints, birth size and weight, developmental milestones, etc. Those baby books are typically 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 endeavored to do better. The result? A mammoth 400-page document, spanning my daughter’s entire life thus far, which I presented to her when dropping her off at college. Here’s an excerpt, emphasizing episodes I think are funny (but which shouldn’t embarrass my kid, who after all has suffered enough, what with me as her dad).

A note on the text: it’s written in the second person (i.e., “you”) because the journal’s real audience is my daughter. You albertnet readers just get a taste.

(Art in this post is by Lindsay’s Grandma Coral, except one picture by Lindsay.)

September 15, 2004 (age almost-1)

I’d forgotten how messy it is when a baby tries to feed herself. You’ll sit at the high chair happily for twenty minutes or more, grabbing everything on your tray, shoving much of it in your mouth, spitting much of this back out, and dropping a lot. Watermelon is a favorite, as are Cheerios (or “ring shaped oat cereal,” as the parenting books call them), refried beans (cold), little blocks of cheese, pieces of bread, cut-up fruit . . . just about everything except baby food, which you never really took a shine to. I’ll be all stoked at how much you ate, until clean-up time when I discover what looks like at least 90% of it on the floor, in your chair, and in the pouch of your bib (when we manage to get the bib on you, which is seldom). When you’re done you scream and cry throughout the clean-up, just like your sister used to do. Then you want to be held, which is a problem because I don’t want to have to change my outfit in addition to yours.

April 7, 2005 (age 1-½)

When I say, “Where’s your nose?” you grin, grab my finger, and touch your nose with it. Then you touch my nose with it. Then you start moving my hand around to different parts of my head: “That’s my ear,” I’ll say, “and that’s my mouth … that’s my cheek.” It’s not entirely clear how much you’re directing the hand and how much I am; it’s like a Ouija board.

You love throwing things away. Every time I empty the trash I have to watch out. The cat’s dish gets thrown out a lot. You’re just like your mother.

April 3, 2006 (age 2-½)

[Our cat] Misha kept getting on the table during dinner. I admonished her, “Get out of here Misha! Go catch some bugs!” (My point was that she’s supposed to be a hunter, not a scavenger, and yet I wouldn’t encourage her to catch birds.) Well, you and Alexa really liked this utterance. I’m not sure whether you grasped the point or not; you may just have seen it as a stock put-down or something. Anyway, the other day we were getting in the car and you and Alexa had some dispute, perhaps over who got what car seat. With a somewhat self-satisfied air (I think you’d prevailed in the dispute), you said, “Go away, Alexa! Go catch some bugs!” Man, she was pissed ... especially, I think, because your mom and I were laughing at what you said. I think this was your first joke ever, or at least your first joke that actually made somebody laugh out loud. I know plenty of adults who haven’t yet achieved that milestone.

April 11, 2006 (age 2-½)

I was reading No No, Jo to you. It’s about a kitten who’s always making messes by trying to help, and each page ends, “But does Sam [or whoever] thank that kitten? Sam says...” Then you open out a flap that shows the kid reacting to Jo’s mess, saying, “No no, Jo!” The idea is that the child to whom you’re reading the book can provide the chorus, or punch line, for each page. But you weren’t doing it. You’d done it before, but this time you were in a needy, weepy way because you’d just awoken from your nap to find the babysitter was here. You like the sitter okay, but of course you recognized that her presence meant your mom would be leaving. (I would be leaving too, but that’s no big deal for you.) It was tough even getting you to let me read to you to cheer you up. I thought you might be coaxed into helping me say the “No no, Jo!” part, so I prompted you. “What does Sam say?” I asked. “Please?” you whimpered.

April 18, 2006 (age 2-½)

We had Easter at your Grandma Judy’s house up in Oregon. After the egg hunt we had breakfast and then a walk. Your mom was enjoying the walking so much that she asked me to administer the chocolate bunnies to you and Alexa while she and my mom walked some more. This seemed like a fine work detail at first, until I saw the size of the rabbits. They were huge! Probably four inches tall, and solid chocolate. Of course you and your sister were thrilled and started gnawing on them right away. Soon you had chocolate all over your mouth and hands. As your mom was leaving she’d said, “Dana, it’s up to you to keep them from making a mess!” I gave you and Alexa each a paper napkin. I policed the devouring of the chocolate for a long while, maybe fifteen minutes, but man, what a tedious job. At several points I thought of taking the chocolate away because it was just too much, but of course that would be like taking candy from a baby. A lot like that in fact. So I tried to encourage you to save some for later. I gave you each a bag to put your bunny in. You dutifully wrapped the bunny in the napkin and put it in the bag, and then, once the delight of this operation wore off, you took it back out and started gnawing again. Finally I couldn’t bear the tedium, not to mention the ghastliness of it all, any longer and started to pack for our trip home. Your mom returned to discover that you (and/or Alexa) had smeared melted chocolate all over the cream-colored upholstery of one of Grandma Judy’s dining room chairs. Your mom snapped at me, I snapped back at her, my mom was hurt because she’d actually bought the bunnies and they’d cost a lot, and at last we fully appreciated the glory of Christ’s resurrection and the thrilling mystery of the rabbit that lays eggs.

June 7, 2006 (age 2-¾)

You were going to tag along with your mom to your sister’s ballet class, but I got home from work right before they left. Your mom saw an opportunity and changed her plan, leaving you home with me (vs. chasing you around the community center for 45 minutes). Oh, man, you were not happy about this—in fact, you had a complete meltdown. I was so exhausted from work, I went straight to my last-resort solution to the crisis: I put in a video for you, which is a rare treat. Then I put a beer in the freezer (we didn’t have any cold) and set a timer to remind me it was in there, lest it get forgotten and burst. When that timer went off, some 10-15 minutes into your video, you thought I’d set it for you, to limit your video time (a standard practice, but one which frankly hadn’t occurred to me in this instance). To my pleasant surprise, you ejected the tape and brought it to me, without any fuss. After that we seemed to be reconciled. It just goes to show, beer is probably the solution to most parenting difficulties.

September 26, 2006 (age almost-3)

You often use the word “instead” when you’re not actually comparing two options. “I want milk instead,” you’ll say, apropos of nothing. I guess it makes sense, because whenever you propose the having of something you’re also implicitly rejecting the not-having of that thing; i.e., “I want milk instead of no milk,” or “I want milk instead of nothing.” Very philosophical of you.

January 23, 2007 (age 3)

Your mom used code words the other night so you wouldn’t understand an idea she proposed to me. She referred to me as “the paternal guardian” or some such thing. “Call him ‘Daddy,’” you told her. Ah, the power of context (though in this case, for her to refer to me in the third person, when talking to me, should have helped throw you off the scent).

April 4, 2007 (age 3-½)

You call butter “toast,” as in, “I want more toast for my bread.” You call your lacy shawl “my marriage.” You call guinea pigs “bunny pigs.”

April 7, 2008 (age 4-½)

Last night at dinner, you had a bite of your mom’s dinner roll. “I don’t like this,” you said. “It tastes like Play-Doh.” I asked you how you knew what Play-Doh tasted like. You said, quite reasonably and matter-of-factly, “Because of this [roll].” This is a nice example of the logical fallacy of “Petitio Principii,” and you delivered it expertly, even convincingly.

July 16, 2008 (age 4-¾)

I sent in proofs-of-purchase from a cereal box and ordered you and Alexa these “Mommy and me” matching wristwatches (big and small). To my surprise, both you and Alexa wanted the black Hot Wheels watches instead of the pink Barbie ones. They arrived yesterday. They feel like they’re made of rubber. They’re black, with a tire tread texture. I asked if you liked them (and may have asked how you would rate them vs. the Barbie version, I can’t recall). You said, “These are cool. Cool is better than beautiful, because beautiful is just paint.”

August 25, 2008 (age almost-5)

You and Alexa were awake, first thing in the morning, and stayed in your beds, talking. I sneaked the door open, and silently peered in. Alexa asked you, “Lindsay, who’s your favorite person in the whole world?” You replied, “That Otto kid at Dandelion [preschool].” Alexa didn’t like this answer at all; as became evident, she wanted you to say that she was your favorite. She told you you’d hurt her feelings, and lectured you on how family is supposed to be more important than mere friends, but you wouldn’t back down. This discussion repeated itself a week or two later, and this time, though he was still your favorite, you couldn’t even remember Otto’s name. (I reminded you, but you seemed unsure that you’d had this right to begin with.)

December 18, 2008 (age 5)

We bought a new[er] car. I had cautioned you and Alexa to behave during our visit to the dealer, and you and Alexa really did. I had also said, almost as an aside, that it would be better if you didn’t appear too excited about the car, since it wouldn’t help our negotiating leverage for the dealer to know we were in love with it. I was a bit concerned about how excited you and Alexa would be about the built-in booster seats (which really are cool). Not surprisingly, that was the first thing the dealer brought to your and Alexa’s attention. I’m sure he recognized that if he could get you girls jazzed on that feature, we’d have a hard time walking away if he didn’t meet our price—sort of the “threat of tantrum” technique that grocery stores use, stocking every aisle with crappy toys and hoping parents will just bite the bullet and buy them, to lubricate the grocery shopping process.

Well, we all piled in for a test drive, and within minutes you said loudly, “I don’t like this booster!” I asked why not. You replied, again loudly, “It doesn’t have any armrests!” This was going well. The dealer’s implicit “You wouldn’t deprive these delightful children of their beloved built-in boosters, would you?” was being answered with an implicit, “Try me. Your boosters are overrated.” I decided to take a gamble and pretend to try to resolve your misgivings, figuring that you’ve never yet accepted a token bone thrown your way: “But Lindsay, if I weren’t sitting in the middle seat, we could fold down the middle armrest and you’d have that!” You replied, with an irritated don’t-you-patronize-me tone, “I want two armrests! I have two arms, so I want two armrests! I don’t want this booster!” So the booster seats were effectively neutralized as a bargaining tool. Yesssss!

July 22, 2010 (age 6-¾)

Alexa finished a meal recently and instead of taking her plate to the counter, she took it into the dining room. “Alexa, I know you’re licking your plate. Stop that and bring it in here,” I told her. She commented that if nobody sees her, it shouldn’t matter. “God can see you,” I said, just to see what my daughters’ reactions would be. You replied, “Does he care?” This was a departure: at other times, you’d referred to God as a she. I asked, “So God is a he, huh?” You replied, “Yes, God is a he and Goddess is a she.” I asked you who is in charge. You paused for a moment, reflecting, and then said, “They fight a lot.”

June 6, 2011 (age 7-½)

You read more and more picture books by yourself, but with chapter books you still prefer being read to. Right now I’m reading aloud Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now. Every so often I pause and ask you questions to see if you’re catching all the details and subtexts. Yesterday I asked, “Do you think Clarice should have told Betty that she had tickets to the ‘Ruby Redfort’ movie premier, to cheer her up?” You replied, “No, that would make it worse because Betty wouldn’t be able to go—her family is moving away, but she hasn’t told Clarice that yet.” I said, “That’s right, we know something that Clarice doesn’t. And what is that an example of?” Without missing a beat, you replied, “Dramatic irony.” That’s my girl!

July 31, 2011 (age 7-¾)

You and Alexa were complaining about not having enough little Lego dudes to play with. Your mom suggested you make your own little Lego guys out of Lego bricks. Alexa complained, “That’ll never work!” Your mom replied, “Then the Lego set has failed the whole family and we’ll never buy them again.” This infuriated Alexa, who cried, “That’s not funny in the least! We don’t have the right kind of bricks for that!” Always acting in solidarity with your sister, you wailed, in an equally affronted tone, “It’s like trying to do a math problem but you don’t even have a brain!”

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume I

Introduction

I’d say albertnet isn’t really a blog, per se, in the sense of a “web log” (i.e., diary or journal). I try to write essays, reports, or humor pieces that have a point other than simply documenting my life. (After all, who cares about my particular experience?) All this being said, I’m emboldened of late by recent published volumes of David Sedaris’ diaries, which people seem to like well enough, and by an account in The New Yorker of the upcoming publication of (part of) the journal of Claude Fredericks, a classics professor in the ‘50s whose output exceeded sixty-five thousand pages. Fredericks extols the virtue of on-the-ground immediate reporting of one’s experience; as the article explains, “A journal is a ‘living thing,’ he says; a novel is a ‘taxidermist’s replica.’”

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I’m publishing here choice snippets from old letters to my brothers, which I think can give the reader a flavor of the era during which I wrote them. These bits and bobs should be better than diary excerpts because at least I wrote them with an audience in mind, so I had incentive to make them good. This post comprises a handful, in chronological order; others will follow in these pages periodically. I’ve provided, for each snippet, the locale I was writing from.

January 26, 1989 – Isla Vista

My roommate S— came home today telling me that Joe, the owner (and sole employee) of MicroPro, where I bought my computer, was busted on a felony computer piracy charge. Joe was S—’s roommate here last year. S—was bummed about the news, of course, but also seemed a bit titillated. I myself was kind of worried, not so much for Joe, but for myself if anything goes wrong with the computer I just bought. S— tried all evening to call Joe, giving me the impression they were best buds or something. “He must be in jail!” S— ultimately concluded. But finally the phone rang and I picked up. Sure enough, it was Joe. I asked, “So, how’s everything going?” He said, “Oh, okay I guess.” I asked, “Are you calling for S—?” He said, “No, I actually called for you. This girl left a message for you on my machine. Her name’s Lisa. Let me give you her number.”

Now, as you can well imagine, I was pretty confused. A presumed felon, who we’d thought might be in jail, had instead called me to relay a message from some random girl. I took down the phone number and was about to ring off when Joe said, “By the way, I think I fixed your WordStar 4.0 program. It should work now. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.” By this time, Scott was practically ripping the phone away from me, bewildered and perhaps hurt that the big shot criminal hadn’t asked for him. I told Joe, “S— wants to talk to you. Should I put him on?” Joe replied, “Uh, well, I guess so.” (I reckon he gets as sick of S— as I do.) They talked for about thirty seconds, S— offering to give the judge a character reference.

You’re probably wondering about the girl by now. Gosh, this sounds like a spy thriller, doesn’t it? The elusive computer hacker, the nosy roommate, the mystery girl, and the microfilm (okay, MicroPro). Turns out when Joe moved out of this apartment last summer, he took the phone number with him—but somehow it’s listed as my number in the student directory. (I didn’t even know I was listed!) The girl, Lisa, is in my French class. I guess I’m flattered she reached out to me, because it’s not like I’m her boyfriend or anything (though I’ve been trying to insinuate myself into the role). She called because her cat got run over on Wednesday, so she was too distraught to come to class, and she needed the homework assignment for tomorrow. She’s had a run of bad luck lately: over the weekend, she fell asleep driving and crashed her car into a ditch, sustaining a minor concussion. I guess these are the perils of college life.

October 6, 1989 – Isla Vista

You know how you always wish you could get one of your bike crashes on videotape? Well, I did. I was cruising around on my mountain bike and reached this big concrete boat ramp that goes down to the beach. (I assume the ramp reaches the water at high tide.) There was a guy standing at the top filming with a little VHS camera, and I asked if it was cool for me to ride down. He said yeah, so I went down at top speed and then locked up the rear wheel and did all these sweet fishtails (showing off for the camera, I confess). What I didn’t realize was that there was like a foot drop-off at the end. But I figured no big deal, I still had plenty of speed, so I jumped off it and made a perfect landing, rear wheel first. Thing was, once the front wheel landed it bogged down in the sand and I was flipped right over the bars. I landed in tons of sand, and tucked and rolled, so it didn’t hurt at all. Like twenty people were out there sunbathing and they all cheered as I leapt to my feet and put my hands up in a victory salute. I wonder how many times the guy with the camera will watch that footage, laughing his ass off.

August 17, 1990 - Oakland

It’s kind of a trip living in Oakland. I mean, this place is huge. I’ve never lived in a big city before, but so far I like it. That said, sometimes the complexity of it all can be intimidating. Here’s an example. A couple of friends and I went to this Thai restaurant, and ordered this big fancy soup. It’s served in a ring shaped bowl, which has this chimney deal that comes up through the middle of the ring. A flame at the bottom of the chimney is supposed to keep the soup hot. Our waitress struggled to light it. Not that the chimney was the problem; she just had no idea now to strike a paper match. She was trying to squeeze the head of the match between the striking surface and the folded over book, and I half expected her to catch the whole book on fire, or inadvertently fling a burning match at me. She finally got the match lit, dropped it in the chimney of the bowl, looked at it with an air of uncertainty, and walked off. Remembering a waiter who failed to successfully light my flaming baked Alaska a few years back, I was pretty sure it hadn’t lit. I looked down the chimney of the bowl to see. Never, never do this. To my horror, it ignited very suddenly and the ensuing fireball completely engulfed my face for a split second before I pulled my head away. The bright blue flame extended a good six inches past the top of the chimney!

I could smell burning hair. Fortunately there were mirrors on the wall and I ran over to survey the damage. Sure enough, my eyebrows had been singed. It really doesn’t look very good. At least I don’t have the shoulder-length hair I was sporting last summer. If I did, I’m sure it would have caught fire and I would have burned to death, right there in the restaurant. I can envision my last dying moments: my life flashes before my eyes as the hapless waitress fumbles stupidly with the fire extinguisher, eventually giving it up and returning, with a shrug, to the kitchen.

I wasn’t very pleased with the whole situation, so I dipped the tablecloth in the flame and very quickly the entire table was on fire. We were out the door and running down the sidewalk when the massive explosion hurled us to the concrete. (Okay, I’ve exaggerated quite a bit about my response, but the part about my eyebrows is 100% true.) I’m going to have to be more careful until I’m accustomed to the sophisticated cuisine of the big city.

November 19, 1991 - Berkeley

So help me God, I’m going to make this the best letter I’ve ever written. This is my goal. It has been stated. Were it possible, I would get you a few sandwiches to munch on while you’re reading. Anything to make this a special time for you. I would do that for you. I would.

Jesus, Geoff. Just think of all the letters I’ve written, always just writing along, knowing that I’m not being graded, you won’t send it back with all the errors circled, little arrows to show where I left out something I should have put in, no general comments like “Little or no relevant material. See me.” No, it’s a simple job, I just write for a change, nothing to get stressed out about. But who says that’s good enough? Things are gonna change. You’re my brother, after all, and you deserve at least as much hard work as a stupid TA who’s paid to write tetchy little comments like “watch your pronouns” in my margins. (Why should I watch my pronouns? Are they misbehaving? Do I need to take them outside?)

Ah, but I also have selfish reasons for wanting to write well. I want to be a great writer someday. No matter what I write, it is nothing more than a stepping stone towards this goal. Writing this letter, or indeed anything, is just a chance to polish my style into the one which will propel me to fame, fortune, and maybe a gig on “Hollywood Squares” or “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” So I must confess that through all my correspondence I have only been using you. And that’s not right. This is your letter, not an exhibition of the literary machine I am trying to build: a machine that so far requires eighty tons of coal, a tanker truck of natural gas, twelve gallons of premium unleaded and eight D-cells just to produce passels of pointless pages of trite, trifling text. It’s a machine you would expect the military to build. Tons of money, marginal promise, dubious worth to future generations. All unacceptable. So I’m going to double down and improve my letters. They will henceforth be of the highest quality I can muster.

Maybe a running account of my latest exploits isn’t the right approach. Perhaps I need to look back over my past, determine the most salient events, and recount them as vividly as possible, while framing them in the context of why they were so formative. I’ll try that out. Here goes:

That summer ended childhood. I hoped there would be work in San Luis Obispo, my new home [during my gap year before college]. Every day is the same: I collect the paper and move swiftly through it, starting with the comics. Charlie Brown is about to get laid for the first time. Nancy finally put a good one over on Sluggo and they say he’ll never walk right again. Garfield has slumped over on the fence, killed by a clock thrown at him. Now, on to the Classified Ads: unspecified work for Ernie Ball under the title “day laborer.” A data entry job in Grover City, a fifteen mile commute for $5 an hour. Dishwasher at Sizzler. Well, so much for that. What else is here? A letter to the editor insists that for all Sarah Riordon’s trouble at the free throw line, she is a valuable asset to the Mission College Prep team. Front page: REAGAN SAYS “EVERYTHING’S JUST PEACHY.” Yeah, now if he could just solve unemployment, starting with mine. I head down Foothill to Spirit Cycle Works. Jay, the obese head mechanic, is sitting on a stool popping plastic bubble wrap in the vise. Garrett is cussing about a bottom bracket adjustment he can’t get right. You’re reaming a seat tub, violently, viciously, a tyrannical grin on your face as you subvert the soft metal to your will. I would take a job here for two bucks an hour, just to work with you. But Spirit isn’t hiring.

It was fun hanging out with you for that year, but I couldn’t ever act excited about it, nor can I reminisce fondly about it now. Maybe it’s because I was un- and under-employed and needed to act cynical. I wonder if you saw through my cool front. (I never did.) But was this front my own idea, or was I unconsciously mimicking your own tough guy act? The thing is, you veer between hard-boiled and almost cloyingly nostalgic. Which one is the real you? Let’s admit it, you yourself are, and have long been, a hard dude to try to figure out. And “figure out” implies that there is an answer, which there is not. There is no solution in the back of the textbook for Geoff Albert. He just is. You just is. We just is.

August 18, 1992 - Berkeley

Let me tell you a little story about my roommate A—’s brother, Robert (I think it is). He’s been couch surfing here for weeks, and even stocked the kitchen with all his own food. He had the cheek to label it all so we won’t steal any. His stash consists mainly of hot dogs, cold cuts, Oreos, white bread, and milk. This guy has no idea how to cook. He prepares a hot dog by putting it, raw, on a slice of bread and microwaving it for thirty seconds (just until the bread’s hot).

Well, one night A— had cooked himself a meal (some weird South American thing) and offered his brother his leftovers. Robert hemmed and hawed, as if put off by the notion of secondhand food, or perhaps by the cuisine being outside his norm, and finally asked us what nearby restaurants delivered. He wasn’t interested in pizza so I suggested a few takeout places within cycling distance. “The bike is kind of what I wanted to avoid,” he said, peering down forlornly at his big belly, which sagged down below his belt. Okay, so no leftovers, no pizza, and nothing beyond walking distance. For a guy who doesn’t even have a place to live, he sure does seem picky.

Finally I thought of a barbecue place like four blocks away. A— explained how to get there, but I guess Robert wasn’t satisfied with the directions so he asked us for a map, which my other roommate eventually produced. After studying the route a while, Robert finally embarked on his daring solo mission. Well, like half an hour later he came back empty-handed, looking totally grief-stricken. Apparently a street hoodlum spotted an easy mark and grabbed the bag of food right out of Robert’s hands! Poor dude was too upset at this point to go buy more, and settled for a couple more hot dogs.

Is there any moral to this story? Yeah: don’t be a dork.

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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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