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“One night, my 3-year-old asked me if she could sleep in my bed. I told her no. She said, “That’s not fair! Why does Daddy get to sleep in your bed?” READ MORE
Fatherhood
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Before we moved back to my hometown, before we had a house of our own, before our son was born, my wife and I spent two years two blocks from the beach in Marina del Rey. It was a time of long walks to the ends of piers, a time of Big Projects and hopes for Bigger Projects, a time of watching Turner Classic Movies till midnight and then walking to the seaside again. In between, from time to time, we would bicker like gulls. That is, it was a time of romance, with all its clichés and contradictions and disorientations, a season of rugged creation, the season that, in many ways, made us as a couple, as a family who we are. In those days there were a number of young couples in our apartment complex. We were all from Someplace Else from Holland and Lebanon and Switzerland and Michigan and Moscow and Vegas. None of us had children yet, but we all had kids on the radar, kids on our minds, kids in our hearts. Kids were everywhere, it seemed, except really, truly in our homes. We were all just south or just north of 30, the age when you’re no longer teasing yourself with the idea of “freedom.” In 1999, couple by couple, we all moved out of the complex. Some, like the pair from Switzerland, moved because they’d become prosperous and were ready for homes. Some, like us, moved because the rent went up. The couple from Michigan, though, moved because they’d become the first of us to have a child. The new days, much-hoped-for days, were beginning, but our little circle had broken up almost too soon to celebrate. On Independence Day we had a little party at our place. Everyone ate pizza, then went down to the waterfront. I made a videotape of the group, together for the last time, watching the fireworks rain down. This spring my wife and I and our 4-year-old son went to Redondo Beach to visit our Swiss friends and their 2 1/2-year-old daughter. These are the friends everyone should be so lucky to have, the kind that take life with a knowing nod and a calm step forward. A morning at their breakfast table is like a trip to the spa. There is always French speech (oddly pleasant when you don’t speak French), and French bread, and Nutella. But this time was the best time, better than all the old times in our old life. The sun shone into the breakfast room, husbands and wives spoke softly, and, in the background, a little boy chased a little girl, laughing gleefully with her, calling out like a suitor, “Victoria! Victoria!” Greg Blake Miller writes from Las Vegas. |
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