The Day the Ceiling Fell
Cleanup crew
Literally a third of the living room ceiling fell to the floor on Father’s Day. This was my fault. About 12 years ago there was a heavy rainfall while I had the roof open for the addition. The tarp didn’t do its job, or maybe I didn’t do my job hanging the tarp, and many gallons of water filtered down into and through cracks in the ceiling. I patched the ceiling in a haphazard way, but the bandages held until new cracks appeared last week. Sunday morning I was idly talking to my son Julian about repair options. He kept asking, “Can’t we just call someone?” I assured him it was an aesthetic problem. Wrong. We were nearby but not in the room when it all let loose. The noise of three hundred pounds of plaster hitting the hardwood floor was impressive even from the curb. The violence was enough to shake things off the nearby walls and shelves (fortunately not my pictures!).
No one was hurt and surprisingly little was damaged, though the cat might take issue regarding her emotional well-being. I half expected to find her little tabby tail curling out from under a sheet of plaster, a notion I found perversely amusing in the way of A Fish Called Wanda—and yes I do love this cat. The worn-out couch and carpet are truly worn out. The venerable piano I paid nothing for gained more character. I learned the painless way that closing your laptop when you’re not using it is a good idea.
Book found under the debris
The worst injury of all is probably to my faltering ego. I think I’m going to make some lemonade from the disaster and build a tray ceiling, improve the lighting, and rough in a ceiling fan; meager recompense for the room blowing up. So now I have a new medium-sized project added to a crowded list with more items delayed than the O’Hare departures in a blizzard. On the upside, school is ending and I can enlist the boys to learn some skills. I have already provided a generous lesson on the long-term price of hack repairs. (Julian just walked by and reminded me, “I was right and you were wrong.” Fine, his workload just doubled. I wonder how much drywall he can handle?)
On the constructive side, today we watched Malcolm graduate from the fifth grade.* It was a bittersweet thing. He’s growing up and, including his brother’s time there, we’ve been involved with that school for ten years. Now that door is closed, and however good or bad a job we did is behind us. In a sense we’re watching the boys build the houses where they’ll live after they leave us; houses that, I hope, will have better ceilings.
Maia—not squished
The more so because of the chaos I grew up in, I regret not providing a stout and orderly childhood home. It’s a rare kid who sees the skeleton of their home laid bare, especially by the folly of their father, and these guys are admirably stoic about it. As a corollary of feeling better, I dwell on this more and I am bringing it around, and with drywall and mud and paint will create the nice boxes I hear normal people like to live in. To be honest, I like problems like these. I understand them. I can fix them. Carpentry is wonderfully concrete. Meanwhile, how the kids will turn out—I don’t know. Raising them is such an inexact and humbling process. But as I described in the last post, I’m trying my best, a much better best than in many years yet maybe 30% of what I can really do. In the meantime I’d really appreciate it if the rest of the damn ceiling would stay where it belongs, securely over our heads.
* With honors, mind you, and just a year after he tried to break it to me gently that “I’m just not an ‘A’ student” in a walk through the park. I demurred … passionately.
Smartass Jr.
Would Captain Haddock have been a good dad?*
I have two sons. I’m amazed that children just appear without some sort of formal transition. I mean, really, we had a ceremony even for graduating from sixth grade. I had no preparation or anticipation. I grew up without a dad, genetic or not. It was just me and my mom. Until her final years, we were a very tight and uniquely egalitarian pair. At various times I was her child, confidant, companion, and, during her decline into disability, caretaker. Torn between these irreconcilable roles, I grew up too fast, like a plant too spindly to support itself.
Now I have a much more typical (but not quite typical) family of four. I am bemused to find myself as an authority figure over a teen and a tween. I am quick to admit I have limited ideas as to what I’m doing. Had I ever stopped to think about parenting in advance, I would have realized I didn’t know much. Now that I am a parent, experience has made me much more knowledgeable and little less inept. But two things I have always believed (that also turn out to be true) are that you can’t assure producing the perfect child, but you sure can do a lot to ruin one; and that you only have a limited time, maybe ten years, to set in place their essential nature.
The effort to be a good parent is a tough one. I’m hardly that sober abstract stoic Atticus Finch we’re supposed to aspire to. For example, I doubt Atticus ever swore around his kids if he swore at all. I try not to, but my kids still know most of my vocabulary. Evidently no child remembers anything we say as well as the unsuppressed expletive. Self-restraint, that was Atticus. I further doubt he was ever sarcastic or any flavor of ironic, rather a sort of rueful optimism. The rhetorical question was as testy as he got. In the same way that he dispatched Tim Johnson the rabid dog—mind you, with a single bullet—Atticus was a straight shooter. Surgical.
Not so in the Douglass household. Not with Dad. I can’t play that far out of type. Two exchanges that illustrate:
Recently 11-year-old Malcolm was in hot water with me for some sort of churlish behavior. I had suspended judgment to let myself cool off. Later that evening, I suggested we talk about it. He looked up from the sofa:
“Am I grounded?” he asked.
Consequences, I thought. All they care about is what it’s going to cost them.
“Actually you’re scheduled to be executed at 7:30.”
Instantly: “Do I still have to do my homework?”
He flashed a toothy smile and defused the moment. Oh well.
A dim gray morning a few years ago, then-thirteen Julian headed out the door, shouldered backpack pregnant with books and body inclined forward for the fast walk to the school bus. School mornings were usually rushed and often contentious. Julian’s disengagement from his work had set in.
I tried a new tack. From across the room: “Have a great day, Julian. I love you.”
He halted halfway out the door, looked back, and inquired, “What is that, some kind of reverse psychology?”
“No,” I sighed. “F**k you. That’s reverse psychology.”
He smiled, a real smile. And he flew down the stairs, seven steps in one leap, landing on the concrete at a run before the door could slam shut between us.
So now Atticus rolls over in his grave. It’s too late for these guys, the chance for me to convey that noble impression of the person I’m not. I’ve infected their personalities badly enough that sometimes it’s like talking to myself, mannerisms and bitterness included. I realize sarcasm is not a happy thing, there is always that tinge of misery, but I find it difficult to check. I usually intend it as humor, and sometimes it does do the job.
How far can I move outside my core? Not very far, apparently. I guess I had more of an instructional model of fathering in mind, and Atticus thing of teaching them what to be according to my best intentions. I realized the importance of being a good role model—and even more so of not being a bad one—but it didn’t occur to me that they developed not so much through observation and analysis as some sort of osmosis. And that really pins me down: I can’t just act like the person I idealize, I have to actually be that person as, God forbid, they grow up and see me for what I really am.
Who would I ideally be? Well, as mentioned, I didn’t for starters have a model to adopt or reject. Like anyone, I can do only so much, and my willingness is not infinite, either. I can’t be Atticus; that ship has sailed. But I don’t embrace stagnation, either, or this ridiculous idea that we can’t learn something new. So I hasten to change in my middle age and hope the kids grow with me, that it’s not too late. It’s likely they will manage to fill in the potholes I’ve left behind, but I’m not going to count on them working it out on some therapist’s couch. I know that wherever it is I want to be, I’m not there yet, but I think I can get close. The best I can do is not by being my best, but the dismal second of trying my best. Hey, there’s something to be stoic about.
None of this means not having fun along the way. The smiles keep things moving forward, for which the joys and absurdities of life certainly provide ample material.
* The Tintin books are wonderful and a must-read. Captain Haddock’s intemperance and whimsical curses (documented here also) make him quite the inverse role (“terrible warning”) model. (There’s even an app for that written by an old friend of mine.) A French friend of my mother gave me Tintin in Tibet when I was five (ca. 1973)—written in French. Tattered and worn, it’s my oldest and prized possession, and I can still read only about a third of it. The pictures help.
On the health benefits of swearing: Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief, Scientific American, 12 July 2009.
To Build a Ship
I’m thinking about my kids; and perhaps myself. The goad versus the goal, the push versus the pull.
Quand tu veux construire un bateau, ne commence pas par rassembler du bois, couper des planches et distribuer du travail, mais reveille au sein des hommes le desir de la mer grande et large.
If you want to build a ship, don’t begin by gathering wood, cutting the boards, and dividing the work; rather awaken in the men the desire for the vast and endless sea.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (attrib.)
NB: I don’t think there is an authoritative translation of this, so I found one I liked and tweaked it ever so slightly. Nothing’s perfect (XKCD).
