Maybe it was the deadened embers my pupils had become, or the angle and slump of my shoulders, but I recently got an unexpected week off,given to me by my boss, for, in his words, working like a dog for the past month. The time was a complete surprise. Spread before me, broad and luxurious, were some hundred twenty unclaimed hours free of meetings,emails and appointments. The easy answer to a week off-- going to,
say, Aruba-- was unavailable to me as a thicket of activities and obligations had grown around my seven and nine year old boy's lives. Even though they are homeschooled and my wife and I have tried desperately not to schedule every minute of their young lives, it seems the small compromises we made for piano lessons, children's choruses and chess classes have assembled themselves into a psychic vacuum capable of sucking spontaneity out of any soul that dares approach it.
Or so I had heard. The truth is, like a lot of fathers, I had very
little contact with my children's day to day lives. What did I really
know about what they did between the hours of 8 and 7? So with little
else to do, I thought I would find out. Instead of my wife, I would take
them through the subways and onto the buses, to all their cute little
appointments during which I would relax, drink coffee and eat danishes.
It would be fun, like one big saturday.
Monday: I wake up late. The kids wake up late. It's their first
rehearsal for roles in a metropolitan opera production of Manon Lescaut.
They had been going to practices of the children's chorus for about a
year and this was the first thing they had been cast in. And now all that
was standing between them and their rightful place on the cover of
opera news is a bath, breakfast, and a decent alarm clock. Shower steam
clouds of panic fill the apartment. The scoldings and protestations and
pleadings end in a tumble out of a taxi in the middle of the wrong
block. I had never been to the opera, much less to the stage door of the
opera so I was wholly dependent on the navigational skills of two
individuals who only recently started putting their shoes on the correct feet.
Weaving through scaffolding, stopping security guards with pleading
inquiries, dodging dump trucks reversing, we finally dashed through the
swinging black doors a full seven minutes past their scheduled arrival
time. The stern guard behind the bullet proof glass mumbled out the
extension for the children's wrangler and pointed to the house phone. I
held my breath, pressing the numbers out with a sense of doom. Before
anyone picks up, the kids cry out,. "Alicia's here, dad!". I spin around
telegraphing a grin of apology. The small, curly haired woman returns my
smile quizzically, saying, "I think the rehearsal is tomorrow."
Tuesday: the thing about opera parents is most of them are actually
opera fans. Some are even Italian. Having arrived 30 minutes early, I
find myself involved in pleasant banter amongst grownups, banter that
turns into a discussion about operas they had seen. I nod sagely, hoping
to mask the sum toto of my opera knowledge derives the viewing of a
highly compressed version of Il barbiere de sevilla performed by msrs.
bunny and fudd.
Wednesday: I wake up from my nap ( a nap I have taken everyday this
week) at around 830 at night. The morning was a blur of bus rides,
teacher introductions, rehearsal drop-offs and espresso shots. In the
afternoon, I briefly rallied the troops for a visit to the museum of modern
art, which despite my best efforts, the two guys have chosen not to
love. On entry, they burst into the sculpture garden, treating the space
as if it were some sort of obstacle course. I'm not sure it's completely kosher to crawl through the tunnel- like center of untitled by Donald Judd, but I'm definitely glad the guard didn't see it. By my count, it
took 5 firm tugs on the upper arm, 3 dagger like stares, 6 impromtptu
lectures complete with wagging index finger to march through the four
sections of the museum I desperately want to see. The way home is
punctuated by sidewalk races, body checks, outright punches, claims of
universal awesomeness, jokes cribbed from Calvin and Hobbes and wildly joyous
laughter. I acted as goalie, referee, and stern handed sheperd until we
all crossed the threshold of our apartment door and I collapsed into
bed. The children played on.
Thursday: "wWuld you like some tea, Mr monkey? How about you, Mrs.
Baby?" I find myself holding a tea party for a friend of our's three
year old daughter. Her other daughter was sick with a fever so I went to
their place in harlem to bring the elder one, arrayed in pink from head
to toe, to her ballet class. As I dip my pretend crumpet into my
pretend tea, I contemplate what different worlds parents of little girls
occupy than little boys. I'm sure the boys are now communicating their
brotherly love for each other in their special sub dialect of smacks and
wrestling holds. For the next few hours, I am free of their chaos, off
as they are with their mother to a robotics class and another choral
practice. I am supposed to meet them near there, after Sola's dad fetches
her. But when the hour arrives, I find myself in bed again, counting
all the things I had meant to do this week, fixing the stereo, buying an
Iphone, going to the frick and the whitney, replacing two measly
light bulbs in the high ceiling of our living room. These unfullfilled plans
run past my mind's eye like sheep. At five, the anger rising in me
crescendos (couldn't I get just one moment to screw in one hook in the
closet) so by ten, I was amused at my desire for a long subway ride out to
Totonno's pizza in Coney island. I reach 20 and I feel a surge of
understanding, deep and abiding, of just how hard it is to be new york city
mom and how much love it takes to endure. Thirty pushes me to the edges
of slumber, and the true meaning of every plea, every look my wife has
cast my direction for the nine years we have been parents rushes over me
in waves. At thirty two, my eyes shut as spaces carved out by my
ignorance fill and I sleep.
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