A Little Chaos

What is. What was...

I can't dance in front of my children anymore. They were once the only safe harbor for public dancing, where i could move with reckless abandon and pretend that i had some sort of rhythm. Today that would be met with "daaaaad." Soon, I imagine, the response would be a fair degree of mortification. 

But Riley still holds my hand. At 10, he still occassionally reaches for mine, the safety of my grip still means something, and he is for now unconcerned with how this might look to others. I secretly I love this.

But i can no longer carry him on my shoulders. Kylen either. Ky did the 'body walk' on me a while back. I held his hands and he walked up my legs and did a flip through his arms. It damn near killed me. 

They take their own showers now. This one, I find, is a wonderful advancement, although i suspect there are often still layers of grime when they are done. I've had to explain to Ri that sitting in a bathtub of hot water with no soap is not some magical cure for dirty. Kylen, at 8, still won't tie his own shoes. This one kills me, especially from mister independent. He gets so frustrated he gives up, and when that kid gets frustrated it's like a black cloud descending from the heavens, with no hope of quick sunshine. He can hang onto a bad mood like few people I know. I have this image of me tying his shoes as we rush for the bus the first day of high school. Ri finally ties his own, but does it so poorly I can't believe he doesn't just walk out of them. This from a kid who does math equations I have to use a computer to figure out. 

Slowly, little by little, Ri's favorite activity, talking to himself, is subsiding, as he sequesters it to fewer and fewer places. We've taught him that there are places it's fine, and places that--for better or for worse--he just can't do that anymore. I know it's part of parenting...teaching your child the ways to be part of society, but it's sad to do. His conversations with himself (at ear-shattering decibels) is one of his defining characteristics, containing so much of his personality and creativity, and it's hard to tell him that the bus just isn't the place for it. But I see him understanding. He gets it. He's resigned to it, but as he says, "I like talking to myself...it makes me me."

Yes, it does. And that--along with dads who can no longer dance--is why growing up sucks. 

Dog Poop Sunday: The Mid-Winter Classic edition

Sixty degree weather and sunshine combined to allow for the staging of the inaugural Mid-Winter Classic, an experimental attempt to boost attendance after 15 disappointing years of the springtime Dog Poop Sunday. Alas, attendance remained at one, mirroring the yearly turnout for the spring edition. 

Wet ground made for less than ideal conditions, and muddy shoes were the order of the day during the 15-minute event. Also, this year saw a new location with the moving of the family from the heavily wooded location of the previous four festivals to the more confined locale of Tiffany Court. Sasha, the only supply side contributor, is also afraid of the front yard stemming from the Invisible Fence fiasco, so the playing field was heavily concentrated in the backyard.

The event wrapped shortly after beginning, with the lone participant wanting to watch the Steelers game and drink a beer. Expectations for the 16th annual springtime edition of Dog Poop Sunday are tempered, with event organizers planning for continued low attendance.

Still, it was voted to double the beer budget, and passed by unanimous decree.  

Leaving Home

I turned and looked one final time at our house in the woods. Its tall peaks and wall of windows looking out on the world. A fitting ending, as the late fall sunset lit the trademark glow of the cedar, and the trees, still clinging to their colors, blazed all around. This was the dream house, the sanctuary in the heart of suburbia, a place that took my breath away countless times. And as I turned up the driveway, it all hit home at once, and I though…”Thank God I don’t have to rake all those f**king leaves.”

I don’t know how, or when, but at some point in our four year relationship I became emotionally detached from the house. It wasn’t overt, and never negative. I think the weight of the place just piled up. It was mostly a realization that, as much as I liked the idea of being isolated, with land, and the need for a self-motivated attitude toward upkeep (and snow), the reality was that it wore me down. And never more so than in the fall, with endless weekends of raking, raking, raking. The lovely landscaping that I fell in love with was an endless chore to keep looking good, and one I quickly failed at.

And snakes. Have I mentioned snakes? They were perhaps the final straw. I liked the battle…the ‘me versus them’ narrative I created in my mind, that I would outlast them, catch every last one, and release them to a better place away from here. And I did. But as four became five, and seven became eight, I started to dread each trip into the garage. They never scared me, but they scarred me. It happened without trauma, but it was a cumulative feeling that this just wasn’t worth the struggle, and that once this chore ended I’d simply be on to the next.

Yeah, it’s just a house, I know. It wasn’t as dramatic as all that. But in hindsight that’s how it felt.

But today, as well, there were lingering memories, and they were good ones. Ky was with me, and we took one last walk through. We surveyed the playroom, where endless dodge ball games marked our days. We looked at the kitchen we’d had built and loved. The great room where we'd placed ridiculously  large Christmas trees. And in the boys' rooms Ky and I pulled out the measuring tape where we’d marked four years of growth of each of the boys, and he wrote down all the measurements as I read them off.

We’ll recreate it in our new home.

Kylen was sad, the first time I think I’d seen any emotion from him about the move. He looked at his room and said, “It seems really small without anything in it.”

He’s right.

The thing that made it big was us.  

 

The cost of a neighborhood

When we did all of our careful financial calculations in the decision to buy a new house, one of the savings we noted, in big, bold text, was No More Private School. This was no small line item, and it served to reduce our monthly outlay, which folded right over into how that money would offset the new mortgage. In addition to the tuition cost, we often complained that our old school asked, almost weekly, for some donation or another, all of which went toward a minimum amount to be contributed each year. "Contributed." As another anonymous dad said to me, "If I just write you a check for the whole amount now, will you stop asking?"

What I did not anticipate--and all you neighborhood types are about to point your fingers and laugh--is the near-constant parade of kids at our door, dog-eared catalogs in hand, trying their best to support their [insert club name here]. Marching band. Cheerleading. Cub scouts. Future Farmers of Northern Pittsburgh's Easterly Suburbs. You name it. And every time I say yes, because sure, I do like to help. And, I don't want to be 'that guy'. And I fear that, soon enough, i'll have to become 'that guy.' 

Seriously, $21 for a box of microwave popcorn???? I don't even eat microwave popcorn, and certainly not the kind with a list of ingredients I can't pronounce. A smarter me would have said, 'Here's ten bucks, keep the popcorn.' A smarter me is probably still months away.

So I now await my delivery of chocolate peanut butter chunk cookie dough, to be delivered in one-to-two weeks. And I fear the coming holidays, which will, innevitably, end with a fruitcake being paid for and left to rot. 

I love our new neighborhood to an unhealthy degree. I just forgot the true cost to live in one. 

If there is a polite way to say no, and still give the occassional yes, i'd love to know it.

The final battle

OK, truth be told, we never caught snake #8. He tormented me. I had him once and he got out of a four foot tall garbage can with a heavy can of paint holding it closed. He would appear from time to time, just to let me know. "I'm ssssstill here." Yesterday I was at the old house gathering a few last things in the garage, and suddenly there he was, half hanging down from the ceiling, fully exposed. That was the good new. The bad was that I was about two feet from him when our eyes locked. The rest went something like this link. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLLK9QRkdhA#t=0m30s

I win.

He now joins his brothers and sisters in the park. And, to quote another movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWiVQ5cVBMg

 

Home for sale

There’s a reason they say “Home for sale.” I could say “House for sale,” and I suppose for some, that’s exactly what they would put. But in our case it’s a home. Because a house is a structure, a building, an impersonal collection of materials that you hope might hold up well over time. A home is much more. A state of mind, a place in the heart, an extension of yourself, and all of your hopes and dreams.

We are selling a home. 

You won’t see it from the road. Not in the summertime. It slowly disappears from view as the trees fill in, becoming once again our hideaway in the woods. It’s close to Rt. 19, to all of Cranberry, but it feels more like being nestled near a ski resort, with 40 or so windows open to the day’s drama outside. In snowfall it is stunning, our own chalet. With a driveway that drops quickly from the road, so that the first comment we often hear is, “how do you keep that clean in the winter?” But it’s deceiving…a quick 15 minutes with a good snow blower and it’s clean to the blacktop again and away we go. I love this part of the house…the feeling that we are somehow brave against nature, when the truth is so much easier, and I zip out in my little front wheel drive hatchback while others are stranded. 

On cool nights, home is where we sit by the fire pit, piles of smores at the ready, listening to the woods chirp and hum. On hot days we stay in the coolness of the shade of dozens of oaks, long since mature.

After work, home is where the boys and I play dodge ball in the downstairs room, long enough to get a good throw, wide enough for a good dive, just far enough from the family room to keep the peace. This is the coziest part of home, where we gather for movies and play.

The kitchen, the heart of our home, is where we gather—inevitably—with guests and family.  Because it’s steps from the great room, with its 20’ ceilings, the endless windows, a fire and room to sit and talk and eat. At Christmas we delight in finding the biggest tree we can, knowing it will still be miles from the ceiling.

The kitchen was a labor of love, and we decided to just go for it and make it custom top to bottom, so we tore it down to the studs, brought in a custom cabinet builder and added everything we always said we wanted. We could not be happier with the outcome.

And because we knew, most of all, that home is where we work, we wanted a separate space, something large and open and dedicated, where we could bring people to meet, and have lots of room to breathe. We did not want just ‘a space’, so we transformed an empty, unheated, unfinished room into our dream space, with teak floors, its own heating and cooling, a library ladder to reach the loft, and lighting to keep it bright, although with yet more windows they often go unused.

We carpeted top to bottom, we added lights, ceiling fans, a new driveway, a new motor for the furnace, and on and on until we turned this house into a home.

 And now it’s time to move on. To let someone else take our work and make it their own.Turn what they see as a house into their own home.

It’s a good home. It will welcome them like it welcomed us.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Rileyman

As if I needed more evidence that the world is screaming by, Riley turns 10 today. 10. How the hell did this little chipmunk that obsessively laid out his diapers, took ½ hour to pick a shirt, started playing on the computer at 2 and reciting the alphabet backwards at 5 suddenly sprout braces, swing for the fences and ask questions I’m not prepared to answer?

This is the Summer of Change. New house, new school, new friends, new everything. Riley’s so different, and so much the same. His biggest concern with moving is leaving his friends, but I think he’s wrapped his head around that. We visited our new house to let them see the new spread, pick out bedrooms and get a feel for the neighborhood. We drove around and they saw lots of kids out playing…something they’ve never had here. He got excited for the first time and now he’s looking forward to being there. His biggest concern is being bullied at a new school, interestingly enough. I’m not sure where that comes from, but being at his old school felt comfortable, with just two classes in his grade and knowing everyone so well. We’ve assured him that most kids are great, the school takes it seriously (and they do), and that he’ll quickly find new friends (and he will).

He’s still the peanut of the class, by far the smallest kid. He just reaches the shoulders of some of his baseball teammates.  This, combined with his never-ending ability to speak his mind in the most inappropriate times continues to endear him to the masses without his knowledge. The moms watching the last ballgame commented to me on how they still laugh at how he told the first base coach he wasn’t going to steal. “No way, it’s not worth the risk!” He’s made good progress this season on not getting upset at striking out, and more important, he’s started swinging the bat consistently, cracking a couple hits, so he knows how good that feels. And in what was way more stressful for Traci and me, he pitched for the first time two days ago. He was beyond excited, but this is a kid who just a month ago was able to throw the ball across the plate at all. To our amazement, he only allowed 3 runs, and made two outs himself. This was against the other team’s best pitcher, who let in five.

I’m used to the emotionally overwhelming moments at this point, but they still whack me when I don’t expect it. When he made that first out I made a spectacle of myself I’m quite sure. Dad’s privilege.

So here’s to 10, Rileyman. You never made it easy…you always made it interesting. I couldn’t be more proud to see you hit this big milestone.