Tag: Shallows

Shallow Work

On By jesteramIn Uncategorized9 Comments

Shallow Work

I’m planning to make Sundays a bit of a rest day here in the Shallows, though I must admit I’m interpreting “rest” in an odd way.

Instead of drafting a new post for today, I started a Standing in the Shallows Facebook page, figured out how to allow for pinning my posts/art to Pinterest, changed my commenting policy to allow for anonymous posts from people who don’t want to provide a name or e-mail address, and created a new page—”The Piers,” get it?—for links to other blogs I read.

I also did a bunch of dishes, helped babysit two other families’ worth of kids, researched other dad blogs, and considered entering a writing contest for a chance to win a contract for a Dark Crystal prequel novel. I think I may try for it.

Today’s doodle, by the way, comes from my children playing with one set—the first set—of our babysitting charges. Through the course of a game, each kid laid claim to a superpower (wings, ice breath, and the like), though my second daughter couldn’t decide on just one. She periodically reinvented herself until she settled on all of them.

I wonder what turning into everything would look like. Marvel, get on this please. I’m sure it could fit in one of your X-Men titles. You’ve got, like, 50 of them.

Check back tomorrow for a new weekly theme, more doodles (yes, there’s a unique one for each post), and other Shallow stuff.

Until then (and speaking of Dark Crystal), what movie terrified you as a kid?

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This is my baby

On By jesteramIn Intro9 Comments

This is my baby

When my wife and I announced that we were having a third child, people would look at our two daughters and then ask me, “Are you hoping for your boy?”

The question annoyed me. It presumed so much: That I was dissatisfied with the girls. That a boy would somehow be more mine than my daughters are. That there’s a proprietary angle to our children. That dads need sons.

We chose to wait until we actually saw the baby to find out whether we were having a boy or girl, and I subsequently worried my way through the pregnancy.

Over the last several years, I’d developed a sense of myself as a good dad for daughters. I attended tea parties and gladly visited imaginary hair and beauty salons, all while championing my girls’ simultaneous desires to get muddy and rowdy, their dreams of being entomologists, and their rights to pursue whatever paths they chose, regardless of sex or gender. I proudly told people that they were the sorts of girls who liked putting on princess dresses before they climbed up on rocks and jumped off. I wrestle with them. I love camping with them. I enjoy the makeovers they give me.

I also not-so-secretly worried that I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy, protesting that I’m not an athlete, not a typical “guy”—to which my wife pointed out that I was being just a tad sexist. My firstborn, after all, shows all the signs of being competitive, physical, coordinated, and eager to take up sports, and I have no worries about my future interactions with her. I was also raised under a model of unconditional support; my rec-major dad and super-active mom—both of whom have participated in team and individual sports my whole life—never failed to attend one of my ballet recitals or musical theater performances. Of course I will make every effort to try to understand whatever activities any of my children choose to pick up.

And then he arrived. I was convinced we were having another girl. But here was this additional XY in the house, and I found myself quickly admitting that, yes, I’m glad I now have a son. Part of me feels guilty in such an admission—but my wife, correct as usual, points out that I can be happy with daughters and a son. For different reasons. And I am.

So I’m working on not being ashamed to say that I’m thrilled to have this little guy in my life, one who already likes to watch me shave. I’ll teach him how to do the same, someday—and he’ll need to do it often. I’ll teach him how to tie a tie, if that’s his style. I’ll teach him about healthy relationships, and respecting women, and masculinity that has a positive impact on society. I hope. I’ll try.

I call him Mr. Dude or Mr. Boy, and I have only recently admitted that I am glad that there’s another person in this family who will—I think, anyway—someday see the world from a similar perspective to mine.

I don’t know any of that for sure, but I do know that he is my boy—as much as my daughters are my girls. And that’s OK.

What do you think?

This is my second daughter

On By jesteramIn Intro5 Comments

This is my second daughter

I caught this one. I literally caught her as she was being born.

My wife and I chose to have home births, and everything went (relatively) smoothly with the first and third kids. There were some complications with No. 2, however, so we went to the hospital so my wife could be induced.

Once there, one thing led to another, my wife ended up on all fours in the hospital bathroom, the OB couldn’t quite get to her in time (I’m really rushing through this story), and I was the nearest person to the action. When I, well, looked underneath to see how things were going, I saw the top of a baby. I stuck out my hand, and this little girl dropped headfirst into my palm.

I promptly scooped her up to my chest, accidentally snapping her umbilical cord and sending blood fountaining everywhere. The OB had made it into the room by then and calmly clamped what needed clamping, checked what needed checking, and calmed down what needed calming down.

She’s had a relatively less chaotic life since then (my daughter, I mean; I have no idea how the OB has fared). As the second kid, she looks up to her big sister, for good and for ill. She’s the cuddliest of the three, and (don’t tell her siblings I said this), she has the best comedic timing.

Her: I’m hungry.
Me: …
Her: Actually, I’m thirsty.
Me: …
Her: Actually, I have to go potty.

She’s as stubborn as her older sister, but in a different way, which feels unfair to me. Until I had two kids, I didn’t know there were different kinds of stubbornness.

The biggest lesson she’s taught me is that a second child isn’t a repeat of the first child, which—sure—sounds obvious, but I’m amazed at how long it took me to figure it out. I love her distinct personality, her subtle zaniness, and her hugs. She’s a peacemaker, which I admire, but that quality also makes me worry, because I want so desperately for her to stand up for herself and make her own voice heard in a world/society/school/family full of voices trying to talk louder than she can—or will.

I’m apparently worse at drawing dimples than I am at hands, but I can’t draw ripples on the sides of her face, thus those little dents in my illustration.

Finally, some questions (and I ask for no reason, no reason at all): Fellow second children, did your parents take fewer pictures and videos of you than they did of your older sibling? And how messed up are you because of that?

This is my firstborn

On By jesteramIn Intro1 Comment

This is my firstborn

In Ben Folds’ “Still Fighting It,” he sings, to his young child, “You’re so much like me. I’m sorry.”

I love the song, and I love that line, though my enjoyment of the words was pretty much abstract until my first daughter came into my life and showed me what I would have been like if I had been born a blond girl.

Some of it is positive, I think. She genuinely laughs at what I laugh at. She’s into bugs and sharks and owl pellets. Her favorite part of “The Empire Strikes Back” is at the end, when Luke gets his new robotic hand, and she can perfectly imitate the twitches he makes as the droid jabs his fingers to make sure the synthetic nerves are working. She tells stories and gets lost in the telling.

She also gets frustrated like I got (and get) frustrated. She gets inordinately angry when she doesn’t immediately grasp and master a new skill. Being right is incredibly important to her in every discussion/debate/argument. Vitally important. As important and inevitable as gravity.

Throughout my childhood, my parents often told me that they hoped I’d someday have a kid just like me. It was a blessing, I think, and a curse. While my firstborn daughter—my firstborn child—looks like my wife, she acts like me and seems to think like me. I can’t tell if it’s nature or nurture. Sometimes (as when she suddenly exclaimed, on the way to kindergarten, “Dad, the future turns into the past!”) I am thrilled to hear my voice echoing somehow in hers. She’s fascinated by science. She falls asleep reading, with her book still propped upright in her hands—an ability I’ve only seen demonstrated elsewhere in myself (actually, I’ve been told of it, since I’m unconscious when it happens).

But she is so, so stubborn. When my wife and I are feeling charitable, we call her “willful” or “persistent” or “committed.” But most of the time we just say she’s stubborn—though we do take comfort in knowing that the challenging qualities of today will someday benefit her when she’s a supreme court justice.

An anecdote to end this on:

I once gave her a dollar I had in my pocket when I got home from work.

Her: Oh, thank you! You’re my best daddy!
Me: Oh yeah? Who’s your not-best daddy?
Her: You, sometimes.

This is my wife

On By jesteramIn Intro3 Comments

This is my wife

Ah, my wife. She bravely wades into the Shallows with me each day.

I say “bravely” because she’s the one who tends to keep a level head when I’m panicking—which is not constantly, but may be more often than frequent. I tend to be a worst-case-scenario sort of envisioner, mentally turning our kids’ slight bumps on the head into concussions and the like. She typically either holds it together or acts like she’s holding it together long enough for me to stop hyperventilating, and then we proceed with life.

She also puts up with me, which is no small task. I sometimes mumble gibberish just to see what she hears, what words she invents to make sense of the sounds coming out of my mouth, and she—well, I said it already. She puts up with me. More than puts up with me, in fact.

Most importantly, I love her, and she loves me. We went into marriage about nine years ago (as of this posting, anyway) reminding each other that the romance would be great, but not always there, and that love would sometimes take the shape of pushing together through rough times. I’ve told her that I’m glad she’s the one I fight with, and I mean it. I don’t tell her enough that she’s the one I’m amazed by, too, and despite my full-time editing job and her part-time early intervention work and our shared more-than-full-time parenting of three children—plus all the other stuff that comes from living—we still do manage to find the romance. Unfortunately, that’s less often than frequent, but I’m working on it. We’re working on it.

She’s smart, beautiful, crafty (in many senses of the word), funnier than she realizes, incredibly sexy (which might not come across in the sketch above), and my best friend. She was fairly geeky when I met her, but her geekiness has thankfully increased throughout our relationship. She’s also a total mystery to me at times, at least when it comes to how she processes the world. Our lives together are never boring—even when we wish they would be, just for a breather.

This is me

On By jesteramIn Intro10 Comments

This is me

I’m going to get things rolling here with an introduction to the regular cast of characters who’ll be populating the Shallows, starting with me. I am the author, after all. The blogger. The dad.

Shortly after I made this blog active, I was reading about blogging strategies (yes after), and the best suggestion I came across in the advice soup of the Internet was to make sure your blog has a point. A goal. A purpose.

My two personal life goals (verifiable by friends and co-workers) are to save sharks and end rape, though not necessarily in that order. Those are lofty endeavors, sure, but I think they’re good ones. I may someday start two blogs dedicated to those respective efforts (or one blog devoted to both), but this blog’s primary purpose will be to present a picture (and a hastily sketched one at that) of fatherhood. I don’t intend to portray myself as a fathering guru, nor as a parenting expert, nor as the very model of a modern social-media-savvy dad. All I have are my stories, my experiences, and my creepy, cockeyed doodles.

My secondary purpose will be to entertain. If I think it’s funny when my 6-year-old daughter watches Han Solo moving in on Princess Leia and shouts, “Don’t kiss him! Only kiss Luke!” I figure other people might think it’s funny, too.

My tertiary purpose will be to earn a lot of money doing this. (I may need to scale this stated purpose back a bit.)

And if some sharks are saved and some of our society’s rape culture is dismantled along the way, well, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

I could, however, ask you what you’d hope to see on a blog such as mine. Got any requests?