Looky, Daddy!

And She Hits Like a Girl

Seven Things I Learned About My Wife While on Vacation

1. She's an Aquarius.
2. She can, when time allows, speak in complete sentences.
3. She still fits in the two piece bathing suit she bought 14 years and 3 kids ago.
4. She still owns the two piece bathing suit she bought 14 years and 3 kids ago.
5. Recently, something she did at work won some kind of award. (This one was kind of confusing.)
6. Both people and mosquitos prefer her company to mine.
7. After a day in the sun, her skin glows deep olive and tastes like sugar cane.

As a Child, the Only Time I Was Quiet Was When I Was Trying to Use the Force

Tikal, Guatemala:

Luckily, my wife didn't let me pack my replica helmet, or I would have posed in the picture, too.

(Also, to those of you who wrote and called, yes, I seem to have been on Oprah yesterday. That was me, in my Mets cap, standing in front of the car of a drunk woman who had already had her keys taken away. Just doing my part, keeping the roads safe from drivers with no ability to start their cars. I was thinking for my second appearance on her show, I would attempt to resuscitate a person who was having no trouble breathing. Because that's the kind of hero I am.)

The Best Post I Will Write this Year

There was a brief moment when I thought we had made a mistake.

The island of Long Caye is a two-and-a-half hour boat ride from Belize City. That's two and a half hours of sitting in a small boat across open sea, crashing over tall waves, slamming back down, sloshing back and forth, the hot Caribbean sun beating down upon a New-Jersey-pale body. But that's not when I thought we'd made the mistake. That's when I thought I was in heaven. That boat could have pounded itself to timbers, pitching us all into the crystal blue sea, and I would have whooped and hollered all the whole way down. My worry had long since evaporated by then.

The boat travels to Long Caye twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday morning. Late Friday night in a bar in Belize City, we met with the representative of the company that ran the boat. She was a nervous and jumpy woman. She told us to keep a life jacket within an arm's reach while we went out. Her exact words were, "We've never lost a boat. But when they go down, they go down fast." Then she told us how lucky we were, because the company had recently bought a new boat, one much better than the old boat. She didn't tell us why they bought the new boat. That was still not the moment I thought we'd made a mistake. We were in a bar in Belize City, drinking beer from a bottle that had a Mayan temple on the label. The label even said "MAYAN TEMPLE," like the brewers had been asked one too many times what the hell it was they printed on their beer. How could any of this be a mistake?

The time I was worried about was a few hours before that, while we were waiting to check in to our hotel. Because the boat to Long Caye, the new boat to Long Caye, left early Saturday morning, we had to spend Friday night in a hotel in Belize City. And it was the person checking in before us who was the cause of my worry. He needed ESPN2. No, not ESPN, he told the woman working reception. ESPN2. ESPN-TWO. EEE ESS PEE ENN TWO. Did she not know the difference? Did the hotel not have it? It's ESPN2. He had it at home, and he wanted it here. And for a brief moment, I began to think that maybe my wife and I should have saved our money and stayed home in New Jersey with the kids. Because my kids may be a challenge on some days, most days, but at least they are not jackasses. Red-faced, bermuda-short-wearing jackasses.

But the man was a blip, a tiny bump, heard from once and then never again. The scene he caused when he learned that no ESPN2 would be coming out of his TV and that maybe he should turn it off and go outside and see Belize instead was mercifully short and I even made a few bucks off it by betting with Sharon that the back of the man's already impressively sunburnt neck would grow two shades redder before the exchange was through.

"No way," she whispered back. "It would burst into flame."

But she was wrong, and the four bucks I won from her paid for our beers later that night. Two dollars per Mayan temple.

We spent almost a week on the island of Long Caye, an island on the southeastern rim of Glover's Reef. The island was small and rustic and pristine. The water we drank was collected rainwater. What power there was was generated by solar panels. There was an old butane-fueled refrigerator in the kitchen stocked down one side with the 200 different kinds of Fanta and down the other with the beer the boat had brought from the mainland Saturday morning. They still hadn't gotten cold by the time we left. Nobody cared.

The island was delightfully, ridiculously small. It could be crossed, eastern shore to western shore, in forty-nine seconds. I timed it. I actually took a short video of myself running from one side of the island to the other with the intention of posting it here, but I now know I needed to have learned a bit more about how to run with a camera before attempting such a feat. I watched the video a few minutes ago and had the distinct and queasy feeling I was on the old boat to Long Caye just seconds before the need to buy the new boat arose. Oh well.

There were no radios, no cell phones, no TV/DVD players brought out in the evening to waste time and pass minutes. There were no minutes to pass. For two hours every evening while we were there, my wife and I watched the sun set. We watched it. We sat our butts in two wooden beach chairs and watched the sun burn into the ocean. We moved only to get fresh beers or to scoot our chairs closer to each other. Even when they were touching, we still tried to move them closer to each other.

The sun took all two hours to set. It moves slowly, our sun, but had it taken three, we would have watched it for three. Around five o'clock each day, as the afternoon light began to deepen and the colors of the island softened, one of us would look at the other and announce our need to go and start watching it. We said it like this:

"It's getting late. Must be time to watch ESPN2."

Exit Row

We are back, and there will be posts galore, but not until I can shed 130 lbs. of clinging girls from my sun-touched arms. In the meantime, I'll share what might be the defining picture of the whole ten-day adventure: The view of Belize from our seats in the airplane.

Ask The Dad: The Oh-Yes-I-Did! Edition

Dear The Dad,

I have forgotten that I like my wife. No, that's not true. I have forgotten why I like my wife. I mean, I know that I like her, but if you pressed me for a reason, the best I could come up with is that I like her mainly because she comes home most days.

I'm sure it wasn't always this way. I can't imagine ten years ago I asked her to marry me because I thought she'd be reasonably punctual most evenings.

Sometime early in our relationship I may have documented, either in a list or some kind of running narrative, a few of the reasons why I liked my wife at the time, but as I've been unpacking boxes in our new house, I haven't found such a thing anywhere. Do you know where I might have put it?

Thanks,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Try looking for it here:

Hope this helps,

The Dad

Dear The Dad,

The other day, my wife told me her job was changing. She told me the new title and the duties it carried, and then asked what I thought about the change. I stood there at the sink, a dirty dish in my hand, and told her that it sounded like a big responsibility. But really, of course, I had no idea what she was talking about. For me to comment on the change, I would first need to know what she does now. And for me to know what she does now, we would need to talk.

We don't talk. For all I know, my wife works as a hostess serving drinks at a 24-hour Go-Go bar in Newark.

Surely I once knew more about this woman. At the very least, when I told my parents that I planned to marry her, I must have had some kind of information about her, something I could tell my parents about. You know, something besides her name, where she sleeps, what train she takes, and how she looks when she's tired.

I'd like to start talking to my wife again, but I'm not sure how. Do you have any pointers?

Thanks,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Try this. Tomorrow get on a plane with her and spend the next ten days here:

Leave the kids with your parents. Do not take your cell phone. Do not take your laptop. I cannot guarantee that you will have any conversations with your wife over those ten days, but if nothing else, the sound of the waves will make the silence seem less awkward.

Hope this helps,

The Dad

Dear The Dad,

My wife was in grad school when we got married. I was a social worker being paid just slightly more per month than the indigent people I was supposedly helping. We thought we were busy. We didn't take a honeymoon, promising ourselves that we would take one as soon as we could. It has been ten years.

If being busy could be measured in shit, ten years ago we had some bird crap on our shoulders. Now we live under a turd the size and shape of Tennessee. When will we ever go on our honeymoon?

Thanks,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Go. Now. Hand your parents the kids and a 12-disc boxed-set of Dora the Explorer and go. Go while your kids are young. It's one thing to leave three little kids in the care of people in their sixties. It's a whole different matter to leave three teenagers in the care of people in their seventies. Right now, if you come home and the house is covered in puke, it's because someone is sick. In ten years, it will be because your kids tried to mix your tequila with Grandpa's oxycodone.

Hope this helps,

The Dad

Dear The Dad,

But I'm poor. I'm impossibly poor. I can hardly afford a trip to the grocery store, much less a trip here:

Thanks,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Yes, you are poor. Just like you were busy in grad school. You will never be less poor. Never. Shut up and go, already.

Hope this helps,

The Dad

Dear The Dad,

Just one more thing. The Internet will hate me if I go here:

I mean, look at it. I'd hate anyone going there.

Thanks,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Possibly, but remember: Most of the correspondence you get from the Internet usually includes the words "I'm glad I'm not you," or, at the very least, "I'm glad I'm not married to you." For over a year now, your presence on the Internet has given countless others the opportunity to feel good about themselves. They will forgive you this one time.

Now stop writing and pack. Your flight leaves 6:30 AM tomorrow morning.

Hope this helps,

The Dad

photo by yogi

Tasteless in Church

Two thoughts from Kathryn's First Communion:

One. When Kathryn returned to her seat in the pew, she looked at me with a sour face and whispered, "Daddy, I never want to have wine again!" From your mouth to God's ears, Kathryn. From your mouth to God's ears. Now, if only Jesus had offered his disciples shots of cheap vodka with Rose's lime juice, I'd feel much better about the chances of Kathryn not throwing up in the back of a campus police car her freshman year of college. Or maybe not everyone has that same experience.

And Two. As I watched the faces of the thirty-three First Communicants as they had their first taste of the cardboardy goodness Catholics call the Host, I decided that, with a little bit of start-up money, I just might become a millionaire.

Bet you can't have just one!

Big in Korea

As odd as it was to be interviewed by the Japanese, it didn't hold a candle to being showered by Koreans.

Let me back up a bit.

It was late 2005, a month or two before the twins were born, and in the back of a Babies "R" Us, two Koreans had cornered my wife. Admittedly, this was not hard to do. Given her size and range of motion at the time, she could just as easily have been cornered by two pill bugs.  As if you needed proof:

Sitting:

Standing:

The Koreans had clipboards and questions and the look of people way outside their comfort zone, like Lutherans with tambourines and flowered necklaces. They had been there for a while, wandering the store, timidly approaching people, and I had done my best to keep Sharon away from them, because I knew that whatever these people wanted, if Sharon could help, she would. And she'd probably bake them zucchini bread to go with it, too. And it turned out that what these people wanted was to shower an old pregnant lady. And videotape it.

Viola!

Okay, what they wanted was to interview an old pregnant lady, and in return, they would throw her a baby shower, and they would broadcast the entire thing on Korean TV. Of course, Sharon said yes. And then she rushed home to start grating the zucchini.

A few days later, our tiny New Jersey rental house was the scene of the most bizarre impromptu baby shower I've ever witnessed. The film crew arrived late in the evening, with wrapped presents, pink streamers, and a bowl of salad with no dressing. As they set up, we greeted our guests, who were really just neighbors as we had moved there not but a month before and we still knew very few people. Looking back on it, we probably should have brought in people from farther afield, because from that evening on, our neighbors never really looked at us the same again.

As everyone was getting into place, the producer told us two things about Korea. One, Korean women were beginning to have children later in life, and by that he meant in their late twenties. This has caused quite a bit of concern, because do you know what comes after having babies in your late twenties? Having babies in your early thirties! And what comes after that? America! America comes after that. America, with all its problems and social ills, comes when women start having babies in their late thirties. And that's why the film crew had been there that day, in the Paramus Babies "R" Us, looking for pregnant women in their late thirties to interview. The producer told us that, of all his previous assignments, this had surely been the hardest because it necessitated spending hours upon hours in that store approaching strange women asking, first, if they were pregnant and, then, their age, something that ranks up there with elective scrotal surgery in the pantheon of things men do not want to do.

The other thing we learned is that Koreans do not typically throw baby showers.

After a few minutes of filming idle chatter over salad, each guest was handed a pre-wrapped gift to present to my wife, then hustled over to a corner of the living room for an individual interview which always began with the same two questions: What gift did you bring to the shower, and why did you choose it? Strangely, neither of those two questions were actually included in the broadcast version of the event, possibly because the majority of the guests answered with "I don't know" and "I don't know" respectively. The questions following were much harder hitting, often including whether women over thirty-five should have children, and whether the guests thought my wife, sitting not five feet away and bending the room with the gravity of her bulk, was making a mistake. To their credit, nobody said yes to the latter. They didn't ask me.

A few months later, we received an envelope containing a videotape of the program. It turned out to be a sixty-minute science program about pregnancy, featuring footage of not one, not two, not three, but four complete vaginal deliveries, which is four more than I had ever seen up to that point. The baby shower came somewhere near the end, or so I was told by my wife who was still able to look directly at the television by that time. The whole program was in Korean with no subtitles, so we still have no idea what anyone was saying, and it will probably stay that way until we find someone with a strong constitution and the ability to speak Korean.

Maybe we'll look for just such a person at the Paramus Babies "R" Us.