'Twas the Night Before Mother's Day

Today was a full day and the kids were pretty wiped out. For me that’s exciting because it means maybe they’ll all crash pretty quickly, and it’s only after everyone else is asleep that I get to enjoy My Time. Yes, that’s with a capital MT. Sadly, it’s Saturday, and My Time tonight, like every other night since became a father, consists of a date with Microsoft Word. And that’s if I’m lucky. Because while going out for a beer is eternally preferable to sitting at home pecking away on the laptop, a quiet evening with a few pages in Times New Roman is infinitely better than dealing with kids who won’t sleep, and since tomorrow is Mother’s Day I’ll feel more obligated than usual to take the little girl off Mom’s hands until eleven or twelve or sometime around dawn.

My three-year-old boy won’t go to sleep by himself. I have to lay there with him until he’s unconscious. This is the by-product of my wife’s insistence that babies should not sleep alone, it’s too scary for them and they need the psychological comfort of knowing Mommy is always there. Well, now my son is extremely psychologically uncomfortable if I am not there to help him fall asleep. If he’s anything like his big brother I’ve got another two years of this crap. Then it’s the girl’s turn to be scared just like she’s been taught.

But like I said, after today they were totaled and I was able to slip away from my kid at 8:30 – a relatively early start to My Time.

Children's Day - No Girls Allowed

Koinobori - 'flying carp'

Today, May 5^th, is Children’s Day (子供の日) in Japan. Traditionally known as Tango no Sekku (端午の節句, loosely translated as ‘Yay we had a boy’), Children’s Day is a time for families to pray that their sons be blessed with health, happiness and good English skills.

On this day in Japan huge colorful streamers called koinobori (鯉のぼり, or flying carp) can be seen all over, in front of people’s homes and in many public places. While the carp is said to represent strength and success – in what capacity history has yet to specify – the actual underlying reason people fly these long, brightly-colored fish is to remind anyone who might have forgotten that today is Children’s Day so don’t forget to pray for your son’s strength and success in conjugating his English verbs.

Interestingly, Children’s Day is customarily dedicated to boys. One theory is that girls have an innate capacity for linguistics and don’t need any more help in outdistancing their male counterparts in conversation class. The true reason, of course, is that girls don’t like carp. To compensate, rather than upset the Wa (和), a special day for girls was created: Hina no Matsuri (雛の祭り, the Doll Festival, which I did not write about because I don’t like dolls).

Find out more about Children’s Day here. I’d go on but it is May 5^th and I am taking my family to – of course – a Tulip Festival.

Happy Children’s Day, boys. (And remember, drink, drank, drunk.)

'Wait, Don't Move!' - a guest post

Back in the day - in those beautiful times when I was still single - I started working for a storage and moving company in Colorado. First I worked on move crews. After a while I was put in charge of the warehouse. Not long after that - due to competence in one thing or incompetence in another - I was moved out of the warehouse and into the position of operations manager.

At first I considered myself lucky. I was making more as an ops manager than I ever had at any other job, I got to wear a t-shirt all day, and I was not only allowed but expected to bark orders at everyone. 'Stick with this business and you can be a millionaire,' my boss told me.

One year later I quit. Some things just ain't worth the money.

The bright side is I've got a substantial cache of stories from my two years in that ridiculous industry. As long as I keep up my meds I can talk about them without slipping into another temporary fugue state.

Recently the good people at HireAHelper.com asked me to contribute a post. After a couple extra Xanax I was able to dig up one of the lighter tales from my storage and moving crypt.

Check it out here.

One day you might just thank me.

Though We Never Really Met...

I see her pretty much every day, the girl with the pink and white dress. She sits on a low stool, or maybe an overturned milk crate – I can’t see below her midriff because she’s surrounded by flowers. Many are yellow, bright like the sun but fuller, deeper; so deep the color itself seems tangible. The rest sit in neat bouquets, splashes of red and purple and white sprouting from water-stained buckets. She’s selling them, for how much I don’t know. I wonder if she’s had any takers on this day. I wonder, for all the flowers she has sold to the husbands and lovers that have come to her, if she has ever been given any.

I look closely at her face. I do this every time I see her because I want to know what lies beneath her unblemished cinnamon features. I want to understand the thoughts that lurk behind the expression that I can not clearly read. She may be lost in a daydream; but those seeking direction and those deep into the sharpened machinations of their desires sometimes look very much alike. She harbors a tint of worry in her face, though the subject of her concern (if that is what it is) is a mystery to me; it could be herself, or the young girl standing coyly in the shadows. Perhaps someone she knows, maybe loves, has gone away, a promise to return though at some point in our lives we learn that a promise is not something we can hold in our hand.

Remembering, With the Help of Friends.

A college friend of mine emailed me yesterday. Considering my poor track record in keeping in touch with people this in itself should be amazing enough, but this was particularly special.

'When you were in Akita,' he began, 'you posted something on facebook...'

He'd dug up two posts for me from March 2011, when I was in the midst of getting my family out of Fukushima and out of Japan while the nuclear reactors were blowing up down on the Fukushima coast, fifty miles or so from where we were living. I was keeping my family and friends up to date on what was happening, where we were and what we were doing - or what I thought we were doing - and though I thought at the time I was doing it for them maybe I was really doing it for me. Either way, standing at a computer in a hotel lobby in Akita Prefecture, this is what I wrote:

"In a hotel in northern Akita, the boys are being total champs, tentative flights tomorrow to tokyo then new jersey, no guarantees. My wife to her mom over the phone - 'good-bye for now' - hit me with something i have never felt. I am wrestling not with the decision to get my family out of here but with leaving when so many people can not."

My friend's response:

"I am glad to hear you are still OK. #1 priority has to be the safety and security of the kids - but all will stay in prayers and thoughts. Travel safely. Reading you post up above makes me wonder if you just stumbled across the title of your next book. A thought for another day..."

With this, my friend brought back a flood of memories which, while they hadn't disappeared, were sitting dormant behind many others. So add to the dedication of this modest recounting the many good friends who helped get me through.

'For Now - After the Quake: A Father's Journey', is my story of the hours and days following the March 11, 2011 earthquake in Japan.

Download for free here.

Happy, Crappy New Year

I thought that once I got married I’d be able to take certain things for granted. Alas, as many of us erstwhile bachelors realize too late, moments that would seem, quite intuitively, to come easier once we don’t have to hide them from the in-laws anymore, prove to be strangely elusive once the honeymoon photos are finally stored away on the external hard drive.

With kids it has gotten even worse. I’m talking in this case, of course, about ringing in the New Year with a kiss.

I wonder if my wife had a bad New Year’s Eve experience when she was a little girl. That wouldn’t adequately explain it though, since she’d made it until midnight every year we were dating. One year she was up until almost a quarter to one, though she was talking like a zombie by the end there, and she doesn’t even drink.

CUTTING BACK ON YOUR HOLIDAY STRESS

6 Survival Tips You’ve Likely Never Heard

Okay, so ever since the wise man bearing the gold sent those two daft men with the frankincense and myrrh scrambling for excuses there’s never been any such thing as a stress-free holiday. There are gifts to be bought, cards to be sent and strings of lights to attach to the eaves with duct tape. And then there’s the specter of putting on a few extra holiday pounds, looming as real as a lawsuit from the ACLU if you refer to them in public as ‘extra Christmas pounds’. These are harrowing days indeed. But by following these half dozen bits of unconventional holiday wisdom, garnered from years of experience involving five sisters, thirty-odd cousins, nine nieces and nephews and now three little elves of my own, you too can lower your blood pressure even as your credit card balances float skyward. So kick back, take heed and then kick back some more – with a bowl of foil-wrapped chocolate balls.

These Times

One day last week – which day I don’t remember because I’d rather forget about it – I spent a sickly part of my morning on the phone with one of the fine folks at the local GEICO factory. Understanding car insurance is hard; getting car insurance shouldn’t be. Yet there I was, on the phone for over an hour as the self-appraised super-representative on the other end subjected me to all manner of informational inquisition. What’s the VIN on the car? What’s your old New Jersey driver’s license number? Date of birth? Social security number? How long has your wife been driving? You drink much? You need renter’s insurance? How many fingers am I holding up?

What am I, on the list of suspected car insurance terrorists?

‘Okay, you’re all set,’ my super-duper pooper-scooper said. Finally. ‘I’ll send you your policy number in a confirmation email.’ An hour later I get a message thanking me for choosing GEICO and confirming the charges to my credit card have been approved for the brand spanking new insurance policy issued to someone named Scott C. Smith.

People Are Strange...When You're a Stranger...

If you’ve been keeping up with my recent move to Long Island (and who hasn’t?) you’ll know that I’ve enjoyed and appreciated the people I’ve been encountering here in my new hometown. I mean, when the people working at the library are so boisterous the patrons have to look up from their books and laptops to tell them to be quiet you know you’ve happened upon a very special place. But as evidenced by the slovenly gray-haired schmuck I watched waddle over to the park area outside the library – he leaned on the fence surrounding the playground and started smoking and flicking his ashes around, then put his cigarette out by grinding the butt into the top of the fence and smearing the ashes around before finally flicking his scrap of dirty garbage into the sand where kids run around with their shoes off – there are a few people around who could use a steel-toed boot in the pants.


Take the trio of eight-year-old girls I saw selling lemonade by the side of their quiet residential road. They were out in the hot sun, making the attempt, and since I had to turn around anyway because I was lost I figured I might as well stop. Call it my beneficent act for the day. Besides, it was hot for me too, beer is criminally expensive here and I was already spending too much on toll bridges and gas. What could be better than a glass of homemade lemonade, procured the good old-fashioned way?

The Good, The Bad & The Bus

As mentioned in my previous couple of posts, my latest move has been marked by run-ins with some excellent people: I wouldn’t have found this house I’m now in without the kind, firm tenacity of Andrea at Signature Realty (and access to the office Keurig); thanks to Lynne across the street my nephew and I didn’t end up waiting at Northport Station for a train that would get us to Penn Station just in time to be stranded there all night after spending the day moving (or not, thanks to a faulty fuel pump); Greg who lives in the converted cottage out back, besides coming through for us with a large pizza, helped me drag my newly-bought, used, half-ton couch from my van into my living room. (Greg’s a big guy and it was still a feat maneuvering the beast through the front door without losing my security deposit on day one. And he's such a cool neighbor he still said 'Hey if you need anything else...')

Also deserving of kudos are various people in the Northport-East Northport School District. Initially I thought I was going to live in this crappy duplex on this hilly, crumbling dead-end street. With this in mind I contacted the people at nearby Norwood Elementary to let them know I would be registering my oldest son for kindergarten there – while simultaneously apologizing for doing so at such a late date. ‘Oh, no problem at all,’ sang Ms. Esposito, the school nurse. Of course she wasn’t the one to have to now prepare extra name plates for the coat hanger, cubby hole, chair, shelf, gold star chart, homework bag, art shelf and whatever else my son would need to be an official member of the class. After forty minutes of pleasant conversation and loads of information regarding the immunization policies of the school district, the good nurse sent me a prepared registration packet in the mail along with a note saying she was setting aside a supply kit for my son to make sure he had what he needed from Day One. Two days later I found a mildly less crappy duplex in the zone of another of the town’s schools.

‘Hi, excuse me, I’m really sorry but I just moved to town (actually I hadn’t yet but there wasn’t time for such boring technicalities) and my son is going to be entering kindergarten…’