The Incredibles

            It was fitting this week that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America released its Hall of Fame voting results just one day before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their Oscar nominations. If baseball looks closely enough, it may find a solution to its most weighty problem on that Oscar ballot.

            In 1994, a vicious labor dispute led to the cancellation of the entire baseball postseason, embarrassing the sport to such an extent that many wondered if fan interest would ever resurface. However, once the games resumed in 1995, America’s pastime stormed back with a vengeance, just as it did after the Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919, when several players “threw” the World Series by taking money from gamblers.

            In the 1920s, baseball was saved in large part by a portly man whose mammoth home runs brought fans to the ballpark in droves. In 1998, baseball was saved in large part by two muscular men whose mammoth home runs electrified the nation. But there was a difference between the way in which Babe Ruth saved baseball in the 1920s, and the way in which Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa saved baseball in the late ‘90s. Babe Ruth, according to writers and historians, was known to enjoy many a good drink; he succeeded despite taking a performance-inhibiting drug. McGwire and Sosa, on the other hand, seem to have succeeded due to performance-enhancing drugs. And with their success, baseball fully entered its Steroid Era.

            Home run records fell by the dozens in those late ‘90s and early 2000s. Barry Bonds hit so many home runs so often that he was walked a record 232 times in the 2004 season. There has never been anything like this, as home runs soared over fences with a frequency you had to see to believe. But then again, you had to see these ballplayers’ muscles to believe them, too. During that 2004 season, Bonds turned 40 years old. Yet, he looked more like the lead character from Pixar’s ’04 film hit The Incredibles than a typical 40-year-old athlete. The bulked-up ballplayers, who were free from any kind of steroid testing, flexed super-sized biceps, pecs and quads that brought to mind Mr. Incredible and his giant, muscular body.

            A lot has gone down since 2004 in Major League Baseball, as we’ve learned that so much of that excitement from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s was created by performance-enhancing drugs. Who took what, and when, and how much is impossible to know for sure, as there was no steroid testing until 2006. There was no agreement on in-season testing for human growth hormone until yesterday. Athletes in search of an edge turned to syringes to enhance their own skills, and they got rich doing so.

            And so, when several of the most celebrated players of the past 15 years became eligible for Hall of Fame candidacy this year, the baseball writers sent a powerful message by electing no one to receive baseball’s highest honor in 2013. Not the guy with seven MVP awards. Not the guy with seven Cy Young awards. Not the guys with 3,000 hits, 500 or more home runs, or 3,000 or more strikeouts. Nobody.

            Some of these eligible players did not take steroids or human growth hormone, but through its massive cover-up baseball did not allow us to know who was cheating and who was playing fair. So, this year, every player suffered the consequences.

            It was an era of irresponsible, unhealthy, and deceitful behavior. But it is also true that during this time, baseball fans devoured the record-breaking offense with much enthusiasm and not much questioning. It is, therefore, rather difficult for us to point fingers at these players without pointing fingers at ourselves as well. They were, after all, giving us what we wanted. We cheered and clapped for the guys who looked like Pixar characters, so the sport created more and more of them.

            So that brings us to the Oscars. Back in 1995, Pixar introduced a revolutionary form of digital animation with the now-classic film Toy Story. Half a decade later, after the success of A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, it was clear that this company had changed the way movies were made. Thus, in 2001 the Academy began awarding an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. In the first 11 years of that award, a Pixar film was nominated eight times. This week, the company picked up nomination number nine.

            Baseball can look at this Oscar category and follow suit with its Hall of Fame dilemma: Simply take the players from the Steroid Era and vote them in under “Best Animated Players.” Some of them were on the juice and some weren’t, but baseball gave us no way of knowing. So we’ll treat them all like we do Buzz Lightyear, Wall-E and Mr. Incredible – we’ll give them their own category. And if the dust ever clears and we get full disclosure, we’ll consider nominating them for the regular Hall as well, just as Pixar movies like Up and Toy Story 3 have also been nominated for Best Picture.

            It’s fitting that this year’s Pixar nominee is a film titled Brave. If only Major League Baseball had shown some degree of courage during the Steroid Era, we might be looking at our recent sports history through a different lens. But brave they weren’t. So the baseball writers called them out on that this week. Even Mr. Incredible can’t save the day with this one.

Our Stories, Our Songs

            For as long as I can remember, I’ve put my girls to sleep by telling them stories and singing them songs. For our older daughter, Katie, it has always been stories. When she was tiny, she preferred fictional tales, such as the one about the purple-polka-dotted bunny who was ostracized for his unique appearance – that is, until a little girl found him and loved him just the way he was. After awhile, Katie grew to prefer real-life stories, especially ones about the things I did with my brother when we were young. For some time, she even requested more specialized stories about times when I was playing with my brother and one of us got hurt. (Thankfully, I had a limited supply of those.)

            For our younger daughter, Chelsea, it has always been songs. She has found comfort in being sung to sleep by my wife or me, with our voices at lullaby volume as we croon “Rainbow Connection” or “You Are My Sunshine” or “Hey Jude.” As we move closer to the holidays, songs like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” ease their way onto the bedtime song list. At some point, we find ourselves singing to a child who is fast asleep, her breathing slowed and her pink blanket cuddled in her arms.

            On a recent evening, Chelsea asked me to sing her a few songs, and when I thought she was asleep, she popped back up and requested another. By the eighth song, my 7-year-old was still awake, and I’d sung the equivalent of a late-‘90s John Mellencamp album. I told her that she was old enough to start easing herself to sleep on her own after a few songs. She cried about that for a bit, and eventually gave in to sleep.

There are times, when the girls are begging us to stay up with them for just a little longer, that I want the stories and songs to end for the night. I crave some time to myself, away from the kids for a bit. The desire for some downtime is a natural feeling, and I don’t feel guilty for thinking it. Of course, Friday’s events in Newtown, Connecticut, remind me of just how precious every moment is with my children. But when I think of Friday’s massacre, as well as the past seven weeks since Hurricane Sandy, I also am reminded of the importance of our own stories and songs.

            We have a little wooden decoration in our house that reads, “You Are the Author of Your Own Life Story.” I bought it because I think it’s true: Each of us tells our own story each day through our actions and words, and together we work to tell our society’s story through our collective expressions. In the last two months, there have been a whole lot of stories in our immediate world that are sadder and more shocking than most of the things we’re used to here in the Northeast. Of course, additional stories of war and natural disaster around the globe compound the sadness.

            But we still hold the key to so much of this societal story. We still have the ability to turn that story into a song. My friend Steve Politi, a tremendous sports columnist for the Star-Ledger of Newark, wrote a piece a few weeks ago about the Point Pleasant High School football team, and how these young men walked from house to house after Hurricane Sandy in order to help people clean out their storm-ravaged Jersey Shore homes. A new friend of mine named Judy in Bay Head, N.J., has told me some stories about moms who can’t afford holiday gifts because of all they’ve lost to the storm, and my school is working to buy gift cards so those moms can go out and buy those gifts. Yesterday, President Obama told stories of teachers and students whose heroism defies description in the midst of true terror at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

            We tell these stories through our own words, and we tell them through our actions. Steve wrote the inspirational story about those football players, but they lived it themselves. There is no storm that can overpower that kind of goodness; Sandy’s a chump in comparison. The president can share the anecdotes in his speech, but these adults and children found grace in a conflict far beyond what most of us will ever face. That’s part of their story now, and it’s shocking in its sheer courage.

            It’s the holiday season, and some of us are not in the mood to celebrate much this year. That’s a natural feeling in the wake of so much sadness and loss. But if we had the chance to ask all the individuals who died from Hurricane Sandy, and if we had the chance to ask those who were killed in Newtown on Friday, I think they would encourage us to celebrate our lives with one another. They’d remind us that our stories are not over, and that we’ve got some people out there whose lives we might be able to touch today and tomorrow.

            They’d also remind us that we’ve got some catching up to do – there’s been too much sorrow in too short a time period. The story has fallen too far off course. We need to bring some joy back now, with little time to spare. Our individual and collective stories need a lift; they need to feel like a song again. So what do you say? Let’s reach out to one another and begin. I’ll start with the one about the purple bunny … 

Strength in What Remains

            I met a woman named Fiorella last weekend. She lives in a one-story house less than half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, close enough to hear and smell the sea. The siding of Fiorella’s house remains, as do the beams and hardwood floor inside. Everything else is gone.

            Fiorella is an elementary-school teacher on Staten Island, and she lives in Midland Beach – an area of New York City decimated by Hurricane Sandy, sometimes with fatal results. Like so many others around her, Fiorella has nothing left but the framework of a home. On Saturday afternoon, she looked at the piles on her curb – of garbage bags, wooden posts, damp drywall and waterlogged sandbags – and spoke to the people standing outside with her.

            “I know it’s hard to believe, but it really was a nice house,” she said. “I had a little fence around the outside, and it looked pretty.”

            Fiorella was taking photos of everything, presumably for whatever insurance or FEMA purposes she could, and she was looking through the bins of soaked belongings outside her home. While she did so, a team of volunteers – some of them teachers like myself, others Mormon disaster-relief workers, others friends or concerned neighbors – worked to unload the contents of Fiorella’s basement. Wood, drywall, tools, Christmas decorations, books – all of them were lugged out. The most efficient means of cleaning ended up being a snow shovel – scoop up the stuff, then dump it into a trash bag. We carried it all out, from the complete works of Shakespeare to the little desk decoration reading “World’s Greatest Teacher.”

            When all but the washing machine had been carried out of Fiorella’s basement, she asked that we take photos with her. I asked how she was doing, nearly two weeks after this monster of a storm had changed her life so dramatically. She said that at first, it seemed unbearable. But then, each day, helping hands have come to her home. Each day, something has been done – a wall taken out, or furniture removed, or a basement cleared out.

            Fiorella has a mortgage on this house, so it’s not as if she can just pack up tomorrow and move farther away from the ocean. There are four neighborhoods worth of homeowners dealing with this dilemma on Staten Island, areas that look more like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina than anything you’d recognize in New York. As the city posts red, yellow and green stickers on homes to identify the level of damage, homeowners like Fiorella wonder what they can do, and how they can recover from this massive punch to the gut.

            And yet, they are here. They survived this storm, and their gratitude is so clear when you speak with them. There’s Anton, who lost his basement in Oakwood Beach but fed the volunteers who helped him with donuts, water and coffee. There’s Kevin, who has nothing left in his bungalow on Midland Beach yet thanked volunteers when they brought him food and toiletries. There’s Chelsea, whose house in South Beach was spared but spends all the time she can helping her neighbors. There are Staten Islanders up and down that borough’s east shore working to make the best of what has happened to them.

            Fiorella said it’s hard not to feel your spirits lifted when so many people show up to help you. I told her I was amazed at the amount of hope she exuded – she talked about putting the photos of volunteers on her Facebook page, of all things. But then, as I celebrate Thanksgiving today, I guess Fiorella’s loss has led her to do something that some of us only do occasionally – she’s looked around her and taken stock not of what she’s lost, but of what she has. And those Facebook photos reveal more than just social-networking cool – they show a sense of community and fellowship that can’t be replaced. You can get another copy of Shakespeare, and there are plenty more Christmas ornaments to be had. You might even be able to rebuild your house, with a little help from your friends and certain bureaucratic procedures.

            But you can’t replace life or love, and Fiorella’s got an abundance of those. So for that reason, I think she’ll be OK. As for me, I’m just incredibly thankful I met her. And you know, it still is a beautiful house. Because a house is only as lovely as the people inside it.

            Happy Thanksgiving.

Carrying the Fire

            A tree has fallen through the fence and into our yard. Our power is long gone. And we are lucky.

            We saw, clip and carry bundles of limbs and branches to the curb. We set up the generator that Amy’s parents gave us and get it running. We share power and conversation with neighbors. We watch as workers remove a tree from a roof down the block.

            The skies are gray. There is a giant wall of wood in front of our house. The branches are gone from the back, leaving empty holes where wooden fence used to be. The homeowners behind us can’t even think about fixing those holes because there’s another tree on their front lawn, having fallen across the street amid a tangle of wires.

            Amy and I feed the girls, read with them, and do a puzzle. We watch old episodes of The Cosby Show on Amy’s laptop. As we go to sleep, the rest of the gas runs out of the generator.

            Day two begins post-Sandy, and we spend hours searching for gasoline. We come up empty. I reach out to friends and learn about the tree that fell through this one’s roof, and the tree that fell on that one’s car. But my wife and I also hear that both of our parents have power. Amy packs the girls into the car and heads up to her parents and sister in Connecticut. I stay behind, working with a neighbor to siphon gas from his car. While the gasoline trickles into our gas cans, I rake an elderly neighbor’s leaves and branches. Eventually, I get the generator going again. People walk the streets in search of wood for their fireplaces. They take some of mine. The skies are gray.  

This is all beginning to look like a scene out of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road. In that book, a father and son trudge through the desolate streets of a land that will never return to normal, searching for a way to survive. The dad keeps telling his son, “We’re the good guys” and “We carry the fire.” The son listens, and they hold onto hope. The book asks us to consider whether life is more about hope or more about despair. In this post-Sandy world, as tempers flare at gas stations and the power remains out, McCarthy’s question seems more and more relevant.

            But on Wednesday night, shortly before bed, the power springs back to life in my house. It stays on, and it seems to be just a few blocks that have it. I turn off the generator, go to sleep, and wake up to a home still powered and heated. With the wireless router now working, I turn on my laptop and begin to learn more about what’s been happening outside of my small world. As I do this, I begin to wish I didn’t know. The stories, the photos, the videos, the Facebook postings – they all feel like a high-tech recreation of McCarthy’s story. I clean up my house, return it to normal, and think about how I can help.

            The friends with the tree on the house and on the car don’t need help yet, as they need insurance adjusters and utility workers to arrive first. The neighbors down the block with no power, though – they’re happy to sleep over. Their thermostat had been down to 55, so they’re thrilled with 70 degrees and a warm bed. We chat for a while, and they go off to sleep.

            I return to my laptop and begin to realize how much despair there is on the east coast of my hometown, Staten Island, N.Y. On Friday, I pack up the car with clothes, towels, blanket and dog beds, and drive to the parking lot of a bowling alley in the Dongan Hills section of Staten Island. Burly men greet me at the car and unload the contents. I stand for a moment and look out at hundreds of bags of donated items, with makeshift signs indicating “Men’s Clothing” or “Blankets.” I see families walking around in search of items to sustain their lives, now that everything they have is gone. I feel a lot less concerned about that tree in my yard. The desperation I see here reminds me of my trip to New Orleans’ Seventh Ward this past summer.

            I decide against driving around to witness the destruction – I don’t want to be a natural-disaster tourist. I drive home, go food-shopping, and meet our neighbors back at the house. They stay over again, and we watch Bruce Springsteen sing for the suffering. We talk some baseball, too, which feels nice.

            The sun shines on the first Saturday morning in November. My neighbors get their power back. They thank me and leave with smiles on their faces. The friends with the tree on their car got it off, and it’s still driving. The friends with the tree on the roof have decided to go ahead with their plans to have their daughter christened today. My brother and I are the co-godfathers. Amy and the girls will meet me there.

There will be no party at the house after the ceremony; it’s not that kind of week. But we will be there, and we will stand beside our friends and their infant girl, and we’ll witness a different kind of water than the one that fell and flooded on Monday.

Another family of powerless friends may come by tonight, and if they do we’ll eat dinner together and talk and perhaps they’ll stay over and be warm. As for Staten Island, there are plans in the works for more drives and fund-raisers. Here in Jersey, the utility workers remain on the job, around the clock, restoring the grid one town at a time.

It’s beginning to feel, little by little, like the good guys might win this one after all. It’s beginning to feel like some hope remains after this truly terrible storm. In The Road, it’s never easy for McCarthy’s fictional father and son to “carry the fire.” In the real-life world of New York and New Jersey this week, it hasn’t been easy for us, either. But even in those gray, desperate days of our lives, it’s really the only way.

Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Gained

            I have a long history of missed opportunities at Yankee Stadium. There was that game against the Royals that my brother and I decided to skip back in 1996, only to miss a walk-off, two-run homer by Darryl Strawberry. There was the playoff game against the Mariners in 2001, when I landed tickets only to fall ill the day of the game and miss it entirely, including a home run by my favorite player, Bernie Williams.

There was the game against the Red Sox back in 1993, when my friend Stew and I drove to Yankee Stadium to see then-Red Sox stars Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs take on the Yankees only to realize when we got there that Stew’s automatic car window wouldn’t close on the driver’s side. He said there was no way he was leaving his car window open in a city parking lot, so we drove home.             And, to top it all, there was that Billy Joel concert at the Stadium back in 1990, when Amy and I had field-level seats but got caught in so much traffic that we arrived in time for the second encore. We stood on the field and sang along to the final three songs.

            When you go to events, you’re bound to miss some things. I obviously have. But I don’t get to Yankee Stadium as much anymore, so there’s not much room for any regrets. If I go to a game, I stay until the end and enjoy every minute. That was the plan last weekend, when I went to the big ballpark in the Bronx with my family.

            My mother had a tough summer health-wise, and we’re all thrilled that she’s feeling much better. So we decided to celebrate her birthday with a game at the Stadium. We arrived in our upper-deck seats behind home plate in time for the Saturday matinee, with six of us excited to watch the game together – my mom, my brother, my wife, our two girls, and myself.

            By the time the first inning had ended, the game was one hour old. The Yankees held a 3-2 lead in this sloppy contest, and our younger daughter was already wondering when the game would be over. But the girls settled down and started to enjoy the details of this ballpark, from the foul poles to the flags atop the stadium to the groundskeepers dancing to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Unfortunately, the Yankees and their opponent, the Oakland A’s, had not come ready to play their best baseball, and they dragged a 5-5 tie into extra innings.

            Our oldest daughter got caught up in the excitement of the late-innings drama, and we hung in there through 12 innings. When the 13^th inning began, we’d been in Yankee Stadium for five and a half hours. Everyone was hungry, and the girls were restless. By the time we’d made our way down to the lower level, the A’s had started the 13^th inning with three home runs, taking a 9-5 lead and sending us out of the park with no regrets. True, the Yankees would have last licks in the bottom of the 13^th, but we had seen enough for one day.

            We took the D train downtown, and got off on West 4^th Street to stop for dinner before driving home. As we walked toward the Italian restaurant we’d chosen for dinner, I passed another restaurant that had its windows wide open on this beautiful evening. As I glanced at the tables and diners to my left, I noticed a wide-screen TV behind them. And on that TV, I saw a live shot of Yankee Stadium. Atop that image was a score: A’s 9, Yankees 9.

            Say what? My mouth dropped. I turned to my mom and told her what I’d seen. She called out to the others, who found another restaurant window in time to stand on the sidewalk and watch the Yankees score yet another run in the 14^th inning to win by a score of 10-9. We stood beside a man who’d left the game himself, back in the eighth inning, and he shared high-fives with us after the winning run crossed home plate.

            Sigh.

So yes, the Yankees did execute the ultimate comeback while we were cruising along an underground tunnel in Manhattan. And yes, we missed it all. Add it to the list, right?

            But I have to say, I have a different spin on those missed opportunities at age 41. Sure, I wasn’t there to see the end of the game, and it was chaotic and dramatic and wonderful for the home fans. But remember, this day was never really about a baseball game. It was about a family celebrating a birthday, a mother, and good health. The only missed opportunity would have been to not go at all.

            And that’s how it’s always been. The day my brother and I missed the Strawberry home run? We actually spent that afternoon hanging out together at the Jersey Shore. The time I missed that playoff game because I was ill? I got to relax at home with my wife, and she pampered her sick husband. The day that Stew and I missed a game because of his window malfunction? We ended up taking another car to enjoy a nice dinner together that night.

            The Billy Joel concert? Well, that just stunk however you look at it. No silver linings there.

            But last weekend, as the Yankees gathered around home plate to celebrate their win, my family stepped into a fabulous restaurant on Houston Street to cap our day together. The girls had perked up, they were hanging out with their uncle and grandmother, and my mom was telling stories. The pizza arrived at our table, and we dug in hungrily.

            It was a success, however you look at it. There are no regrets about quality time with the people you love. And hey – somehow in the midst of it all, our baseball team had won a ballgame. Go Yankees. Go Mom.

The Ring

            In American homes today, it’s nearly impossible to predict the roles that husbands and wives are playing in each family dynamic. With so many adults either working multiple jobs, struggling to find work or staying home while their spouse works, traditional roles are out the window. In our family, Amy works two jobs, while I teach full-time and dabble in tutoring and free-lance writing on the side. So when it comes to things like cooking, cleaning and shopping, the work gets done by whoever is around to do it.

            Yesterday, Amy had an open house for her real estate job, and I was home with our daughters. The girls were playing with a neighborhood friend, so I took advantage of the time to do about eight loads of laundry, unload and reload the dishwasher, and clean whatever couldn’t fit in the dishwasher by hand.

            After Amy came home from work, it was time to put on some jeans and clean myself up a bit. It was, after all, our anniversary. The babysitter was coming by 7:30, so we hoped to get two or three hours to ourselves.

            As I washed my hands before leaving, I interlocked my fingers to lather them with soap and immediately felt something different. The nerve endings spread to the brain which brought out the panic and the words: “Where’s my ring?”

            I looked at my left ring finger. It was not there. The thin, gold-and-platinum wedding band, which I had worn every day of my life since September 16, 1995, was not on my finger. I checked with Amy, to see if she had played a trick on me, and she assured me she had not.

            So where was it? And why was this happening on our anniversary, of all days?

            My immediate instinct was that I had not been missing the ring for long. After all, I noticed it so quickly when washing my hands. But I am, after all, 41 years old now, and therefore I am starting to lose my mind ever so gradually. So Amy and I rewound our weekend. Could I have lost it while swimming at the gym on Friday? No, because Amy had a photo of me and the girls while apple-picking on Saturday, and, when she zoomed in on my left hand, you could see the ring.

What else had I done this weekend? Not much, actually, aside from cleaning house, washing the car, going to church and heading out for a run. Had it slipped off in the soapy water while cleaning the car? We checked the driveway, and found nothing. Was it in the sink where I’d been washing cups and glasses? Nope. Had it come off in the pockets of the new jeans Amy had bought for me? No, it hadn’t. Had I dropped it in the offering plate at church? No, we do electronic giving.

By this time, the babysitter had arrived, and we had to go. So Amy and I went out to eat, to celebrate 17 years of marriage, with only one of us wearing the wedding band that symbolizes this commitment. We had a great dinner and talked about other things, but every once in awhile I’d blurt out another possibility, asking, “Do you think it could have come off there?”

After we arrived home, we decided to choose sleep over more ring-searching. But when I woke up, I knew what was next: the garbage. I found an old pail, put a fresh bag around it, and proceeded to take everything out of the bag I had tossed in the trash can the night before. It took about 40 minutes, and it was awful – a rotisserie chicken, mac and cheese, week-old guacamole, mushy cereal, and dozens of soiled paper towels, napkins and wipes – all of which I unfolded and checked deliberately.

No ring.

By this time, the flies were swarming, and my hands stunk something awful. So after cleaning up the garage, I headed straight into the shower. Afterward, I walked into our bedroom to grab some clothes. As I pulled out a pair of underwear from my dresser, I heard a metal object fly across the room. It then began rolling along the hardwood before falling to the ground beneath Amy’s dresser. I got down on my knees, reached for the ring, and put it on my finger. At this point I thanked God.

I know this is the part of the story where you’re expecting me to put it all together, and tell you what it means that my wedding band was nestled comfortably atop of a pair of black and gray boxer briefs that I had shoved into a full dresser drawer after folding that eighth load of laundry on Sunday – just before going in to wash my hands.

But I’m sorry; I don’t know what to say. All I can tell you is that yes, 17 years is a long time. And yes, there are a lot of days in which it feels like our marriage is simply one of chores and errands and begging our children to do what we ask. A whirl of wedlock, where the last thing anyone’s thinking about is gold and platinum.

And yet, even without that piece of metal, I did go out with my wife last night. As we’ve done ever since we started dating, we hunted out a great pizzeria – one that served us locally grown mushrooms and onions along with mozzarella and parmesan cheese on our pie. It was so good. And we sat across from each other, eating and talking and looking into the eyes of our life’s partner.

That part, of course, was there all along. You can symbolize it in whatever way you want – through a ring, a pizza, a load of laundry or 40 minutes of garbage-sifting. It ain’t always pretty, it’s far too hectic and it will never be predictable. But I will take it, every day. I know, after all, who put that ring on my finger. And so long as her hand is in mine, we’ll be all right.

Daddy, Seriously

            I was vacuuming. She was in the shower. I propped open the bathroom door for a moment to quickly sweep the tiled floor with the vacuum.

            At this point, the 7-year-old poked her head out from behind the shower curtain.

            “Daddy, seriously,” she said. “I’m taking a shower in here and I want some peace!”

            I stared ahead, looking into the eyes of this child I helped bring into the world, and I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. She ducked back behind the curtain, merrily applying conditioner to her hair. I closed the door, shaking my head with wonder.

            My girls are changing before my eyes. There was a time when they wanted me around them all the time – to read to them, to play make-believe school with them, to dance with them. Now my girls, who are 10 and 7, are more content watching TV, fiddling with their iTouches, or playing around with makeup. A few days ago, they took the tissues out of every Kleenex box in the house and turned the boxes into two pairs of make-believe ice skates. We have a giant stack of tissues in the living room, and torn pieces of cardboard all over the floor.

            “For the past 10 years,” I told my older one the other day, “I believe I’ve been a great father. But I am honestly not sure how to parent you right now.”

            Katie, the 10-year-old, is leading this change. She, after all, is the one who’s genuinely entering a new life stage. Her pre-pubescent hormones are leading her to all kinds of emotions and moods, and I am quickly learning that I need to pick my battles. I also need to understand that privacy is becoming more important to her, and that’s not necessarily a problem. Chelsea, the younger one, is more or less tagging along. She’s still just a little one, but she’s not going to let Katie enter this sassy phase alone.

            I have thoroughly enjoyed raising two daughters, and have embraced everything from the princess movies to the baby dolls to the boy bands. But right now, I could really use a little guy who wants to have a catch in the backyard. I could use a LEGO Star Wars video game, or a burping contest.

            Alas.

All summer long, their infatuation was with an Australian show about teenage mermaids. They watched and taped the show every day, then reenacted scenes from it with each other. They used their Flip video cameras to create mermaid stories. They stared up at the moon to see if it would turn them into mermaids. They made plans for mermaid Halloween costumes.

After letting them watch back-to-back episodes of the show, I’d ask them to stop. They’d whine and ask for more. I’d put my foot down. The battle was on, and eventually they’d give up. Then, a few minutes later, I’d hear something upstairs. Yes, they’d turned on Katie’s computer, logged onto YouTube, and found another episode of the show.

Mom and Dad have their work cut out for them. And remember, Katie is only 10. There are many more adventures ahead. But I think this is a lot more than my kids copping an attitude; they are, after all, always wonderfully behaved in public. They do care deeply about their family members and friends. They do, eventually, clean their rooms. And they still love to tell and listen to stories.

I think this new life stage that Katie is entering (with Chelsea in tow) requires some adjustments from Dad. I’ve got to come at things from a different perspective now, and parent my 10-year-old with an eye toward making sure that I’m the kind of dad she wants to come to with problems when she’s 16 or 17. If it means I sit down and watch some mermaid TV, or pop upstairs to watch them dance for a while, then so be it. If it means we negotiate over the iTouch play time, or they clean their rooms once a month instead of once a week, then so be it. If it means I bend a little on some rules, only to clarify which ones are non-negotiable, then so be it.

A few days ago, we were walking through a wooded path toward a gorgeous, rocky beach in Plymouth, Mass. We were with our dear friends, and had spent a lovely weekend with them. As we walked and chatted, Katie took one of my hands, and Chelsea took the other. It was only for a couple of minutes that they both held on, but it was enough.

Enough to remind this father that he’s still relevant. Still needed. Still loved. Daddy, seriously – that stuff doesn’t change.