Top 40 Songs of 2012 (if you have kids)

It's New Year's Eve and once again iTunes has helped me compile my family's forty most played songs of the year. (Um... can you tell we have five kids under the age of ten?)

1. Locked Out of Heaven (Bruno Mars)

2. It Will Rain (Bruno Mars)

3. We Are Young (Fun feat. Janelle Monáe)           

4. Eyes Open (Taylor Swift)

5. Call Me Maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen)

6. Ours (Taylor Swift)

7. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor Swift)

8. Payphone (Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa)

9. Boyfriend (Justin Bieber)

10. Rumour Has It (Adele)

11. Moves Like Jagger (Maroon 5)

12. Harder to Breathe (Maroon 5)

13. Shake It Up (Selena Gomez)

14. Baby (Justin Bieber & Ludacris)

15. Mean (Taylor Swift)

16. Sparks Fly (Taylor Swift)

17. Billionaire (Travie McCoy feat. Bruno Mars)

18. California Gurls (Katy Perry feat. Snoop Dogg)

19. Back To December (Taylor Swift)

20. On the Floor (Jennifer Lopez feat. Pitbull)

21. Kissin U (Miranda Cosgrove)

22. Some Nights (Fun)

23. Makes Me Wonder (Maroon 5)

24. Good Time (Owl City & Carly Rae Jepsen)

25. You Belong With Me (Taylor Swift)

26. Who Says (Selena Gomez & The Scene)

27. Firework (Katy Perry)

28. Fearless (Taylor Swift)

29. One More Night (Maroon 5)

30. Volcano (Jimmy Buffett)

31. Start Again (Counting Crows)

32. Love Story (Taylor Swift)

33. Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb (Edd Byrnes)

34. As Long As You Love Me (Justin Bieber feat. Big Sean)

35. One Less Lonely Girl (Justin Bieber)

36. Make It Shine (Victorious Cast)

37. Girlfriend (Avril Lavigne)

38. Leave It All to Me (Miranda Cosgrove)           

39. Safe & Sound (Taylor Swift feat. The Civil Wars

40. Nothin' On You (B.o.B feat. Bruno Mars)

And as a way to save face, here are my most-listened to songs of 2012. (This is the part where my wife will call me an old man.)

1. We Can Work It Out (The Beatles)

2. Emotion In Motion (Ric Ocasek)

3. My Back Pages (Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, et al.)

4. Please Please Me (The Beatles)

5. I'll Follow the Sun (The Beatles)

6. Let My Love Open The Door (Pete Townshend)

7. Electric Blue (Icehouse)

8. Take It On The Run (REO Speedwagon)

9. New York, New York (Frank Sinatra)

10. Don't Stop Believin' (Journey)

11. Denise (Randy & Rainbows)

12. God Only Knows (The Beach Boys)

13. When I Grow Up To Be a Man (The Beach Boys)

14. All My Loving (The Beatles)

15. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (The Beatles)

16. Paperback Writer (The Beatles)

17. The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan)

18. Norwegian Wood (The Beatles)

19. Blowin' In the Wind (Bob Dylan)

20. Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)

21. Real World (Matchbox Twenty)

22. Expressway To Your Heart (Soul Survivors)

23. Born In The U.S.A. (Bruce Springstein)

24. All I Really Want To Do (The Byrds)

25. I Wonder Why (Dion & The Belmonts)

26. Got to Get You Into My Life (The Beatles)

27. Cool (Gwen Stefani)

28. Boston (Augustana)

29. I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues (Elton John)

30. Rag Doll (Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons)

31. Basket Case (Green Day)

32. Laid (James)

33. Mrs. Robinson (Simon & Garfunkel)

34. Penny Lane (The Beatles)

35. Take Me Home Tonight (Eddie Money)

36. Next Year (Foo Fighters)

37. Runaround Sue (Dion)

38. Lonely Teenager (Dion)

39. Walk of Life (Dire Straits)

40. Remember Then (The Earls)

Happy New Year, everyone!

SUMMER RE-RUN: Twins Again!

If network television can fill its summer/creative void with re-runs of things it has already broadcast, then so can I. This essay of mine appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of TWINS Magazine. (I think I'm supposed to put "used with permission" or something like that; but since its my own work that I'm using, granting myself permission to use it seems somewhat redundant.)


Father of Five: Twins Again?

By J.J. Treat

TWINS Magazine, Summer 2009

The grainy black-and-white ultrasound couldn’t have been any clearer. Two small circles, two dark spots, two little flutters.

We were having twins. Again.

Alex and Madeline were four and a half, Katherine was not quite 18 months and there we were, back in the same exam room where it all started, finding out we were having two more.

For a good, solid minute we sat in silence, taking deep breaths and staring at the monitor as if we were in a trance. Finally my wife blurted out: “Oh my God - what kind of a car is going to fit five kids?”

Without cracking a smile our doctor shrugged and deadpanned: “A Suburban.”

Two set of twins... and Katie in between.

Most statistics put the average American family at somewhere between 2.06 and 2.10 children – a fact which has come to explain the novelty of having five kids in today’s Western culture. From the minute we saw those two little flutters we knew we’d be branded a social anomaly.

My mother-in-law, for example, burst into hysterical laughter when we told her we were pregnant with Nos. 4 & 5. So did my mother. My father literally took an hour to absorb the news, while my father-in-law simply told us to get a bigger house… and soon.

When word got out to the rest of the world, most people gasped and told us how lucky we were (a legitimate reaction given our doctor’s claim that the odds of naturally conceiving twins twice is about the same as getting struck by lightning). Others suggested we get our own reality show on TLC.

And of course all of the people who thought we were crazy to have three children had plenty to say about our fourth and fifth. From the generic “How will you afford it?” to the more caustic “better you than me,” people didn’t mince their words.

Buried within the novelty, though, was the very real feeling that our life was changing – and for real, this time. The jump from zero children to two was big but expected; and the jump from two to three was nothing. But making the leap up to five was an unequivocal game-changer.

For starters, my father-in-law was right: we needed to move. Our three tiny bedrooms just weren’t practical anymore; plus, we wanted a town that offered a myriad of sports and activities so our five kids, who all already have different interests, would have plenty to choose from.

Mostly, though, we just needed to adapt to the everyday nuances that exist outside the American “norm”. Most strollers are built for one or two children; we needed one that could hold three. Most restaurants have booths to fit five; we’d always need one for seven. And most deals, specials, coupons and prizes are for a “Family 4-Pack.” With us that would barely cover half.

Kevin and Elizabeth were born full-term on a rainy September morning only a minute apart and weighing-in at a combined 14 pounds, 15 ounces (which I’m fairly certain qualifies my wife for sainthood). Coming from a comparatively small family, I was in awe – amazed, even – the first time I saw all five of my children together.

As early as our hospital stay, though, random strangers felt the need to weigh-in on the size of our brood. One woman chastised us for having so many children, citing the world population and the growing need to adopt. Another said we should have just stopped after the first set of twins. And plenty of uninhibited types had the nerve to ask “natural or in-vitro” with the same ease a waitress would ask “regular or decaf.”

Lucky for us, peppered within all the cynicism and commentary was genuine excitement - mostly from people who either came from or had big families like ours. They assured us that what most saw as a novelty was simply just our life.

That got me thinking. With five kids in public school, I will never again complain about paying my property taxes. And with five kids living under my roof, I should be able to stop shoveling snow by the time I’m 40.

With five kids, they will have to learn patience, independence and responsibility (since my wife and I can’t do everything for everybody). They will have to learn how to share, how to fight and how to resolve conflicts; and they will wave to learn how to tolerate other opinions and adapt to other interests.  

And with five children there will be plenty of people to take care of my wife and me when we’re old. More importantly, though, there will be plenty of them to take care of each other.

Life with a big family won’t always be easy. We’ve already had (and will surely continue to have) our ups and downs. But at the end of the day my wife and I rest well knowing we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Of all the questions we are asked, the most common is always: “How do you handle all those kids?” I wish we had some snazzy, magical answer; but when people ask how we do it the simple truth is: we just do.

And we haven’t even needed a Suburban… yet.

J.J. Treat lives in West Hartford, CT with his wife and five children.

My Dad

For more than 38 years my father has been an educator. He started as a teacher, spent the bulk of his career as an elementary school principal, was promoted to Assistant Superintendent and eventually became Superintendent of Schools in the city where he (and I) grew-up. On June 30th, my dad will retire - marking the end of an era in the New Britain school district.

My Dad after throwing out the first pitch at the NB Rock Cats.

This past Wednesday night, my dad was feted at what can only be described as one of the largest retirement dinners I have ever even heard of, let alone attended. More than a dozen speakers touted my father's accomplishments and presented him with tokens of appreciation before my brother and I finally had the honor of introducing him. Here in its entirety is what I had to say:


There are more than 500 people here in this room tonight – and that is, in and of itself, both a tribute to my father and a representation of the vast cross-section that is his life. Family and friends… students and administrators… colleagues and business leaders… coaches, players, politicians… and teachers.

My father was and is - first and foremost - a teacher… a time-honored profession that transcends the history of civilized society. The acquiring of knowledge and dissemination of that knowledge is a skill - a gift – that generation upon generation of human beings have venerated not for its wealth or prestige, but for the very simple fact that it sustains our future. Teachers ensure that society advances; that it continues to propagate and prosper… for centuries and centuries to come. 

My father is a great teacher… and for all of you who know him, you won’t be surprised to learn that in my 34 years of being his son, he’s taught me a lot.

And for all of you who know him, you also won’t be surprised to learn that in 34 years of being his son, there are also several skills I’ve acquired that he ostensibly did NOT teach me: like sheetrocking… and plumbing. Installing an electrical outlet… or tiling a kitchen floor. Pretty much anything involving a hammer, nails, a drill… in fact he doesn’t even own a drill.

Every year I hike through a tree farm with my wife and kids and chop down a Christmas tree with my own two hands… NOT a skill I learned from my father.

Driving a car? Lord knows he tried… but that too was NOT something I learned from my father. And negotiating the price of a car? Definitely not something I learned from my father.

Fishing, painting, singing, playing cards? I can do all of them… with absolutely zero thanks to my father.

But obviously when I started thinking about what to say here tonight, it did dawn on me just how many things – how many important things – in my everyday life that my father the teacher did in fact teach me.

He taught me how to shave; and how to tie a tie… two skills without which I’d undoubtedly be unemployed.

He taught me how to read… a skill I not only use every day in my job, but more importantly every night when I put my kids to bed.

He taught me about baseball… a game that’s rarely ever over; that’s always possible to win. A game designed to make you fail, bounce back, fail again… and emerge stronger, more focused and more resilient than ever.

He taught me how to keep score in baseball… a skill that earned me all-conference honors at New Britain High my senior year; and he taught me how to be a coach… something I get to do with my son and his friends a couple of nights a week.

And while Joe Dimaggio famously thanked the Good Lord for making him Yankee, I always thank my father for making me a Yankee fan.

My dad the teacher taught me how to teach… something I’ve been doing at Central and the community colleges for almost ten years now. He taught me how it’s about patience and understanding… and always remembering that the ultimate purpose is to get your students to think.

He taught me about politics… how it’s not about celebrity or even a person; but rather a process – a powerful mechanism – that we all can use to help make our community, our country and our world a better place.

I make my living through politics – and though I don’t often say it: it was my father who first got me involved. In 1984, I was 7 years old – and my dad took me down to Democratic headquarters to work for Walter Mondale and an incumbent Congressman named William Ratchford. We stamped postcards, passed out buttons, ran numbers on Election Day… and of course we got trounced. Being only seven, I was devastated, but my dad taught me how to hope for the future and manage defeat… a skill that came in quite handy four years later when he took me to see Michael Dukakis speak in Waterbury – and he too got trounced.

When I was 11, he took me to a local candidate forum sponsored by a group of New Britain school parents. He was supporting some guy named DeFronzo who had never held office before and had virtually no chance of knocking off the city’s longest serving mayor… that one, of course, we won (go figure). And we won a lot more than we lost over the years, but the message was always the same: be active. Challenge the system. Stand up for what you believe in. My father taught me that win or lose, we have an obligation to inspire, to be a part of the process - to bring people together and work for the type of society in which we all want to live.

My dad taught me how to be a leader… a professional… part of an organization. And he taught me how to be passionate about my job… how life is too short to waste by not doing something you absolutely love. How there are good days and bad days… but no matter what: at the end of the day, you’ve got to have feeling for what you’re doing.

My father taught me to remember where I came from… to take pride in the fact that I’m the grandson of a factory worker and the grandson of a carpenter… and that were it not for my grandparents and their insistence that their children be educated, neither he nor my mother nor my brother nor I would be standing before you today.

My father taught and continues to teach me every day how to be a son-in-law… and of course: a son.

He has taught and continues to teach me every day how to be a brother… and a brother-in-law… and a cousin… and an uncle.

I watch his relationship with my mom – the woman he has loved and adored since their days at New Britain High. His partner, his companion… his confidant, his best friend… And I know that he’s taught me how to be a husband.

But in the final analysis – and above all else – the single most important thing I’ve learned – and continue to learn – from my father… is how to be a father. It’s been almost ten years since I first looked at that white stick with the little blue plus sign and knew that my life had changed forever. First came Alex and Maddie… and then my little Katie… and then Kevin and Libby. Are they overwhelming at times? Sure… and it helped that my dad was always there for the big things: when they were born, when they were baptized… when they were in the Emergency Room (which by my count I believe at least four of the five have been at some point). But in a way he’s also there every minute of every day… as I navigate my own ups and downs of fatherhood with my own children. Whether it’s helping them with their homework, or taking them on vacation, or talking them through a bad day at school or a rough outing on the pitcher’s mound… or answering their millions of questions about everything ranging from: who built me?... to what’s it like up in Heaven?... to why haven’t the Houston Astros ever won the World Series?

At every turn, at every step of the way, my first point of reference is always to think back to me and Nick – two little kids growing up – and ask: what did Dad do? What would Dad do? And just like any good, free-thinking student: sometimes I follow my teacher’s lessons, and sometime I don’t. Sometimes I have to try and fail on my own before I can see that he’s right… and sometimes he’s even taught me so well that I can admit that he’s wrong.

That’s the beauty of fatherhood… and the beauty of teaching. And in the end, they’re both what he knows best.

It’s my pleasure, my privilege, my honor to introduce the guy my grandparents named Ron… the guy that people call Ronnie and Jake… Mr. J… Coach Ron, Uncle Ron… Grandpa…

And the guy I still just call Dad.    

My Anxious Little 8-Year-Old

Alex is the oldest of my five kids and an anxious little bugger.

He worries about things outside of his control, he obsesses over unfamiliar situations and he somehow extrapolates seemingly harmless events into natural disasters. He's also easily rattled by the things that annoy him or gross him out (i.e. his sisters' singing, his sisters' chewing with their mouths open... pretty much his sisters in general).

Some parents have a hard time relating to an anxious kid, but I'm not one of them. I get him. I get exactly what's rolling around in that over-worked little brain of his, even when I don't like it.Why? Because he's me.

Me, circa 1985

In elementary school, I went through a period when I physically couldn't eat in the school cafeteria with the other kids because the noises they made while chewing grossed me out. I also went through a phase where I had to pull back the shower curtain twice every time I entered the bathroom just to make sure some creepy killer guy with a hockey mask wasn't standing behind it waiting to slice my throat with a machete.

Making new friends was tough, since I never knew how to start a conversation... and recess? Torture. Pure torture. Something as simple as going up to a group of kids and asking them if they wanted to play was nearly impossible given the inner workings of my brain.

Such is the same for Alex... and it breaks my heart.

Alex loves baseball, and he's pretty good at it too. (Some have even suggested that's he's better now that I was in my prime - a fact I won't dispute.) By the end of last summer, though, you could see his anxiety start to take-over.

What if I can't turn the play?

What if I get hit with the ball?

What if someone on the other team slash-bunts and gets tossed out of the game? What will the umpire say? How will he toss him? Will the fans boo? Will the kid throw his helmet?

Alex, circa yesterday

By the time fall baseball came around, the anxiety became too much. Between the start of school, a new coach and older kids pitching, things got so bad that Alex - the team leader in batting during the summer - could not step inside the batters' box come fall. He was too nervous.

But there was and is a difference (thank God) between my run as an anxious 8-year-old and my son's: he had and will have infinitely more resources by which to deal with his anxiety than I ever did. The science of anxiety has ballooned over the last three decades to the point where society now knows more about and accepts more of the intricacies of our own human brains. What I once saw (and internalized) as my own inherent failure to be a care-free little boy is now understood to be a complex confluence of genetic traits that are able to be addressed environmentally. Hallelujah!

Over the last six months, we've helped Alex and we've gotten Alex help; and though he's still revolted by his sisters slurping cereal, he's been able to enjoy the thrills of being an 8-year-old much much more.

Last night we had our first game of the new baseball season. Alex was the starting pitcher and played the rest of the game at shortstop. He struck out, grounded out and - get this! - got hit by a pitch. Six months ago he would have been scared to ever face a pitcher again. But yesterday? He simply jogged down to first, stole second and was eventually driven home.

We won the opener 12-10, but I didn't really care. My anxious little 8-year-old was exuberant, ecstatic -  playing the game he loves.

And happy.

This Picture Makes Me Sad

My parents were born in the same hospital exactly 40 days apart... a fun little factoid that would someday result in their darling son (i.e. me) having to put together two separate 60th Birthday slide-shows within six weeks. In the process, I became intimately familiar with hundreds of my family's pictures - and among those that I managed to scan was this one, taken in New York City during the summer of 1986:

Try (if you can) to divert your eyes from our coordinated outfits... or our long white socks... or the fact that all three of us have our shirts tucked into our shorts without a belt. Instead, focus on the picture itself: a guy takes his two sons to New York City to see the Statue of Liberty and South Street Seaport and they stop (as billions of visitors once did) to take a picture in front of the beautiful New York skyline and its prominent Twin Towers.

My dad never thought twice about putting this picture in the album of our family vacations. It was merely one of a dozen pictures he included from that day; and merely one of hundreds more we had accumulated over the years.

It was never supposed to be special, let alone sad... but ten-plus years after those towers fell, its both. 

My Big Fat Polish Christmas

For a whopping 364 days of the year, my family exists devoid of any real celebration of our ethnic heritage.

Sure it sounds sad, but you don't have to be a sociologist or an anthropologist (or any ologist, for that matter) to realize it was bound to happen. My 100% Polish grandfather married my 100% Italian grandmother; and my Polish/Italian father married my 100% Spanish mother. Then to complicate matters further, I went and married a 25% Polish, 25% French, 50% WASP woman who had ancestors on the Mayflower. (I like to joke that they actually do have an ethnic celebration: its called Thanksgiving.)

The end result of all this madness, of course, is that my wife and I now have five wonderful children who aside from their decidedly Polish last name have no real sense of their own cultural heritage.

Except for Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve is the one night - the one holiday tradition - that has endured throughout my lifetime...and I've come to accept it as perhaps one of the few opportunities I have left by which to teach my children about their past.

Throughout my own culturally trifurcated existence, Christmas Eve has always been a celebration both of and with the Polish side of my family. The meal, at its core, consists of fish and pierogi - because in the true Polish tradition, you are not allowed to eat meat on Christmas Eve. My father recalls that growing-up the meal specifically called for seven different types of fish, although we have heard that in Poland the actual number is proscribed to be twelve (a discrepancy he simply chalks-up to his grandmother being a relatively poor immigrant). My grandfather's favorite is sledzie (kinda sorta pronounced SLEDGE-e), which is raw pickled herring... not particularly my cup of tea, but nonetheless a Polish delicacy available in large vats on the floor of just about every Polish deli and grocery on the infamous Broad Street in New Britain.

As for the pierogi: we get the real ones - the ones hand made by the little Polish ladies over at the St. Lucian's home and filled with good stuff like cabbage or sauerkraut or sweet cheese. (With my most sincere apologies to Mrs. T: I loathe bland, Americanized supermarket-freezer pierogi filled with potato and cheese... loathe!) Since my wife is part Polish too (the only ancestry we have in common), she more than qualifies to cook-up the pierogi... and this year, she's even adding potato pancakes to the mix!

In the Polish tradition, we also break and share the oplatek (kinda sorta pronounced oh-PWAH-tek) wafers - typically three communion-esque wafers with images of the Nativity on them. As our patriarch, my grandfather begins by saying a few words and then sharing the wafer with his wife and then sequentially with each of his three children, then his grandchildren... and by that point the ritual devolves into a joyous mass of chaos in which ultimately every member of the family has shared a piece of the wafer with every other member of the family and has wished them a Merry Christmas.

And then there's the song. Mixed-in among the secular sounds of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the only Polish song any of us in our family will likely ever know: "Dzisiaj w Betlejem" (kinda sorta pronounced GEE-shy beth-LAY-hem). According to my grandfather, the literal translation is something to the effect of "come to Bethlehem" or "rejoice in Bethlehem" - but admittedly none of the rest of us have even the slightest clue as to what the actual words in the song mean. All that we know is that its my grandfather's song - a song I remember him singing with his brother, that was most certainly sung to them by their mother, and one unquestionably sung to her by her mother. The rest of us have heard it throughout our lives and have either picked-up the words either through rote or osmosis - and I am insistent that if my children know nothing else about their past, this song must be it.

We are hosting Christmas Eve for this first time this year - and while I do expect these next 48 hours to be a bit hectic, I am genuinely excited... because while Christmas always has been about faith and family, for me it has also always been about my Polish heritage.

Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia! (Which I'm pretty sure means Merry Christmas!)

New Blogs

I'd like to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to the two latest editions to the blogosphere: my little brother Nick and Prof. Geoffrey "Thug" Elterich... check out their words of wisdom at the links below:

• Nick: Spoven Weedle Presents at http://nickjake00.blogspot.com/

• Thug: "Of Intersections and Strange Things Told" at http://ofintersectionsandstrangethingstold.blogspot.com/

Visit 'em... Read 'em... Follow 'em...

Mom.

I love my mom.

That's not a very controversial statement, given that an overwhelming majority of human beings (and other species, for that matter) do in fact love their mothers; but admittedly, it could stand to be said (by me, at least) a bit more often than it is. The hustle and bustle of 21st Century tends to consume all of us in a way such that we are able to reflect on such things only on certain occasions... and this past Sunday, as we celebrated my mom turning 60, was one.

I spent much of last week making a slide show for my mother - a tedious task, given the fact that digital cameras have only been prevalent in about nine or ten of her sixty years. My grandmother provided me with an album of black and whites from when my mom was a kid, and then my father (ever the meticulous photo connoisseur  allowed me to borrow his OCD-infused albums from the middle years of her life. All in all I collected 195 pictures, which thanks to Mac technology (RIP Steve Jobs) were instantly coupled with four of my mom's favorite songs and melded into a Ken Burns-style slideshow.

She cried when we played it. So did everyone else in the room. But for me, the sentimentality of the final product couldn't rival that of the actual development. Its not often that you get to peruse sixty years of someone's life over merely a few days - and when you do, I think it helps you gain a greater appreciation for the genuine essence of said person.

Before putting the slideshow together, I knew without question the things I admired about my mother:

• When my brother and I were young (i.e. still in elementary school), she made a decision to go back to grad school; and she set an amazing example some years later when she finally graduated with her MSW.
• When my aunt was diagnosed with a vicious form of leukemia, my mom literally moved to Boston for nearly four months to be with her - day in and day out - so my uncle could try to keep life as normal as possible for their three little girls.
• And when my wife and I were four months pregnant with our first set of twins, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer... a diagnosis she faced with courage and ultimately defeated with valor. 

Putting together that slideshow, though, caused me to see other things - different things - that I don't always necessarily notice. From the simple (for most of her life she had short hair), to the complex (she still looks at my father the same way she did on their wedding day), I couldn't help but feel as though I had been blunted - stunned, even - by the obvious nature of such observations.

The observation that struck me the most, though, was the affinity my mom had/has for my brother and I together. Even before I had started to scan, I noticed the plethora of pictures of just the three of us. Pictures from Christmas and vacations; from school events and the park. There were literally hundreds of them... and after perusing them all, I felt a certain closeness - an identification, if you will - with that particular triumvirate: my brother, my mom and me. Not to slight my father (since he was likely the one who took most of said pictures), but there is something special about those particular images that capture my mother - the true essence of my mother - more than any of the others ever could.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

What if...?

My wife and I took this picture of our five kids last weekend on a visit to the University of Connecticut:

Over the last twenty years, UConn has become one of the top public universities in the country, not to mention the "College Basketball Capitol of the World". I hold two degrees from this fine institution, I was the editor of the campus newspaper, and I was front-and-center that magical Monday night in 1999 when Coach Calhoun hoisted his/our first-ever NCAA Championship trophy in Tropicana Field... but more than anything else, UConn is where I met my wife.

We have known each other for 14 years, have been married for 11, and have five wonderful children - and when I look at this picture, I can't help think of the improbable things that had to have happened in order to bring us to this point in our lives. Yes, it sounds kinda Doc-Brown-Back-to-the-Future-ish, but think about it: at some point in October of 1997, I'm sure I stumbled drunk past this very statue, sorting through the dozens and dozens of girls' phone numbers that were voluntarily thrown at me at that night's array of parties... yet 14 years later there we were taking this picture. The time in between was and is filled with countless "what ifs".

What if she aced freshman chemistry and remained a nursing major instead of switching to journalism?

What if I didn't wander over to the campus newspaper looking for a job my freshman year?

What if her dumbass high school sweetheart hadn't broken up with her over the summer?

What if Billy had in fact beeped the horn of his car, demanding we leave that silly party before I had a chance to talk to her?

What if she said no?

What if she got sick of me?

What if she didn't have a genetic predisposition to release more than one egg per month?

What if we decided to stop after two?

What if we decided to stop after three?

The picture of my kids reminds me of that picture of Marty McFly and his siblings - the one that starts to fade bit by bit as he changes history, as he alters the "what ifs". But since I don't have a time-traveling DeLorean, the only conclusion I can draw is that life is some ironic mixture of free-will, divine intervention, and good old-fashioned luck.

I could drive myself crazy thinking about all the things that could have gone differently, that could have gone wrong... but in the end, I am where I am.

And for that, I'm eternally grateful.

Of Cribs and Men

I took down the babies’ cribs last night… a sullen reminder that, in fact, they’re not babies anymore.

My son pretended to kiss his crib goodbye, while his twin sister nearly broke her foot on the scattered remains. The three older kids – all past inhabitants of said cribs themselves – were completely oblivious; and my dear wife, of course, tried her best to fight back tears.

As for me (i.e. the guy actually doing all the work), I just kept rolling the same thing over and over and over again in my mind: Damn - these things are a helluva lot easier to take down than put up!

May 2003 - I was in our old house sitting on the floor of what soon would be the babies’ room, surrounded by countless rails, spokes, screws, safety latches, bolts, Allen wrenches, et cetera. The room was a mess. I was a mess. A 25-year-old guy who had never even held a baby, and there I was building not one but TWO cribs for our forthcoming twins.

I don’t remember every exact detail of that particular day; but knowing me, I’m sure I whined to my wife about how hard I worked putting the cribs together… and then I’m sure she suggested we go out to dinner… and I’m sure once we were out we decided to go catch a movie… and once the movie was over we probably scooted over to Barnes & Noble to browse through the zillions of “how to be a parent” books that we most likely didn’t even buy… and then we probably headed home and actually watched SNL live so as to conserve future recording space on our standard VHS cassette.

Boy, have things changed.

In the eight years since I first built the cribs, we’ve moved, I’ve changed jobs and we’ve welcomed a grand total of five wonderful children into our lives. We can’t go to the movies or out to dinner on the spur of the moment anymore – hell, we technically can’t even put our children in a confined space to sleep anymore – but that’s just as much a part of parenthood as lying on the floor covered with seemingly endless pages of incomprehensible “EZ-build” assembly instructions.

According to my math, I have assembled, adjusted and disassembled the cribs eighteen different times – and that’s it. The crib phase is officially over; the bunk-bed phase has begun… and I only hope I can enjoy those last few remnants of innocence before that evil leap to puberty swoops in and changes everything.

Life's (NOT) a Beach

I hate the beach.

There – I said it. No more side-stepping the question or hiding from the truth. I’m putting it out there for everyone to see, hear, feel and know: I unequivocally despise the beach.

Of course this isn’t the easiest thing in the world to admit. After all, my wife loves the beach, as do at least four of my kids (I’m pretty certain that my son Kevin takes after me). Plus, it’s “the beach” – the one place universally associated with summer and fun and relaxation and all that other good stuff that everyone everywhere around the world enjoys. So to say that I hate it is not an easy thing… but it is the truth.

I don’t know when it all started, really, because as a kid we always spent time down in either Old Saybrook or Misquamicut. My brother and I would play in the water and catch crabs in the jetties, while my mother sat in her chair and read her books for hours… upon hours… upon hours. I liked it when the Italian ice truck showed-up, and I’d sometimes even grab a milkshake or some clam fritters at the snack shop; but by and large, it was all kind of monotonous. Some people can just lay there on the beach all day and relax – but even as a kid, I couldn’t.

As I grew older and even more idiosyncratic, the reasons for my aversion became all the more obvious:

·         The Sun. Yes – I know it’s essential to sustaining all forms of life (human and otherwise), but really: does it have to be so bright? And blinding? And hot? Which brings me to another point…

·         The Heat. You know what’s better than being outside in the heat? Not being outside in the heat. Sure, summer is supposed to be hotter than winter. We’re closer to the Equator or the sun or something like that having to do with the earth’s axis – but is it really that much fun to sit outside and boil when there’s a perfectly acceptable alternative (i.e. staying inside and not boiling)?

·         The Sand. It’s impossible to walk on, it coats the inside of my car, and three weeks later I’m still finding it in bodily crevices I never even knew I had.

·         Sand Flies. Because sand isn’t bad enough on its own, it has to have little gnatty pests flying around inside of it.

·         The Water. People piss in the ocean. Hell, even I’ve pissed in the ocean. Am I really supposed to swim in that?

·         Suntan Lotion. Messy, gooey and completely unnatural.

·         Sunburn. First it burns, then it itches… then you start to peel your skin off like an f’n rattlesnake. And as if all of that’s not bad enough, you’ve also increased your risk of cancer.

·         Finally, there are the Seagulls. I’m afraid of birds. All birds. Even little birds – like those teeny, tiny ones that fly away the minute you take a step toward them. And if I’m afraid of a teeny, tiny bird that flies away the minute you take a step towards it, I’m more or less petrified of those ginormous seagulls that fly right up to you and grab the food right out of your hand.

So yes – I hate the beach. But make no bones about it: when my wife and kids want to go, I’ll still go - stumbling across the sand in my Nike’s, sitting upright in my chair under two umbrellas, leaping to my feet every time the mere shadow of a seagull enters my airspace – because that’s what you do for the people you love*.

*An adage I hope my wife remembers next time there’s a new Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers slasher-flick out in the theaters.

Vacation: All I Ever Wanted

Merriam-Webster defines the word vacation as “a scheduled period during which activity is suspended”… which leads me to believe that neither Merriam nor Webster ever had small children.

We just got back from a sojourn to Martha’s Vineyard with our five kids, and both my wife and I are totally spent.

First there’s the prep work… then the packing… then the driving… then the unpacking… and then the whining, tattling, complaining, hitting, shoving, pulling hair, forgetting to go potty, refusing to sleep in a strange place, and general chaotic delirium that naturally develops among even the smallest assemblies of toddlers when they’re over-excited/over-tired and out of the normal throes of life.

Trust me: it’s rough.

Not that I’m anti-vacation. Quite the contrary, in fact. If anything, I’m the one who pushes the annual family vacation – insisting they’re essential to building great childhood memories. When my brother and I were kids, our parents took us on vacation every year; usually for a week, sometimes even two. In the early years we went camping at some Yogi Bear-themes campground in Massachusetts. Then when we got older we did the whole rent-a-cottage-by-the-beach thing in Rhode Island. And those last few years, before I went off to college, we took even longer trips to places like Provincetown, Virginia Beach and Ocean City.

All of our vacations are cataloged somewhere in my father’s meticulous array of photo albums, and just about every picture carries with it some innocent memory of the four of us: my parents, my brother and I. Every now and then I’ll look back on those photos and remember just how fun and adventurous, how carefree and relaxing those vacations were… and I’ll think to myself: what the hell happened? When did these vacation things turn into such a giant ball of stress?

My parents laugh whenever I share these laments with them, usually accusing me of having a selective memory.  Apparently my father nearly had a panic attack every year trying to put the goddamn tent together; and when it would rain (as it inevitably did every time we’d go camping), the tent would leak, thus forcing us into a nearby motel. Then there was the year the muffler on our station wagon fell off and we drove home going 20 miles-per-hour… and the year I spiked a fever and never left the hotel… and the year my brother and I cried on the ground, making a public spectacle out of a blown call in a wiffle ball game… and the year my brother poured orange soda into his ear… and the year I hurled sand at some lady sitting on the beach… and, of course, nothing could top the year my parents’ lounge chairs flew right off the top of the car smack-dab in the middle of I-84.

So while our family vacations may have been fun/adventurous/care-free/etc. for us when we were kids, they clearly weren’t a picnic for my parents. Yet thankfully, year after year, they managed to toil through - leaving my brother and I with a treasure-trove of lifelong memories.

Yes - my kids were a little crazy, and yes - my wife and I were a tad frazzled, and yes – we vowed several times to never ever ever go on vacation again; but then our daughter popped her little head up from behind her brother’s car-seat and declared: “Mommy, I have fun in Marfa’s Vinnerd”…

And in that instant, it was all worth it.

I'm Not Superman?

There comes a time in every boy’s life when he discovers that his beloved father is, in fact, NOT the flawlessly omnipotent end-all-be-all of creation. Unfortunately, there also comes a time at which every father realizes that his beloved son has made such a discovery… and man, oh man, does it hurt.

For the past twelve years (pre-marriage, pre-kids), I’ve been playing Fantasy Baseball with my college buddies; and during those twelve years, I have made the playoffs an astonishing nine times!

NINE!

None of my friends have even come close to that number (a fact I remind them of often). Yet in spite of those nine chances, I have never once managed to actually win the league championship (a fact they remind me of even more often).

Enter Alex: my 7-almost-8-year-old son who already knows enough about baseball to win any handful of sports bar trivia contests. These past two years he’s helped me manage my Fantasy team. He drafts players, makes roster moves and gives me a daily update as to how we’re doing. (We’re currently in 10^th Place out of 16 teams… an off year, to say the least.)

A few weeks ago I noticed that little Alex had proposed trading away Albert Pujols (i.e. the best consensus player in baseball) in exchange for Mark Texeira. I immediately canceled the trade and taught Alex an important life lesson: patience. “Pujols is off to a slow start,” I said. “But baseball is a lonnnng season.” So he shot me that “Father Knows Best” look I oh-so-treasure, and he went on his way.

Sunday morning – Father’s Day, no less - Alex brought me the sports page of our local paper and said: “Dad, we have a problem.” I went on to read how a ball nailed Albert Pujols on the wrist, causing damage severe enough to knock him out of commission for at least eight weeks - maybe more.

My heart sank.

“Maybe we should have traded him,” I mumbled half to myself, half to Alex… and that’s when he said it:

“Geez Dad - now I know why you’ve never won a championship.”

My wife laughed. So did Alex. And so did I… because, after all, it was funny. Not mean, not insulting – but funny. So much so that I even shared it with my Fantasy Baseball guys, who will assuredly relish in using my own son’s words against me for years to come.

Now I wholly admit that in the great scheme of life, these silly little fantasy sports games are not that big of a deal (as evidenced by my ability to still walk, talk and breathe despite my zero championships). But my take-away from this particular exchange managed to run quite deep. It was the first of many many many occasions my son will see me as imperfectly mortal; a truth that I know from my own experience as a son, will only get tougher and tougher to face as time goes on.

In the meantime, though, I still have four other kids who totally think I’m from Krypton… 

Beginnings

About ten years ago, before I had any children, I developed what could only be described as a most unusual obsession: locating, obtaining and - ultimately - watching the first-ever episode of Sesame Street.

Of course it goes without saying that like every other American born in the 1970’s, I loved Sesame Street. Bert and Ernie, Kermit the Frog, that mean bastard Oscar… they were all just as much a part of my family as my parents, my brother and my fish (named Sugar, who suffered quite the untimely demise at the hands of my brother’s Fisher Price baby vacuum cleaner - but that’s a story for another time). Yet in all my years and through all the hours of quality Sesame time I had amassed, I had never once seen how it all began.

Maybe Big Bird hatched from an egg or Super Grover used his magic powers to make the street appear; or maybe even Mr. Hooper fell asleep next to Suzanne Pleshette and dreamt the whole thing up. Either way, I wanted to see it - I had to know; so I scoured the Internet, looking for clues until finally I found someone on eBay selling a VHS cassette version of exactly what I was looking for.

The tape cost about $60, and when it finally arrived in the mail, I was like a kid on Christmas - tearing open the package, rushing into the living room, impatiently waiting for the cassette to play. And when it finally did I was crushed.

No bird’s egg.

No Super Grover.

No Suzanne Pleshette.

Oscar was orange and Big Bird was sort of goofy looking; but otherwise, the on-screen commencement of the single most identifiable children’s show on the planet was nothing special. I stopped the tape about five minutes in and realized: I wasn’t obsessed with Sesame Street… I was obsessed with beginnings.

Nice beginnings.

Clean beginnings.

Affixed, finite, “yes – this is where we’re starting from” beginnings - like Peter Parker getting bit by a radioactive spider, or Diane Chambers wandering into Cheers, or God creating the Heaven and Earth… or the unambiguous, unwavering declaration that Marley is, in fact, dead to begin with.

Which brings us to the present… in which I’ve begun writing a blog and you’ve (presumably) begun reading it; and to the extent that I will continue to write (which I will) and that you will continue to read (which I hope you will), I’d like to begin appropriately, with a clean beginning:

• I’m 33-years-old.
• I’m married (sorry ladies).
• My wife and I have five young children.
• We live in suburban Connecticut.
• I’m a writer.

And above all else: I’m a dork… because if searching for an obscure episode of a PBS children’s show doesn’t define dork-dom, writing a blog most certainly does.

Happy Beginning!