Father's Day Finances: Mamawala

One last Father's Day gift - my wife, after talking to her mom handed me some cash. I looked at her quizzically - not that I mind being handed cash.

"It's from my mama," she explained. Although of course I am grateful that my mother-in-law likes me, this is, however, a worrisome sign that her usual good sense is failing.

But here is the thing, it was my wife's money - and we basically pool our money so what was I given exactly?

My wife shook her head, "Just take it - my mama said to do this so we have to do it."

Suddenly I understood the hawala system, one of the informal financial network used by diaspora communities to transfer money. The system works entirely on trust, one broker will release money strictly on the say-so of a broker on the other side of the world.

Mamacita is running her own network, and I'd best go along with the mamawala.




So what will I do with my good fortune? I'll take my inspiration from former major league pitcher Tug McGraw, who, when he was asked how he would spend his $75,000 salary (this was 1975) said, "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste."

I'll do like good old Tug McGraw, an old, sluggish, married Tug McGraw who needs to be up early the next morning.

Father's Day Card Update

Below (no link, just scroll down) my I wrote about my daughter's disturbing Father's Day card. Bouncing her on my knee this morning, I asked her about it again.

"Sweetheart, why did you make the person on the Father's Day card all bloody?"

"Daddy, I did it to make you freak out."

Well, it kind of worked.

Father's Day Cards: Portrait by an Artist as a Red Man

So my kids made me Father's Day cards - pretty standard stuff (and as such, painfully sweet.) My son's card had a picture of my pitching to him, his drawing of my face had black magic marker blotches because I hadn't shaved. Great!

My daughter (she's four) made a card featured below.*



After my son explained his card, I asked my daughter about her work. She explained, "That's a bloody man."

"Oh."

"The sun, the clouds, all bloody," she continued.

"Daddy, maybe it is from that time you had a lot of nosebleeds and got blood on everything," my son suggested helpfully.

I learned my lesson - never ask an artist to explain his or her own work, just appreciate the spirit that went into it.

One source may have been some of our recent reading. Their Trotskyite grandfather gave them Big Bird's RED BOOK, with its focus on the need for discipline and monster/child unity in order to prevail in the class struggle (Mr. Hooper is obviously a symbol of bourgeois control over the means of production - particularly of milkshakes). Still, politics aside, Big Bird puts it best when he says, "Red is a very beautiful color. I think you're going to like it."

*Astute readers may have noticed my daughter's card was signed with an "E" that she made herself. It is the first letter of her name. Recently, when I was catching up on some work, she expressed the opinion that my boss was making me work too hard. She announced that she was "Going to write him a letter!"

She made a neat card, with lots of drawings and when I opened it up, inside was a big letter "E."

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Past Father's Day Entries

I've built up a bit of an archive of Father's Day pieces.

My favorite is my first - Fatherhood and Today's Dad about how previous generations of fathers had it easier, with a reference to the late great King of Tonga Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (I expect they will have another - who can refuse a fifth?)



You can read the full Father's Day Archive here.

Gaming Lessons Part II: Seizing the (Father's) Day

Risk is much more to my son’s liking. Counting and remembering may not appeal to many little boys, but world domination is right up my son’s alley. He likes it so much, that this morning I woke up to hear him trying to teach his little sister how to play. She is only four, and while she was eager Risk was a bit over her head both in mechanics and in purpose. She is less interested in domination. When we play chess the Queens meet in the middle of the board, have tea and invite the bishops, knights and castles to join them. For some reason the king is always busy checking his email.

My son became frustrated and starting yelling at his sister for not paying attention, so (after a few moments of enjoying this delicious irony) I accepted that, Father's Day or not, I could sleep no longer and went down to play her part – naturally she had chosen pink.

The die was cast, and it kept coming up in his favor. While I sought chokepoints (Iceland is good, so is North Africa) and to develop adequate force ratios, my son favored a more direct stratagem: “Attack!” His tiny expeditionary forces trounced my citadel in Quebec, my firewall in Ukraine, and my strongholds in Peru and Kamchatka. Soon he needed more pieces then the game provided, so he started using red pieces to augment his forces. A canny move, since my aged eyes had some trouble distinguishing between his red and my pink pieces.

Not that he needed much help. As four straight rolls went against me in the battle for Egypt I envisioned a newspaper headline spinning out, reading: Nile Defenses Shattered as Demoralized Pink Armies Collapse. But then, my small Mongolian contingents put up a surprisingly fierce resistance. I began composing lines for a future history textbook:

Unfamiliar with the terrain and overconfident from their stunning successes, Blue Armies found themselves bogged down by a tough insurgency in the depths of Mongolia’s deserts.

Finally, at my last bastion – inevitably Madagascar – the garrison fought well. I imagined its commander exhorting his men in their doomed defense like Hector at Troy and delivering bombastic speeches like Henry V calling on history: “To always remember the courage of the armies of Pink!”

But a few more rolls and it was over.

As a graduate student of international affairs, who has studied Sun-Tzu and Thucydides, it is humbling to be bested. It was also a lesson in the role of fortune in human affairs (and perhaps a warning that my coursework in conflict management is not serving me well.) The laws of probability decree that we all have a certain number of favorable rolls of the die in our lives. But perhaps these favorable rolls are bunched up at the beginning, for, as Machiavelli instructs, “…fortune always favors young men because they are not so much inclined to caution as to aggressiveness and daring…”

So my duty as dad is to teach him the things he’ll need when fortune’s favor shifts – as it inevitably will - diligence, virtue, and perhaps just a bit of cunning. That is my Father's Day Lesson, to teach my son guile, but as to girls he’ll be on his own.

(And to some extent so am I - I can't teach my daughter anything about guile, or much of anything else. She is four and knows everything.)

Father's Day III: The Take

I guess my T-shirt says it all.

It was all the joy of a Denny's heap o'egg, meat, and French Toast, but without leaving the house. Actually it was better, since I require fake veggie sausage, the pleasure of which Denny's denies (yet another reason to prefer dining at home to dining at Denny's - as though further reasons were necessary.)

Actually, come to think of it, there's more. You can't see what's in my coffee cup. My wife thoughtfully bought me this:

Yet again, recommended by The Wall Street Journal, this little device froths milk - an easy way to turn a coffee into a latte!

I've long feared a Starbucks might open in my living room (not a bad business move for them since I work at home much of the time and often need little pick-me-ups - the fear is my eyes would explode from over-caffeination). Now, I've pre-empted them and this morning I enjoyed the best of Denny's and the best of Starbucks rolled into one - a DennyBucks morning.

The best feature of the aerolatte is that it is small and portable. I'll be adding it to my utility belt - along with my celphone, my bottle opener corkscrew, my laser pointer, and my awl. It may get its own holster.

Later in the day, I took it to a Starbucks, ordered a regular coffee and frothed it myself. The barristas hated that. Then I asked for a cup of water and frothed it - to clean the aerolatte - just to pour salt in the wound.

OW! My Back! Get off!

Father's Day II: License to Wrestle

The Wall Street Journal's Work & Family column by Sue Shellenbarger reports on studies showing:

...fathers have an additional impact, over and above that of mothers. Also, men have a tendency to behave differently with children. After defining good parenting for decades as what warm, nurturing mothers typically do, researchers now are also beginning to see how behaviors characteristic of fathers can shape children too.

Fathers tend to engage kids in more rough-and-tumble play, for example. Researchers say this can have a powerful positive impact on children, fostering curiosity and teaching them to regulate emotion and enjoy surprises.*

Cut through the jargon: wrestling and goofing off are good for kids! YES!!!

These are the areas were dads excel. I always viewed it as a practical matter. It seems counter-intuitive, but wrestling is less exhausting than most other father-child activities. "Candyland" is not physically demanding, but after Game 2 of the "Candyland" World Series I am ready to slash and burn the candy cane forest. But wrestling is easy. You usually don't get off the floor, you just toss them around a bit. When you get tired, you just lie down and they jump on you a little. Mine are still small enough that they don't do much harm (when the get close to 100 lbs. the physics change.) But don't let on. You can use the "hurt back excuse" to get out of mowing the lawn for a couple days.

Mom always frowns on this - it makes the kids wild and encourages aggressive behavior. Now, a renown source tells us this is exactly what we should be doing. We are fulfilling our biological and social mandates as teachers. We are preparing our children to interact with an exciting world. So, in that vein, I'll spend the afternoon teaching my children. My daughter has a drop kick with real potential (to annoy my wife.)

Another pointless goof-off game at our house is "bump heads". Pretty much like it sounds, mom hates it (especially when she hears the disturbing thump of my children and I bashing our skulls together.) But it is just goofing off, and it will serve them well come rutting season.

Random tickle attacks, pouncing, running around the house yelling, "La la la!" and just severe cases of what my son calls, "Goofing out" are now recognized as healthy, development activities. What could be a better Father's Day Gift than an endorsement of what dads do best?

* This is echoed by this report on CNN.

Father's Day I: Revelations from the Muck

Many dads remember the first time they gazed upon or held their child as a transformative moment.

For me, changing my son's diaper was that moment. I suddenly understood my own father. My father fancies himself a leftist radical (although his day job is as a real estate attorney – small practice specializing in condominiums – and he gets twitchy about increased regulation of the homebuilding industry).* I have moved away – nay fled – his worldview. He took my heated arguments with a placid magnanimity. Now that I’ve changed my son’s diapers I see why. No matter what I do or say, he will always remember picking poop out of my tuchus. Whatever I say or accomplish, my father sees it as just more of the same.

When my children decide to reject everything I believe (perhaps by becoming evangelical Christians who belong to PETA) I will remember changing their diapers and think of their fads of the moment as more of the same.

*Also, he never had radical hair. That may have been prudence, but I believe it was really genetics.

Special Father's Day Gift

My little girl is, of course, a Princess. So I was telling her about the
exotic pets a princess should have, like a leopard or a polar bear.

This is a set-up. I tell her how she will need to ask mommy if we can have
this pet. She then runs to mommy yelling, "Mommy, have tiger?! Tiger!"

My wife cries back at me despairingly, "Why? Why do you do this to me?"

My son at five has already outgrown this game. Whenever I ask him about an
interesting pet, he just responds, "Daddy, they make too much poopy."

Yesterday, when I told my little girl we could get a zebra if mommy said
yes, she looked at me and said, "No, Daddy!"

I was so proud, only two years old and she is learning that sometimes people
are full of it. You can't teach them healthy skepticism too young. That is
the best gift of all, seeing your children growing and learning. It was a
magical Father's Day.

On the other hand, maybe my wife got to her, it wouldn't be the first
time...

Father's Day Treat

Today I treated myself to a new Starbucks Banana Mocha Frappuccino.

It is a profoundly disgusting beverage. A sickly-sweet blend of incongruent
flavors.

I had a Venti.

Father's Day and Today's Dad

We need Father’s Day more than our Dads did. They had it easy, reigning as constitutional monarchs, like the English royals (or in the case of my dad Tonga’s King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV). Dads performed ceremonial functions like carving the Thanksgiving turkey and frowning at the gutters every April. Every day was Father’s Day.

Today’s Dads are equal partners in childrearing. But we’ve been blindsided by the complexity of modern parenthood. It isn’t the big things, like the coarsening of American culture or our need for even toddlers to be over-achievers that make it harder. It is all the little improvements we have undertaken on behalf of health, safety, and education that complicate childrearing and sap the will of parents.

Things like:

Peanut butter allergy awareness
The primary sustenance of my childhood, is now a WMD (did we find some in Iraq, was it creamy or chunky?) Even the dust can be deadly and it is banned both from schools and under the Geneva Convention. Losing this fallback meal costs at least an extra hour a week trying to figure out what to give the children for lunch (add that up over ten years, it’s a fiscal quarter.)

Also, a little mouth full of peanut butter is a little mouth that is not singing the Teletubbies song or explaining the internecine power struggles at the sandbox. Hummus would work, but it gives kids garlic breath and contains deadly allergens like sesame oil. (Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?)

Quality Children’s Television
As a kid I watched “Bugs Bunny” and “Tom & Jerry.” These shows taught me an important lesson - the world is a violent random place and if I was out of line I could be flattened by an anvil. Then I would have to wait for Dad to get home and re-inflate me with a bicycle pump, and that wouldn’t happen till after dinner and I’d miss dessert.

Now children watch high-quality education shows like Franklin that teach valuable conflict resolution and problem solving skills. Children apply these skills frequently, when confronted with cauliflower, or clean-up time, or a bath. In his nightly bedtime filibusters my son has protested the unfair bedtime standard that is applied unequally in our house and pointed out that this may reflect my inadequacies as a parent. Maybe not in exactly those words, but that’s the gist of it.

Sometimes I imagine cartoon anvils smiting my little Senator.

Today’s children are never allowed out of sight
My mom would take us to the park and, pointing vaguely in the distance, command, “Go! Play!” She could also leave us in the car while running into stores. We can only dream of such ease.

This close proximity standard prevents creative discipline. As a pre-schooler I wouldn’t get dressed for school. After a week of threats, rewards, and brute force, mom let me miss the carpool and then got in the car and drove off. I was left alone, in my Gilligan underoos. When mom returned (she says she just drove around the block – I think she went to a matinee) I was dressed. I dressed promptly every morning afterwards (till college.) Of course if I tried that with my kids I would have to answer to child welfare authorities. (Ironically, my mom was a child welfare authority.)

Car Seats
Car seats save lives. They have also redefined parenthood. Just as dogs meet and sniff each other, parents meet and discuss car seats: which model, which safety features, and was there a deal (the other parents always got a deal, they will tell you about it in excruciating detail – that is how they establish that they are the Alpha couple.)

Putting children in carseats inappropriate to their weight and height can result in Federal prison time. But there are unwritten conventions that car seats also match the child’s somatotype (can a three year old be a mesomorph?), astrological sign, and aura. Failing to meet these transport needs will result in shunning.

Carseats turn carpooling into a complex logistics chain of transferring not only the children, but also the carseats. Moving children becomes one of those horrible math problems with 11 villagers and two canoes and getting them all across the river in the fewest trips.

These are only a few of the thousand cuts. I didn’t mention the awesome power of the Internet to instantaneously provide hundreds of terrifying anecdotes about horrible diseases your children could have or allow your wife to engage in vitriolic debates over baby formula with complete strangers.

We need Father’s Day. Let it be the one day a year where we celebrate the ancien regime, and live as our fathers did, ruling magnanimously from the barcalounger with a stiff drink in hand.