“Happiness is a superficial and fragile thing; joy is happiness that has been deepened and refined by tragedy. Joy is happiness with dimension. Joy is what you have that tells you that the burden is light, the yoke is freedom.”
There’s certainly truth in that. Though I fear that Rod is staying within the conceptual universe that leads so many parents—or rather, so many of the early twenty-first-century, upper-middle-class, professional, secular, American parents highlighted in the New York magazine article—to view parenting as such an unhappy burden.
As ever, the New York whiners. I imagine the absence of accolades that generally accompanyg good parenting bother them. I never complain about parenting (my sole complaint being that I do nearly 70% of the parental load, to Exene's roughly 30% -- and this is borne out statistically, isn't just some arbitrary number I throw out). But in terms of the actual parental load, I don't have a problem with it. I work on my ME stuff when I can, but not to the exclusion of the boys (again, this differentiates me from Exene, who just runs off [literally] or in other ways just checks out).
I don't complain about parenting because it's the nature of parenting to be hard. It's like working in a coal mine and complaining about all the dust and dirt! It's just part of the deal. I guess that's what makes me a great dad. When I had the boys with my family in North Carolina on vacation, at one point, B2 was acting up, being a real pistol, and I just kept my cool, held to my parental line (he wasn't wanting to eat the food I'd set out for him), and eventually, without losing my head, B2 came around and ate his meal. No drama (and no mama -- haha). My mom, stepdad, and stepsister were all amazed that I hadn't lost my temper with B2, hadn't raised my voice. I just kept my cool.
Kids are kids. They're the ultimate egoists, and I think it's actually kinda charming about them. They're these young little universes, full of promise and potential, and it doesn't even occur to them that there are other universes out there, and that the reality beyond them doesn't care about them, or is even dangerous to them. Sure, it's a bliss borne of ignorance and naivete, but at the same time, it's charming. They want what they want when they want it. Over time, they learn (or should learn) the necessity of diplomacy and tact (and, again, amusingly, they learn Machiavellian intrigues so damned early). I think kids are great. Fatherhood is a true joy for me, because I think kids are wonderful. For them, everything is new and wonderful. That's precious, so I do my part to ensure that they get the best sampling of life that I can give them.
And it's still amusing to me what they pick up, what strikes their fancy -- B1 loves disasters of every stripe, black holes, volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, asteroids, comets, meteors, sharks, tanks, ships; B2 loves guns, cars, garbage trucks, guitars, music, performing, mischief, dogs, trains, jets, books.
This morning, the boys pretended that we were blasting off for Mars as I walked them to their sitter. I've played that game with them before, but this morning, the boys were mostly narrating it themselves, with B1 describing nebulae as we went on our way, interference with our radios and guidance systerms, while B2 was talking about being in a space capsule. I offered bits of input here and there, but it was a delight to see them playing together like that, crafting a fun narrative around an otherwise routine trip.
