The Vampire State

Halloween is here again, and that means 3 very important things: costumes, candy, and scary stories.

The candy is coming, we just need to beg strangers for it.  You know, I try this year round, but for some reason it only ever works at the end of October.  Go figure.

As for the costume, my daughter has chosen ninjas as this year's theme.

I was hoping for "astronauts."

And finally, the scary stories: I love scary stories in all forms.  Be it book, or movie, or TV, I love being scared.  And while it seems like every horror movie put out these days claims to be "based on a true story," the very best scary stories are 100% true.

Like the story of Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire.

Now, I'll grant you that this happened back in 1892, which seems like a long time ago, but this is also the most recent documented incident of vampirism in the United States.  And like most of my favorite ghost stories, it takes place in Rhode Island.  And the real kicker is, while Mercy Brown may be the last vampire reported in Rhode Island, she's not even close to being the first!

Our story begins in the town of Exeter, Rhode Island.  There in 1892, the Brown family had suffered a string of terrible tragedies.  Mary Brown had died the year before of a horribe illness, where she seemed to slowly be drained of all life, becoming thinner and thinner, her eyes becoming sunken, her skin pale, like she was becoming a living corpse before their very eyes.  Soon after she died, her oldest daughter (also Mary, because, you know, it was a popular name back then) contracted the same illness, and shared the same fate.

By the following year, Mary's  (first Mary, not second Mary) daughter Mercy and son Edwin were also ill.  After Mercy died, the people of Exeter were convinced that a vampire was to blame.  They exhumed the three Brown corpses, and while two of them showed appropriate amounts of decomposition, the third, Mercy, showed very little decomposition, with seemingly fresh blood still in her veins.  Seeing this, the people of Exeter, immediately cut out her heart and burned it, making her ashes into medicine for poor Edwin.  (It didn't work.  Remember that the next time your doctor prescribes "ashes of your dead sister.")

Mercy, and the rest of the Brown family, had what was known at the time as consumption, what we know today as tuberculosis.  It was a poorly understood illness at the time, with many conflicting and incorrect ideas about what caused it.  (It's much better understood now, but really, do you know what causes tuberculosis?  I didn't think so.  And if your doctor told you, "Yep, that's definitely vampire-related," you'd at least consider the possibility, so don't look down on the poor folks of Exeter.)

But why did these not-nearly-as-ignorant-as-people-think Rhode Islanders jump right to vampirism as a likely cause?  Probably because of all the times it had happened before!

The first documented case of Rhode Island vampires seems to date back to the 1790s.  And that's not necessarily the first case, just the first one where we have found clear documentation proving that said person existed, died, was exhumed and treated as a vampire.

This first case of vampirism centered on a girl named Abigail Staples of Cumblerland.  According to official town records, after her death at the age of 22 or 23, Abigail's father asked permission to exhume her body, "In order to try an Experiment on Livina Chace Wife of Stephen Chace Which Said Livina Was Sister to the Said Abigail Deceased."

(They really liked capitalizing back then.)

So, that doesn't say anything specific about vampires or consumption, simply referring to an "Experiment'" but destroying a vampire to keep her from destroying her own sister is rely the least creepy explanation I can come up with.

And soon after that, around 1799, comes another story out of Exeter.  After the deaths of between 4 or 6 (details vary) of his children, Stukeley Tillinghast (Best. Name. Ever.) decides to exhume their bodies, and ends up believeing that his daughter, Sarah, is the vampire feeding on the rest of the family.  Hilarity ensued.

Between 1799 and the finally story of Mercy Brown in 1892, as many as ten documented cases of vampirism can be found just in Rhode Island, plus a few more just over the border in eastern Connecticut.

Just ridiculous superstition, right?  Just silly folklore nonsense from those crazy, ignorant Rhode Islanders.

Well, perhaps, but this isn't fifteen or sixteenth century Europe.  This is happening in the United States, starting in the same time period as the writing of the Constitution, and on up past the end of the Civil War, almost to the beginning of the twentieth century.

But of course these folks were isolated in their small towns and not as educated as the average American.

Except that's not entirely accurate, either.  These towns kept careful records, they had newspapers, so people obviously knew how to read. If they were isolated, it was really only because they wanted to be, not because of any great distance or physical barriers.  This was, after all, just Rhode Island.  You could walk the entire length of the state without too much trouble.

So what was really going on there?  Why did so any people believe in vampires, and why did it stop after Mercy Brown?

This mystery reminds me of something I've always felt was odd about the Salem Witch Trials. Again, they happened only in one isolated area, and quite apart is distance and time from the European witch trials. And while it is obvious that most of the victims were blameless, it seems possible, just possible, that the panic could have been sparked by some degree of truth: that maybe, just maybe, someone in the village was practicing witchcraft.

Similarly, why would the people of these small Rhode Island towns be so convinced of vampires, even after consumption had been identified as tuberculosis and treatments had been developed, unless somewhere, at some point, one of these "vampires" had really been an actual vampire?!

Imagine this: One by one, members of a family become stricken by what appears to be consumption.  One by one, each family member wastes away, until their skin is drawn tight over protuding bones, their eyes so sunken into their sockets that at night, by the light of a few candles, they seem not to have any eyes at all.  And then, they die.

Perhaps, then, someone sees some creature in the local cemetery, perhaps just too big to be a dog.  Perhaps they notice a grave recently disturbed.  At any rate, they decide to investigate, to dig up the grave, open the casket.

Inside, they find something horrible; something not dead, but not truly alive either.  They realize this...thing...has been the cause of the lamented family's misery, and calling upon stories they always thought were only folklore from the Old World, they cut off its head, they cut out its heart, they destroy the thing with fire.

The town is at peace again, but none of them will ever forget the thing that they saw in the cemetery.

And if something similar happens in a town nearby, won't one of the townsfolk want to help, to warn those citizens of what it could be.  Again, they are not superstitious, do not believe in such creatures, but the man gives his word he saw it with his own eyes.

And so it continues.  Never spreading far from where it began, and the supernatural cure does not always work, for often these are just what they seem: vicims of consumption.

But once in a while, just enough to keep the stories alive...

And why did it suddenly stop in 1892?  Maybe it didn't, they just stopped talking about it!  It could be that the same thing is happening in parts of Rhode Island even now, they just don't publicize it anymore.  The Brown case got quite a bit of media attention, and maybe once the late 19th century version of Fox News descends on your village and starts openly mocking your beliefs, you may shut up about it for a while.

"Damn liberal media." - Dracula

That doesn't mean it stopped.

So the next time you find yourself driving through Rhode Island late at night, keep your eyes open. You might see a young woman walking along the side of the highway.  You might think she's looking for help, that perhaps her car broke down somewhere.

I'd advise you to keep driving.  Don't even slow down.

Because the Ocean State might just be... the Vampire State!

Happy Halloween!

I should add, I am deeply indebted to Michael E. Bell and his fantastic book on New England Vampires, "Food For the Dead."

Remember the Poodle

Last week, we had to say goodbye to a member of our family.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a dog lover. And when we bought our house nine years ago, we immediately got a dog.  My wife found him at a local shelter, a scrawny, underfed, unkempt little mutt, found wandering around, abandoned.  We named him Joe.

Believe or not, he was not always this dashingly handsome.

Soon after, my wife picked me up from work and told me, "We're going to Billerica."

"Ok," I said. "Where's Billerica?"

She didn't know.  We needed to buy a road atlas to find it.  (This was before the world of ubiquitious iphones and GPSs.)  It turned out to be almost 2 hours away.  There, in some woman's house that doubled as an "animal shelter," we got our second dog, a tiny ball of white poodle that we named Mae.

Mae, pictured moments before she tried to convince my toes to become unattached from my foot.

Mae did not immediately ingratiate herself to us.  She whined a lot, she growled, she bit, she picked fights with Joe.  But over time, she grew on us.  She would sleep at the foot of our bed, and bite my foot nearly every night.   As she got even older, we had to get used to cleaning up her accidents all over the house.

She had breast cancer, which was removed by surgery twice.  She had to have one eye removed after it became swollen and infected.

This wasn't exactly "Marley and Me."

Nine years later, last week, we took Mae to the vet for another eye infection.  They found she'd lost over 2 pounds since she'd been there last.  Considering she'd never weighed more than 7 pounds, she didn't have much left to lose.

Within a day, she'd stopped eating entirely.  The next morning, she passed away in her sleep, in her favorite bed.  We buried her in the backyard.

I don't want to talked at length about this one poodle (although I guess I am), nor do I want to talk about death, about picking up her cold body, or the smell that infused her bed.  No, that's not something I'm feeling up to talking about.

If you remember nothing else about this blog entry, please remember this: there are animal shelters near you, filled with dogs and cats that need a home.  That need love.  That need you.

Don't go to pet stores that sell puppies out of cages.  Please.  Yes, that puppy may be given a good home and a wonderful life, but you're encouraging the store to bring in more puppies, and very few of them will be so lucky.

During one of her checkups soon after we brought her home,  one vet commented that it looked like Mae had had puppies before.  They guessed that she'd been a breeder, used to churn out as many puppies as she could to sell to those same pet stores, and had probably been abandoned, literally thrown out, when she got too old to be useful.

Mae had endured 9 years of being beaten, forced to breed, forced to fight other dogs for food, for water, for a place to sleep.  And because of that, despite being given a safe home surrounded by a family that loved her, she still woke up in the middle of the night snarling and biting anything that moved nearby.  (Spoiler: it was my foot.)

The 9 years she spent with us cannot erase those first nine years, but she was able to die in her favorite bed, peacefully, and that counts for something, since it was probably the first thing she was able to do peacefully in her entire life.

So the next time you see a puppy in the pet store, please remember my little white poodle.  Remember her nine years of torment, and the nine years of peace that couldn't erase them.

Then, drive down to a shelter, and give your love to a dog that needs it.

Or else her ghost will bite your foot off.  I'll make sure of it.

How a 37-Year-Old Man Joined the Girl Scouts

I’ve done it.

I’ve raised a school-aged daughter.

Please, hold your applause.

Still, it was a surreal feeling, as my wife and I watched her get on the bus for the first time, sporting her new Chucks (with neon yellow shoelaces of course), smiling broadly at her first day of kindergarten. No tears from her eyes, no shouts of “I don’t want to go to school!”  And walking back to our house, I reflected that this was something we had done: we’d brought a child into this world, raised her, helped mold her little personality (just kidding, there’s nothing little about her personality), and brought her to this point.

Clearly, she gets her style from her old man.

School!

And the first day went perfectly.  She was happy, she was excited to go back, and she didn’t get in any trouble for misbehaving or not listening.

She saved that for the second day.

Oh, well.  Even I had to stand in the hall a few times…

And at open house last week, she saw the Girl Scout recruiting table and decided that she wanted to be a Daisy Scout.

Of course she did.  How could this rainbow unicorn ninja resist becoming a Daisy Scout?

But for one small problem:  There was no one to be a Daisy Scout Troop Leader.

Solution:  Meet the new Daisy Scout Leader!

What have I gotten myself into?

All kidding aside, I’m feeling pretty excited about this whole prospect, although I know it won’t be the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  Still, let's face it: I wasn't cut out to be a soccer coach.  Scouting, on the other hand, seems a natural fit.  It seems to be about instilling in young people a sense of honesty, integrity, responsibility, for our country, for our civic duty, for our planet.  That's a message I can certainly get behind.

Plus, my wife pointed out to me that I would be much better at teaching outdoors-y type stuff than she would.  I pointed out that Daisy Scouts don’t learn to start fires or build lean-tos, as far as I know.  (Although they will, now!)  Still, I feel lucky to know that my wife will be there to help me when I need her to, and my daughter will (hopefully) love having me as the troop leader.

Even still, shouldn't a Girl Scout leader maybe have been a Girl Scout, or at least, you know, be a girl?

Now, I’ve said a thousand times before that the parenting world is mom-oriented, and sometimes very anti-dad.  And this may seem like one more loud protest that yes, we dads can do this stuff, too.

It isn’t.

If there is one area where it makes a certain amount of sense to prefer females over males as leaders and mentors of children, it would totally be the Girl Scouts.  I’m not here to change anything.  I’m not standing on my soapbox, I’m not holding up any protest signs, I just want my daughter to be able to be a Daisy Scout.  And if that means they need a Daisy Scout leader, then I will happily volunteer to be a leader.

If it means I’m the only guy in the room, that’s okay.  If it means that all the generic literature will refer to me as a “she,” I’m cool with that.  I won’t say a word against it.  I don’t know yet if I will be required to wear the uniform, but if so, I can do it.  If it means there will be special extra rules that I need to follow, as a guy, for the safety of the scouts, I will happily abide by them.

That all said, I applaud the Girl Scout for giving me, and dads like me, this opportunity.  It still boggles my mind that the Girl Scout Membership form has a box for "Male," 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to start memorizing the Girl Scout promise. 

I assume they'll teach me the secret handshake at some point.

It looks like I am in for another interesting adventure in parenting…

Stay tuned!

The Tricks That Time Plays

Last weekend, we spent a couple days in Vermont, running around in the woods, deciphering secret messages, and following fictious maps from a very real Revolutionary War general named John Stark.

Because this is the kind of thing we do for fun.  Deal with it.

It was a nice getaway which reminded me, at moments, of other weekends spent many, many years ago, not in Vermont, but in New Hampshire.

I in no way mean to imply that Vermont and New Hampshire are indistinguishable from each other.  I’m saying that outright.  They look pretty much exactly the same.  Residents of either state can feel free to send me hate mail.

Anyway, the mental comparison has very little to do with the states themselves, or much to do with the scenery (picturesque mountains, babbling streams, beautiful lake vistas), but instead had everything to do with something has been on my mind quite a bit lately, which is time.

When my sister and I were kids, our grandparents would sometimes take us up to a lake house in New Hampshire.  I have no idea where in New Hampshire, although last year, while visiting Storyland and North Conway, I realized that I had totally been there before, so it must have been near there. 

And I remembered the log I would play with in the lake, just the right size to try and ride like a horse, only to have to rollover and dunk me under.  And bringing my favorite bear, Jack, and the time he “fell” off the porch of the house (he might have been pushed…conspiracy theorists, take note!), and I bandaged his arm using my socks like a cast.

This is Jack, my bear since as far back as I can possibly remember...

And this is what happened to him after my daughter got hold of him.  Look at it!  LOOK AT IT!

And with that memory, came all the other memories attached to it, like a parade of the past, marching before my eyes, of going fishing with Grandaddy, of going to church with Grandma, of a hundred more, or a thousand, or more.

And now on this trip, seeing some of the odd signs, the roadside eateries, the beautiful scenic vistas, I couldn’t help but think of Grandaddy stopping there to show us something, or talk to the folks there, or play some practical joke on us.

Why was I thinking about New Hampshire all those years ago while watching the scenery of Vermont pass by?

Because time plays tricks on you.

Not memory, though memory does play tricks on you.  In fact, everything I’m remembering could in fact never have happened.  Or could have happened, but only in, say, New Jersey.  I’ll never know for sure.  Because that’s the kind of trick memory plays.  Time plays a different, and more subtle trick. The trick time plays is all about people you love, people you lose, people you miss.

When we lose someone that we love, no matter how long (or how short) we’ve known them, they take pieces of us with them when they go.  What they take, indeed, is often completely out of proportion to the length of time we’ve known them.  What they take can never be replaced, but that emptiness, while painful, helps to define us, to make us the people we are.  And when the person we lose is someone we’ve known and loved our entire lives?  Well, you see, that’s part of the trick that time plays.

And often one loss awakens the echoes of other losses, and time plays its tricks again.

 

Grandaddy passed away years ago, before my daughter was born, which seems a shame, ‘cause he would’ve gotten a kick out of her.  Grandma, or as my daughter knew her, Great Grandma Mary, passed away just over a month ago.

A rare photo of my pre-facial hair days...

So it wasn’t surprising that this was one of the things on my mind as we drove through Vermont.

I try to be a positive person.  (This statement alone sometimes comes as a surprise to people who have known me for years.)  And this blog is meant as a way to capture what I think and feel about being dad, and being a husband, and about the world, which I still believe to be an essentially good place.

But time, don’t you see? It plays tricks on you.

I’ve written before about the importance of talking about sad things and bad things, in a way that comforts, while resisting the urge to pretend that bad things don’t happen.

But not shielding your kid is very different from having to actively hit it head on, which is what I felt I was doing when I had to tell my daughter that Great Grandma Mary had passed away.

It went a little something like this:

Me:  I have something important to tell you.

Her: Ok.

Me: It’s about Great Grandma Mary.

Her: Ok.

Me: Well, sweetie, she died.

Her: <gasp>  (The momentary look on her face was the look of anguish, of sadness, or mortality.)

Me: She’s in Heaven, now.   She went to see God.

Her: Why?

Ok, now, I’m not a theologian.  I’m not even an armchair theologian, or a Monday Morning theologian.

I’m more of a Comparative Religion kind of guy.  I don’t know what awaits us in the hereafter, I have little to no opinion about our immortal soul, and while I try to live a life that is good and moral, I ultimately have no idea how, or when, or if I will be judged based on that life.  I have some ideas about God and the afterlife, but I also know I’m as likely if not more so to be completely wrong.

Thank God (no pun intended) for Catholic schooling.  Heaven was something she knew, something she understood.  Probably better than I do.

As to why, that’s the question, isn’t it?  And not one I was really prepared to answer.  So, I told her what I knew to be true.

Me: You never knew your Great Grandaddy.  He died before you were born.  But he loved Great Grandma Mary very much, and she loved him.  And she’s missed him ever since he died.  Now, she gets to see him again.

Her:  In Heaven?

Me: Yup.

Her:  Oh.  And they loved each other?

Me:  A lot.

Her:  Oh.  And now they’re together again?

I nodded.

Her:  Oh.  Ok.  Can we play Ninja Surfer Team, now?

(Sidebar:  “Ninja Surfer Team” is that greatest name for a TV series ever.  And I call dibs.)

I don't know where she gets this stuff from.

Grandaddy and Grandma had many influences on my life, on who I am and how I think about things.  About storytelling (they could BOTH tell a story, like only a Virginian grandfather or an Irish grandmother could), about cooking (I remember how proud I was when we bought our house and I was able to invite Grandaddy to dinner, as a way of saying thanks for all the dinners he’d cooked for us), about being Irish (if I know all the words to Danny Boy—and I do—it’s because of Grandma).

Goodbye, Great Grandma Mary.  Ella was very lucky to have known you for as long as she did.  As am I.  Tis you must go, and we must bide.

Tell Grandaddy we say hi.

File Under: Things That Piss Me Off

I recently came across this article.  I included the link only in case you think I'm just making shit up.  I'm not.  Someone actually wrote this.

The name of the article tells you all you really need to know: "When mom earns more, it's tough on dad."

And in deference to Dr. Drexler, you need to know the conclusion as well, which states, essentially, that dads who feel threatened by these changing gender roles need to get over themselves, and accept the idea that moms can be the primary breadwinners, dads can be primary caregivers, and families need to move beyond the social gender stereotypes that we've been locked in for most of the past century.

I happen to agree with that part.

What I do not agree with is that dads who earn less, and/or have a lower level of formal education, can't handle being in a role that they perceive as inferior.  I'm sure there are plenty of those dads out there (I've written about them before), but if this is a continuing or growing trend, then we, as a society, need to give back all the nice things that we've accomplished and slink back into the caves.  Neanderthals don't get iphones.

So, what's really going on here?

Well, either I'm wrong (on the whole, unlikely), the cited studies are deeply flawed, or the author of the article interpolated the wrong conclusions from the data sets she was looking at.

So, I decided to look at the studies, or at least what I could find of them online without having pay anyone any money.

The results were quite surprising.

(Except about me not being wrong.  That wasn't surprising.)

The article referenced three specific studies, one by the good folks at Pew, and 2 academic studies which I was only able to find abstracts of.

The Pew study showed that more and more women have higher levels of education and earn more than their spouses, and also showed that both men and women claim that they don't think it matters which spouse earns more.  Yet the study still shows the general social attitudes still prevail, with more people believing that the woman should be the primary caregiver, and that having a successful marriage and family life is more difficult when mom works.

But, if you read the rest of the study, it becomes clear that, despite having some ways to go, this represents a significant shift in attitude versus just a decade ago, and that these trends have been moving in the direction of more equal co-parenting between spouses since at least the 1960s.

So is this an historical trend that is going to continue to harm the fabric of our society by making dads feel inferior to the point that they have serious commitment issues within their relationships, or even physiological problems that require medication to maintain a normal lifestyle?

Well, a second study cited indicates that men who earn less than women are 10% more likely to be on some kind of medication for such physiological issues...

...In Denmark.

Does that matter?  Is there a difference between social and gender roles in U.S. and Denmark?  I don't know, but given that the U.S. is one of the most heavily medicated societies in the world, I think it is telling that the study about the difference in medication in men based on household income was done in Denmark.

Context is everything, and I don't believe that social context was fully taken into account or explained in this case.  Rather, it seems as though results were found which seemed to coincide with the authors thesis, and so were shoehorned in.

This is really easy to do.  I did it with that prescription drug report I linked to in the last paragraph.  I wrote the conclusion, then found an article on the web to back to up.  When you start from a preconceived conclusion, making the data fit your argument usually isn't too hard.

The third cited study noted that men who earn less are more likely to cheat on their spouses.

Well, you say, that can't be good.  Is this data somehow flawed?

No, the data on this is pretty solid, but what is portrayed in the article once again only tells half the story. The full study shows that men who cheat either earn less than their spouse, or more.  In other words, the men in the study cheat, and it may or may not have anything to do with their relative income.  The author of the study then goes on to claim that men who make less feel threatened, and therefore cheat on their spouse.  And men who earn more cheat on their spouse because, you know, their guys and they can get away with it.

So, guys who earn less are threatened, and guys who earn more are on a power trip.  To be clear, the data supports this hypothesis only as far as that hypothesis fits the data.  The data itself does not identify that actual reasons that the men in the study cheated.  So, the conclusions, which are full of terms like "threatened" and "feelings of power," seem to be more the author's rationalizations of the data based on his own preconceived notions about social gender roles than on any hard data.

Overall, it kind of sounds like they just studied jerks of different income levels.  A poor jerk and a rich jerk are, in turns out, still jerks. 

Now, to be sure, these are very smart people writing carefully researched articles that are meant to shine some light on gender roles in our society, and in particular family dynamics and the shifting roles of breadwinners and caregivers, and help us understand how those roles will impact the next generation, which is growing up right before our eyes.  But as soon as we fall back on our preconceived notions of male and female roles, we are undermining our own progress.

Because when we do that, the headline changes from "Families Are Succesfully Beginning to Shift Away From Decades Old Institutionalized Sexism," to "Dads Have It Tough."

And I call bullshit on that.

If you, as a dad, feel you have it tough in this new and emerging social gender paradigm, tough shit.

Because being a successful parent is tough.  Also, having a fulfilling career.  Also, having a successful marriage.  I'm sorry, you wanted "easy" social roles?  Sorry, buddy, you've been watching too much "Mad Men."

Parenting, career, and marriage, if plotted out, all fall along the same data curve:  the more challenged you are, the more effort you put into it, the more fulfillment you receive from it.  So yes, I agree, being a working parent is challenging.  Making a marriage and a family work when both spouses have careers that they also find challenging and fulfilling, that's Difficulty Level: Expert.

Which is kind of what makes it so worthwhile.

It may sound like I'm being defensive here, and perhaps I am.  But I have been waging a seemingly one-dad war against just the kind of social gender role stereotyping that these studies seem to be validating, and I'm convinced that we as a society not only can change, but need to change, and are changing even now.  But these studies, lending "scientific" credibility (while simultaneously violating the scientific method through common fallacies like "correlation versus causation," and basing conclusions on subjective ideas rather than objective evidence), create an environment where guys are given a free pass to act like assholes.  And you're better than that, guys.

Oddly, while reading up on the cited studies in the above article, I found a reference to another article in a journal called "Sex Roles"  (Best name for an academic journal ever, by the way), which said, "macho men whose partners earn more than they do have worse romantic relationships, in part because the difference in income is a strain for them. Conversely, men who are not so traditional in their masculinity do not place as much importance on the difference in income and, as a result, appear to have better-quality relationships with their female partner."

Now that, I believe.  But I don't think income has anything to do with it.  That sentence should read: "Macho men have worse romantic relationships; men who are not so traditional in their masculinity have better-quality relationships with their female partner."

Ultimately, I find all this very hopeful for the future.  And here's why:

Because if you're the kind of guy who is that insecure about his masculinity that you let your relative income affect your family relationships, than I would much rather you not have any hand in raising your children.  Because you're going to raise them wrong.  And you're only going to further perpetuate the same gender role stereotyping that is so ingrained in our thinking that even the researchers who are trying to understand the current state of gender roles in our society fall back on the same old and out-dated assumptions seemingly without questioning whether those assumptions are still valid, or if something new is actually starting to emerge.

I haven't done any scientific research, and I have only anecdotal evidence to go on, but I remain hopeful that the emerging trend is one where guys come to understand  that to be a good man, a good husband, and a good father means much more than providing for your family financially.  You also need to provide for it with love, with stability, with communication, and with a clear understanding of  the impact of your example on the next generation.

And hopefully, you can choose to be an example of what to do, rather than what no to do.

Why My Daughter Won't Dance With Me

A couple weeks ago, my daughter's school had its annual Father-Daughter Dance.

My little date got all dressed up, I cleaned up as best I could, posed for some pictures, and off we went!  It was going to be a great night of laughing, having fun, and dancing with my little girl-- real quality father-daughter bonding time!

Except for one little snag: my daughter refused to dance with me.

My daughter is the black-and-white polka dotted blur running away from me.

As soon as we got there, she was off like a like rocket, right to her friends, who were running and chasing each other, sticking cookies into the chocolate fountain, you know, normal kid stuff.

And every once in a while (seriously, three time over two hours), the DJ played a slower song so the daughters could stop jumping and running and chasing, and actually dance with their fathers.  And they did.  Except for mine.

I tried, I really did.  I asked politely, I pleaded, I made the same pouting face she always makes at me.  Nothing worked.

She refused to dance with me.  She almost agreed, danced for two steps, then let go of me, pointed to a chair and said, "No, Dad, not this song.  Go sit down."

She can be a little bossy.

Quick digression: Can we please, as a society, find some better father-daughter dance songs?  This night, I was expected to dance to "Butterfly Kisses"  (gag me) and "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars (really!?).

There have to be better choices out there.  Sure, I'm having trouble thinking of any, but if we can get the entire internet community together on this one, I'm pretty sure we can crack this nut.  (The internet's not really being used for anything else right now, except passing around the same three pictures of cats with different captions.)

I'm a little partial to "Have a Little Fun With Me" by Glen Phillips. (Google it.  You won't be disappointed.)  Or how about "Gracie" by Ben Folds?  "Daughters" by John Mayer? 

I just realized I'm probably dating myself a little here.  Maybe Bruno Mars is really the best we've got these days.  But refuse to believe it!  You got a better suggestion?  I'd love to hear it.

Or else feel of wrath of every father who has been forced to dance to "Butterfly Kisses"!

End of digression.  Now back to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

Was I disappointed that she wouldn't dance with me (even to really crappy songs)?  Did this hurt my feelings?  Did I feel a crushing sense of rejection that my own daughter refused to dance with me?

Well, no, not really. 

She was, after all, surrounded by kids her own age, all little girls, friends that she was excited to see.

Even still, just one song?  When all of her friends were dancing with their dads?

I believe that my daughter is going through a phase of increasing independence, which causes her to want to separate more from the family interactions and build more friendships/social relationships with her peers.

Sounds pretty good, right?

I have no idea if that's true.  I don't even know what half of what I just said means.

When it comes to parenting, I'm no expert.

Attachment parenting, parental detachment, helicopter parenting, tiger parenting, lotus flower parenting, penguin parenting, I have no idea what any of this means.  I only know one "style" of parenting and this is it: pay attention, and love unconditionally.

I figure everything else will more or less work itself out.

What I do know is this: watching my daughter at that dance, watching her stubbornly refuse to have anything to do with me, was one of the great joys of fatherhood.

Why?

Because of what she was doing INSTEAD of dancing with me.

My daughter walked into that gymnasium (okay, ran like cheetah who just spotted a gazelle-burger) and immediately engaged a group of her friends.  She started talking, and if they weren't listening, she'd keep talking until they did.

And when that group of kids ran off to do something else, and my daughter was left behind, she simply looked around until she found another group, and charged right into it.  She walked up to anyone and everyone, and immediately struck up a conversation.  Even when someone completely ignored her and walked away, there was no sadness, no sense of rejection.  She just looked for the next group, and away she went.

The thing is, I've never been able to do that.  Never in my entire life.  Put me in a room full of people, even people I know, and it will take me hours (and probably several beers) to work up to what my daughter was able to do within 5 minutes.

Whatever else I've managed to screw up (thanks to me, she's been calling guns "boomsticks" for the past 3 years), I've somehow managed to instill a sense of self-confidence in her that I've never quite been able to instill in myself.  I hope she is able to keep it, as it will serve her well in the future.

For now, I'm just happy to sit back, and watch her work the room better than Sinatra ever could.

Keep Calm, and Brew On

Being a parent is easy.  I didn’t even have to pass a test to become one.  That makes being a parent easier than driving a car, or getting into college.  Not even a background check.  Piece of cake, nothing to it, what’s the big deal?  I can sit on my butt, drink beer, and still be a perfect dad.

Parenting...

Yeah, right.

Parenting is hard. 

Fortunately, I'd read all the parenting books.  I was ready for the challenges of fatherhood.  I know how to engage with my daughter in a way she understands, I know how to redirect her when she gets upset, how to comfort her, how to properly discipline her without raising my voice or losing my temper.

I’m just kidding, I don’t know any of that stuff.

No, as much as I love my daughter with all of my heart, sometimes she drives me nuts. Sometimes, I raise my voice.  And sometimes, I have no idea if what I’m doing, despite every good intention, isn’t totally screwing her up for the rest of her life.

What I’m trying to say is, we do our best as parents, filled with the often-contradictory information about what is good for kids and what isn’t, unsure about what will actually make a difference in their lives, and filled with the awe-inspiring knowledge that we can either prepare them for their future success or failure with every minor decision we make. 

No pressure.

So we agonize over seemingly trivial choice: Which elementary school should she go to?  What educational philosophy should we embrace?  (Spoiler alert: It’s not Montessori.)  What sports should she play?  Ballet or gymnastics?  Flag football or cheerleading?  Will giving her chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast increase her risk for type 2 diabetes in 20 years?  What summer camp should she go to?  How on earth are two working parents supposed to figure out summer vacation?

And why can’t anyone answer these questions for us!?

I know when things start to get stressful at work, I start to think I need a day off.

But you never really get a day off from being a parent.  It’s something of a lifetime commitment.

I’m generally a laid-back, roll-with-the-punches kind of guy (which is why my daughter always asks me about those aforementioned chocolate chip pancakes), but I’ve been feeling the pressure a lot more lately. 

Part of this stems from my job, which has become a lot more stressful lately.  I know better than to let my work-life interfere with my home-life, but hey, life happens.  On top of that, my daughter has turned into a fiercely independent free-spirit, which I’m, on the one hand, proud of and grateful for.   

On the other hand, when you’re on a tight schedule, convincing said free spirit to stop dancing around the driveway and get the g*&%@#m car is not always the easiest part of the day.

So, I’ve been working on my mantra:

Keep calm, and brew on.

How is that going to help?

It has to do with beer and monks.

I’m brewing a Belgian ale in the style of the Belgian Trappist monasteries.  And making a Trappist beer means a lot more than following a recipe.  It means thinking like a monk.

This may seem a little strange, but I find something very compelling about the monastic lifestyle of simplicity and work, prayer and meditation.   I always figured that being a monk could be a decent fall-back plan, although I’d always assumed I’d become a Taoist monk, since they had Kung-Fu, but Christian monks have beer, and that’s almost the same thing.  (That sentence alone shows how little I truly know about Taoism, kung-fu, and monasteries.)

And how does one make a Trappist beer?

Well, there are no end of recipes out there, but to really make something special, I believe you first have to embrace the core principles of monastic brewing:  study, self-sufficiency, and patience.

As it happens, these are three things that I find are in all too short supply in our everyday lives.  Convenient how that works out, don't you think?

So first, we need to learn about the beer, study the brewing process and understand what makes Trappist beers different from other beers.

I started by drinking some Trappist-style beers.  (Research is hard...)  Next, I looked into the brewing process, and identified the differences between brewing Trappist ale and other beers. Two things popped up immediately:  yeast and sugar.

As it turns out, the Belgian beers of Trappist monasteries rely on specific strains of yeast for their unique flavors.  This isn't too surprising.  I've found that yeast plays an important role in most Belgian beers.  Which makes me think, what's the deal with Belgian yeast?  Did Nature just get drunk when it came to Belgium?

"Most Gratuitous Use of the Word 'Belgium' in a Serious Screenplay or Beer Blog"

Belgian beer is also made with large amounts of sugar (dubbed “candi sugar”).  Most brewers, especially in this country, turn up their noses at brewing with sugar, believing it cheapens the final product.  However, Belgian Candi Sugar, which looks exactly like un-colored rock candy, can be found in most homebrew stores.  But it turns out, that isn’t the candi sugar they’re talking about.  Trappist Monks use a dark caramel syrup that they call candi sugar, and it's not easy to procure outside of Belgium.

That seemed to pose a problem.

But monks are also a self-sufficient bunch.  They probably don't buy their beer supplies at some homebrew store.  So, I decided to make my own candi sugar syrup by cooking sugar until it carmelized.

So, where did that leave me?  Well, having embraced the monk’s example of diligent study, I had done my homework on the strain of yeast to use.  Embracing self-sufficiency, I'd even made my own candi sugar.  Now I came to the most important lesson of monk-style brewing: patience.

Beer (for fear of repeating myself) requires a lot of patience.

And as I put the beer into the basement to ferment and age, I downloaded some Gregorian chants to play, just to make the yeast feel at home.  And on the stairs leading down to the basement, I put up a friendly reminder to, please, be quiet.  The beer is resting. 

In Dutch.

Maybe it was the chants, maybe it was the soft sound of bubbles of carbon dioxide gurgling through the airlock, but as I waited for the beer to ferment and mature, I began to think and to reflect, which is, I believe, one of the reasons that monks brew such strong beers.  Waiting for them to mature gives one ample time for reflection.

Maybe, at the monasteries, they consider the nature of existence, or the way God manifests His will.  I don’t know, go ask a monk.

I took that time to consider my role in this world, and my role as a father and husband.

I’ve decided that, as long as I follow certain simple rules, I won’t screw my daughter up (too much).

1)        Be patient, especially with yourself.  It’s okay to lose your temper, that’s what tempers are for.  But if you find yourself yelling, take a breath, calm down, and apologize.  That’s what you would want them to do.

2)         Teach by example.  Your kids will listen to almost nothing you say, but will see everything you do.  Be the kind of person you want them to be.

3)         Keep it simple.  Like the monks, practice self-sufficiency.  Don’t spend money on a movie or a new toy, when a cardboard box and a pack of crayons can yield a long afternoon of fun and excitement.

4)          As long as you love your children, you're doing a lot more right than wrong.

5)         Value learning.  Like the monks.  Because if you value learning, your children will value learning (see Rule 2).

6)     But most of all, be patient.  Keep calm, and brew on.

If that fails, just flip to the Troubleshooting part of the manual.  (You did get one, didn’t you?)