“There’s a big…machine in the sky…some kind of electric snake…coming straight at us.”
“Shoot it,” said my attorney.
“Not yet,” I said. “I want to study its habits.”
— from Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
“Harlan, are you friends with the monster?”
— Cerys Weylyn Davis
I love this exchange. It makes me think of my decision last year to do a stint as a stay-at-home parent. Stay-at-home parenting was coming straight at me. I battled it. I studied its habits. But I didn’t shoot it. I befriended the monster. And now that I’ve been doing it for seven months, I’m planning my return back to lawyerland. After moving to Austin in November, we are moving back to North Carolina this summer. That’s right, the real North Carolina comeback is about to happen. My taste buds just got accustomed to brisket and jalapeños now that they’re going back to chopped pork and hush puppies.
Here’s how my brain is dealing with it: yesterday I waited through the Starbucks drive-through for a good twenty minutes only to realize I was at the Wendy’s. I made a hiccuppy chicken noise not unlike a “bok” when I saw pictures of burgers on the board and sped off. To put it mildly, I’m slightly confused. Still.
Last night I sat under the live oaks in the backyard and watched a storm way off lighting up the sky with near-constant lightning. I thought about this Texas landscape. All these live oaks, cedars, Texas palms, and prickly pear cacti in the hills. It is truly where south meets southwest. I’m going to miss this climate. Shorts through the winter is a concept I can appreciate even with my chicken-like British-skinned legs. And the rivers here. Man, the rivers here are spring-fed and clear, loaded with bass and gargantuan gar that are there for the catching twelve months a year.
But I’m looking forward to being back in Raleigh. There’s the Haw River not far away, the snakiest river I’ve ever fished. The piedmont pines have a way of simultaneously humbling and rekindling a person. And the swamps of eastern North Carolina rival Louisiana. There’s one called the Devil’s Gut at Jamestown where there’s a put-in that is lorded over by a cricket lady. There’s a river called the Cashie and I still can’t figure out how to pronounce it. Cash-eeeee? Cuh-shy? Cuh-sheeee? When the locals say it, it’s as if I just got dropped off a spaceship. All these rivers flow out to these sounds that look endless but do in fact end at the slivers that are the Outer Banks.
At any rate, I was just working on my resume. And I realize that most of the accomplishments I’ve had over the last six months as a stay at home dad are never going to show up on my resume. I would list the following as major victories:
*Transferred two sleeping kids at once from car seats to bed with two semi-somnolent urinations on the way, neither of them mine. The urinations, that is, the kids are both mine.
*Put shoes on a fairy.
*Cleaned up bowel-soiled leggings while doing an online CLE entitled “The Mobile Lawyer.”
*Made mac and cheese without opening my eyes.
*Gave a haircut with a pocket knife.
*Outran my daughter on all fours with severe back spasms at a Louisiana rest stop.
*Urinated in public at a Memphis gas station without getting arrested.
*Inadvertently taught my son to do the same.
I know there are more. These are just the ones that occur to me right now. As I think about returning to the work world of being a lawyer, I feel that once again the giant electric snake in the sky is coming straight at me. One thing I’ve learned though, if I’ve learned nothing else as a stay-at-home dad, is that it will all come naturally if I let it — if I just open my mind to the natural path.
As one of my clients once wisely said, “The good Lord never made a menthol tobacco plant no how.” I think what he was trying to say is be natural.
jbrettdavis 