Author: jbrettdavis

My son is not really that big. Like 1st percentile in weight and height. Come to think of it, I was never really that big. Football was never even suggested to me. By anyone. Even though my dad played in college. People must have looked at me and thought, runner. Maybe because I was actually running away from them in a social-anxiety-induced terror. I don’t remember if I ate well as a kid. But my son. Man, my son. He will not eat anything. He’ll eat mac and cheese — if it’s the kind “that’s not already made.” He will eat chicken if the breading is just right. He will eat pork if I call it “pork chicken.” But he will eat anything with sugar on it. I think he would eat a cedar plank if I covered it in icing. This is irritating because I love to cook. I made carnitas the other day. He ate a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.

When I get really upset about this, I take a deep breath and take stock of my own eating habits. I admit, I have a junk food problem. Every place I have lived has offered me a junk food escape.

Ironton, Ohio. Where I grew up. If you are from there, you know what I’m going to say next: Giovanni’s. As my son would say, “how can they make something so good?” I can say without any hesitation at all that I have craved Giovanni’s at least once a month for my entire adult life, no matter where I’ve lived. I know there are Ironton expats all around the world who find themselves salivating now and then at the thought of Giovanni’s. Giovanni’s is unparalleled in the world of pizza. I’ve had pizza in Italy. I’ve had pizza in Chicago. I’ve had all kind of frou-frou boutique pizzas around the country. But Giovanni’s is different. And it’s best when accompanied by a Mountain Dew, the national drink of southern Ohio. Maybe it is the grease. If there is a top shelf for greases, this is it. Extra virgin pizza grease. Maybe it is for the best that they put the huge pepperoni slices under the cheese. They would float off otherwise. Giovanni’s is a chain. You can get it in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia as far as I know. But let me tell you one thing I will not do and that is wade into the rivalry of Ironton vs. Coal Grove.

Athens, Ohio. Burrito Buggy. This was a food trailer up by the College Green. There are plenty of times that I ate Burrito Buggy that seem foggy. You know what I’m talking about. Especially if you went to Ohio University. But that’s been a long time ago. The burritos here are probably in some ways a cousin to the Taco Bell burrito. But what they lack in fancy, they make up for in sour cream, other-worldly (quite possibly from another world) ground beef, and the softest flour tortillas you’ll ever encounter. And location. On the walk back from uptown to the dorms. You cannot go wrong with Burrito Buggy, whatever questionable decisions you’ve made up to the point you stagger up to that metal counter.

Swansea, Wales. Swansea is on the water. Swansea Bay of the Briston Channel. It looks across at Somerset, England, which you can see on clear days. But who cares if you can see England? Everything you need is in Wales. There was an internet documentary/reality show filmed here called Swansea Love Story about a young couple in the throes of addiction. I could relate to it. What was my go-to heart stopper here? It’s a tie. On the one hand, it was the kebab van. It was between campus and the little town of Mumbles as I recall. Slices of beef and lamb off the inelegantly labelled “elephant leg” could turn a bad night good. Or worse. Depending how you look at it. The other contender for my hardened, slowed-down heart there was the “chippie” across the park from campus in Uplands. My junk food partner, Hywel, and I would sit on a park bench up by the little Welsh chapel and eat roast chicken and chips wrapped in newspaper. Sometimes we ate the newspaper. The pigeons ate what we didn’t.

Columbus, Ohio. White Castle. Those oniony little vessels of so much goodness and so much arterial plaque. To this day, I am not sure if I really like them or not. But like all addictions, it was a love/hate relationship.

Boone, North Carolina. This is where I fell in love with the ham biscuit, the gateway drug to the chicken biscuit. To be more specific, I fell for the plate of ham biscuits they serve family-style at the Daniel Boone Inn. The salt content of these things could dry out a slug a mile away.

Raleigh, North Carolina. The chicken biscuit. Bojangles. I recently told me wife I was feeling wistful about chicken biscuits. She never understood them. She gave me the same look she usually does when I talk about chicken biscuits — equal parts disdain, disinterest, and, quite possibly, pity. But, really, I tried to get her to understand, now that we live in Texas I miss chicken biscuits. Like a person. I miss chicken biscuits like a person.

Austin, Texas. I just got here. The next arterial adventure awaits. Will it be the kolache? Does brisket qualify? The surreal orange concoctions at Round Rock Donuts? It could be anything. Something I don’t even know about yet. But something will step in and become my new go-to junk food.

After all of this food talk, I’m dying for a chicken biscuit and Harlan is still refusing to eat the vegetables I put out for him. Where does he get this nonsense?

One day when I was a kid, my dad told me “Derik’s not always going to wait around for you.” He already knew what I did not — that my best friend was about to move far away. A few days later, I learned that Derik and his family were moving to Florida.

I thought of this when my mom called me a few weeks ago to tell me of Derik’s passing.

I have a scar on my left hand from the day he moved. I cut myself on a chain link fence in the yard as they were packing up the moving van.

When he was a kid, Derik abducted the baby Jesus from the St Lawrence nativity scene. The priest could not figure out what was happening — the baby would disappear from time to time and always return. Turns out, Derik was taking the little plastic Jesus on walks around the block in his wagon. He was a kid people remembered. He made himself known.

We used to ride bikes from one end of Ironton to the other. He’d come up to my house on 11th Street and insist we get on our bikes and go visit people. We would ride up to Mary Lintner’s house or Bob and Norma Compton’s house and just shoot the breeze. As an 11-year-old kid, he wanted to go sit on people’s porches and chat. His personality was beyond his years.

His dad had a furniture store — Woods Furniture. We would make ourselves at home in the furniture showrooms. Back then Zenith was a tv brand to brag about and Intellivision was a new game system. Derik would greet customers as if he owned the place. The Woods Furniture warehouse at the end of Railroad Street was our playground. We’d climb up on the shelves and jump off onto the mattresses on the floor. Even then, he lived wide open.

We watched the movie “Halloween” and then spent a weekend at his Grandpa Coster’s cabin out by Lake Vesuvius fretting that our demise was around every bend — scaring each other the way kids do.

One year at church camp in West Virginia, he decided to get baptized. I resisted. I told him I didn’t want him to do it. That it meant we would be grown up for real. He insisted. I came around a couple months later as did my dad, who was also moved by Derik’s decision. That was the way it was — Derik did things first.

It’s gut wrenching to think about the times he and I would talk as kids. We would talk about our futures. What we wanted to do. He wanted to play tennis. I wanted to be an oceanographer or something I’ve since forgotten. I think we both wanted to be his older brother, Donnie. We’d take his worn out, hand-me-down tennis rackets and treat them as prized possessions.

I went down to Florida to see Derik one summer when we were in junior high school. His mom, Brenda, took us to Disney one day and dropped us off to do what we wanted. All that freedom. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We ran from one end of Disney to the other end of Epcot. I don’t even know if we actually did anything — we just sprinted around pointing things out to each other. Too exuberant to focus. I remember we also talked Brenda into taking us to a questionable amusement park nearby — Circus World, I think it was called. We both got whiplash. Then we went to New Smyrna Beach and I got a nasty sunburn for good measure.

We would see each other over the past decades for life’s milestones — graduations, weddings, funerals. And each time we picked up like nothing had ever changed.

I’m looking at that scar on my hand right now and grieving the loss of my friend. The memories grow faint with age. But that little guy, that precocious little raconteur, my best friend Derik — he’s still jumping off the furniture warehouse shelves in my mind. Full of life. Spreading positivity like only he could.  

We drove 1200 miles on an impulse. My best friend growing up passed away. I wanted to be there to say goodbye. Maybe that is a little irrational given my presence would require over a thousand miles of driving with a 3 and 5-year old. But I was compelled. I can’t explain it beyond that.

A neon Cheeto projectile puke to the face, multiple Giovanni’s pizzas, an impromptu haircut with a pocket knife necessitated by a brush with a toy helicopter, some unheavenly foul 3-year old feet, several rounds of armadillo roadkill in Tennessee of all places, a sighting of the International Space Station, a side trip through North Carolina, at least three chicken biscuits, a scratched cornea, a temporary incapacitation by back spasm at a Louisiana rest stop and multiple truck stop peristaltic rushes later, we were home again. Over 3000 miles. I dropped out of Cub Scouts at a young age because I didn’t like the socks — but I feel like I might have gotten a badge for this.

The whole thing got me thinking about teleportation. I mean, would it not simplify our strung-out lives significantly if we could just break ourselves down into our constituent parts and instantly reassemble them anywhere we wanted?

My wife and I have always had these multi-locational (and slightly impulsive?) realities. We met while living on opposite sides of the country. Within months we had reassembled ourselves in North Carolina and had a little Harlan on the way. I’m no scientist but I think we might have approached quantum entanglement through our constant geographical metamorphoses.

Our kids are no less multi-locational — at this point they truly have no idea whether to call North Carolina, Ohio or Texas home. Harlan just now announced he was walking next door to visit the neighbor kid. Never mind he is in his underwear and Crocs. And never mind that the neighbor kid he mentioned is over a thousand miles away. For at least 700 miles of our latest road trip, Cerys demanded we turn the car around and go “back to Chad’s house in Raleigh” for some apple sauce.

Back to teleportation…

How great would it be? Have you ever just sat down and meditated on the prospect of being able to instantaneously transport yourself to any spot on earth at any moment? It brings up so many questions for me. But first things first. Why would it be helpful? My wife, kids and I are in Austin. My wife’s family is in Dayton/Xenia/Yellow Springs, Ohio. (As an aside, I think people in Yellow Springs have been teleporting since the 1800s but that is another post that I need to think out a little more.) My family is in Ironton, Ohio. I should say the greater Ironton area as most of them live in the hollers outside of town. Our second home — the place where my kids were born — is in North Carolina as are some of the best humans I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. And we have friends scattered over the continents.

Let’s just think about the practicalities here:

All this angst about not living near family? Fixed by teleportation.

The fact that I’m not licensed to practice law in Texas? Fixed by teleportation.

The fact that my dentists (aka dad and brother) are in Ohio? Fixed by teleportation.

The fact that my daughter chooses to use the worst truck stop toilet in the deep south? Fixed by teleportation.

My supreme and spontaneous urge to have a beer with my Welsh spiritual brother, Hywel, in a Cardiff pub? Home by midnight!

Problems with teleportation keep coming to mind, though. Mind you, I have been practicing personal injury and medical malpractice law for over a decade. There is no better training for imagining the worst possible scenario in every potential situation. The bad outcome. I’m an expert in imagining it in all its hideousness. What if my impulsive Cerys or Harlan decided to jump in the teleporter and head to Nana and Papa’s farm without telling me? The god-forsaken game of hide and seek has already given me a glimpse of this scenario. The part of hide and seek my kids love most is not telling me they are playing it while they sit silent and grinning in the farthest reaches of the darkest closets in our house and I sprint around screaming their names holding my spasming heart. Maybe I should have had kids when I was younger. No. Bad idea. I’ve never been as responsible as I am right now. Scary thought.

While the verdict is still out on whether I would be responsible enough to have a teleporter, I suspect it is the very definition of luxury to be able to focus on being in one place at a time. There is a certain benefit to being fully present in Texas at the moment, politics aside. I would probably misuse it anyway. Lord, at this very minute I would be casting a fly into Devils Gut swamp off the Roanoke River in North Carolina right before getting a quick pint at The White Rose on Swansea Bay in Wales. And I would probably forget that my wife would appreciate it if I fed and bathed the kids tonight. But this is something I need not stress about. They don’t even have these things yet. Mostly, though, I’m wondering if I could teleport my kids to their grandparents’ house to get a bath and a bedtime story before being teleported back home angelic in their sleep. Without losing them.

Just now…

Harlan: The baby is stuck in a cave!

Cerys: No it’s not a baby, it’s a kid! Mom, Harlan’s trying to take my kid unicorn out of the cave!

Harlan: No it’s not, it’s a baby and it’s stuck!

Cerys: We have to tell it to stop growling at us!

Remember how it used to be as a kid when everything came with a story? A shrub became a fortress. A forest was pulsating with unknown creatures just waiting to show themselves.

I still think I saw a sloth in the hills of southern Ohio when I was a child. I walked down the trail away from my friends, followed it around a bend and could no longer hear their voices. My hackles went up. I was going into the unknown. And just at that moment I saw it. On the trunk of a tree in front of me. The sloth. It clung to the bark with its back to me and turned its head to look over its shoulder. I ran back to the safety of my friends. But the image stayed with me. I do not wish to grow older, “wiser,” and to lose this story. I choose to cultivate an ability to see the world in this way, however absurd and irrational it may be in light of the supposedly more immediate concerns of commerce and politics and whatever else creeps in and crowds out that childlike exuberance. I choose to envision a South American tree-climbing mammal in the hills of southern Ohio despite the overwhelming and adult evidence that I’m off my trolley.

Just a few years ago my sister and I caught a glimpse of a mountain lion on the highest, most forested spot of our family’s ancestral farm. We were on a hay wagon being pulled along with the rest of our family. It was the family reunion and this tradition of the hay ride endured in spite of the attendants’ more immediate concerns — like not getting food poisoning from the fried chicken. A tail is all we saw. Too long and low to be a fox or coyote. No one else saw it. Mountain lions are not generally in this area. There are stories of them and now and then random roadkill evidence of their presence. But they are there in the hills, living their lives unaffected by our stresses. Was that what we saw that day? I’m sticking with yes.

I just read that scientists have determined that we have thousands of daydreams a day. And that they last an average of 14 seconds. We have stories within us. We concoct stories based on moments as short as a glimpse. A glimpse of a couple saying goodbye at one of their cars on a Sunday morning. A glimpse of a girl half smiling as her significant other engages her best friend in a conversation we cannot hear. The look on a young girl’s face looking off above the ridges as her parents inform her of her grandfather’s passing. Snapshots.

When we become cognizant of our propensity toward story, we can cultivate it. It becomes an escape. It becomes a reminder that we can feel raw emotion. Is that escape? Or is that the opposite? Is that a hunkering down into the nuances of reality and not an escape at all?

I want to be aware of the story that lurks like the mountain lion on the edges of its known territory. The story that situates itself as absurdly as a sloth in southern Ohio. It is behind everything we see on a regular day. This is one of the gifts of this time I have as a stay-at-home parent, the opportunity to engage the vivid imaginations of these little humans. And this will not last forever. As Harlan recently said, “that’s gonna be a long time ago.” It’s also why I write, to tap this lurking energy. It is there for the observing. I want to be aware of the stories in my head. Harlan and Cerys will not settle for anything less. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go find out where that unicorn is and how in the world it got stuck in that cave.

I was meditating this morning. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it what you want. Sometimes you just need to dampen the noise a bit. I should say I tried to meditate this morning. My solitude  was interrupted by constant intrusions of a commercial I saw the other day. PuppyMonkeyBaby. I kept having visions of this thing accompanied by the chant “PuppyMonkeyBaby” over and over. I brought myself gently back to presence in the moment. Then there it was again. The ghastly tripartite creature would not leave me alone. And it made me think about the messiness of living in the presence of kids.

Here’s a typical scenario of my glorious and unruly daughter. Last night she was running around with a shoe on one foot, a Wellington on the other, and a big stuffed-animal-like monster slipper on each hand. Within an hour she spilled two cups of water, one cup of orange juice, a plate of mac and cheese, and a bowl of cereal. I told my wife about it later in the evening and she looked at me like well maybe it was because you let her run around with slippers on her hands all day. Thing is, she didn’t have the slippers on when she trashed the kitchen on her dropping spree. In fact, the only thing she didn’t drop was a granola bar that she masterfully handled with those big old fuzzy-slippered hands. Maybe because it was stuck to the fibers. I think it’s still stuck on one of them this morning.

I had an experience before we left Raleigh that really brought home this idea to me of living with the mess. While Karla was away on a business trip, I was trying to get the kids to brush their teeth before bed. It had been a long weekend with their mama out of town and my patience was running a little thin. I asked Harlan to brush his teeth and then he started crying that he was hungry. That routine. The skip dinner and get hungry at bedtime routine. I demanded he stop complaining. When I looked at him, I noticed a little tear sitting on his left eyelid. I took a breath, asked him what he wanted. A granola bar. So I got him one and he went out on the back porch. He sat on the bench and I sat across from him. He looked up, noticing how loud the cicadas were in the tree canopy above Boylan Heights. “Wow that’s a different kind of cicada!” And he was right. A completely new sort of chirp was coming down from the canopy.

We sat and listened to all the noises up in the trees. Something switched over. We were communicating in a natural tone. He chewed his granola bar slowly. Probably to delay bedtime. But I didn’t care anymore. I only cared about the cicadas in August in North Carolina and soaking their sounds up with my Harlan. He finished up, went and brushed his teeth and he and Cerys wanted to sleep in the same bed. (You might wonder what Cerys was doing this whole time — naturally, she was eating toothpaste in the bathroom.) I tucked them in, hugged them, and kissed them goodnight. The smile on his face struck me.

I am learning the language of parenthood. The little glimpses I get feel like the surface of a deep pool. Gratitude is what I felt that night. True gratitude. For my kids and my wife. Sometimes it is difficult trying to corral these little rapscallions and integrate them into my own schedule. And sometimes they remind you that if you quiet all the white noise of your expectations of the way you think things should be, you can sit and listen to the cicadas. Even with the occasional intrusion of the PuppyMonkeyBaby.

There are a lot of dead skunks on the roads of the Texas hill country these days. Each time I smell one, I think, man, I really miss Gallia County. That’s right. I have a sentimental attachment to the smell of skunk and I associate it with southeastern Ohio. It reminds me of my younger days when we’d go to the family reunion near Rio Grande, Ohio (where it’s inexplicably pronounced “Rye-OH-grand”). I don’t know why, maybe it was the time of year that we had the Jones Family Reunion on Raccoon Creek, but I always smelled a skunk.

And come to think of it, we used to drive through there to go to Point Pleasant, West Virginia when I was a kid because my grandpa had a motel. I think it was a hotel, not a motel, but he always pronounced it MO-tel and I like that better. I would smell skunks then too. He took me up on the gravel-covered roof of that MO-tel one time to see the killdeer nests and I distinctly remember the smell of skunk. We also used to cross the bridge up above Gallipolis — the bridge in the spot where the mothman was sighted and the previous bridge collapsed back in the 60s. I wonder, does the mothman smell of skunk? Some people call bigfoot the “skunk ape.” It’s not just me, there is something enchanting about the smell of skunk. Ask any bigfoot researcher.

I was thinking about this the other day and about how life can take you places you’re not expecting. Here I am driving outside of Austin smelling skunks and thinking about Gallia County, Ohio and Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

But my fascination with skunk smell goes deeper. Sometimes I have to turn the radio down to smell skunk as I drive. Have you ever turned the radio down to smell something? Admit it. You’ve done it. It makes no sense. For example, you’re driving through the country talking to your brother, discussing when and how to locate sauger in the smaller streams leading to the river when it hits you. That high-pitched, fresh green smell.

“Hold on, wait.” You turn down the radio, inhale, “Smell that?”

It wasn’t so he could hear you. Some generic country song was barely noticeable in the background anyway. Are there connections in these neural regions? Is it a rare neurological condition like “face blindness?” It is not really a type of synesthesia, which is more of a blending of senses or the way one sense sparks another — in this instance the senses are at odds. I do have a color deficiency. Maybe I should get an MRI while smelling a skunk and they can see if there’s something wrong with that part of my brain. Surely insurance would cover that.

Every time I smell a skunk, I think to myself — maybe it’s because you popped your ear so bad that one time. That time you could hold your nose and squeak out your ear. That must be it. Your hearing and smell have been forever linked by your poor decision making in your 20s. Too many jumps off the barge docks of the Ohio River.

No, you’re being neurotic and judging yourself again. It’s just a focus thing. You make your environment silent so you may focus. Whatever it is, you don’t think you’d want to live in a place that doesn’t have skunks.

So there it is, the conversation I have with myself every time I smell a skunk. Maybe it’s weird. But I bet I’m not the only one. Come clean, you know you like the way it curls the bones. Turn the radio down and sniff.

Did I mention that I am a secret stay-at-home dad? No one mentions my affliction. It’s like a hemorrhoid. As if going against the grain of a good thousand years of gender roles is to be suffered silently…hoping it won’t get so bad you have to go to the doctor, get in the stirrups and bare all. I am quite comfortable calling myself a stay-at home-dad. To the more traditional influences in my life, though, I am “looking into getting my Texas law license.” But maybe I am saying this all because there is a little voice somewhere inside me that is judging myself for not working outside the home — a voice that is just as biased as anyone else when it comes to gender stereotypes. If I am completely honest, I am flailing through space. Broken-masted in uncharted waters. Paddling my boat with a spoon. Pole vaulting with a toothpick. You get the picture.

I could say something sappy right now, about how Harlan, my 5-year-old son, smiled at me with his entire face, his entire being, when I put him to bed last night. About how Cerys, my 3-year-old daughter, held onto my neck when I took her sleepy self out of her car seat the other night and how, years before I ever thought of having kids, I imagined this very scenario — before I conjured this little goddess in store-bought fairy wings. But you’d probably stop reading.

So let me tell you a different story — one about road tripping with a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. And about really having to pee.

I decided to drive to Ohio to be with our families for Christmas. My wife was working a lot of hours in her new job. The kids and I had plenty of time. What better idea than a road trip? From Austin, Texas to southern Ohio, it was about a 17-hour drive — easily divided into two days.

Very late into the first day of driving — I mean, it does take forever just to get out of Texas — I realized I had to pee somewhere around Little Rock. But the kids were sleeping so peacefully. I couldn’t leave them in the car. Surely it wouldn’t take too long to drive to the next city and maybe they’d be awake by then.

If you’ve driving through Arkansas, the “next city” is an illusory term. It was night time. I was listening to an audiobook on the early Texas settlers (insane) and the Apaches (also insane and rightfully distraught at the presence of the insane settlers). I could have stopped beside the road. But there was no berm for several hundred miles because Arkansas’s road construction never ends. And it was scary out there in the dark. I don’t think I even saw a light for hours. And the potholes. Arkansas potholes are bladder-jarring, craterous monstrosities. It felt like we were dropping entire wheels. About four hours after I realized I had to pee, we finally hit Memphis. It is a beautiful sight, by the way, driving across the Mississippi toward Memphis at night — especially after all that Arkansas darkness.

The kids were still angelic in their sleep. But this had to stop. I was hitting panic stage. It was still rush hour. I had to find a gas station. I woke the kids. I turned up some metal (The Sword) very loudly. I opened their windows to let the cold air in. I whistled Camptown Races like I was crazed. We pulled into the first gas station I could find, which happened to be all the way through Memphis on the road to Nashville. It was also the busiest gas station in west Tennessee. I jumped out of the car.

My kids, you see, don’t often appreciate the immediacy of the moment. Cerys insisted I let her unbuckle herself from her car seat, turning a couple second task into at least a 5-minute ordeal while she was testing out her newly-acquired motor skills. Harlan decided he didn’t want to put his socks on. Of course, both their shoes and socks had been tossed into every corner of the car. What is it about kids taking their shoes and socks off the minute they enter a vehicle?

Hopping at this point, I could wait no longer. I, a 44-year-old adult with no known prostate, bladder or bedwetting problems, found myself involuntarily urinating in a crowded parking lot. No choice, I had to do so properly. Frantic, I unzipped and let go. In public. As I tried to hide between the open doors of the car, I looked around hoping I wouldn’t be arrested only to see my son standing three feet from me, peeing the proudest arc you’ve ever seen on the sidewalk as an older couple made their way past him.

This is not pretty. I know. I have a lot to learn. I am not a perfect parent. We slept well that night, floating away to the discursive sounds of Paw Patrol in a La Quinta Inn with a very questionable elevator on the outskirts of Memphis. We made it this far without getting arrested. I think there is hope.

I am a new parent. Well, no I’m not. I am a new stay-at-home dad. And not a good one. I’ve been a parent for five years. But it’s all different now. I stopped practicing law in October to move to Austin for my wife’s job opportunity and a chance to do what I felt like I was missing out on every day — being a dad to my my two kids, Harlan and Cerys.

As a stay-at-home parent, I feel like I should have plenty of time to write. There are a lot of hours in the day. A lot of hours I’m no longer practicing law. I thought this recently as Cerys, my daughter, sat on my lap while I stared at an empty screen. Her brother was consulting a choir of animated Christmas chipmunks in the background. Each time the chipmunks hit a battery-powered-singing-toy crescendo, Cerys headbutted me. I gave up. But what was I doing before? While I was managing hundreds of clients? Yearning to write. Fighting ideas back. Voice-memoing ideas in the car. Wishing I had more time with my kids.

So here I am. It’s all a blank page now. And here’s the thing — I don’t know what I’m doing as a stay-at-home-dad. This is what I wanted, right? To break gender stereotypes? To be free of the law (as a vocation not behaviorily — obviously I’m not engaging in any sort of open insurrection standing nude in my public weed garden). To explore a part of myself not associated with my lawyer persona.

I was recently in Ohio visiting family for the holidays. After multiple attempts to write had been scuttled by the aforementioned headbutts and dime store holiday Chipmunks, I set out to learn two new things — to learn to make my mom’s banana bread (or as the kids call it — “Nana bread”) and to learn to do something with my daughter’s birds nest of hair. Not at the same time. But that would be some sort of success, wouldn’t it? Broken off toddler hairs in baked goods are not that appetizing. Put them on a crispy garbanzo caesar salad and you might have something the hipsters could get behind though.

My mom showed me how to make the bread while I kept one eye on the kids as they flew down a hill on plastic cars. My parents’ farm is in the middle of a national forest and the thousands of acres of woods just beyond the periphery of the farm have always seemed to me to be a reminder to keep track of my kids. Not that I am paranoid. But I hear the coyotes there every night. So with one eye out the window and one on my mom’s cooking demonstration, I tried to focus.

At any rate, I’ve never understood baking. Last time I tried was in college, decades ago. I wanted to make my grandmother’s beer biscuits. Lord, I messed up. I had a couple of the beers from the 6-pack to start off. Then I mistook crisco for bisquick. With a plastic bowl full of shortening, salt, and beer, I thought, man, I’m not a chemist but I haven’t a clue how this stuff is going to turn into a biscuit. But I trusted my instincts, imagining that baking was some sort of alchemy that could turn liquids solid. It didn’t make biscuits. It melted. I wasted a beer. I would say I wasted 2 cups of crisco but I couldn’t imagine any other uses for it. 

I was thinking about this college experience when I came to and realized my mom was already taking the bread out of the oven. Magically, it came out crusted and browned. Perfect. 

As for Cerys’s hair, I couldn’t catch her to try my hand at pigtails. I was still on personal probation anyway for having used a bbq spray bottle to wet her hair. Parenting tip: apple cider vinegar and spices don’t work that well in a little girl’s hair. It gets really soft but it stinks. 

Next month, I thought. Maybe when we have a house and aren’t staying with family. That’s when the routine will come together and I’ll make biscuits with some dry ingredients besides salt.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll figure out how to do this stay-at-home dad thing.

**********

If you’re interested in the recipes, here they are:

Nanny’s Beer Biscuits

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

¼ cup shortening

a beer

Mix ingredients. Bake at 450 degrees (in an oven) for about 10 minutes. Inhale because your kitchen is gonna smell great.

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Brett’s Ohio University Liquibiscuits

2 cups crisco shortening

salt

beer

Go to store. Buy beer. Drink a few. Think about recipe. Tape recipe to cabinet drawer so you don’t get distracted. Find recipe after you lost it looking for tape. Mix ingredients. Bake. Any temperature will do as long as it melts the shortening. Take pride in your new skillset. Wonder at the sheer brilliance of baking. Be thankful you had capable people raise you.