The Moments - Chapter 4: "It Means Daddy"

                Although I write these pieces about “the moments” I share with my son on the basis of concepts, I also began the series intending to give it a certain sequence – building through Joey’s first years in a rough chronological order.  All that said, I’m going off schedule for this one because two of “the moments” occurred over the past weekend, and I just feel like sharing them.  As with so many things Joey says and does, he made think, melted my heart, and made me proud all at once.

                This weekend, my mother (“Mama Tee” to Joey) spent Friday night and most of Saturday with us.  After Joey woke up from a long nap on Saturday, he was full of energy – moving around all the time, jumping and climbing faster than I could follow him.  However, as is now often the case, he caught things we said when we didn’t necessarily notice he was listening.  At one point that afternoon, Mama referred to my full name, Larry Charles.  Upon hearing it, Joey said with a smile in his voice, “No. That’s Daddy.”  Mama explained to him, “Well, yeah. But that’s his full name. Like you’re Joseph Ellis, your Daddy is also Larry Charles. That’s his full name.”  No longer seeming completely focused on the conversation, Joey proceeded to climb on furniture but very matter-of-factly stated, “Uh-huh.  His name Charles.  It mean Daddy.”  I love that!  Between its English, German, and French definitions, Charles actually means “man,” “manly,” or “farmer.”  But, I like the Joey Webster Dictionary definition.  Charles means Daddy.  I’ll stick with that.  For the record, Joseph means “may God give increase” from Hebrew.  My son fits his name well, as he is the greatest increase from God to me.

                As an interesting follow-up to that exchange, Joey and I slightly ventured into a discussion about my “final journey” (such as one can discuss that with a 2-year-old) the next day.  Joey had put one of our Elvis CDs in the player while we were getting ready for church on Sunday morning.  It had run for quite a while and the song “The Impossible Dream” (one of my favorites) is what Elvis was starting to sing as I sat Joey up on the end of our chaise lounge to put on his shoes.  As he often says toward things he knows and things he doesn’t, I heard “What’s that?” come out of his mouth.  Figuring he meant “what song?” I responded, rather than with the title, with “That’s a beautiful old song that I want you to have played at my funeral – Elvis style. Will you do that, son? Will you make sure that song is played at my funeral?” He didn’t miss a beat.  Joey instantly said, “No,” with a smile.  I laughed a little.  “Ok.  Well, what will you have them play at my funeral?”  He put on that coy, cute little grin that is patented Joey Grimes and said, “Wise Men Say.”  That’s his title for “Can’t Help Falling In Love” from the film “Blue Hawaii.”  I’m not sure if that would have a place at a funeral, but I told him he could have them play both.  It may not be time to talk much about how anyone can or should send me off, but I’m sure Joey will send me off like a king.  He already treats me like one far more than I deserve.

Facebook After A Decade - A Wonder, A Weapon, and A World Unto Itself

            With Facebook hitting its tenth anniversary this year and generating a lot of celebratory hype, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a social, technological, and commercial phenomenon it has been.  To put it in my own historical perspective, Facebook has now been around for the last third of my life, and I’ve been a user/member of the site for about that long. 

I remember, when I first joined, only being able to add other students or alumni of the University of Memphis because Facebook (or “The” Facebook at that time) only allowed networking within one’s own school and was exclusive to those possessing a college-based e-mail address.  It was nice because it was a kind of members-only club for college students.  It was also the only way we knew Facebook.  In the beginning, it was a useful tool for sharing information with folks in a specific community – your school.  It also allowed someone to get to know unfamiliar classmates a bit better and promote campus events.  It quickly grew into far more.

 It was quite a boom when all the member schools joined on one universal Facebook, but that paled in comparison to the point when Facebook’s exclusivity was eliminated and EVERYONE could join.  Indeed, everyone seemed to do so.  I remember that year well.  Many of the high school students with which I worked at the Governor’s School joined after their summer with us and there were long lists of “friend requests” for all of the counselors from students that had not yet graduated.  Facebook became a great way to keep track of the students that had made an impact on our lives from year to year.  I still get news and messages from those students that were with us in Memphis as long ago as 2004, during my first summer as a counselor.  I may not have seen them in person in as many years, but we are linked across the miles in an impressive way.  On the flipside of the high school Facebook boom, there were also adults of all ages (whether having attended college or not) who joined up when the virtual doors flew open.  Across the country, there was a collective reciting by high school and college students of “My dad just added me on Facebook,” or “My mom just friended me,” or “Gosh, I didn’t think my parents would sign up.”  In the years since, there are a lot kids on the network that don’t really remember its beginning and parents who knew how to use it before they sent many regular e-mails.  That, in fact, is one of the things that makes Facebook such a phenomenon – it is its own Internet experience.  Many people seem to communicate directly with other individuals more via Facebook than through a traditional e-mail account.  Contests are entered, pictures and videos and music are shared, and fan bases are established and tracked through Facebook as much (or more) as any other medium.  It’s even gone commercial for its users, hosting several venues by which goods and services are sold.  It also, naturally, hosts advertisements that lead to purchases from established businesses.  In all these ways and others, Facebook has come a long way and proven to be its own online world separate from, yet often connected to, any other website or forum.

I shouldn’t even venture into what Facebook has done to and for political discourse in the world.  In the last few years, many candidates and political organization have credited social media, particularly Facebook, with their rises and falls.  The line “Look what they did with social media” has been used to describe, now, multiple political victories.  But the way this has been made possible is as much a symptom of the other advantages and social norms of Facebook as it is its own concept.

On Facebook, we each have our own online identity.  Unlike some earlier forms of online activity, this identity is kept in check by the network of people, including those who we actually know, that we build as users (you can only fudge so much about yourself if people you live with, work with, hang out with, etc. are on your friend list).  As Facebook’s functions and ease of use have evolved and we as a society have come to treat it as the most common of online forums, there has been a marked change in what people share and how they share it.  Sometimes, this is where Facebook proves to be a blessing and a curse.  Generally speaking, we share everything now!  Particularly with Facebook’s linkage to most smartphones, it is almost possible to feed every waking thought some people have into their pages.  Some seem to try it.  It gets to be too much.  But, I guess it’s one of those “to each his own” points of online existence.  In the beginning, there were statuses, and statuses gave a general statement about a person’s day or overall activity or whatever.  I liked it when the status was automatically a sentence starting with you name.  All I had to do was end the sentence “Chuck Grimes is _______.”  It was a creative little online blip.  Kind of like MadLibs, but you had to come up with a few more words.  Many folks updated their status once a day as, kind of, their daily report to the world as it remained lodged on top of their profile page.  I fell in line with the crowd that used the status to identify a geographic location (a lot of us did back then) and usually set mine to say “Chuck Grimes is somewhere you’re not.”  It was true for most folks when they saw it.  As Facebook got more common, its user base broader, and the ease of operation even simpler, folks started seeming to post every move they made, thought they had, or miniscule step in their day-to-day life.  My running joke used to be that someone would wake up and post “I just woke up.”  Then, they would post “Trying to decide what to eat for breakfast.”  A few minutes later, they would post “Eating cereal for breakfast… again.”  Later posts might include “Getting dressed for work,” “Leaving for work,” “Just got to work. Why am I here?!”  Only exaggerating a bit, I knew some who took to Facebook that heavily and still catch some posts from time to time with that kind of ridiculous play-by-play which makes me wonder what they watch on television to give them the idea that such a script is entertaining or even interesting (it’s not like Peter Griffin narrating his day). 

From self-generated reports on all the news that ain’t news, more Facebook users seem to lean toward putting the formerly called “status update” to use for the display of opinions.  What’s the old line about opinions?  Everybody has one, just like an @#*!^%e.  Yes, we all have them (ask me anytime and I’ll share several… opinions, that is).  Thanks to Facebook, however, we’ve turned into a culture of constant opinion declarations with no spelling or grammar checks.  Call me old fashioned, but I tend to respect a written statement of thought a lot more if it looks like it was proofread with, at least, the speed at which it was thought and written.  I’ve used it as a bulletin board for my own interpretations of the world, too, but still prefer a longer written format (like this) or a good old-fashioned verbal interaction (whatever those are now) for sharing my detailed views of anything, whether my views matter or not (This is the part where I thank you for reading. J).  Sometimes, folks prove that they, too, need another forum, or perhaps a companion guide to their Facebook wall, to explain the source of posts that are clearly written with a specific life event, person, or backstory in mind.  Why post the end or moral of the story with some type of reference or hint of the tale’s beginning but give no explanation?  Not everyone on a person’s Facebook list is well-versed in that person’s daily life or offline interactions to understand it all.  Facebook is a conversation with the world.  So, don’t you want your conversation partners to understand what you put before them?  My theory (which I’m not posting as a Facebook status) is that we have developed the Internet equivalent to walking into a room and letting out a loud sigh just for the purpose of soliciting an obligatory “What’s wrong?” from whoever is around.  I’ve often called this a manifestation of “Got-the-Vapors Syndrome.”  We all display it in some form at some time but, yes, there are those for whom it is rather commonplace for a variety of reasons.  Facebook has just formalized it. 

In a more positive light, however, Facebook does allow for the mass informing of relatives and friends when a loved one is very sick or injured or has passed away.  It’s good to reach out to those who wouldn’t necessarily be called quickly but should be made aware of such things.  I’ve grown very accustomed to seeing the daily string of prayer requests from friends and family and hope that those who always “like” those notices (doesn’t always seem like the appropriate word to click) or write “prayers” as a one-word comment are actually praying and supporting their loved ones in need.  Facebook can easily become host to faith and attention in word or for show only if folks don’t think about what they are clicking and/or writing. 

A negative byproduct that I see in the clouds floating between the practice of Facebook-based “Got-the-Vapors Syndrome” and sharing news of unfortunate events that others genuinely want and need to know about, however, is the irresponsible appointing of ourselves as a combination news reporter, judge, jury, and executioner.  I’m sure I did some of this in the early years of Facebook and openly admit to being such a person in my offline life without a mouse and keyboard, but it has become widespread to a scary degree online.  Growing up in the locale of the tragic disappearance of Holly Bobo but now living 100 miles away, I followed the case as much through Facebook as any other medium.  Friends and relatives would post every news article or related video clip over the 3 years after her disappearance, and I never had to perform an Internet search to find them.  Again, prayer requests and pleas from the Bobo family were often displayed online, as along the streets of Decatur County and Henderson County.  Most of these things were constructive and kept the effort to find answers very much alive.  When the prime suspect in her murder was finally arrested recently, the media in much of the state took notice once again and the Facebook traffic increased from heavy to massively enormous.  I only say that it increased because it did.  But, it really didn’t have to increase much, as it always existed at an impressively high level.  According to the media and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, evidence was found and a criminal was caught.  I truly hope and pray that the TBI got it right, as a confusing aftermath to the tragedy of the past three years would be a separate and gut-wrenching tragedy on its own.  However, many details of the investigation, arrest, and evidence in the case have still not been revealed.  That’s where Facebook comes in with the fury of a thousand clicks.  Media report an arrest.  They don’t conduct a trial and, even in many cases in which they report on a crime and an arrest, they don’t necessarily cover a trial and conviction thoroughly.  However, on Facebook, all we seem to need is an arrest.  Then, enter the deluge of guilty verdicts, punishment suggestions, and theories on every detail not yet exposed.  As a Facebook community, all we need is a “who done it” and then we fill in the blanks on “how he done it” and follow up with “what’s gonna get done with him.”  This is a sad case to view as an example, as I truly hope that the arrest was valid.  If so, I hope the verdict comes quickly and would have no problem with the killer getting the chair for what he is charged with doing.  However, the version of public discourse that Facebook nurtures in this case and many others frightens me.  There have been other cases – with less time, exposure, or detail – that have and continue to generate instant guilty verdicts from the court of public opinion simply because a few folks post and repost a news story or what they heard “in town.”  I fear that Facebook becomes a pre-emptive weapon to damage lives that haven’t been given a fair examination by the people who should, and even the people who should not, conduct such examination.  I’ve never been good at thinking before I speak, but I always thought anyone could think before they type.  Do we?  Do we not?  Or does Facebook just show us how little some folks think at all? 

For some things on Facebook, we need not think too much.  As when the Internet became widely used in schools, businesses, and homes, it is simply a great way to communicate across the miles.  I remember the commercials for America Online and other web services in the 1990s that would show parents talking about e-mailing their kid in college or the grandparents who loved getting pictures of the grandkids soon after the camera snapped.  Facebook allows those functions in advanced form and so much more.  It’s fun and useful all the time.  And, as it allows a “conversation with the world,” you can easily spread a general message, picture, or shoutout of any kind to as many people as you want.  Everyone has their style of “Facebooking.”  My two favorite things to do with it, publicly, are share songs or videos from cool celebrities on their birthdays and, most importantly, show off pictures of my son.  Some folks follow one or both of those things pretty closely.  Sometimes, we just catch a post here and there as they pop up in newsfeeds.  As “Facebookers,” we can be anything from casual observers to dedicated stalkers (Haha! Had them and been one. It’s a trade-off, I guess.) in each other’s lives.  Then again, maybe we’re all Facebook stalkers of varying degrees.  No casual observers on the net, right?

In the years I have used it, I have had a love-hate relationship with Facebook.  I miss the old exclusivity but have enjoyed using it for more mass communication with those I might not otherwise connect with so much.  It gets cluttered with advertisements and page suggestions, but such things exist for a purpose and have brought some good products, movies, music, and events to my attention.  Private messages are often a convenient alternative to e-mail but have a “big brother” feel now that they automatically show when they’ve been read.  Outside of the private messaging function on Facebook, I remind us all that the program is very much a conversation with the world and should be treated as such.  If you need to pull someone aside to say something to them, do it.  Not everything has to be a post on a wall or a comment to a post.  However, if you’ve got sometime cool to share – share it!  No matter what, don’t let real communication die just because the Internet makes its life support system look good with a site like Facebook.  Pick up the phone once in a while.  Go visiting now and then.  Human presence and a human voice is still the best way to interact, whenever possible.  But, when that’s not an option, look me up on Facebook.  I’ll be watching.

One of my earliest profile pictures.

This photo is older than Facebook itself, though.

The Moments - Chapter 3: Water, Water Everywhere

                Have you ever met a child who doesn’t like the water?  Unfortunately, you probably have.  There are tales told of little boys and girls who take years to truly have fun with bath time.  And, Heaven forbid that they should ever come near a swimming pool.  That ain’t happening either.  This is not such a tale.  I don’t think “Grimes” means “amphibious” in any language, but Joey may be rewriting the Rosetta Stone one day.  My boy loves the water!  Whether in a pool or in the bath, Joey is virtually always right at home bouncing around sea level. 

                Our trips to the swimming pool have provided some fun and memorable moments in Joey’s, so far, short life.  This is not one of those pieces where I’m going to take something simple and get philosophical with it.  It’s just plain fun.  However, I think it appropriate to note that Joey’s first trip to a swimming pool was on our first Father’s Day (mine as a father, his as the one who made me a father).  Daddy J and Mama Tee (my parents) had come to spend the day with us, and the weather was great for an afternoon visit to the pool at mine and Joey’s apartment.  We knew we couldn’t/shouldn’t keep him out for too long at five-and-a-half months old, but we were all ready to make the most of our fun time there.  We had a fresh pack of swimmer diapers (those things still amaze me) ready for the day, a Joey-sized inflatable float, and my Daddy’s new waterproof digital video camera.  When we got to the pool area, there was the usual 20ish and 30ish crowd who made camping out at the pool a weekly pattern.  They all treated Joey like a star.  I was impressed.  I actually thought if we were the only ones with a child there that my fellow residents would have a little attitude about sharing their turf with a youngster.  They ate it up.  They kept him laughing and he did the same for them.  It was a good show on land or in the water.  Daddy and Mama and I were careful to take things slowly in terms of acclimating Joey to the pool experience, but it wasn’t long before he was living it up in his float and not wanting to leave.  Daddy set him on my shoulders in the water, Mama and I pulled him around in his floating Cadillac, he splashed and kicked and splashed some more.  It was awesome.  Joey even got a little fussy when we proceeded to take him out of the pool for the day.  He handled it so well that I told some folks I wanted to do it every weekend.  But, alas, weather and logistics often prove a foe.  For his first summer, Joey only made one more visit to the pool with me.  Krista and “Uncle” Will and “Aunt” Tali got to join us for that party.  Joey was a few weeks older (at that point, made a big difference) and all the more able to maximize his fun in the water.  It was another great afternoon.  Joey clearly liked the freedom he felt in the water, and I love seeing him really feel the fun in whatever he does.  His second summer included some similar pool days, but those first ones will always stand out because he couldn’t speak yet and completely communicated his enjoyment through his face and actions and attitude.  I hope your kid(s) like the swimming pool.  It’s a great multi-faceted place to bond and have fun.

                Certainly less public but almost as aquatic is Joey’s other favorite water locale – the bathtub.  As with some of the other routine life activities that I realized I take for granted until seeing Joey learn them in his months of early life, I never thought he would make the bathtub the site of regular entertainment.  But, he is a natural entertainer and he loves the water.  It’s an easy combination.  He commonly puts on a show with a decent amount of water, a touch of shampoo, and a few tub toys.  All I really have to do is get him in there and scrub a little.  Getting him in there is even fun.  I imagine all dads have a variation of the routine.  I lift Joey up over the water a bit and make sounds like a submarine diving but pull him back up just before his feet hit the water.  I’ll repeat it a couple times before changing the tune and slowly putting him down in the water.  When he was younger, he acted like it surprised him every time.  Now he makes the sounds for me, but he still wants me to do it.  I love it!  Once he’s in the tub, I help with the washing of his hair and face and body, but he’s really in charge.  He sloshes around a bit and talks to the Elmo faucet cover.  We’ll often break out a few of the songs that we sing together.  Particularly common among the bath tunes are our favorite songs from the Sesame Street movie of my childhood called “Follow That Bird.”  Joey has come to love the movie, and he knows the songs very well.  When we would first sing them, when he was younger, Joey was just able to plug in a key word on certain lines.  It was our routine.  I guess our bathtub singings have served as a kind of gauge for his linguistic skills.  He’s moved up so much in his handling of each song.  Now, he sings the whole chorus of “Ain’t No Road Too Long” after I just sing a verse (actually, he helps with the verses too).  And, he can remember more than I can of the song “Easy Goin’ Day.”  All one of us needs to say is “sing Big Bird” and we belt out the tunes.  We sing other stuff in the bath, but those are the standards.  When one of Joey’s rubber ducks is floating around, I try to manage an Ernie-esque rendition of “Rubber Ducky.”  My son is also a Star Wars fan in training, and bath time is often when some of that gets to shine.  On his last trip to Disney World, Uncle Will bought Joey a set of seven Star Wars bath toys (super cool!).  They quickly became Joey’s favorite playthings in the tub and have even been at the core of some bath-ending father-son feuds (R2-D2 doesn’t need to leave the bathroom if he’s wet).  Joey knows I get a kick out of them too, and he loves showing off how well he already knows the characters by naming them all off to me as he pulls them into the water with him.  They can squirt water, so I sometimes tell Joey that I’ll rinse him “Vader style.”  As a fan of the Weird Al Yankovic Star Wars parody songs, I sometimes serenade one of the Joey’s toys with his song “Yoda” (to the tune of “Lola”).  As with other songs, Joey has gotten in on the act.  When I get the chorus, the little man is gracious enough to join in by singing the “Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda” part.  We may just have to become a pair of travelling singing plumbers.  One of Joey’s funniest recent bathtub routines is his early request for someone to “wash my toes.”  He gets a kick out of a bath sponge tickling his feet.  When he asks for it, I remind him that he needs to wash his body from the top to the bottom.  Who would have thought that a kid would treat getting his feet scrubbed as an incentive?  So far it works, and Joey sticks to business until he is washed.  Can’t have our young people spending all their time footwashing, right?  When the time comes though, Joey sits in the tub, sticks a foot up, and laughs like crazy while I scrub it with the sponge.  Enjoy the little things, my friends.  If a little boy can get cleaned and entertained in the tub, you can’t go wrong.

                Ok, here’s the part where I’ll get a little deep.  For whatever reason, bath time and the beginning of a day’s end have become a common time for Joey to actively seek to bond with me.  When I take him out of the tub and stand him up to dry off, he always seems to be particularly attentive to me.  I goof around with him as I’m drying his hair and wrapping him up in a towel, and he plays along with that, but he also looks over at the mirror and seems to lock in on the image of the two of us together that he sees.  After I have him mostly dried, he usually leans toward me for a hug.  Even if we’re cutting up, I always tell him I love him.  The first time he ever said “I love you” to me was during one of those times.  I had dried him off and he leaned in for a hug.  Granted, that was back when he only said it as a repeat to me, but it sticks out.  It partly sticks out because, later, he first said “I love you, Daddy” without any provocation when I had just taken him out of the bathtub again.  I’m glad that I can keep my boy clean, and I know that, soon enough, he will be taking care of that task completely himself.  But, I enjoy the fun and memorable moments that something as seemingly simple as a bath can provide. 

                I sometimes wish that Joey could already understand the depth of some of the things and events around him.  For him, every day and every experience is just the passage of something new or different or just routine.  I couldn’t give the details of most of the times I have been in or near a swimming pool or any other body of water.  They didn’t matter much.  And, I certainly don’t keep a log of every bath or shower I have taken over the course of 30 years.  But, what a difference Joey has made.  He has made each of those water-based experiences so much more memorable and so valuable.  Here’s to the splashes remembered and the splashes yet to come!

The Moments - Chapter 2: Unpopular Mechanics

                I think we really start to appreciate, and even truly understand, the “mechanics” of life when we start trying to convey them as concepts and practices to a child.  When a baby is born, his or her day probably started at a different time than the kid on the other end of the hospital nursery.  Depending on multiple factors, he or she probably starts taking in nourishment other than milk in different forms and at a different point in their first several months than you or I did (or at a different point than that kid on the other end of the nursery).  Ultimately, you (the parent) and the little person whose inaugural journey through life you are hosting will figure all the details out and adjust them as his or her body, routine, and level of understanding develops.  As nice as that sounds when read as printed words, it is a loaded endeavor to participate in – for you and a baby.  Enter Joey Grimes – the kid who made learning those things and tagging along for the ride fun and enlightening.  Some of “the moments” simply come from experiencing the basics of everyday life with Joey and being a part of his learning about them for the first time.
                During Joey’s first few months of life, we spent a lot of time in the car.  Whether it was making the drive between his mother’s home and mine or taking a day-trip to Lexington to visit my parents, we logged a lot of hours on the road.  As a child is supposed to ride in a rear-facing carseat during, at least, the first year of life, I quickly sought to remedy the monotony of looking behind me or in the rearview mirror and seeing a plastic shell instead of my precious little boy.  Backseat mirror – check.  I highly recommend those.  You can safely see your child with just a glance in the interior mirror.  After a while, kids figure out the device and start looking back at you.  [So, watch your facial expressions behind the wheel.  If the person next to you at a stop sign can look at you like you’re crazy, so can your child.]  During the early months, when Joey still took multiple naps a day, he was perfectly willing to catch some Z’s while on the road and usually fell asleep quickly after the car started rolling.  The times that we learned from are the times when that wasn’t the case.  One evening, during one of our shorter times together, the traffic in Nashville was absolutely not on our side.  It was raining, every road in town was jam-packed, and every vehicle in the city was slow-moving.  In the end, we spent a solid 2 hours in the car with no destination to be easily reached.  Whether the change in the rhythm of the road or the sound of rain was to blame, I don’t know.  Perhaps it was teething pain or a lack of sleep earlier in the day.  Again, I don’t know (nor does it really matter).  All I knew was that little Joey Grimes didn’t want to doze or, at least, wasn’t going to very easily.  With the radio playing to provide a little music and to broadcast those lovely after-work traffic reports from people safely in a helicopter overhead, I tried to “talk Joey down” so that his constant cry might turn to a dull roar.  Didn’t work.  Fool that I am, I had to be reminded that Joey was not yet much of a conversationalist.  I changed the music to something without commercials and with a smooth beat to soothe him.  Again, not doing it.  My mind was racing (since my car wasn’t).  This period of random attempts to find something to calm him might have lasted all of four minutes, but it bothered me.  Wasn’t I supposed to make things better?  Ha!  Well, “supposed to” doesn’t mean “can do.”  It doesn’t even always mean “supposed to” (think about that).  I couldn’t fix the traffic, stop the rain, or definitively identify what was disturbing Joey at the moment.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to do any of those.  I just needed to keep being creative about how to ease his mood under the circumstances.  Not thinking it would do much, I started humming a lullaby as if I were laying Joey down for a nap.  It worked!  It took a few minutes, but his cries grew softer and, without sleeping much, he started to lay at ease in his carseat like it was a normal ride.  However, like the sitcom that my life often is, if I paused my humming for a second, Joey reignited the fussy machine.  The humming routine began early that night and had to continue for over an hour.  After I took Joey back to his mother, I drank an ocean of everything in my fridge to “wet my whistle.”  I’d never been so proud to be a little hoarse.  Since then, the combination of figuring out what works (most of the time; there are no absolutes) in helping Joey relax before a nap or at bedtime and his own evolution into a more mature sleeping schedule have made things a lot easier.  We’ve got a good routine but, certainly, have our share of “off” nights.  He sleeps better in my home than anywhere else now – but only because we’ve learned a lot and figured out how to handle the speedbumps.

                Teething has been another of those natural but thought-provoking things that makes me appreciate mine and Joey’s basic humanity and look at it a little differently.  I don’t remember sprouting my first set of teeth.  Do you?  If you do, good for you (weirdo).  To really put it in an understandable context, I needed to be around someone experiencing it.  Again, enter Joey Grimes.  From what other parents have told me, I think he handled teething rather well.  However, he probably wasn’t thinking that when the uncomfortable sensations in his mouth were giving him fits and making him cry.  When teething pain came along with hunger, drinking from a bottle or, later, a sippy cup served two purposes.  Sometimes, gnawing was all he wanted to do with his milk vessel.  At other times, his baby toys became like a buffet from which he took a bite of everything.  As he grew in his ability to understand and manipulate his hands effectively, he would suck or bite on his fingers to occupy his mouth.  What his abilities and immediately-available resources allowed, he would do.  As with his pre-crawling aggravation, I wanted to get into the act.  A child may be uncomfortable, but a parent should try to find a way to remind him that he doesn’t have to suffer completely alone.  With teething, I would often gnaw on my hand when he did or grab a clean teething toy and bite down while he did the same with another.  Sometimes, he would laugh at me while still doing whatever it was that helped his mouth at the moment.  Those are the moments I like the most – when he can laugh at me or with me as if it eases his discomfort, if only for a second.  Did it always work?  Of course not.  Did it truly ease his pain?  No.  Sharing those moments isn’t about stopping or easing the pain.  It’s about making the moments more bearable, because you (the parent) are the one with the capacity to understand that this, too, shall pass.  Also, the child probably can’t grasp the concept of the forthcoming Tooth Fairy yet.  See!  Teething is eventually profitable. 

                We take the basics of daily life for granted.  When I’m tired at the end of the day, I lay down and go to sleep.  When I need to go somewhere, that is too far away to walk, I get in my car and drive there.  I brush my teeth in the morning and at night and sometimes at other points, and it usually doesn’t hurt to do so.  I prepare a meal or a snack and feed myself when I’m hungry.  Where did all of that come from?  Some of those abilities did not come naturally, and none of them came at the same time as the others.  Nature, nurture, and active learning collaborated to give me the ability to do the things I’ve learned and to handle the parts of life and my body’s existence that came more naturally.  It’s fascinating to think about but only really possible to think about with any depth as we see it form in another person.  Sometimes, I like thinking about this amazing thing I see developing in my son – this thing we call life.  And sometimes, I am reminded of a line from a TV show of my youth that keeps me sane in considering the enormous complexity of it all – “Well, yeah, it makes perfect sense… if you don’t think about it too much.”