The sound of a marching band blasts through the mid-morning air, bouncing off the neighbors’ garages. An insistent train whistle sounds its required alarm in the near distance. A beat up, muffler-less, sub-compact barely slows and then belches through the intersection, ignoring the stop signs. Peanut click-click-clicks across the kitchen floor, turning in agitated little circles, whining for a walk.
Meanwhile, David an Trinity are on each other’s nerves, snipping and sniping at each other in a register that makes Sarah Palin sound like Greta Garbo.
Eddie finds his way into my office and begins digging at a cardboard box seemingly without any intention of finally settling in. It’s all about the clawing.
I can’t hear birds for the voice inside my head that keeps listing all the things that need to get done: yardwork, laundry, shopping, grading, reports, proposals…
And so I go outside and start to pull the weeds that have taken over our driveway. The marching bands continue in the background, but the satisfying “rip” and “pop” of roots giving way joins in and suddenly I feel a little better.
Not everybody loves a sound of the train in the distance. Sometimes where you are right now, as maddening as it can be, it right where you need to be.
Nancy and I celebrated our 18th anniversary a little early last night. Our actual anniversary isn’t until Monday, but we could get a babysitter for last night, so a-celebratin’ we went, toasting our marriage which is now voting age.
We went out to Stables Steak House, perhaps the best restaurant in Terre Haute and dropped a cool $120 on a couple of steaks (with sides and salads, of course), a couple of beers (for me) and a couple of $12 glasses of wine for Nancy. We realized that this was the first time we had been out together ALONE since we got the kids (27 months ago). We weren’t gone long – a mere 2 hours – but I think the kids wore our babysitter (the heroic Fran) down, nonetheless.
When we got back home, there was a message from one of Nancy’s students who has done work for the Obama campaign here in Terre Haute. Her message indicated that there were 4 tickets to Obama’s Terre Haute visit (scheduled for the next day) waiting for us at the gates to the Fairgrounds. How could we say no?
So, we packed the kids up in the car this morning and headed out to the Fairgrounds. David was a little upset because when we asked if he wanted to go see Barack Obama he said yes, but it turns out that he thought we were going to his house. David loves to se people’s houses. And then he thought that maybe Sen. Obama would come to our house. David loves visitors. But he doesn’t love crowds.
The crowd itself was actually quite small (a few hundred at most) and the setting was intimate (an equestrian ring), but it was still loud and chaotic. And we sat on hay bales near the back. After a couple of brief rallying speeches and an introduction by Sen. Evan Bayh, Obama took the stage.
And while the speech itself was nothing unexpected (lots of stuff about change, you know), when you meet his eye, which I did do at one point, the guy is electric. I’m hopeful that some day Dave and Trin can look at these brief video clips and recognize that they were in the presence of this historic person.
Of course, none of us heard all that much of the speech because were busy wrangling these two live wires we call kids: jumping off the hay bales, chatting up strangers, wanting to talk to state troopers and Secret Service agents (who are nicer than you’d expect), getting obsessed by the ladder behind us, and much, much more. By the time we left, I was sure that I’d been captured on camera by any number of major news organizations in the act of quietly scolding, looking stern, or getting slammed in the face by Trin’s “First Teddy.” Keep your eyes open for that.
At the end of day, I didn’t come away with much new information about Barack Obama – Nancy and I and our marriage will be voting for him come November. But we did learn that the first rule of civic engagement is: get a babysitter.
This semester I'm teaching the foundations course for my department, Communication and Theatre. I always start the course off with a bit about communication as the deployment of symbols and the construction, sharing, and contestation of meaning -- how we become social beings as we enter into language, but that we must realize that this language is learned and it's relationship to the real world is symbolic and arbitrary.
And now I can use Dave and Trin as examples.
Both Dave and Trin are now talking up a storm and it never ceases to amaze me just how much they pick up without us even noticing or trying to teach them. Right before our eyes they are becoming social creatures: complex communicators increasingly aware of the rules of both their new language and their culture. When (and how), for instance, did Dave learn that train cars are "coupled" together. How did Trin learn to put a sentence together like, "You're a good Daddy."? Of course, I still can't really understand what they are saying half the time, mostly because they are whining their words or just slurring them together like a couple of drunken college kids at a four-kegger (complete with odd dance moves and unexpected violence).
And so there we were tonight, Nancy, Trin, and I (Dave was already asleep having denounced his nap time on the weekends), waiting for Trin's bedtime to arrive. It was a long day and I really wanted a beer. Not just any beer. One of the two cold Smithwick's in the fridge.
"Man, I really want that beer now," I said.
"Have it, " said Nancy.
"Nah, I have to put Trin to bed in about 20 minutes."
"I guess it depends on whether you're a happy drunk or a mean drunk."
Trinity traipsed over to the fridge and hauled on the door. "What are you doing, Trin?" I demanded.
"I'm getting you a beer," she said as clear as a bell. She gave the door another firm tug. It opened. Trin reached in a came out with one of those nice cold bottles in her little brown hand. "Here, Daddy!"
"Thank you, my love," I said, taking the bottle from he hand and opening it on the wall-mounted bottle opener.
Twenty minutes later, Trin and I went upstairs. I read her "The Saggy-Baggy Elephant" and then sang her a song until she went to sleep.
There are some things about communication that can't be taught - like Daddy needs a beer.
1. David will eat as many blueberries as you let him eat...and not get sick.
2. Trinity, under the right wind conditions, will fly approximately 10 feet if she leaps from the swing at the apex of its upward trajectory. She won't be injured in the least, but it will scare the poop out of everyone involved.
3. Tractors are pretty easy to drive.
4. David is one cool 3 year-old. Sample comment to a 4 year-old girl with whom he grew tired of playing:
"You'll have to go when your mommy calls you. It was nice to meet you."
