So I've been really busy recently --- took a work trip to Vegas, am elbow deep in the book, trying to get back in the groove with the last round of pre-defense dissertation edits, warily eyeing the syllabus for this fall's class. There have been some interesting personal and professional developments for the upcoming academic year that I'll be talking about eventually. And our sitter is on vacation for a week and a half, so I've been home with the kids.

It's been fun, though, being with the kids. The other day I made a half-hour-long recording of a conversation between me and Casey that started with Rosa Parks, meandered past Thurgood Marshall to the concept of race, and from there proceeded back from the early settlement of New York City to the theory of evolution, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, and whether elephants, like birds, are the lineal descendants of dinosaurs.

Elvis is pretty damn cool too, I'm being reminded. I think I said something in my last Elvis post about how no parent can ever be at all certain how many words his toddler actually knows, but spending a couple of days in a row with E has really been an eye-opener. She has a lot more words than I'd realized --- I have no idea how many, but it's got to be several dozen.

A couple of weeks ago I was participating in a focus group downtown, and I went out for dinner by myself before the event. I took a notebook and pen and wrote out the Elvis update I'd been meaning to post, and then promptly lost track of the notebook. By the time I unearthed it, I was well into the crush of work I mentioned above. But since I've been with the kids all day, C1 is letting me hide out a bit while she preps dinner, and I'm going to transcribe the thing.

...But not just yet, it appears. Elvis is melting down, and interfering with dinner prep. I'm needed. Watch this space.

Tags: casey, elvis, family, work

So. Elvis.

Parents tend to say that they get too busy to track the second child's milestones the way they did with the first, and kids --- second kids --- tend to assume that they just get blasé. There's some truth in both of those explanations, but neither tells the real story, at least not for me.

One thing the second kid teaches you, and even the first kid, after a while, is that a lot of developmental milestones are mirages. A kid can do a task one day, and not the next. Maybe not for a couple of months. And then it returns. That thing you thought was evidence of a grasp of cause and effect was coincidence, and the thing you missed completely was really, really interesting. Every parent's list of the words his 18-month-old knows includes words that are just babble, and leaves off words she doesn't use all that much, but has known for ages.

I was at a party last night, and a friend showed me a quote he'd used as the epigram for his dissertation. It's from one of Aldous Huxley's lesser-known books, and I can't find the whole passage online, but here's the heart of it:

At any given moment life is completely senseless. But viewed over a long period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, extending in a certain direction. That life is meaningless may be a lie so  far as the whole of life is concerned. But it is the truth at any given instant.

This is a profound truth, and one that most first-time parents reject instinctively. Your child is not revealed in the flash of a moment, except perhaps in retrospect, by synecdoche. Your child is revealed by accretion, in the drip drip drip of daily living. (So too with parenting. It is the accumulated weight of our mundane relations with them that shape our children, not the fraught decisions we anguish over.)

But we're pattern-seekers, we humans, and what we seek, we find. I was confident, when I posted this in early 2006, that there was a connection between how Casey handled a pen and how she handled clay. Now, having watched her make art for an additional two and a half years, having seen her create dozens of physical objects and literally thousands of drawings, I have no idea what was going on with those pieces I highlighted back then. I wouldn't presume to guess.

And here's another thing about me. I'm a miniaturist. When I was made to write weekly essays on books in grad school, I'd concentrate on a chapter, or even a passage. I can't read a piece of writing without mentally tweaking each imperfect sentence, but it won't occur to me to interrogate a book or an article's structure unless I'm asked explicitly to do so. My sense of something large is built brick-by-brick, and I'm much more comfortable talking about the bricks than I am about the structure I've assembled. The shape of the structure reveals itself to me late in the process, if at all.

And so I'm happy to tell you what my kids did today, but if you ask me who they are this month or this year, I get nervous. With Casey, I have by now a sense of her in full. Not a fully-formed one, or an inflexible one, but a working sense of things. And I arrived at that in large part through a process that I'm now deeply skeptical of --- the process I've described above, the process of recording and interpreting moments at which she revealed something about herself for the first time.

And so if you ask me about Elvis, I feel like I don't know all that much yet. She's got a lot of secrets. She's got a lot going on that she's not equipped to share. I can guess, but I don't like guessing about kids. Your guesses tend to turn into presumptions, and I do believe that those presumptions shape kids in unfortunate ways.

Which is, in turn, another thing. We have two now. Anything we say about Elvis at eighteen months is something we may be tempted to compare and contrast with Casey at the same age. Was one more stubborn? More outgoing? More tense? As bad as it is to mark your kid as X, it has to be worse, I think, to mark her as "the X one," to mark them both as opposites.

But there's stuff I know, all that said. Stuff she does, stuff she likes, stuff she doesn't like. Ways she has. And there's stuff about her and Casey, good stuff about her and Casey. I've taken some notes in the last couple of days, and today or tomorrow I'll be writing some of that stuff up.

Tags: elvis, family, parenting

It took a little poking to confirm this, but California's court ruling affirming same-sex marriage goes into effect in thirty days. Even now, invitations to June weddings are on their way to the printers.

In 2000, when marriage rights first went on the ballot in California, had never been a legally recognized same-sex marriage in the state. In passing Proposition 22 the electorate simply affirmed the status quo. But on June 14 of this year, gay marriage will become a reality in California. The newspapers will be filled with photos of happy couples, and workplaces will be filled with honeymoon photos a week later.

If opponents of marriage equality succeed in getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall, voters will have to answer a different question than the one they faced eight years ago. Then, a vote against gay marriage was simply a vote in favor of the status quo. This November, a vote against gay marriage will be, literally, a vote against marriage --- a vote to render real extant legal marriages null and void.

Eight years ago, Californians voted 61-39 against marriage equality. By last spring, a Field Poll found the margin of opposition had tightened to 51-43.

It's gonna be close, but I kind of like our chances.

Tags: family, gender, politics

I recently stumbled across a journal I kept during my second year of college at Binghamton, my first year on the student government.

In an entry that February I wrote that I had "a bit of a thing" for a fellow member of the SA budget committee. I found her "exciting and interesting and nice and beautiful," but I was flummoxed --- I had "no idea how to extend our relationship."

Apparently I came up with something.

Happy mother's day, C. From me and the kids.


Later: I know everyone's linking to it this year, but I just can't pass up a chance to intone the words "our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause." Here's Julia Ward Howe's 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation.

Tags: family

My sister can't read.

Her disability usually isn't obvious when you meet her. And when she's home visiting my parents, she spends a fair amount of time out in the city on her own. She takes the bus, she shops, she goes to restaurants. She gets her nails done.

My dad gives her her walking-around money as five-dollar bills to limit how much she can lose if someone decides to cheat her when giving change.

But like I say, mostly her disability is invisible. And when folks do notice, they're usually cool about it.

(I remember once, years ago, I was out with L and we got into some sort of awkward situation. I wanted to explain to the woman we were inconveniencing, and so I said "she's..." And then I wasn't sure how to finish the sentence. The woman said "a little slow." It wasn't a phrase I'd ever use myself, and I cringe a little typing it, but she said it with love, and when she said it I felt myself unclench. We were among friends.)

But here's something I wish I could tell everyone in the city: Not everyone can read.

I see it at least once a month, when I'm out and around. Someone on the subway or the street or in a shop will ask a question. "Is this the 14th Street stop?" "How much is a Big Mac?" "What kind of iced tea do you have?" Usually, whoever's asked will answer appropriately, but too often they'll glance up and say "read the sign."


My sister will take a menu when she's offered it. But she can't read.

She'll flip through a magazine when she's bored. But she can't read.

She has a library card. But she can't read.

She's 32 years old, and she looks like any other 32-year-old on the subway. But she can't read.


My sister is good at keeping her disability to herself. She likes keeping her disability to herself. When she's out on the street, away from all of us who know and love and worry about her, she's just another New Yorker. But every once in a while, she could use a little help maintaining her public face.

As we all could.

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day, and you can read. Go read.


(I wrote this post for the first Blogging Against Disablism Day in 2006. Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008. I've updated the URL, but otherwise left the post unchanged.)

Tags: disability, essays, family

At an event over the weekend, Barack Obama was asked his position on sex ed in the schools. Here's a chunk of what he had to say:

The most important prevention is education, which should include abstinence education and teaching children that sex is not something casual. But it should also include other information about contraception. Look, I've got two daughters, nine years old and six years old. I'm going to teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. It doesn't make sense to not give them information.

Chris Dodd said something similar last summer, when he was asked about gay rights during a presidential debate:

My wife and I have two young daughters, age five and two. I'd simply ask the audience to ask themselves the question that Jackie and I have asked: How would I want my two daughters treated if they grew up and had a different sexual orientation than their parents? Good jobs, equal opportunity, to be able to retire, to visit each other, to be with each other, as other people do. I feel very strongly, if you ask yourself the question, "How would you like your children treated if they had a different sexual orientation than their parents?" the answer is yes, they ought to have that ability in civil unions.

I've got some issues with the specifics of what each of the candidates said. I'm disappointed that Obama equated "values and morals" with teen abstinence, and that Dodd opposed full marriage equality. But whatever problems I have with their policy stands, I'm impressed by the way they framed their responses.

There's a standard script that fathers of girls are supposed to follow when talking about their daughters' sexuality. Even today, even in New York City, I've grown accustomed to hearing winking comments about how I'll need to lock my girls up in a few years.

But that's not my script, and it's not the script that these two candidates were reading from.

Obama's youngest and Dodd's eldest are Casey's peers. As fathers, the three of us have some time to figure out how we're going to deal with what's coming. But our daughters are going to be sexual beings sooner than we can imagine, and it's not going to be long before we're going to be facing big questions of how we can help them stay safe, stay healthy, and --- yes --- be happy and fulfilled and assertive.

It's easy to say --- and it's not wrong to say --- that my daughters' sexual identities are none of my business. They're going to grow up and lead their own lives. But at the same time, I want them to understand that there's a difference between something that's private and something that's shameful. I want to pass along some of the stuff I've learned about sexual ethics and morality, and I want them to know that their mother and I are here for them if they need us.

I don't have much of a sense of how the specifics of all this are going to play out. A lot of it is going to depend on aspects of the kids' personalities, and of my relationships with them, that haven't emerged yet. But I know I want us to be talking, and I know that talking means I can't pretend that they're going to stay kids forever. And it's striking to me that Barack Obama and Chris Dodd --- serious candidates for the US presidency, cautious men living in the public eye --- are so comfortable with this stuff.

When Bill Clinton ran for president Chelsea was only a little older than Malia Obama is today. Can you imagine Clinton speculating in 1991 about the possibility that his daugher might grow up gay, or discussing what he'd want her to know about contraception and the prevention of STDs?

Me neither.

There's something going on here. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I think I like it.

Tags: family, gender, obama, politics

Postcards From Yo Momma. Authentic unedited emails to readers from their mothers.

Update: This may be my favorite letter...

Hi Sweetie. I saw “Knocked Up” on the plane coming home and thought it was hilarious but would not wish that kind of life or love for you.

I guess I am too old fashioned.
Have a good day.
love mom

(via Feministe.)

Tags: family

Yesterday a New York court ruled, unanimously, that the state must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. The case was brought an employee of Monroe Community College who was seeking health care benefits for her wife, whom she'd married in Canada. The decision, which reverses a 2006 trial court ruling, can still be appealed to the state's Court of Appeals.

But still, you know. Boom.

Tags: family, gender, parenting, politics

How did it not occur to me in years past that when sending out end-of-year cards, the most sensible thing to do is to write the ones for old/frail/revered family members first, before even thinking about anyone else's?

I'm such a goon.

Tags: family

So we have this thing we do, which I may have mentioned, where we all go around the table and talk about our day. We introduced it a couple of years ago, I guess, when Casey was about three. We don't get to it every night, but we try to remember to do it pretty regularly.

When we've got guests over, though, it takes more time than we have to get all the way around the table with a narrative. So we streamline it down to the three questions we ask after the open-ended "tell us about your day" part on an ordinary night. Three questions:

What did you learn today?
What did you play today?
What was the coolest thing that happened?

Three good questions to ask about anybody's day, I think.

Tags: casey, family