Finding my footing

Dec. 1, 2005

I admit, as cliché as it seems, to counting Myowndaughter’s fingers and toes when she was plucked from the womb. I did this right after I was sure she hadn’t received my father-in-law’s nose. They were all there, all 20 digits, all perfectly normal on her perfectly beautiful little body.
Then, a month or two later, I looked at her cute little feet and made a startling discovery.
Her toes, the second and third ones on both feet, seem to share their first knuckle, the one still inside the foot part of the foot. These toes sit apart from the other ones, like two flower buds sprouting from the same short stem.
“Have you seen this? Look, look at this!” I said to Mod’s Sexymom.
She’s grown accustomed to my occasional histrionics, which seem to have increased in frequency since our daughter was born.
“What.” She said it more than asked it.
“Mod’s toes! They’re, they’re … they’re stuck together!”
“Yeah. I told you that. She has webbed toes, just like you.”
What? First of all, I didn’t remember her telling me anything about my toes, but that’s such a common theme I skipped right past it.
“I have webbed toes? What are you talking about? You’re crazy! I don’t have webbed toes.” After all, when we were in that hot-and-heavy dating phase, where we were both dumbly blinded to any of each other’s blemishes, Trish told me how “manly” my feet were. Really, it’s true. “I’m glad to be dating a man with ‘manly feet’.” She said it just like that. Why would she say that, even seized by passion, if I had mutant toes?
With Mod tottering on my knee I yanked off my shoes and socks, peered down at my size 12s, my manly feet, looked closer, tilted my head, kicked a foot onto the coffee table for a better view and there, right in front of my eyes, between the big toe and the fourth toe were two toes, stuck together.
Other foot, same thing.
They’re not exactly webbed; Sexymom was exaggerating. But the spaces between the toes in question definitely are not as long as the spaces between the others. My metatarsals merged. They were just like Mod’s, only bigger and with manly hair.
To find a part of one’s own body one never knew existed is, to be certain, a significant event for anyone. But I was 36. I’d lived with this body a long time, showered thousands of times, put on socks thousands of times, spent countless hours barefoot. Why hadn’t I noticed? I’d even had two minor procedures done on my big toes. Podiatrists had seen my feet. Specialists. Why hadn’t they said something? If I had been 19, or 20, even 25, maybe I wouldn’t be so shocked, my body would still be “young,” newish.
(I later told a friend about this. She said, “you and Ashton Kutcher.” Apparently, the pop press reported on the punked punk’s conjoined toes. Great. I had two things in common with this silly, quasi-adult bizillionaire actor — a sexy older wife and webbed toes. I must admit, I was a little flattered.)
But life had brought a lot of excitement and discovery my way in recent years. Six years ago I was divorced, after seven years of marriage. In the following two years I moved to a new city, changed jobs twice and careers once and adopted two dogs. Then, I met the future Sexymom, and a year later I was married again. Life was moving fast.
Three years after thefuture Sexymom and I married, Mod was born, early one November morning. Suddenly I was looking at, and into, a whole new life, and that life was looking back at me, and crying, and pooping, and sleeping on my chest with quick, shallow breaths with the heartbeat a hummingbird, small and fragile. Life slowed down, and I welcomed the new pace.
I was faced with new challenges, to be sure. I didn’t know how to hold a baby, rock a baby to sleep, prepare formula. I knew nothing about an infant’s demanding schedule.
The genes in my family, my father’s family, are very strong. Photos of me, my siblings and our dad all look like pictures of the same baby dressed in clothes from different decades and posed with props from respective eras.
After Mod was cleaned and warmed pink in her hospital bassinet, I looked down and saw my hair, dark and messy and abundant; my ample cheeks and little round chin; my olive skin; and my old-soul eyes, looking for answers and questions and more answers.
I’m proud of my daughter’s toes. They’re incredibly cute, even if a couple of them look a little different. And I’m still excited that after 36 years I practically found a new body part. But, I’m most proud, and amazed, and appreciative, that this little girl, my little girl, Myowndaughter, has already started teaching me something about myself.
Life as a single man, and even a married man without kids, can be very self-serving, and self-satisfying. My daughter’s life has added new dimensions to mine, outside my own needs, that I didn’t know existed. My relationship with both my parents, from the very beginning, was distant to say the least. Perhaps the greatest discovery, tipped off by my little girl’s toes, might not be that there’s another world available to me; that’s universal. What’s unique is my gradual learning that I have the capacity to live in that world.

Half a mile, uphill, in the …

The other day, Myowndaughter, every stinkin bit of 2, walked two of our three dogs half a mile, uphill.
She had Duke on her left and Tiger on her right, and their respective leashes in her corresonding hands, and kept these two bad boys in line for about 20 minutes. While wearing her winter mud-puddle splashing boots, no less, when the temperature was in the 70s.
I was in absolute awe.
I asked her, “want some help?”
“No.”
We’d walk a while farther.
“Want to ride in the stroller now?” I’d brought it along knowing I’d employ it sooner or later.
“No.”
When Mod says “no,” it’s usually just matter-of-fact. Short and sweet. Thanks for asking, but, no.
We walked down our street, turned left, walked up the big hill, turned right, walked past the construction workers framing houses and digging utility lines and back to the undeveloped lots. She wasn’t distracted, wasn’t tired, wasn’t intimidated. She was enjoying herself, without, apparently, giving it much though.
Later that day I drove the route, to get the mileage.
Half a mile, on her own, basically, controlling two large dogs known to bolt on occasion. She gets the toughness from her mom, definitely.
It’s amazing what kids will do.

Give me a pea!

Stepblog’s post about “>sweetness vs. badassness reminded me of a story about Myowndaughter.

Mod, every stinkin bit of 2, is a fairly decent eater, as they say. She likes spinach, broccoli, peas. She scarfs edamame. She’ll throw back fruit like a monkey. She just doesn’t always eat a lot, and sometimes hardly touches her dinner.

Being an ignorant first-time dad, this, of course, got to me. My default parental instincts are those forged by parents who lived through the Depression. After witnessing this behavior a couple of times I’d had enough. Dammit, I thought, I worked for that food, I paid for that food, she’d better eat it or … else. I thought of the “children are starving” speech but quickly dismissed it because when I was a kid the b-roll in those Sally Struthers commercials, where she shamed people into feeding children in Africa for only pennies a day, always freaked me out and I’d turn the dial from UHF to VHF as fast as I could.

So, ignorant first-time dad that I am, I tried to get Mod to eat by, of course, telling her to. It went like this:
“Eat!” says I.

“Hahahahahaha,” says she. She has a great laugh. Even a great sence of comedic timing. But that didn’t deter me.

“Come on, now, I’m serious!” (She’s supposed to know this because I’ve raised my voice.) “Eat!”

“Abbyabbyabbyabby?” says Mod, invoking the name of her favorite dog. Sometimes “Abby” has relevance, sometimes not.

“Eat!”

“Noooooooo,” lilting at the end.

I was getting nowhere, and I didn’t understand why. I would leave the house at 7 a.m. and come home at 6 at night, maybe 7 when the man put it to me extra hard. I would be hungry. Why wasn’t this ungrateful kid?

It’s too late, my fatalist voice would said, sadly shaking its metaphorical head. We’ve already started to indulge and pamper and encourage her to be a spoiled, insolent, unambitious louse who completes her life sponging off of honest taxpayers like me. That’s what happens. My dad told me so. I’d better nip this corrosive behavior in the bud.

Fortunately, the woman I sleep with, who happens to be Mod’s mother and my sexy wife, is more enlightened than I. And, more rational. And I know she objects to my behavior because she’s not saying anything. I think she secretly laughs at me. She’s with the kid all day and has to pull every trick in the book to get her to eat, nap, play nicely, don’t run out in the street naked, don’t catch the dog on fire. I get home and in 30 minutes I expect the kid to jump to attention. I expected to win a showdown with a 2-year-old when 2-year-olds live for showdowns. I lost professional show-down status decades ago. I was in over my head.

So when Sexymom got quiet I rethought my strategy. I remembered that even Ward Cleaver swallowed his words on occasion, when it was appropriate, when his own sexy wife (was she ever!) shone a light on the falicy of his logic. And, I’ve contemplated this parenting thing long enough to realize the way I was taught was really pretty crappy.

I’m mostly ignorant, but I’m not a total idiot. I see I’ve hit a brick wall — a 2-year-old brick wall who happens to be very cute. In one of those rare moments, I actually evaluate the situation and think of a solution, a complete change in course.

I wait until Mod takes a bite, on her own, then I cheer really loudly.

“Horaaaaaaaay! You did it! You took a bite!!!!! Yayyyyyyy, Mod!!!! Woohooooo!”

She’s startled. She’s baffled. Sexymom is startled, maybe a little scared.

I see my daughter’s brow wrinkle. What the hell’s gong on with the old man? He’s nuts. Let’s get him to do this again.

And she takes another bite.

“Hooraaaaaaaaay!” I cheer like I did at college football games, like the Houston Astros didn’t choke during the World Series (I know, it was two years ago, I’m still not over it), like I, myself, would have loved to have been cheered.

I actually get a positive response! She likes this craziness! She eats, I cheer. It’s fun! She takes another bite.

She pauses, looks at me, takes another bite …

I am not an idiot, but I am ignorant. I stop cheering. I figure a little applause has sent her on her way to a healthy meal.

“Dada! Hooraaaaay!”

“Oh, yeah! Hooraaaaaaay!” Phew. Nice recovery.

Mod remembers this little game the next night, and the next. For a couple of weeks, dinner resembles a political convention. Mod cheers when I eat. She cheers when Sexymom eats.

Health disclosure here — we’re not forcing our kid to eat eat eat eat. We tell her to eat when she’s hungry, and when she’s not, stop. Sometimes, though, she’d like a little encouragement, a little something to help her focus.

Now, we cheer less often. Sometimes I cheer and she doesn’t buy it, and that’s OK. But this exercise has carried over to other aspects of our daily lives — getting dressed, brushing teeth, not catching the dog on fire. There might still be children starving in Africa — we’ll tackle that topic another time — and I might still, occasionally, once in a while, maybe raise my voice. But I’ve emerged from the fog of doom — Mod isn’t going to be a louse because she doesn’t clean her plate. Foregoing second helpings doesn’t foreshadow life in a methlab.

Dinnertime is much more enjoyable, now that I’ve been ever-so-slightly more enlightened.