Thanks to my unemployment, I was able to fly to South Bend, IN (directly) on Wed night and stay through the weekend. (Theresa’s husband, Craig, is a professor at Notre Dame, which also happens to be my dad’s alma mater.) I got in too late to see Patrick that first night, but I was up (late) the next morning to say hello. He was much chattier than the last time I saw him, which Theresa said had started just a few days before. There were very few recognizable words in his babble, but his tone was upbeat and endearing.
It took me until about the third day to really get back into “Best Uncle Ever” mode. (Theresa and Craig got a mug conferring me with that title.) I think it was his growth that threw me off. The little baby I once knew was now fully a babbling toddler whose demands were clearer and stronger. Most of the time he’s a darling, but sometimes, like most kids, he can be a handful.
I played with him quite a bit on Thursday and Friday. Theresa works from home, so she took care of the essentials and when Paddy wanted his mom, which was quite often. But after a while he’d bring me books to read and climb into my lap, which was great, obviously. Unfortunately, his Elmo book has become a gateway drug for TV. Reading it made him want to watch The Furchester Hotel, an Elmo vehicle on Netflix that they let him watch. He turned on the TV once on his own, and, after watching a few minutes of another PBS show, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, in rapt wonder, I turned it off, which sent him into a crying jag.
He has a lot of toys and books. By the end of each day, the living room was a mess and, after putting him to bed, we’d clean it up. He also has a play area in the basement. There are 2 balls that light up when bounced, and he threw those around the room for a long time. With most of the basement lights off, it looked like a mini-rave. There’s also a table with buttons that make noises and play songs. He hit the buttons in rapid succession, before the songs could finish, as if he were an EDM DJ. It was like his own little dance club down there.
Friday was my birthday, so Theresa picked up a cake (chocolate with chocolate frosting, natch) and balloons, which Paddy loved, grilled up some steaks and asparagus, and we had a delightful dinner. After Patrick had retired, we stayed up late talking politics and jobs. I laughed harder than I had in a long time, so hard that I fell into a few coughing fits. It wasn’t just the hilarity of my companions, but being more relaxed than I’d been in a long time.
I should mention that “Paddy” is my nickname for him. (I wanted to double-down and whip out “Paddycakes” for special occasions, but then I heard about the new indie film Patti Cake$ and thought better of it.) His parents call him “P” or “Mr. P.” Theresa said she doesn’t like “Paddy” and has apparently managed to break Craig of the habit of calling him that. But he’s gonna need something credible for the playground, and I don’t think “P” is gonna cut it. It could, but that’s not usually how the playground, at least for boys, works. Granted, “Paddy” sounds just like “Patty,” a far more common girl’s nickname, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Besides, he’s not old enough to go by “Pat” yet.
There’s another option, of course, which would be to just go by “Patrick.” But that’s a rare situation for boys, and it seems like all boys who go by their given name have something wrong with them. Either they’re nerds or wusses or upper-class twits.
Moms have something against nicknames for their sons, it seems. My mom didn’t like calling me “Mickey.” She was afraid I’d get picked on for having the same name as Mickey Mouse (which only happened once, as I recall). My friend named her son “Thomas” and refused to call him “Tom” or “Tommy.” How ya gonna call a baby “Thomas”? It’s not like he’s the Dauphin.
I discussed this with my Aunt Kate, and she thinks moms are very attached to the names they give their kids and generally loath to abbreviate them. You don’t know what you’re doing to your sons, ladies! Don’t saddle them with their given names! Unless you name them “John” or “Hal” or “Rutiger”, yer gonna hafta let go of that nomenclature, except for when you’re really mad at them.
I got up around 10:30 on Saturday. (But Indiana is on Eastern time, so it's not as bad as it sounds.) I had just enough time for breakfast before Theresa and I took Paddy to A-mazing Acres. It’s a farm out in the boonies with a bunch of children’s activities. As Craig and Theresa said, the place has no concept of liability, because they’ve taken virtually no safety measures. But that just makes it more magical.
The first stop was the Corn Box, which is like a ball pit but with corn kernels instead of balls. It took Paddy a while to grasp the concept, but he eventually crawled around in it. We checked out the mannequin-like bunnies in Bunnieville and a coop of slightly more active chickens. There was a (stationary) wooden train that he loved crawling through and the Apple Cannon, which you could use to fire at large pictures of insects. I didn’t know if these insects were the enemies of apples or what. One was a grasshopper, so I doubt it.
We managed to make it through one of the Corn Mazes, which was my first time going through one of those. Our final destination was the coup de grâce: a huge inflatable trampoline in a barn. It was basically a bounce house without the house. Theresa went onto it with Paddy and made sure he didn’t get knocked over by the other kids. He had a ball, mainly watching the kids run and jump, but also crawling around and standing a little.
We were there for maybe an hour-and-a-half, although I’m sure to Paddy it seemed like no time at all. Through watching him play, I’ve come to realize the joy of watching kids have fun, especially when you know them. It feels stronger than the joy I felt playing as a kid, which was quite strong.
I think it’s because I’ve reestablished an emotional link to the joy of my childhood, free of the baggage of adolescence. It has unlocked my generosity. Now I get more joy from giving than receiving. I can once again draw on the deep well of love that my family gave me. I no longer need to be an emotional miser. I have care to spare.
The weekend took a slight downward turn when we returned from A-mazing Acres. I started feeling dizzy, and I knew why. I’d forgotten to pack my paroxetine (better known as Paxil, an anti-anxiety, anti-depression medication). Since I’d be going 4 days without my meds, I figured I’d experience symptoms of withdrawal at some point.
I lay down on my bed for an hour, which renewed my energy a bit, but didn’t diminish the dizziness once I got up. I joined the fam in the living room. Craig had been tailgating with some co-workers and friends. He had a ticket for the Notre Dame football game, but decided not to go. He got me a ticket too, but I wasn’t interested either.
He was sitting on the couch, watching college football on the TV. Theresa was also on the couch, working on her laptop. Patrick was shuttling between them and his toys, having a grand old time. Craig brought out a hunk of cheese and pepperoni slices. To Theresa’s consternation, he let Paddy take the cheese and gnaw away at it. Internally, I usually side with Theresa in their parenting disputes, but I try not to insert myself. My sister and I are more cautious than Craig. It’s a classic Midwesterners-vs.-Australians situation.
Paddy looked very cute carrying around the hunk o’ cheese and gnawing on it. Then he got his hands on the cheese cutter and tried slicing the hunk. He was surprisingly successful, but it was worrying to see him handle such a sharp object.
Three friends of theirs who were in town for the game came over that evening to hang out on the patio. The woman in the group wanted to sing Paddy a Polish song as a lullaby, so she went upstairs to his bedroom when Craig was getting him ready for bed. I was too out-of-it and dizzy to socialize extensively with strangers, so I went down to the basement and watched the first few episodes of Garfunkel and Oates on Netflix. They were quite good.
My dizziness continued on Sunday. Theresa, Patrick and I went out for brunch. Theresa’s first choice, the American House of Pancakes or something, looked busy, so we went to Perkin’s instead. We were seated in a high-traffic area, and people kept squeezing by Paddy’s high chair. He’s an avid people-watcher, so that kept him distracted for a while. But the food took a while to arrive. Theresa had to go to the entertainment of last resort: the Elmo videos on her phone. Once the food arrived, he was fine, chowing down on the bits of Theresa’s meal she gave him and people-watching.
By the time we got back home, there was only an hour left before I had to be at the airport. We spent it in the backyard. Patrick has always been enamored of the outdoors. Theresa took some pictures of us, but he wouldn’t sit still long enough to get a really good one.
To my surprise, I was getting choked up, to a degree that I hadn’t in at least a decade. My emotions intensified on the car ride to the airport, while playing with Paddy in the backseat, and I alerted Theresa to my state. She assured me that I could always FaceTime with her and Paddy and we’d be seeing each other again soon. I explained that it had more to do with the fact that I haven’t had a really good cry since starting middle school. A lot of the sadness and tears of the intervening 27 years had built up. I told her I’d been trying to cry for years.
“So this is a good thing?” She asked. “Yeah,” I answered. It felt good, but it also felt really awkward and embarrassing, like the way some men (John Boehner, for instance) have of crying that makes you want to prohibit all men from crying in public. As I told Theresa, I was rusty. When we got to the airport, she proposed a group hug. Patrick has recently learned to hug, but I couldn’t tell if he joined in. I held him for a while and kissed him repeatedly on the temple. He seemed to enjoy it, because he didn’t move. Also, Patrick loves to rub heads, so he was probably enjoying the experience on that level too.
I waved goodbye and proceeded into the (small) terminal. My emotions were still exposed, but it still felt good, even though I was reluctant to exhibit these feelings in public. I approached the breaking point a few times, but I wasn’t able to go into a full-fledged bout of crying. In the line at the ticket counter was a man with a military tote bag and a group of people seeing him off. Some of them were misty-eyed, and it seemed like other people in and around the line were too.
It felt like an emotional breakthrough. I’m not sure how much of it had to do with the Paxil withdrawal. But I’d hoped to open up to Craig and Theresa that weekend anyway, so it wasn’t a total shock. Being around Paddy may have been the real trigger, stemming from the aforementioned reestablished emotional link to my childhood.
I think I fell so hard for Paddy because of his innocence (and his super-cuteness). I’d come to think of Life as a long, slow march from Cuteness to Non-cuteness, or, put another way, from Innocence to Guilt, or at least Complicity. It seemed like each year brought another moral compromise. I thought of him as a chance to start over. Maybe my life had gone horribly off-track, but I could still steer Patrick away from the rocks on which my ship ran aground.
But mine is no longer the story of the prodigal son. My personal narrative is now one of redemption. All of my hardships have been justified (for now). I seem to be a lot closer to being the person I want to be. Even though there are sure to be more twists and turns, I may finally have the emotional resilience not to lose the plot.
