BLACK LIKE ME

A famous novel and movie was titled Black Like Me, about a white man who put on make-up to look black. He experienced as closely as a white man could, what it was like to be black. Some kids used to call me nigger when I was a boy, because of my last name, and I remember it hurt. Now I have had this  experience that mostly women have and occasionally I felt that my new friends would forget that they were talking to a man. Mothers of America, you are right when you say that your husbands don't do enough, but you shoudn't put them down when they make an effort. In his eyes, he's doing 50 times more than his father did and he wonders why you don't appreciate it more! Having said that, wouldn't it be great if every man in the USA pledged one hour a week less of viewing televised sports and devoted it to the kids? You could take it away from the first half of the game when nothing important happens. You can't change the world unless you're going to start a new religion or buy a thermonuclear device. You can change your  world. I changed mine. My biggest problem in the future is finding a job as  rewarding.

DIVIDENDS

When the boys were under a year old, the work was at its hardest. As they got older, I reaped many dividends. They  stopped running in different directions. As toddlers, I would scoop up one and run after the other when this happened. After age two they became little buddies and played together. The three of them might even allow me to talk to another playground parent without screaming for my attention.

My most pleasant surprise was how most women accepted me and what I was doing. There was a story in New York City about a father who was allegedly turned down when he tried to join a playgroup at a YWHA. They told him it was full. His wife later called and she was told to come on down. I have never run into this kind of overt prejudice and  can only guess it is a correlate to the discrimination at the all-men clubs that women want to join. The added cruelty factor that this man faced was that the child was being discrininated against too.

I am a loner. Hard to be one when you have three kids and a wife, but that's what I used to be. I've made one good friend, Cathy, who has a boy the twins age. She comes to our house and we go to hers, and the  kids have a lot of fun together. She told me that her son Dylan woke up in the middle of the night after our recent visit and said, "Where's Tommy and Matt?" Then he said, "I had a nice dream." The last visit the three boys played a lot and  fought a lot. When we left, Dylan cried. They were all born in 1989 so it would be great if they could be in pre-K together. Here in New York City pre-school acceptance is determined by lottery or political connection. The Board of Education will deny this but I have had mothers literally tell me that it will be no problem to get their child into pre-K because they, "know somebody." These are the things you learn when you work at home.
The physical sensations of being home--one boy squeezed in on each side of me as we sit on the couch and read; the hugs and kisses for boo-boos; two tiny sleepy arms  wrapped around my neck; ubiquitous peanut butter and jelly sticky fingers; the wet runny noses that inevitably came in threes; the daily exhaustion that came at 2:30 p.m.; the cries of "don't forget me!" from  any two kids if any third kid got a kiss or a hug or a pick-up--these are the things that have become part of me forever.

We have a computer. It is a lifesaver on a rainy day or a sick day for Brigid when we can't go out. For Thanksgiving 1992 I generated some turkey pictures and the kids colored and hung them on the wall.  I have a lot of pictures on file in the PC so we have coloring "contests" where everybody gets a ribbon and shows off to Mom when she gets home. One very entertaining and educational computer game for  kids is a shareware (available for demonstration and if you keep it you pay for it) program called "Amy's First Primer." It contains letter and number games and a fun maze game called "Help the Froggy." The frog has to negotiate a maze using the arrow keys. When completed, the frog gets to snare and eat a fly with his long tongue, and chew it. The kids then say, "The frog was hungry!" I downloaded this game from America Online and it is also available from Public Brand Software, 800 426-3475. I also subscribe to Prodigy, the interactive service from IBM and Sears, where the children enjoy the stories in "Reading Magic."

WHAT TO CALL ME

When I left my old job (I still freelance for them) the office staff had a big laugh at the good-bye party when someone called me "Mr. Mom." I said no, call me "Major Dad." I feel that one thing the more radical element of the women's movement did (they continue to deny it) was stigmatize not only mothers who stayed home with their kids full-time but the word "mother" itself. I now call myself a full-time father. When I would meet somebody new or somebody I hadn't seen in a while, I had trouble answering the simple question,"What are you doing now?" I was self-concious and would always throw in the fact that that I still freelanced in publishing.

I hear a lot of mothers sound almost apologetic that they are home with the kids, but in general I feel that  my female contemporaries are less likely to let other women dictate choices to them.  It's generational. Today's 45-year-old woman had the freedom of making choices that her 70-year-old mother didn't have the chance to make. In 1947, the norms decided that she stay home with her kids. That same 45-year-old's 35-year-old sister (my contemporary) had the chance to see how it worked out for big sister, how big sister handled the conflict of career and family. Little sister had a frame of reference that gave her an idea of how her choice could or couldn't work out.
 Instead of this being a forward thinking progression, with people being more informed and enlightened, today we may see a pendulum swinging. The 45-year-old now has a 20-year-old daughter in college. The college girl sees Barbara Bush being slighted by students at an all-female college because her only accomplishment in their eyes was being  married to a famous man. We can conjecture that these young people came up with this idea on their own. We might make a more accurate guess that this short-sightedness about the importance of raising a family came from the values that their professors taught them. Much of the world rejoices  for the first time in decades in liberty American style, while some Americans seek to narrow our possibilities. "Give me Liberty, or give me death!" said Patrick Henry.  Today we are confronted by the death of ideas. Will this be the first new generation to conform to the norm, this political correctness? Academia, teach the children to think, don't teach them what to think, or even worse, what not to think.

 At a party I met a man whose wife was pregnant. She was a high priced lawyer and he was an academic. He gave me that old line,"Yeah, I thought about that, staying home with the baby." In addition to a teaching position, he did freelance reviewing for academic journals, so he was a good candidate for squeezing in some freelance time at home. From our conversation, I gleaned that he thought that I had a lot of time to do freelance. I couldn't convey this one bit of information to this learned man: you can't do work when you're trying to work. He kept saying to me,"Yes, but how much time do you have to work during the day?' I would say, "I am  working all day." He would say, "No, no, no, I mean work." He's a wannabe. He'll never do it.

part 3