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Monday, July 27, 2009
HEAT OF THE MOMENT
Asia
Asia
Geffen: 1982
[Buy It]
BURNING HELL
John Lee Hooker
Hooker 'N' Heat
Elektra : 1971
[Buy It]
AHMNOT MADATCHA
The Negro Problem
Joys & Concerns
Aerial Flipout : 1999
[Buy It]
I'M NOT ANGRY
Elvis Costello
My Aim Is True
Columbia : 1978
[Buy It]
Yesterday was the first day that was too hot. I didn't check the temperature, but I felt the temperature. A few people disagreed with me, insisting that it was summery but comfortable, so it is possible and maybe even likely that temperature is subjective.
Yesterday was the first day of the summer that I lost my cool. Three separate people in my house--all the people in my house who aren't me--told me that I was too hot-tempered. It started early in the morning, when my five-year-old decided that he was going to talk back, make faces, push things off shelves, lean his chair back on two legs, and generally be five years old. I snapped at him, snapped at him again, told him what he could do to avoid further snapping, but he would not rehabilitate no matter how many opportunities he was offered. My wife and the eight-year-old, more circumspect than I was, tried to rein him in, but they failed as I had failed before them, and as I would fail after them. The morning was bad enough. Then we went to lunch. He started in immediately. The table was shaped weird. The lemonade was too bitter. Give me my cookie. I glowered and scowled and did my best to lessen the swelling, but it got worse over the course of the afternoon. Dinner was a repeat engagement: he mocked my voice and my wife's, stuck his tongue out at his food, laughed inappropriately. Five. Finally I was finished with it. I took my plate to the kitchen, dropped it next to the sink, and left the room. He came to find me and apologize, but somehow managed to turn that into a demand for a trip to the park. "Park, park, park," he said, stamping his foot. "Now, now, now."
"Go away," I said. He didn't. I went for a bike ride by myself. A storm was coming in. The air was nearly liquid. When I came back, he was still defiant. He rolled his eyes and then narrowed them. I yelled a little, which may have seemed like more than a little to him. It was the heat of the moment. Incidents arose from circumstance. The five-year-old went to bed without any resolution, and before he went to sleep he told my wife that he didn't like me. "Dad's always mad," he said. Temperature is subjective.
I have several wise things to say about child-rearing, but none of them relate to the behavior I exhibited yesterday. When the kids were off to sleep, my wife told me that I had acted poorly and I reminded her that five-year-olds can be jerks. "I wonder where he gets it from," she said.
"Stop it," I said. I thought I was joking, but evidently my face wore an expression of rage. I gave in to it. "I'm boiling mad," I said, and as a result I was. She went to bed, tired of me, and I stayed up alone and listened to music. Mostly I listened to John Lee Hooker, who isn't my favorite blues guitarist or singer but usually trances me out a little bit. This time, the first song was "Burning Hell," not the original but the version he recorded with Canned Heat. It starts with a bit of studio chatter in which Hooker gives the producer instructions. "Nothing but the best and later for the garbage," he says. I went in to look at my kids as they slept. The eight-year-old was peaceful; there was a book open beside him. The five-year-old had his jaw set angrily, even in sleep. I lay down next to him for a minute, rubbed his head, and then wrote an apology on a Post-It Note. "Sorry I yelled at you at dinner," I said. "Love, Dad."
Last night a storm dumped rain on the city. Rain is supposed to cool things off. This rain didn't. This morning my five-year-old woke up mad, mostly mad at me. While his brother read and got dressed, he stalled, challenged, got his back up. I went to force him into his shoes and socks, and saw the note I had written him, crumpled up in his trashcan: later for the garbage. A few minutes before we had to leave for camp, he asked me to play some music for him. He likes music with energy: the Hives, the Who, the Ramones. I tried playing him Public Image Ltd.'s "Rise," which explains that anger is an energy, but he wasn't interested in a lesson plan. He insisted on AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." "There was a storm last night," I said.
"So what?" he said. "Who cares?"
I walked him to camp. "I'm hot," he said. "And tired." I resisted saying "Who cares?" We talked about kids and parents and arguments and time. Talking about time was his idea; he wanted to know what it was and how we all got in it and if there was any such thing as being outside of it. I said there wasn't. To support my point, I told that when I was his age, I had a very similar personality to his. "I got in trouble because I argued and talked back," I said. "I didn't like listening to grownups."
"I know," he said. "Why would you?" I turned my head to look at him, assuming he was joking, but his face had an entirely different expression. I didn't ask him if he was still mad. It was obvious. When we got to camp, he asked me to carry him upstairs. "I like being here," he said, "with you." Then he said he had to tell me a secret. I leaned in. "I love you," he said. "Now go away." I did.Labels: ben, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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