The Land of China, Part 1

In baseball, there is a time-honored maxim that "hitting is contagious" - that is, that good hitting inspires more good hitting. I think the same sentiment applies to writing. After reading an excellent piece about fatherhood by my good friend Steve Orders, it occurred to me that the old "Bank of Barron" has been collecting dust for more than two months now. Luckily, I'm spending the next month and a half at my school's front desk, where I'll be resuming my receptionist duties. Not a ton happens during the summer, which means I really have no excuse not to write. In fact, it was this very job, with its wide swaths of free time in front of a computer, that enabled me to start the blog a year ago.

Chairman Mao's Little Red Book was all over the place.

While cleaning out a drawer yesterday, I came across a journal that I kept during my time in China ten years ago and was immediately overcome with nostalgia. My first thought was the obvious, "I can't believe it was ten years ago." My second thought was that it is incredibly unlikely that I will ever take a trip like this again. I don't just mean that it is unlikely that I'll return to China, although I guess that's true too. What I mean is that I now have a wife and kids, and a house with a lawn that needs to be mowed, and the inclination to want to make at least a little money during the summer instead of just bumming around a foreign country. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in the unlikely event that I ever return to China, it won't be for six weeks and it won't be entirely without an itinerary and it won't involve a sketchy program I found on the internet.

The story of my trip is pretty convoluted actually, and when most people asked me about it upon my return, I tried to provide the Reader's Digest Program: "I tried to teach English in China. It didn't really work. I ended up basically bumming around the country for six weeks instead. In spite of my disastrous experience with the teaching program, it was actually a great trip."

Here's the longer story, as I remember it:

At some point during the 2006-2007 school year, I decided that rather than return to summer camp for the umpteenth time, I wanted to do something a little spontaneous and adventurous. So as one does, I combed the internet for all sorts of weird programs abroad. One of these was a summer camp in - I kid you not - Siberia. (On beautiful Lake Baikal, "the Blue Eye of Sibera"!) Thankfully, my dad talked me out of this one. I had never longed to go to China, but the internet was rife with
opportunities to teach English there. Almost all of these programs offered only volunteer work, and volunteers were required to pay their own airfare, but housing and meals were generally free. At school one day, I happened to talk to my colleague Krista about my search and it turned out she was looking for something similar. She referred me to a program she had been considering, which offered American teachers the chance to spend a summer teaching ESL at schools in China. We both interviewed (a rigorous process consisting of a ten minute phone call), and after filling out some paperwork and paying a visit to the Chinese Consulate in Glover Park to procure a Visa, we were on our way together.

Lake Baikal does actually look pretty impressive. On the other hand, summer in Siberia still sounds like a questionable proposition.

Some months before the trip, we were told that we would be stationed in Yangzhou, a "town" with a population of around 4.5 million - or more than a half million larger than L.A. While Yangzhou's description in Lonely Planet sounded appealing enough, we wanted to see more of the country too, and so we arranged to fly to Beijing a week early, to fit in some sightseeing before getting down to business. This part of the trip was fairly conventional. Krista and I stayed in a small hotel in a "hutong" or narrow winding alleyway near Beijing's massive main train station. In a few days there, we hit most of the biggies: Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, lunch at the famous Peking Duck Restaurant, a long hike on the Great Wall.

We meant to travel down to Tai Shan, the sacred mountain south of Beijing, but due to a combination of mishaps and poor translations, we missed our train there and wound up going instead to the city of Nanjing, which we actually found quite lovely. Its Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum looked like it had been

Nanjing's humble memorial to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. The Chinese aren't really into subtlety.

built for a god and could only be reached by climbing approximately 7000 steps, but it was indeed an incredible sight, unknown to most westerners. The next stop was Shanghai, a few hours away, where were to meet our fellow volunteers at small hotel. It was there that we would be sent off to our posts at various schools around the country. Now in the hands of this organization we had found via Google search, we would be forfeiting our autonomy. And it was at this point that our trip went off the rails.

Part Two to come...

Remembering the Rachels

Ten years and a few months ago, Rachel Smith, a student in my eleventh grade English class at Thomas Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, took her midterm exam and then, almost immediately afterward, got into a car with her friend, Rachel Crites. The two girls were reported missing about twenty-four hours later. Within a week, they were found dead, lying side by side in a station wagon in a rural area of Loudon County, Virginia.

Smith (left) and Crites (right)

The subsequent investigation suggested that the two girls were romantically involved and that their deaths had been part of a suicide pact. A key piece of evidence was an excerpt from Crites' journal: "Wherever I end up laying, whether buried or cremated, I want to stay with my true love, buried next to her. This is my choice. I'm sorry." Needless to say, the media was all over this disturbing story. In the weeks to come, fingers would be pointed in the direction of Wootton. Should Rachel Crites, an alumna who had graduated the previous year, been allowed to routinely visit her friend Rachel Smith at school? Should she have been allowed, in some cases, to join her for the entire duration of her classes?

I'm not an amateur sleuth, and I'm not interested in reopening the investigation today. Instead, I want to take a moment to think about Rachel and about the community and my reaction to her death. I was stunned when I heard the news. How could you not be? I was a first-year teacher at Wootton High School at the time, and I was trying my best just to tread water. Before I started teaching, I used to watch a show called Boston Public, which chronicled the lives of (mostly unrealistically attractive) teachers at an inner-city school. Like most shows, Boston Public made life in a school seem much more exciting than it really is. Every week, a teacher would sleep with a student, or a kid would die in a gang fight. It was tv, though, and it was pretty entertaining, and I was willing to accept that this was an exaggerated version of reality. The Rachel Incident would have been too melodramatic even for Boston Public standards - except this was real life. In some ways, it took away my innocence as a teacher: teenagers, even the healthy ones, are messy and fragile, and what they present to the world is only a fraction of what's really going on. Crazy things happen at high schools.

I can't pretend to have known Rachel well, but I did interact with her for an hour a day during what turned out to be the last months of her life. She sat in the front of a class of thirty-two students. From my admittedly limited perspective, she didn't seem interested in any of her classmates, and the"cool" boys in class would sometimes antagonize her. Mostly, though, they left her alone and vice-versa. Rachel participated in class regularly. She was bright and creative, and she had plenty to say. She made no apologies for her sometimes brusque manner: she was, it seemed to me, in school to do a job. She wasn't actively unfriendly to her peers, but she also wasn't there to make friends. (I learned later, at her funeral, that she had actually had plenty of friends - many of them from her summer camp, I believe.) I saw Rachel smile only infrequently, as on the two or three occasions that she would linger outside the classroom, talking to a friend right up until the bell rang. After the news broke, I realized that her friend - who always grinned politely when I shooed her away at the beginning of class - was the other Rachel. I had had no reason not to assume that she was a current student.

The detail that haunted me after Rachel's death was her performance on her English midterm: she wrote an outstanding essay on The Great Gatsby and earned an A, the highest grade in her class. I will never understand how a person can spend hours preparing to take a test, and then spend a full two hours actually taking it, knowing all the while that it is the last test she will ever take. At the risk of sounding like an armchair psychologist, I believe it couldn't have been the work of someone bent on taking her own life.

I wish I had known Rachel a little better, and I regret that I didn't make more of an effort to know her. Ten years later, Rachel's death continues to stick with me, along with a sense of guilt - misguided or not - that I failed to notice warning signs in a young person who was drowning in plain sight. It reminds me how little I truly know about the kids I see every day. And on my good days, it reminds me to be a little bit nicer to them, because who knows what else is really going on in there?

Opening Week!

I first started following baseball midway through the 1991 season - a good year to pick up the sport, since it ended in one of the best World Series of all time. (Twins over Braves in 7 Game, Jack Morris, Kirby Puckett, etc.) By the time the 1992 season rolled around, I had drunk the Kool-aid. After more than nine years, my dad had basically resigned himself to the fact that I would never be a baseball fan, and was thrilled when my interest finally developed, better late than never. When he saw that his Red Sox were at Yankee Stadium for opening day, he immediately picked up two tickets, even though it was a weekday afternoon game. Fourth grade be damned.

The game was great: Mo Vaughn, in his first full season, hit a huge home run. Roger Clemens pitched a complete game (in defeat, but still). Sadly, the Red Sox lost. And even more sadly, the loss would turn out to be a harbinger of a decade of futility by the Red Sox and, soon enough, dominance by the Yankees. But no matter: I got to watch batting practice, I kept score (using a kind of primitive score-keeping invented by my dad to cater to a nine-year-old), I had a hot dog.

Me - every year.

The next day, as I got off the school bus, I was welcomed by the school principal, a very friendly man with an unpronounceable last name: we called him "Dr. A." He smiled down at me and, with no trace of bitterness or sarcasm, asked, "How was the game, Alex?" I wasn't exactly sure how he knew where I had been. Possibly, he knew that yesterday had been opening day and just put two and two together. Or maybe he had overheard me tell my plans to anyone who would listen. At nine years old, it may not have even occurred to me that there was any reason to keep them secret. Looking back, I have to applaud Dr. A's sense of perspective. I'm sure he took his job seriously, but I think he also knew that my memories of that game would outlast my memories of that particular day of fourth grade.

There's no way I could have realized how lucky I was to attend opening day. I've been to a ton of baseball games since then, but I've only been to one other opener: the Braves' first game at Turner Field in 2009, against the Nationals. And that one was just a dumb luck, right place right time kind of deal.

I can't just drop work and assorted other responsibilities to go to opening day - especially now that I have children. But the thought still crosses my mind every year. The next best thing to actually attending opening day is coming home from work at 3:00, turning on the tv and cracking a beer. On a Monday afternoon, this is decadent enough to make me feel that I'm at least doing something to mark the beginning of the season. I kept the tradition going this past Monday.

My wife says she can relate to that old song from Damn Yankees, "Six Month Out of Every Year," in whichbaseball widows bemoan the loss of their husbands to the baseball season. That's me alright: from April through October, baseball is a big part of my life. The games are always on the radio when I drive, and on tv in the background while I grade papers. The ESPN scoreboard updates are always open on my computer while I do anything else. In fact, I've checked them no less than twenty-seven times since starting this entry. The men in the Damn Yankees song complain about their crappy Washington Senators. My teams - the Nationals and the Red Sox - have both been pretty competitive lately, but the equivalent for me has to be my fantasy baseball team, which continues to stink, year in and year out, no matter who I draft.

It pains me to admit it, but football has obviously surpassed baseball in the estimation of most sports fans in this country. Not for me. Baseball is at the center of many of my most meaningful friendships. It's the central focus of some of my best memories. It gives me a little jolt every morning when I realize that, even though I have to wake up, I at least get to check the box scores. With apologies to Christmas, this is the most wonderful time of the year.

Feel Like a Brand New Person

A while ago, a blog called The First in Line posted a story I wrote about a Weezer concert I attended with my friends in 1997, right after our freshman year of high school. I enjoyed writing it, and remembering the experience, and so I wrote a piece about another more recent concert: Tame Impala at Merriweather Post Pavilion last June. I never submitted that one to the blog though, and in fact, I forgot about it until last weekend. When I tried to submit it then, I realized that The First in Line seems to be taking a break. In fact, my story about Weezer, posted on July 31st, is still at the top of their archive of recent stories. I tried submitting it to another music publication and was rejected more or less immediately.

It turns out my blog is not as discerning as most other publications, especially when it comes to my own writing, so for now I'll just post it here. And incidentally, this song has the highest number of plays on my itunes and is still firmly stuck in my head.

I haven’t lost the capacity to become enraptured with a new band. But – partly because I teach high school, and I maintain what I like to think is a healthy distance from my students, and partly just because I’m a little older – I think I’ve lost the capacity to feel a kinship with a new band’s audience. These are the two main conclusions I’ve reached, while sitting on the grassy slope at Merriweather Post Pavilion, alongside my friends Nick and Steve, waiting for Tame Impala to take the stage. Tame Impala is an Australian rock band whose front man Kevin Parker is, at thirty-one, a few years younger than I am. Their sound, however, is a kind of a throwback to the late sixties and early seventies. (To me, Parker’s voice sounds strikingly like John Lennon’s.) And for this reason, their genre is almost always described as “psychedelic rock.” So they sound a bit like bands from before my time, and their main fan base is decidedly after my time. I would conservatively guess that the average age here is about twenty. More than a handful, I’ll wager, are here celebrating the end of their second year at College Park.

It’s hard to accept that I’ve become one of the old guys at the concert. But all the same, I’m excited for this show in the way that I haven’t been in a long time. For the past two weeks, I’ve been listening to their latest album Currents on a virtual nonstop loop. The bouncy synth chords on “The Moment,” which sounds a little like a more sinister version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” have burrowed their way into my ear. The mere thought of the hypnotic main riff on “Mind Mischief” makes me spontaneously and purposefully nod my head.

Me, Steve and Nick - approximately a half hour before the weather got ugly.

In an effort to save a few bucks, my buddies and I agreed to pick up lawn seats, instead of the more expensive seats underneath the covered pavilion. For the entirety of the opening band’s set, I’m glad for this decision. The opener is French Electronic group M83, whose music, despite my never having heard of it before last week, has earned a major following in its own right. I recognize one of their songs, a soaring ballad with a big, anthemic chorus, from an itunes commercial. Millenials have a reputation for being ironic about everything, but their sound is refreshingly sincere, and I hope it serves as the backdrop for a romantic moment between two of the College Park sophomores. It isn’t until after M83’s set that the first raindrops hit my arms. By the time the lights go down for Tame Impala, rain is falling at a steady pace.

Buying tickets to a show at Merriweather Pavilion, or any equivalent half-lawn/half-covered venue like New Jersey’s Garden State Arts Center where I saw some of my first shows, is like a poor man’s lottery. Do you save some money and go with the lawn seats, crossing your fingers for a lovely evening? Or do you pay a bit more for the peace of mind that comes with covered seats? We chose the former and, although it hadn’t seemed that way during the opening set, we were getting burned.

The good news, such as it is, is that during a rainy concert, there comes a point of saturation – both figuratively and literally – at which you stop caring about the rain, because you can’t get any wetter. Choosing appropriate clothing for an outdoor show had actually proven even more difficult than the question of whether or not to purchase uncovered seats. You don’t want to be too cold, so normally you might dress in layers. But you really don’t want to be carrying around a sweatshirt if it stays warm out – especially in the rain. And wet jeans are the absolute worst. For me, there was also the matter of dressing fashionably enough to look like any other (relatively) young person enjoying a summer concert. They say that as you age, you start to feel less concerned with what other people think, and in general I think that’s true, but weirdly, some of that old college self-consciousness starts to return to me when I’m in the presence of a bunch of college kids, even though I realize intellectually that no one really cares what I’m wearing. On this night, in the unlikely event that anyone was paying attention, they would have seen a guy willing to forgo style for comfort. My choice of gym shorts, a t-shirt and a bright orange raincoat felt fairly ridiculous at the outset, but as the rainfall became certifiably torrential, I felt increasingly pleased with my decision. Actually, the raincoat did little. The drops inevitably infiltrated my pockets, soaking my keys, phone and leather wallet. (I would have to use my wife’s hairdryer the next day, to dry out each individual dollar bill I carried.)

When, a few songs into the set, Kevin Parker shouted, “How’s everyone up there in the rain?” the crowd roared back to signify their total euphoria. I roared along with them, and my roar was genuine: none of the standard “I’ll humor you” tone I usually reserve for responding to the standard, “How are you feeling, Baltimore?” I was paying my dues to see a band I really liked, and I wanted everyone to know it, especially those bastards underneath the covering in front.

There was no point in feeling self-conscious now. I bought a round of Flying Dogs for Nick and Steve (the tall-boy cans) and brought it back to our muddy spot, about two thirds of the way back, dead center. I took a big swig and danced to that groovy bassline on “The Less I Know the Better.” (There is, to be sure, no other appropriate reaction to that bassline in any scenario, even for the usually reluctant dancers like myself.) I belted out the lyrics to “It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” even though I messed up a few of them.

By the encore, I was far beyond caring about the soaked contents of my raincoat pockets, focusing instead on the all-consuming rhythm of “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” – the last track on Currents, and the last tune of the evening.  I sang along with the chorus, “Feel like a brand new person,” and felt as though I had written it myself.

As if on an automatic setting, my head kept right on bobbing as I trudged toward the parking lot, which by this time, was more of a marsh. Traffic moved slowly out of the lot, but having no plans for the following day, I felt none of the impatience that usually comes from sitting in a line of parked cars.

This picture is from our show - but our view from the lawn was nothing like this.

I first discovered rock concerts when I was fourteen years old, and for a while, there was a sense of euphoria that came from each one of them. That feeling has been hard to find lately, in part because I don’t go to as many concerts as I used to, but also, I think, because I’ve grown a little jaded. Tonight though, because I was with friends, because I had had a couple beers, because the rain had lent the evening a weird, though not unpleasant sense of chaos, and most importantly, because Tame Impala had just solidified my infatuation for them, that jadedness had evaporated. As I sat in that unmoving line, I pulled up Currents on my ipod and cranked the volume on my car stereo, contentedly drumming my fingers on the steering wheel while I waited for the car in front of me to move.

Get a Life

I've definitely given this matter more thought than it deserves, but I can't help it. I'm reminded of it at least once a day, often more.

Here's the story: for the past year and a half or so, I've noticed white sheets of printer paper bearing either Boston Red Sox or New England Patriots logos, taped to public property in nearby Northern Baltimore neighborhoods: telephone poles, electrical boxes, the backs of stop signs. Mostly, these "signs" - certainly a generous term to describe them - are scotched taped on various posts along Gittings Ave. and Lake Ave. And since my commute requires me to take at least one of these streets every day, the signs are basically unavoidable. I've also seen them in two other spots I visit frequently: the parking lot of the Giant on York, where they are posted on lamp posts, and along Roland Avenue, where they are stuck to parking ticket machines. Most recently, I've spotted a few smaller stickers that simply read "BRADY." I assume that whoever is behind these is also behind the Red Sox and Patriots signs.

At first, I took note of these signs because, as a Red Sox and Patriots fan, they caught my eye, and truthfully, because I couldn't help but see them every day. There isn't much else to look at while sitting at the long light on Lake and Charles: a random white xeroxed Red Sox logo kind of stands out. But as I have continued to look at them day after day after day, I've become fascinated on a human interest level. Who is posting these signs? What is he hoping to accomplish? I need more context here.

In writers' workshops, students are sometimes asked to create the backstory for a random stranger - a person on the subway or at a diner or at a bus stop - whom they find intriguing. This exercise becomes harder when you've never actually seen the person, but I'll give it a go anyway.

In my mind, the mystery Boston Fan is not from Boston and has probably never been there. He likes them because they're good, but he won't admit that to anyone. Instead, he'll say something like he liked the Patriots logo when he was little, and just started following the team. He's around 20 years old, and has graduated high school. He's taking classes at CCBC and has a job at Giant, but lives with his parents. He is obviously a He, by the way.

I don't have an actual photo of this guy's handiwork. Basically, just visualize a piece of white paper with a Sox logo where the peeling sticker is.

He lacks a sense of purpose, and he thinks he is much funnier and much more subversive than he actually is. He is under the impression that posting these signs in random spots around town is clever and edgy. Best case scenario, what will happen? An Oriole fan will stop at a light, catch a glimpse of a Red Sox logo and then, like a cartoon villain, clench his fist and curse that dastardly Boston team? A Ravens fan will careen off the road and into a ditch, having been driven mad by the sight of a Patriots logo? Did he ever think that his weird little prank would end up raising the ire of (or at least the baffled curiosity) of a fellow New England fan?

Ok, so this guy is clearly an easy target. Some poor soul who obviously who has too much time on his hands. Some guy who desperately seeks attention, and doesn't quite know how to go about getting it. I'll give him this, though: he's gotten me to fall right into his trap.

Some Thoughts about Fatherhood So Far

This is not going to turn into a Fatherhood Blog, but at the moment, my twins have been dominating my thoughts and most of my formerly spare time. As a result, I really don't have much to say about any non-baby topic. I'm determined to maintain personal interests and hobbies that don't pertain to my kids, but right now, those are mostly on hold. Thursday marked the end of ten weeks of fatherhood. As I enter Week 11, here are some of my main takeaways so far:

• About 50% of my time has been devoted to washing bottles. Dr. Brown's bottles are supposed to be the most efficient, and are supposed to prevent your baby from ingesting huge gas bubbles, which can lead to discomfort. I get that, but they are also a bitch to clean. They consist of six pieces, some of which are tiny enough to necessitate a special tiny brush. Two babies means two bottles per feeding, which means we go through them very quickly, which means that we have to wash them entirely too frequently.

These are not my babies, but I feel it's an accurate representation of what my babies would look like if we were to force them to wear these costumes. Speaking of which, it's early to think about Halloween, but if anyone has costume ideas, I'm listening.

• My knowledge of song lyrics is lacking. I know all the words to "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)," and most of Salt n' Pepa's "Shoop," and a surprisingly large chunk of Les Miserables. But none of these are really appropriate songs for babies (even though that hasn't stopped me from trying them out). I sing to my babies quite frequently - right now, it's the best way to provoke a little smile. But I've realized that my knowledge of many popular lyrics isn't as thorough as I had thought it was. The other day, I found myself gazing into my son's bassinet and singing, "Grey skies are going to clear up/Put on a happy face," only to come to an abrupt stop when I realized I didn't know a single other word to the song. I found an old camp songbook upstairs, and I've strategically placed it in the babies' room so I'll be ready next time.

• I love these babies, and yet I find that when someone asks me about them, I have surprisingly little to say. Here are my options:
• "They're great!" (Usually my go-to response, but it's extremely obvious and pretty trite.),
• "We love them!" (I've used this twice, and both times, the asker gave me some version of "Yeah, well duh.")
• "We think they're pretty cute." (That's what I've been going with lately. I kind of like the understatement. As a general rule, I prefer to avoid describing anything as "cute," but for my babies I can make an exception.)
• "They're growing on me." (I only used this once, and knew it was a ridiculous thing to say even as it was coming out of my mouth. I'll chalk it up to lack of sleep.)  

From there, there's not much more I can think of to extend the conversation. They're really cute, she came out first, he's bigger than she is, they pretty much just eat, sleep, poop and scream - although lately, they have been smiling a little, which is awesome. People have mostly told me that she looks more like me and he looks more like Maya. There. You now know pretty much every important detail about our babies. Which, again, is not to say I love them any less or that I don't want to talk about them. It's just that I can't think of anything else to say that anyone would particularly want to hear.

• I am not allowed to complain about lack of sleep. I mean, I am, but if I do, I can't expect much sympathy. Surely, I am sleeping less than I ever have, but Maya has more to do, and isn't back at work yet, so she sleeps even less than I do. No one really wants to hear how tired I am, least of all my wife. That being said, I'm quite tired and I'll probably take a nap after I write this. And that's all I'll say about that.

• There are few things more fun than taking newborn twin babies to a pediatrician's office. Everyone makes a really big deal over them, and over us. We haven't even gone out very much, so reactions like these are still very much a novelty.

• Compared to being at home, work feels oddly like a vacation. Yes, I still have to respond to the needs of kids at school. But the difference is that I can occasionally shut my office door and tell the kids to buzz off without feeling sharp and immediate guilt. After all of the (justifiable) fuss and drama surrounding the babies, it was nice to return to work where I could deal with matters as mundane as writing progress reports and telling kids to tuck in their shirts.

• Running errands also feels like a vacation. After my nap, I think I might find another reason to run to Target. That way I can both 1 - take a little break from the babies and 2 - feel like I'm actually being helpful and not a deadbeat.

• Before the babies were born, I wondered occasionally whether I would mind having strangers pass them around to each other, or whether I might feel a little protective. Turns out I don't mind in the slightest. Having my arms free is a privilege that I took for granted before the babies arrived. And on that note, does anyone want to come over and hold a baby?

The Happiest Day of My Life

In the end, our twins' birthday, Thursday, December 15th, turned out to be a pretty incredible day. But the babies weren't born until almost 8:00 that evening, so the first three quarters of the day were actually pretty monotonous. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to write down some of my thoughts - about my children, but more so about the strangeness of the moment.

7:12 A.M. Thursday, December 15, 2016

They say that the day you have your kids is the Happiest Day of your Life. It's only just past 7 AM, so today may yet live up to that billing, but at the moment it's hard to see it. It's not that I'm not excited: I've been waiting my entire life to have children. I fantasize almost every day about activities I want to do with my future kids, about things I want to teach them some day. I cried when, after nearly two and a half years and three rounds of IVF, I finally saw the two little specks on the television monitor, which the doctor said were my twins.

Today is going to be a momentous day, I'm sure. But there's always this idea that the Happiest Day of your Life should transcend the minutiae of everyday routine - as though you should be walking in the clouds all day, and feasting on ambrosia. My imaginings about the day I became a father never included snacking on a Nature Valley granola bar I bought from Royal Farms before we came in. My wife is currently lying on the reclined bed with an IV in her arm, chatting with the nurse about the merits of various hot water heaters. They got on the subject after Maya reminded me to call the plumber today, to ask him which model he plans to install in our house.

I had this other idea, which I think I got from the movies, that there would be a frantic energy about the whole day, like in Nine Months with Hugh Grant. I think he hits a cyclist with his car during his mad dash to the hospital. And when they get there, an incompetent Robin Williams announces that he is filling in for the regular OBGYN. I think.It's been a long time since I've seen it. The reality is proving to be much more sedate, mostly because we've had this day scheduled for a while. Scheduled induction of labor is a weird concept to me. It's almost like Maya is about to have her wisdom teeth removed, instead of our children. The upshot is that there's a lot of leisure time to just sit and read, and write, and grab coffee, although I have no doubt that things will pick up soon.

I'm a little surprised I don't have anything more profound to say today, but I'm not mistaking this strange blankness for apathy. I feel the way an Olympic athlete must feel in the moments leading up to the competition that will define her life. The moment is obviously huge, but if you spend every second thinking about its hugeness, you start to go nuts. I've already spent my entire life, more or less, thinking about what today will mean, looking at it from every angle. Now that today is here, I'm done thinking and I'm ready to react.