Shannon Phillips

I made these little gingerbread people, aren’t they cute?

I hope all our far-flung family and friends are having a warm and happy evening tonight. Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful solstice yesterday. In the morning we got up and opened our presents. Robin didn’t quite understand what was going on but he caught the enthusiasm of the moment, especially as one after another of the intriguingly wrapped boxes proved to contain a present for him. There were clothes, there were toys, there were delicious things to eat. Robin was eating graham crackers when we unwrapped our present to him, a little boy doll, and the first thing he did was eagerly take the doll into his arms and carefully, precisely lift a graham cracker to its sculpured lips. It was the cutest thing.

After the gift-unwrapping I spent most of the day cooking. I was well prepared and everything went according to schedule, so it was fun rather than stressful or tedious. Robin amused himself with his new toys for most of the day.

This year our guests were drawn from my gay male coterie of friends, allowing me now to lapse into a flight of generalizations based on very small sample sizes. Our guests all showed up right on time and bearing gifts. They made witty conversation all night, they were effusive in their praise of the food, and this morning they each sent me very nice e-mail to say how much they’d enjoyed themselves and to thank me for the dinner. Now, we love our straight friends too, but I have a very vivid memory of a solstice a few years ago when one of our guests cornered me in the kitchen after the meal to tell me—with the sympathetic air of one saddened by the news he is forced to deliver—that the green bean casserole had arrived at the table lukewarm. And I can definitely say that thank-you notes are not the norm, at least among straight Californians of our generation.

Why is that, I wonder? Why are gay men such better dinner party guests? It can’t have anything to do with upbringing because most of these particular friends have hilarious stories about their graceless family origins. These kind of manners must be taught and enforced by the gay community, is all I can figure, maybe in the same way that good personal grooming is taught and enforced? I don’t know, I’ll bring it up with them next time I see them.

After our friends had gone we put Robin to bed and spent a little time together cuddling in front of the TV before we followed him there. I was filled with an intense happiness and sense of security and warmth that actually really surprised me, because it is exactly the sentiment that Christmas greeting cards hollowly evoke in their formulaic way: the peace and joy of the season. When I say that it surprised me I don’t mean that I am usually unhappy or that I expected the holiday to be bad: I can’t remember the last time I’ve had an unhappy winter holiday, and I can remember several very nice ones, very recently. But I guess I think that “peace and joy” is mostly something people say, not a special sort of feeling that really comes to you on Christmas (or in our case the solstice). In fact if I had to guess I’d probably say that the expectation of such a feeling causes more unhappiness than joy, because people get all stressed out trying to achieve the perfect Christmas and then they fight with their families and end up all angry and alienated. Right? I mean, I’m not making this up, there are all kinds of books and jokes and articles about de-stressing the holidays and insulating yourself from family drama and all the rest of it. So what I mean is that, at least since I’ve become an adult and the sheer mercenary excitement of getting presents has faded, a happy Christmas means the ordinary happiness of good food and relaxing with family. It doesn’t mean special happiness. And yet there I was, peaceful and joyous, basking in a unique kind of holiday glow. So it exists! Isn’t that interesting?

I wonder what has to be done to get that holiday high. I suspect you have to put some work into it, but not too much work: enough so that you are proud of the payoff, not so much that the stress overwhelms you. Having small children around has got to help. Also, apparently gay men are essential to holiday happiness. If you can’t get gay men where you live, people born before 1960 may have the same kind of good party manners and might suffice. Certainly I will be attempting to replicate these results!

My grandfather, Ned Fritz, died early this morning. He was 92 and he went peacefully in his sleep. In his blog he wrote regularly about becoming old and being prepared for death, but he also wrote about enjoying life even as he weakened. In his memory I want to quote something moving and profound that he wrote two years ago, an essay titled “Old Age Is Worth Living To.”

About five percent of Americans live to age 96 or longer. Many of those feel good. I have lived three months past age 90, and I usually feel good, although I no longer can be much help to the world, as I used to be.

At old age, most people spend time enjoying life. As my memory weakens, I no longer perform much, but I deeply enjoy life. My wife, Genie, and my three daughters help me a lot, with food, walks, talks, and gifts. I usually feel good. Many other people say and do nice things for me.

My wife still takes me to beautiful places, like wild areas, musical events, monthly and annual meetings. My wife also fills my outside bird feeders. So I can enjoy seeing many species, like red-bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, tufted titmice, goldfinches, and even house sparrows. Nearby are many more species, including cardinals, mourning doves, white-winged doves, and white-throated sparrows.

We have over twenty kinds of wild trees, including Green ash, Gum bumelia, Eastern red cedar, Black cherry, Eastern Cottonwood, Box Elder, American Elm, Cedar Elm, Common Fig, Pyracantha, Sweet gum, Common Hackberry, American holly, Honey Locust, Mesquite, Southern Red Oak, Bur Oak, Live Oak, Osage Orange, Pecan, Mexican Plum, Texas redbud, Flame-leaf sumac, Common Sycamore, and Texas Hercules Club. Occasionally a red-tailed hawk from our deep back yard comes looking for a bird to eat, but I never see it catch one.

At old age, most people like me, cannot lead a battle to maintain human population and peace. Most old people can merely support younger officials who lead a big movement to stop over-population and war. The trouble is that few people in positions of power actually lead a powerful effort to end the growth of population or to prevent the beginning of another war. Therefore, we old people can mainly be nice to others and enjoy the remaining days or years of life.

Life began as cells 3 ½ billion years ago and gradually spread out from one species to another. There is no evidence of any species living after death. Therefore, each human should enjoy life, itself. Long before our Earth formed, our Universe spread out 14 billion years ago, long after material existed, which may have been forever. On that basis, I think human lives are a result of amazing development. We can enjoy life deeply into old age and on almost to death. No human should weaken true enjoyment by physically attacking another human. A human may argue with another human with the purpose of keeping both lives enjoyable.

When approaching death, a person should overcome huge pain by mental concentration or medicine and enjoy the remainder of life. This can be done by listening to music, relatives, friends, reading, and other actions. Life can be pleasant to the end, or about to the end. Enjoy yourself. Be nice to others.

A Non-Exhaustive List

Bubba
Bug
Cutie-bug
Difficult Child
Little Buddy
Mister Baby, Sir
Mister Cutie Toes
My Sweet Prince
My Young Apprentice
Punkin Butt
Robin-bobbin
Stinkbug

Well, before I tell you about the conversation, I want to tell you what a nice Thanksgiving we had with my mom and Mark. We have a lot to be thankful for, and thanks were given. It always pricks my heart a little to see Robin respond so strongly, so joyfully, to his extended family, because I know he’ll really miss them when they leave. I’ve become convinced that the modern American nuclear family is, well, a dumb way to raise kids. It makes my life so much harder. It makes Robin’s life so much worse.

And yet our own extended family is so scattered across the country, and I can’t see any way to knit them back together. Especially with this economy: I don’t know if we even have the option of leaving the Bay Area any more. We’re pretty safe here in terms of knowing that Sam can always find a job. We wouldn’t have that safety in most other places.

So, anyway, I’ve been watching with great gratitude Robin’s interactions with his loving grandparents, and thinking a lot about family, today as we saw Nanita and Marqueño off from the airport. Then in the late afternoon I nipped down to the little corner grocery on our block to buy a carrot for tonight’s turkey noodle soup. There’s a fellow there who often works the checkout that loves interacting with Robin. He’s a nice guy, one of the many Middle Eastern immigrants in our neighborhood, and that’s basically all I know about him.

So we’re chatting as he rings up my carrots; I asked him about his Thanksgiving and he asked me about mine; he asked me where my boy was (napping with Daddy) and—guessing, based on his warm and playful interactions with Robin—I asked him if he had kids of his own.

“I did,” he said, blinking back sudden tears. “I had a ten year old son. My wife, she was shopping in downtown Baghdad. They were both killed in a bomb.”

I couldn’t say anything except “my God. I’m so sorry.”  And he nodded and smiled and I stood, useless, and then repeated myself several times before I stumbled away.

Now you can tell I’m Southern in upbringing because I have the strongest urge to bake him a casserole. I don’t know any other way of responding to such terrible grief. I know this has happened to so, so many families, but it hadn’t ever before happened to someone I know.

It feels so strange that I’ve known him for so many months—I see him every week—but I know so little about him. I don’t know his name. I wish I knew more, but I don’t want to intrude. This is all I know of his story:

His family killed, he came from Baghdad to San Francisco, and he started over. He works long hours. He loves children.

Now I can’t stop crying. What justifies this? Who can answer for it? What can be done to atone?

Brought to my attention via my friend Zach: “Review of My Toddler’s Pretend Restaurant”

Here’s an example of a typical ordering experience:

Lily: Order something, please.
Mom: OK, do you have coffee?
Lily: No. No coffee at the Cafe Restaurant. Only water and tea.
Mom: OK, tea please.
Lily: No tea. Only water.
Mom: OK, water.
Lily: Do you want coffee?
Mom: Well … actually, yes.
Lily (Handing me a toy tomato) Here.

http://www.momlogic.com/2008/11/review_lilys_cafe_resturant.php

Really the best part is the “Cleanliness” section of the review, but I’m not going to spoil it for you. Go read! It’s funny and very sweet.

Speaking of childhood nutrition, this study is just fascinating:

A study finds that obese children from poor families often don’t eat enough.
…
A 9-year-old should consume 1,400 to 2,200 calories daily to sustain growth, said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the nonprofit Social and Health Research Center. But in the study of 1,400 inner-city children, 44 percent were consuming less than 1,400 calories, and 33 percent were obese.

“They were not overeating,” Trevino said. “This study shows these kids were not eating enough, and when they did eat it was all the wrong things.”

Missing from the children’s diets were four key nutrients: calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus.

This doesn’t actually surprise me as someone who has spent a lot of time trying to diet. There’s plenty of evidence out there that caloric restriction can actually contribute to obesity. As best I can tell, the relationships among weight, nutrition, exercise and metabolism are far from being completely understood. The link between vitamin deficiency and obesity seems really interesting. I’ve been bad about taking my vitamins lately; maybe I should get more rigorous about it.

As for Robin, at least I know he gets plenty of potassium. The little monkey ate three bananas this morning for breakfast. I actually had to go look up whether it’s possible to get too much potassium (not under normal circumstances, no). Bananas are actually like the perfect food: if you’re constipated they’ll make you go, and if you’re going too much they’ll make you stop. If you get more potassium than you need your body just filters it harmlessly out. Hooray for bananas!

So my friend Madeline just commented on my last post (fretting about Robin’s recent lack of growth) to tell me something really important:

Isabel’s growth stalled out at around this same age. She was around the same percentiles for height and weight as Robin, and at around a year, she stopped gaining weight for months. Our pediatrician told us that the growth curves are based on both breast-fed and formula-fed babies, but that breast-fed babies have a different growth pattern (faster for the first 6 months or so, slower later) than formula-fed babies (steadier and more consistent). Our pediatrician told us it was nothing to worry about, and that we shouldn’t make a big effort to get her to eat more.

This is true!  And it’s something that might cause me to change pediatricians, as now I’m really angry that the doctor scared me about something he should have known was perfectly normal for a breastfed baby.

Coincidentally, one of the parenting blogs I read is having a big discussion about how unreliable those growth charts are today.

We’re back from the pediatrician’s office—Robin now tips the scale at 21 and a half pounds, and he’s thirty inches tall. This is slower-than-expected growth and prompted the doctor to quiz me about his calcium intake. The truth is I haven’t been paying much attention to his calcium because we’re still nursing, albeit less often now. The doctor said it was probably nothing to worry about but that I should offer him cow’s milk throughout the day in addition to nursing (I did do this for a while but he consistently refused the cow’s milk, so I stopped), and hopefully by his eighteen month visit he’ll be back on one of the normal growth curves. So as soon as we got back home I offered him a cup of milk, which he refused, and then I gave him some cheese, which he is right this instant tearing up into little bits and throwing on the floor.

Also, Dr. Simons said that if Robin isn’t talking at all by eighteen months, we should check his hearing. But I know he can hear because he turns his head when I call his name. I know some kids are already talking by this stage but I don’t think it’s so unusual that Robin isn’t. He’s very vocal and “conversational”; I can tell that he’s making progress with language and he understands a lot of what is said to him. I really feel certain that he’ll talk when he’s ready.

I also feel certain that Robin gets all the food he wants, and that if he were hungry he would not be shy about making that fact known; but all the rational certainty in the world doesn’t stop the crazy part of my brain from freaking out: oh no, am I starving my baby??? Probably for the next few days a lot of food will get thrown on the floor, as I persist in trying to feed Robin every twenty minutes.

Sometimes when we’re nursing (which now we only do a few times a day) I’ll turn on the TV. If Sesame Street is on, we’ll watch that. Well, Robin responded instantly and strongly to Elmo. I don’t know what it is about that particular muppet—the red color, the squeaky voice—but Robin points to the screen and coos whenever Elmo happens to appear. It’s kind of freaky how immediate and how strong his response is.

So we bought him a couple of Elmo videos. And yes, he is mesmerized by them. He doesn’t pay attention to much else on TV, but Elmo is like baby crack. I don’t let him watch the videos every day (I want him to get plenty of active play), but today because he’s sick I put one on. And as always, he’s enthralled. What is it about Elmo?