Where I Came From

I bought myself a birthday gift today.

I don't know much about it, but that doesn't bother me.  The seat is covered in a coral-hued fabric, there's wicker underneath the cloth.  The back is punched leather, and there's wicker behind that, too.  The little sticker from the antique mall just said, "Swivel Chair - Oak.  $85".  I offered to pay cash, so they gave it to me for $70.  Life is good, you know.

I saw it a week ago, and I wanted it then, but my wife and the babies and I left the antique mall last weekend and I let myself think about it for a couple days.  See, I'm a pretty impulsive guy, so I thought I'd see if I still wanted the chair come, Wednesday, say.  I did.  Ten years ago, I bought a wooden swivel chair from K-mart and, well, it's just not the same.  There's no character, no history.  No one's ever farted in that K-mart chair besides me.  I like things that have been farted in, apparently.  You should see my trouser collection.

So, today, I put the babies in the car and, on a whim, I picked up the phone and called my father.

"Hey, want to take a ride with me and the babies?  We're going to an antiques mart to pick something up."

"Where?" he asked, "you mean, like across the street, or like, New York?"

"Well," I hedged, pulling up to their house, "it's somewhere in between."

The antiques mart is 23 miles away from where we live, and is around a 45 minute drive.  The babies were blissfully quiet in the back, and my father did what he does best-- which is keeping conversation going.  He asked me questions about the babies he already knew the answers to, or had forgotten, he chatted about a conference for entrepreneurs he attended where he met the mayor and inadvertently put his foot in his mouth-- this happens a lot.  He talked about successfully suing a local radio station, for what I have no idea, and his thoughts about possibly suing his web design contractor.  My father also wants to sue the hospital where my brother-in-law was diagnosed with and treated for the cancer that quickly killed him, but thankfully that subject didn't come up on this leisurely drive down Route 1.

"I hope this thing actually fits in the car," I said during a silence, "I didn't take any measurements."  I never do.

"What are we picking up?" he asked.

"Oh-- it's an office chair, an antique office chair with a cloth seat and a leather back."

He looked at me.  I looked at the road.

"Where did you come from?" he asked, shaking his head, "I mean, seriously-- an antique fucking chair?  Where did you come from anyway?"

I shrugged.

"You know, I ask myself that question a lot, too."

"I mean, I know I have family on my side that liked music and things-- and my cousin, you know, the one that was in love with my brother, she had an antique show in South Africa a while ago.  But you?  I just don't know what it's all about."

And he never did.  But one thing that was always understood was that, however bizarre and off-the-wall my latest interest was, he would be there to indulge it.  During the late eighties, when the Olympics were held in Seoul, I decided, at age 8, that I was going to grow up to marry a Korean girl.  The language fascinated me, so I would have my father drive me to Darby-- 69th Street-- where there was a small Korean enclave, and I would look at all the strange neon signs on storefronts and windows, and I would make him buy me Korean language newspapers that I would take home and study, and copy onto lined paper.  My lust for antique VW Beetles raged unquenchable for years and, when I was fourteen, a 1966 Beetle-- Bahama Blue-- somehow ended up in our driveway.  I sometimes went off to summer camp dressed in a dark blue, heavy wool three-piece suit in 100-degree weather.

No one ever said "no" to me.  But they probably always wondered "why".

I don't know who they would have asked.

"Look," he said to me as I piloted my wife's Honda Fit towards through the towns leading to the antique mart, "just be who you are-- you always were who you are.  The minute you start to change, you can't live in your own skin.  I never changed for anybody."

"Yes," I said, "you did.  You changed a lot."

It was quiet for a second.

"Yeah-- okay, yeah, I did.  But I knew if I was going to stay in this country, I'd have to change-- otherwise it wouldn't be fair to anybody."

I've changed, too.  I'm a husband, and I'm a father, two times over.  I'm no longer chasing dreams of policing the streets as a genteel beat cop, and I'm satisfied with the humble life of the occasional community theatre performer.  I'm no writer, I'm a blogger, and that's okay with me.  When my wife was pregnant, she was worried that the babies would change us into some unrecognizable entity, that they would supplant our identities.  It happens, you know.  Just look at the Facebook profile pictures of the people you went to school with-- many of their profile pictures have been replaced with pictures of their offspring.

But that's supposed to be you.  There's still a you in there-- isn't there?  That's what identity is, I think; who we are and what we love and what piques our interest.  My identity is comprised of my preferences and my proclivities and my habits and my collections.  My sillies.  And I suppose I'm glad I'm still bringing back silly things from antique malls.  And I think, in his way, my father's glad, too.

Status: It's Complicated

I entered into a very complicated relationship today.

Don't worry-- it's not the one with my wife. That one's pretty straightforward. She wears the leather face-mask with rivets. I am the keeper of the safe-word.

No, this isn't a relationship with a woman, or a man, or even a South African track-star who may be both, or possibly neither. Man, I'd hate to be the endrocrinologist who has to make that call.

Anyway, this is a relationship between me and a clock.

A cuckoo clock, to be precise.

My mother-in-law came over last weekend to visit. When she comes to visit, we always get things. She pulls up in her used, red Jaguar wagon and we make an average of five trips from the car to the house. She's like Santa Claus with lip-stick. I'll bet there are Santa Clauses out there who wear lipstick, even while on-duty.

Anyway, she always gives us stuff. Stuff, I believe, is her middle name. Or her maiden name. So, when Stuff-in-Law comes over, it's like fucking Christmas. We don't always want the stuff we get. Sometimes it's stuff even she doesn't want that she tries to unload, usually successfully because guilt is powerful like tractor, on us.

"Well, I got this at TJ Maxx and I didn't really like it-- oh, the price tag's still on there. Do you believe that sale? I mean, the price was right..."

There was even more stuff this time around because this is the first time she's been in our new house for any extended period of time, so it was house-warming time. She was here right at the beginning, a week or two after we'd just moved in. My wife was violently ill, vomiting with appreciable propulsion every hour or so. But it was okay, because her mommie was there. To schlep us both down to fucking Maryland to visit my wife's 106-year-old 1st cousin, twice removed. Fortunately, Mrs. Apron didn't kill him with a strategically-placed vom-shot to the skull.

So, included in the usual pile of home-baked cookies, cast-off, discount clothing and a full-sized ironing board, this time, we also got a present that was, apparently, two-and-a-half years in the making.

"We had this in our house, and then it fell off the wall, and I took it to a shop in Fall River and they said they couldn't fix it, so then I took it to another store and they said they could, but they needed a part and, well, it sat there for a couple years."

Well, the price was right.

It's a Black Forest Cuckoo Clock from Germany. It kind of looks like this:

Tonight, we hung it up and, after my wife consulted a website or two, we figured out how to make it go ticky-tocky and cuckee-clockie. Miraculously, we didn't break it. That would be two-and-a-half year's bad luck, approximately.

Now, I love timepieces. I own four or five pocketwatches, and I'm always on the lookout for the next one, and I have an antique self-winding Bulova wristwatch. One day, there will be both a steeple mantle clock and a grandfather clock in this house, just give me time + money. This clock, um, doesn't really do it for me. Now, I know what they say about looking a gifthorse in the mouth-- he'll let you count his cavities before he severes your cervical vertabrae-- but I just can't help it. The first person with whom I was honest about my feelings towards the cuckoo clock was my own mother.

"So, when your mother in law comes into town, hang it on the wall."

Ah, but it's not so simple, I explained. Mrs. Apron also likes the clock. Finally, after a week of dreading speaking the truth, I said something.

"I don't like it, I'm sorry,"

"What don't you like about it?" Mrs. Apron queried, smiling, signaling that it was not perhaps the choicest reaction, but that it was okay.

"Well, it looks like it was painted with poop. And those three pinecones dangling from the chains look like turdlettes."

"Well, I like it," she said steadfastly.

It's in our dining room. As we watched COPS together, it cuckooed its goddamn head off. I smiled.

See-- this is where it gets complicated.

The clock does indeed look like some German clockmaker in lederhosen dipped his paintbrush in a bowlful of digested sauerbraten-- but that goddamn little bird that comes out to say "Guten morgen" every half-an-hour is just pretty fucking irresistable.

Though it's only been hanging for less than three hours, I can already see myself making excuses to go downstairs to hang around the dining room just so that I can catch a glimpse of the elusive avian creature.

"Oh, I just need to get, um, a napkin..." and I'll disappear down the stairs so I can catch the 3:00pm show at the aviary.

I can't help it, I'm smitten with that little bastard.

Even if he lives in a house covered in dookie.

Try Not to Get Backed Over By My Father-in-Law

In case you didn't know, Sunday is Father's Day.

Last night, my wife left the house to go tutor her student. A couple minutes after she left, she called me.

"Hi, buddy," she said, "what are you planning on doing tonight?"

"Well, I'd like to practice banjo," I replied.

"Oh. Would you like a p-word?" (This means "project." A "project" is usually defined as some haphazard, fucked up errand usually having to do with her family.)

"Um, not particularly." Pause. "What is it?"

"Well, I just listened to a voicemail from my mother-- it was about a Father's Day gift for my father."

"Yeah?"

"Would you please go to Amazon and order him a copy of "My Father's Paradise" by Ariel Sabar?"

I was relieved. Finally, an easy request, and a normal present to boot.

"Sure," I said.

Pause.

"And, could you also research audible backup warning alarms?"

.............

Right.

You know what we're talking about here, right? Throw a truck in reverse and hear a BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! loud enough to wake up your Facebook Zombie. These reverse warning alarms are typically found on, oh, I don't know-- big rigs... U-Hauls. Mail trucks. They're not necessarily items you would expect to find on a 2003 silver Honda Accord.

Now, my wife's father is a strange duck, as are lots of our fathers, but this particular gift desire took even me by surprise. As I was researching the various audible backup warning alarms on Froogle and Ebaymotors, I couldn't help laughing hysterically and pounding the desk in front of me. This man is my father-in-law and he deserves to be respected, but, come the fuck on already. What could a psychiartist in his mid-sixties want with an audible backup warning alarm?

Has he run somebody over?

Does he routinely drive in reverse on the grounds of a local school for the deaf during recess?

Does he harbor some secret wish to feel like a UPS man? Will he eventually carry out the fantasy by brush-painting his car brown and ordering large quantities of chocolate-hued uniform shorts?

I think it's probably less about the actual device and more about the gadgetry. He's all about techno-baubles. His car looks like the inside of a police cruiser. He has a custom-built laptop table which he made himself out of spare pieces of wood from the basement. There are more fucking wires and shit draped all over the interior of that car than there are vines in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There's the auxiliary thermometer, and the compass, and the GPS unit and Christ knows what else-- probably a homing device or a mini-satellite dish. I guess this is the one final piece of auxiliary technology he hadn't gotten around to installing on the car. Besides the fare meter.

It's not about the beeping when he reverses. It's about the technology and the nerdery. He's a total nerd. As I was researching the alarms, I saw the specifications and I said to myself, "Aha, this is what he really loves:"

Voltage: 12V±3V
Temperature: -40ºF~+185ºF
Beep volume: 70~90dB
Input: <4W Range (Rear): 1.0~8.4 ft

All that shit that is essentially Mandarin to me. He loves it. And he'll totally get off on installing it, too, all by himself, in the driveway. It will take him all Sunday long, but he'll be in heaven. He will be out there, all 101 pounds of him, in his button-down, short-sleeve, threadbare blue Oxford dress shirt and torn trousers, crumpled tissues hanging out of his pocket, his salt-and-pepper hair awry whistling Mozart bassoon solos and airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore and mumbling calculations and machinations to himself that the rest of the world would never understand as he blissfully tinkers and putters the day away.

And, shit, if that's the Father's Day he wants, let him have it.

My only fear is that he won't install the alarm exactly correctly, because that's his M.O. I worry that he'll install it connected just a hair wrong so that it will beep incessantly whenever the car is put into Park, say, or-- worse-- Drive. These things tend to happen, you know.

But, still, I love him, and I wish him a Happy Father's Day. Beeps and all.