Bar Stools & A Four-year-old

Rufus & Mufus in Cleveland Metroparks, 2010 (No, not really)

First, BWTrotter is a pen name; a combination of a nickname from my past and the name of my dog. That's for purists.

Second, allow me to explain how I came to start this web log.
I have two young children aged 2- and 4-years. The other morning my four-year-old, Rufus, dressed himself, went downstairs, used a counter stool to procure a bowl from the cupboard and grab his favorite cereal from the high shelf in our pantry, poured the cereal, retrieved milk from the fridge, poured his milk, ate his cereal, rinsed the dish, and put it in the sink. All while I read upstairs unaware. I didn't know my son had crossed the Rubicon until the boy called up to his sister, Mufus, playing in her room, and asked if she wanted him to fix her cereal for breakfast. I went downstairs, realized what Rufus had done, and knew my role in my children’s lives had changed significantly. It was a watershed moment, for the father at least.

Like every parent who has ever lived I conjure up scenarios in my brain into which I place my kids and try to play out how they would react or survive or think. It can be a downright horrifying exercise, but it is the very essence of parenting. The vignette that pops into my mind most often is of the 'what if I become incapacitated when my wife is out of town and my kids have to fend for themselves for a day or two?' variety. Like if I brained myself cold on a countertop bending over to pick up a dropped grape, or suffered an embolism watching an Ohio State game. Rufus and Mufus couldn’t run to a neighbor because of child-proof doorknob covers, and as far as I know, they don’t know how to turn on and dial a phone. In my mind I watch them try to wake me up and cry and plead with me to stop joking around. For comic relief, I suspect, in the throes of such a taxing train of thought, my brain inserts lots of footage of my son jumping on me like a big time wrestler, giving me a wet willie, and as a last resort, a giant wedgie; simultaneously, my daughter plasters my face with make up and pulls my leg hairs; all techniques that have forced me to quit faking sleep in the past. I don’t wake up in the scenario, but get a laugh in real life. After the tears and pain-based resuscitation attempts end, my children begin to wander around the house, perhaps playing with stickers or trucks, they go potty, they act fairly normal. To work the heart strings like Huckleberry Fox (see Terms of Endearment if you have not), my mind always throws in bits of one of them calling to me—always in the brutally haunting voice of that little girl in the beginning of The Rescuers. “Who will rescuuuue, me?”--to announce a need or ask for help, forgetting that I’m out cold or comatose on the floor somewhere, and the other child has to respond, “Daddy’s hurt”. Depending on the time of day I go out, they may spend the night on the floor next to me, or curl up together in my son’s bed, an especially emotional thing to imagine. Really, what can be more messed up and dark than observing your children put themselves to bed parentless, hungry, and scared in your own house? After many hours--just seconds in my brain--the moment comes when they realize they’re unbearably thirsty or hungry. The climax. In my mind’s eye I watch them behave about on par with their capabilities at the time of the exercise. At their ages that lately has meant they rummage the lower shelves of the pantry, perhaps find some goldfish or raisins to eat, they drink out of the bathroom faucet; enough to survive a day or two, barely.
Through this dark—unhealthy?--modeling behavior I gauge my day-to-day value to my progeny, particularly my son, and until a few days ago the exercise invariably validated how I’ve spent the vast majority of my time over the last two-and-a-half-years. In the wake of The Bar Stool Incident a few mornings back, however, the brainware that runs the Necessity Simulator crashed spectacularly: a colossal display of sparks, falling pipes, exploding servers. The NS doesn’t work anymore because now my children can survive as long as cereal, crackers, string cheese, apples—anything that’s ready-to-eat—remain in the kitchen. (I do have this one vignette variation that surfaces in the NS occasionally where Rufus expertly mixes a perfect Gin & Tonic. Two limes.) Of course, the harshest consequence of my son’s use of a bar stool is not the crash of a nutty, oft-used brain app, but the powerful blow delivered to my sense of import in my children’s lives. Rufus did not merely master a task convenient to our household like buckling his car seat straps or putting on his pants tag-in-back for the first time, he executed a basic survival maneuver. Clearly, Rufus and Mufus do not need me as they used to. Tough to deal with, that.
I know my kids still need parents. They’re only two and four, after all, and remain firmly dependent. Still, it was the moment all parent’s work hard to reach, but dread the arrival of, the one drop in the pool that releases an unceasing cascade of moments that relegate parents to bit players. I relished being a rock basin that contained my son’s life and, before I was ready, with the help of a bar stool, the water spilled over the rim and now I am the canyon through which my boy’s life runs, a channel directing the path of a trickle that will soon become a torrent. And anybody who’s ever studied geology understands that over time rock is powerless against running water. It will go and do as it pleases. So will Rufus.
Melodramatic? Over-blown? Maybe. But it was my Moment, one that made me proud and small.
So, that’s why I started AllFourEndsoftheCandle (a name I’ll explain in future posts). I all of a sudden felt like I could start doing stuff I want to do that maybe I’d been hesitant to do before in case it conflicted with responsibilities to Mufus and Rufus. And maybe it’ll help me deal with the transition from basin to canyon.
Still, I might burn the bar stools.