a stay-at-home dad muses about raising his two children
I wrote the following into the One Line A Day journal I kept for London.
March 5, 2019.
On the morning drive to pre-K you said you “love hugging God.” Then you started to look out the window and pray, “Dear God, I love you so much.” And then you blew God a kiss.
The morning sun lit up your smiling face at the exact moment I turned around to look at you. It wrecked me. There were tears.
The war with Iran will stir me to write more about politics, current events, and international relations, but not now. Today I am just a swirling mess of ideas I can’t quite put down on paper and so I looked at a long note on my phone, which is full of some of my favorite quotes. I came across this one from Mark Twain and it pairs nicely with my comments yesterday, specifically those comments regarding POTUS and his drunken Secretary of War…
“We will not hire a blacksmith who never lifted a sledge. We will not hire a school teacher who does not know the alphabet…But when you come to our civil service we serenely fill great numbers of our minor [and major] public offices with ignoramuses.” – Mark Twain, September 30, 1876.
I check in once a day with my dear friend in Israel. He and his family already live in a volatile region of the world and what Trump did in the wee hours of Saturday morning has made day-to-day life in Israel and the Middle East even more fraught with peril.
Trump and Hegseth live in this imaginary world that never existed, but one we all thought existed after 9/11. It’s a world in which people believe the strategy to kill off a terrorist group is to take out its head and then everything will be all right. That didn’t happen in Afghanistan. That didn’t happen in Iraq. And it didn’t happen when Osama bin Laden was killed, although I cheered when he died. However, I knew it didn’t mean the hour of freedom was at hand for the thousands living under al Qaeda’s watchful eye or the multitude of terrorist organizations modeled after it.
So if you’re thinking Trump just solved ME peace again (remember he did that just a few months ago as well, saying Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “totally obliterated”) you haven’t been paying attention for a very, very long time. The newest power vacuum in the ME has just been created by the trigger-happy boys in charge of America’s firepower. When Hegseth talks about the war and American strategy, which there is none, one can truly hear that he is a stupid individual. Yes, SNL joked that he might have borrowed his Iran strategy from a bad GameCube game, but the really sick part is that it’s entirely believable. He is a stupid, boneheaded, shadow of a man. He truly makes me feel embarrassed to be a part of this country. And his boss, well, he clearly did not think about the repercussions of a regional war with Iran. He has put that part of the world under a blowtorch and now we have to watch it burn, we have to come to terms with the fact that we are responsible for blowing up a girls school, and we must prepare ourselves for what comes next. No matter how bad the next iteration of Iranian rulers are, Americans in power must say we did that.
The Board of Peace must also say we did that, when rockets fall onto Israel, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE, killing citizens. Or when US troops die, as they already have in this, only the latest, disastrous adventure in the ME.
My friend in Israel sends me videos of air raid sirens right before he and his family huddle into a safe room. He has sent me a video of an impact crater in his neighborhood. Again and again he says it’s not normal to live like this. But he is also getting to know Trump’s motivations, mentioning they are for his own financial benefit and that he’s acting like a man who is running away from something, read Epstein files. Again and again, I say I’m sorry. I added this morning, on behalf of the USA and everyone who voted for Trump, I am sorry.
It won’t be the last time I say this. I look forward to the day when more people say it too.
I just had a weekend with London.
We finally concluded the Hunger Games movies with viewings on Friday night, Saturday morning, and Sunday afternoon. At one point during the viewing London told me, “This is what happens in chapter 25 of the book.” Things like this happen when you hang out with London. You think, that can’t possibly be right, but you double check it later when you’re by yourself or maybe even in the moment and you realize, yes, she is right.
Saturday was big. I took London to Root Down, one of our favorite restaurants in Denver. Once settled into our seats I had to go use the bathroom. When I got back to the table, London was talking to the server and she asked, “Do you have any other entrees besides these four?” I mean, she wasn’t wrong. If there’s something I would change about Root Down, I would like maybe 6 entrees, but I’ve never said that to them. London cut right to the core of the problem in the 90 seconds I was away from the table.
Despite the limited selection, we fared quite well at Root Down, getting their quintessential lamb sliders and sweet potato tots. We also shared the crispy brussel sprouts and devils on horseback before “sharing” the hangar steak. I let London have 8 of the 10 tender slices of steak and in between bites she announced, “I’ve never been exposed to these flavors before.” We then had the banana cream pie and salted chocolate chip cookies to finish off the meal. As we finished up, Governor Polis took his seat in the corner of the restaurant.
The true highlight of the night, and the real reason we were in Denver, was to see Bruce Hornsby perform with the Colorado Symphony at the Boettcher Concert Hall. London has never seen Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce in concert, but Kate and I have been going to Bruce concerts every year of her life. She’s heard a lot of Bruce at home and is more familiar with the songs than even I believed her to be.
Once the show started and we were settled in with our drinks (Shirley Temple for the lady and an Odell IPA for me) London was naming songs after a few keystrokes. Bruce played a long time and London might have fallen asleep—resting her head on my shoulder—during a song or two. At one point, Bruce announced that his next song has a curse word in the title and went on to explain a bit about “Shit’s Crazy Out Here.” Before play resumed, London turned to me and said, “Oh my, I’ve never heard an artist swear before.” She got a laugh from our row in the concert hall.
London rallied for Bruce’s second set, even whispering into my ear the name of an obscure song Bruce was dabbling in, “Hop, Skip & Jump.” For the second time in two days I was later looking it up to see if Bruce had been playing that song. He had been. She was right. I could have never named it.
An hour later we were home and in our beds, so happy that I saw Bruce with my daughter, thankful for a great meal, and treasuring new moments which will always be with us.
I’ve just been brainstorming for a few days about a new title for this blog. Here are the frontrunners in my mind:
South Suburban Salutations
Folio From Featureless Fort Collins
Scrawls From Suburban Sprawl
Filings From Barely Fort Collins
Shoutouts From The Sterile South
The Exurb Epistolary
Missives From Monotony
We Have Trees Down Here Too
Notes From Nothingness
Letters From Lifeless Locales
I Go On Runs Longer Than This City
If you have alternate ideas, I’m open to them. Please leave a comment with them or your favorites from above.
Cognitive Dissonance is defined as “a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. Being confronted by situations that create this dissonance or highlight these inconsistencies motivates change in their cognitions or actions to reduce this dissonance, maybe by changing a belief, by explaining something away, or by taking actions that reduce perceived inconsistency.”
I saw this mental phenomenon in the form of an outfit this week.
A man was wearing a tank top with pink lettering that said, “Support Your Local Girl Dad.”
And, he had a Trump hat on.
You cannot be both.
That’s it. That’s the post.
I am not a devoted hockey fan, but if it’s the Olympics or the Avs in the playoffs, I’ll watch a match. So I was Sunday when I saw Jack Hughes’ golden goal just 1:42 into overtime. To see the excitement of the team was absolutely contagious. I replayed the final minute of the match for the kids. We were stoked. And then the players held up Gaudreau‘s jersey and brought his kids onto the ice for photos with the team. It was a beautiful moment and a show of brotherhood that few of us get to experience.
I truly felt proud of these guys, none of whom I follow, but it was a moment—rare these days—to be proud of something the United States of America has done. That was the before.
The in-between was just a few hours later when, as I scrolled through Instagram, I saw the familiar coke-addled, deer-in-the-headlights look of the FBI Director Kash Patel slamming back beers with the team. I felt the moment died right there.
The after was coming to grips with the taxpayer money used to fund such a trip, apparently $100,000. There was no such support of the women’s team when they won their gold medal. In fact, this celebration did feature the women’s team (after a few more shitty beers were had) as they were the butt of a joke by the president himself when he said, “I must tell you, we are going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that.” Adding that if he didn’t invite the women’s team, “I would probably be impeached.” To this, the men’s team laughed, both after the mention of inviting the women’s team and again after the impeachment joke. There was one man decent enough to be heard saying 2 for 2 in the video, a reference to the USA hockey teams sweeping the medals at the Milano Cortina games, but other than that the video was filled with very bro-y chuckles and slaps on the back.
So there we have the president and one of his closest servants mock women’s sports, even though they pretend to be the party that wants to save women’s sports, but not behind closed doors. Behind closed doors they are pedophile-protectors, misogynist pigs, and care little about serving their constituents or solving a high-profile missing person case (you forgot about Guthrie, Patel). It’s all jokes and glad-handing. Duty and honor are absent from these men. They have proven it again and again. Their love of taking credit for any American victory, whether they played any part in it, is face-palming toddleresque.
The kicker to all this is that as far as I know, no member of the men’s hockey team has spoken out about what went on in that locker room. They could have collectively not let that wee spotlight-grabbing, sad sack of a man in the door to celebrate with them. His role at most, should be to shake hands with the players once they were back in country. And not one man has defended their much more successful counterparts, the women’s USA hockey team, after Trump made them into a joke for all the men and the world to hear.
If I could, I would make the men’s hockey team hear this poem I just heard last night for the first time (potus and Patel are a lost cause, clearly), it’s by Daragh Fleming and it’s titled “If I Ever Have Girls.” Here is a brief passage from the poem, intended for the US Men’s Hockey Team because they clearly need the education:
My girls will know poetry and song.
They’ll know I will listen when something feels wrong.
They’ll learn that “women are too emotional” is an original lie,
And they’ll not grow up with a father who refuses to cry.
So yeah, my girls will make some weak men shake in their knees.
They won’t be the women that society expects.
They’ll be the women society needs.
—Daragh Fleming, “If I Ever Have Girls”
Denver has a pulse. I have found myself missing the beat of the city lately. I left it with relative ease in June when we packed up everything and moved to Fort Collins, but now that we have had time to settle into our new house and new hometown, I spend a lot of time thinking about the last hometown.
There is always the grass is always greener excuse, but that’s not exactly what I am feeling. I don’t want to be in our last house, although I absolutely loved it. I don’t want to be back in the old neighborhood, although I sort of liked it. I just miss things about Denver, things that maybe I thought Fort Collins had too, but I haven’t found them yet. For example, good restaurants. Denver has many of them. A hundred? I don’t know, but enough that there was always some eatery with a great reputation that you could go try for the first time every single time you went out to eat. Fort Collins has an inexplicable amount of restaurants, but finding a good one is as rare as finishing the NY Times Sunday crossword in one sitting. It’s quite the task, one that we’ve been surprised by. Thankfully, we were taken to a great one on Friday, Rare, a steakhouse at Mountain and College, right in the heart of town.
I guess I underestimated how much I was tuned into a Denver lifestyle after 15 years there. It’s a big city, especially by my standards. There was always something going on. That doesn’t necessarily mean we always partook, I mean, there’s never a need to go to some event on 16th Street, but similar activities were always an option. Prior to our time in Denver, we lived in Milwaukee, which is a noticeably smaller city, but still a city with a buzz and an identifiable scene. So, Kate and I have had 18 years of marriage in big cities, and nearly eight months in a certifiably small city.
Fort Collins has a pulse too. But I haven’t found it. It has felt so laid back and slow it appears lifeless from some angles. I suspect that I will find the beat of this city. Time will strengthen the bond as it always does. I guess I still feel bonded to Denver in a very strong way. I don’t want that to weaken, but I want my bond to FoCo to be just as strong.
I do not once remember my parents implying that the key to happiness is money. They expressed that money is important, of course. It pays for a roof over your head, food on your plate, a car in the driveway (or other means to easily get around town), and, if you’re lucky, it pays for other roofs over your head on an annual vacation.
I grew up in a family that vacationed more than once a year and we were never left wanting on Christmas morning. My sister got a car on her 18th birthday. I was given a car in my second year of college. Like many families, a washer and dryer breaking down and needing immediate replacement was a financial burden, but it was not one that economically broke the house. We were not in the third of Americans who couldn’t cover a sudden $400 expense. We earned above the median household income, which currently stands at $81,600. We were reminded of unhoused people all around us and helped them through charities and mission trips.
Essentially, I was raised in a household that made me believe we were well-off. And we were. Things were kept in perspective. Yes, there were people richer than us and we were told there always will be. But, we weren’t on the streets, we had a very nice house, I had very nice toys, I had Shaq’s Reebok Pumps (look at these beauties, damn), a Duke Blue Devils pullover jacket, and the gold Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time N64 cartridge (still do). I felt lucky. I felt undeserving on many occasions because of what my parents gave me and gave the family.
So when my kids ask me, are we well off? I tell them the truth. Yes, yes we are. We keep it real. I don’t want them comparing up the economic ladder, I want them looking down the economic ladder to see how well off we are and thinking how we can make things easier for those who aren’t well-off. In this house, like the one I grew up in, a matter of being well-off is knowing the facts, having humility, being respectful of the majority of the country who cannot live the way you live, being grateful, and not acting like you are owed something because your family can afford it.
And it’s about holding onto rare N64 cartridges.
Catastrophizing is a bad habit I have developed since becoming a father. I am no idiot, I know where it has its origins: London’s nearly 4-month-long NICU stay and all the things I witnessed during that, all the scares and setbacks we have had with her since then, and the ASD and ADHD diagnoses. Not to mention that since she has been born we haven’t lived in a calm, peaceful, and honorable country. A lot can go wrong. A lot can go right, but I am weak and tend to spend quite a bit of time in the former mindset. I am trying to improve that. Progress pending…
Anyway, when you’re already fearing the worst, attending a parent/teacher conference can be like going to the front lines of the conflict. You expect to hear some bad or sad news regarding the child you already know has special needs, but when it’s the other child, the one you thought was in the clear, the mind goes blank. You can go from not very hopeful to the sky is falling quite quickly. This is precisely the way I felt when Camden’s teacher brought up his attention span last year. I stared at the ground, here we go again.
We started the diagnosis process last year in Denver, but it fell to the wayside amidst the chaos of moving. Now, in Fort Collins, we have had another teacher express concern about his attention span in class. I’m thankful he has had attentive teachers who both, without any communication between them, mentioned attention concerns. Finally, we are taking the steps to look into it, starting with the Vanderbilt Assessments this week and meeting with his doctor next week.
As for me, I haven’t been catastrophizing too much this go around. I don’t think it will be a multiple diagnoses situation, like with London. At most, I do think Camden has a moderate case of ADHD and we hope to get him some help. We will review the assessment results next week and probably talk treatment/solutions in the same appointment. Talking and writing about it has made it easier to face. So, even if you’re not here for updates regarding this, you’re still gonna get them because I’m here to talk and write about anything. Buckle up. 🙂
I run out of patience with my kids when I don’t run. It was years ago when I realized that running had become an essential ingredient in my self-care. I had not run for several days and I had a short fuse with everybody. In the middle of yelling at the kids I was chastising myself for yelling at them. I was not the best version of myself and I wanted to know why. It wasn’t just an off day—all parents have those—there was something missing from my ordinary menu of mental health entrees. I ran down the list and could not put a checkmark next to running. A day off was key, but I had taken three and felt myself stretched too thin.
Since then I have made running a priority. I try to run when it’s convenient for the family. If it’s on the weekend, then the offer stands for Kate to get away and do something by herself for a while. I try to navigate family and social commitments and, for the most part, I do that successfully.
After more than a month of writing, I feel like it’s back on the menu, my menu of mental health entrees. Writing was at best a digestif for too long, something I indulged in only when everything was going right, but the irony is that everything felt off or just not right because I didn’t write, so I never wrote.
Last week was busy. A lot of things going on and a trip to Steamboat Springs to prepare for, so writing took a hit. I thought about it all weekend and, at times, felt the same way I do when I don’t run for several days, dull, easily angered, not as talkative, and more cynical than normal. Yikes. But it was comforting to feel that I am a better version of myself when I write. The cost of not doing so has become crystal clear once again.
After 15 years in Denver, having parked in a wide variety of places all over the city, and in front of my own house, I took a hard hit to my passenger side corner panel in June. I was fast asleep, it was 12:30, prime sleeping hours for an old ride like me, when a Merc pulled a u-turn behind me. It’s operator must have thought she was clear of my booty, but nope. The Merc hit my right flank and slammed me into my sister, this beautiful white Sienna. Gosh, I was sore that morning.
The nice people that hit me left a note on the windshield. They were looking for my owners and around 7am they found them. My driver drove me forward some, easing me away from my sister Sienna. She faired pretty well. A sizable dent in her side above the rear wheel, but nothing that couldn’t be hammered out, painted, and polished. Me however, I could move fine, my driver made sure of that. He and the experts he took me to to get fixed thought I would soon be on the road again. But I felt like something was not right and that they’d have to take me apart to find out what exactly. After a several hour operation without anesthesia they found it, a cracked A/C unit that—at my age—is a death knell. They say the cost of repairing that A/C unit is more than my entire worth! Well, junk in my trunk, that freaking sucks.
I sat in a shitty dirt lot getting dusty for a couple weeks before my owners came by and took a closer look. They kept their voices down, but I knew it wasn’t good news. I was to be put down, sent out to pasture, repurposed as an ultra-modern bookshelf, made into a tiny home, or whatever it is they do with heaps of metal like me that are never gonna roll on four wheels again. They said some nice words to me and cleaned me out really well. They get a new version of me now!…but they didn’t look excited. I knew they just wanted to keep me.
As they walked away I recalled our long, wonderful journey together. I was brand new when they found me in Milwaukee, the first new one they had ever bought. They put some leather on me and gave me hot pads so I could heat up their butts on cold upper midwest mornings. From that day on they kept me picture worthy. I was born in 2009, but looked half my age when they had to leave me in that dirt lot in 2025. I third-wheeled it on a lot of date nights until 2014 when I became the family car. The amount of gear I carried just for a one-night stay became absurd. Then another passenger arrived in 2017 and I was officially demoted from first string to second string. I couldn’t compete with the Sienna. She’s faster, greener, smoother, and has loads more storage than I do.
But retirement was good to me! I was still the date car. I was kept even cleaner than in years past! I even drove for Lyft for a little bit. Someone kindly left me some weed one night in the fold of my second row, it made my headlights droop. I still had time with the family, just for shorter drives. Back and forth to school. Back and forth to Costco. Last hurrahs? I had a number of them. A blizzardy drive to Omaha, leaving at 3am because if I waited longer, I couldn’t get through that whiteout. A guys weekend in Steamboat. I carried seven adult males up the road to Strawberry Hot Springs, my heaviest cargo yet and I was in my 14th year!
I dodged bullets, stolen vehicles, and somehow avoided break-ins and hit and runs for all of my life in Denver, only to come to a stop in Fort Collins, a much safer, calmer, cleaner city. The irony. It’s not the way I wanted to go out, but I did the very best with the miles given to me.
I keep a note on my phone called Quotable. It’s been there for years. Sometimes I add to it once a week. Then months might go by before opening it up and adding another great line or passage from an article or book.
The quotable note is often referenced by me to jumpstart a post or a brainstorming session. This afternoon I could not decide on what to write about. Not sure why that is, but I think yesterday’s tough 8-mile run with almost 1000ft of elevation gain might have played a role. I am quite lethargic in body and mind today, a real case of the Mondays, so I turned to the quotable note for inspiration.
A quote from The Handmaid’s Tale (I think) caught my eye. “Isolation atrophies the mind.” That hits hard for me. I have never been as isolated in my adult life as I have been during my years being a stay-at-home dad, specifically those years the kids weren’t in full-time school. I kept them busy with trips to the zoo, museums, and camps. We always had stuff to do and I was never truly alone, but I was isolated from my peers for many years. No co-workers, no “working” lunches, no peers, no conferences, no after-work happy hour meetups, a whole lot of blank stares from moms and nannies, and a growing sense that all my good, male friends don’t think of me as a professional or a person with career ambitions (I think that sense has proved correct again and again).
As years of this flew by, I felt a greater gap between myself and peers and a dullness to my mind, like an unused muscle. The atrophy of the mind, not from old age, not from a disease, but just from the daily grind of parenting and numbing domestic work. It’s a feeling stay-at-home moms have known for generations, but it’s uniquely strong for at-home dads. Not necessarily worse, just different.
When I tell another man that I am a stay-at-home dad they react in a few ways. One, the man is completely shocked and acts like he hasn’t heard of such a thing, also assuming I will get back on my feet and be in the “workforce” once again. Two, they share that they did the same thing, but I wait for the punchline, “it was for six months” or for some other unimpressive duration of time. And three, the man tells me that is his dream job. This is a classic case of a man not knowing what he doesn’t know. But do you see what I am dealing with here? None of the responses are welcoming, nor relatable.
For the man giving me response number two: I have been a stay-at-home dad for twelve years now. We aren’t going to connect if you think your 6-month stint (that’s just paternity leave in Europe) is relatable to my tenure. For the man giving me response number one: While you are still giving me your response I am calculating how quickly I can get out of this worthless interaction and to make a note to never approach you again. For the man giving me response number three: You really have not given this any thought and you don’t know exactly what a stay-at-home parent does. In this case, more often than not, ask your wife.
Try having these three conversations over and over again for twelve years. It’s not isolation, but it can sure atrophy the mind. Maybe my mind has atrophied. Hopefully, not that much. Maybe not at all. But when I came across the quote from Handmaid’s Tale I wrote it down because it’s true. That truth scared me. It has to be part of the reason I am doing this again because if not now, then when? After both of the kids have left the house? Ten years from now? Too long. Too much isolation between now and then. After a wait that long, the muscle will not have just atrophied, it will have disappeared and along with it the ambition to have ever worked it at all.
No one tells you that looking at pictures of your kids from years past is going to hurt so much. It really came as a shock to me when I first registered this response. I heard so many maxims and accepted truths about parenting, especially the oft-repeated it goes by so fast. I always felt the truth in that. It was made crystal clear after London’s first few years, so when Camden came along in 2017 I made an even greater effort to appreciate every single moment of infancy and the toddler years.
I feel like I did that right, most of the time, but still, I look at a video or a picture of those years and I get overwhelmingly sad. Yes, I’m happy I lived the moment. Yes, the kids look cute as heck. But it was gone so fast. And there’s gonna be a moment that happens over the next few days that will be photographed or recorded. In a few years, it’ll pop up as a memory on my iPhone and it’ll make me sad all over again. That cycle will continue until they are out of the house. Then the memories from those fleeting moments will become even rarer.
These really are the best years and the sadness is a reminder of that. I’ll know in the simplest of moments, like walking London to the bus stop as the sun rises or holding Camden’s hand as we walk to get the mail, that on my deathbed I’ll want them back more than anything I have ever wanted in my life. That is the most painful reminder that the years do really go by fast. You can believe it when you hear it. But you feel it in your bones when you live it. It’s a stubborn ache that will never go away.
When my inbox notified me of a response from the most popular swimming website in the world, I felt like a big door had just opened. This was my break, or really just the evolution of my freelance writing career, which was gonna take off following this gig. I just knew it. The owner and editor wanted to have a phone call and talk about topics, how often I would be expected to write, and what they were looking for. The call was scheduled two days later.
“We offer $10 per post,” the editor said. I was so insulted I didn’t know what to say. I managed an, “Okay.” This was the swim website to have publish your work and the owner just offered me enough money per post to cover the cost of my Chipotle order, but not if I wanted a drink. It was 2015 and a few days later I got them to double their offer. But even at $20 a post, I would make less than minimum wage if I took four hours on a piece, from conception to ready to publish. I entertained the website by submitting three to four articles. They were all published. I had a writer profile page on the website. In fact, it’s still there for some reason, but this was a doomed project before it started.
This was my last gasp at freelance writing. Even if I worked efficiently and quickly, I wasn’t producing an article in under two hours so the best hourly rate I ever achieved at the aforementioned website was $10/hr. For quick reference, we pay babysitters twice that amount, and that’s the starting rate.
My long, storied freelance career* began at DiningOut magazine. They were kind enough to offer me a paid internship in 2007 and afterward I had a monthly article with them for about the next year. Their pay wasn’t exceptional (if I remembered the exact amount I would share it), but it was a lot more than the swim website was offering. It was fair pay considering my lack of experience and if my passion was food writing, I think it would have been a better fit for me, but I was also turned off by their advertorial articles. I didn’t want to be promoting a pizza I had never eaten or a martini I had never sipped. I wanted a little more freedom, both in topic and ability to express myself.
The ideal writing gig was with the now defunct collegeswimming.com. They offered me $75 an article. They wanted one a week. I usually took 90min to 2hr to write, edit, and submit. This was something I could easily do as I finished up my MA degree at the University of Denver and started my job search. $300/mo was nothing to survive on, but it was a nice little boost to our income and to my ego, which was in desperate need of a boost as the job search stretched on and on, much later into 2013 than I ever thought it would.
But in 2014, something happened to us. Kate and I became parents three months sooner than we expected to be and, although I’ve dabbled with other writing projects since then (see lucrative deal from 2015 mentioned above), I knew the moment London arrived at 26 weeks gestation that if I were to write about anything of consequence ever again, it would be about this experience and the twelve years since. At this point, I don’t get paid per word or per post, but that could change, either way I feel like writing on this website about whatever it is I want to write about is the richest I have ever felt as a writer.
*denotes sarcasm.
I love a good documentary. This time of year between Oscar nominations and the Oscars show is like Christmas for documentary lovers. A lot of the films become available to stream on some platform or at least become available to rent. In 2023, one of those movies was titled Navalny, after the Russian lawyer and opposition leader, who was sentenced in 2022 to nine years in prison. In 2024, Navalny’s death in a Russian prison was announced and even though terribly sad, it was not shocking to the community of people who knew what he was up against.
When Navalny won the Oscar for best documentary feature no one was surprised. Navalny was gripping, disturbing, touching, and so incredibly sad. But so important. I have been interested in documentaries from inside Russia or from countries they invade, see 20 Days in Mariupol, since then. You can watch 20 Days at this site. It won best documentary feature at the Oscars in 2024.
The latest and greatest documentary feature smuggled out of Russia is Mr. Nobody Against Putin. It’s available to rent on Amazon Prime (that’s how I watched it). Although it is not as polished, nor as well known as Navalny and 20 Days, its story is pivotal in understanding today’s Russia, especially their now four-year-old war with Ukraine. Mr. Nobody is about an events coordinator at a primary school in Russia’s industrial heartland who was also the only videographer at the school. His name is Pavel and he was constantly filming, thus making himself a bit of an accidental documentarian when he gets in touch with someone outside of Russia who is interested in his footage.
The footage Pavel collects is at first general reactions to the war with Ukraine, but it takes a radical turn when Putin launches a national education program with scripted, patriotic speeches from every teacher in the school. Time spent learning nosedives. Grades tank. And Pavel, well he very conveniently is in charge of filming the rollout of this propaganda, which gets weirder and weirder. Students get scripted responses to the scripted questions asked of them. Military marching is frequently practiced in the hallways. The Wagner Group even comes to the school and makes a presentation, holding a grenade-throwing contest for boys not much older than my son.
The footage is sickening, but like Navalny and 20 Days, essential viewing if you want to educate yourself about Russian leaders and what Ukraine, and frankly the rest of the world, is up against. The movie would not exist if Pavel did not escape Russia with his hard drives and memory cards. He leaves behind a city he truly loved, a mom who works as a librarian at the primary school, and dozens of current and former students who consider him a true friend. But, under Putin, Pavel was at risk of being sentenced to prison for 15 to 25 years under new and old laws which punish Russians who spread “false information” or dissent against Russian activities or leaders.
Pavel will likely never be allowed back into Russia. Like any well-known Russian dissenter he also faces the threat of Putin’s ire, which does not respect boundaries, sovereignty, or international law. It was a great risk, and still is, for Pavel to have made this movie. It faces tough competition at the Oscars this year, but of the 4 out of 5 Oscar-nominated documentaries I have watched this year, it gets my vote.
Successful birthday parties for a child on the spectrum are rare, at least they have been for us so far, having just celebrated London’s 12th. The first parties, the preschool parties, don’t count. Those are the easy ones, where everyone is invited. Parents hang around too. Maybe you have a cooler of juice boxes next to a cooler of craft brews, clearly marked of course. All the kids get along for a bit. There’s some crying. There’s some chaos. There’s some confusion. But, the really nice part is that kids aren’t mean yet. If they see differences at all among their peers it is not an issue.
Elementary was a whole different beast. Girls got very clicky. They aren’t kind to each other and they’re especially not kind or welcoming to someone who appears to think and act differently than them. My daughter, who is the most welcoming and nice person I have ever known, did not get invited to a birthday party more than twice in elementary school (I might be exaggerating). We hosted a few parties, though it was a mix of good and bad. One girl at a third grade party showed up with her cellphone. At another party, a sleepover, we had a guest steal toys and jewelry (real jewelry, not kiddie dress-up garbage), later receiving it in the mail and severing ties for the best.
London would often speak of friends at school. I knew some of them. But there was never an invite. And in group interactions, I saw no one engaging London like a true friend. I was disgusted and admittedly so disappointed in her peers that I referred to them as bitches when complaining to Kate. How is this possible? How are these girls so mean already?
My heart has been shattered again and again thinking about how many birthday parties she hasn’t been invited to. It has bothered her too, although she is so damn resilient and has faired much better than I have. For her, it’s normal and I think it truly does not bother her. But I know exactly what she’s missing and the sadness that comes from that enwraps me in a dark shroud somedays.
I have normalized London not having friends she sees outside of school. No one is gonna call for a playdate. There just aren’t going to be birthday party invites. No need to navigate a busy weekend of social gatherings for her because there aren’t any. I know London has attended more parties as the older sibling guest of Camden, who receives birthday party invites, than parties she received an invitation for.
So when we moved to Fort Collins and London met a girl one year older than her and two houses away from us, I was not optimistic. I started to wonder how long until this girl can see London’s differences and any hope in a friendship is dashed? How will we handle that when she lives on the same street? We are going to see her so much. London won’t get it. London will approach this girl every day like they are best friends.
But it’s been months now and that hasn’t happened. London and her new friend have even hung out outside of school, having hot chocolate on Fridays and fishing together on the weekends. They walk back from the bus stop after school. The girl says bye to London and London actually says bye back! London’s new friend has introduced her to other friends in the neighborhood and at school. And just this last weekend, we hosted a party for seven of London’s friends who, according to spies in the room (I took Camden to Fort Fun), got along very well and were respectful and sweet to London. After the party, London was on cloud nine. She showed me all the generous gifts she received. I reveled in her glow, even feeling a bit optimistic about her future friend situation, which I have never felt. I expect there to be setbacks along the way, these are middle school girls after all, but so far they are much kinder than any elementary “friend” she ever had.
I just have to recalibrate my social expectations for her because—although they are fleeting—hopeful moments in this area are a new thing for us. Although we have encouraged her socially for years, it’s her who is really putting in the work, putting herself out there, and talking to anyone and everyone like it’s the best day ever. I love that.
Trail running. I have always loved it. One might think that living in Denver for 15 years provided a lot of trail running opportunities. Well, if that’s the case, you just don’t know Denver. It is a shockingly flat city and spread out. Omaha has more undulation and hills than metro Denver. Truly. I have run a decent amount in both cities.
Also, if you live in east Denver, the mountains aren’t close. You have a one-way, 35-40-minute drive to get to the foothills, a total slog that means a trek on 70, 6th Ave, or a really long loop south via 225, 25, and 470. That’s just to get to a run, that by this Coloradan’s standards, could qualify as a trail run. Then you have the drive back.
So, for fifteen years, trail running wasn’t a big part of my running regimen. Whenever we would vacation in the mountains, which was frequent, I would bring all the running gear and over the years I’ve accrued a lot of miles in Breckenridge, Frisco, Vail, Steamboat Springs, and Estes Park.
Since Fort Collins has been home, trail running is back on the menu and a regular part of my week. The mountains in general just feel much more accessible here. I can reach the base of them in twenty minutes. I have a standing trail run with a good friend every Thursday at noon. I have joined the Fort Collins Run Club and participate in their training runs for the Horsetooth Half Marathon (not a trail run, but a decent chunk of it happens in the mountains).
Solo trail runs are also a regular occurrence. This time by myself serves as a much-needed meditative hour in the midst of so much noise and bustling about. Now, the week doesn’t quite feel fully taken advantage of if it doesn’t include a trail run.
A good trail run always presents a scene worthy of a photo. So, before I head off on my weekly trail run, I’ll share a few photos below of the scenes trail running has brought me. The new header image for this blog is from a trail run as well. It’s not a remarkable photo, but it was time to lose the old photo of the Denver skyline, circa 2014.
Being a sibling of a child with special needs is tough. I think about Camden’s voice being stifled and smothered from time to time by London’s voice. Not that she is trying to be rude. She loves a good chat. She loves sharing facts. She loves asking questions. Hang around for an evening and you’ll get all three. Of course, there is an element of not being able to read the room, i.e. know when someone else wants to talk. That comes with the autism.
Camden is very patient with it all. Yes, there are times where he will scream at the top of his lungs in order to interrupt or he will simply just tell London to stop talking. But most of the time, he settles in for a good while and waits to talk. He’s often better at this than me. His frustration does manifest in unique ways though. He has broken down in tears in response to us telling him he does not have autism like his sister. In hindsight, he was likely expressing a yearning for attention. Because he doesn’t have autism, he won’t get as constant attention as London, nor will he receive hours of playtime therapy at home, which London received. He has FOMO, the most unusual kind, but it’s definitely FOMO.
Camden has had to develop very good listening skills. We all have. There is one person with autism at the dinner table every night, but we all feel it. We all live with the diagnosis. To be clear, this isn’t a curse. It’s merely a clarification. Autism is a family diagnosis.
There is a name for the siblings of diagnosed children. “Glass siblings, they’re called, because they are thought to be invisible—as transparent as glass,” writes Carrie Cariello in Autism Out Loud. Now, I think with London’s diagnosis not being in the moderate to profound level, Camden isn’t quite a glass sibling, but he does spend his time being overshadowed because of his sibling needing more guidance, attention, verbal reminders, etc. To think that he has ever felt invisible makes me incredibly sad, even if it was just for an evening.
It may be hard at times, but Camden is a perfect sibling for London. Constantly on the move and ready to play with her. The minute he walks in the door after school he asks, “Where’s London?” They increasingly play well together, whether building Legos, a Brio train, or playing in each other’s Minecraft worlds. I say increasingly, but I still feel like a boxing referee 50% of the time. That’s okay! That’s an improvement. They play in each other’s rooms. They enjoy the same music. They are both in love with playing in the snow. Their connection is very strong.
It used to be if Camden crossed the threshold of London’s room she would instantly yell, “Get out,” done so with a signature staccato, which Kate and I still imitate. I remember the first time London allowed Camden into her room to sit down and play Legos. London’s ABA therapist alerted me to the moment and I snuck upstairs to get a picture of it before the moment vanished. And it did vanish, but it happened! I’ll take that win.