Love, Dad

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I’m sitting in a little dark room with a number of other parents watching their children do gymnastics.

I’m always so proud when I watch you, despite all your unplanned tumbles and face plants.  I’m proud because you always manage to shake it off and try again.  No tears, no visible frustration, just smiling persistence.

I laugh when you get distracted and your orchestrated actions evolve into impromptu dance routines, even when there is no music.  You seem to have music playing in your head all the time.

You have been promoted to the Advanced Kindergym class after starting in the recreational program.  This didn’t come as too much of a surprise, you took to it very naturally.  When you started, you could barely walk a straight line without zig-zagging across the floor like a late  night drunk, but when we put you on a balance beam you walked across the beam like you had been doing it for months.

I wonder when you read this if you will have kept at it for years or found something new.  I have a feeling that whatever the case I will be proud of you just the same because you never seem to give up and you learn from your failures.  How could I not be proud of that?

I love you darling.  Happy valentines day!

I went the easy path of using Squid as it is available to install and manage via virtualmin

For those that don’t know why I would want to install a squid on my New Jersey linode (the same people who think i am currently talking in tongues); this allows me to appear as if I am browsing the internet from the United States instead of Canada.  Why would I want to do this?  Well, if you’ve ever come across a web site that says “this content is not available in your country” you’ll know why.  Most of these sites now believe that I am sitting in the good old USA and happily serve me up a nice dose of streaming content.

Installing it on my own server and limiting access to just myself gives me a nice fast dedicated proxy server that delivers my content nearly as fast as without a proxy at all.

The idea of my not being able to watch a Saturday night Live clip on a website, simply because I am sitting on the wrong side of an invisible line is ridiculous. In my mind the internet is borderless; having people impose these silly and outdated restrictions irks me.  It’s television, not state secrets people…

My next project is to install some sort of VPN server on it so that when I am on a public connection like a wifi hotspot, I can surf in the relative safety of an encrypted tunnel instead of on an open connection.  That one may be a little bit more difficult.  Not quite sure I know where to start…

My sincerest apologies to you, the internet.

Please forgive my tardiness.  I leave you with a tidbit while I compose myself for a better post.

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‘You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.’

I was pointed to this thought by a friend who saw this picture and it got me thinking.  Do I understand human nature?  Not really,  I have no illusions to the contrary.  What I have come to realize however is that I didn’t truly understand this waving on the merry-go-round  concept until I became a parent.  What follows is an attempt at explaining it.

Before I was a parent, I can confidently say I was complete.  By this I mean that I had everything I needed to face the world as my own independent and functional unit.  To be clear, I’m not talking about material possessions; I’m talking about what I possessed in a psychological and spiritual sense.

Then Lily was born and that sense of self contained  completeness changed dramatically.  My understanding of personal completeness instantly  expanded to include the health and well-being of this other, fully dependent external  entity.  I can suddenly no longer be complete without  constant and tangible reaffirmation that she is well, that she is taken care of, and that she is happy.

While this same effect does extend to other family members, it is less dramatic because there is not generally  a dynamic of complete reliance involved.  If I don’t make Laura dinner she will make her own.  If I don’t feed a Lily, she doesn’t eat.

So back to the merry-go-round.  Before parenthood I understood that upon every rotation  parent and child  were happy to see one another.  Now that I am a parent and I am the one watching Lily spin, I understand (after some reflection) that it runs deeper than just being happy to see her.  I’m happy that I have received that visual,  tangible affirmation that she is okay, that she is happy, that she is in no danger.  During that briefest of moments when she is out of sight my sense of personal completeness is diminished slightly.  So when it is restored I’m happy, I smile, and I wave.

But what about from my child’s point of view?  It’s been a while since I’ve been a child, but I think it’s very much the same concept.  Where I see myself as guardian and provider to my child, she must see me as her protector and provider as well.  She must know that her well being is intimately tied to her parents presence because we have always provided the necessities of life to her, and we have caught her so many times when she has fallen.

So, like me, when the merry-go-round spins and mom or dad come into view she must receive that tangible affirmation that she will be ok, everything is fine, everything will be taken care of because we are there.  So she smiles, content with this knowledge, and she waves.

I generally don’t enjoy winter, or rather, I haven’t until Lily showed up, but playing in the snow with a 3 year old has a way of warming you up at the core.

Snow Bear

WordPress for Blackberry is available at the link or in the app store and seems to be a nice little app. Easier than navigating the web interface on a small screen.

All part of helping to encourage myself to do a bit more blogging this year.

L: “When we get too old, daddy, we die?”

I for some reason thought this question would come later in life. But no, it came over a bowl of pasta at the dinner table from my 3 year old. How does one answer a question like this? Honestly I suppose.

Me: “Yes we do. But you won’t have to worry about that for a long long time.”
L: “I don’t want to get too old, just a little bit old. Why do we die?”

Whoa, that one is even tougher. My mind scrambles to find an answer to a question that I don’t really think about much.

Me: “To make room for other people I guess.”
L: “Other people in our house?”
Me: “No, other people in the world.”
L: “Would they all fit in our house?”
Me: “No, there are too many to fit in our house.”
L: “In our back yard?”
Me: “No”
L: “Our front yard?”

The train of thought has thankfully moved away from death. I’m hoping that I haven’t planted the seed of thought that has lily wanting people to die when she finds herself too crowded in an elevator.

Being a parent is interesting. Every one of these answers to fundamental questions like life and death is like a seed (or a virus?).   Each with the potential to eventually take root and grow into a part of her world view.  I can only hope and try to choose the right seeds to plant and hope that she becomes a little self sustaining ecosystem of healthy ideas.

I sometimes still wonder at what point I became qualified to to this whole parenting thing…

It’s easy, make a slit int he end of a big cardboard tube.  The kind you may find in say, a wrapping paper roll.  Put the end of the cable into the slit and start wrapping the lights around the tube as seen in the picture.

Next year, you can unwrap them without a single tangle.  Gone are the days of pulling out a giant wad of lights and spending the next hour untying the most complex knot you have ever seen.

And now, because I like you, I will let you in on the very best part of storing your lights this way.

It leaves you with one of these!