It starts with the kids and I actually kind of more in sync than most mornings - they both had to catch morning flights, so we wound up sitting around the little tree at 5am, dressed in slippers and the sweatpants and t-shirts we'd slept in. Didn't even put on a bra, so I'm sure my nipples will be in every picture we took. I laughed, saying that it seemed like only yesterday they were so eager to see what Santa had brought them that they got up before dawn until they became teenagers who slept in practically until noon. Rusty said that still sounded like a great plan.
After last week's hemming and hawing, I eventually decided to get them things that would be useful now and that I could see them bringing home. For Kutter, that was a camera and some accessories - a ring light, a gimbal stabilizer, and an external hard drive. The camera probably wasn't much better than what she's got in her phone, but it's good to have something built for a job sometimes. Rusty got a Blu-ray player and what the guy at the store assured me was a good starter pack of Korean movies that could be hard to find on streaming services. This apartment actually doesn't have any device that plays discs (welcome to being a zoomer, Aidan!) and the one in the living room back home is old.
With each other, they were oddly sensible - chocolates and coffees and craft beers and bottles of hot sauce with an alarming amount of flames on the packages (Rusty, of late, has discovered that she really likes a lot of spice and heat on occasion, after she went to some local ethnic eatery and they deemed her Asian enough to handle the "real" version of a dish), stuff that they figured they would use up in the next few months even if they only had the good stuff every once in a while.
I got some of that from them, too; ciders and the fanciest box of artisanal peanut butter cups you've ever seen (they've been buying me the tree-shaped boxes of Reese's since they were five and six, so this is a bit of an upgrade). Kutter got me an autographed "Advanced Reading Copy" of a thriller by a favorite author that should be big next summer. Rusty discovered that apparently Atari still exists and is selling updated versions of 30-year-old game consoles, so she got me one of those and some cartridges, which I guess means I'm not totally introducing her to the idea of physical media.
(There were also some gag gifts that I'd prefer not to discuss - what was the idea behind competing over who could get the other the most outlandish heels?)
Then Kutter beat Rusty to the shower but was quicker than usual, and soon they were dressed, made-up, and on their way out the door. I felt like I should have accompanied them to the airport or seen them off, but it would have just been taking the subway even if one wasn't going to JFK and the other to Laguardia. Just a reminder that I was not properly dad-ing.
Soon, though, it was my turn to shower and dress for the holiday, which I'd left in the hands of the kids, telling them this would not be a good time for pranks. I still kind of felt like they were kidding me - candy-cane tights, a sparkly green skirt, and a sweater with a reindeer on it that didn't hide much of my figure and which didn't feel entirely appropriate for Zooming with the parents - but apparently, it was: Emilia's mom and her little sister were wearing matching sweaters even though full breasts apparently run in the family and her sister is still a senior in high school. When I opened the box they'd shipped, it was from Victoria's Secret and contained both flannel pajamas and some new variety of bra that Emilia's mother swears by. I'd sent gift cards, and so had they, with a pre-loaded Visa debit card discretely slipped into a card so the little sister didn't have to see it. We somehow managed small talk with me drawing on Facebook and "Mom" remembering what it was like to just be starting out in a new city.
The call with her father was a little different. There was a stepmother who said hi at the start but then busied herself in the background; I gather she and Emilia never became close. Her dad asked if I was already looking for new work since the bookstore would likely be a last-in-first-out situation, and I lied and said yes. Lots more questions about if I was being careful in the big city, and I admit I did chuckle at one point when he used some exact words I'd spoken to Rusty & Kutter, although I bluffed and said we'd had this exact conversation at graduation when he asked what was funny. Anyway, I'd sent him gift cards and he had done the same, plus some nice gloves that you don't have to take off to use your phone and a knit jester's hat. He didn't feel the need to be discrete about having sent a prepaid debit card.
After that second call, I did the thing where I retreated to Emilia's room and flopped backward on her bed, feet touching the floor, and just staring at the ceiling for a bit. I used to do it because being a girl has just been too much for me, but today it was the lying, and also something seemingly bigger than that. The parents were my age, and Emilia's sister less than a year older than Kutter, and it was something to really do the full role-reversal; dizzyingly strange at points and all too easy at others. It's one thing to put on a bra and work an entry-level job and scrape to pay rent but then come home and be able to be yourself with your kids (I've done some of that before and at a certain level you just accommodate your body until you can tune any signals of discomfort it's sending out), but immersing yourself in someone else's life, even for a couple of hours, is something different.
And on top of that, I knew that pretty soon, Kutter & Rusty were going to be doing it even more than I was. Maybe better? After a while, it led me to thinking about the guilt I'd felt about not being able to drive them to the airport earlier, and how over the past couple of months, I've slowly been relating to them more as roommates than as Dad, even with the morning's sentimental gifts, and they were about to get the better part of a week of people just relating to them as parents with their kids. And mothers! They would have mothers for the first time in a decade! Two people doting on them and worrying about them that they didn't have to share with their brothers!
I don't think I quite had a panic attack, but I laid there a while. Then, some time later, I realized I was hungry, because I hadn't actually had any breakfast and it was 1pm or so by then.
For some folks, that's bad, they'll feel like they don't deserve food or binge or the like, but it tends to hit me as "here's a problem you can deal with, so tend to that". So I did. I grabbed a coat, plus the gloves and hat Emilia's father had given me, and went downstairs, glad I was in New York. Lots of places were closed, but lots of places weren't, and while they were quieter than usual, they weren't sad, empty places that reminded you that you were sad and lonely. No, there were lots of people grabbing a slice of pizza for lunch for whatever their own reasons were and it was kind of no big deal.
Then I kept going, explored New York at Christmas. Sure, it doesn't quite snow like it used to here, so maybe it's not the exact sort of magical that it used to be, but I only saw that in the movies and on TV, so I walked through Central Park, through Times Square, up Broadway, and every other thing Emilia's phone could find that was a noteworthy Christmas decoration. And the thing about New York's bigness is that, while it's often annoying when you're packed into a bus or tourists are choking downtown, it can also mean that things can be done at scale. Some of it just isn't possible anywhere else, certainly not in our suburb or the nearest city.
Of course, another part of New York is that it gets dark at 4:15 or so this time of year on top of being cold. I decided to treat myself, found a nice steakhouse, and let them all wonder about the pretty girl having a steak, red wine, and ice cream by herself on Christmas. Then back home and more time playing Atari than since I was eight (though we probably had a Nintendo by then).
And then, writing this, because the crazy day seemed to need summing up. Tomorrow, back to work!
-Aidan/Emilia
1 comment:
Sounds bittersweet, but I definitely think you and the kids are doing your best!
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