Father's daze
Tim Lott - The Guardian

... The good news is that along with sex, New York and good cheesecake, having children is one of the few life experiences that truly lives up to the hype. I have known how to be miserable both with children and without. But I never knew what happiness truly was until I was a father. And it looks nothing like I thought it would.

When I was in my 20s I thought that happiness looked like a big desk I could sit behind, ordering people around. I thought happiness was golden beaches, and exciting parties, and recreational drugs, and exotic travel and big salaries and gorgeous women. And I tried all these things - oh, how I tried them. But you can add them up and multiply them by their own power, and none of them achieve the simple intensity of the joy that is granted by pushing my daughters on the swings in the local park on a sunny day, or simply watching while they sleep. No clever piece of artifice - film, theatre, TV - can make me laugh half as much. No stunning piece of art can be so beautiful. No winning of a literary prize would make me so proud. Happiness, it turns out, like evil, is banal.

What is wonderful about children is the same thing that is terrible about them. Things matter so much to them. They have the capacity to draw immense joy from, say, a cereal packet Tweenie - and generate extraordinary grief when it is trodden on. Children, emotionally, are like adults - only far, far more so. And what could be more terrifying and brilliant than that?

thanks to wood s lot

Zoe and I are putting on a party at my new place tomorrow (I'm not quite moved in. My computer isn't there yet.) My mom, Zoe's mom, along with assorted siblings, nieces and nephews will be there. A sort of saying hi to Jenny, who is here on leave from the Army in Germany, and goodbye to Jenny, Robby, and Robyn who all leave for Germany on the 25th. As well as Father's day, and a late birthday party for my mom, as well as an early birthday party for Zoe's mom. Katie will be up from Tacoma. She is in the fireworks business and this will be her last day off until after the 4th of July. So my kids, Jenny, Katie, and Robby, will be together for one last time before Jenny, Robby, and Robyn leave. Both grandkids will be there too: Robyn and Michael.

It's nice to have all the people you love in the same time and space once and a while.