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His recent deeds – or mis-deeds, as some have negatively labeled them – include: shouting “all-done!” and throwing food and other objects (solid and otherwise) on the floor; spitting liquids on the floor while making bubbling sounds; grabbing toys from sister and friends or even strangers; scratching; hitting; bashing-sister-over-the-head episodes; climbing on chairs, tables, and other furniture (and to which he has also taken to inscribing with pens, markers and playdough, with gusto!); de-tuning guitars; dropping coins into the steering wheel of father's car making the horn honk on right turns only; allocating water from the tub to the floor, and a host of other big-ideas formed in his angelic little devil-head.

My usual reaction to this is formally against what Dr. Jane Nelsen wrote and what two years with Carolyn Di Giuseppi, the Petaluma Queen Mother of positive discipline, told me I need to do in these situations. I usually say “No, buddy, that's not ok” and leave it at that. There are times lately though that I am taking more time because the crimes are becoming larger and therefore carry broader consequences.

I spoke at length about this with mom-friend Jane and her son Robert. She has just come out of a rough period with him telling me that there were times that any request she made of him, no mater how sweet and subtle she felt she was, was met with a roaring “NO!” That resonated with me in more ways than one. Is this what I am teaching Finghín, that is, how to say no? Is this how I want to teach him?

With that conversation in mind I went back home with him in tow and decided for the rest of that day I was not going to say no. I was instead going to find a way to say something other than no but which meant no really. The work began in earnest straight away when got home and he asked for milk. He happily says please and thank you (“Tank you papa” - that just melts me!) but his intent is anything but to drink it. Immediately he spits it on the Pergo.

“N...,” I start and clamp down on my tongue until it bleeds. I recover and say, “Finghín that milk belongs in your belly buddy. I can see that you're not ready to drink milk properly so when you're ready you let me know.” I take the milk away and pop it in the fridge and feel pretty confident that I've done a good thing. In fairness I was really just channeling Carolyn as that language and interaction is something I hear her say to her charges twice a week, even when I am there only a few minutes a day the enforcement is nice to have.

This particular day sister Hannah was having a play date with school-mate Olivia and there is calamity of a different, more sophisticated nature when these five-somethings get together and has mostly to do with taking clothes off and on and off and on again, and today, listening to Pooh stories on tape while changing clothes.

Eventually the girls came down for sustenance (frozen yogurt bars, probably) and I was distracted (only for the briefest of moments, honest) by a web design problem. It was then when I realized I did not know where Finghín had gotten off to.

I found him upstairs in Hannah's room smiling a joyful smile, having happily unwound the borrowed Pooh cassette tape, the brown ribbon looking like so much whole-wheat spaghetti on the floor. I could not contain myself as I let him have the fusillade which ended with a very charged “FINGHÍN NO!” His look was somewhere betwixt the realms of Curiosity, Awe, and Fright. He was banished downstairs to the common rooms while I gathered the tangled tape of Pooh and began the rewind job.

The job of rewinding the tape is quite pedestrian and especially in my world, in my way of being, it is too slow and without any redeeming value that I might find in working with a bit of html or css, working on that novel, or planning a shoot, or cleaning the oven, yet it did present a creative opportunity of sorts. I had worked out a way to spin the tape by placing the wooden handle of a thin painting brush into the gear and make the work faster and quite simple. The job was now simple enough to allow me to gaze out my bedroom window.

My gaze fell upon trees which seemed impossibly tall, barren of leaves, swaying gingerly in the early April breeze that was bringing just more rain and not much else. What were these trees? They were in my neighbor's yard, and by the looks of them they have been there for quite a while since they were at least five stories tall, but why hadn't I noticed them before? I continued to looked at them when I had finished rewinding the tape and suddenly felt in wonder of so many things. What kind of trees were they? Poplar? Birch? Why didn't I know? Why had I never noticed such an obvious thing before? Had I noticed them before but had forgotten?

Then it hit me that I was deeply in the realm of wonder. Holding the Pooh tape in my hand and staring at those impossible trees I felt as if I knew again, for the second time, the wonder of a child.

Finghín's deed, while ultimately problematic, offered me an opportunity to see the world differently, as he does, in a way where there is nothing right nor wrong, but that things just are what they are and I was terribly grateful to him for providing it, at least until the next clean up.

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The other day I stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying desperately not to imagine that I had become my father. I looked closely at my face, noticing the “crumples” as Hannah calls them, carving up what once was the smooth skin of my youth making me feel rather crumpy. I stood there in my crumpiness thinking about the tragic loss of youth, and then looked down at my hands rubbing in the botanically tinged lotion my wife recently prepared for the hands which I had unmanaged into scouring pads. I looked up again and saw next to my aging face the new piercings in my sagging 50-year-old ears and thought, I look like my mother.

Since turning 50 I have to admit at feeling a bit, well, old. Old as in the I'm-as-old-as-my-parents-once-were sense, which is a kind of sickly sense of being closer to the thing some of us try to avoid discussing, much less thinking, about. Yet with the ragged face staring back at me in the mirror it's difficult not to entertain the notion for bit.

I admit to going a bit off when 50 came around. One of the first things that hit me was that I would probably not hold down a regular job again, at least not unless something drastic happened. I am the at-home parent for the duration, we have decided. I felt that at 50 I'm most likely missing out on honing the modern skills to do what I do with the same efficiency that any level entry pup can manage. For so long I measured my self by what I did, but now, taking care of the kids, what have I become?

Begin mid-life crisis.

I'm not sure how long I stared there wondering which was the worse mistake, the piercings or the hand cream, and hoping I hadn't done more narcissistic, desperate age-defying silliness of which I simply was not yet aware. Since taking on the role of stay-at-home-papa things had changed a lot, but my perspective on change did not include in what manner I might be like my parents. But when I pressed the issue through my internal dialog it appeared to me that I was more like them than I thought.

I shudder at the thought that I could become my father as his cruel life provided him little perspective and little appreciation for the values I hold so dear. But, in fairness, there are definite aspects of his behavior which inform my behavior today.

I often entertain Hannah with stories about the grandfather she never knew. My father, Walter, died several years before she was born so she only knows him through the stories I've told her. Usually these stories resemble parables about choosing right from wrong, something my father could never do with much success, so stories about him have become the de facto moral equivalent of every hard lesson ever learned. I never knew he could do so much good.

My mother, on the other hand, is interesting in different ways. Like many women of my mother's generation, hers was of surviving in a tougher man's world with fewer opportunities and greater intolerance for a woman's dreams of a better life.

The fact that I think I'm looking and acting more like her every day should perhaps cause me some reason for celebration, that I have indeed not become my father. But of course I haven't become either. Or have I?

When my father lost his job due to his poor health he took up the apron and Kirby vacuum and began his days anew by packing lunches for his early teen sons, my brother and me, stuffing both whites and colors into the Maytag load, dusting off his bowling trophies – yes, he became a house-husband to his utter humiliation. He too defined himself by what he did and this work, serving his wife and kids, told him he was less than a man.

My mother's life has been mostly spent serving others. She served her mother and her mother's wishes. She served my father and her four kids without argument or fuss and with a coping cheerfulness that could be mistaken for a Pollyanna imitation until you get to know her.

In a glorious moment of clarity she knew she needed to move on from my father, but even in her new situation she served, yet in much less fear and with the same cheerfulness. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer her mood never wavered from her positive bent on things and her mission to serve. While she recovered from surgery we laughed about her personal loss in a way that others might find tragic, but from her perspective, life means so much even if she has to live it with “one less piece of equipment.” My father was not as fortunate to look upon his losses with such insight.

On his death bed my father's perspective had changed little over the years. He spoke of regret and sadness and loss. His world was dark and unflattering, full of what could be but never was. What my mother sees as opportunity he saw as defeat. My mother survived cancer, my father did not.

I gaze at my hands, looking so much like my father's, spotted from age and rough from years of manly inattention and now reeking of a sweet smell much like my mother's lingering cosmetic cornucopia and I realize I am an amalgam of who and how my parents were.

I must look upon my father's black hole of a life is a gift. The awareness that making better choices, having the awareness of the consequences of choice, is how to avoid a life of regret. It is a gift that I must surely pass down to my children if I've learned anything at all.

My mother's strength informs me that loss does not necessarily equal sadness. Indeed some of my mother's losses have meant an opportunity for laughter, a virtue I recall now looking again at my declining, untended hands and outrageously affected ear jewelery.

What a silly old man I am, and yet, in this moment, I am a happy, silly old man.

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