When my childless friends ask what it's like to be parent, I often say that it's like being in a boat lost in fog, but then you figure some tiny thing and the fog clears to reveal a full moon over a calm sea.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Our son fell asleep normally, but kept waking up and crying for his mom. After the 3rd or 4th trip downstairs for my very pregnant, very tired wife, I volunteered to take a shift. The minute our son saw me instead of his mom, he started crying inconsolably.

Now if you've never seen a 2 year old cry, especially a kid like ours who is pure sugar, it's like watching all the sadness in the world poured into this little pup of a human being. There is no anger, no reproach, just pure unfiltered sorrow. So I try to hold him and he just turns away, giant tears streaming down his cheeks. "No daddy. Noooo..."

There is one school of parenting that says, offering comfort in these situations is exactly the wrong thing to do, that you need to steel yourself and be hard and that by going cold turkey the child will learn to sleep by himself. We tried that once or twice and our son sobbed so hard he started throwing up. He was a headbanger as an infant until we brought him to our bed. The headbanging stopped immediately. The kid is just a people person.

Anyway he was sobbing, crying for his mom, and I told him if he felt sad to hold my hand. His hand reached out, grabbed my finger and squeezed it hard. I asked him if he felt better, and he nodded. He turned to me and through a stream of alligator tears said, "Up. Up. Momma. Momma." I told him his mother needed to rest and eat dinner which led to more gulping heaving sobs. He turned away again. He was trying to keep it together, but not doing a very good job of it, with cycles of crying and wails. This went on for a long time and I was about to break down and call for Jenn. Then I whispered, "Hey, I'll hold you until your mom comes to bed, however long it takes. You can hold me too." He turned to me, gave me the tightest hug a kid his size can give, rested his forehead against mine, and held my face with both his hands. The tears stopped, he gave me a kiss, closed his eyes, and fell into deep slumber. That was all there was too it. He didn't want to be alone tonight. And who does really?

Sybil Miller put up a nice post yesterday on Helen Levitt's color work along with a links to several images from Levitt's book Slide Show. Slide Show is on my Christmas list in case anyone in my family is reading this.

Gabriel García Márquez on marriage in Love in the Time of Cholera:

"Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore."

Jonathan Moller spent ten years in Guatemala photographing rural Mayan communities at war with the government. The stories he tells are tragic, heartbreaking, and beautiful. A monograph of this body of work is titled Our Culture is Our Resistance. (Note the images on Moller's personal website are presented with lots of compression. Slightly better quality images are viewable, although without context, here.)

I don't remember many of the details of funerals of my childhood, but I do remember hanging out with all my cousins, playing cards, and chasing each other through house. We kids might might cry upon seeing the dead, or afterwards at night, but the sheer exuberance of youth would not allow us to remain sad when so many cousins were around. It was that way this weekend at the funeral of the father of a friend, a respected 70 year old doctor killed in an instant by a drunk 20 year old driver. The brother of the doctor said this, "As I get older I realize more and more that the constant in these family gatherings, the thing that cements them in memory, is sound of of the kids voices and the rumble of their feet tearing through house. I look around this room and I can see almost everyone here as one of those kids. I remember when my brother and I were those kids... it doesn't seem that long ago."

There is a moment during great concerts after last note has played out, but before the applause starts, of lingering clarity. The music trails in your head, the musician waits expectantly for the audience reaction, the crowd recoils silently with palpable tension. The quiet is delicious and I always want it to go on forever. But then, usually too soon, people leap to their feet spontaneously, applauding and cheering. The artist relaxes, smiles and the moment has passed.

That in-between moment is the best way I know to describe the experience of seeing of seeing my son for the first time. After the drama of being born he was lying in an incubator squalling under the attention of a small battery of nurses and doctors. They parted allowing me in and there was a sudden quiet. My son's eyes opened for the first time and we looked at each other. He held my finger. Everything fell away. Lingering clarity... and then of course it was time to bring him to his mother who worked so hard to get him into this world and things got noisy again.

With a first child you spend nine months speculating. What will he look like? Will he have a sense of humor? Will he hate eggs like I do? Will he have my toes or yours? But when the child is actually born, sitting there blinking, still steaming from the womb, holding your finger with his entire hand, you realize, you don't know anything, you have no idea what to do, and the only thought in your head is, "What have we done?"

Fast forward two years to this morning. My son is hiding under a blanket. When I peek underneath he says in his scariest voice, "Boo" and pulls down a corner. From my perspective I see a blanket covered mound shaking with giggles. He refers to watermelon as "mmmmmmmmmm" as in "yummmmmmmmm". He is moved by music of all kinds, finding it impossible not to sway his entire body from side to side when hears something he digs. He insists we join in his rapture so if you see the Gutierrez family at an Indian restaurant and they are playing Bollywood tunes (he loves Hindi music), you will see all of us chair dancing in unison and a huge smile on my son's face. He loves the moon and wants me to grab it for him. None of this would I have imagined.

Of course it hasn't all been fun. Sleep has never been our son's strong suit... All the clichés about not knowing vulnerability until you have a kid are true... wait until your 3 month old has a raging fever, or you watch your 6 month old topple from a chair, or witness a 4 year old sucker punch your kid in the playground. Each incident stops your heart for a second, but while these things hurt our parental minds, the kids are, for the most part, oblivious. They're hard to break. It is a necessary trait of the very young, to shake things off and to keep moving forward without looking back.

Time has a different meaning for a 2 year old. He can spend an afternoon chasing ants and have it pass in a second, but 5 minutes in a car seat can stretch out to eternity. For us parents days flicker by with blinding speed. We look at pictures from 3 months ago and say to each other, "My god he was such a baby."

Life is full of so many firsts. First smile. First steps. First time seeing the ocean. First ice cream. First stars. First time wearing waders in the rain. First time playing in a pile of leaves. First scar. Maybe first memories.

And for this particular two year old life has been full of people who love him, and he expresses love in return with an almost heartbreaking openness. If only things could always be this sweet...

related: birth, one year

When was the last time you sat in a darkened room and listened to a great album from start to finish with without distractions? No internet, no books, no preoccupations- just you and the music... this, I recommend.

I do not like cheese
a well known fact
nor rainy days nor purring cats

there are so many things
that displease me
now go away and let me be.

December 5th, 1976, Lufkin Texas

(written on the back)

p.s. Happy Martin Van Buren's birthday.

related: about a year later

One of the most compelling recent trends in blogging has been the artist interview. This Simon Norfolk interview on his war photography (and much more) by blogger-extrordinaire Geoff Manaugh is a prime example.

December has arrived and just on time.

One of my favorite photographers, Andrew Moore, has a show up at Yancy Richardson through the end of January. It's a broad review of his work over the last couple of years... I missed the opening last night which is annoying as I was only a few blocks away.

535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
New York NY 10011
tel 646-230-9610
fax 646-230-6131
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10-6 PM

related: Andrew Moore's Russia

When you walk to the corner deli having conversations with neighbors along the way completely forgetting you have a zebra stickers on your forehead.

The man on the right is my wife's haraboji (grandfather).

Haraboji was born into a wealthy family in what is now North Korea. His parents, like their parents before, were strong Christians in what was then still an overwhelmingly Buddhist country. He rarely fails to mention this. "5 generations of Christians. Very strong," he will say. The family lost everything including their names to the Japanese (he went to Japanese schools and still can speak the language), but he bears little bitterness. After World War II his family recovered their house and some land, only to lose everything again to the communists. He joined the anti-communist army and fled south, almost losing his wife and children in the chaos. Eventually he ended up working for the US Army as a translator and continued working for the Americans through the rest of the Korean War and into Vietnam...

The date on this snapshot leads me to believe it was taken in Vietnam at an on-base store. Maybe it was meant to be sent back to Korea as a holiday greeting. Haraboji had 5 daughters before he producing a son. Jenn's mom is the third daughter. The entire family moved to the states a few years after this picture was taken. He is now in Philadelphia where he lives very close to four of his daughters (his wife died 3 years ago).

A more patriotic American you will not find although his dream is to go back to the village where he grew up. "My house was made of wood and looked out at the mountain. Very beautiful house." he says, "I dream about my village. We will go back soon... after North Korea is finished. I want to see my house."