Growling, Cooing and Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyucking Through the Generation Gap

Katie and I went down to the Margaret River area over Easter. There we spent a bit of time with her sister, Sal, and three-month-old nephew, Jacob. At one point Katie had asked me if I wanted to hold the baby and my response was, "I don't know... I'm okay with my own kids; I don't feel funny cooing or growling at them, but not other kids."

Maybe it was a case of jitters prior to our own baby's arrival, but I started wondering if I had lost my touch with babies. Now, given the villain I have become post-divorce, I'm sure my ex-wife would say that I never had a touch with babies and that I was much more of a growler than a cooer, but when I was growing up I seemed to be pretty good with babies and people would say things like, "You'll be a good father some day."

Being entirely candid, I know that I was, for various reasons, quite depressed when my younger son Mac was born and I had offered up a spicey soundbite or two in regards to fatherhood and my tenuous connection to him. Thankfully, I grew close to him after I found a job and started settling on the new continent, but the pangs of guilt are still there. I figured if I held Jacob he'd pick up on my failings with babies in the past and would just wail.

Don't get me wrong, I like many babies, and I certainly don't dislike them on principle. My stepfather, Harry G. Nicoll, on the other hand, would often make the pronouncement, "I. Don't. Like. Babies." In a movie, you might have a central character say such a thing several times throughout the flick only to see him awkwardly cuddle-up with his grandchild during the last reel, but Harry's story, as far as I can tell, didn't have such a moment. My mother had the whole situation nicely pegged: "He just hates the fact that babies take the attention away from him." In his defense, Harry was great with older kids, teenagers and young people in general. But he really didn't like those beings that, in his words, "did nothing but eat, shit and squawk."

Getting back to me and babies and away from the digression, some babies I like and some are just okay. I certainly don't view all of them as adorable little angels, nor do I view them with the passion that some have for, say, a specific breed of dogs. Although you can't accurately say that a baby has a personality, you can say the little one has a presence. Some harmonise with us, others not so much.

Anyway, Katie is very persuasive. I held Jacob for a few minutes. He's too young to be bounced or tossed (to name just a couple of stereotypical guy-baby activities), but he was pretty cool with make believe dancing coupled with a mild invisible elevator sort of movement. I even got a few smiles out of him and a proto-giggle. In my book, that counts as bonding with Uncle Greg. We're pretty cool with each other. All of this bodes well for September and the arrival of Little Walker-White (whose sex is to be discovered in five days, by the way).

Moving up a few stages in the life cycle, last weekend Firstborn Cal and I were cruising through YouTube. Somehow we got to The Three Stooges.

"Oh, Cal! You're gonna love these guys! I used to watch them all the time when I was your age."

I explained to him how they were known for their particularly violent brand of slapstick. "But it's not the kind of violence you see in your video games or in, like, The Lord of the Rings." The clip we watched (linked above) was described as the "most violent sequence ever," but I knew no one was going to be killed and that it would be bloodless. Certainly it wouldn't be as bad as The Itchy & Scratchy Show, which he's seen tons of times on The Simpsons.

Well, was I surprised by Cal's reaction (picture at left)! Not only did he not laugh, but there were a few times when his eyes widened in disbelief. When Moe put Curly's nose to the grinding wheel he said something like, "Oh, my God, Dad! That is so violent!" He was really taken aback! At that point, I was more amused with the difference in tastes between the generations than I was the video clip. This kid (and all of his peers, lest I come off as the least-discerning father in Australia) has seen Orcs beheaded, Indiana Jones bloodying Nazis, Luke Skywalker have his hand amputated by his own father, King Kong chomping on Skull Islanders, hordes of the Na'vi wiped out on Pandora and Spider-Man receive plenty of graphic ass-whippings by deranged supervillains—but he was slapped out of his complacency by Moe Howard!

Honestly... I'm guessing it's Moe's bullying ways that did it. The guy really does have a nasty attitude and his expressions are genuinely mean when he whacks the other two. As far as I know, Cal has never been slapped before, so maybe that has something to do with it. When I was growing up, bullying was a fine art during recess at Avery School. I should be grateful that my boys are growing up in an age when grabbing another's nose is worse than decapitation, right?

Note to self : For pure entertainment value, invisible elevators have a greater shelf life—across generations—than The Stooges. You oughta know that by now, you chowdahead—crack! crunch! boink!

Finding Innocence

There are plenty of stories about the loss of innocence. As a genre, it's pretty stale. When I was a teenager, I figured The Loss was one's virginity, and not too long after that I thought that it must be when one has their heart broken. At any rate, that's what the movies usually depict... the one-two-three punch-kick-slap of getting laid for the first time, falling in love (the order can be changed there) and then heartbreak. You can probably think of five movies or novels that follow that formula—15, if you add a vampire into the mix.

In my later 20s it became clear to me that the real loss of innocence is when you actually do the heartbreaking. Power is being exercised and maybe misused and you're not the innocent party anymore. This is where emotional callouses are really developed. I mean, you can have your heart broken a few times and still be plenty wet behind the ears. Soaking. In fact, retained innocence is likely why you're still getting your heart broken. As far as romance goes, my stepfather was always trying to drill a certain amount of worldliness into me when I was a young man. He might as well have been yelling, "Lose that stupid-ass innocence and wise up, moron!" Most likely he'd punctuate all of that with a "Jesus H. Christ!"

It took me a while, but I eventually wised up, and this was followed by years of guilty shenanigans, reckless romancing, nuptials, fatherhood, grinding through a failing marriage and then divorce. Then came the rebounding and rancid ruminating. Loss of innocence and innodollars and my innocredit rating was horrible, too. Emotional pockets were waaaaay empty. Or "wicked empty," as we'd say back home.

If we're very, very lucky, though, we find innocence again. I did.

This is how I found it—and I can be very specific here. I met Katie on Friday, May 16th 2008 at The Subiaco Hotel. My imagination was nabbed like never before. Label me superficial, but, yes, beauty and style caught my eye. My buddies kept telling me to go over and talk with her or I'd freak her out with all the staring. Must've been that sleek, black hair cut across the brow and that gorgeous coat with the faux fur collar that did it. Maybe the way she really listened to her friends and smiled. There were a lot of things, actually, but I didn't feel I could approach her until I saw that she was kind enough to help a struggling waiter clear off a table. Lust at first sight was then spiced with fondness; that's a potent combo.

All of this is just a quick background to the specific moment. Bear with me. So, I introduced myself, we hung out that evening and I spoke with, texted and emailed her in the week leading up to our first date the following Saturday. I had my kids that night and she came over to my place in Fremantle after I put them to bed. We shared a bottle of red on my back porch, had the obligatory deep and meaningful and, according to Katie, I gave no indication that I was genuinely interested. We moved the conversation inside eventually.

The moment: after talking for a few minutes in my kitchen, Katie leapt up into my arms. I mean she jumped up onto me and latched on with her legs and arms. Wow. Talk about gutsy! My sister Meg would have to agree with me that the "chumpiness potential" is frickin' huge there. Honestly, Katie's move was a very real leap of faith.

That leap went against everything that I had read or heard about in the popular press, in books like The Game or shows like Sex and the City. Here was a woman who had plenty of options and attention—in fact, the night after we met she had a date—yet she was so open, free and generous with her spirit (which is probably why she had the attention and dates to begin with). There was nothing calculated. And Katie wasn't a jump-into-the-arms kind of woman. She just went with the moment, and that allowed me to be open and free with my better self.

Innocence found.

Meeting and sharing my life with Katie has been an enormous blessing. I could go on and on about how Katie is so good to me, but that's not the really wonderful thing. I mean, when I was younger I'd spent time with partners who were, initially, pretty nice to me. There were even times when it seemed like the person was especially nice to me despite having problems with or little time for others. I thought, "Wow, I must be a really wonderful person." Eventually, though, things would turn and the special treatment I'd been receiving disappeared. I'm no martyr and I can be awfully reactive, so things would run a predicatable course.

Here's the thing, though: Katie is kind to everyone. To put it plainly, she's simply kind. Her  being kind to me isn't a case of her knowing which side her bread is buttered on (not that I can afford lots of butter). She's good to her mother, stepfather, sister and friends. It sounds like she's always been a wonderful coworker and colleague. It's a running joke now, but when I look at pictures of her as a child or teenager, she's almost always beaming at the person she's standing with and her expression says, "I just love my Dad/nanna/stepsister/best friend/next-door neighbor!" Katie will also tell a stranger how beautiful a dress looks on her. The woman is as generous with compliments as she is with good deeds and warmth.

Here we need to make the distinction between kind and nice. A good synonym for nice is "unoffensive." I say that because it's just become too much of a cliche to say "nice = boring." Nice can indeed be boring, but that's not always the case, and the term certainly indicates someone who does not offend. Now, my Katie might be offensive to some, because her capacity for swearing can make this former sailor blush. She used to smoke and could drink pretty well, too. As a high school student she was a habitual truant. I guess what I'm trying to say is that she doesn't have a sterling track record of bland niceness. This flawed fellow can relate to that.

Katie will often say that her sensitivity makes her a "pain in the ass," but I find her transparency refreshing. Here's an oxymoronic idea for you to mull over: she's fearless about her insecurities. Yes, we all have them, but many will fight tooth and nail to keep them hidden. What they might do is offer up some idiosyncracy as an insecurity, and that's a pretty good start, but the real worries are locked away. Festering. Katie gets it all out there, though, and that allows this peasant to voice his long-held worries, too (another big no-no according to some popular writings on the man-woman dynamic). Our mission now is to handle each other's fears gently, and I have every confidence that we'll do just that.  

When it comes to affairs of the heart, I tell anyone who will listen that they're enormously lucky if they have a partner who is kind, makes them hot and is easy to talk with. Anything else is gravy. If you have someone in your life with whom you can be your unarmored self, you've got dessert, too. But it takes so much courage to lay down one's arms, drop the guile, and fly in the face of the prevailing wisdom.

My arms, though, will always be there to catch you, Katie.