The Adventures of Cal and Mac, Episode I

I had my sons this past weekend. Always good to see them although, as a half month passes between their stays with Katie and I, I'm often taken aback at how much they've changed since our last time together. According to the markings on the study's door frame, both of them have grown about three inches during the past year. Each time I see Mac I notice a tooth is missing or one is coming through. Cal's sense of humour becomes more sophisticated, he picks up more in general and displays a lot of the behavior we associate with tweens.

Specific things? Well, this last weekend Cal read the whole of The Call of The Wild within a few hours. Mac, I came to discover, had won a merit certificate for language a couple of days before. He's only in first grade, but he's a standout in the basics of reading and writing. I figured he was pretty bright, but it's great to see it made official. So, they're both ticking along pretty well in terms of intellectual development. Along those lines, they'll be starting at a good private school in a couple of weeks.


It's fantastic that their mother and stepfather can afford to give them a superior education, and I believe that Cal and Mac (right) will thrive in such a setting. I'm grappling with my inability to pay for such things, though: as a fledgling high school teacher, half of their annual tuition would cost me just a touch under a quarter of a year's salary. What's the right thing to do here? Should I get a second job and forget about ever owning a house? Please bear in mind that Katie and I have another child to think about now and that I've not been involved with any decision-making processes regarding the boys' schooling.

Hold on a minute... I need to put the brakes on the guilt reaction here. I am not the only working class father of two in the Perth metro area who can't afford to send his kids to an exclusive private school.

What can I offer my kids? What do I offer them?

The Goofy Stuff

While the hour of tennis we play on Sunday mornings is a nod of the head to respectable activities, Mac, Cal and I spend a lot of time drawing at the kitchen table. This is a throwback to my own childhood: one of my earliest and fondest memories is of my Uncle Jim and I, back when he was dating my Aunt Kathy, circa 1970, sitting at the breakfast table drawing cartoon characters. A few years later I would develop a callus on my middle finger from my hours of drawing superheroes and monsters. My mother's brother, Uncle Frank, also a talented sketch artist, would often ask me, "That's pretty good, Gregory, but when are you going to draw something like airplanes?"


Most of my boys' drawings are of The Incredible Hulk, weird faces, pirates, King Kong and Star Wars characters, but the late Uncle Frank would be pleased to know that every now and again Cal will draw WWII era soldiers. Oh - I almost forgot! Lately both boys have been drawing Sasquatch quite a bit. My interest in the cryptid (please note that I am a hopeful skeptic with an accent on "skeptic") has been reawakened recently and I've shared this with them. They've seen the Patterson-Gimlin Film and are familiar with its famous Frame 352 (see Cal's photo at right). For a while they were both doing various Sasquatch calls around the house... but they eventually spooked each other so I had to issue a cease and desist order.


As you can imagine, we watch a lot of movies, too. They've been so steeped in the Star Wars canon that any prolonged periods of misbehavior are blamed on The Dark Side. Cal and Mac have also seen the original King Kong (1933... Cal used to call it "the gray one") and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), so they'll have a jump on things if they should take a film studies class at the private school. Action figures go about their business to an urgently hummed Indiana Jones theme or an obscure motif from any of the Star Wars films. For a couple of years now they've both been able to pick out the Wilhelm Scream from a movie. The fact that I'm proud of this probably says something about my questionable values.


Then there are the adventures in the real world. A big chunk of this past Saturday was devoted to making a sculpture out of sticks in the park. You see, Perth experienced a hellacious storm last Monday and the grounds were strewn with tree limbs, bark and branches. We had a great time doing this and Mac really threw himself into the task... he imagined the kinds of creatures, both real and mythical, who might live inside. Cal grew bored after an hour or so, but it didn't tower over him like it did Mac, so you can understand. That's when he started perfecting Sasquatch's characteristic arm-swinging walk. I guess the twisted pile of branches made a good backdrop for the imagined antics of the Pacific Northwest's elusive beast.


The headmaster of this really private school gives its two creative students As for their efforts and talents.

Now It Can Be Told

Certainly there's a reason for this blog, right? I mean, other than it being another The World According to Greegor website, there has to be some theme propelling things. The future English teacher in me thinks, "There better be." Well, now that I've told my mother and the world (thank you, Facebook) the news, I can finally get to the point here.

In a sense, I've been given a second chance: my partner, Katie, and I are expecting a baby. Katie's first, my third. Wonderful news and definitely a planned-for pregnancy, although I thought it would take a while for the alchemy to happen. Why do I consider our baby a second chance rather than a third blessing (which it is)?

I have two sons, Callum and Cormac. I spent five years under the same roof with Cal by the time my ex-wife and I called it quits; Mac was 14 months old. When Cal blew out his candles on that day, I remember thinking, "Wow, I lasted a year longer with Cal than my father did with me." I'll be the first to admit that I harbored a defeatist mindset there. That's a failing in itself. The old apples, gravity and trees thing at work, I suppose. Always aware of most of my shortcomings—I have no doubt that I have my blind spots—I just assumed that the marriage wouldn't last. The bank account of resentments starts off with a big deposit when two hemispheres factor into the young union.

Let me quickly put the brakes on things: I can pillory myself here, but not the boys' mother.

Anyway, after the divorce I wrote up a list of things that I felt I did wrong and areas in which I might want to improve. I carried it around with me for a while and it soon had me thinking that maybe I didn't deserve to be a father. Sure, I paid my child support, had the kids on a weekend night and, initially, a night or two during the workweek. I did my best despite having a virtually non-existent support system but I wasn't really a father... I was Uncle Dad.

That feeling persists to the present day. Mac had his sixth birthday four days ago but I was not there. If he wants to come over this weekend, we'll do something to mark his special day. Hey, he's a little kid and knows that cake and presents are waiting, so it's a safe bet he'll be over. Another safe bet is that, when he first gets here, Mac will slip-up once or twice and call me "Papa," something I'm almost numb to after three and a half years.

Two weeks ago, when I was dropping the boys off at their mother's house, their stepfather was out front washing the Volvo. At this point Mac almost ran in front of a car while crossing the street, and to steer him off of what could've been a tragic trajectory I yelled (admittedly, my voice gets big and scary), "Mackie! Mackie! Mackie!" Screeching brakes and nasty thump were avoided, but not tears, wailing and a cry of, "No! You're not the boss of me!" All of this was within easy earshot of Papa, who probably is the boss of my son Cormac.

Uncle Dad.

Phoenix Fathers

No, I am not the only Uncle Dad in the world. What makes my situation a bit spicier, though, is that I too was raised by a stepfather and had my own you're-not-the-boss-of-me moment. I guess I was about 15 years old and it was Christmas Eve over at my Aunt Martha's house, sister of my natural father whom I had not seen in... maybe six or seven years. At one point in the evening, Aunt Martha handed me the phone and I spoke into the receiver, "Hi. Who's this?"

"It's your father."

"You're not my father. I have a real father now." End of conversation. Ouch.

Truth be told, I don't remember the incident. I think my sister, Meg, relayed it to me years later. But it certainly seems characteristic of me back then.

About 15 or 16 years after that call I had started feeling like the loser he was supposed to be. So I called him to apologise for my callous remark. Wow... it just dawned on me that the apology call is temporally equidistant from the remark and the present day. At any rate, we both apologised during that short phone call. Never saw each other again. Charles Gregory McNeil, Sr. died in subsidized housing in November of 2000.

We've heard time and again that being a parent is the most important job in the world. How many of us have screwed up that job royally or at least feel like we've botched things? How many of us toil under and try to escape the shadow of a bad parent? Are we ever allowed to say, "From this point on, I am indeed a good father"? Or shall we pay for those sins, real or perceived, forever?

When can we rise from the ashes of our failings, take wing and approach that job with a renewed purpose, confident in our good intentions and become a phoenix father, if you will?

Sure, if you go to any orchard you'll see that apples really don't fall far from their trees. Last time I checked, though, apples can be shiny but they're not reflective.

I have not wronged my sons in any significant way and probably not any insignificant ways, now that I think about it. They have enviable and privileged lives and I will again contribute to those lives financially when I'm finished at university and working full time. But I'm here for them, have a comfortable room for them and deny them nothing during their fortnightly stays. Hey... at least Mac has someone he can shout "You're not the boss of me" to! There is indeed value in that. Trust me.

Katie, thank you for telling me that I will be a good father to Little One. And for continuously reminding me that I'm good to Cal and Mac. Someday I'll get the message.

Little Moments with the Big Screen

I had a wonderful weekend with my older son, Callum, whom I see two weekends a month. Sometimes Cal is accompanied by his younger brother, Mac. Lately, though, almost-six-year-old Mac often doesn't feel like coming over. I can't blame the little guy for this; he was only 14 months old when his mother and I divorced and he started calling another guy "Papa" not too long after that. My guess is he's a little confused. I'll leave it at that.

Upon arrival, Cal said something about almost seeing Avatar earlier but the idea had been nixed in the other household because it was felt that the aliens in the movie might scare Mac. Fair enough. Since Mac wasn't with us, Cal and I had our opening to see what's being likened to a similar cinematic experience many of us had in 1977.

A great many people are going to catch the reference to '77 without any explanation—and I tend to get along with those people very well—but for the rest of you, I'm talking about Star Wars. Star Wars before there was anything about episodes or "A New Hope." Magic that's been talked about and referenced so much in pop culture in recent years as being magical that a lot of the magic has been washed out. I was 12 years old in '77 and I was one of the target audiences. Another member of another target audience would have been my 50-year-old stepfather-to-be Harry G. Nicoll. Harry read tons of science fiction, worked on some of the early space projects and could remember the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.

I'm almost certain that we saw the movie in early September of that year. Either that or late August. At the time the flick was just becoming a phenomenon and no one knew enough to keep and frame the ticket stub, but I can pretty much nail my initial viewing of Star Wars to the three-week window of late August to the first half of September. As a kid who spent a lot of time drawing and zero time playing baseball or other such sports, the movie hit me hard. I was Darth Vader for Halloween that year, collected the cards and kept a Star Wars scrap book.

That was the superficial stuff.

Three years later and the Empire Strikes Back comes out. When I discovered that Vader was Luke's father, the mythology knocked me for a loop and I found myself in a subset target audience of the original target audience: I had not seen my wheezing (he died of emphysema years later), villified and absent father in many years... and I would not see him ever again. All I can say is that I felt Luke's cry of "Noooooooo!" when he discovered his parentage. To put it simply, no one wants to be of bad stock; you feel damaged from the git-go. With that flaw, bullies and empires are hard to defeat.

Okay, let's get back on track. Harry didn't take my sister, Meg, and I to too many movies, but we saw the three original Star Wars movies together. I was not athletic like Harry and I'm sure I was generally pretty pesky, but we shared those movies. For me, they were honest-to-goodness father-and-son experiences (or, more correctly, stepfather-and-stepson experiences).

Every now and again I will try to kick the Aussie Rules footy around with my sons, but talk about feeling like an imposter. That's a sport that's indulged in the other household. I tried tennis with Cal yesterday because he had just finished a tennis camp and my amazing Katie thought it would be a fun thing for all of us to do. Still, my kid isn't coming away from our hour on the court knowing something about what his Dad does or likes.

Dad takes him to the movies and draws with him. A lot of the time we draw stuff from the movies. I'm sure to many it's not as worthy or authentic an experience as playing catch, experiencing the great outdoors or riding a bike. I can see the merit in those viewpoints. But it's also nice to see a kid's imagination fired: after the movie, Cal was wondering about the lives of Pandora's animals, the cryosleep required to travel from Earth to Pandora, having an Avatar, imagining a sequel.

When the house lights came up Cal said, "Thanks, Dad." I don't have a snappy and tidy way to end this entry. I just felt great when my boy said that, that's all.

The Magic Dipper

My old friend Lou DeLuca visited me the other day. The fact that I live in Perth, Western Australia and Lou had been living in Norwell, Massachusetts made the visit pretty special. The fact that Lou has been dead for two and a half years made the visit really special.

Let me tell you about Lou. I met him in 1979 during my early high school years. The father of my buddy, Johnny DeLuca, Lou had a vending business and he'd often take us on his route to service the machines. Johnny and I would do the hoisting and Lou would reward us with a meal at an honest-to-goodness diner or hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant and then a cultural outing of some sort: a museum, historical landmark or a film like, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A first-generation Italian, Lou could still speak the street's language and related well to Johnny and his friends. His beard, unkempt hair and... well, I was going to say "considerable girth," but that just sounds too antiseptic and polite. Look, Lou loved the beautiful food that he cooked so well, and he often spoke of his addiction here. Suffice it to say he looked like a working-class Pavaroti (interestingly enough, they were born and died during the same years) or an intelligent version of the late Captain Lou Albano of wrestling fame. His clear and powerful speaking voice coupled with his colorful language completed his formidable presence.

The teenager in me had him boiled down to this: funny fat guy who sells Cokes, candy bars and cigarettes, likes science fiction and still says "Fuck!" like he means it.

So, one day Johnny, who had a kind of nasally voice, tells me that he had to go to some talk with his parents that night and thus couldn't hang out with the rest of us behind the cemetery.

"What kind of talk?"

"Theosophy."

"You mean philosophy." Amongst the group of guys who hung out around Washington Park, I was the motormouthed kid who could've done pretty well academically if I wasn't such a clown in the classroom. John, like the rest of my buddies at the time, ended up in the region's vocational school. Maybe I suffered from a certain arrogance when it came to language.

"No, theosophy."

"John, it's pronounced phil-osophy." I guess I was trying to help Johnny, given that nasally sounding voice and all.

"Theosophy!"

"It's philosophy, trust me. Just drop it."

I ended up going to one of those talks, if not that night then during the next month or so. Johnny was right, of course: Lou, his wife Carole, Johnny, and daughter Jasmine would go to the monthly meetings of the Theosophical Society. They had a shop and meeting rooms on Bay State Road in Boston, on the BU campus. Nice real estate. Johhny and I would, at that age, get a bit antsy during the talks, but liked the fact that we could walk to Kenmore Square.

Well, not only did Lou and family attend those lectures, but Lou was the president of the Boston chapter and often led the talks.

Yeah... I seriously shortchanged the man in my teenage estimation of him.

If you're not familiar with the Theosophical Society and don't have the time to visit the link above, the short version is that they've been around since the late 1800s, are interested in comparative religion and the brotherhood of man and "investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man." There's also a heavy "search for truth" element at play.

Over the next few years Lou and I became very good friends. After I returned home from the Navy to study, I lived in my parents' house for a little while and my relations with my stepfather, Harry, were often strained. Lou and Carole were the friends who understood things, understood me and were straight shooting enough to tell me what I might have done to raise Harry's ire.

I last spoke with Lou in early 2007. Diabetes was doing its nasty job on him, but he still had that youthful voice that never sounded anywhere near 70+ years old. Most likely I was seeking his advice about a particularly bad relationship or something. At the end of our talk he said, "Always a pleasure, Greegor."

I could and will talk more about Lou in the future, but I need to get to the point here.

Every time I walked into their little house on High Street, Lou would greet me with the nickname that he bestowed, "Greeeeeeeee-gor!" More often than not, I'd head over to their kitchen sink and open up the tap. There was a window over it and hanging from the window's frame was an antique water dipper. You know, the kind with the enamel worn away in a couple of places. The DeLucas had well water, and it always tasted so good and cold from that dipper.

It was through the dipper that Lou visited me the other day. Carole had sent it to me, most likely following the phone call I made to her on Christmas Eve... as if hearing her warm Kentucky drawl wasn't enough of a gift. The dipper now hangs from a cabinet handle over my stove, an arm's length away from my sink. I don't have well water and the City of Perth's water isn't particularly cold—especially during the Australian summer.

But it's a magic dipper and the water tastes wonderful from it.

Always a pleasure, Lou.

I've Made All the Mistakes... Now It's Time to Get Things Right

A good chunk of my life is over. In fact, if I'm at the midpoint, then I'm going to have an enviable lifespan—and the guys in my family generally don't have enviable lifespans. Divorced, laid-off and living far from my New England homeland, I've reaped the fruits of my errors over the last half-decade. Several months ago I said to myself, "I better get serious in a hurry." So I decided to become a high school English teacher.

I'll be qualified to stand before a classroom in about five months. One semester to go. Although I make a bit of money by writing copy for a few Australian websites in the retail space, I'm burning through my savings. The local press says that there will be a great need for secondary-level teachers in a few years, but it'll be competitive for a while; finding a permanent teaching gig isn't going to happen quickly.

But I feel like I have a fighting chance in education. That's a new feeling for me.

Truth be told, I stumbled into my career in marketing. After high school I joined the Navy and became a military journalist; my dream at the time was to be a filmmaker, and my recruiter told me that journalists worked around cameras quite a bit. So I ended up reading the news for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. The military seemed like the adventurous thing to do and, besides, I was way too much of a cut-up in high school to go to college—and I had the grades to prove it. After my hitch, I went on to the University of Massachuetts to pursue a degree in English. I earned good grades there.

While at UMass I held all sorts of odd jobs: bouncer, barback, courier and emergency room clerk, to name just a few. After I received my degree I simply went on to a slightly better administrative posting at the hospital where I'd been working. Children's Hospital, Boston, to be less vague. Got married. Then went from that slightly better admin job to a start-up internet company that one of the hospital's physicians had founded. Amongst a dozen or so M.I.T. and similar computer hotshots I was woefully out of place and got laid off for the first time since I started working in high school almost 20 years earlier. Ouch.

Not long after that my ex-wife and I discovered that she was pregnant. Yes, it was pretty scary hearing that I was to become a father while there were no paychecks coming in... especially since my biological father, whom I had not seen in almost a quarter century—nor would I ever see again—had been a huge failure. A massive failure. Colossal. We'll talk about that later. Anyway, I got lucky and landed a job that actually made use of my degree about two months after I was shown the door at the internet company. I would be working as an editorial assistant in the marketing/communications department of a large consulting firm.

A few years later I quit that job when my ex-wife and I decided to move to her native Australia. It took me the better part of a year to find a job once I hit these shores. Blessings were counted when I successfully landed a marketing manager gig six weeks after my second son was born. Yes, it was good to be working again, but marketing in Australia, I soon discovered, seemed to have more of an accent on sales rather than communications. The marketing job I had before I left the U.S. was pretty rare in that it was primarily focussed on the written word, so I always felt like an imposter when asked to do anything business-development related in Australia.

Fast forward a year after getting that job and my marriage is over. Three years after that and I'm thoroughly burnt out. I get another marketing job. Nine months later the Global Financial Crisis is in full swing and I fall in its path. Add another 11 months and half a Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) and here we are.

There's ad copy that needs to be written right now, and a book that I've been trying to birth for a few years. My writings here definitely fall under the "Procrastination" banner.

It's time to get things right.