Father's Day and a Haircut

Sam scales the new changing table
The haircut "after" picture
Peachy
The before picture, looking very Garfunkel-y.

Today is Father’s Day, at least Stateside. (On Island, it falls on 8/8 which is pronounced Ba-ba or “dad.”) Em let us celebrate it today. We’re all getting over colds, so it was a fairly quiet day, but very relaxing. Emily let me sleep in which was wonderful. The last week my sleep was off, so I feel a little recovered now. I’m working on some academic projects and spent a little time on that. We went out to dinner in the local ‘burb.

I’m thinking of my own father and brother and grandfathers. I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with my own dad. When I was younger, my mom went back to school and my dad was more responsible for us. (He struggled unsuccessfully to implement the “one plate, one cup” rule, but it never took.) I also spent a lot of time with my dad during high school when he shuttled me to all manner of activities, and I lived at home during a year of grad school. We used to take walks together and had a lot of family time. A benefit of academic life is that I’ve also gotten a lot of summers close to home, and I still skype my parents often. My dad works hard, but he always had flexibility in his schedule, which was nice.

The other big excitement of today is that I gave Sam his first haircut—pictures another day—which was quite a lot of fun. His hair is basically like my hair, so as long as you don’t cut too close it’s fine. It’s hard to totally mess up, and it’s to be very creative. There’s not much styling our hair—no parts, no bangs, not much particular that you can do. Emily kept a couple of curls, something her mom had done for her. Sam’s very cute now and will be a bit cooler for the summer. This was his first haircut ever, so a bit of a milestone. Between this, weaning, and the expanding vocabulary, he is starting to seem like a little boy, although a very small, cute one. He’s a real charmer and we’re lucky to have him. No doubt, he is part of the reason we have the others on the way.

I also started reading Sh*t My Dad Says, which is a pop best seller based on one of the break-out twitter posters from a couple of years back. It’s a son’s recollections of a cursing, no nonsense dad. This is basically the polar opposite of my dad. It’s even a lot more wild than my grandfather, who is the loud, wild one in our family. But it’s also an endearing, sympathetic narrative, and a good one for father’s day. I read the first hundred pages in a couple of hours, so I’ll probably finish it tomorrow.

I’ve been reading more fiction the last few weeks, which is one of my key methods for getting rest and distance. So far nothing especially profound: the Stieg Larsson books, The Memory of Running, and several more serious books I started but haven’t kept working on. I’ve also read a little bit of history in my field and have been working on some language resources. I like reading, and I think it’s helping to satisfy my desire to hole up some. We’ve been here ten months now (I think today), and while things are going fairly well I was also ready for this semester to end. I love this school and I genuinely like all of my colleagues, but they’re also starting to drive me a bit nuts. This is a pretty hierarchical, patriarchal society and I come from a society that at least has egalitarian leanings. And probably, it’s more galling as the young person to live in a society where age is especially valued. I’m used to everyone having a say, and here a lot of decisions are made from above and at a distance. I’m not making a lot of sense here. Mostly, I just want to take a few steps back and regroup. I want to write and study language and prepare for the fall. I think some sort of rest is in order, and hopefully it is on the way.

I’ll try to post some more pictures soon. I’m sorry my posts are always so broken. I think I’m feeling especially scattered lately, so hopefully the summer will give me some time to pick the pieces back up and puzzle with them for a while. Blessings to the rest of you on this Father’s Day.