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Being,
Nothingness and the Grocery List
The
toilet paper’s completely gone, the toothpaste tube’s been
squeezed almost entirely into its cap, and the laundry has
forwarded an official notice of secession and run one of my
more brightly colored shirts up the wall as a banner of sovereignty.
I’ve conceded to it the far corner of the bedroom behind the
old steamer trunk, and—just between you and me—I’d probably
give up the stretch of floor where the unused NordicTrack
sits (some sweatpants have already established a squatter’s
foothold settlement there). It’s a siege state.
Recently, I’ve been living on delivery and nibbles of whatever
food is left on my daughter’s highchair tray after she’s finished
mauling it and/or testing its aerodynamic properties (she’s
a budding Galileo, that girl). I should probably take some
kind of stand, assert authority over my apartment but, for
whatever reason, I am for the moment the Neville Chamberlain
of household chores. In the daily negotiations with clutter
and mess and disorganization, I’ve been a wishy-washy diplomat.
I admit, I’ve been a collaborationist with chaos. Secretly,
I suspect it may be even more severe than that: I think I’ve
been wondering, if I let it go on long enough, if I disregard
the petty rituals of upkeep, if I let deteriorate the decorous
prophylaxis of Palmolive and Tide, will I be absorbed into
the chaos? Will I be assimilated? Is this what happens to
nihilism when it’s run through the filter of a single dad’s
domestic responsibilities?
In my life these days, the café tables are few and far between,
though there’s a two-foot-high, purple-and-orange, molded-
plastic table and chair set pushed against one wall in my
kitchen (on which rests some pretty precocious works of abstract
expressionism, in Crayola washable marker); there’s no cigarette
smoke in the house anymore, and the candles are lit only after
the tyke is safely cribbed; it takes a lot longer than it
once did to fill the recyclables bin with wine bottles; and
discussions are less likely to revolve around free will v.
determinism than Fisher-Price Little People v. Bear in
the Big Blue House. Camus’ The Stranger gave way
to Sendak’s Mickey in the Night Kitchen (pretty strange
in its own right) long ago, and though I’m still suspicious
that Sartre was right on and that hell is, in fact, other
people, I’m absolutely sure that Krauss was right and a hole
is to dig, and that mashed potatoes are to give everyone enough.
Pretty heartening thoughts, actually.
So, ennui isn’t really an option when there’s a two-year-old
around, however naturally it may come to you. How can you
be consistently world-weary and blasé when your wriggling
kid answers the question “Hey, what are you doing? Are you
dancing?” with a knowing grin and the statement, “I shake
a booty, Daddy”? In that scenario, by the way, a panic-inducing,
marrow-chilling flash forward to an abdomen-baring T-shirt
somewhere in a writhing, sweaty throng on a future dance club’s
floor may be a likely response—but ennui likely won’t enter
into it.
When schooled in disaffection, and suddenly thrust into a
world of great—even overwhelming—affection you may stammer,
searching for a more apt vocabulary. Your universe has shifted
and, in mirroring it, you find that indifference, however
benign, can be a tough guise to maintain. Still, a smirk is
often easier than a smile, and the quips and criticisms seem
fleeter than the confidences or the compliments. So, at large,
you can remain gimlet-eyed and cranky, but it takes more and
more effort and seems less and less convincing. You just get
tired of marching in line as the standard-bearer for the “nasty,
brutish and short” theory of life—which, though true, is every
bit as boring as a gig in any other doctrinaire parade. You
get weary of protesting too much, of offering only autopsies,
so to speak. But you’re not quite ready to start dotting your
i’s with little hearts just yet.
So, as a part-time parent and half-assed existentialist, you
stage little rebellions, little bursts of targeted misanthropy
and symbolic (i.e., really pretty pointless) non-conformist
actions: You stop cooking for yourself for days, dining on
handfuls of mixed nuts, leftover lo mein, your daughter’s
string-cheese snacks, vitamins and the dregs of juice boxes;
you color-coordinate your kid’s socks to her belt, and go
to work in your pajamas; on your free nights you counterbalance
your intellectual diet of children’s literature with bleak
works from the likes of Lars Von Trier, Werner Herzog or Darren
Aronofsky. You satiate your affectedly dark appetites with
somber music and reading, and gloom it up. You mope and sulk
in a way that Stanley or Spongebob or Dexter or Madeleine
or Olivia just won’t seem to allow. You strike a pose in an
outdated stereotype.
And then the cycle shifts and your kid comes back, or wakes
up, and you realize that you’ve got stuff to do; it dawns
on you that no one else is paying enough attention to notice
whether you’ve been absorbed into the banal and staid life
of a responsible parent or into your laundry hamper. So—with
a tinge of something like regret and something like embarrassment—you
kill the Sisters of Mercy and you scour the house for your
cardigan and your fatherly wisdom. You mop the bathroom floor,
and you beat the dirty clothes into a cowering, cooperative
mass and do six hours of laundry. You go online for recipes,
dragging the laptop out into the living room so as to better
oversee the construction of the Lego fortress or the strawberry-yogurt
defilement of the couch’s still-fabric-softener-redolent slipcover.
And you make a note to pick up toilet paper and you check
to make sure your AdvantEdge card is in your wallet, in its
regular place by your kid’s insurance cards and the picture
of her dancing like a little maniac in the living room.
—John
Rodat
jrodat@metroland.net
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