Beach Landscape with Two Boys and Their Father

The waves roll in, one after the other, after the other, and three heads bob in unison.  One belongs to a grown man, the other two to his sons, one of whom is ten and the other eight years old.  This picture is precious to me, because it actually represents two groups of men.  If the picture were on Polaroid or Kodachrome stock, it might be dated 1973.  The beach could be Fire Island, or the Cape or somewhere along Highway 1 in California.  The man might very well be my father, Hanno Fuchs -- overweight, smiling and hairy.  The boys, full of courage and joyful smiles are likely myself and my younger brother, Michael.

Now if the photo were digital, posted on Instagram or Facebook, the year would be 2013, and the hirsute, rotund man would be me, the older boy would be Diego Reyes Fuchs, and the younger boy would be Jackson Hanno Fuchs.  Apart from the names, the remaining details would be very much the same.

"Okay guys, we're gonna ride this next one!" I call, loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the constantly breaking waves of Cancun.  The three of us fixate on the wave that builds toward us. 

"No, Daddy! The NEXT one!  The next one!" Jackson calls.  All three of us nod in agreement, and we let the wave I'd originally chosen pass, bouncing and bobbing over it, in favor of the whitecaps that are forming on the one Jackson has chosen for us.

"Here we go!" says Diego.  "Ride it! Ride it!"

All three of us begin swimming with the breaking wave, and when I come up from the water, I see that the boys have caught the wave and have ridden it all the way to shore.  Not me.

"I missed it!" I yell to them over the continuous roar of the surf.

"I caught it!"

"Me too!"

I want to stop, to interrupt the game, in order to tell them, to let these two boys know, how incredibly happy this seemingly simple activity is making me.  I want to grab them up and smother them with kisses and tell them of my love for them.  But I know my children; their moods turn on a dime, and this perfection we are sharing in the midst of the planet's tidal undulations is as delicate as a moth's wing.  If I touch it, even slightly, it may turn to powder and blow away.

Because I don't want this moment to end, I stay in it, stay with it, and keep my mouth shut.  I smile with each boy, as we connect -- with each other, and with the tides.  Occasionally, we mis-time a wave, and rather than guiding us gently to shore, it lifts us up like an enemy, dashing us headfirst into the gritty, unforgiving sand.  This is fine, though; this is good.  Part of this whole experience -- an important part, in fact -- is failure. 

I realize now, looking back on all the time I spent on beaches with my brother and father, that body surfing is a life lesson.  Each wave is an opportunity that presents itself to you.  You must decide quickly whether or not to seize that moment, and when you do, there is no guarantee that it will work out for you.  When the opportunity bears fruit, the sensation of gliding along with the wave is almost like sprouting wings and flying.  When it falls flat, you are literally dragged through the grit and muck. 

This was a great life lesson for me, and those beach memories are indelible, as much a part of my heart as the blood that pumps continuously through it.  My hope is that these times will take root in the hearts of my sons, and give them the same comfort they have always provided me, even in my darkest, loneliest times. 

As my wife Jeanette said on the beach today,when we finally decided to come out of the water, "It's so great that you are in there with them, making memories."

Flying, Then and Now

The flight attendant bunches her nose up, so that she looks like a bunny, as she baby talks my sons, handing them each a cookie on their way off the plane in Cancun, Mexico. 

"Oh my goodness," she says, to my wife really, I suppose, "can't I have one?  Can't I just keep one of them?"

The boys say thank you, almost as fast as we can remind them to do so.  The cookies are on the nasty side -- some overly soft combination of oats and cranberries.  Even I, their human Hoover, cannot vacuum them into my gullet.  They're that bad.  It's as though someone had, in their haste to put together a healthy cookie, forgotten to actually cook the thing.

Anyway, that's hardly the point.  This isn't about how good or bad the airline's cookies were.  This is a post about remembering when the stewardesses (as they were called then) doted over me when I was a boy the age mine are now, back in the early 1970's.  I recall the way they would spoil me and my brother, and giggle at how we blushed, much the way the flight attendants do with my boys today. 

I also remember EXACTLY when that all came tumbling down.  It was in the spring of 1985, on my first ever flight to Madrid, Spain.  I was on my way to meet up with my girlfriend who was studying there at the time.  I was 22 and in the prime of my life, flying with my roommate, Greg, and probably drinking too much Jack Daniels.  It was a charter flight, and I remember it being very full.  One of the flight attendants was a Spanish woman, not much older than me at the time, and very cute.  Deep dimples in her cheeks, and dark, dark eyes, if memory serves.



Flight attendants (or "stewardesses") as I remember them
back in the day, as they like to say



I'm sure I was putting on a bit of a show for my friend, but I began an ill-fated (and probably half-hearted) attempt to pick up on this young woman.  Her weariness became immediately apparent, and as she shunned my attempts at humor, I realized she was an extremely patient and hard-working individual, who I would never, ever see again.

"Why don't you just tell me what you want to drink, and I'll go get it for you, okay?" she said, or something close to that.  It had the effect of chilling my blood, and I realized I would never fly as that cute young boy the stewardesses liked to embarrass anymore.  Instead, I had become just another young, drunk Lothario, there to make her day even longer and make her ask God what exactly she'd done to deserve this. 

I remember exactly what Diego and Jackson feel like as they are mooned at by grown women in airline uniforms, because they did it to me and my brother too.  I almost want to tell them to enjoy it while it lasts.  Before too long, they'll be the young guy on the make, and in a few breaths after that, the invisible, if sometimes charming, middle aged man with the beautiful wife and kids.

The Crossword Connection

I've come to enjoy Father's Day in the ten years it has pertained specifically to me.  My wife does her best to spoil me (though, to be honest, I feel spoiled on most days), and this year was no different.  The kids always scrawl me out a couple of loving cards, and I get one big, pampering gift, and one small, tongue-in-cheek gift.

This year it was a 90-minute massage and a nose hair trimmer, respectively.  In addition, however, Jeanette got me The New York Times Will Shortz Presents Every Day with Crosswords: 365 Days of Easy to Hard Puzzles.   She got me this particular gift, because she remembers a time, early in our relationship, where crossword puzzles, from the New York Times could often be found on the various night-stands and coffee tables of our world.

My wife also knows that crossword puzzles -- like chess, which I've described in a previous post -- hold a special place in my family history, because my father was a prodigious puzzler himself.  In fact, when I picture him, I see him sitting in a golden yellow upholstered easy chair, with the Times on a clipboard in one hand, and a pen (always a pen and NEVER a pencil, which I still adhere to) in the other, his scotch and water sweating in a glass on the side table.

He's looking over his reading glasses when I picture him this way, smiling, the lines above his cheekbones deepening, as they always did.  He'd probably rather be working on the puzzle than entertaining whatever it is I've interrupted him for, but he rarely, if ever, expressed any exasperation about having to put the clipboard down in his lap to address my issue.

I can't remember whether or not I was resentful of the time my dad spent with his crossword puzzles.  To be fair, he was quick -- much quicker than I -- in solving them, so that time was probably negligible.  Because I myself enjoy puzzling now, I of course get that this was his private time when he could tune us and our constant squabbles out and just enjoy his puzzle.  (Not to mention his cocktail.)  Like Hanno, I am a hard-working father of two energetic and mostly happy boys, doing my best to help them along.  I now understand that means that my father, like me, and like every parent who fits the description, actually worked two jobs, and the one for which he got paid was definitely the easier of the two.

So this break, this brief respite or reprieve from the job of being a parent, is something my father appreciated deeply.  I appreciate it, too, and this gift from my wife, shows her appreciation of it, as well.  For this I thank her, more, probably, than she'll ever know.

The author getting ready to delve into a morning crossword.

Heft is a Novel That Lingers

Heft by Liz Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know you're in the middle of a good book when you find yourself wondering about the characters when you're not reading it.  I did this constantly with Heft.  Just as you think of a friend or lover who has left you after a pleasant evening of the kind of togetherness that reminds you of why they are special, and that makes you feel blessed, this book lingers.

One could argue Heft is a story about loss, despair, and sadness. Undeniably, these are central aspects to the novel.  However, I came away feeling a wonderful lightness -- ironic, when you look at the title.  It's an extremely hopeful book, in the end, about all the ways we continue to live and to love, even in the face of gut-wrenching loss.

There's some lovely writing by Liz Moore, who has managed, at a tender age, to speak in the voices of not one but two flawed and believable characters.  Here, Arthur Opp, over 500 pounds, and lonely in the Park Slope brownstone where he grew up and now lives by himself, at age 59, describes a very particular brand of empathy:

"Here is what I have always thought:  that people, when they eat, are very dear.  The eager lips, the flapping jaws, the trembling release of control -- the guilty glances at one's companions or at strangers.  The focus, the great focus of eating.  The pleasure in it."

Not only is the writing simple and sharp, but the thought is unique, and helps us know Arthur deeply.

The other narrator is an 18 year-old baseball player who is struggling with a loss that fills him with ambivalent emotions.  He comes to a realization that frankly stunned me.  He is 18 and the author who created him is not much older; together, they express an understanding that I came to only recently at a slightly more advanced age.  (Let's just leave it at that.)

"I feel like people are only really dead once you stop learning about them.  This is why it is important to me to keep learning about my mother, and what she wanted, and what her life meant, what she meant by the life she led.  Then she will be alive, somehow, and her wish for me will have come true.  My vow is to learn more about her.  To see her as she saw herself."

I'm excited about Liz Moore.  Hers is the kind of writing that endures, because it is straightforward and moves us, because its characters, and the lives they lead, the emotions they feel, go directly to our hearts, with a pinpoint accuracy that astonishes.  To say I look forward to her next effort is putting it (pardon the pun) lightly.


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I've Got An Eight-Track Mind

Smells trigger memory.  So does the weather.  In my case, as I've discussed in a previous post, dull, repetitive menial tasks do it, too.  I'd call the phenomenon "Proustian," but that would be pretentious and would suggest that I have managed to get through Remembrances of Times Past, something I have not been able to do up to this point in my life. 

One of the greatest memory triggers for me, and for many, I've heard, is music.  Anything by Paul McCartney and Wings, for example, takes me right back to Rocky Ledge, the swim club where we spent our summer days when I was a pre-teen, and where I fell in love on a daily basis, with girls in bikinis who never even knew I was there. 

I've taken to using the Shazam app when I am driving to and from work, in order to capture songs I either like or connect with, for whatever reason.  Okay, it's also to show off, since I know the songs I tag will automatically post on my Facebook page.  I like to imagine people seeing what I'm listening to and thinking, "Wow, that Dan sure does have an eclectic music sense!" 

The other day Dionne Warwick's rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis's "Walk on By" came on KUTX -- our public radio station here in Austin.  It hit me like the proverbial bullet in the brain, and I was in our living room on Hartford Lane, dozing in my father's lap, staring out the pre-dawn bay window, hearing the "Ca-CHUNK-click" of the eight-track stereo cassette player, switching tracks. 

I'm sure my dad had lots of 8 track tapes, but the three I remember best are Dionne Warwick, A Partridge Family Christmas, and Simon and Garfunkel.  The latter is the only one of these three that I currently own on MP3.  Everyone I know who remembers 8 track, does so fondly, with a glint in their eye.  It's so archaic now, of course, along the same lines as the CB radio.  But for me, it's a joyful, warm memory, and I may very well have to get myself some Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach for my iPod some time soon.



Little Big Chat

A recent staring contest between the author (left) and young Jackson Fuchs, age 8.  Winner uncertain.

I'm not a big fan of the "Kids-say-the-darnedest-things" branch of literature.  It gives rise to, in my opinion, the precious and smarmy.  Despite my feelings on the genre, however, there are times that one or the other of my sons come out with things that I must make sure and write down.  This is one of those times.

"Daddy?" Jackson said, the ellipsis hanging invisibly in the air between us.

"Yes, son?"

"Will I look very different when I'm a grown-up?"  He was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, and had just finished brushing his teeth before bed.

"You will," I answered definitively.  "You'll certainly always recognize yourself, but you'll change, too.  You'll get a lot hairier, for one thing."

He then ran to where I was waiting for him in the hallway and threw his arms around me.

"Oh, Daddy," he said, full of emotion.  "I wish you could live forever."

I realized then, returning his embrace, that this was more a conversation about mortality than appearance.  We have these little big chats every now and again.  I've come to accept that when you've got a grandfather you've never met, you are going to have these questions.  He must empathize with me on some level.

"I'll always be with you, son," I tell him.

"I know, Daddy.  Right here," he says, touching his chest where he thinks his heart is.  It's what we always say -- the classic Mufasa-Simba conversation.

But I can tell it's not the same.  He'd like us to be together forever.  I know that in a few years he'll feel differently, so I soak in this unabashed love.

As Jerry Seinfeld said in a recent stand-up routine, "Our children are here for one basic purpose:  to replace us."  All I can do is continue to shower these two people with all the love I can.  In this way, I'll "replace" myself with two young people who know how important it is to be kind and to love, and to leave the world a better place for your having lived in it.

A Great Day for Frogs

Our backyard play scape in the morning rain

"Look at that rain!" I say, noticing it after helping the boys get dressed for their second day of Raider Baseball Camp.  "Oh well, it's a great day for frogs."

It's one of those things I say a lot.  One of those Dad Things.  I'm not sure where I got the phrase; must've heard it somewhere.  It's one of those things the boys roll their eyes at -- like when we're at our favorite Chinese restaurant, Happy Dragon in Round Rock, and I draw their attention to the string-heavy traditional music playing on a loop and say, "Hey, do you guys like this song?  I wrote this."  They pretend to be pained by my corny jokes, but their vague smiles suggest they will one day be nostalgic about it, just as I am with my own brother about the many, many phrases, quips and bad jokes our father repeated through the years.

Any way you classify this weather, it signifies a rain out -- a re-thinking of plans.  A re-boot of our day.  Jeanette has already left for work, and it is a Guys' Day.  The boys immediately go for their Nooks, and begin constructing houses that will keep them safe from the zombies who creep around the perimeters of their virtual homesteads.

Jackson and Diego playing Minecraft on a rainy morning in June

I grab my tablet and get back into the novel I'm currently reading, until I feel a pleasant sleepiness come over me.  I put the device face down on my chest, the way I used to leave an open book there when I'd get drowsy.  Then I nap, until one of the boys comes in to show me the houseboat they've been working on, and ask me about going to the movies.

I get on the computer and buy e-tickets for the 11 o'clock matinee of Man of Steel.

It's all great stuff.  I'm not a troglodyte who pines for the days before there was this level of technology. I will say, though, that I grew up in a place and time that found me often out in the rain.  My friends and I were explorers, and we were lucky to be surrounded by acres of relatively pristine land.  When I think back on childhood rainy days, I feel the cool droplets on my skin, and I smell the earth, replete with wildlife.  Earthworms were the most obvious, but we also saw salamanders, moles, chipmunks, and yes, frogs.  Lots of them.

Maybe that's where I got that from.  Hmm.  I am feeling somewhat inspired to take the boys out on a nature walk somewhere.  Perhaps I'll do that.  After the movie.  Go out on a trail, in search of some frogs.