Dad Life

Grandma McMorris seldom curses, so when she said, “never let a son of a bitch know he’s a son of a bitch,” I knew she was quoting her father, Pop Pop. My grandfather oozed apothegms, nuggets of wisdom that are now only found on refrigerator magnets, motivational posters and throw pillows: the Silent Generation’s forerunner to the meme. Mom was giving me work advice. It’s only been two months, but I no longer remember who the son of a bitch that I called a son of a bitch was, let alone why I called him that. The particulars vanished as soon as my mother spoke, the work crisis overtaken by a personal one. It was a barbecue, probably. Or perhaps a s’mores night at the firepit. A birthday party for one of her sisters? “Dad, when can I have a cigarette?

North Carolina The ancients used the sun and moon to measure time, but modern man has a more exact instrument at his disposal: the odometer. It has ticked up a thousand-plus miles, a sure sign the 2024 holiday season has just ended. The children are all struggling in the backseat — against one another, their own bladders and the nylon straps the Car Seat Cartel has foisted upon them — and are thus unable to see the dash’s mileage ticker, as well as the incriminating orange “service reminder” messages your wife is pretending to ignore. When you read aloud the “Welcome to North Carolina” sign, your most intelligent child says, “Are we still in the United States?

The church sitting catty-corner from the former sushi place was the tallest building in Rosslyn, Virginia, not so long ago. It bears the cross and flame logo the Methodists adopted in 1968, the same year a local lumber yard donated the plot in the heart of Southern Baptist territory. Locals affixed a Catholic nickname to the brutalist structure perched above a filling station, “Our Lady of Exxon.” The tongue of fire engulfing the cross is the same hue as the neon informing passersby that Regular Gas is $3.399 per gallon ($3.949 if you pay by card). Things have changed in what was once a sleepy outpost of Georgetown. The gas station is now a Sunoco, and the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church may be the most perfect symbol of the GOP that was.

Alexandria, Virginia Close your eyes. Picture an elementary school orchestra on a school bus. All instruments are plastic recorders. Now picture the school bus hurtling into a warehouse filled with barn owls. Open your eyes. Welcome to my dinner table. The priest assured us he wanted to experience family life at its fullest. No need for a special meal, he said (we will pretend that we eat duck every week). No need to clean (fat chance). Only a bachelor could think that freshly swept floors and expert cooking could detract from an authentic family meal in a house full of women. Aside from grace I do not think I have completed a sentence at the dinner table since 2017. There are too many riddles and recess incidents to discuss.

On August 25, 1953, neurosurgeon William Beecher Scoville drilled holes into the skull of a young epileptic named Henry Gustav Molaison and vacuumed out part of his brain. In August 2023, Mrs. McMorris watched her husband turn his hat backward while teaching her daughters to fish — and then she drank wine. Modern man tends to think “botched lobectomy” is redundant, though the frequency and severity of Molaison’s seizures receded. Picture the neurosurgeon, contemplating the forthcoming medical association medals, the ceremonies he would keynote as the Jonas Salk of drilling holes into skulls, the Clara Barton of vacuuming-out brain tissue. Mr. Molaison left the operating room able to recount his childhood crush but could not tell you whether his parents were alive.

If the meme is to be believed, I do not hate journalists enough. You would be hard-pressed to find a more self-loathing individual — and yet I cannot bring myself to cheer on AI or venture capital’s march through the newsroom. I worry not for my own sake but for the future of my favorite type of journalist: the foreign clickbait farmer. Armed with a broken pocket translator and battered Fourth Edition of Roget’s Thesaurus (1977), these writers fearlessly tackle the issues of the day.

Alexandria, Virginia  I sit on bathtub’s edge, back spasming, left leg numb, inner cheek bitten raw — pain that must be endured if I am to triumph over fatherly futility. #5 is only twenty months old but understands that in a household of eight people the toilet is the optimal, if not the only, place for contemplation. I am reflecting, too, on an event that occurred three years earlier, one that will be with me on my deathbed. I was in a rush for reasons I cannot recall as #4 sat lost in thought or perhaps the fiftieth reading of Yertle the Turtle. I grew frustrated. “Go pee! Go poo!” She looked up at me and said with the calm gravity befitting a statesman: “Go Mets.” Only then did she poop.

Alexandria, Virginia  It is impossible to read through the transparent eyelids of an eight-day-old just what kind of young lady she will become, but I already know Katherine Matilda is going to have impeccable comedic timing. She announced her existence a week after we donated all the maternity and infant clothes, diapers and, natch, car seats — a month after we signed off on a renovation that demolished the entire ground floor for the duration of a pregnancy. She came home on a Saturday, a week into a pinkeye epidemic in which half of her sisters proved allergic to antibiotic eyedrops. There was a time when such chaos would have sent sleep-deprived parents into crisis. That time was Monday.

I work on the back deck and must work quickly while I have the midday sun. The mixing bowl holds distilled white vinegar, quantity unknown; Dawn antibacterial dish soap, the blue one, quantity unknown; rags, four; toothpicks, innumerable; toothbrushes, medium bristle, two; a single sponge destined for the garbage by day’s end; a pipe cleaner that should return to its post next to the sink. The target is mildew. The spots are irregularly shaped. If they appeared on your skin, you would bypass the dermatologist and head straight to the oncology ward, but against the firm cotton and rough polyester, they are mesmerizing. I concentrate as I scrub. On closer inspection they are not irregular, but pointillist. I am at war with a poisonous Seurat.

Mrs. McMorris and I have five daughters — and much like the WNBA nobody is watching them. Unattended children are best kept to the cozy culs-de-sac of the suburbs where the only threat to life and limb is inattentive Amazon delivery drivers, rather than the city where they could fall prey to inattentive pit-bull owners — or worse, watchful public-school teachers. Every father knows the first thing to do when moving to the suburbs is to find a cheap handyman who will respond within the hour to any text message. All the better if he is a licensed plumber, which is how Mrs. McMorris and I found Scott from All Total Service plumbing. Scott is indifferent to my career as a journalist, though he cares deeply about his Nextdoor rating.