FiveManns.net

We’re in the car … the triplets and Daddy.  Mommy’s in the store buying whatever it is that Mommies buy in stores.  Daddy’s drinking his Starbucks chai latte.  The boys eat their cheese sticks.  We listen to NPR.  Mommy takes a while, for shopping is serious business.  Time passes.  Daddy finishes his chai.  The triplets have long since finished their cheese.  NPR moves on to something less interesting.  Time drags on.  The boys get bored, all four of them.

A bored Daddy grumbles to himself, but is otherwise harmless.  A bored toddler is more creative.  Daddy hears a cry from the back seat.  The cry persists.  Daddy looks around.

Xander is struggling against his car seat strap.  He’s ferocious about it, straining, craning, wrenching and twisting himself against the straps.  The car seat strap is firm like steel.  Wow, Mommy really tightened that thing!  Mommy likes a tight car seat strap;  it’s safer, she says.  Mommy’s right, of course, but Daddy errs on the side of casual, loose and free.  Besides, the car is parked and this kid is strapped in fighter-jet tight.

Daddy loosens the car seat straps.

More time passes.  Daddy relaxes, grumbling to himself now and then about how long shopping takes.  Xander cries.  Daddy looks around.  Xander is strapped back into his fighter jet.  What the …!?!  Daddy loosens Xander’s car seat straps a second time.  Daddy watches.

Xander is elated with his new found freedom.  Yeah!  He can move.  He can lean.  He can reach.  And what does Xander do with his freedom?

We have Graco CarGo car seats.  Of the hundreds of models of car seats in existence, only two models are  narrow enough to fit three-abreast in a Volkswagen Jetta, and the other model cost $350 per car seat.  Who pays $350 for a car seat?  At any rate, the Graco CarGo has a strap coming out the lower front of the seat next to a big red button.  If you pull on that strap, it connects through the back of the seat to the top of the harness and tightens it.  If you push the red button, you can pull the harness out and loosen it.

The first thing Xander does with his freedom is lean way forward, grab that strap, and pull with his considerably muscular Team Vietnam strength and wrench himself back into the vice grip of iron tight straps.  Crunch!  And then cry.

Daddy loosens the harness.  Xander reaches forward, grabs the strap, and straight-jackets himself into his seat.  Xander cries.  Daddy loosens the strap again.  Xander wrenches himself in again. Xander cries again.  Daddy found this amusing and was no longer bored, curious how long it would take Xander to figure out what was going on.  Loosen.  Yank!  Cry.  Loosen.  Yank!  Cry.  Loosen.  Yank!  Cry.  A voice in Daddy’s head speaks up … I don’t think he’s going to figure this out today.  Daddy unbuckles all three boys from their car seats and the car explodes in clambering toddler chaos until Mommy arrives.

But that was it.  That was the iconic maneuver for the self-defeating nature of toddlers.

Niko loves to shove toys under furniture to the point where he can’t reach them. And then Niko cries.  Devon likes to throw toys down the stairs where he can’t get them.  And then Devon cries.  They break stuff and are upset that it’s broken.  They trash it and morn that it’s trashed.  They release a balloon and howl for it’s return, as wind and helium conspire to make the decision irrevocable.

No explaining can stop it.  No demonstration of the futility of their actions will deter it.   Daddy can only watch helplessly and be reminded of a favorite quote:

Good judgment comes from experience,

and experience comes from bad judgment.*

And hope that their experience will develop outstanding judgment.

——————-

* alternately attributed to Barry LePatner, Rita Mae Brown and G. Warren Nutter.

This is a special edition of The Daddy Report.  Although Niko can’t put together a five word sentence verbally, it turns out that he’s a keyboard savant.  He’s here and wants to type something.  So … Daddy’s turning the rest of this report over to Niko …

I think my Daddy is retarded.  He’s a slow learner.  I’ve been trying to teach him, but he just doesn’t get it.  How many times do I have to tell him, “no no no”, before he stops getting angry with two year olds for being two year olds?

Think about it.  In the last year I’ve learned how to ride a bike, speak a new language, eat with a spoon, poop in a potty, put on shoes, take off jackets, assemble lego, drink from a cup, identify countless objects, float in water, sing three songs, count to two, recognize a dozen new people, slide down a slide, climb up a wall, open a gate, lock a door, stand on shoulders, sit on a lap, jump on a jumpie and disassemble anything.  In that same time, what has Daddy learned?  From what I can tell, zip.

Daddy loves to tell us about consequence.  “You have to learn about consequence”, he says.  “There’s consequence for your actions”, he explains, before throwing us in the timeout slammer. You wanna talk about consequence? Here’s what I have to say about consequence … remember the speaker grill.  Remember the great poo smearing.  Now that’s consequence.    We’re just getting warmed up.  If Daddy doesn’t pick up the pace of learning a bit … there’s going to be consequence.

I knew we were in trouble as soon as I saw him.  “Uh oh … this one is going to need some training”, I thought to myself. And I knew that I was going to have to take the lead on this.  Xander, god bless him, has a huge heart and boundless courage, but the boy doesn’t think.  I’ll bet he was half way down that 12 foot fall before it occurred to him that jumping off the banister was a stupid idea.  But I admire how he crashes his bike into the curb, sails over the handlebars into a bloody-nosed faceplant and does it all over again the next day.  And Devon … Devon is a genius.  That kid can figure out anything if you give him enough time.  First to open the gate.  First to remove the light bulbs.  Inventor of the Plasma Train.  But he’s sensitive and caves under pressure.  Whines a lot, too.  Nope, training Daddy is my job.

Do you have any idea how much patience is required to train a parent?  Every day to us is like  a week of adult time.  So to spend an entire year trying to teach Daddy to be more patient … you can’t even imagine. So much ground to cover, so little time.  I mean … just look at this Daddy Report he’s writing.  For one thing, I think he’s obsessed with poo.  It’s in every other article.  He complains incessantly about us, and the irony of his complaining about our whining seems completely lost on him.  Devon and Xander haven’t read The Daddy Report, yet.  But when they get older and they do … there’s going to be consequence.

The boys are starting to talk!  Well, they’ve been babbling like drunken sailors to each other for months, but have now found the usefulness of including Mommy and Daddy in the conversation.

Their first word was “dey“.  It may indeed be (as suggested earlier) toddlerese for the Vietnamese word for bus, but Daddy has come to learn of more poignant origins.  Ever since we met them, the boys often chanted , “dey … dey … dey … dey …“, in a seeming love affair with buses.  Recently they adopted the curious habit of walking en-triplet, backwards, up hills to the “dey … dey … dey …” chant, with no buses in sight.  It was captivating, enough for passers by on the local mountain to see three irresistible boys and one Daddy all walking backwards together, up the hill, chanting “dey … dey … dey …“.  But what gives?  What was the urge?

The answer came one day as Daddy backed the car out of the carport, immediately illiciting a triplet chorus of “Dey … dey … dey …”.  And as Daddy continued backing into the neighbor’s driveway, “dey … dey … dey …” intensified.  Pretty soon a regular pattern emerges … Daddy backs up the car, the boys chant.  They boys see a truck backing up, the boys chant.  Oh!  Oh my god!  Have you ever heard a truck back up?  The kind of truck that might have delivered supplies to an orphanage?  The kind of truck that would have been rare stimulation in an otherwise bare, toy-less, quiet (except for crying), view-less (except for trees), interaction-less (except for food and bath) environment?  Our boys’ first vocalization was taught to them by a truck!  In cadence, tone and manner, they were mimicking the back-up beep sound that trucks make.

After “dey”, the second word the boys ever spoke was “em”.  It’s Vietnamese for brother.  They used to yell it loudly whenever they were really upset.  They may love trucks and buses, but when their back is against the wall, it’s each other they turn to for help.

Their first English words were for sure “mama” and “dada”.  After em, Mommy and Daddy serve as backup.  The first English sentence  they mastered was “no”.  No is useful.  It can be it’s own sentence.  No no no no no no no.  It’s no secret where they learned that sentence from.

They moved on to some other sentences.  Beek peas! (Book, please!)  Aap-ple peas! (Apple, please!)  Mostly they talk in order to get stuff they want.  Wada peas! (Water, please!)  Daddy wondered … can he use this to get stuff he wants?  Their baby word book has a picture of a police car.  Having figured out that “police” is a two syllable word, for Daddy is no fool, Daddy points to the police car and says, “Cop.  That’s a cop, boys.”  While driving down the interstate, Daddy sees a police car.  “Cop.  That’s a cop boys.  If you see one, I want you to tell Daddy.”  Daddy was tired of having every cement truck, bus and panel van on the road loudly announced in triplicate.  Daddy didn’t care where the bus was.  But cops!  Daddy cares about where the cops are, and three young eyes with nothing else to do but scan their wondrously new world are much more likely to see them than Daddy is.  “Cop, boys, that’s a cop“, Daddy trains the boys as they are passed by a whizzing highway patrol car.

Some days later Daddy took the boys to Hauke Park to play with soccer balls.  Daddy tosses the balls up, the boys squeal, and then chase the falling balls.  Toss.  Squeal.  Chase. It’s a very engaging game for both Daddy and the boys.  “Gop!  Gop!”  Daddy tosses.  Boys squeal and chase. The game continues.  “Gop!  Gop!”  Niko Nhan isn’t playing the game.  He’s obsessed with something.  “Gop!  Gop!  Gop!”  Daddy looks over.  Niko Nhan is pointing at something … a local Mill Valley police car driving by.  A  cop!  Daddy had never been so proud of a boy and nearly fell over laughing.  “It worked!  It worked!  They understand!  They learn!  They speak!”

The boys’ first two years in the orphanage lacked verbal stimulus.  They completely changed language and culture at age two.  As triplets, they mutually reinforce an unintelligible babble with each other.  They are boys and boys are, sorry to say, slower to get going in the verbal department.  Shoot first … talk later.  Any one of these explains a late talker.  Taken together, you get human beings with way more thinking capacity than language ability.  What this means is that our boys talk a little bit like someone who is learning a foreign language.  They know what they want to say;  they don’t know how to say it;  so they glue together the words they know to express what they want to express.

Every Sunday Daddy takes the boys biking.  Without Mommy.  The goal is to give Mommy a tiny break.  The boys cry.  They don’t want to go biking without Mommy.  “Bye, bye, Mommy”, says Daddy.  The boys cry.  “We’ll be back, soon”.  That’s not good enough.  The boys cry.  We drive away, crying mixed with “dey … dey … dey …”, arriving at the local Middle School.  The Middle School has walkways and paths.  Those paths have hills.  Those hills mean speed, way more speed than Mommy allows.  Eventually the boys figure out that biking with Daddy and without Mommy is a good thing.  Zzzzoooommm!!!  Zzzzooomm!!!  There’s no speed limit with Daddy.  Never mind the crashes, flying through the handle bars and the bloody noses … the need for speed is satiated and the boys learn to love Sunday biking with Daddy.  And like all things they love, they want to ask for more of it.

But what, exactly, is it they ask for?

“All-boy bye-bye-Momma bike, peas!“, of course.

To really drive home the linguistic challenges, Mommy also teaches the boys Czech.  “Hum!” is kiddie-Czech for food.   Our smart, food-loving boys learned it immediately.  Even Daddy learned it.  We don’t have dinner at our house, we have “Hum!”.   The boys don’t feed their stuff animals, it’s “Cat hum!”.  Drive the car past a gas station and they enthusiastically call out “gas tashun – car hum!”.

Sometimes they talk to express a state of being.  “No roof car!” (a convertible)  “Bike up car!” (car with bike on top)  “Almost done!”  “All done!” (useful at potty time)  “Big ow!” (when they want sympathy).

They love “Tsope” ( soap).  They squirt gobs of soap at shower time.  They lather each other with soap.  They eat soap, suck soap, and slurp it up off the bottom of the shower, soap bubbles dripping from their lips.  No amount of scolding, cajoling or explaining seems to have any impact on soap etiquette.  Daddy can’t get them to stop drinking soapy water.  Daddy can’t get them to stop grabbing for the soap.  And Daddy can’t get them to stop wasting soap.  And soap usage is an issue, because Mommy insists on buying the world’s most expensive, all organic, all natural, non-laurel-sulfate, non-toxic soap-shampoo to reduce the chance of brain lesions when the boys reach 80.

So Daddy guards the gold plated soap.  It sits way up high on the shower shelf.  Daddy holds the soap in his hand at shower time.  One little squirt here.  One little squirt there.  No wasting the soap, please.  No grabbing the soap, please.

One shower day Daddy got distracted.  He forgot to turn the bathroom fan on.  Boys were in the shower.  Daddy reaches for the fan switch.  It’s only 8 feet away, but enough to take the boys out of Daddy’s view.  Daddy turns on the fan.  Maybe he pauses to wipe the counter.   Maybe he flushes the potty.  He takes too long.  The boys go for the soap.  They reach.  They acquire.  Plop.  Clank.  Slump.  Fwump.  Swish.  What are those sounds?  Crying.  Slorp.  Slosh.  Squish.  Slish.  Slippy-dishy-wishy.  More crying.  More slishing.

Daddy makes it back to the shower.  Emotions … three of them … three divergent emotions simultaneously pour through Daddy’s body and he’s not sure which one to react to.

Three boys have opened the super expensive soap bottle and poured it all over the shower.  Daddy’s pissed.  Three naked, hairless, soap-covered, slimy toddlers are writhing and sliding and slipping all over themselves in repeated fruitless attempts to stand up in the now frictionless environment of the soapy shower stall.  Daddy’s hysterical with laughter.  Three pairs of soap-stained eyes are red with pain (non-sting soap notwithstanding) as the boys cry out in suffering, frustration and fear.  Daddy’s moved to tears.  Daddy’s angry at the $20 soap bottle going down the drain, but that doesn’t stand a chance against the force of the funny.  He tries to not laugh because the boys are in such pain and misery, but the collectively 12-limbed dodecapus writhing and spinning and flopping around in the shower is unimaginably, gut-splittingly hysterical.  Niko stands.  Niko slips, one foot slides up into Devon’s face as the other trips up the almost rising Xander, who now flops over sideways.  The whole closely entwined trio, now completely off balance, rotates as a unit with Devon gliding up the shower wall as Xander slips under Niko who reaches pointlessly into space for a grip.  Arms, legs, heads, bodies and little boy penises are everywhere.  It’s a figure-eight, half-hitch, fishermens-bend, overhand-slip of knotted humanity that can’t right itself and can’t relax.

When all is finally quiet, eyes rinsed and bodies dry, the boys find the words to express what happened:  “Tsope ow!”

Christmas!  Christmas?  Christmas was 4 months ago.  Why are we posting about Christmas now?  Because my wife made me promise to write an upbeat, positive Christmas report.  She said I needed more Daddy Reports that emphasized the positive.  This requires highly selective memory.

Back when I used to climb mountains, I realized that one of the prerequisites for repeatedly attempting high altitude, glaciated peaks was selective memory.  You had to cull the last trip’s biting cold, nausea, pain, fear and frustration out of your mind and focus your attention on that glorious sunrise or summit-top euphoria with near delusional commitment to selective memory.  That kind of culling takes time.  Time heals all.  Now I can write about Christmas.

I can skip over all the sleepless nights spent deciding, shopping, packing, unpacking, assembling, decorating and preparing.  Christmas lists, returns, wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and the post-traumatic stress of checkbook sticker shock need not be a focus of my memory.  We don’t need to discuss the hundreds of hours of research that went into selecting the perfect easels, in triplicate of course, whose primary function over the subsequent four months has been to take up space and look nice in the Christmas video.

If not that, then, what?  Eva tells me to write about all the touching moments.  I suggested that maybe she should write about the touching moments.  Eva scowled.  Eva suggested that I write about how cute it was when Xander (child formerly known as Tam) opened his new electric drill with realistic drilling sound.  It’s easy to locate that moment in our Christmas video.  Before he opened it, you hear Czech Christmas music in the background.  After he opens it, all you can hear on the video is the incessant rrghrrghrrghrrghrrghrrgh of his new drill.  Piercing, maybe, but not touching.

Eva suggested writing about Devon (child formerly known as Tai) kissing the rocking horse.  An interesting second choice, for the only thing noisier than the drill was the clip-clop of that horse.  Pinch its ear and the rocking horse emanates a sound akin to a herd of Clydesdales wearing ceramic horseshoes trotting over kitchen tile.  It was a cute, Devon kissing the horse, if you like cute.

We made a huge thing about wooden trains at Christmas.  We gave that suggestion to everyone.  Clearly I must love trains.  The boys now have a huge stash of train track.  The boys love trains, too, for about 15 minutes.  We’ve settled into a ritual.  We open the box of train stuff.  Daddy proceeds to set up the track.  The boys mess with the trains and disrupt Daddy.  Just about the time Daddy finishes setting up the track, the boys are bored.  We tear the track down and put it away.  It’s one notch above the easels in playtime utility.

The boys love trucks.  They own about 50 trucks now.  Christmas would have been a lot simpler and provided just about as much lasting impact if we had bought them a crate full of toy trucks.

But touching … where do I find touching?  How do I write a positive article about Christmas?  This has been my task for the last four months.  Four months during which time Daddy took on a second job complete with 4 hour round-trip commute and out-of-town rented room.  Niko (child formerly known as Nhan) and Mommy traveled to Prague.  Niko got jet lag.  Mommy got exhausted.  Relatives came to visit.  The shower broke.  The mold got out of hand.  The fence rotted.  The boys got sick. And none of these inspire the kind of rosy nostalgia necessary for the task at hand.

Except … they did.

Somewhere in this nonstop, relentlessly “on”, not-a-moment-for-myself life came the creeping realization that I was, for the first time ever, touched by my life.  In the past I have painted my life with adjectives like challenging, fun, adventurous, or exciting, but I’ve never really been moved by it.  I could be proud of overcoming the challenges of a successful summit, but at the end of the day I did it because I wanted it.  At the end of the climb, I came back, sat down and drank a beer.

This is different.  This is like standing at the base of a mountain that has no summit, no end, and no beer, and starting to climb it anyway.  The irrational audacity of adopting triplet toddlers half a century younger than I am, the whole, crazy, difficult, overwhelming blur which extracts every available morsel of energy in devotion to others … it evokes a compassion in myself for myself like nothing ever before.

That’s what was touching about Christmas.

Daddy is the kind of man that reads the directions.  Kids don’t come with directions, but they come with parenting books, so Daddy read a few parenting books.  Some have really good ideas … when your kid misbehaves, discover the underlying motivation and find an alternative way to satisfy it.  Those we used.  Some have really harsh ideas … if you are going to spank your kid, make sure it hurts.  Those we didn’t.

Toddler parenting books have ideas about potty training.  Mommy had been saying for a while, “I think it’s time for potty training.”  Daddy thought about that.  Daddy thought about all those independent, asynchronously timed, triplet trips to the toilet and imagined that the only outing they’d be doing is back and forth to the nearest restroom.  How does a parent know when it’s time for potty training?  Daddy heard about a boy who announced one day, “I want potty.  No more diapers.”  That seemed pretty clear.  But Daddy wondered … are there other signs?

Toddler parenting books have ideas about when it’s time to start potty training.  The child must be physically mature enough, psychologically ready, aware of his body and cognitively capable of understanding the process.  Daddy  even saw a Potty Training Readiness Checklist … including “gives a physical or verbal sign when he’s having a bowel movement such as grunting, squatting, or telling you.”  We’re at a slight disadvantage, of course, because Team Vietnam grunts to communicate everything and squats like a Vietnamese to play with anything.  One supposes the signs existed.  A tug at the pants here.  A red faced grunt there.  Daddy may have missed them.  So the boys came up with a sign that was unmistakable, a sign Daddy never read about.  Daddy didn’t see this in the parenting books.

It was 7am.  Daddy’s alarm goes off.  It’s wake-up time.  The boys are up, squealing and banging and waiting for Daddy to open the door.  Daddy dresses.  Daddy’s still half asleep.  He opens the door.  Blankets, animals, socks, toys and pillows are scattered about the room.  All seems normal.  This is the way it is every morning.

Or is it?  Something’s off.  Something’s different.  They boys stand quietly in the middle of the room.  Grunt!  One points.  What’s he pointing at?  Daddy scans.  What’s the matter with that bed sheet?  Why is there a diaper on the floor?  Where are his pants?  Why are there three pajama bottoms on the floor?  What is that?  Another diaper.  Is there a smell in here?  What’s that over there?  And that?  And the bed sheet … what’s up with the bed sheet?  It looks like poop.  Poop.  That looks like poop, too.  It smells like poop.  The boys are pointing at something else.  Grunt!  Grunt!  And more.  Oh my …

At this point reality collides with Daddy’s half-awake expectations of normalcy.  This can’t be happening!  Daddy’s brain refuses to see what he sees.  Only a single word launched itself from Daddy’s mouth … “NO!”.  “No”, as in, no this can not be happening at 7am in the morning.  “No”, as in, this is a no-no-no-no.  “No”, as in, those slow-motion movie scenes where the hero witnesses something horrific while “nooooooooooo” reverberates through the canyon.

Poop.  There is poop everywhere.  There is poop on everything.  Sheets.  Carpet.  Toys.  Walls.  Blankets.  Clothes.  Hands.  Stuffed doggies.

A plan.  Daddy needs a plan.  Neurons fire.  Where to start?  What’s the plan?  The plan … isolate the contagion and protect the boys.  STRIP!  Daddy strips the boys.  Minefields are everywhere.  Step carefully.  Quarantine everything.  Nothing leaves the room but Daddy and naked boys.  Daddy’s socks stay behind.  The stuffed doggies have little tags saying, “Do not wash. Surface clean only”. Fine.  Burn the doggies.  Wash everything else.  In hot water.  Including the carpet.  Daddy thinks … this is what Daddy is doing today.  Great.  Daddy closes the door.  Save the boys.

Naked boys get a shower, a really good shower, all at once.  They love it.

Days later Mommy and Daddy are talking to a friend.  She says, “Oh, yeah, my girl did that.  Poop all over the walls.  It was disgusting.  Happens to a lot of parents”  Really?  Never heard of it.  Daddy checks out the web.  Dr. Heather on Babyshrink.com wrote a whole article on the topic after a number of mothers complained of poop smearing toddlers.  And you know what … it is the all-time, number one, most read article on her web site.  Number one?  Most read?  This must be an important topic.  It sure became important to Daddy in a hurry.  What was Dr. Heather’s take on it?

“… take it as a sign of interest in potty-training.”

A sign of interest in potty training?  No shit!?!  Why wasn’t that in the books?  Daddy’s looking for subtle tugs and grunts and nobody tells him that a room smeared with feces is on the menu of possible communications?  If Daddy ever writes a book on toddler potty training, this is going to be in it.  It’s going to be first.  Right up front.  With photos.  It’ll be like those Drivers Ed films he watched in high school … look for the early signs of interest in potty training, or this could happen to you!

Daddy sure hopes he catches the early signs of interest in driving.

The other day someone asked me, “How is fatherhood?”.  Here’s my reply.

It’s an in-your-face personal development training.  Oddly, people would pay thousands of dollars for a workshop that accomplished the same thing.  In this workshop, you would be handed something unbelievably precious to take care of with the goal of never getting angry or physical or abusive with it.  Then the thing would proceed to detect your weaknesses and torment you with the goal of getting you angry or physical or abusive.  If you don’t kill it, you graduate.  If you don’t maim it too badly, you graduate with honors.  If you never, ever get angry or physical or abusive, you are enlightened and get to start your own religion.  You would have to pay for the entire workshop up front; otherwise nobody would last beyond the first week.  It’s too hard of a workshop.  That’s why people pay thousands of dollars to sit in circles and listen to other people talk about enlightenment, after which they do some chanting and art work.  It’s a lot more fun and you get to sit down for a nice dinner.

We pay to have nanny-help a few days a week.  Nanny-help allows daddy to work with clients and earn money to cover the cost of food and nanny-help.  From the Workshop Fatherhood perspective, this is backwards.  I’m giving away the world’s most potent self development program for free.  People should pay us to hone their character against our three terrible-two’s toddlers.  Nine thousand dollars for a week-long initiation into patience, persistence and discipline.  No boring lectures.  No abstract philosophical nonsense.  No dogma.  Pure, unadulterated, experiential transformative healing.  You have to cook your own food, and it would be still be worth it.

The only problem with this idea is that in order to succeed you can’t kill the kids.  I’m not sure nine thousand dollars is enough motivation for someone to keep them alive. For that, you have to love the boys more than you hate the workshop.  Best if people do it on their own.

Back in BT (before triplets), fathers used to tell me, “You have noooo idea what you’re getting into.  You can’t.  Unless you’ve been there, you just don’t know.”  OK.  Sure.  I knew that was true.  You can never know what a person knows until you walk the proverbial mile in their shoes.  You have no idea what it’s like to spend a month climbing a glaciated mountain if you haven’t done it.  Only nine human beings on the planet are still alive who know what it’s like to walk on the moon.  So, we all agree on the irreplaceability of direct, experiential empathy but, somehow, fathers like to underscore this point.  Why is that?  What is it about fatherhood that inspires such a blood bond of membership?

Extraordinary ordinariness.

Walking on the moon is obviously extraordinary.  There’s nothing ordinary about it.  Its rarity, its unreachability, and until Kennedy choose to go to the moon in 1962, its virtual unimaginability communicates volumes about the experience without uttering a word.  Even if we can’t know what it’s like, we can know of its specialness.

Fatherhood, on the other hand, is ordinary to the point of problematic.  There are too many people on the planet;  thus it stands to reason there are too many fathers.  Common as weeds, we are.  Everywhere you look, there are fathers.  For a trip to the moon a rich man would pay millions.  For fatherhood … free for the asking.  As such, it is easy to underestimate fatherhood’s value and soul sparking capacity to mold and develop.  It’s a club whose inner sanctum is more precious than gold, but whose outer facade is deceivingly common and simple.

Years ago I wanted to rent a sea kayak in Maine just after the ice broke.  Rental shop after rental shop said the same thing:  “Nooooo … the water’s too cold for you to sea kayak.  You’re from California.  This is Maine.  You have noooo idea how cold the water is here.”  At the time I took their cautionary admonitions as a form of regional boasting, as if for a sun belt boater to survive the Maine waters in early spring would cheapen the depth of their winter hardened strength. And when fathers pulled me aside to warn me, “You have noooo idea what you’re getting into”, perhaps shaking their head in casual significance or tightening their voice for emphasis, I took it the same way.  It sounded like boasting.

But I’m in the club now.  I understand now they weren’t boasting, they were congratulating me.  They were telling me in the only way that, before I walked in their shoes, I could possibly appreciate the extraordinary gold inside the hard work of fatherhood.  Fatherhood from this perspective embodies the wisdom teaching ideal of living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way.  Mystics speak of enlightenment not as being beyond the ordinary, but rather a continuously refreshing experience of the ordinary.  So it would seem that fatherhood is the common man’s training into an enlightened life … sort of “enlightenment or else.”

Every now and then Mommy and Daddy break up the kids.  Mommy takes two.  Daddy takes one.  Oh, one is soooo easy.  Two hands, one kid.  Piece of cake.  You got kids?  You thinking about adopting triplet, two-year-old boys? You have noooo idea what you’re getting into.  You can’t.  Unless you’ve been there, you just don’t know.  But I’m probably just boasting.

The boys steal a lot. Mostly they steal from each other, but playground raids on other toy endowed toddlers are not unknown. “No, no, we don’t steal things from other boys”, says Daddy. Literally speaking that’s not true. We do steal. We steal all the time. We steal, but we’re not supposed to. The boys grab toys and Mommy and Daddy don’t want them to do that.

When we first picked up the triplets, stealing was straightforward. Daddy understood the toddler perspective. He has it. I want it. I grab it. Although not fair, the logic was simple. The thief desired something. To stop the theft, satisfy the desire.

Mommy understood this way in advance. To Vietnam we brought three little noisemakers, three little cars, three little stuffed toys, and three more of a thousand different things. Daddy, being minimalist of mind but mindless of toddlers, thought this was silly. “Why don’t we just bring a noisemaker, a car and a stuffed toy and they can trade around?” Daddy was naïve. Luckily Mommy ignored Daddy and filled our suitcases with three of everything.

Boy 1 has car. Boy 2 steals car from Boy 1. Mommy and Daddy give identical cars to Boy 1 and Boy 3. Stealing stops. It actually worked that way for a while.

The boys didn’t have access to toys at the orphanage. Parents are encouraged to send toys to the orphanage. The staff sends back pictures, sometimes even video, of your child gleefully opening up the toy that you sent. Weeeee!!! Smiles and giggles and joy all around. Then you, or another family, shows up at the orphanage a month later and, lo and behold, no toys! Where did all the toys go? I still don’t know. The orphanage was loving and caring and gave the boys a wonderful grounding in eating neatly, napping regularly and climbing fearlessly. But toys … no toys.

I’m guessing, but I think I figured out why. As soon as we gave a toy to a boy he tossed it. He tossed it hard. Then he smashed it. He whacked his brother with it. He had no idea how to play with toys. Daddy took it for granted that kids knew how to play with toys, but in fact they need to be shown how, and that takes a lot of time.

So in the early days in Vietnam, when Mommy and Daddy preoccupied themselves with preventing the boys from destroying each other and everything else with projectile toy tossing, one of our boys actually slowed down enough to learn what to do. Tai. Tai was the first to play with a car. Squatted down on his heals in that way that westerners just can’t do, Tai gently rolled his little car along one of the foam cushions strewn about the apartment. No “vrrooooomm” noise. No screeching turns. Who knows what internal imaginations fueled his young mind, but it was clear that Tai played car in his own little world.

And the rules of stealing changed forever.

Tai was engrossed. Tai was self sufficient and happy. Tai used that gift of human consciousness to imbue has car with something special. Nhan’s car just flings through the air. Tam’s car just whacks against furniture. But Tai’s car … Tai’s car rolls sensuously, slowly and silently across the great hills of cushionland. Tai’s car is now better. Tai’s car came alive with the spark of imagination, and that spark attracted attention. Tai had become a target. Tai has it. Nhan wants it. Nhan grabs it.

The difference now is that it is more than the toy which Nhan grabs. They’re not stealing cars, they’re stealing entire imaginal landscapes … the toy, the place where toy is being played with (requiring a hefty shove to get the previously happy and satisfied Tai out of the way), and the mannerisms of play. If Nhan has as yet to create his own imaginal world, he can at least recreate Tai’s world through mimicry.

To Mommy and Daddy this is infuriating. But before it gets better, it gets worse. And we’re still waiting for it to get better.

Stealing gradually evolves into the game to play for its own sake. It’s no longer about replicating imaginal worlds. It’s no longer about the car at all. Stealing is a thrill. The grass is greener. He has it. I want it. I grab it … utterly disconnected from the it that I steal, for I already have it in my hand and in my own imagination. To steal is to feel alive! I steal therefore I am!! The power!!! The glory!!!!

The horror. The horror. Mommy and Daddy descend in the heart of darkness of thievery, thuggery, muggings and all form of necessary police work.

Mommy and Daddy serve as beat cop. “Hey! No-no! Don’t steal his toy.” Those are the easy ones, caught in action before the theft.

Mommy and Daddy patrol team respond to calls from the dispatcher. The dispatcher cries. The thief takes flight with his ill gotten goods. Mommy and Daddy rush to the scene and apprehend the errant boy. “No-no! We don’t steal from our brothers. Give it back. Give him back the car. NOW!” The stolen goods are returned. “Now hug your brother.” Hugs all around. Reparations made.

Mommy and Daddy FBI agent investigate crimes. The perpetrator’s long gone. The victim is crying. Two boys are playing. One is guilty and one is not. Agents check the records … which car was the victim playing with last time we looked? Agents interrogate … did you steal his car? Agents try to scare out the perp by threatening time in the joint … do you want a timeout? Sometimes the guilty party gives himself away … why is he playing behind the dining table where he never usually plays?

Sometimes the cases are too cold to solve. Mommy and Daddy try to pay off the victim to keep him quiet … what about this car? This Lamborghini is way faster than that old Lexus he stole.

Mommy and Daddy, beat cop, patrol team, FBI agent and witness payoff program struggle to keep the peace. Mommy and Daddy enforce the values, but the triplets are their own people. Mommy and Daddy swim against a rising tide of self aware, individuating little muggers.

A theft occurs. The victim cries out. This time, the perpetrator stands idly by. It’s an unfortunate reflection of the degradation in triplet morals that thieves don’t even see fit to run any more. It’s like … “Yeah, I stole that car. So what! What are you going to do about it?” Timeout, that’s what we’re going to do about it. Timeouts are effective. Timeouts temper the flow of hot cars pretty well.

Until … in a frightening merger of brilliance, style and duplicity, Daddy encounter a new level of sophistication in the criminal element.

The case seemed routine at first. Daddy was on patrol alone. A theft occurs. The victim cries out. The perpetrator stands idly by, the new norm. The resolution seems obvious and Patrolman Daddy responds. “No-no! We don’t steal from our brothers. Give it back. Give him back the car. NOW!” The perpetrator doesn’t move. FBI Agent Daddy checks the records … no prior information. Agent Daddy interrogates … did you steal his car? No response. Agent Daddy threatens time in the joint … do you want a timeout? No response. Hmmmmm. This is a tough case. There’s no choice. Daddy brings in the SWAT team. SWAT Daddy moves in. SWAT Daddy rescues the car and returns it to the victim. The victim is elated.

The perpetrator does time in the joint and he’s upset about it. Doing time in the joint always creates upset … that’s kind of the point. But this time there’s a riot. The timeout jail is a source of wailing and screeching and howling of injustice that far exceeds the usual response. Complete lawlessness doesn’t create this kind of riot. Something stinks here. Something’s not right.

Agent Daddy decides to do a stakeout.

All the boys are back on the field of play. Daddy’s preparing dinner with one eye. Agent Daddy is watching the field with the other. It won’t take long. It never does.

The cry goes out. Thief! Thief! He stole my car! Help! Help! The victim cries out for justice to be done, but in a shocking and unexpected twist, there was no theft. He’s faking it! The little b*****d is faking a theft to get Daddy to rush in, play cop, and effectively steal the car from an innocent victim with the added bonus that the victim goes to jail for the mugger’s crime. He’s learned how to work the system well enough to get the system to steal for him. It’s brilliant. It’s nuts. It’s infuriating.

Does the faker get a timeout even though no stealing occurred? We need new laws on the books. The books are out of date. They need to learn the word “fake”. Daddy’s in a bit of a spin. What now? What’s the answer to this?

Mommy and Daddy’s answer? Commerce and trade. We have introduced the concept of trade. Don’t steal a car, trade for it. Offer your car! If he won’t trade for your car, find another car, and see if he’ll trade for that. Try trading with your other brother. Try again later when the market has changed. Trade! Exchange! Barter! We don’t steal from our brothers, we trade with them.

How does it work? So far so good. Felony theft has leveled off. Patrol duty is a bit more relaxed. What’s also helping is increased vigilance on the part of the brothers. Neighborhood Watch is quite active, especially during diaper changing, a time of high vulnerability.

All the time people tell us it will get better. So I hear.

Our boys have new names. They’ve always had these names since we adopted them, but now it’s official. Last Monday three toddlers whose legal names were Phan Thanh Tai, Phan Thanh Nhan and Phan Thanh Tam went to the Marin County Superior Court and came home Devon Tai Mann, Nicholas Nhan Mann and Alexander Tam Mann.

Currently we call them Devon Tai, Niko Nhan and Xander Tam. The boys recognize their Vietnamese name, so we’re using the double name until they grow accustomed to their American name as well. Our plan has been to eventually call them by their American name at home, and we may do that. However, just as the boys acclimatize to their American names, Mommy and Daddy grow fond of their Vietnamese names, which are quite beautiful.

As her parting gift to them, the boys’ birth mother gave them their Vietnamese names. To be a good and successful person, one first needs talent. Tai is the Vietnamese word for talent. That talent must be combined with heart. Tam is the Vietnamese word for heart. With talent and heart, one becomes a good human being. Nhan is the Vietnamese word for human being.

The ceremony was simple, lovely and warm, thanks to the appreciative and toddler-friendly atmosphere created by Commissioner Wood at the Marin Civic Center. The two adoption cases that day entered the courtroom first. Obviously it’s a smart move on the part of the court to empty the room of fidgety toddlers before getting on with the day’s work, but they didn’t have to keep the room clear of everyone else during our time. They didn’t have to bring out a little basket of toys for the boys to play with as Mommy & Daddy held their hands up and promised to raise these adopted children as we would any natural born child. They didn’t have to grant three scrambling monkeys unfettered access to the courtroom, something Daddy was pretty sure the court would regret.

Commissioner Wood’s sincerity in her well wishes and acknowledgement of the triplet’s happiness in our family touched us both. The court clerk burst out with, “I think I’m going to cry.” But the memory that will stick with me the most as we took pictures of our family of five, was that of the otherwise staid sheriff’s deputy jumping up and down, jangling his keys, making faces and keeping the boys’ attention on the camera. I wish I had a picture of that.