Through the Looking Glass
The public good
Been a long time and I’m feeling a bit rusty. So, let’s talk about the public good, rubber ducks and ponies.
People, so many people, told me, “Once your baby comes along, your work-life balance will never be the same.”
See, in the Before Baby Girl times, I was a notorious overachiever. When things got tense, my jokes got darker and my nights got longer. I believed I could work myself to a solution. Sometimes I did. But most of the time, I was just tired.
I’ll be honest, I was hoping Anisa would cure me of this behavior.
To her credit, Anisa has tried her best. Not only by being amazing, wonderful and all those things. Also by being sure to wake up at odd hours of the night demanding our attention. Sleep deprivation, it seems, is Baby Girl’s strategy to keep us focused on the good things in life.
The other night, after she dragged me out of bed for a midnight snack, I said to her, “You are such a rascal.”
“Yes I am,” she replied with a late night grin.
Her two year old grammar is already better than her Dad’s. (Or, according to the Whole Foods cashier, her grandpa’s.)
Yet, here I am. Trying to be a good father and husband, pouring as much information as I can into the funnel piped into my small brain. Fortunate to find purpose in the public good, flummoxed by our collective disdain for the public good.
“Throughout his life,” Hannah Arendt wrote in Public Rights and Private Interests, “man moves constantly in two different orders of existence: he moves within what is his own, and he also moves in a sphere that is common to him and his fellow men. The ‘public good,’ the concerns of citizens, is indeed the common good because it is localized in the world which we have in common without owning it.”
My parents instilled in us the importance of the public good. What we did as private citizens, in our homes, within our family, was separate from the public space. But, it informed how we engaged in the public space. I am not exactly sure what the moment or the lesson was, but I grew up knowing that we had to give up something in order to contribute to the public good.
Some of what we offered was tangible in terms of time or resources to those who were less fortunate. More of it was a mindset, an acknowledgement that a functioning society requires that all of us sacrifice some of our private interests, our desire for control, for a greater good.
As Arendt put it, “Public interest always demands a sacrifice of individual interests which are determined by life’s necessities and by the limited time which is given to mortals.”
In a time when the public good is hotly debated (to say the least), what are the lessons to be shared with Baby Girl?
Perhaps it all comes back to the responsibilities of citizenship. At a very local level.
See, I have become terrible at local citizenship. Back in the day, when the focus of my work was local civic life, I paid more attention. Was more involved. These days, the national gaze of my overachieving eyes provides an easy excuse to ignore the local.
I realize this is important because Anisa’s “public” will be her immediate community. For her, to paraphrase Arendt, the common good will be localized. From there, she can explore the nation and the world to her heart’s desire. Therefore, I need to become a better local citizen.
Through the Looking Glass
A couple weeks back, my high-falootin’ fellowship took me to Amsterdam and The Hague for just over a week. It was really hard to be away from Toya and Baby Girl that long; which increased the pressure to find some good gifts.
I am terribly indecisive when purchasing gifts. I will scour a city or a nation for the perfect present, passing on multiple opportunities, believing the right purchase is at the next stop. Knowing there is always the safety net of the airport gift shop.
On my second to last night, I was on the phone with Toya walking through Amsterdam and came upon a store that sold rubber ducks. And only rubber ducks. Don’t ask me why the Dutch love rubber ducks. But, Baby Girl is now the proud owner of three rubber ducks from The Netherlands. Which she loves.
(Note: For whatever reason, Dutch rubber ducks can’t float worth shit. They drown in the bathtub like bricks.)
On my last night, I wandered through what I thought was a kitchen goods store in The Hague. (Yes, I was shopping for gifts for myself.) I turned a corner and found a fantastic children’s toys section. Which is where I saw the perfect gift for a two-year old: a magnifying glass. So I got two — one for Anisa, the other for her nanny share buddy.
It was a huge hit. Anisa spent days walking around the house closely examining everything she could. To see her look through a big magnifying glass at the world in was pure joy for both of us.
Which brings us to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass where I realize Anisa is Alice.
See, when Alice meets Tweedledee and Tweedledum, she, “Did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one’s feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring.”
Which is certainly the way Baby Girl interacts with the world. Unless Daddy is involved.
See, there are few things Anisa likes more than dancing with her parents. (To be clear, I am Tweetledum in this metaphor.) Sometimes she will pull both of us (and, sometimes, Lady) to the middle of the family room where we are implored to, “DANCE!!!!”
Although, the other night, when I walked from the kitchen to join the dance party, Anisa turned to me, wagged her finger, and said, “Noooo Daddy! You go wash dishes.” In other words, she knows I am a terrible dancer.
Ponies
After a couple months of soccer, Toya found us some new weekend activities.
As noted above, on Sunday, we are learning how to swim. And, on Saturday, Anisa and I head to ballet class - although both of us are waiting for the custom fit tutus. I have standards.
This weekend, we headed to Half Moon Bay for the Dream Machines festival. Anisa got a kick out of the helicopters, the planes, the cars and old school steam powered machines.
The hit of the day? This:
