Bad Dad

“Our first rolling seas”—that’s what we got yesterday.  I sat most of the morning in the Glazer Lounge, which is the big room at the top front of the ship (the forecastle?) with 180-degree glass facing forward, and watched and felt the swells grow.  This ship rocks.  Last night or early this morning, the swells rolled me around in bed, and it felt like being six years old and under a blanket in the back of the station wagon, some night when mom and dad were taking us on a long drive somewhere.  Everybody’s been feeling good, even Susan, thanks, I suppose, to the patches.  I think I felt a bit queazier than she did.  Some students and other faculty are not faring quite so well.  All I can say is, this crew is truly skilled at the art of cleaning up and deodorizing messes.  Thank God.

The Explorer listing to starboard

The rolling swell is actually beautiful to see and feel.  This big (600-foot) ship glides across the sea with the greatest of grace.  The bow dips and rises, a slow-motion roller coaster, through the ultramarine blue of the deep Pacific.  I’m glad that the ship is not larger, like the massive Carnival lines cruiser we berthed next to in Ensenada, nor smaller, like the incongruous, tiny fishing vessel that passed on our starboard side some 800 nautical miles at sea yesterday.  I think the MV Explorer is just right.  Apparently she and her sister ship are the two fastest cruisers on the planet.  Hilo is ahead of us, along with cerulean skies and dappled clouds.  

Two Noah meltdowns this morning, triggered by everyone’s exhaustion and overwhelm and daddy’s being a bad dad.  I love being a dad, and I think everyone who watches me parent knows that usually I’m OK at it, but I have one massive achilles heel: I’m too self-absorbed and too jealous of my time and energy.  Apropos of an earlier entry, I have a hard time letting go and letting be—letting Noah have Noah time and space, or rather just being in that time and space with him.  If you’ve seen me play Tickle Monster or Thomas trains with him, you know I can go there, but often I have a hard time letting him set the agenda.  I felt this acutely when we were in Cayman last year.  There’s almost nothing I love to do more in the world than snorkel in clear, warm ocean water, which Noah can’t of course do, poor guy, so many moments spent not at the beach but rather reading or watching a show or just hanging out felt torturous.  Again I was a rotten travel companion, to myself as well as to Susan and Noah.  

Here on the ship, not only do I have lots of things I want to do to feed myself or take pleasure (watch the sun rise, paint, nap, do yoga), but I also have many things I need to do.  Semester at Sea works its faculty hard.  The meeting schedule was intense the first three or four days.  Add to that the problem that internet is very spotty and weak.  This morning I felt a pressure to deal with email at exactly the same time that Noah was in my face, wanting me to switch to Noah speed, Noah time, Noah space.  I don’t switch suddenly very well at the best of times.  The result, as I said, was two meltdowns before 0800.  (Oh, and Noah had a few too.)

Becoming a dad at midlife has been wonderful in so many ways, but poor Noah landed in the middle of a crisis—my midlife crisis.  I keep thinking that it’s winding down, but it persists.  The keenest edge of it lately has been my growing awareness of the steadily descending pendulum of time.  I understand why some guys go for the sports car and some women go for the botox.  They feel their energies waning and know that there will be an end to the number of good days.  For me it works out in the certainty that there will only be so many more paintings to paint, so many more fish to swim with.  I feel frantic a lot of the time as I feel the days surging and subsiding past, my ship being one ship on one journey toward a closing port.  Noah didn’t want to go up to the deck and watch the sun rise this morning.  I love being with Noah, but there will only be so many more sunrises.  That’s midlife: a time when even the most spectacular of life’s blessings have to duke it out in a shrinking ring.

One day, sooner than I can imagine, I’ll wake up, and Noah will not want to hang out.  The relief will be great, and the loss will be excruciating.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t love so much.

We ride a deep, deep, deeeeeep blue sea here.  We’re well.  I’m well, Susan’s well, Noah is the best of us.  Hundreds of lovely young women and handsome men have fallen in love with him.  He keeps whispering in my ear: “Daddy, everyone thinks I’m cute.”