The scene:  Dinner.  My five-year-old, as usual, is complaining about what we’re feeding him.

Me:  I’m tired of the whining.  Someone made you a nice dinner, so the least you can do is eat it.  If you don’t, maybe I’ll write a book about you.  I’ll call it Calvin the Little Engine Who Couldn’t.  What do you think about that?

Calvin:  If you do that, if you do that – I’ll – I’ll take the napkins and throw them at your face.

Me:  Yeah, but I can get that book published and have it appear in every school library in America.  Millions of kids will know who you are.  So you shouldn’t try to one-up me.  I’ve got the advantage.

Calvin (thinking about it):  Then I’ll spank your bottom ten times.

The scene:  I’m sitting at the kitchen table surfing the Web with my new smart phone.  My seven-year-old daughter is doing her spelling homework next to me.

K:  Daddy?

Me:  Yes?

K:  Do you love your new phone?

Me:  What?

K (suppressing a smile):  Do you want to marry it?  You spend all your time with it.  I thought maybe you loved it.   Maybe you should marry it.

Me:  Very funny.  (Thinking:  Nothing like getting shamed by a seven-year-old.)

Me: All right, Kat, this time when you play I want you to count the
notes. Out loud.

Kat: But I hate that!

Me: I need to know you’ve got the rhythm down.

Kat: No! It’s embarrassing!

Me: Why is it embarrassing?

Kat: Because Calvin’s listening!

Me: Calvin? He’s four years old. He doesn’t care about you playing the
piano. Half the time, he forgets to put on his underwear. Does he act
embarrassed?

Kat: No.

Me: Well, there you go.

My three-year-old son has a unique kind of logic.  You can’t always follow it, but it’s sure fun to go along for the ride.  Here’s a conversation the other morning between he and my wife:

Son:  I love everyone!  I love everyone in the whole world. 

Mom:  Oh, that’s very nice, honey.

Son:  Even you, Mommy.

Mom:  Oh. Don’t you mean especially me?

Son:  I love my teeth.  I brush them.

Mom:  That’s very good.

Son:  It’s good to brush your teeth.

A conversation with my three-year-old son this morning, when he was eating a donut (something that rarely happens):

Me:  I don’t want to hear any whining, though.  Whiners don’t get donuts.

Son:  I’m not a baby. Babies cry like a baby.

Me:  That’s true.  It’s okay to cry sometimes, though.  Just not when eating donuts.

Son:  Yeah.  Babies don’t get to eat donuts.

Me:  No, they don’t.

Son:  I like donuts.

If you’re into Twitter, I broke down and finally created an account.  You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/scottwcarter.  With my crazy life, I’m not sure how much I’ll be on there, but I figured I should at least try it.  I also found a nifty Wordpress tool (the open source software I use to update my website and my blog) that I can use in conjunction with with Ping.fm that will automatically send my blog posts (truncated appropriately) to all the social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.  So if you want up-to-the-minute news on my writing, or you want occasional musing from my over-caffeinated mind, now you have your choice.

My website and blog:  http://www.scottwilliamcarter.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/people/Scott-William-Carter/600351984

Myspace:  http://www.myspace.com/scottwilliamcarter

I’ve been experimenting with posting a little more, though I’ll never be one of those people who blogs about what he had for breakfast.  The key, for me, is to do it in a way where the cost doesn’t outweigh the benefit.  I find the Internet in general very addictive, and since I have so little time for my fiction what with the day job, two kids, and everything else, I have to go to great pains to make sure I don’t spend an excessive amount of time sitting in front of a computer not writing fiction.  That said, I find the social networking sites to be a fun way to connect with both good friends and casual acquaintances, as well as to network with people in which you have a common interest — like writing!

Speaking of writing, my productivity is back where I want it to be, which took me a long time to achieve after my son was born.  Most of this had more to do with me finding the right approach, since the “write in the evening” method was no longer working.  Now I just squeeze it in whenever I can, withholding all those guilty pleasures I love so much (like the Internet) until I’ve met my daily word count.  It’s not ideal, but it’s getting me to write (translate:  practice) as much I as I need to, and that’s what matters.

About two-thirds the way through a mystery, with a character I wouldn’t mind writing a while slew of novels about.  After that, I have to finish the YA book that would be a good follow-up to Water Balloon Boys; I’d already written the first 50 pages and a proposal, so that one’s well on its way.  I just mailed off another short story featuring a character that’s appearing in Analog next month — a sort of Travis McGee in space named Dexter Duff.  It’s the first time I’ve written a short story with the same character and I really enjoyed it.  I’ve also committed to writing one short story a month.  I’d been focusing a lot more on novels the last two years, writing only a handful of short stories, thinking this was necessary because of the demands on my time, but I was cranky from not writing them.  Plus I can experiment and stretch in ways that are easier.  There are lots of benefits; I just have to maintain the balance between the two.

And, on the personal front, our house remodel is nearly finished.  It’s been a crazy couple of months living with my mother (I never thought that would happen again), but we’re a week away from moving back in, and it’s going to be a great house to raise our family in.  There’s a long list of projects waiting for us even after we move in, but that’s all right.  It’ll be nice sleeping in our own beds again.

What else?  Kat just turned six.  Can you believe?  She’s almost in first grade.  Calvin’s three and growing up fast.  Me, I realized I’m now twice the age of the kids graduating from high school.  Ouch.

My five-year-old can’t tie her shoes.  This didn’t bother me until she informed me that all of her friends can tie her shoes.  Then I spent most of the morning worrying that I’ve failed her as a father because she can’t tie her shoes.  She’s going be thirty years old and on her way to accept a Pulitzer Prize but then her shoe laces will come undone and she won’t be able to do anything about it, so she’ll sit down on the curb and sob about her lack of good parenting, which will make her miss out on a Pulizter Prize.  These things matter.

I had to explain to Kat, my five-year-old, that “I know” is not the best response to a compliment.  But that got me thinking.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could say “I know” when someone complimented you without looking like a jackass?  I mean, if you feel proud of something, why do you have to show all this false humility?  The things you can get away with in kindergarten . . .

Yesterday, when I picked up Calvin from preschool, I talked to him for a while, asked him if he was ready to go, and then . . . realized it wasn’t Calvin but a near doppleganger. What does it say about me that my first thought upon realizing this was, “Why does Calvin’s face look different?”

I have my beliefs, and I don’t want to rain on any one’s parade, so I generally don’t try to pick fights with the religious crowd.  Mostly, I envy them.  That belief in an after-life is like a nice warm blanket you can pull over yourself when the cold realization of your own mortality overcomes you.  That feeling suddenly overcame me today when I was out on a walk.  I got to thinking about our home remodel, and how this is the house we plan to raise our family in for at least the next fifteen years (until Calvin graduates from high school), and I realized that if all goes as we expect, I’ll go from 35 to 50 in this house.  Essentially, passing from being a young man through middle age.  My children will grow up.  Many others will die; still others will be born.  For what?  And why?  There is no why.  There just is.  Why is the moon the moon? 

You can either invent a fiction to believe in, or you can try to put it out of your mind as best you can.  Otherwise you’ll be overcome with grief — not sadness, but grief.  You’ll grieve for your own eventual death and for the eventual death of everyone around you.  It’s not a way to live. And topping it off is the cruel possibility that your life could be winked out unexpectedly at any moment.  

The one good thing is that it does make you appreciate everyone around you.  You feel more sympathy.  You realize that everyone is on the same road, even if they are on different journeys.  We are alone, and yet we are together.  It is the great irony of humankind. 

So I sit and watch my children playing before me.  Children are born and live with the cherished myth of an everlasting life.  Then one day they, too, feel the death-pangs of grief for the first time, and that will be  beginning of the end of their childhoods.  It is sad and poignant and you wish you could spare them from it, but you can’t.  No one can.  You shelter them for a little while, maybe, and that’s part of parenting, but in the end they have to become just as fully human as you. 

So what do I do?  I go on living.  I go on parenting and being a good husband.  I love.  I try not to do harm.  I write, because it’s something I’m somewhat good at, and because I want to become my best self.  Occasionally, I write about things like this, because I don’t want to shy away from the shadows or the light.  It’s all I can do.  

And in the end, you decide to appreciate the gifts the universe has given you.  You didn’t have to be born, after all.  Ever think about that?