Its dinner, and tonight we're having vegetable stew.  I watch as the girls methodically sift the edible components of the stew from the undesirables.  Their results are remarkably similar; under-cooked carrots and over-sized potatoes hunks lump to one side, everything else in the mouth.  I watch in awe as mounds of cabbage, sausage morsels, peas and corn stream ceaselessly into their little faces by way of little hands, marvel at how food ends up in such obscure places; yogurt behind the ears?  Raisins on the scalp?  Curious little creatures!  I learned long ago to stop meddling in their meals.

To wit- watch as a younger me tries to intervene in the mashing of oatmeal into faces.  Watch as we struggle over the bowl, as the baby overcomes me, the bowl is whipped asunder. Oatmeal oozes down the wall.  The dog, fond of anything humans eat,  watches expectantly for it to reach the floor.  Lesson learned.

We can sit for minutes or hours in those little plastic chairs, eating or mashing or throwing food as the moment dictates.  We can laugh, shriek and slam our hands down in this wonderful mess for just about ever because when you're under two and its mealtime, all bets are off.
There's a curious kind of paradox that runs through the experience of parenting, a tenuous edge on one side of which you run the house like a cold dictator and on the other, an uncaring slob.  While your job in the family picture is to provide structure and guidance, you are up against not a small child but rather what the child introduces into your life; namely the chaotic tendency of the universe.  You see in children we are reminded, most invaluably, of the limitations of control.   I think almost all adults, however slightly, develop a low-grade megalomania about power and their ability to decide outcomes.  Surely you've heard, 'we make plans, God laughs'?  Replace the word 'God' with 'your kid' and it works all the same.  Indeed, perhaps it was somewhere in the plans that children should come along just as the claws of adulthood have gripped us, to break up the rigidness it took to become upstanding, responsible members of society!

Sometimes my daughters won't take their food from my hands.  They only want it from Mom's.  Sometimes even Mom won't do; only their brother can feed them.  Is this about food?  Sometimes they will thrash and struggle away until i bring that first bite to their lips, after which we are best friends and i can't shovel it in fast enough.  Some days they eat raw vegetables, other days they gasp in disgust as i gingerly offer them.  Today's truth is tomorrow's joke.  There are no set rules in their tiny experiments with power and control, only the wonderful experience of doing it for the first time and watching what happens.  Meanwhile we adults, not yet finished with our own experiments, are left in that strange adult world of reasons and consequences to watch with a mixture of awe and perplexity, they who know only the curious wonder and newness of it all; see only the vastness and mystery in the world where we find struggle and strife.  While we seek wealth, power and influence, the highlights of their days are splashing in water, going outdoors or hiding in the cabinets.  I don't think it would be to much to say that as adults somewhere we bear a deep-seated envy for our children, for the heavenly world they live in, even if we've forgotten that we lost it, or were forced to lose it, forced to grow up possibly before we were ready to let go of the richness of childhood.  Somewhere in all of our toil, in all of our vacations, new purchases and weekend parties we are looking backward toward that initial sweetness.  In our hearts we feel indebted that simple feeling of freedom and happiness that was once our natural state.

 With effort and sincerity, however, I do believe we can seize part of it back.  At least it feels that way when I too have applesauce on my eyebrows, jigging in the living room even though it should be bedtime.

To Those Without Children:

To those without children, things can be very hard to explain.

Why does it take me so long to answer the phone sometimes?  Because I have to go brush the cracker crumbs or rice off of my fingers.  If i don't the crumbs fall down and get lodged between the phone buttons, or the rice gums them up.  I have these things on my fingers because I've been sitting around, feeding babies manually.  Why?  Because they routinely slap the spoon right out of my hand, sending gobs of oatmeal or soup or whatever onto the wall, the dog, my HP printer, anything.

But I don't say all that to whoever is calling.  Sorry, I say, kid stuff.  You know.

And they say, oh yeah sure, but unless they have kids they definitely don't.  No no nope.  How could they?  Even pet owners of the world scarcely know the truth; that parents of human beings sign an unwritten contract that stipulates total self-denial and diminished expectation of rewards.  Children, by their very design, are consumers of adult energy.   Anyone who has ever tried can agree that in raising them with anything like intention we find that they fully and efficiently require every ounce of energy we can scrape from the ragged depths of our souls.  In giving them life, we are most exquisitely spent, drawn ever forward by a sweetness deeper than our childless life could have revealed.

My friends are artists.  They spend their time, countless hours, putting together works of inexplicable beauty.  Would I like to go over to their house, bring a bottle of wine, spend hours looking over their works and discussing, capriciously, the subtle and profound power of art?  Good god yes!  But  the truth is that actually I'm going to be home dancing to preschool music in my living room, stamping little bits of cereal into the carpet, making yet another pot of macaroni or rice or comforting a very, very little girl who sniffles on my chest, because also in the unwritten contract is that a piece of you, a purer piece of your own heart that perhaps you've let grow guarded and inaccessible lives in the eyes of your child and it is more precious than any belonging you'll ever have.  It is in this wonderful light of my son's eyes when I tell him stories or show him how to cook noodles that I forget how much of this great big world I am so unable to see right now, and how much it seems to matter.  In those moments, holding their sweetness close to me, I am fully satisfied just to be the father. What could be more valuable in this torn world than innocence?

I try to remember these things when self-denial is at the forefront of my mind, scraping crusty cheese off of little plastic baby dishes, why do they make those things with the damned little contours that are so hard to clean out!  And the sink sprays water like a power-washer because of some odd glitch in the purifier we have affixed to it, so I am literally dripping water on the floor long before I'm finished.  plink, plink, plink.  The phone rings.  I wipe my hands off on my soggy pants and turn to pick it up.  Behind me Khaliya has climbed up the step stool and is reaching for the long knife on the counter; it glistens almost as if to taunt me.  I can see the number on the phone and I think its one of my potential employers calling to set up and interview.  Small fingers reaching for a large blade!  Water dripping from my pants!  I am a modern warrior!  I can endure anything!  In my head, I look up at thunderous skies and laugh maniacally, bellowing hot breath.  In reality I grab the phone, tenuously say hello and attempt to talk while with another hand wrangling the dagger from my daughters grip.  The guy, who is calling to set up an interview notices the commotion and says, uh, is this maybe a bad time?  To which I reply oh no no no, not at all.  Its just the kids, you know.

To which he replies, oh yeah.  Sure.

I remember when I was twelve, just about to turn thirteen.  It was a time of tremendous energy and growth; I thought I knew everything.  I was still young, fresh, a spring chicken ready to run; I could see how my parents and teachers had somehow forgotten youth, had long lost touch with how thrilling it is to be a child, how they came up with all these arbitrary rules, got rigid, lost the laughter in their eyes.  Meanwhile I was bigger than a little kid, much bigger.  My leg muscles were pronounced, my voice deep and boxy.  I had only recently left those days of relative innocence though not yet caught up by the frantic hormonal rush of my teens, I was sitting on a precious and fleeting precipice - perhaps the wisest moments of my life.  The tender glow of childhood had not yet been obscured in my heart, yet my mind was sharp and aware of the world.  Did I know everything?  Was that why i was such a wiseass?  Could it be?

It grew into a goal of mine, to preserve some of that innocence in myself, not to become too ensnared by the trappings of growing up, but one can only do so much.  Already I have trouble remembering; I need cleanliness, order, routine.  I need to go to bed early and I like neighbors to be respectful.  I get angry about little, useless things.  No!!!  Its a rule of time that I should grow old, strangely rigid and attached to convention while my children should come in, look at me like a fool and try to destroy it all. Examples abound.

"Isaiah - don't put your feet on the table."
He slides his feet over so that he can see us.
"Huh?"
He has perfected this look of total bewilderment.
"We don't put our feet up on the table."
"My feet?"
"Yes, Isaiah, your feet."
"On the top of the table?"
"Isaiah!"
"They're not!"
We have a moment where we look at each other, both knowing that he is about to pull a full-blown-attempted-ambush that will seem vaguely plausible.  He always does this, excuses his impish behaviors with somewhat logical explanations.
"How are they not on the table?" I ask.
"They're just-its just my ankles, that are on the table.  My feet are actually just in the air.  That's why they're not touching the table."
He has now convinced himself of his own argument.
"Isaiah."
"What?"
"Put em' down."
"..."
Now!

I have these moments of terror where I can see it already starting, the wiser-than-thou approach.  He sees through our little games, alright.    It's like, you're the one who colored all over you legs, arms, face, chest, belly, parts of your back and privates with magic marker and I'm the one who gets a look of pity?  Yes, because in his world the rules are governed by the magic of the moment, by bringing fun and happiness into the world in the best way he knows how.  When he bends the car antennae back or puts tape on his sisters there is no before and after in his plan, there is only a momentous, happy experience that draws him in and engages his curiosities.  The floor does not have to be clean of toys and food bits, nor the dishes scraped of their crust for him to be happy.  For him there is only the joy of alternately pleasing and challenging everyone around him.  For us, there is the cleanup afterward.  The real challenge, however, is not to lose touch with sharing a little bit of that precious joy with him.  To keep order and safety for all involved entities, but to remember that we are moving in a world of children here; delicate and expansive, we must treat it with due reverence, even if its methods are chaos.

I look over, and Isaiah is putting green beans on Khaliya's head.

"Isaiah."
Again with that look of total astonishment.
"Seriously?"
"Dad..." he begins in what I know will be another strategic assault of charm and semi-logic.  I cut him off at the pass.
"No.  Don't say another word."
He finishes with, "she likes it."  Another secret weapon that sometimes garners his mother's support.
He stammers. I unsheathe icicles from my eyeballs.  He relents.
"Take the beans off her head.  Now."
And for a moment I can tell that through that cute little head of his there is flying the notion to again try to argue his case, that of course whatever reason i have for not wanting him to stack cooked vegetables in his sister's hair is nowhere nearly as persuasive as his reason for doing it.  Again, we stage a cold war with our eyes over dinner.  And suddenly, against my every expectation, Isaiah decides to demure in the way that sons do to their fathers in times of serious disagreement.

Wow.  Raising kids is crazy!