O / K

[1st-1]

[odinandkevin]

Odin’s first museum visit. A mere 39 days after birth.

[odinandkevin]

Five years ago, looking up at the trees and birds at Irving park.

[odinandkevin]

Sometimes Odin and I get around Portland by scooter and skateboard, sometimes by foot, but mostly by the grace of TriMet. The TriMet MAX Yellow Line is a second-home to us by now, spending a solid hour a day riding the rails. So when news came trickling in last week that two people had been gruesomely murdered on the train it sent shockwaves down my spine. I told him about the TriMet tragedy only after he found me breaking down in the bathroom Sunday, two days after the attack. The decision to tell him is one I struggled with, and still do, but ultimately I think he deserves the truth. I spared him the gruesome details, but he knows that some brave people stood up to a hateful white man who was harassing dark-skinned girls and that two of them died as a result.

Earlier this year he witnessed me stand up to an older white man who was harassing a dark-skinned man, a refugee from Kabul, Afghanistan working at Wendy’s. And he’s seen me, on several occasions riding TriMet, confronting people acting inappropriately. I know it’s scary, but I am choosing not to shy away from the reality of what all this means. I need him to know that I put my life on the line for other people because it is the right thing to do.

I tried emphasizing the overwhelmingly good-natured response of our city, but that’s got to be hard for him to truly understand without access to the media that we are all consuming.

I plan to take him to the vigil at Hollywood Transit Center so that he may witness for himself the messages of love and hope that have poured in over the last five days.

He must know the Love and not the Fear.

[odinandkevin]

Years ago I thought this was cute. I've still got the shirt and onesie, bought at different second hand stores in different cities.

[odinandkevin]

We caught the PNCA BFA Thesis exhibit last week. He’s an astute observer, pointing out the sailboats I’d missed in one of the paintings.

[odinandkevin]

Another classroom at Odin's school did some work with plant-based dyes.

[odinandkevin]

Lately we've been discussing ways of keeping our friends safe. “That was an accident, are you ok?” is a good way to help another person feel safe in the moment and “I didn’t mean for people to get hurt, I’ll be more careful next time” is reassuring about the future. First one, then the other.

[odinandkevin]

Telepathy with O

Everyday I work on the bond I have with my son. Some days, as he grows older, I feel like he's pulling away and some days it's like we're riding the same wavelength. And then we get special rings from the toy machines at Yummy Mongolian BBQ that allow us to telepathically communicate (or so we have convinced ourselves).

Here’s to making our own magic!

[odinandkevin]

Fathers: Feel Your Feels

Redefining Fatherhood today has more to do with simple care than with whichever theoretical approach you choose. Care is always listening, being attentive, providing comfort, validation, reassurance, love, and lots and lots of cuddles. We have no, or few, models for this entirely new way of being a man, of embodying, living, practicing all the feminist theory we’ve read and preached and continue to engage with. My own Father, when my son was born, insisted that I touch that baby constantly. “Skin to skin, son,” he’d repeat. “Take your shirt off and lay him down on your chest. I did it with all you boys.” I may not remember snuggling with my own father, but we hugged frequently, and still do when I see him.

As my own son approaches his fifth year on this planet, I continue to make time for this close contact. Whether it’s at bedtime when I lay down beside him and listen to Johnny Cash or Otis Redding, or cradling him in my lap on the train as we take in the sights and sounds of Portland, Oregon. “The Great Northwest,” I tell him, as we gaze across the Willamette at Mt. Hood or, on a clear day, St. Helens.

I take every opportunity I can to ask him how he’s feeling, but more and more he has become resistant to these check-ins. I see my son shutting down emotionally sometimes and, while frustrating, it’s important to use this as a reminder that resisting toxic masculinity in my own son will require creativity. Flexibility. Compromise. Empathy. It’ll take all I’ve got but I’m determined to give this little human all the tools he’ll need to thrive and find his own happiness.

Fathers, in particular those with sons, owe it to the world, ourselves, and in particular the young people we’re raising, to fearlessly examine our own aversions to feeling feelings. All the feels. We spend so much time focusing on the good, the happy— the saccharine. “Oh! Don’t Cry! Look over here! A toy! A silly face!” But what of melancholy, fear, heartbreak, frustration? How will our children know a healthy way to express these oh-so-human emotions if we don’t show them ourselves? If we don’t, media will. They will learn retaliation, pettiness, jealousy, and our boys, above all, will learn violence. Toxic masculinity posits anger as the only acceptable response to any negative emotion. THIS. This is what we are up against, y’all. We must hold our children close and let our tears fall on their shoulders and tell them that it’s all going to be O/K.