Recently our car battery died.  This created a number of hassles, the least of which was that I had to reprogram our radio buttons.  Jay was with me in the car as I did this.  I set #1 to NPR.  #2 to classical. #6 to Ann Arbor’s 107.1.  He asked me what I was doing, and I explained that we program the buttons in order to make it easier to find songs that we like to listen to.

Jay got the idea—kind of.  A few days later we were driving to the grocery store when a track by Kat Edmonson came on the radio.  “I like this song, so push the button,” Jay said from the backseat.  I started to tell him that I’d already set a button for this station, but Jay repeated his request, and he wasn’t satisfied until I did push the button, and he heard it go beep.

Ever since then, not a car ride passes in which Jay doesn’t say, “I like this song, so push the button,” and now I comply.  For the most part his taste aligns with mine, which isn’t surprising since I’m the one who’s arranged the menu of radio stations.

But his curatorial skills aren’t perfect.  Sometimes he’ll hear a commercial and ask me to push the button.  That makes me laugh, because we’ve all, at one time or another, misheard a jingle for a car dealership as a hot new single.  But I usually push the button for him anyway.

The only time I correct Jay is when he asks me to push the button twice in the same song.  The other day—perhaps wary of making that mistake again—Jay asked me if this was still the song about “flying.” I hadn’t been paying attention to the lyrics, but then the chorus came back up and indeed it was still the song about flying.  I told Jay we’d already pushed the button for this one, and he went quiet.

Jay’s interest in the radio has reminded me of the first time I picked out my own music.  I was in sixth grade, choosing CDs from BMG, the mail-order music company.  They were running a promotion—something like 10 CDs for $10—and I remember spending a whole week trying to figure out my choices.  It felt important to get them just right, as if I were bringing myself into being through the choices I made.   My heart breaks a little when I picture my 12-year-old self, sitting on a beanbag chair in his room, filling in the code for Helmet’s newest album.

And my heart breaks a little bit, too, every time Jay speaks up from the backseat.  It’s a long process by which we figure out who we are and what we like, and Jay is only at the very beginning of that.  His mistaken understanding of how the radio works seems nicely reflective of all the false starts and abandoned choices he’ll make between now and whomever he ends up becoming.

My inclination is to want to take a very active hand in that process—to tell him upfront what’s good and what’s not.  But lately I’ve been thinking the more important thing will be helping Jay feel confident determining his own standards of value.  And so, when he says he likes that song and asks me to push the button, I do.

Last weekend I went to New Hampshire to visit my sister and meet her new son.  My brother was there, too, and spouses, (but not Caroline, who was home with the boys and her mom in Ann Arbor), and on Saturday night, after-dinner brownie sundaes spilled into a freewheeling conversation that lasted late into the night.

We started off topical but eventually grew more personal.  Around midnight we arrived at marriage and kids, and their places in a good and fulfilling life.  We talked about our parents’ divorces, and how divorce in general affects how kids grow up.  I said that when it comes down to it, I expect my success in life to hinge less on how well I do as a father, and more on how I do as a husband.

Caroline and I love each other very much.  Our priorities and values are well-aligned, we enjoy the day-to-day work of building a family, and we have fun in the moments when we are alone together.  All of this is true, but none of it is meant to say that our marriage happens automatically, or that even the very strongest parts of it can be taken for granted.

So I expect my happiness in life to hinge more on how well I fare as a husband than how I fare as father.  And I say that because I think marriage is both more consequential to long-term happiness than parenthood, and because it’s the harder relationship to do well in.

Raising kids is tiring and consuming but it’s a relatively simple relationship: Provide for Jay and Wally materially, teach them what I know about what’s important in life, love them unconditionally.  And it’s this last part that’s the easiest.  My love for Jay and Wally flows freely and abundantly and there’s nothing they can do to turn it off; when you have that, the other parts of a relationship fall into place.

Caroline and I love each other fully, but the kind of love we share is different from the kind of love that we have for our kids.  Caroline and I need to work for our love.  We need to earn it and renew it and cultivate it, and on the days and weeks when we don’t do quite as good a job at that, the rest of our relationship doesn’t work as well.

There are moments, too, where the differences between parental love and spousal love really come through.  Just this morning at breakfast, Wally was sitting on my lap, eating eggs, and Caroline was sitting across the table, staring at him. We both find our kids magnetic; we can’t look away.  But those kinds of moments don’t come as automatically between a husband and a wife; it’s easy to go days without looking at each other with the same intensity that we look at Jay and Wally all the time.  But when Caroline and I do have those moments together, they’re uniquely fulfilling- in the way that anything you have to really earn, is fulfilling.

There’s also a greater margin of error as a parent than as a spouse.  Raising kids is a blunt endeavor:  Jay and Wally can absorb a lot of mistakes.  For that reason, and because of what I just wrote about love, I’m not worried that I’ll fail to deliver Jay and Wally into adulthood with a fighting chance at happiness.

But marriage is a much more complex and precise relationship; success there is less assured.  Moods matter.  Gestures matter.  Even the things you think but don’t say, matter.  And marriages can turn out so many different ways:  They can disastrous; they can be functional but unfulfilling; they can be the richest relationship you ever have.  There’s also more subtlety and nuance to a marriage compared to a relationship with children.  It might be fair to say, following Tolstoy, that we all love our kids in kind of the same way, but that each marriage is unique. And I think this nuance demands a fuller commitment of attention, and more consistent, sustained effort in order for a marriage to thrive.

I could imagine coming to the end of my life, knowing I’ve been a good father, but still feeling like I have not lived well.  And while I don’t think failure in marriage means failure in life, I do think the opposite is true:  If I have loved well as a husband, it’s very likely I will also conclude that I have lived well in life.

One of my favorite things about Growing Sideways has been the opportunity to share other people’s stories.  There’s the ongoing Parent Interview series, a post from Chris Huntington about taking his son to Hong Kong Disney, and an essay from Jay’s cousin, Mara, called “What means remembering?“

Today I’m happy to bring you this essay from Nat Hoopes.  He and his wife, Anika Binnendijk (who went to high school with Caroline), welcomed their first child, a son, Malcolm, just before Christmas.  I asked Nat if he’d be willing to write something reflecting on his first three months as a father.  I’m glad I did.

Yesterday our first son Malcolm turned three months old, which feels like an important milestone.

Out in public—in the grocery store line, the office, or our neighborhood coffee shop—becoming a parent has thrust me into a whole new world of spoken and unspoken conversation.  It’s a world that’s full of warm, knowing glances from total strangers, and old, worn-out clichés and questions (some of them contradictory) from friends and colleagues. Below is a sampling of the most frequent comments:

1. “Are you sleeping yet?  Don’t worry – it will get better.”
2. “This is really the best time – just strap him in a car-seat and bring him anywhere.  Just wait until he’s a toddler – then you’re really in trouble.”
3. “Enjoy it – it goes by so fast – we just woke up one day and our daughter was in high school.”
4. “How’s it feel to be a dad?”

And of course, I do a lot of sharing of my IPhone pictures of Malcolm. My friends have noted with dry humor that I didn’t text photos to them very often before Malcolm’s arrival.  It’s all a part of a constructed narrative that breaks our time into a sort of Christian parenting calendar:  Before Baby., After Baby.,

But inside our little co-op on 17^th street near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., the transition from “young married couple” to “young married parents” has felt more seamless. “Nat, Anika and Malcolm” feels just as right, just as natural and comfortable, as “Nat and Anika” ever did.

I maybe expected that Malcolm’s arrival would be exciting and joyful but also constraining. Maybe the years my wife and I spent together before becoming parents has made it easier; although we’re only 32, my wife and I have been together for more than 12 years (dating for 4, engaged for 1, married for 7).  But I’m not so sure that time matters much. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of new dads look at their wives now holding on to newborns and feel that things are alright, that life has somehow always been this way, even though it hasn’t.

But that feeling isn’t an easy thing to articulate in a sentence or two, and it doesn’t solve my parenting conversation problems in the coffee shop.  I want to have something intelligent, creative and wonderful to say to other people about becoming a dad, about my newborn son, my wife who is now a mother, and the lives we’re living together.

In the end, I’ve surprised myself a bit with my parental conversation. Unconsciously, I’ve started saying something that I heard my first cousin say to me a year ago, when his own son was three-months-old.  He was looking like a new dad — wearing an old torn t shirt, he still hadn’t showered at two o’clock in the afternoon, shaggy hair months overdue for a haircut, dark circles under his eyes.  All smiles, he looked at Angus, bounced him on his knee, then turned to me with his eyes glowing and simply said:

“He’s such a good boy.”

I remember thinking at the time: “At three months, how does he know if a child is good or bad!?” But it was the way that my cousin said it that really struck me at the time, and it stuck in my mind.  It was so clear that he wasn’t talking about his son’s behavior, his talent with a bottle, how much he cried at night, or how easy it was to take him out to a restaurant.  And he wasn’t bragging about his cute smiles or his red hair. It was just the way he felt about Angus, a pure expression of a father’s unique love for his son.

So now, when I’m carrying Malcolm on my chest into our coffee shop, and people ask me about becoming a Dad or how it’s all going, I almost always find myself finishing the conversation by looking down at Malcolm, fast asleep, and say the exact same thing: “He’s just such a good boy.”

It’s truly the way I feel. And I hope I always will.

Over the weekend we spent time with some new Ann Arbor friends.  The fit is good: Like us they have two young kids, and like us they’ve been trying to figure out where they’ll move in the fall.  Their choice came down to Houston or Madison, Wisconsin, and at the last minute they surprised themselves with their decision.

They explained their thinking over coffee while our boys and theirs played in remarkable harmony in the next room over.  At first they were sure they were going to Houston.  The city seemed to offer a great mix of easy neighborhood living with the amenities of one of the biggest cities in the country.  They could imagine an easy life for themselves in Houston, but they were afraid it wasn’t the one they’d end up having there.

“We always seem to make decisions that make our lives harder,” the wife said to explain why they realized Houston just wasn’t going to work.

In Houston, she feared they’d choose to live in an expensive neighborhood and incur a mortgage that would require her to continue on the intense career track she was eager to exit.  And they knew that even at that address, they’d have a 20-minute drive to bring their son to the preschool they wanted him to attend (even though there would have been other preschools closer by).  In short, while life in Houston seemed like it could be nice, they worried they’d get drawn into a situation where their overall quality of life was less than the sum of its parts.

And so they chose Madison as a way to force themselves into living less complicated lives.  The lower cost of living meant they could make career choices that were less based on salary considerations; and the smaller range of choices in everything from preschools to restaurants meant they’d be less compelled to reach for things that would have the unintended consequences of making their lives harder.

Last year I wrote several posts on this topic (here, here, and here), and it will be no surprise that their way of thinking resonates with me.  What I liked in particular, though, was the wife’s comment that despite what they want for their lives overall, in each individual decision they face, they often end up making the choice that makes their lives harder.

It’s strange to think that we’d ever choose to make our lives harder, but of course we do it all the time.  This is true when it comes to big decisions like where to live, what kind of house to buy, and where to send our kids to school.  It’s also true on a smaller level.

This past January, Caroline and I completed a “purge” of stuff from our house.  It was our third time doing this since Jay was born.  Overall we prefer to feel less hemmed in by our possessions, yet, we find that our individual purchasing decisions often cut against that general preference.  Do we need a nonstick saucepan?  (It sure would be nice for making scrambled eggs.)  Did we need a bouncy seat when the boys were infants?  Or a second sleepsack for Wally, who often throws up on the one we have?  The answer to each of these questions, considered on their own, would seem to be, “yes,” but if we keep answering that way, we end up with the cluttered house that we don’t want.  It’s just one example of how it can be hard to align broad goals with day-to-day decision-making.

Keeping life simple is probably my highest practical priority.  I think about the things we could prioritize in life- professional success, money, living in exactly the place we want to live, getting the boys into the best schools.  None of them come close to affecting my sense of happiness and satisfaction as much as having the space each day to breathe, and to enjoy life together with Caroline, Jay, and Wally.

Put that way, of course, who wouldn’t choose to have space to breathe and to enjoy the company of the people you love?  But even if it’s an obvious priority, it’s tremendously hard to preserve in the weeds of everyday life.  And sometimes you need to take drastic steps like moving to frigid Wisconsin to force yourself to live the way you want to.

It has been awhile since I’ve written.  This is partly due to Brainiac, which is taking up a lot of my writing energy each day, and partly due to the way that not doing something begets not doing it even more.

We have been well, though.  February has been a relatively healthy month for the boys and Caroline’s academic job search is progressing well, such that within a week or two we will know for sure where we’re moving this fall.  A couple weeks ago I took a short trip to Philadelphia, and as the plane took off from Detroit I had an unhappy thought: What if my previous post were to end up being the last words I ever got to write about our family?  I imagined Jay reading it when he is older, and after that I resolved to write less about beer and cursing in the future.

If there’s been a theme to my thinking over the last month it’s been intimacy—as in, how close Caroline and I feel to each other.  We’ve talked a lot about how it’s something that can slip away easily and unnoticed and how it takes deliberate effort to make sure we don’t lose touch with each other.  And while I don’t mean to yadayada over the best part, I’ll save saying more on this topic for later, because…

What I really want to write about are a couple of sterling developments that have made our lives much easier over the last six weeks or so.  They concern Jay who has taken a sudden but inexact interest in time, and who of late really likes to be the first one done with everything.  (And I offer these hopeful notes especially to my sister, who recently gave birth to her second son, and who will undoubtedly need these small graces in the years to come.)

Regarding time, a typical afternoon exchange between Jay and me goes like this:

Me: Today you have to do a 45 minute quiet time.
Jay: Actually, how about five minutes.
Me: Alright, maybe 33 minutes.
Jay: Maybe seven minutes would be better.
Me: Ok, seven minutes.

What’s beautiful about negotiating with Jay is that he can’t actually tell the difference between 45 minutes and seven minutes.  He knows one minute is a really short amount of time—when you tell him something will happen in one minute he’ll stay focused and wait you out—but above one minute he loses track and it ends up being all the same to him.  So, he goes agreeably into quiet time thinking he’s just won a good deal for himself, while I get to go back to work knowing I’ve got an hour, which is what I’d been gunning for all along.

And speaking of winning, the logistics of our days are working better than ever thanks to Jay’s newfound competitive streak.  He calls it beating, as in, “I want to beat,” and he wants to beat at everything: being the first one done with his breakfast, the first boy strapped into his carseat, the first boy brushed and pajama’d and ready for bed.  It’s actually incomprehensible to me that we would have stumbled upon such a perfect synergy between Jay’s desires and mine and Caroline’s and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The only looming complication I see is if Wally starts really wanting to win, too, in which case these fun evening races through the bathroom might get a little too hot.  But for now, Wally is content to shout, “beat, beat,” while counterproductively flailing his legs as Caroline attempts to strap on his nighttime diaper.

Today after nap time (it was dark outside) Jay took an empty diaper box and played trash man.  I wasn’t thrilled with my role- crawling around on my knees, pushing Jay in the box in front of me- but at least it was in service of a good cause: At every ‘stop,’ Jay picked up the scraps of paper, old cardboard, and broken cars that had been accumulating in the playroom for months.

But with little kids, no good thing lasts for long.  Soon, Jay’s definition of trash changed to include books, stuffed animals, and the remote controls for the television. And of course, this more liberal definition of trash called for more trash receptacles.  I watched in mild, domestic horror as Jay dumped the train tracks from their drawer, emptied the remaining books from their crate, unloaded, one by one, the balls from their wagon.

And I considered intervening.  But while I pondered the unholy destruction around me, Jay began to cart his trash up to what I suppose was a landfill in the kitchen, where Caroline was cooking dinner.  My pulse flickered.  I thought about telling Jay that the bridge was down, the kitchen was off limits, and by God why did he always have to take a good thing too far.

Then I thought, “Oh, to hell with it,” and got a beer.  My favorite Dawes song came on Pandora, Jay continued at his work.  We’ll see how this turns out.

It has been a season of new fears for Jay: He’s clung to Caroline the last few times she’s brought him to school; he hates, suddenly, to be left alone in a room; he’s waking up at night and begging us to help him get back to sleep.

I’m somewhat sympathetic to these fears.  Except for the last one.  It’s really hard for me to marshall sympathy in the middle of the night.  ”There’s nothing to be afraid of, go back to sleep,” I say to Jay, first in a soothing voice, then in a growl, as he looks up at me from his mattress, his eyes beseeching and moist.

His night waking started on the road after Christmas and continued when we got home.  After a couple weeks of this, Caroline and I were at a loss.  Jay was devastating our sleep and we hadn’t been able to find a quick way to console him.  So finally we resorted to chocolate.

“You can have a Hershey’s Kiss, in the morning, for breakfast,” I told Jay one evening last week before bed, “If you go all night without calling to me or Mama.”  We closed his door and didn’t hear from him again until just past 7am, when he emerged to claim his prize.  Refreshed and rested, I gave it to him gladly.

Jay made it quietly through the night each of the next four nights.  I was happy but perplexed.  His fears had seemed so urgent that I couldn’t believe he was capable of swallowing them for a measly piece of chocolate.

A few nights ago Caroline and I talked about this in bed.  I told her I was confused about how Jay had managed to subjugate his fears in an instant.  She theorized that the chocolate was short-circuiting the bad rhythm he’d gotten into.  He was still probably waking up at night, but maybe now, while still groggy, he was thinking about the chocolate and dipping right back into sleep before he could get fully worked up.

This past Saturday Caroline’s theory was put to the test.  Sometime after midnight Jay woke up in a coughing fit.  Caroline and I lay in bed for five minutes, then ten minutes, listening to him hack, waiting for him to call out to us.  Finally, I decided we needed to do something to help him stop.  I got out of bed and went to his room to fill his vaporizer.

As soon as I stepped into his room, Jay called out, “Noooo…” As in, “No, don’t come into my room because then I won’t get a chocolate.”

I was floored. There he was, lying wide awake in the middle of the night, coughing hard, in the throes of the exact conditions that usually make him plead for us to comfort him.  Yet now he was telling me to get out because he wanted a piece of candy.

Quickly, I told him that I was just going to fill his vaporizer and that he could still have a Kiss in the morning; my voice was full of more sympathy and admiration than I’d ever managed to muster for him at this hour of the day.

Back in bed, I told Caroline what had happened.  I really couldn’t believe it.  What exactly is the calculation in that little boy’s head?  Was he ever really afraid in the first place?  Or does he just love chocolate more than anything else in the world?  I still have no idea how to answer any of these questions, but now, having slept well for a week straight, it barely matters.

Whatever you’re thinking at night, Jay, please keep thinking it.