On The Martial Arts (or, Boot To The Head)

My yet-unborn daughter: Father whom I love?
Me: What's up, Sonya Rosa?
Sonya: Am I correct in understanding that I shall be forced to learn martial arts whether I would or no?
Me: Entirely rectitudinous, dear love. Also, you shall eat your vegetables and learn your Catechism, and I believe your mother will be teaching you to play some manner of woodwind.
Sonya: The mastication of fauna, Father, I heartily accept, forasmuch as I know it to be a most beneficent undertaking for my body, blessed sister of my soul. And of course I will toil with assiduous delight to master the doctrines of our Holy Mother Church. Further, I perceive the utility of learning the basics of music—as you, most honored patriarch, have sadly failed to do—irrespective of whether I choose in my eventual womanhood to pursue the arts of Euterpe.
Me: All is then well.
Sonya: Well-a-day, not so.
Me: Alas and alack!
Sonya: Alas in a lackadaisical fashion.
Me: Okay, I actually don't have any idea what we're talking about right now. One of us has been into the bourbon. Have you been into the bourbon?
Sonya: Not unless Mom has. Kidding aside, why do I have to study martial arts?
Me: Well, for one thing, you never know when some maniac might jump on the hood of your car.

Sonya: That's not the hood, it's the windshield.

Me: Oh what do you know, you won't even see daylight for months. But fine, let's be serious. Training in the arts will give you physical strength and grace, emotional confidence, and psychological discipline. It'll make you a less probable target for muggers and rapists, who often tend to choose timid-looking victims. It'll give you an edge in a world where it's never too early to start punching bullies. And if you're anywhere near as lucky as I was, it will give you a second family that'll have your back no matter where you go.

Sonya: So it's not just because you think it would be cool to have a ninja daughter.

Me: Goodness, that would be cool, but I'm afraid I don't know Ninjutsu. From me you get Shaolin Kenpo and Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu. That should get you through high school. After that, you can choose your own path as a martial artist, or never throw a kick again if that's what you want. But the arts will always be a part of who you are. My job is to give you the best formation that I can, and this is a big part of it.

Sonya: Knowing how to throw a kick isn't going to help me if I'm drugged. Or attacked by a dozen men. Or shot.

Me: I know that, sweetheart. But I don't get to keep you inside for the rest of your life. In the end, none of us survive this world. But at the very least, you and I will both know that you have the tools you need to be a fighter, whatever might happen in the fight. The rest is up to God.

Sonya: I love you, Dad.

Me: I hope that is still your reaction when you start writing your own dialogue. And I love you too, Sonya Magdalena Rose.

On Oedipus (or, Giants And Blankets)

A little while back, I reread Oedipus Rex for the first time since high school. I sympathized with Mr. Oed a lot less than I expected to. He really was a wiener. But let's forget for now the hubris and the creepy mom stuff—which—seriously, dude, if you're that concerned about the prophecy, then how about just don't marry anyone older than you. We have a saying in America: Duh. But again, let's set that aside for the nonce. I want to talk about the other half of the Oedipal curse.

Freud, of course, argued that on some level, all children have this urge. I can't from personal experience speak to the inner lives of all children, but I can surely think of times when I wanted to kill my dad. He's a good father and a good man, and we get on quite well now, thank God; but we had some stony and tenebrous moments in the elder days. I fear that, shy of both of us immediately dying and going straight to Heaven when she's born, my kid and I will pass through a shadowed vale or two of our own before the end.

C.S. Lewis says somewhere that Nature compels us to invent giants: the mountains and the storms and the sea, and all the vastness and wildness that lurk beyond our walls. And he's not wrong, but it seems belated. Long before we have any sense of Nature, we're all surrounded by giants. Long before we have the words to encapsulate size and proportion, we know that Mama and Dada are bigger, titanically bigger than us. And the giants have absolute power over every tiny aspect of our existence. We eat what they give us, we sleep when they say, we wear what they put on our backs; we go to the schools and read the books and do the chores they choose for us. Granted that we would suffer a millionfold demise long before pubescence if it weren't for the giants. But they're still giants, and we're still swordless little Jacks.

The thing about being a parent is that sometimes you're going to be wrong. Depending on your efforts and proclivities, you may even often be wrong. And as a general rule, the child has no higher authority that he can appeal to. If you've promised him that he can, say, watch a particular movie, but discovered too late that it's about the exploits of a space pirate who does explicit things with a dozen different space women, then he has no recourse but to accept the breaking of your promise. He's too small to fight you, he's too poor to run, he has no grown-up words to argue his case. He can sit in his room and stew. And nothing breeds hatred like impotence. Glance through the imprecatory Psalms—137:9, for example—and you'll get a sense of how I sometimes felt about my perceived injustices.

Not getting to watch one movie is at worst an annoyance to an adult; but by definition, a child doesn't see the larger picture in which that annoyance is a tiny blip. Your sense of proportion is only as large as your experience of the world, and your capacity for suffering fills up a lot faster when you're very, very small. I surely don't want Sonya feeling murderous feelings towards me any more often than I can help; and if she does, I'd like her to be able to look back at them when she gets older and at least grant that for all my mistakes, I was doing the best I could.

I have to keep in the forefront of my mind that her reality is real to her, no matter how little it seems to me. If I'm forty years old and someone takes away a blanket that I like, then, well—darn. But if I'm three years old and this blanket has been a part of my waking and dreaming life for as long as I can possibly remember, if I can't exactly drive to the store and buy another one, if I've never seen pictures of Hiroshima and the Holocaust because I'm a freaking three-year-old, then in my pea-sized world, it's a big, big deal. So if grown-up me is going to take away a blanket that mini-me loves and cherishes, then I'd better have a damned good reason for it. I guess, at the end of the day, that's the best I can really hope to do.

On Gender (or, Baby Names)

Apparently there's a village in the Dominican Republic where it's totally normal for boys to be born outwardly indistinguishable from girls and to manifest their boy-parts at puberty. They're called guevedoces, which literally translates as "penis at twelve."

Ellie and I just had our second ultrasound and discovered our five-month-old womb-farer is a girl, whom we shall call Sonya Magdalena Rose. Interestingly, young Sonya has already produced something on the order of 7,000,000 oocytes, or basic egg cells—which means that when Ella was the age that Sonya is now, she was already harboring the egg that would become one half of her eventual daughter. If Sonya were a boy in the hidden hamlet of Las Salinas, she might look exactly the same as she does now. But she'd be clandestinely producing testosterone instead of oocytes, because deep down, she wouldn't be the same. Sometimes Nature gets the wires crossed and the outside doesn't seem to match—but that doesn't mean the inside doesn't matter.

I hope Maggie Rose does not suffer from gender confusion. I hope she's not bipolar, or deaf, or left-handed. (Kidding, I'm a leftie.) If any of those difficulties should transpire, I will surely not love her any less, and I will spend my last breath striving and yearning to make her happy and whole. If she should happen to be gay or to feel that she ought to be a man, then we'll work together and try to figure things out. Even if she comes out absolutely "perfect," in this or that or anybody's sense of the term, we'll still have to piece together how the hell she's going to fit into a bent and fractured universe.

But here it is. . .

I won't be helping her if she suffers some fundamental confusion and I pretend she doesn't. If my girl decides that she's a wolf, she might need a bit of support in accepting the truth. If she decides that she is actually a boy, then it's a lot more complicated; but it's still a problem, and it can't be fixed by throwing out her skirts and playing along. There just isn't a way to say this without sounding dogmatic, but there's such a thing as things. There's such a thing as truth, and things being what they are.

Sonya's a girl. I'm extremely excited to have a little girl, and I will teach her all about sports and trucks and martial arts as well as music and cooking and whatever little girls might stereotypically enjoy, if she enjoys them. El and I both have jobs, and we both do the chores; I'm not that concerned about Leave It To Beaver gender roles. I am concerned that Sonya Rosa should have a sense of empathy and nurture, and feel happy and proud to be a woman. The other day, I felt my daughter kicking in my wife's stomach for the very first time, and I do have a bit of envy for Ellen's power to carry and grow an actual person inside of her. Mind you, I'm also glad that I have a stronger upper body and can more effectively punch anyone who might try and steal her purse while she's busy carting around embryonic people in her torso. But I have no illusions about my gender being superior to hers. It seems—

God

—just so, so obvious that we need each other, that each gender pines for the other, that we're both here because we're neither of us complete without the other. I don't wish to seem disingenuous, but I'm a white guy and can't become a Polynesian female merely by wanting to be. Nor could our Magda become a man, or an Egyptian, or a hippogriff, however desperately she might wish it.

I deeply believe that, for all the moral advantages the Greatest Generation may have had over us, we're far better off in that we tend to talk about our feelings. If my daughter felt that she was my son, I certainly wouldn't try to sweep it under the rug and forget about it, as our grandparents might have done. My God, I don't want my child, my love, to think she's unloved if she feels she ought to be a man. We'll do all we can to help her understand and cope with those feelings. But the fact is, the truth is, that she isn't. She's a woman, and if she feels otherwise then there's something wrong that needs to be talked about. No matter how tolerant, how understanding, I wish to be, I cannot help her by pretending that A is not A.

On Sex (or, When A Bird And Bee Love Each Other Very Much)

When Dad was working on the car, he didn't really need a hyper-distractable, poorly-coordinated ragamuffin clattering through the garage. Without me knocking over oil cans and mixing up the ratchet sizes, he could certainly have finished his labors more quickly and with less exasperation. But because he's my dad and he wanted to give me a part in the work, he let me fetch the tools while he handled the parts that I couldn't understand.

When God wants to create an everlasting soul, He doesn't need our help. He made the angels; He made Adam and Eve; and He made the Word Made Flesh with only half of our usual involvement. But He's our dad and He wants us to be a part of the process.

Adam was given only two commands, one negative and one positive. Don't eat that fruit—and go have tons of sex. Because fruitfulness and multiplication allow us to play a part in bringing forth actual people, actual souls, sex is the greatest of all creative endeavors and thus one of the greatest of all pleasures. In the exact etymological sense, it is ecstatic: it calls us out of ourselves. Even in the most corrupt and twisted of cultures, even in the uttermost chasms of nihilism, nearly every human alive still wants sex. That's how much radiance glimmers through, no matter what landfills of muck we heap on top of that ancient and luminous gift.

At some point, the micro-Toner is bound to want to know where she came from and how. I guess the easiest way to address the issue without having to use any variation of the word "loins" is to say that a piece of Ellie and a piece of me get mixed together to make a body, and the Holy Spirit gives it a soul. On reflection, I'm not sure that (apart from a whole passel of details) theology and medical science together can provide any more accurate description of the process.

And now I want to see if I can address one of the most delicate of all subjects without appearing to occupy any manner of pulpit (especially since I can assure you that I personally hold no moral high ground whatsoever). As Catholics, we shall certainly raise our kid Catholic, and that will mean teaching her that she oughtn't have sex with anyone except her lawful spouse. I do think that, maybe more than any other single thing, this is the teaching that makes people angry with the Church, and I hope to be able to explain it adequately to my offspring. Remember that the Church only has the authority to teach the Truth, not to make it or to change it; she doesn't impose the laws upon us, but only tries to help us follow the laws that are intrinsic to our nature. So: why is it that Ellie and I, who were already lovingly committed to each other, had to mouth a lot of old formulas in a big stone building and have a bachelor in a robe mumble Latin and throw water at us before we could make love?

Well—why did Jesus, Omnipotence Itself, have to spit in the dirt and rub mud on the blind man's eyes in order to cure him? He healed the centurion's servant without even entering under his roof. But maybe for something so fundamental as a missing sense, He felt the need to give a special benediction, involving body and spirit both. The whole point of the Sacraments, of course, is to bless the soul in a visible way; but in marriage especially, there really is a missing sense that's being mended. From the moment I gave my vow, I became a recovering cyclops, very slowly beginning to see our world through our eyes, the eyes of our marriage, rather than just my own. My perspective (again, very slowly) began to turn stereoscopic, and another mind and soul became a part of my every consideration. And Matrimony, alone among the Sacraments, is not administered through the powers of a priest, but given to the couple by one another. That makes it hard to see how it could be right for us to give ourselves in love to anyone else.

On Sainthood (or, Only Through Time Time Is Conquered)

Kid in womb: Father whom I love so dearly?
Me: Yes, my tomato-sized amniotic mariner of a child?
Kid: Why am I here?
Me: Oh! Uh... Well, you see, when a bird and a bee love each other very, very much...
Kid: No, I mean teleologically speaking.
Me: Ohhh, like what's your purpose. Well, the Catechism says our purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next.
Kid: Huh. I didn't expect it to be that simple.
Me: Give it a minute.
Kid: Waaaaaait.....
Me: There it is.
Kid: How, specifically, am I supposed to—
Me: That, my friend, is The Question. Sadly, neither I nor any other mortal can tell you how best to serve God in this world. Part of your task is figuring out what your task is. I have often reflected that the destiny of man is like unto that of a Special Forces operative who parachuted in behind enemy lines, hit his head, and forgot his mission.
Kid: That is not helpful.
Me: 'Swhat I got, kid. Good luck.

"Parenting fail, bro."

The Brits used to spell "cooperate" with a hyphen (or even, sometimes, an umlaut). I kind of like that spelling because it emphasizes the idea of operating, in the sense of taking action. The idea of cooperation seems to connote a passive element these days: if I cooperate with you, I go along with your suggestions, whatever they might be. But when we speak of co-operating with Divine Grace, it really should be hyphenated. God can't operate in me unless I operate through Him, with Him, and in Him.

No two people are more different than two saints. A saint is a being who has finally and ultimately become a person, a soul that is finished and real. We are all of us potential persons here on Earth, hopefully working with God to scuff away the accretions of meanness on our hearts and hone our spirits into actuality. If we get to Heaven, God willing (and He does), it will mean that we've become not only what He meant us to be, but what we have meant ourselves to be. "For it seemeth good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28). Every sin, redeemed, becomes the specific grace that heals that specific sin. A man of sloth, redeemed, becomes a man of zeal. So out of all our choices, even sinful ones, God (if we work with Him) brings virtues that are infinitely particular to each of us. God doesn't need me to be St. Francis of Assisi. He's already got one of those. He needs me to be St. James Blaise Toner.

The intersection of Time and Eternity is now. I can't escape from Time, from being confined to a single facet of me-ness instead of fully being all of the me that I have it in me to be, except by co-operating with Grace right now, at this particular moment. If I do that at each moment, through all of the moments, then all of those moments become infused and united by that Grace, and I become a whole and integrated soul, and thus I become eternal. And what that so often boils down to, in practice, is: shall I do this tiny little duty, or shall I say the hell with it? Do I help my kid with her homework, or have another beer and tell her to Google it? And even more terrifying than my responsibility for my own soul is this: how responsible am I for her soul, if she should learn irresponsibility from me? St. Augustine became St. Augustine because of the Grace of God and the choices of St. Augustine, but also because of the prayers of his mother, St. Monica. I've got to keep working on becoming St. Me, so that my kid has the best possible chance of becoming St. My Kid.