10 Days — Dec. 19-28

Ten days ago, Dec. 19, we had snow. Two inches shy of two feet fell from the sky, papering our house and streets in an unprecedented downpour – for December at least – of frozen, granular ice.

Nine days ago, Emma and I shoveled a path for the car. Two neighborhood girls came over and helped us clear the driveway while Kate started making her Christmas presents in every possible room of the house. As the night ended, we plodded to a hotel near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, knowing that Jill would not make it from New York as we had planned due to the weather.

Eight days ago, at 5 a.m., we boarded a flight for Orlando and the land of the Mouse. The girls bickered. Kate twitched while Emma made her version of snark angels. It was colder than I anticipated, but we braved Magic Mountain.

Seven days ago, Jill made it! Forty minutes before the girls went on stage for Frosty Follies — the 22-minute holiday revue that is the only reason we were at Disney the week of Christmas — she arrived at the hotel, exhausted from an all-night trip of planes, trains and taxicabs. Later, we had drinks in the bar and shook our heads in amazement at the year almost behind us. I couldn’t sleep as I worked on the first draft of this entry, but the words weren’t there.

Six days ago, on three hours sleep, I left Orlando for New York. There, Ben was obsessing about “Billy Elliot,” wondering if he would have a chance to do that show, too. Ten minutes before curtain, he was on; I ran five blocks and saw my Little Boy on stage for the third time. He was terrific.

Five days ago, on Christmas Eve, I started writing this again, trying to find a way to meld the various emotions of seeing my girls on stage in Florida and my son on Broadway. But I couldn’t put the words on paper. After Ben’s matinee, we headed home on the train for Christmas in Virginia. The phone rang; it was Jill. Kate was in distress. They went to the hospital ER. We got off the train and cabbed to Springfield to meet them; Ben performed in the room while Emma laughed hysterically.

Four days ago, at the start of Christmas Day, we arrived at home with Kate. The diagnosis was a panic attack, but a neurologist now needs to be called ASAP. The ER doctor started off defensive, then realized what he — and we — faced. The kids slept until almost 8, when it was time to open presents. All the kids were extremely grateful for their gifts, a first I think, and it was a very nice and quiet day. Ben, grateful to be home, called it the “best Christmas ever.”

Three days ago, I drove to Ellicott City to drop off Ben, who had to be in New York for a matinee and rode back with members of the “Ragtime” cast. An article in the New York Times noted that Internet rumors were surrounding the show, but it looked like “Ragtime” would survive through January. Traffic was a bear, but I managed to get home and work some on the house, addressing long-awaited issues on the to-do list. Then Emma and I picked up Nicholas to head to New York, where we picked up Ben that night. I fell into bed.

Two days ago, it was Kate’s 13th birthday, and she celebrated with a low-key shopping excursion with her mom and a friend. Meanwhile, Ben and Emma bickered as all good married couples — and opposite sex twins — do. After lunch, I stood in the TKTS line for 45 minutes, only to be told at the gate that “Next to Normal” had sold out. Sadness turned to euphoria when I won the lottery and Nicholas and Emma got in to see the story of a bipolar housewife and the effect that the illness has on her family. Meanwhile, vendors stood at TKTS with “Ragtime” fliers in hand, getting few takers.

Yesterday, Dec. 28, we went our separate ways. Nicholas met up with some of his friends from school. Ben, Emma, and I arranged to go to Mars 2112, a bizarre little “Chuck E. Cheese Goes to Outer Space” restaurant on 51st Street, with a girl from “South Pacific” and her mom. It was a nice day.

Then, a series of omens — a picture frame broken, problems with Ben’s camera. Jill was returning to New York with Kate, which made Emma nervous. I was heading back to Virginia to work before the New Year’s holiday, but a few minutes after dropping Ben off, he called. I thought it was to tell me to have a good trip, or perhaps to apologize for the camera incident.

“We’re closing,” he sobbed, “on Jan. 3.”

Life Amid the Holidays, Vol. 2

In my 20s, a car pulled out in front of me on Christmas Eve, totaling the first new vehicle I ever had. Then my second car, a used battleship that would not/could not be destroyed, was stolen the next holiday season.

A few months later, I got married, picking a safe, middle-of-the-year month — May —  to avoid any potential mishaps. Within two years, my first child — Nicholas — was born (of course) in December, tying the fate of my parenting skill (or lack thereof) to the emotion-laden holiday season.

Two years later, during my parents’ Christmas visit to North Carolina, my dad and I went to see two movies on the same day. Movies were one way my father and I bonded, and it didn’t hurt that I managed to escape what was an increasingly untenable situation at home.

On the way back to Reidsville from Greensboro, I asked him: “Why, given everything you’ve been through, are you and mom still together? How have you made it work?”

He paused for a long time, then said, “When I look at your mother, I see the same person I fell in love with. Of course, she has changed, physically, and so have I, but I still see the same person.”

For me, there was — and is — no simpler definition of love.

I could not say the same, and within a month, I had left the marriage. I wanted the chance to be like my dad.

Within two years, I had divorced, remarried, changed jobs, and bought a house. As Christmas 1996 approached, Jill and I were ready to mark the birth of our first child, Katharine. She was born two days after Christmas.

Little did we know that before the next Christmas we would have two more children. Ben and Emma were born Dec. 11, 1997, giving us three kids who are the same age for 16 days each year and four children born in a single month.

Christmas had moved from a season of endings to a season of beginnings — albeit one that has us running around constantly and trying to hold on to our remaining shreds of sanity.

But the spectre of loss has continued to loom.

Last weekend, I looked around the table at a birthday celebration for Ben and Emma in New York. Earlier, Ben had performed for the second time in “Ragtime,” and we went to a restaurant with family and friends to share some cake and have a late dinner.

My mom was there, as was Nicholas (thanks to my mother’s generosity in paying for his plane ticket). Emma and Kate watched Ben perform for the first time, and we had dear friends and family also in the audience.

As we lit the cake, I looked around and thought briefly of the people who weren’t there — my dad, Jill’s mom, Fran and Bill — and would have given anything to join us. Just as I had done at Thanksgiving (also a dinner in New York), I thought of the holidays we shared as a family, how the chaos of growing up amid illness had given way to the chaos of raising our own children.

And, despite my need (and ability at times) to cling to the holiday humbug that looms over my past, I realized how truly lucky I am.

Life Amid the Holidays, Vol. 1

At some point every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, my inner cynic starts thinking: Maybe Scrooge had a point.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is about the holidays that bring out my inner churl, but it is hard to escape a simple fact: Every year for more than a decade, starting at age 8, I spent part of the holiday season visiting relatives in the hospital, waiting and wondering when the dreaded shoe was going to drop like an anvil on a member of my immediate family.

And after that lucky streak, I upped the ante by becoming Charlie Brown in my own Christmas special.

My father’s illness covered my tween years; my grandfather’s my early teens. After my grandfather died nine days before Christmas in 1981, the pattern became more erratic, even if the result didn’t. One year it was my dad’s gallbladder operation, the next it was my uncle having a car radiator explode in his face just before Thanksgiving.

(If there’s one thing I can safely say about my uncle, it’s that his failure to differentiate between a warm engine and a hot toddy made him the winner in the “Most Unique Reason to Spend the Holiday in a Hospital” category. And that was the year we won the medical triple crown, with my mother separating her shoulder and my dad having knee surgery. But again, I digress…)

Remarkably, as they did throughout their married lives, Mom and Dad managed.

As my mother recently noted, I had a thing for things; as a parent, I have found this is an affliction many children have. This presented an ongoing management challenge for my parents, who scraped pennies together to make ends meet against our wishes for the next big thing, which ultimately would be pushed aside in pursuit of the next-next big thing. (After all, my birthday is in mid-January...)

Looking back, I now see how hard it must have been. To my mom’s everlasting credit, she worked tirelessly to ensure that my sister and I had a nice holiday season, even if that meant excavating me from my traditional sleeping spot under the tree late on Christmas Eve, or putting our dog Frisky’s paw on a rubber stamp pad so the “reindeer” could sign Santa’s thank you note for the milk and cookies.

They did this while somehow putting food on the table, paying the bills on time, and getting us what we wanted (within reason), even if that meant they had to recycle bows and wrapping paper from year to year and event to event. It also meant that the largest Christmas present always came in "the bag," which was then folded and put away until the next year.

I didn't realize then how small blessings, built up over time, could turn into large ones. One of those blessings came from my second set of “parents” — Fran and Bill, the childless neighbors from across the street who “adopted” us as theirs. Having them always made the holidays a little easier.

As the years passed and the hospital visits mounted, however, I found myself approaching mid-November waiting for the other shoe to drop. My deeply jaded side wanted to conduct an office pool under the title of “Which member of Glenn’s family will be subjected to the holiday drama trauma this year?” (Double points if it was anyone but my father.)

My (italics added for emphasis) bad luck almost became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bah humbug, indeed…

A Birth-day Memory

Sometimes, when we pick up around the house, my wife wonders aloud if the air duct is clean. Depending on her mood, she may even try to climb onto something to make sure the dust is gone.

On that day 12 years ago, she stared at it every few minutes, waiting for me to whisper in her ear. “Focus, focus,” I said. “Breathe. Breathe. Keep your focus. You’re doing good. There you go.”

For hours we continued this routine, a process that began with an “Oh-my-God-that’s-intense” pain that woke her up around 1:30 a.m. on a cool Thursday morning.

We arrived at the hospital around 5:15, and within an hour our room was filled with rhythmic, tribal sounds that came from the heart monitor’s tinny speaker. Drugs were administered to make her labor more regular, and the staring at the air duct began.

Because twins presented a higher risk, more personnel and equipment were required than for a single delivery. We got the “good room,” twice as large as the others, to accommodate the extras.

A ward full of nurses, some of whom we vaguely remembered from our daughter’s birth less than a year before, walked in and out. Three stayed with us on an irregular basis through their shift, talking about their families, what to eat for lunch — typical everyday-type things for everyone but the two of us. For them, it’s their job; they had five deliveries in 24 hours. We had other things on our minds.

The rolling wave became more intense, and my wife requested drugs. A woman who would not come near an aspirin when she was pregnant the first time had become the poster child for epidurals.

The next two hours were surreal, even for those not under the influence.

Jill’s parents sat in a corner. Two health occupations students from a local high school observed while standing near a sink. The nurses continued their chatter while checking the vital signs. I jotted down notes on the hospital stationary. Jill read a newspaper between contractions, which with the epidural brought pressure but no pain. If not for the tribal rhythms of the heart monitors, it would be difficult to know she was in labor.

The girl’s heart rate fell, dropping from the normal range — 140 to 160 — to 60. After 2 minutes, the nurses huddled. The doctor was called. Jill’s parents were asked to leave.

The heart rate came back up; the doctor said our daughter was on the umbilical cord in some way. Since the rate was back to normal, it did not appear that a C-section would be necessary.

The routine resumed. Jill continued to make progress, and the nurses rotated in and out as they left for lunch. Then the pressure intensified, and the time was near.

Jill started to push, and push, and push. The baby girl’s heart rate leaped, then fell. My wife developed a fever. The baby was in distress —life-threatening distress.

The C-section was ordered. I was told to put on scrubs, but I had to wait outside. If complications developed, I couldn’t be with my wife.

In 63 seconds, our bustling room was empty. All the equipment, the people, even my wife’s bed, was in the OR. I stood alone and waited. Seconds seemed like days.

Finally, the anesthesiologist came in and got me, and I joined my wife in the operating room.

At 2:34 p.m., Emma was born, the cord wrapped around her neck. The doctors worked on her quickly and she was fine, even though she narrowly escaped permanent brain damage because of the oxygen deprivation.

At 2:35, Benjamin followed, announcing his presence as only a baby can do. We should have known then that he was a singer.

Thirteen hours of labor. Nine hours at the hospital. Two new babies. One big scare.

A memory of 12 years ago today.

A Song For You

Remember how I said that irony is not dead? Let me prove it to you.

Today, I should sing “Happy Birthday” to my oldest son, except that the best present I could give him is not singing at all.

“Dad, please… I mean, really, I’m not being rude … but I’d rather hear the cats.”

Yep, I have a voice that stands out in a crowd — for all the wrong reasons. My solution is to be the Milli Vanilli/Britney Spears/Janet Jackson of the “Happy Birthday” set. (Except that you wouldn’t want to see me dance, either.)

• Irony No. 1: Rhythm, tone, and pitch — three things I want more than almost anything — are nowhere to be found. And three of my four children, plus Jill, have beautiful voices.
• Irony No. 2: I love music. 
• Irony No. 3: Over the past three years, both sons have been in productions of, yes, “A Christmas Carol.”

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s December (although retailers would have you believe that the month started just before Halloween). It’s a month built for music, from carols to hymns to show tunes to “Happy Birthdays” and everything in between. And over the next 18 days, the height of the singing season, all four of my kids have birthdays.

Now there is irony, topped only by the fact that for 16 days, from this Friday through Dec. 27, I will have three 12-year-olds.

So as we kick off birthday month and continue through the holiday season, the best gift I can give to my children it to remain vocally silent. As the DJ says, this one goes out to Nicholas, Emma, Ben, and Katharine — by request.

“Overture. Purple lights. This is it. The height of heights. And oh what heights we’ll hit… On with the show this is it.”

The Bipolar Parenting Challenge

I should have seen it coming.

I should have seen her face change when we mentioned the twins’ birthday. I should have seen the black cloud that parked over her head.

After dinner, I should have tried another approach when helping her with homework. A few minutes after that, I should have taken the time, counted to 10, and not been so quick to respond in a firm voice that — under so-called “normal” circumstances — any parent would use.

I should have, but I didn’t.

And everyone paid for it — most of all Katharine.

Having a bipolar child with a triple A membership (anxiety, ADHD, and adolescence) is one of the most difficult challenges I face as a parent. Day to day, hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute, we never know which person will show up.

Is it the sweet, vulnerable child overwhelmed by the faulty wiring in her brain? The ditzy, funny, engaging 12-year-old girl who can’t stop talking? The child who watches the clock almost obsessively to ensure that you get her to school on time, yet can’t tell you what day it is?

Is it the little girl who can’t stand to see an animal stuck outside in the rain, or the enraged, angry, out-of-control person who locks herself in the bathroom, curls up in a ball, and screams at the top of her lungs for 30 minutes? Or is it, not so simply, all of the above?

The last question is the best answer I have.

••••••

The above paragraphs were written about 2:30 a.m. yesterday, several hours after Kate’s most recent outburst.  Sadly, this has taken on a familiar pattern — struggle, mania, struggle, confrontation, emotional spark (or acetylene torch, depending on your point of view), outburst, regret, sadness, and finally, fitful sleep.

The collateral damage from these incidents forces everyone to reflect on what has just happened. Could anything have been done to stop it? Or were we just delaying the inevitable?

Afterward, I never can sleep. I have to process what just happened and my role in it. And if I’m being honest, truly honest, I don’t always come out looking so great.

As much as I care about and love my children, I’m far from perfect at parenting. Sometimes, especially in the heat of the moment, I have difficulty in separating the child and the illness, which we have dubbed “It.”

Think about it this way: If parenting a child is difficult, then parenting a mental illness is impossible. Add them together and see the result.

Over the past 13 years, I have written about Kate more than any of my children; for more essays on this, go here and here. In part it’s because raising a bipolar child is such rich material, filled with opportunities to try to explain the complexities to those who want the debate distilled in more than simplistic overtones. For a journalist, it's a great story.

But it’s also a way to process and sift through the conflicting emotions I feel as the parent of a child who, at times, is quite literally “out of control.” Writing about Kate and our family’s internal struggles in confronting “It” has been a great source of comfort over time. Writing and reflection also help me process feelings that, left suppressed, likely would damage our long-term ability to have a relationship.

It’s definitely your traditional father-daughter dynamic, albeit one on anabolic steroids. Often it feels like I’m standing on quicksand with her. I can only imagine how she feels.

We are blessed, however, by the fact that Kate is so open about her feelings, her fears, and her anger. We also are blessed that she has numerous gifts and talents. And we are blessed by the fact that she truly wants to help, that she doesn’t mind if we share our struggles with this with the world.

Amid the joys, ironies, and hardships that we and others face in this holiday season of uncertainty, those are blessings I’m glad I can count on.

How does it feel? — Part 2

At this point in our story, Nicholas, Katharine, and Emma have been relegated — not necessarily because they chose to be — to supporting players in Ben’s reality show. And like all siblings, especially ones that share similar interests in performing, they alternate between supportive and one of the following:

a.     Jealous as hell.

b.     Proud but not willing to show it.

c.      Both A and B.

Between mid-October and the night before Thanksgiving, Ben did not see his sisters due to “Ragtime” rehearsals. Because Nicholas lives in North Carolina, we had not seen him in three months. That prompts remarks such as:

“Dad, I never thought I’d say this,” Kate said to me the other night, “but I actually miss Ben.”

“Dad,” Ben said a couple of days later, “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m looking forward to seeing Kate.”

First time I think they’ve agreed on anything.

The two I feel worst for in this scenario are Emma and Nicholas. Being twins, this is the first time Emma and Ben have been apart in their lives for an extended period. It also means Kate and Emma have to be together far more than any sisters do/should.

Ben and Emma are the old married couple in the family. They bicker, bitch, and laugh at each other daily. Emma and Kate manage two of the three, but laugh usually is not one of them.

It’s also been tough for Emma because, until this year, she always was in school and dance with both Kate and Ben. Now Kate is in a different school because she’s in 7th grade and Ben is in school in New York. Emma is truly on her own for the first time.

She’s done very well given the circumstances, and despite the fact that she is our most methodical, black and white child, she’s managed to adapt quite nicely to everything. Flexibility, however, is still foreign to her; after all, this is the child who would, given the opportunity, alphabetize the people she mentions in her nightly prayers.

I’ve written about Nicholas already (see “The Oldest” entry below), but I do understand how difficult it is for him. Ben’s dreams are Nicholas’ dreams, too. And Nicholas’ brother is living his dream. Because of the divorce and the distance, we are not able to give Nicholas the same day-to-day time and attention we give the others. It’s a hard reality that once he turns 18 and lawyers are no longer standing on the periphery, we hope to rectify someday. He deserves it…

Traveling from DC to NY

To go back and forth from Virginia to New York, we normally take the Bolt Bus, which is where I started writing this. Unfortunately, this means we must navigate Interstate 95, which I think was engineered to make sure that no one bolts anywhere.

Still, the ride is cheap, the bus has a bathroom, and you meet some interesting characters. I hope that’s what the other riders thought on Thanksgiving Wednesday when we journeyed — very slowly — to the Big Apple with our nieces, Elisabeth and Margaret, and Jill’s cousins James and Katharyn in tow.

Two years ago, we left on Wednesday afternoon to go to Chapel Hill for Thanksgiving.  Three hours and seven miles later, we turned around. This year, going north was not much easier.

We had a persistent mist and fog for the first half of the trip, two prerequisites for screwing up traffic in unprecedented ways. Combine that with some not-so-timely road construction and the I-95 engineers penchant for making five lanes of traffic squeeze into two, and you have the makings of a cluster of cars as well.

All I can say is that it would not be inappropriate to use cluster in a different context here. What is normally a 4 to 4½ trip took 8 hours, no fun under any circumstances.

Still, the trip had some highlights…

I now know how to make the selections for the U.S. men’s downhill team, and don’t have to go anywhere near a ski slope to do it. Stick them in the bathroom of a charter bus in stop-and-go traffic and tell them they can’t hit the lid while peeing. Those that can pull it off can do the Alps without a problem.

••••••

Favorite lines of the day:

Kate, after taking falling asleep for an hour at the start of the trip: “Are we there yet?”

Me: “Nope, not yet.”

Kate: “How much longer? Five minutes? Ten?”

Me: “Sweetheart, we’re not even to Baltimore.”

Kate: “Oh, but we’re close, right?”

As you can see, geography is not her strongest subject in school.

••••••

Kate: “Where are we?”

Me: “On the Turnpike, close to Rutgers.”

Kate: “Fuddruckers?”

Me: “No, Rutgers. It’s a university.”

Kate: “I didn’t know Fuddruckers was a university.”

••••••

Nicholas, after leaving four hours later and making it to the apartment earlier than us thanks to a flight from Greensboro to LaGuardia: “I’m so ADD that I get distracted reading a picture book.”

That’s my boy…

The First Broadway Bow

Ben takes his first bow on Broadway after performing as "Little Boy" in the revival of "Ragtime." (Photo by John Mara)

How does it feel? — Part 1

“In 1902, Father built a house on the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill. ... And all our days would be warm and fair.” — The Little Boy, opening lines of “Ragtime.”

The curtain opened and there stood my son, opening the first Saturday night performance — not counting previews — of Broadway’s new revival of “Ragtime.”

It had been a long journey to this point, and as Jill and I sat on the 7^th row in the orchestra section, we were more nervous than Ben was.

Arms interlocked, fingers crossed, tears filling our eyes, we watched as he maneuvered across the stage in the show’s stirring opening number. And just like you see in the movies, I found myself flashing back to that day in March when I took him to the understudy audition at the Kennedy Center.

“And there was distant music…”

At the time, we didn’t know if he had the vocal chops for the part, especially since the role called for performing with a 28-piece orchestra. And precedent was working against him; he had what he thought was a Kennedy Center jinx because some of his worst auditions had occurred there.

“Do your best,” I told him, as we do at every audition. “As long as you do your best, everything else will take care of itself.” I recognize those are clichés, but we say them with all due sincerity, because that’s all we require of him as we make this journey.

That day, we also came up with a new, more straightforward motto: “Kick ass. Take names. Have fun.” Perhaps not the most politically correct thing to say to an 11-year-old, but we say it anyway. And he did and does to this day.

For all of the hard work and sacrifice that this requires on the part of everyone in our family, you have to keep the “fun” part in perspective. After all, he’s still a kid, and this is an adventure equal to any rollercoaster ride you can find in any theme park.

Or, as he says, “You know what the worst part about boredom is? It’s boring.”

This has been anything but boring.

This Is His Life — In Pictures

Ben's performing life in a 2-minute video (my present to him for his Broadway debut). It should be obvious quickly why he's here — performing is in his DNA.

Helpless to Selfless

I'm no parenting guru, but if asked, the one thing I always tell new moms and dads is: Get used to the feeling of helplessness. Or look at it this way: As much as we want our kids to go play in traffic sometimes, we always want them to look both ways before they cross the street. And we're never truly sure they will.

This gnawing emotion starts, literally, at conception. From the moment you know you're going to have a child, the doubts start to seep in. Will our baby be OK — 10 fingers, 10 toes, and the like? If he/she isn't, how will I react? No matter what, will I be a good parent to my child(ren)?

Immediately, we flashback to our childhoods, and become determined to erase all the things our parents did "wrong" when we were kids. You know that feeling; being wronged at some point in your childhood is universal, a guarantee that's as ironclad as any genetic trait.

Not to be pessimistic or cynical, but even if you manage to erase every generational wrong in your family tree, all parents make mistakes. Some are newer than others, some are perhaps more creative, but this is not Augusta National. No one is excluded from the club.

More likely, you will develop a begrudging understanding of why your folks did the things they did, usually during or after an experience in which your child dragged you through the Parenting 101 knot hole. Have you looked in the mirror and seen your parent's face and torso, arms crossed with an "I told you so" look in the reflection? I know I have.

Back to helpless. The problem, just as universal as the wrongs, is that we can't live their lives through them or for them. We've already had our shot at childhood. Rather than hover over them with the stealth-like attention military snipers can appreciate, we have to learn to give them their own air space to figure it all out.

In many respects, that can be the most helpless — and ultimately selfless — feeling of all.

In Our Family, We Have Posters...

Baseball & Theater: What A Game!

Baseball is known for its superstitions: Always respect a streak. Never talk to the pitcher who's throwing a no-hitter. There is some logic to them, even though superstitions can stray toward the weird sometimes. To quote a player trying to stop a hitting slump in "Bull Durham": Anyone have a live chicken?

Theatre, as I've learned, also has its share of superstitions. Did you know that saying "Macbeth" aloud in a theater is the same as shouting "Fire!" in a crowded movie? (It is referred to, simply, as "The Scottish Play.") Or that actors do not, I repeat do not, discuss the show's reviews or their individual performances. (I'm pretty sure some read them, though...)

Baseball and theatre share a single moment in "Ragtime," in which Father takes his Little Boy out to watch a game rather than talk to him. Baseball is, Father says, a "civilized" sport.

Then, in the Act II number "What A Game!" Father finds that the other fans are less than proper and certainly not civilized, even as his son Edgar learns how the other half of a divided America lives. (Even though the play is set in New York, the fans act more like they're from Philadelphia.) It's a light moment in what becomes a progressively somber second act, and one of the play's many tips of the hat to America's greatest icons.

Theatre, like baseball, also is full of traditions, some of which are better known to the general public than others. As rehearsals have moved to performances, I've learned about two such traditions that are just fascinating.

One is the "sitzprobe," in which cast members sing through the show with the orchestra in a rehearsal hall without blocking, costume, or staging. The focus is on merging the two groups and in the case of "Ragtime," which integrated a 28-piece orchestra with a 40-member cast, it was quite the experience for all concerned.

The other is the "Gypsy Robe" ceremony. Held an hour before curtain on Opening Night, it started in 1950 when Bill Bradley, a chorus member in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," persuaded a chorus girl to give him her dressing gown. According to the Actors' Equity website, Bradley sent the gown to a friend on opening night of "Call Me Madam," who then sent it to another chorus member on the next opening night. The tradition, which has continued nonstop for almost 60 years, now has official rules; for example, the robe is given to the most experienced chorus member, who then parades around the stage counterclockwise and slaps the hand of each person in the cast.

Fortunately, Ben has participated in both events as part of the "Ragtime" company. This Saturday, when he goes on stage for the first time, he will sing "What A Game!" in the role of Little Boy. And as he learns more about the history and traditions of theatre, he flinches when I mention the word "Macbeth" in his presence.

As long as he doesn't go on the hunt for a live chicken, I guess we'll be OK.

Up and Running

The Memories of Silence

My mother was born on August 15, 1941. Her mother died a week later, leaving behind an 8-year-old son and an infant daughter. My grandmother’s purse and other belongings were swept up and put into a cedar chest that now sits in my mom’s house.

When my mom was not quite four months old, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My grandfather, then almost 30, joined the Navy. He could have stayed home and helped raise his two children, but he chose to leave them with family and go off to war instead.

I don’t know why he made that choice. Perhaps it was the patriotic fervor that Pearl Harbor brought, a feeling that we collectively experienced again on 9/11 when we realized that the United States was indeed vulnerable to attack. Perhaps it was his chance to get out of the Texas oilfields. Perhaps it was his chance to leave his grief behind.

The few pictures and patches give us a glimpse of what he looked like then. I still have an opened hand grenade shell, and some of his standard issue Navy stainless steel flatware with the initials U.S.N. carved on the bottom side. At the bottom of the cedar chest is a glass heart that he carved from the shattered window of a Japanese zero, his dog tags and a few other pieces of memories.

He described how basic training in California was the best time of his life, in part because he loved San Diego, in part because he had a freedom he had never experienced before.

When the subject turned to his role in the war, he did not talk about it — perhaps out of modesty, perhaps out of fear.

Who were his friends? What type of work did he do? What was it like to be one of 55,000 Seabees on the beaches of Okinawa? Did he know anyone who died?

Those are the typical questions any kid would ask. And ask I did. But he just nodded his head and changed the subject.

We know what happened to the family my grandfather left behind in early 1942. My mom and her brother sent to live with her grandparents, who died within a week of each other when mom was just 4, and then to a kindly aunt who took them both in until my grandfather returned with a new girlfriend in tow. They married after the war, moved to East Texas, and stayed.

My uncle and his father did not speak for 13 years, in part due to battles over my grandfather’s new wife. My uncle says that, aside from a few stories that you would hear in any junior high boys locker room, my grandfather did not say anything about his wartime service.

“He just didn’t talk about it. I don’t think he could.”

My mother says I shouldn’t feel bad that he never spoke about the war. He didn’t say much to her about it, either. He didn’t say much about anything, in fact.

I think it’s more a reflection of the man than of the time he served in the military that we don’t know more about this period in his history. Soldiers of that generation did not talk about their experiences in war. It wasn’t until “Saving Private Ryan” was released, 12 years after my grandfather’s death, that members of the “Greatest Generation” finally felt empowered to share feelings that had long been repressed.

Today, 23 years after his death, my mom still speaks in somewhat hushed, reverent tones about the man whose expectations of others exceeded his ability to give and receive love. But the details of his life, outside the outline used in his obituary, remain a mystery. Just like the purse that sits at the bottom of the cedar chest, untouched with the same contents it carried 68 years ago.

The Oldest

We should have known then that something was different about Kate. And I think, deep down, that we did.

She walked at nine months, graduating to running two months later. She was talking in full sentences at a year. Her tantrums had a ferocity to them — “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System!”

And she never slept. To this day, I don’t think she ever rests.

Kate, our oldest daughter, is ADHD/bipolar. She also is very bright, yet she wrestles with paranormal forces that lurk inside her brain. At times, she is a hard child to embrace, as if the disorder creates a force field that prevents you from warming up to her, even though that’s what she wants and needs more than anyone.

••••••

He wants nothing more than to be on stage — it’s his calling, he says. And he has to sit on the sidelines while his younger brother moves (seamlessly it seems) from show to show, graduating from recitals to the Washington, D.C., stage to New York in a remarkably short period of time.

Nicholas also is a child of divorce, the oldest child in our family. Geography requires him to travel at least 250 miles one way to see us.

He’s split between two families with five half siblings, all with different interests, strengths, and challenges. He’s divided between parents who genuinely don’t like each other. He is so ready to get on with life after high school, but deep down I think he’s nervous about his future and what it holds for him.

He looks just like my ex; in many ways he acts just like me.

••••••

Nicholas and Kate are my oldest children.

On the surface, they’re like many above-average, middle/upper middle class kids you see today, navigating that all-too-difficult phase from 12 to 18 that captures, enraptures, exhilarates and frustrates them and us. They will be the first to tell you that their families love them. They will be the first to say that life is fun, but not easy.

Welcome to the club, you think. You'll learn.

At times, you want to shout how much worse they could have it. (Remember the speech your mom and dad gave you when you wouldn't finish your food?)

And while all of that is true, this is their reality.

It’s our job to show them how to navigate it. A daunting task, indeed…

OK, so this is pretty cool..

The sign for our child's first Broadway show — on Broadway in Times Square, no less.

God, humor, and irony

We are living proof that God has a sense of humor.

Please understand, I don't want to offend anyone with that line. But it's true.  If irony left us with the turn of the century, as some say, then we were the poster family for it in the late 1990s.

If irony did not exist, why else would we have three kids who are the same age for 16 days each year? Why would it happen within the first two years of our getting married? And why would all four of my children be born in the month of December?

When people saw us struggling to manage a toddler, two baby carriers, and a then 6-year-old at the same time, they confirmed God's role in everything. Rarely did we have a conversation without one of these three phrases, all of which managed to invoke the supreme being who resides in life's penthouse suite:

• Oh, my God.
• God bless you.
• Thank God it's not me.

We've heard everything, from sophomoric to sympathetic. My favorite was about Ben and Emma: "Awww... They're twins. Are they identical?" Somehow I always managed to avoid asking back, "Have you changed a diaper recently?"

But I digress.

The point of this is that irony persists in our lives, as does proof that God's sense of humor remains pretty much intact. For example, this year on the week of Christ's birth, we will have one child in New York while our girls are in Orlando performing in a "Frosty Follies" revue at Disney World. And that will be just after the oldest finishes two plays in North Carolina.

How is that not irony, or some higher order's way of having a small laugh at our parenting expense?

Not that it's a bad thing. Far from it, in fact. We are very lucky that our children are healthy, talented, and smart, and that we are in the position to give them opportunities to have fun and be successful. And we're very fortunate to have a strong faith, especially given that it is so battle tested. 

The next time God chooses to be a stand up comedian for a day, however, I wish he would look elsewhere.

The box

How do I describe our kids? Think about “the box.”

• Nicholas and Ben: “Outside the box.”
• Katharine: “Where’s the box?”
• Emma: “Did you know that when you leave the lid on the box, the little light stays on?”

The juggling act

One of our largest parenting challenges — and believe me, we have a number of those — is striking the appropriate balance in paying attention to each of the four kids. It doesn't help that all basically like and do the same things (dance, acting, theater, in case you haven't guessed by now), and are — like all siblings — genetically programmed to compete with each other.

At times, life in our house feels like a long, constant guitar pull, in which musicians perform in a round-robin format and end by turning to the next singer with the implied, "Top that!" At others, you watch helplessly as Vince Lombardi retires and is replaced by Phil Bengston; no matter how good the successor may be, it's impossible to follow a legend.

All four have their strengths. Nicholas definitely has the big picture gene — he's "directed" the family shows for as long as we can remember (see the "Pooper Heroes" video below) — as well as comedic timing and a very nice singing voice. His greatest strength, in my opinion, is in art; he did a beautiful job of illustrating a children's book we are working on as a family project.

Kate brings a combination of ditzy, otherworldly humor and a long, lithe dancer's body to the proceedings. Emma's strengths are tap, gymnastics, and a sly, dry, very funny sense of humor. (Definitely she was an adult in the womb — see "The Zoo Story.")

They all are smart, sharp kids, children any parent would be proud to have. But I know it's hard for them not to feel overshadowed by Ben, the flip-a-switch kid.

This is the child who potty-trained in one day at age 3, rode a two-wheel bicycle after an afternoon at age 4, won national and world aerobic gymnastics championships by age 9, and is now part of the company of his first Broadway show ("Ragtime") at age 11. Everything, it seems on the surface, comes easy to him.

This makes the juggling act even more difficult for us, his parents, because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. You can't compare "Macbeth" at the Folger Shakespeare Library to a fifth grade class production. Both have merit; both provide you with opportunities.

As his parents, we've seen how hard Ben works at his craft, and how much he has grown as a performer (and human being) as a result of the chances he's gotten over the past two years. We know how tough it is to get up for school at 7:30 a.m. after not getting home until midnight because of a show. We have heard from his fellow actors and directors that he is a professional who is on time and on cue, ready to do anything at a moment's notice. We know that his peers, not just his siblings, don't understand him sometimes. And yet he has perservered.

I'm just as proud of that as I am of Emma's A on a project, or Kate's self-portrait that hangs in the hallway of her new school, or of seeing Nicholas as a member of his homecoming court. (Although, in true Nicholas fashion, he ditched the dance afterward.)

Our mantra has been to help each child develop and grow at his or her own pace, and to give them the training and opportunities they need as they move forward. Are we always successful at the juggling act? No. Do we always try? Yes.

Someday, I hope all of our kids will look back and remember that we did try, that we love them, and that we were there to support them when it counted. Isn't that all you can truly hope for as a child?

There's a moment you know...

I can think of several moments that fit this line from "Spring Awakening" (2009's summer obsession) as long as you're willing to be liberal in the interpretation.

• Seeing Jill sing.
• Peace Day.
• The red overcoat.
• The 21 week ultrasound.
• The nurse saying, "You're having a boy ... and a girl."
• My baby, blue and gasping for air.
• Moving to the D.C. area.
• "Who Let the Frogs Out..."

That last one, in many ways, is why we're here in this position today. It's hard to believe it was just three (very long) years ago. But it was June 2006 when Ben and Emma performed the song as part of their jazz class in Metropolitan's production of "The Little Mermaid."

Simply put, Ben stole the number and show — a lengthy extravaganza that showcased MFAC's growing student body — not once, but twice over the weekend. It was when we saw he was at home, literally, on the stage.

A year and a half later, people still mentioned that night to us at random moments, with almost an "I was there..." aura about it. By this time, Ben had auditioned for and signed with an agent.

Quickly, he learned rejection, how you could get so tantalizingly close to something big and then be turned down because you weren't the right height, weight, or hair color. But by the fall of 2007, he was cast as Tiny Tim in Ford's Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol," and life had changed forever...

Bored? This is what they do...

Ben had a rare day off recently, so he decided to make a movie with Emma. Enjoy.

The Zoo Story

It started over the word “but” — or “butt,” depending on how you spell it.

When we first moved to the DC area in 2001, that was a big word around our house. For a brief period, we had to admonish our children and tell them not to use the word as it relates to the human anatomy. But (no pun intended) we soon found ourselves unable to use the word in a conjunctive sense without being told why it was a bad idea.

“Oooh, Daddy used the word,” they said in joyous glee (glee always comes in unison). “Daddy, you’re not supposed to say that.”

“But,” I protested, “that wasn’t the bad butt. It was, uh, the good but.”

Thus was born the “good but” and the “bad butt,” a slight, subtle, but nonetheless important distinction for my children to draw at that nascent phase of their lives.

If nothing else, pre-school children are literal. And when you have three kids only 11 1/2 months apart, literal comes at you with the volume and intensity of a presidential press conference.

So my wife and I had to find some way to bring compound sentences back into our home speech.

“The good but,” I explained, “is when you say, ‘I want to do this, but I can’t right now.’ The bad butt is when you refer to someone’s bottom.”

That seemed to work for a time, until my youngest daughter and I went to the zoo. We were walking from site to site on a brisk January day. We saw the pandas, the giraffes, the elephants. And then we went to the beaver exhibit.

“Daddy, where’s the beaver?”

“He’s in his house.”

“What do you call his house?”

“Well, Emma,” I said, steeling myself. “It’s a dam.”

“Oh, Daddy…” she said with a level of sincerity only petite 4-year-olds can muster. “That’s a bad word.”

“No, no Emma. It’s not the bad ‘damn.’ It’s the good dam.”

“Oh,” she said, her wheels turning as onlookers snickered. “So you mean there’s a good but, and a bad butt, and a good dam, and a bad damn.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Daddy,” Emma said with a sense of confidence. “I don’t say the bad butt, and I don’t say the bad damn. I just say shit.”

I had no retort, just a sheepish reply.

“Well, Emma, there’s no such thing as good shit.”

And a man walking by said, “I beg to differ.”

Tell a Story in 100 Words or Less

“All My Life” — I just wanted to hear that song live. “Can’t do it,” the 74-year-old legend said as he picked at the piano. “Don’t like the introduction.” He mentioned my love for the song in a letter he wrote to my (now) wife, a letter framed in my basement today. But he still wouldn’t sing it. Then, one night at a show, Charles Brown asked the two of us to stand, told the framework of our story, explained that we had waited for each other without knowing it, and sang the song. It was the night of my life.

Need Proof?

A summer movie project. Yes, we still have neighbors who speak to us...

Musical obsessions and circle backs

Each summer, which is when we see Nicholas for the most sustained period of time, the kids find a new musical to obsess over. Usually this starts with Nicholas and spreads to the rest of the troupe like swine flu, eventually taking over all of our lives and not letting go until the next one comes along.

A quick rundown of just the last five years:

• 2005: "Wicked" and "Mamma Mia" (Nick).
• 2006: "Rent," (the movie, then the show), "A Chorus Line," (revival), "High School Musical."
• 2007: "Hairspray" and, sadly, "HSM2" (the movie, not the high school play Nicholas was in last year).
• 2008: "Avenue Q," "Mamma Mia" (the movie dragged the rest of us in), and, yes, "HSM3" (but only Emma, Ben, and Nick this time).
• 2009: "Spring Awakening" (all except Emma) and "Next to Normal."

This does not include shows the kids perform in with Metropolitan Fine Arts Center. Think about the entire Disney canon there, plus "Annie" and "The Wizard of Oz," and you can see why I made the "obsession" reference.

What do I mean by circle backs?

• "Annie" was the first show Jill and I did together; last year, we watched our kids perform in it.
• We found out Jill was pregnant with Kate during "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"; two years ago, while our entire family was participating in another production of the show, my father died.
• "The Wizard of Oz" not only permeates society, it runs through our family like a bad computer virus. I served as an assistant stage manager for one production, while Kate made her stage debut in another at 6 weeks old because Jill was playing Glinda. Nicholas has done the show three times, and the trio performed in an MFAC production in 2008.

Considering that Jill was pregnant with Ben and Emma when she did "Annie Get Your Gun" — they made their stage debuts in utero — I can't wait to see what happens when that one gets revived. Of course, that show also has a circle back of its' own: It was the first Broadway show Jill and I saw together as a couple.

It won't be the last.

Dinner Theater 101: About Us

In our family, we don't do dinner — we do dinner theater. Come over to our house and inevitably you'll get a show of some kind.

I'm not sure when this started, except that I can't remember a time when it hasn't occurred. All four children have the performer gene.

By way of introduction, let's provide you with cliff notes on how we got to this point:

Jill and I met in 1994 when I spoke at her Career Day at Reidsville Middle School, where she was the counselor. We became friends, and did a show ("Annie") for the local community theater group. I was nearing the end of a five-year marriage/seven-year relationship that had produced a son (Nicholas, the now 16-year-old); Jill was living with someone and engaged.

Later that year, she married (I was, ironically, the wedding photographer). The following spring, I divorced. That fall, she divorced. The next year, we got married.

Several months later, we had Katharine (now 12). Just 11 1/2 months after that, Ben and Emma (now 11) came along. And we haven't stopped since...

We moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 2001 and work for associations that support K-12 public education. Emma and Kate live for dance, while Nicholas is a singer/actor/emerging artist in North Carolina.

Ben? We'll leave that for another posting.

From the Bottom Up

So you've come to this blog and reached the bottom, the spot at which we're supposed to give you the reasons why we're doing this now and for the foreseeable future. And it probably wouldn't hurt to have some context for the title, either.

I'm not sure why I picked 6:30 a.m. on a rainy, freezing Sunday October morning to finally sign up with Google, except that this is something that has been on my to-do scroll for months, ever since my wife Jill brought it up during dinner.

Listening to the four kids chatter relentlessly, intermittently interrupting the proceedings to show off a new dance move, sing a song, or do some standup, she looked across the table and said, "Our life should be a reality show."

Jill has a point, especially now because we are living in two different cities with kids who have only five years separating them in age, yet attend four schools in three states. (I'll explain later...)

At the same time, I'm not quite ready for cameras to stalk us relentlessly or for my bride to get a short blond haircut and a sudden attitude. And I don't want to be forced to explain, ad infinitum, why three kids are exhibitionist wannabes while the fourth refuses to go on camera, preferring instead to look at the fine print of the non-existent contract with some fourth-rate public access cable channel that is following us around.

But I do think, at least in part, that we have a life worth chronicling. So here we are... We hope those of you who are top-to-bottom readers have enjoyed it so far. For those who read from the bottom up, welcome.