The Dad Who Parents. No, Really.

Dads matter, yes. But do they matter... as much? Are there fundamental differences in the roles of mothers and fathers? And if there are, is that ok? What do we really mean by "coparenting" and how much more involved is this younger generation of fathers in all of the family business? Literary critic and professor Dr. Monika Gehlawat sits down for a discussion about all this plus the value of parental differences, whether birth order is destiny, having immigrant parents, which long-dead novelists we should hang portraits of in our kitchens, and much more. Then, poet Hayan Charara comes by to pick up his latest in a long glittering line of major awards.

Get a handsome copy of Monika's book IN DEFENSE OF DIALOGUE here.

The "lovingkindness" meditation Monika describes is helpfully printed here. You need that. We need that.

Images of Henry James to print out, frame, and hang over your kitchen sink can be found here. Be sure to laser print those bad bois.

Then head over to podrepod.com for more information about the show and to sign up for email updates so you never miss an episode or that moment in the near future when we blast out the special patented PODRE secret instructions for how to be the perfect dad.

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Chris: Dads, they've been around since the beginning, but what do we really know about them? It's time to start asking questions. I'm Chris Brunt. This is PODRE.

Julian: Now, you know what we're going to be talking about today. Dad, tell us what we're going to be talking about today.

Chris: Whether or not you should be able to eat candy after school.

Julian: Yes, I should be able to eat candy after school.

Chris: Why?

Julian: Because.

Chris: What? Make an argument.

Julian: I should eat candy.

Chris: Don't hit the desk.

Julian: I should eat candy because it's yummy after school. Because I just went to hard work, that's why.

Chris: The hard work of school?

Julian: Yes. Math, subtraction, addition and times, timetables.

Chris: Yeah, but you know what? Tomorrow after school, you know where we're going?

Julian: Dentist.

Chris: The dentist. And the dentist is going to want to see that you've taken good care of your teeth, and you know what candy does to your teeth?

Julian: Yes, but the dentist isn't today. It's tomorrow.

Chris: I want to talk today about co parenting, which really means, given that I'm a dude, I want to talk about labor. When people talk about having kids, especially in straight coupled them, there's this cliched version of the story that has something to do with the death of romance. Like, if you have kids, it has to strain the marriage. It's hard to be romantic when you have little kids, and that's certainly not completely invalid. There are definitely periods of having little ones, especially having babies, where that's the whole focus. It has to be. My wife, Chanelle, is a writer, a brilliant one. She wrote a great collection of short stories called The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead and a brilliant novel called The Gone Dead. She's won these big awards. She's a star. She's beautiful and she's glamorous, and she's written these incredible books at a young age, and she can make things look easy. I think a lot of people think it is easy for her. Right out of the MFA, she had a literary agent, and it seemed like shortly after that, she had a two book deal. And next thing you know, she's on stage with big famous writers. And shortly after that, her novel is on the shelves, and Jimmy Fallon is waving it around on The Tonight Show. And there is, I guess, from an outsider perspective, an easy glide path to all that. But I don't think she'd mind me telling you that. Of course it wasn't that easy. The amount of labor that people don't see that goes into writing books like the books that she has written, and into just living your life while you're trying to write. And I had a privileged position to see that labor as her partner. I mean, I'm her first and her last reader. So I get to see these stories and these novels in their earliest form, and I see them again years down the line in the middle, where she's beginning to figure them out and even more years down the line in that late draft. I'm really the only person who really knows how much labor is put into these beautiful works of art that when you read them, they seem effortless and graceful and fully formed. That privileged vantage point makes me see them as more valuable, not less, as more wondrous and miraculous that they came to be after all this struggle and suffering and tenacious effort. When she was writing her first book and she had this big New York agent, she was also tempting in New Orleans. I was making, like, ten grand a year as a PhD student, and she had to more or less support us with an executive assistant gig that she hated. I mean, we were living hand to mouth, living in a ******, unheated apartment in mid city New Orleans. There wasn't a lot of glamour there beyond how we felt about each other and how we felt about what we were trying to do, the power of our ambition and our love for each other. Julian was born just before her first collection came out, so she was on the road with him on a book tour with her first baby. Sometimes me and him, or sometimes just him, carding him to bookstores and panels and festivals, and after that we were both writing our next books while we raised him from a baby to a toddler. And then, boom, she's pregnant again. And here we go. She gave birth to Nico one week after her debut novel came out, and going on the road with another baby, a newborn breastfeeding on airplanes and in the bathrooms at literary festivals and bookstores. And never, of course, of course, never sleeping, never getting any real sleep, never getting more than 30 minutes here, 60 minutes there. There's only so much about that experience of new motherhood that men understand, myself included. There's only so much we really get when you're partnering with somebody in this endeavor, you do at least witness that stuff, and you might be the only one who sees it. And can't we see that as what's truly romantic? To see the work and the labor that goes into raising a book under difficult conditions or into raising a child under any conditions at all? Right. And to still be in love, to never lose that youthful sense of romance and possibility and excitement. I don't know why we speak about these things as if they're incompatible. I think it's just a deepening in a way, it's similar to me to the debate over whether writers and artists should have kids at all. As if kids are going to detract from the project of making art, and certainly in some material or quotidian way, they do. They do make life more crowded and busy and hectic and chaotic. And therefore it can be harder to find the time and space and freedom to make your art. Sure, that could be true for some people. But it's also true that having kids is a deepening. They're a deepening of your felt emotional experience, that you understand something new about human existence in having children and loving that totally. When she was pregnant with Julian, she had a nine month bonding experience that I just didn't have. It was physical and real. It was like she was getting to know his movements, his rhythms. She talked to him like, hey, it's time to go to sleep now. She was already parenting him in the womb. I couldn't do that. I was just sort of on the outside watching this in wonder, feeling more or less like the same guy, just this, like, 30 year old bro who's waiting for my life to change, waiting for this enormous event to happen. Everyone's like you ready. You ready? I'm like, no, I'm not ******* talking about I'm the same person. And then one day it did. It happens, and now I'm in it with her. But she had that head start. She went through that labor appreciating. The differences in the conditions of parenthood and the differences in the bond that exists between your partner and your kids can be a good thing. I mean, forget about the difficulty of labor itself, right? There's something different. When they laid our babies on her chest and they heard her voice, and they looked up and saw her eyes once, when Julian was still a baby, he was about seven months old. Chanel had gone back to work, and it was summertime. I was teaching, so I was off for the summer, and I was home with him every day. She was working a staff job on campus, so she was kind of in a nine to fiver, and I was home with him. He was getting sick a lot, and he'd get these bad fevers. Sometimes he'd get up to 103, 104. One day he had one of these viruses, and it got up to, like, 104, and it's climbing, and I'm like, I got to get him to the ER. But it's Houston. It's rush hour. I hate to put this tiny little baby in a car seat right now. He's so miserable. So I think, well, let me try the Tylenol and see if that gets his fever down. So I go and I get the little baby Tylenol syringe. You fill it up, and you squirt that red stuff in their mouths, and normally, a little bit at a time, they take it. But this time I got it to him, and the second it kind of hit his mouth, he threw up so hard. I mean, it was like knocking the head off a fire hydrant. Just almost a solid cylinder of red bile spewing from his mouth, all over me, all over the walls for a long time, too. It was like, how do you even have that much fluid in you? It was shocking. I'd never seen anything like it. And afterwards, he went limp in my arms, and he closed his eyes. It seemed like he stopped breathing. And I'm rocking him, I'm bouncing him. I'm calling his name over and over, and he won't wake up. So I panicked. This is the scariest moment in my life. I have no idea what's happening, but my son, my baby son is non responsive, and his little muscles aren't working anymore. He's just limp. So I call 911, and I call Chanelle. Where are you? She says, I'm already on my way home. I said, you got to get here as fast as you can. I'm raving at her about what happened, and she's fighting her way through rush hour traffic, and there's an ambulance on the way, but his eyes are closed. I can't tell if he's breathing or not. And he's limp in my arms. I call his name over and over and over again. Finally, Chanelle comes to the door. She beat the ambulance by a couple minutes, and she comes up the stairs, and she calls his name. And Julian, for the first time, opens his eyes. I'd been screaming his name, crying his name to no effect. But when she walked up the stairs and said his name, he opened his eyes, and it was like he was resurrected. That, my friends, is co-parenting. In just a minute, you're going to hear my interview with Dr. Monika Gehlawat. But before I introduce her, I want to think a little bit more about the way gender does or doesn't structure how my partner and I parent our kids. Chanelle always reminds me that before Julian was born, she was observing my general cluelessness and lack of baby knowledge with trepidation and putting into place mechanisms to ensure that she wouldn't end up saddled with all that invisible labor, the never ending administrative tasks of caring for children, running a family household. She had been a nanny in her earlier life, and she had much younger siblings she'd help care for. And she had an interest and a skill set with children that predated becoming pregnant with one, whereas I was like, okay, babies, sure. So I remember her sitting me down and saying, you're in charge of the doctors. You find the pediatrician, make the appointments, keep up with the vaccinations, et cetera. That's in your portfolio. See, I didn't even know we had portfolios at that juncture. But she'd done all that for the pregnancy. I didn't pay much attention when she was reserving spots in our birthing class or picking out decorations for the nursery, making sure we had all the equipage we needed. So this was her way to ensure we were being mindful about the division of labor once the kid was born. It's funny when she brings this up, because all that seems pretty distant now. The version of me that was like, what do babies eat? Is pretty long gone. Some of how this plays out has as much to do with our relationship as it does our theoretical views on parenting, to say nothing of our take on gender. Like, I'm married to a successful and ambitious woman who I respect and admire and who happens to be in the exact same line of work as me. So there's already a structural equivalency to how we look at things like our schedules, how we're using our time, and who is or isn't getting time to write or prep for their classes or promote their new work, et cetera. We've always been on the same team, playing the same game, and I realize that that just isn't the case for a lot of Coparents in that structural sense. One parent may be in a very different career with very different demands on time travel, the physical or mental toll or work takes than the other, and that inevitably shapes the way parenting duties and expectations get divvied up. But I wonder, I genuinely wonder how many Coparenting couples like us there are out there, especially in the current generation of younger parents partnerships in which gender has very little, if anything, to do with who does what for the kids or how much they do it. My guess, and this is not backed up by data, this is purely anecdotally derived is that it's more prevalent than we say it is. I know it's probably foolish to even approach this topic as a father, but **** it. If we can't honestly report and analyze and theorize about what our relationships and family roles are like, then how do we ever expect the old patriarchal models and norms to be overturned and replaced with something better, more progressive and just and healthy for everyone? I see this tendency online on the hell hole that is Twitter primarily, but also in book reviews in the literary discourse around things like Keith Gessen's book, where the upshot is how dare a father publish a book? Or broadcast a feeling via Tweet about the challenges and stress of parenting when historically it's moms who do all the real work, even as that father is publishing that book or broadcasting that tweet out of their experience, more or less as coequal caregivers to their children. Lots of dads are basically moms now. That's why we're here. And it's a good thing. This happened in Tommy Vietor the other day. Tommy from Pod Save America. He's got a little baby. I guess his wife had gone out of town for a few days, so he's handling the parenting by himself. And all he tweeted was something like eight more hours till bedtime, and most people just wrote some corny. Hang in there, Tommy. You got this type of fluff. But it's Twitter. So there were also trolls, the self serious trolls, which are the worst kind. And what I keep thinking about when something like, all due respect, but a woman would never tweet this, we expect our male partners to leave on business or leave us with the childcare all day, and we don't ever complain or expect any credit for it. Do better. And I'm like, oh, really? Like, do you only know Don and Betty Draper? Look, I'm not saying that there aren't any parts of our co parenting regime that accord with traditional gender norms. Sure there are. When the boys are sick or when they hurt themselves, they're more likely to want mommy in that situation. She is more comforting, I think, than I am. I'd prefer her too, over me. And when it's time to go outside, do sports stuff, hit the baseball, ride the bikes, play whatever new game we're obsessed with, it's usually me. Who's taking them, who's teaching them, who wants to be out there participating? Though I do have to note, contractually, that Chanelle is a much better soccer player than me, and she was the one who had the patience to teach Julian how to scooter and rollerskate. The point is, some of our tendencies do fall into your classic this is mommy stuff and this is daddy stuff, but it's not predetermined. It's more or less accidental. We just naturally tend to do the stuff we're better at more than the stuff we're not. And we, too, as parents and people, are products of this highly gendered society. But it has never crossed my mind from the moment my first kid was born that I should not have to do something for my children because I'm their father. And that thing, whatever it is, is over on the maternal side of the ledger. And if it had, and I'd voice that belief, my wife would laugh her ******* *** off. My mindset has always been the parental labor that falls to me is the parental labor that needs to get done whenever. I'm sort of the closest person to hand, whether that's knowing what's in the kitchen cupboards on Sunday nights so we can get the lunches made, or folding all those tiny pairs of pajamas and putting them away or remembering to buy more bandaids and gummy vitamins at Target, or having that long, painful discussion after school about what those other little demons said to your kid at recess that hurt their feelings. This is not work that women mothers are more suited for. It's just work that they were always told they had to do. There's no intrinsic reason fathers can't do it. Many of us do. Many of us can't imagine existing in partnerships where we weren't expected to. And if we're going to make headway in changing the norms around Coparenting, especially the gender norms, moving away from those patriarchal models of the past, then we have to publicly model and acknowledge that and quit yelling at Tommy. Vtor for treating the normal processes and stresses of parenting is just that normal standing invitation to Tommy, Jon, Dan, the Pod Save America guys, to come on PODRE and talk fatherhood with me. I've been a friend of your pod since the Keeping It 1600 days, and now it's time for you to return the favor. Become a friend of ours. Lovett. I'm especially talking to you. What kind of daddy stuff do you want to talk about? Okay, time for our guest. Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi and author of In Defense of Dialogue a study of Postwar American Literature. Monika is a brilliant critic of contemporary art and literature. She has a philosophical mind matched with a very immediate and wonderfully direct style of communication that makes her a world class teacher and an important writer. And to me, the kind of friend that you can rely on to clarify the most difficult questions. Should I take this job and move my whole family or not? How do I pursue my professional ambitions alongside my equally ambitious partner? How do I get an eight month old baby to nap? Monica has been an indispensable mentor and friend to me over the years, and I think you'll see why. Dr. Monika Gehlawat on co-parenting, gender, the psychodynamics of family life.

Monika: My older brother has always been a bit of a handful, so that was a challenge for me growing up to.

Chris: Be that's the way older brothers are, right? It's their birthright to be the handful of the bunch.

Monika: Yeah. I don't know. Some people I do feel like I'm the classic middle child in a lot of ways.

Chris: See, I don't know about this. So I grew up with just one brother, and then I have two, of course, as you know, just the two. So I'm not as well versed as some people in the middle child phenomena. Can you explain that to me a little bit? Like, how does it work? Like, what happens when you're a middle child?

Monika: Well, this is supposedly and then in my case, it holds true. So may not hold true beyond my anecdote, but the middle child is expected to just kind of get along and go along and sort it out and be fairly self sufficient. The older child is like the renegade prodigal, whatever prima donna. Yeah. And then the younger one is the baby who everybody babies. And the middle child is thus the one who can cooperate, can eat anywhere, manage in any circumstance, be fairly thick skinned.

Chris: The conciliator, the peacemaker, the hey, guys, this is just a big misunderstanding. Let's talk to each other. Let's hear each other. That kind of yeah.

Monika: I don't know how much of it has to do with the diplomacy part. I think it's just like the self sufficiency. You're not getting a ton of attention, which I don't remember minding as a child. I don't have memories of wishing they paid me more attention. I really liked being left alone.

Chris: Just reading all of Proust by yourself upstairs while all the racket was going on downstairs, everybody's getting in trouble. And you had worked your way through volume three well, I do have this.

Monika: Memory that I had this game for a while that actually, I lived in a hotel and these people, they just lived in the hotel, too. They weren't my family. So my brother was a guy whose room was down the hall from mine in the hotel, and my dad was the driver and my mom was the cook, and I interacted with them basically in that capacity, but without telling them.

Chris: Right.

Monika: Yeah. They didn't know, but that's how they were to me.

Chris: Did you tell your friends, like, my driver will be here at 515, so we'd better hurry up?

Monika: No, I just was very formal towards all of them. They were just strangers. Cohabiting the hotel that I lived in is that Eloise?

Chris: I never read that book, but I know it's a famous you know what?

Monika: I never read it either, and nor has Sonia. I'm sure that a therapist would tell me that it was some sort of coping mechanism for the fact that I didn't really like them that much at that time in my life, or that I didn't feel close to them. I don't know. I enjoyed it, though. I really have happy memories of that game.

Chris: It's interesting that the way you're describing the middle child and the baby, both of those roles somehow, like, paradoxically, Nico, my youngest, seems to be just naturally he's already slipped into both of them, right. Which is weird because you'd think that they would be in tension, but he's totally self sufficient because his older brother is taking up so much oxygen and so much space that he'll just kind of like he's just lurking around a corner, like quietly doing a Rubik's cube or like reading a book at at age zero. Just like flipping the pages by himself quietly and happily. And yet he's also the baby and he likes to be called the baby. We can't call him a big boy because if we do, he yells at us. He says, no, I teeny tiny baby. And we're like, okay, sorry. Yeah, so it's like he likes the identity of Babiness still. And Julian can kind of baby him sometimes and he sort of talks to him very he patronizes him a lot. He's like Nico, so it seems like he's comfortable in both of those roles at once. So I wonder if that's what happens. If you only have two kids, then the first one is always going to be the first. No matter what. They're going to have that role. They're going to play the villain of the bunch. But the second one has to be the middle child and the baby, maybe.

Monika: Yeah. It's interesting because Sonya is now the age that I was when my younger brother was born, and it just astonishes me to remember how much responsibility I was given to take care of him and do all this stuff. And I loved it. I loved having a baby brother and I just loved playing with him and hanging out with him, so I never begrudged it. But to think of Sonya having the capacity to look after another human being.

Chris: What do you mean? She's the pragmatic one in the family. She's doing y'all's taxes. She's keeping you to a budget.

Monika: That's true. She's very good with her friends, younger siblings, actually. She's very patient and kind, so she probably would handle it just fine.

Chris: She'd have you guys switched over to cloth diapers. It would be a whole new regime around there.

Monika: Yes.

Chris: I don't know.

Monika: Well, that's true. She's very progressive about the environment and all of that, so she's definitely constantly ashamed of us. My mom hates when I tell this story, but it's true. We were not like a hugging, affectionate family when it was the four of us. We lived in the hotel together. Right. And then when my younger brother came along, he just, out of sheer nature, not nurture, has always been this incredibly affectionate. Like, if he sits down on the couch next to you, he's going to sit really close to you and put his arm around you or lean into you, and he's just this very kind of physically affectionate human. And it was the first time that I realized how nice that was to be hugged and to sit close to somebody. And he's just always been like that.

Chris: So did he change the culture of your whole family then, with that kind of behavior?

Monika: I mean, he did, but the other thing about this, and this kind of maybe speaks more to the parental focus here is like, my parents had me and my older brother when they had just come to this country in the 70s, they were living in New York and they were just busting their *****. And it was very stressful. Like, our childhood was a stressful time for them to make ends meet, to get their life going, to buy a house, to settle, really. And then when my brother was born, they were doing much better in every sense. I mean, they were financially well off. They had someone who helped clean the house. They were able to pay someone who'd, like, watch him on a regular basis as much credit as I want to give to his innate character, which is just like, he's a lovely person. I also think he was raised in an environment that was much more stable and people were just happier and there was more bandwidth to enjoy their life together.

Chris: The conditions were more luxurious for him to be his joyful self.

Monika: Right.

Chris: And you and your older brother are like, you don't get it, man. You don't know what we went through.

Monika: Well, it's funny because sometimes we have had to say that a couple of times. We had different kind of different parents than he did. They were raising us the way they had been raised in India. Like the discipline, the expectations, the kind of authoritarian type of it's all they knew. And they were in their twenty s. I mean, they were just like young up and coming immigrants, which is so different from how they were in their 30s when they had my younger brother. And they had been in this country for a while and they were really sort of secure and settled. And I try to remember that it's been a lot easier to realize that as becoming a parent myself. But it's interesting, when we talked about having a child, Charles was really firm about like, we're not going to do this until we're financially stable. Because I think he also grew up in an environment where it felt very financially precarious. I don't think it actually was, but I think the way that the grownups and his family handled all of that, it was very stressful as children to live in that environment. And I don't think he didn't want to do that to a child of his own.

Chris: And that's hard too. It's hard to know how to communicate to your kids the realities of money and the resources that your family has and teaching them about responsibility. I mean, I have this thing, I have this constant battle right now with Julian over seltzer, which is that he likes to go to the fridge and take a seltzer, open it, take two sips and then forget about it. And then an hour later go open another one and do that so that he goes through like a six pack of seltzer a day but never actually drinks them. And I'm like the ******* who follows him around going like, that better not be another seltzer. And he's like, Dude, but I find myself like breaking down the dollars and cents with him. Right. I'm like, look, that twelve pack was 699 because that's the good **** you're drinking right there. But I don't know what message I'm really sending to him. I hope that in my better moments, I'm teaching him to not be wasteful, to be grateful for what we have, and to not take more than he needs, blah, blah, blah. But what I may be communicating to him is just my anxiety over every little nickel that gets spent around here because I'm not inside his head. So I don't know what he's really getting from me. Do you know what I mean?

Monika: Yeah, I do. But I don't think that's an ******* move to point out the value of something. And it seems like it's more about waste. And I do think we kind of owe it to our kids to make them aware of the cost of waste with resources these days. I don't know.

Chris: I would be doing in principle, it's not a bad deal, but it's more the style. I got to revise my style sometimes. It's like by the 7th time I'm pretty much in full ******* mode, I think.

Monika: Yeah, I mean, I think the. Thing that Charles and I relate to each other in terms of our memories of childhood was just this sort of layer of anxiety and impatience and stress that was part of the atmosphere of our childhood homes. And that's what I'm distinctive, if I can recall correctly, from my younger brother's upbringing. And that's something that we try to be conscious of around Sonya is just sort of what is the atmosphere of the home? What is the attitude of the mind? What's the nonverbal **** that is into the home?

Chris: What's the weather like around here? What's the weather like inside this house on a daily basis?

Monika: Yeah.

Chris: I wanted to talk today with you about co parenting because you're someone who has a relationship and a marriage that I've always admired and thought was really beautiful and something to kind of look up to.

Monika: Things really improved for us when I came to the realization that his differences for me actually are really good for her. The way he parents differently is actually really good for her to have instead of being like, we have to be the same, he has such a different vibe. And if I wasn't there, like, if I dropped dead today, it would be like Copa Cabana at my house. They are so chill together. They just have this very easy vibe. There's no one in charge who's saying yes, no, maybe. So they're extremely compatible in that.

Chris: But isn't that predicated on the fact of you on the full composite dynamic of the family?

Monika: Well, that's a great point, and I will say, to their credit, they give me a lot of credit for the practicality of my role in the family structure. But the other thing that I was going to say is that so pretty early on, I decided philosophically that it would be healthier for her to see us disagree and even argue and then make up, and for her to understand that relationships can work that way. And then that doesn't mean that they fall apart so that she's not afraid of conflict either with her and someone else or being around it. That we argued about something in the kitchen and then we made up and she sees us being physically affectionate or she sees us hugging each other. I love you. And so then it's like the world didn't end because Mommy and Papa had this argument about who was loading the dishwasher or even something more serious.

Chris: I think that I had to change the way I think about this because I think that my instinct is to always show that me and Mommy are great. We're so happy together, we get along so well. And the few times where her and I have actually argued in front of the boys and we don't yell at each other, but that tension is there, right. We're in real disagreement over something, and it's not going to wait until later. It's happening right now. Our oldest Julian will usually yelp in complaint, right, and be like, Stop, guy. He'll referee. He'll get in there and be like, can you stop? But it's sort of like you hear the anxiety in his voice. He's like, I don't like the fact that you two are doing this. The lesson I took from that is to never do that in front of him right, no matter what. And to always kind of save it for later, save it when they're in bed, and then we can have this conversation however we need to. But what you're saying is, no, let them see disagreement and then also let them see that we can still disagree respectfully, we're not going to try to hurt one another, and that we make up at the end. Like we come to some kind of reconciliation. Yeah. Which is what we do out of sight of them. But why aren't we showing them that part?

Monika: Yeah. I mean, obviously, ideally, we can go over this stuff when she's at school or she's asleep. I'm not saying that we willfully parade it in front of her, and sometimes you're ****** enough that you can't do it respectfully, and so that's especially a time when you shouldn't be. But I also just know that there's an anxiety in a child when parents are whispering in another room and there's an edge to the whispering, and the child knows that things aren't copacetic over there, but they don't know what's going on. And so those are the moments where, if I hear her, I'll just say sounds you can come in. It's not a big deal. Me and Papa were just disagreeing about X, Y, and Z. But we're good. You don't have to worry about us. This is normal.

Chris: I love that. I love the frankness of that and the unembarrassedness of it. And I think it's so hard for me personally to be like that.

Monika: Well, I think for me, part of it, too, is raising a daughter and wanting her to feel like she's not afraid of disagreement, because that's such an easy thing for young girls to get taught to be agreeable and to find confrontation scary, or even to view things that are not confrontation as confrontation. Just saying what you really think or disagreeing. And I see it in grown women who are my friends, who are smart and interesting, but when it comes to conflict, they would rather just avoid than have a conversation with somebody and resolve something. I just think it's really important for her to see that it's not scary. The world doesn't end, even if it takes a day. Ultimately, these two people who love each other will come together, and there's trust there.

Chris: I love that, and I want to come back to what you said about gender in a minute, but I also want to go back to this idea of parents always being on the same page right. And how you and Charles are different and how you've come to see that as a good thing, as a productive kind of difference for Sonya. And I think that that's counterintuitive. That's not usually the message that I hear about co parenting, which is always like, get on the same page. Right. You guys have to agree on a philosophy and always be completely in lockstep. It's very all this pressure to become a unitary parent.

Monika: Well, you lose the benefit of having two if you totally try to be one. My parents were very much like the two of them. Even when you knew that they didn't actually agree, they were always like, that lockstep. And it created a dynamic of us against them. I just never felt like I was going to be heard by one of them. And it was like their different personalities were fused into one as a parental wall.

Chris: The Ministry of Parenthood.

Monika: Yeah. And I think, fortunately, in many, many ways, the sort of general framework of what we think is right and wrong is very similar in terms of the importance of school and respecting people and how you act in the world. We're very much on the same page about that. So if she steps out of line in any of those ways, there's no disagreement. But it's more about core values.

Chris: You guys share core values.

Monika: Yeah, exactly. And so there's no debating about that. I think it's just that we have very different communication styles, and it's extremely helpful to have his style sometimes and for me to just be like, I can't, I'm out, and here it's you. Now you're up. Yeah. And I can sometimes hear his tone, his tempo and the messaging. I wouldn't have been able to come up with it, but it's highly effective in certain situations. Those are the moments that I'm most keenly aware of how hard it must be to be a single parent, because you do just drain out at a certain point and you're not able to be the best self that you want to be. And just to be able to tap out and have someone tap in, that's a huge luxury that a lot of people don't have.

Chris: I don't know. I think for me, there is a little bit of a danger of letting this kind of play into my worst impulses as a parent that like, oh, well, I have a shorter fuse than Mommy does, and I yell louder because I'm this big dumb guy. And that's well, that's just the difference between her and I. Read is going to have both of these different styles.

Monika: Yeah. I mean, the lowest common denominator in our house is respectful tone. No one gets to talk **** to anybody else. No one gets to use those tones of voices. And anyone who does is expected to apologize. And we apologize to her. We apologize to each other, and she's expected to apologize to us.

Chris: I know it's really hard sometimes to do, but it's so simply understood and communicated. I like that. I'm going to write that and put it on the kitchen wall.

Monika: Yeah, no, we call it a tone standard. I think that's following Henry James, so there's a tone standard in the house, and we all know what it is, and we can goof up and have a short fuse, and then you just say, I'm sorry, I love that tone standard.

Chris: I'm going to put a picture of Henry James next to your picture that hangs in our kitchen. Monica and I'll just point from now on, when somebody meeting Julian, of course, is screaming their head off at one of us, I'm just going to point to Henry James, say, like, Henry's watching.

Monika: Yeah, just tone standard.

Chris: So let's talk a little bit about gender, because I love the way that you were describing being very conscious of raising Sonya to be fully aware of the society in which we live and the expectations that come along with that and the norms that come along with that. It's not the kind of thing you can just kind of bury your head in the sand about as a parent and just hope that they'll just magically enter into a genderless society where everyone should be treated equally. Right. It's the same thing with race, with class. I know that when we were bringing Julian up in first Texas and then Tennessee, no matter how we dressed him or what kind of toys he was playing with, he was always called a girl by people. And we let his hair grow long, he's got his mommy's eyes, these big, beautiful blue eyes, and he did look like a girl. People on the street like, oh, what a beautiful girl. What's her name? And we'd always say, Julian, and then go, and if we were in Houston, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee, or Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and you say, his name is Julian, they'd go, oh, I'm so sorry, so sorry I misgendered your baby. And we're like, no, it's fine. It's really okay. It's really okay. So it's like, from the very beginning as an infant, it was clear that we can do all kinds of things on our side, but the world is going to have their way with communicating all these different messages about gender to our child and that there's going to be a constant kind of negotiation there.

Monika: The two things that came to mind. One was much longer ago, she had, you may remember, short hair. She had the kind of very cute Winona Ryder circa 1990 haircut.

Chris: Yeah.

Monika: And it was very chic. And then she had it all the way through kindergarten. Then she went to first grade, and she came home one day and she said, I was in the bathroom, and these girls said, are you a boy? Why are you in the girl's bathroom? And I was like, Honey, they know that you're a girl. They don't actually think you're a boy. They just have never seen a girl with short hair, and they're uncomfortable with it, so they're trying to make you uncomfortable. But the damage was done. She said she wanted to grow her hair out. And my thing is, I'm not going to make my kid be the object of my principles. I was just like, all right, let's grow your hair out. Because, I mean, she has to live in the world and I want her to be comfortable in it. That was a moment that always bothered me, but I knew it would happen because it's a lack of imagination that kids inherit from their parents. So that was one. But then much more recently, and this is where I think of myself in terms of what I'm modeling. So Sonya is a perfectionist. She puts a lot of pressure on herself to be really good right away, whether it's like the butterfly stroke in swimming or it's a new piano piece or whatever. And as things have become more difficult, her frustrations have grown. And I was starting to read about how to help a child who's a perfectionist, because from my perspective, I was like, we really don't put that pressure on her, and we're just really supportive of wherever she's at and where is it coming from? Is it just her personality? So I was reading this article one day and it was saying that you have to show your child your own missteps and your own challenges and the difficulties you have in the day. And it was so counterintuitive to what I thought my job as a parent was, which was to burden her with that stuff, right?

Chris: Just like the conflict thing, right?

Monika: Exactly. So that's so funny you use that word, because so this is what happened. So I'm reading this, right? And then Charles comes home and he comes in and I look up at him and I'm like, dude, I think Sonya thinks I'm perfect. And he looked at me and he goes, you think? It sounded so bad coming out of my mouth. But I did start to change after that. And I'll share more in the car, I'll share more about work, I'll share more about being feeling overwhelmed or feeling tired or just being like, I don't really want to talk right now. I just need time to myself because I've had a tough day. And it's interesting because in her empathy increasing, which is to say she'll then say, oh, what happened, Mommy? Why did you have a hard day? It's made her more kind to herself. That's the whole compassion trick, right? Like, if you can be more compassionate towards others, then you can start to be more compassionate to yourself. And I just don't think she ever thought I needed it because I thought I shouldn't show it to her.

Chris: Mommy's perfect. She never makes mistakes and everything's easy for her and she knows everything.

Monika: Of course, it was such an epiphany because I was like, oh my God, that's totally not the idea I want my daughter to have. I don't want her to think that as a woman, you have to have it all together all the time because that's already such a challenge for so many working mothers. I know where it's like, you have to have your work **** together and you have to have your mom **** together and your spouse **** together. And it's an impossible standard, and yet we hold ourselves to it and we compare ourselves to whoever's doing it well in whatever area. And then I was like, God, I don't want her to think that that's what you look up to.

Chris: I think this is the exact same phenomenon that's going on with Julian, with my oldest son, in that I'm perfect, right? And he sees that and I know everything and I'm never a hair out of place. And every time I pick him up from school, I say, how was your day? And he's like, fine. And sometimes he'll say, how was your day, dad? And say, you know, I had a great day. Whether I did or not, I'm like, yeah, I had a great day. Because I'm trying to model this like, enjoy life, son. But I've asked the same question so many times, where is his perfectionism coming from? Because I know I'm not consciously I'm conscious of trying to not instill that in him and just sort of let him see that things that are challenging for him are also challenging for me, too.

Monika: Yeah, I mean, I think that the even more kind of radical vulnerability is for him to know that grown up stuff that you do is hard for you.

Chris: So not just faking mistakes as if I'm also a six year old boy, but letting him actually see my real vulnerability, that sounds a lot harder. Monika, I'd rather just mess up a couple of words here and there. Okay, how do I do that?

Monika: Well, because, listen, this is what I realized she would say to us when we would say to her, you're, you're doing great in the pool. I see you swimming. You're doing great. Or like, this piece is just going to take a while, she would say, you're just saying that because you're my parent. So she wasn't buying our support and tolerance of her process. She was not persuaded by that. What was going to persuade her and what I didn't realize was to see the people she cohabits with not handling everything perfectly, giving grace to themselves for it, having humor, like laughing at themselves for the times that they **** up, supporting each other, letting the other one support them. So many things that, again, this is funny how it comes back to that middle child thing. So many things that I really have a hard time with. I have a hard time letting people help me. I have a hard time admitting that I need it. You have to come to me and literally take me by the arms and be like, you're tired. Sit down. Let me do this for you. And it's only through wanting that for my child, that I have been able to give myself the permission to be like, I need help, or like, I ****** up, or whatever. And it's weird that I had to trick myself into doing that vulnerability thing just so that she could feel vulnerable herself. But it's been really helpful. And it's amazing how ready Charles, for example, is to help me and to take care of me and just all these things that I didn't let myself have.

Chris: That's so helpful to hear. Because I think that this has really become a huge source of Julian's frustration that he's sort of obsessed with the best right now. That's his big obsession. And if like, we're driving in the car, he says, can I run this fast? And I say, no, buddy, we're going 42 miles an hour. You can't run this fast. And he goes, well, what's the fastest anyone's ever run? And I'm like, because I know everything. I say, well, Usain Bolt once ran 34 mph. That's probably the world record. I don't think people are going to beat that anytime soon. And then he's like, okay, how do I get faster than Usain Bolt? And I'm like, **** it. Or we're skateboarding, right? And he's like, could Tony Hawk do this ramp? And I'm like, yeah, Tony Hawk could do the ramp, dude, but you're not Tony Hawk yet. But he's like, how do I become that? I have to be the best at this? And I'm like, no, you don't. You just have to have fun and enjoy it. And he's like, not hearing that. How do I be the best? He started a band, an imaginary band, at least at this juncture, it's imaginary, but he's the only one in the band, and they're called the best. He has no idea what a ******* amazing band name that is, number one.

Monika: Wow.

Chris: No idea. But they're called the best. And part of the reason he's the only person in the band, I think, is because no one yet has met his expectations to join him in this band. Right?

Monika: Yeah. I mean, look, some of that is just them and their personalities. A lot of it is Sonya. She's a competitive kid and she pushes herself, but it causes pain.

Chris: The frustration of not being immediately the best at whatever he happens to find interesting that day causes him real frustration, which can lead to real anger and real suffering. And I'm so often at a loss at how to get him down off that kind of precipice of like, dude, you don't have to put yourself to you don't have to hold yourself to any standard at all. We're skateboarding on a beautiful spring day. Just enjoy it. But I think it's so much about this, like what I'm modeling to him. Not so much what I say or even how I react in those moments, but what he sees on a day to day basis when I'm not even thinking about this subject.

Monika: Yeah, this past spring, she's just a happy go lucky kid who's not prone to I mean, she never had tantrums as a baby or as a toddler. So when we when we see her getting upset, you know, it's like some kind of intervention is needed. But he might be too young for this. But the other thing that I got her doing and we do it on the way to swim practice, because that is a source of frustration for her because she's, like, in the middle of the team. She's not the fastest. She does the compassion, the meta meditation where you wish yourself, may I be safe, may I be healthy, may I be happy, may I live with ease. And then you wish other people the same thing.

Chris: That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm going to get that too. I'm going to put that next to Henry James. He needs that.

Monika: Well, and what's funny is that the structure is the repetition of those phrases, but you send it to whoever pops into your mind. And so sometimes she'll tell me she sent it to, like, a character in a book who popped into her mind or a kid from school or a musician whose music she's listening to, but it has an effect. I mean, she's not mad at herself anymore.

Chris: You know what I just realized, Monika?

Monika: Yeah.

Chris: It's not just Julian that needs this meditation. It's me too.

Monika: Yeah, you should do it's. That's a really good question.

Chris: I'm just putting all my hang ups on you and going, right, right, Monika, you too. Right?

Monika: I am too impatient of a parent to do too much explanation. I'm just like, no, yes, get out of here. Come on. I have friends who do a lot of explaining as parents, and when I'm around them and their kids, I find them incredibly annoying. Like, the amount that they're negotiating and rationalizing and explaining, and I'm just like and it's because they're nicer than me and they're more patient than me and I just don't have the time for it. I'm just like, no, it is annoying.

Chris: And it's exhausting to hear, but it's hard to hear it in yourself, but it's very easy to hear it in the other parent. It's like, I'll hear Chanelle on her 7th attempt to end the conversation, but they're on, like, a footnote clause of the argument. And I'll come in around the corner and be like, you're over explaining. And she's like, Right. But then the next day it's me doing it right. As you were explaining that, I was thinking about like, well, why am I like this? Where does this tendency to over explain come from? And partly I'm a know it all that's partly it. It's pretty simple, but also partly like, I grew up in a house where nothing was ever explained and nothing was ever talked about, and everything was every possible adult subject under the sun was either, like, off limits or verboten or just my parents aren't curious about that, so we're not going to talk about it or whatever. And I found that really stifling and frustrating, and I think that there was almost like an eagerness when I became a parent to be like, there's going to be no holds barred conversation around here. We're going to dialogue. We're going to just talk about it all. We're going to be verbally free. I think that, combined with the egotism of being a know it all results in this parenting style of like, you need an editor. You need someone to sometimes hit the pause button and be like, stop talking.

Monika: No, but I think that's fine. And I mean this in the best sense. It's one of the great qualities of you. You're a wonderful conversationalist. You do know so many things. You are always wonderful to have in seminar for that reason. And why should you not be like that as a parent? I mean, that's who you are. That's your personality. And until he tells you that you're boring him or something. Which he will. Yeah, which he will. If you are, then I don't think you need to have a different style.

Chris: Because I think that it gives him a certain I think it contributes to his anxiety sometimes, where it's like filling his head with things that he's not able to process, which then can feed into anxiety and a certain kind of emotional difficulty right away or later on or whatever. I mean, when I told a child psychologist that I think he was four and a half, maybe five years old, and I told her that we read every night, we read tons of books, and she's like, well, what are you reading right now? And I said, well, funny you should ask. He had gone into these children's books that I had put away, and he grabbed one that he wanted to read. And I know it's not quite appropriate, but we're reading The Red Badge of Courage right now. And she said, you're reading The Red Badge of Courage to Julian now. And I was like, yeah. I mean it's, Abridged. It's heavily abridged. It's illustrated. She was like, no, he's four. No, go to the store, get little golden books and read him The Lion King again, right? But do not read him the Red Badge of Courage. And I was like, yeah, but he gets it, and he really wants he. Won'T let me stop. And she's like, well, you need to put your foot down and not read him novels about the Civil War just yet. Okay, fine.

Monika: That's so funny. I mean, he is precocious as a result. I meant to ask this earlier, this thing with the best with him. Have you ever asked him, what's the deal with the best for you? Instead of just answering the question to do, like, the meta Socratic thing and just be like, why are you always into the best? I would just be curious to know because he seems like he would be interested in trying to answer that question, and it might be a different way into it. Instead of just like, don't be obsessed with the best. Just be like, where is that coming from? What's with that?

Chris: Yeah. I feel like maybe we floated that to him before and didn't get a lot back, but maybe he wasn't yet ready to psychoanalyze himself. Dig deep, man. He needs to dig deep. It's like, where is this coming from, man? Your childhood?

Monika: Well, no, I wouldn't ask it as thinking of it as a psychological question. I would ask it as this is, like, a big, fun thing for you, you know, like, yeah, you love the best.

Chris: You love the best. What's behind that? What what do you think the best is? Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I like that I'm getting so many practical. I'm redoing everything around here. Monica, after this interview, it's like a whole brand. It's a brand new day.

Monika: Oh, God.

Chris: I did want to ask you, though, about the way that your work interacts with your parenting. Of course. You are a brilliant writer and scholar. You write about contemporary literature and art. You've published an incredible book on Habermas and Frank O'Hara and James Baldwin and Grace Paley, and you're a master teacher, and it influences the way that you see the world. And does it ever interact with the way you see yourself as a parent or the challenges that you're facing as a parent?

Monika: I feel very glad to feel a very natural affinity to both my job and my role as a mom. I really like both of them a lot, and I don't see them in conflict with one another. I don't really think I code switch much between how I am as a mom and how I am as a teacher and how I am as a colleague. I just try to be a good person in all of those roles, and I try to be authentic.

Chris: It's the same idea of not putting up the wall between the parents side and the kids side of, like, we're different around our colleagues than we are with you at home. You're not old enough to see what we really do, so it's this mysterious thing. But of course, it's like, the wall is porous, right. And you're always seeing through it wasn't a natural thing. They put it there, and you're like, why?

Monika: Yeah. That resonates with me so much, especially with my mom, because I really chafed against anything fake. When I was growing up, I hated how she would put on a certain persona out in the world or in her social world relative to. How she spoke and how she acted at home with us or with my dad. I don't think from her perspective, she was being fake. I think she thought she was, like, being appropriate to a different setting or something. But I really hated it as a girl growing up.

Chris: I hated that inauthentic mercilessly clocking. Every little unnatural gesture and tone of voice in your mother, like, oh, that wasn't her real laugh.

Monika: Well, I remember when we'd be at these big Indian parties, I could be right next to her. I could be like mom. Mom. And she'd just not pay attention to me. But if I'd go Sushila, she'd turn and be like, yes. I would get her most sort of pristine reception. And I think that that's one thing I never really outgrew, is just this instinctive recoil from fake being fake or people being fake. And I mean, look, obviously I don't share everything about my life, and I believe in discretion and appropriate information to share with child versus grown up. But I think when we talked about the attitude of the mind, I think that that's a fairly transparent quality that she sees in me consistently with whoever I'm talking to. My guess is your kids see the same in you, and Chanel too. You guys are so authentic.

Chris: I don't know about that. I mean, we do like to cart them around and let him bring him to campus and let him see everything and just sort of let him see who we are at work. Julian wants to just be the center of attention when we do those things, right? So if we are introducing him to colleagues or to our students, then he's just immediately on stage and performing in front of them, so he's not that interested in observing us. And what are they like around these? He's more just like, oh, it's my time lights. But that may change as he gets older. I mean, as you were describing that, it made me think of one of my very best friends in high school. I was over at his house one time, and they were having a new house built, so they were, like, customizing it and planning all this stuff and making all these decisions about the layout and whatnot. I think we were like juniors in high school, so we were older teenagers, but still kids, very much kids. And he had this beautiful relationship with his parents. I was always really sort of jealous of just how pleasant they all seemed around each other all the time. And one day his dad called him into a study in the house, and he said, Vishal come here, I want you to look at these whatever, like these plans or these options or whatever. And he had him looking at the nitty gritty of what they were going to select or buy or pay for for this new house. And he really, honestly wanted his son's opinion. And he was like and then he even went a step further. He's like, you know what? You decide. You seem to understand this. You take this.

Monika: Wow.

Chris: And I was just at the doorway watching with my jaw on the floor. I was like, what is happening in this family? Like, I've never seen this before.

Monika: Yeah, that's so cool.

Chris: It was so cool. And I was like, God, what a great way to be a dad. To be like, Son, come here. Help me understand this. And then, you know what? You seem to get it. You take it over. This is your thing. And this was a serious business. This was the house they were building. It wasn't bullshit. It was real. And the trust that he had in him and have my friends poise and maturity to just slip right and be like, okay, dad, I'll look at it. And I was like, I can't relate to either of you right now.

Monika: It's so interesting. That just made me realize, yeah, my parents never did that with us at home either. But we traveled a lot. My dad loves to travel. We traveled a lot. And when we traveled, he would give a lot of that over to me especially. He'd be like, Figure out how we get there. What do you want to do? And then he was a good my mom would be like, Museum? I'm not going into a museum. She'd sit out on the grass and play cards. But he would do it. He would go to the museums that I'd find. I'd get to pick the restaurant. He wanted me, I think, to be worldly. But it was so interesting to think that I didn't get that kind of agency in the everyday. It was only out of the everyday.

Chris: But you were telling me before the interview today, Monika, that you are giving some of that responsibility over to Sonya. So it seems like you're passing along that tradition directly from your dad.

Monika: Yeah, I totally didn't realize. That's why I gave her that assignment.

Chris: There it is. It's Patrimony, right? It's direct from Grandpa to her. That's beautiful.

Monika: Yeah, well and you know what's so interesting is that when you do that with a child, the child's innate interests emerge. So it's like, I was finding art, I was finding beautiful architecture, and he was giving me the rope to take them there. And it was enriching my family's experience because of my own personal interests. And in this case, her Pragmatism and her distance cost these things that never inform the choices I make when I try. I mean, to some extent they do, but they're not like the top three categories. I don't even think in terms of categories. She said after she had produced this slideshow, she said there was wait, she produced a slideshow? Yeah, she had slides for each thing.

Chris: Oh, my gosh. She had a PowerPoint presentation for this?

Monika: Yes.

Chris: Wow.

Monika: I know.

Chris: She was more than ready to handle this on her own.

Monika: Yeah. And it was stuff like the Opera house, the hours that we could go to just tour it, versus if we wanted to see a show like what the show was and what the cost was. It was all very I can help with that, actually.

Chris: If you need tickets to the Opera in Paris, let me know.

Monika: I do.

Chris: My best friend's conducting there right now. Actually, today he's conducting Electra at the Paris Opera House, so

Monika: Hold on, are you serious?

Chris: I'm totally serious. Yeah.

Monika: Oh, my gosh. You're kidding. No, really?

Chris: No, it's for real. My best friend is a conductor. He's got an orchestra in Paris and one in Germany. And right now, he's conducting Electra at the Opera in Paris.

Monika: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing.

Chris: You heard it. Here, I will hook you up. But only you, Monika. Nobody else.

Monika: Okay?

Chris: You, Sonia, Charles, you guys are going to get good seats.

Monika: That's awesome. I'm going to be texting you later.

Chris: Monika, thanks a lot.

Monika: I enjoyed this very much. Take care.

Chris: Nico, what's your favorite book? Is it Quackers?

Nico: No.

Chris: Is it Madeleine?

Nico: No.

Chris: Is it the Bug Book?

Nico: Yeah.

Chris: The Bug Book is your favorite book. Why do you like the Bug Book so much?

Nico: I like to read this so much.

Chris: Yeah. Do you like all the bugs in it? What's your favorite bug in the Bug Book?

Nico: The bumble bee.

Chris: You know what time it is? It's time for another. Not a Terrible Father In This One Instance Award. This week. Our winner is Hayan Charara. Hayan is a dad to two beautiful kids and he's a highly decorated poet, editor, and author of five books, the most recent of which, get Ready, is titled These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit. How good are the poems in that book? Well, Hayan just recently was named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the entire world of poetry. It's an incredible honor. But is it as incredible as winning the Not A Terrible Father In This One Instance Award? Which carries more prestige? Being a Kingsley Tufts finalist or winning a NATFITOIA? I honestly don't know. So let's call him up and put the question to him. He's expecting our call, but he doesn't know why we're calling. We were very mysterious about it all. One more thing about Hayan before we get him on the line. I'm not going to tell his story for him. He can tell it himself when he comes on the pod next season for a full interview. But just know that the man you're about to hear from is a remarkable and devoted father who, as a father, has experienced some extraordinarily challenging situations. And I've seen him move through it all with grace and compassion and dignity and intelligence and care. So go read his poems. And if you see him out there in the world. Tell him congratulations on his NATFITOIA. Okay, let's get him.

Hayan: Hello.

Chris: Hayan.

Hayan: Hey, Chris.

Chris: Hey, buddy. How are you?

Hayan: I'm dealing with ragweed pollen.

Chris: Oh, my God.

Hayan: It's snowing up in Detroit, where I grew up, but it's raining pollen here.

Chris: Hi. And recently, you were given a tremendous honor, the Kingsley Tufts Award. You were a finalist for one of the biggest prizes in all of poetry. First of all, congratulations.

Hayan: Thank you.

Chris: But second of all second of all, I think we can top that here.

Hayan: Really? It's a lot of money.

Chris: Everybody keeps bringing that up. Several of the recent prize winners here on PODRE have brought up the purse size, the dimensions of this award, and I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell everyone. This award is one that people will never forget that you won. Okay.

Hayan: I'm curious.

Chris: Well, it's called the Not A Terrible Father In This One Instance Award. I'm sure you've heard of it.

Hayan: I think I've probably been a finalist many times.

Chris: You know, a couple of the recent winners, actually.

Hayan: Really?

Chris: I think you're familiar with John Harvey. Yes. I think you're familiar even with Ricardo Nuila.

Hayan: Absolutely.

Chris: Who was the inaugural winner of the Not A Terrible Father award.

Hayan: I think we all are. No, the award makes perfect sense if you're being honest, and we're letting people glimpse our actual lives as opposed to the veneer.

Chris: But you and I were talking the other day, and you told me a story about a recent trip you were on to not the 9th, but at least the 8th circle of Hell, which is AWP, the Conference for Writers, Poets, creative writing Programs. That happens every year, usually in a remote location far away from where everyone lives in the wrong time zone and usually in the wrong climate. You and I talked about that, and you told me a quick story, and I wondered if you could tell our listeners.

Hayan: Sure. It was in Seattle, which I think probably qualifies as one of those remote locations a few time zones away, at least for me. So I was at the conference, and Rachel, my wife and the mother of our two children, was in California. She was traveling with the kids without me. And midway through the conference, Rachel had been texting me. But midway through the conference, I got a series of texts from her relaying to me the hyperbole that our younger son Aidan was conveying to her about his hunger. And I saved the text, so I can read these to you.

Chris: He was a very hungry boy. He was?

Hayan: Well, you'll see.

Chris: And just so people know, how old is Aidan now?

Hayan: Aidan is just turned 11.

Chris: This is not a baby we're talking about. No, baby won't take the bottle. He's very hungry. This is an eleven year old. Okay.

Hayan: Eleven year old who's on vacation, by the way. His mother's spending a lot of money and time away from home. So the first text she writes to me is, Aidan is being so difficult. And then a minute later, she texts, he chose a $20 entree from Papacitos at the airport.

Chris: I mean, airport Papacitos. There's a big markup there, but yeah.

Hayan: Threw half of it out. And now he says he is hungry and wants me to buy snacks. He is sulking and he threw his backpack down when I said no. And I'm so grateful as each text comes by that I'm not there because I might not have qualified for this award. Then she writes, he thinks I'm being terribly unfair and he is convinced he is going to faint from starvation. A few minutes later, he keeps holding his hand up to show me that he's shaking from hunger. By the way, he just ate two quesadillas 15 minutes ago. I wrote back, I'm laughing, I'm sorry. What a drama queen. And then she wrote back, and salad. He also ate salad. But he's going to pass out if he doesn't eat candy and chips. Now he does rescue himself here, she says. Now he's being sweet. He's holding my hand because I got anxious waiting in line to board the plane. Yeah.

Chris: I love it, man. And I love that Aidan, Aidan is always such a cool customer, man. But the histrionics you have to almost step back and admire the creativity. I got to find a way to really manifest how hungry I am to mom right now.

Hayan: Right.

Chris: What does she need to see? Do I need to fall on the ground and go into convulsions? What's it going to take?

Hayan: It is fitting, I suppose. They were in Los Angeles and he actually got to go with a friend, sit in on an audition. So his skills are being honed and he's working on it.

Chris: If he'd have done that at Lax, he might have gotten representation out of it. Like someone could have been walking by going, hey, this kid needs to be in the pictures.

Hayan: I'll have to let Rachel know, coordinate the meltdowns. But I didn't read the text that I sent to Rachel, which was I gave her, I think, level headed advice and helped.

Chris: What's the advice?

Hayan: Some of it was to just ignore him and he won't die, he'll be fine. The other advice was to maybe give in to a drink or a snack here or there. Sometimes it's a lot easier to just be the kind and generous parent rather than the one who has to stick to the rule that you've set.

Chris: It's easier. Yeah, maybe, but it's harder to access that. You know what I mean? Just like you're talking about. Right. It's hard because it requires a certain amount of distance, whether that's emotional distance from the frustration that your kid is causing you or physical distance like be on the other side of the country when it's going on and all of a sudden you're like, hey, you know, what's the big deal? Let them have a cupcake for breakfast.

Hayan: Absolutely. And I tell Rachel all the time, if she dies, I'm going to remarry instantly because my kids would not make it. They wouldn't make it if it was me alone, because we tag team, right? I'm in and she's out. And we go back and forth to.

Chris: Be able to be like, you know what? It's fine. Let's just surrender. Let's not fight this fight.

Hayan: It really is the easier way to go. It's the more Zen way to go, if you will. But I'll say it is really difficult and for all of us, I'm sure we have different reasons. My own upbringing was so tumultuous. I know that that's what's going on. But my kids are not my therapist and they don't know my personal history, which is sort of amazing because they know exactly which buttons to push. They are experts at triggering this, that and the other.

Chris: Isn't that wild? It's almost just uncanny, right? They have no idea what happened to us as children or what we went through or how we're wired, why we're wired the way we are, and yet they play us like they're just virtuosis.

Hayan: Look, and I think your word is perfectly named because that's ultimately I know I'm joking a little bit here, but I'm partly serious. That's the goal. Not to be a terrible father, not to be a terrible parent. I'm always aiming to be good, but really that means, I think, some days at least, not to be bad.

Chris: Well, I know that you give Rachel a lot of credit, and you always have. But I will tell you that if we ever do a lifetime achievement award for the not a terrible father in this one instance, Hayan, you will also be a finalist for that prize. Because you and I have been friends since your kids were little, since it feels like it actually was only a number of years, but it felt like long before I became a parent, long before I had children of my own. And you were bringing your kids to the office and we were seeing them and it was so clear what a great dad you were, how filled with love and delight you were with your children and how invested you were as a dad. You were co parenting with Rachel. You were taking care of your kids. There was no doubt about it. And it's something that was a great model for me, just the way that you've always been a big bro poet to me. You've always been a dad that I look up to, and I appreciate that.

Hayan: I want you to know that I appreciate that generosity. And I hope this makes the air because I'm going to make my kids listen to that on repeat few times in case they forget or question it.

Chris: Hayan, congrats, buddy. You're the Not A Terrible Father In This One Instance Award winner this week. We appreciate you and we acknowledge you. Thank you. Good to see you, buddy. We'll talk to you soon. All right?

Hayan: Take care.

Chris: That's all for the show. Join us next time for a very special episode of PODRE, when I'll be talking to that mysterious nameless, faceless man from the rolling mists of a long ago time, without whom I would never have existed. That's right, my biological father, Mike Frontain, is coming on the pod. We have a lot to talk about. Be here, show up, hang out. You're with us now. You're one of us. PODRE is created and produced by me, Chris Brunt. Original artwork for the show is by David Wojo. Special thanks to Brad Franco and Julian and Nico Benz-Brunt.

PODRE

The Dad Who Parents. No, Really.

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