Year of the Smoke

In the days following my daughter’s birth in January, one thought crossed my mind often.

I can’t wait until December.

For me, December represented a point in time where the parental fears I was experiencing would be a little less intense.

You see, in the aftermath of my daughter’s arrival, I was intimidated by the prospect of being the parent of a baby again. While I wasn’t really that out of practice – my first child was born in 2020 – just enough time had passed that doubt had started to creep in. Would I be able to get back into the swing of caring for such a young child? And, more importantly, how long would it take my wife and I to adjust to the new responsibility of caring for a baby and a toddler?

Additionally, my wife and I were nervously waiting to see what kind of sleeper our daughter would be. Our son had been a dreadful sleeper as a baby. Went to bed late. Woke up multiple times a night. Was difficult to put back down. Obviously, you’re going to deal with some degree of that when you’ve got an infant. But this was every night for a year. Now, for the record, my wife and I love our son very much! But, man, those first 12 months were… grueling. Were my wife and I fated to experience that all over again with our daughter?

All these fears, ultimately, were felt against the backdrop of my daughter’s birthdate: Friday the 13th.

I’m not a superstitious person. But that date – with all its ominous baggage – did make me a bit apprehensive that the road to December would be fraught with perils.

And it was.

Although not in the way I anticipated.

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I encountered the first of those perils in January, in the days leading up to my daughter’s birth.

From out of nowhere, I began experiencing hearing loss. One ear would be compromised, improve after a few days, then the other one would follow suit. During these periods of reduced hearing, it felt like the inside of my ear was being pinched shut. This was bewildering to me, as I’d never had hearing problems before.

Frustratingly, during my wife and I’s entire hospital stay with our daughter, I was partially deaf in my left ear. (As annoying as that was, I’d say it was still a slightly easier hardship to bear than the C-section my wife underwent or my daughter’s experience being, you know, born.)

After we returned home from the hospital, I made an appointment to see an ear specialist. By the time that doctor’s office was able to fit me in, however, nearly three months had passed and my symptoms had abated.

When the symptoms eventually returned, I just gritted my teeth through them. I Googled and practiced every conceivable way to unplug one’s ears. When those methods proved ineffective during a stretch of compromised hearing this fall, I made another doctor’s appointment. But, of course, my symptoms lessened once again by the appointment, giving the doctor little to go off of, aside from my word.

It’s December and, unfortunately, I don’t know much more about what’s going on now than I did in January.

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There was one thing I had no trouble hearing this year, even with my uncooperative ears:

The sound of birds inside the walls of my house.

Yes, you read that right.

It all started when my wife and I detected an awful stench wafting down from the ceiling fan in our kids’ bathroom. Had an animal, we wondered, somehow managed to get into our house, up in the rafters, and died? The stench smelled organic, so we felt confident that that’s what had happened.

We also felt confident that it was a fluke. Clearly, some squirrel had managed to force its way into our place, got trapped, and was now rotting above our heads. After a week or so, the stench dissipated and we moved on with our lives.

But then it returned. And kept on returning.

The culprit at the heart of the matter came into focus when my wife and I noticed something protruding from an air vent outside of our house: a bird corpse. This discovery prompted my wife to monitor all of the house’s vents. And she witnessed birds coming and going from all of them.

These birds, we came to find out, were starlings. An invasive species. A pest-management company came out and investigated the problem further. In all, the company deduced, a total of 40 birds had taken up residence inside the walls of our home.

Once I became aware of that, sounds that I had previously attributed to other sources – the wind, the house settling, etc. – got reattributed to the winged trespassers lurking on the other side of our drywall. The whole situation felt like the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” For real.

Obviously, my wife and I couldn’t let these birds stick around – not with the potential for them to damage our home, or make our family sick upon dying and decomposing, as some already had. So, we shelled out nearly $1,000 to the pest-management company to remove them and install grates over our vents.

And as starlings are not a protected species, you can surmise what “removing” them entailed.

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This wouldn’t be the only time death descended on my neighborhood in 2023.

When it returned, the victim was – tragically – a member of my own species.

One morning in September, a fellow dad in the addition, not much older than me, went out for a jog. This was something he’d done countless times. As an avid runner, he was a regular sight in the neighborhood. You could always spot him on account of his dastars – a Sikh head covering – which were frequently colorful.

On this particular morning, his run took him out of the addition and onto one of the adjacent country roads.

And it was there he was killed in a hit-and-run incident.

His death has been difficult to process for many reasons, although I keep coming back to two, in particular.

One reason is the cold randomness of it. I mean, he died doing something he’d done every day. Why did this instance have to end in tragedy? It’s the kind of death that forces you to confront the harsh reality that the universe really is indifferent to our existence.

The second is that he was a father. One morning, I remember passing his house on my way out of the addition. He was with his daughter as she waited for the school bus. And I caught a glimpse of him dancing. Visually, it stood in contrast to how I usually saw him – a runner whose eyes expressed focus and dastar conveyed dignity. Here, he was just a dad goofing around with his daughter. A fleeting moment, yet so revealing.

Knowing I’ll never see him jog past my house again makes me sad. But knowing I’ll never see him dancing with his daughter again…

Sad doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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For a year that started, in earnest, with my daughter’s birth on Friday the 13th, it’s only fitting that one of the year’s recurring images embodied that date’s portentousness.

My city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, was like many places in the Midwest and East Coast that found themselves in the path of smoke from the historic wildfires in Canada. It was almost incomprehensible, the extent to which a city like Fort Wayne, nearly 200 miles away from Canadian land, found itself engulfed in the wildfires’ smoke. My workplace has a clear view of the city’s skyline; it was surreal seeing it blotted out, looking like an inferno were at our doorstep.

Fort Wayne, of course, was never in any real danger (save for deleterious air quality.) There were no fires. Just smoke.

There’s a parallel here to the experience of being a parent, or even just an adult. I find that fear is more present in my life now than ever before. As with any parent, having children is a major source of that anxiety. You worry about their wellbeing constantly. But there are other worries that touch all adults. Like career progression. Relationship health. Mortgage payments. And so on.

For me, things like hearing loss, animal infestation, and close-to-home death fueled my anxiety in 2023. They were a reminder that fear is exponential. That it has the capacity to spread, like wildfire. Because when bad things happen, it conditions you to anticipate more of the same (even if you don’t realize it.) Before you know it, your whole worldview can become corrupted.

That’s the most insidious thing about this breed of fear I find myself contending with as a parent and thirtysomething. Simply put, it compromises your ability to foresee all the ways a situation could unfold. Instead of being able to consider the range of outcomes, you fixate on the most negative one.

However, I try to remind myself: Fear is not reality. And the truth is, the desirable outcome in many situations is not only possible… but probable.

I should know. The fears I had about my daughter at the start of the year (Would my wife and I struggle caring for her and our son? Would she be a poor sleeper?) never came to pass. It’s funny… because I was so certain they would.

Instead, my wife and I got acclimated to being two-child parents in short order; by the time summer rolled around, it was old hat. And, similarly, we realized early on that our daughter looked forward to bedtime. Most nights, we can rely on her to sleep 10 hours. It’s been nothing short of amazing.

The smoke from the wildfires has long since dissipated. But it contained a lesson that’s worth remembering:

Sometimes, where’s the smoke, there’s fire.

Except, of course, for the times where there’s only smoke.

Land of the Free

One of the simple pleasures of summertime is going out for ice cream in the evening.

Talk about a satisfying way to end the day. Near my house, there’s an array of ice cream shops and it’s always fun stopping by and ordering some delicious confections for my wife, son, and I. (Even though it inevitably leads to a long stare of betrayal from my food-curious baby daughter.)

Across the board, these shops are staffed by teenagers. In other words, people in the midst of life’s most carefree season. Whenever I place an order with one of these workers – and especially if I’m attempting to corral my toddler son or lug around my daughter’s car seat – I’ve never felt older and more ensconced in a world that’s not carefree.

My wife and I welcomed our daughter to the world in January. The responsibility of caring for a baby was less daunting the second time around, thanks to the experience we gained with our son. However, there was still plenty of parental anxiety to be felt, as we wrapped our heads around now caring for a baby and a toddler.

With one child, it’s easier to disengage from being a parent. For example, in my experience, there were nights where I could let my wife take the lead on putting our son to bed; this created time where I could either get caught up on some chores or kick back and relax with a YouTube video. With two children, though, those opportunities dry up. Simply put, it’s an environment where you almost always have parental responsibilities to tend to. For my wife and I, we’re either tag-teaming our children’s care or dividing and conquering, with one of us taking the baby while the other handles the toddler. Really, the only reliable respite from parenting comes at night, once the children have gone to bed. It’s a big departure from the way things were.

So, lately, whenever I’ve been in any of the aforementioned ice cream shops, around the lively, youthful staff, I can’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia – even envy – for where they’re at in life. For a fatigued parent of two, there are evenings where the freedom they possess looks as appealing as any sundae.

The ironic thing, though, is that my longing is for freedom, in a general sense, and not for the days where I actually possessed it. Which is revealing.

I think we all remember the nights in high school, college, or afterwards that were pregnant with potential. The nights where you hung out with friends, and maybe friends of friends, in someone’s backyard, a Buffalo Wild Wings, or any number of places. I can remember getting ready for these nights and being downright giddy with anticipation. It felt like anything was possible.

Specifically, at 19 years old, these were nights where I imagined crossing paths with girls who looked like Veronica Mars or Serena van der Woodsen. (Confession: I spent the 2000s smitten with blonde main characters on CW shows.) In my mind, this was the best-case scenario for how a night could play out.

But, here’s the deal: Few of those nights actually lived up to their potential. Sure, I often had fun, but just as often, I felt underwhelmed by the end of the night. And maybe that was inevitable, with the youthful expectations I set while getting ready proving to be impossible for reality to realize. Suffice it to say: I never ran into a Blake Lively lookalike.

And, as I further reflect on this era of life, we’re just talking about the nights where I actually went out and socialized with people. There were many, many more where I stayed in, slumped on the couch, and watched reruns of “CSI: Miami.” It’s the unglamorous truth.

As a parent, if you’re going to miss freedom, I think you owe it to yourself to remember what the experience of having it was actually like. In my case, it was a mixed bag. At best. And remembering that helps me realize that freedom’s ability to promise happiness is not commensurate with its ability to provide it.

Next time I’m in an ice cream shop, I’ll be mindful that the 19-year-old preparing my shake might not necessarily have a wild night waiting for him at shift’s end. He might just be heading home to watch “Wednesday” on Netflix. And given the choice between that and making a memory with my wife, son, and daughter as I head out the door, ice cream in hand, I wouldn’t trade places with anybody.

Life is a Highway

Never underestimate a child’s capacity to watch the same movie again, again, and again.

I’d always heard this was something to anticipate upon becoming a parent.

And, sure enough, last year I experienced it.

The movie that was hurtling toward my wife and I, primed to strike a chord with our 2-year-old son, was none other than (gulps)… “Cars.”

Honestly, it’s a movie I’d never held in high regard. Made by Pixar and released by Disney, I’d always viewed it as little more than a vanity project for Pixar’s quirky executive, John Lasseter, an avowed car enthusiast. It seemed to me that the film existed more because of Lasseter’s personal interest and less because it possessed genuine artistic merit. Despite digging other Pixar movies, I’d always felt justified in steering clear of “Cars,” which was directed by Lasseter, from a story he broke with Jorgen Klubien and Joe Ranft.

Between my wife and I, I’m not certain who first invited Lightning McQueen into our home. But I am certain of the rationale: My son, a connoisseur of vehicles, would surely love a movie about vehicles.

Boy, was that hunch right.

From a toddler’s perspective, it’s not hard to see the appeal of “Cars.” There’s a host of different vehicles to look at, all with personalities as colorful as their paint jobs. If you’re a 2-year-old, it’s a movie that makes you laugh and holds your attention. As a parent, if you can find a piece of entertainment that checks those two boxes, you’ve found a winner.

Suffice it to say, my son was hooked. And he was soon posing the question my wife and I would hear more than any other in 2022: “Watch Cars?”

Watching “Cars” did, indeed, prove to be my first test of parental endurance watching. My wife and I, not to mention my mother-in-law, were viewing “Cars,” either in part or in full, multiple times a week. Viewings of the “Cars” sequels and shorts, along with the “Cars on the Road” series, were mixed in… but the original “Cars” remained my son’s Piston Cup Champion.

This is where I confess that I was morbidly curious about what the experience of encountering the same movie day after day would feel like. Because, quite simply, I’d never done anything like it before. For example, I’ve watched my favorite movie of all time, “Donnie Darko,” on countless occasions. But I’ve never watched it twice in the same week, let alone the same month. In watching “Cars” so often with my son, I was treading on strange new ground.

Here’s the truth: “Cars” stands up to repeat viewings shockingly well. The more I watched the tale of Lightning McQueen’s accidental detour to Radiator Springs, the more I appreciated it.

Speaking of Radiator Springs, during the town’s introductory scene, Fillmore, the multicolored VW bus, claims that every third blink of the town’s stoplight is slower. At face value, it’s a humorous observation that establishes Fillmore’s character – he’s an old hippie with a tenuous grip on reality. But it’s also a sly way for the filmmakers to plant an idea in the audience’s head: Pay attention to the details. And if you do, you just might uncover a deeper layer of meaning in “Cars.”

Well, watching the movie literally hundreds of times has given me the opportunity to do just that.

And there are a couple of observations I’d like to share.

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McQueen spends much of the movie working to repair the road in Radiator Springs, atoning for the damage he caused when he arrived in town. Sally speaks to the importance of these repairs at the courthouse; if the town didn’t conscript McQueen to fix the road, it would signal the end of Radiator Springs.

While McQueen’s building of a new road is significant from a practical standpoint, it’s also thematically significant. McQueen’s work on the road is tied to the emotional journey he takes in the movie. Physically, a road takes you from one place to a different place. And the same thing can be said of McQueen, as a character. When the movie begins, he’s a selfish, shallow individual committed to the pursuit of fame, which he thinks will make him happy. By the end of the movie, he’s learned that being selfless and kind confers the true, lasting happiness he’d been seeking.

The more McQueen works on the road, the more he learns about the value of kindness. After he completes some of the road, he notices that, through this act, he has ingratiated himself to the town; Luigi and Guido cheerfully service his tires, Red is willing to hose him down, and, most importantly, Sally offers to put him up at her hotel. His good deed is rewarded with good deeds.

Later in the movie, after Doc Hudson accurately characterizes him as a heretofore narcissist with no regard for others, McQueen, for the first time ever, appears bothered by that label. And he wants to shed it. So, he not only completes the road, but sticks around in town, directing acts of kindness toward everyone he met along the way.

The recipient of his last, best act is, of course, Sally, for whom he coordinates the relighting of Radiator Springs’ long-darkened neon lights, recreating what the town looked like in its prime – a sight she’d longed to see. When the lights flicker back to life, it’s pregnant with meaning. Radiator Springs, bathed in sumptuous, multicolored neon light, is a metaphor for the quality of McQueen’s character. When he arrived in town, the quality of his character was as ugly as the decaying buildings around him. But by the end of his time there, having learned lessons that fundamentally changed him, his character now shines as brightly as the revitalized town.

In the end, McQueen fixed the road.

But, really, it was the road that fixed him.

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During the first season of the HBO series “True Detective,” Matthew McConaughey’s character, Rust Cohle, shares one of his closely held beliefs about reality, remarking that “Time is a flat circle.”

Cohle is speaking to the concept of eternal recurrence, which posits that time repeats itself in an infinite loop.

Now, it’s one thing for an HBO series to get philosophical; that’s to be expected from a network whose programming exemplifies prestige television. But it’s another thing for a movie like “Cars” to go there.

So, imagine my surprise when, during one of my many rewatches, I detected that “Cars” has something to say about eternal recurrence, too.

In “True Detective,” Cohle’s take on this concept, specifically, is that people are fated to live the same lives forever. In “Cars,” eternal recurrence is presented slightly differently; the same events recur forever, happening to different people. In other words, the performers change… but the script stays the same.

“Cars” depicts this phenomenon twice. First, while the film is about Lightning McQueen getting a new lease on life after stumbling upon Radiator Springs, it becomes clear as the story unfolds that he’s not the first wayward soul to wind up there. Sally also came to Radiator Springs by accident, where upon she discovered a sense of purpose that her life had been missing. Years before that, Doc Hudson found his way there, during his embittered flight from the racing industry. Like McQueen and Sally, he found fulfillment in Radiator Springs and never left.

And before any of those three, the town’s founder, Stanley, a traveling salesman, stopped at the future site of the town because it had a spring that could cool off his radiator. Sensing a business opportunity, he remained at the spring… and the rest is history. (For the record, this all occurs in the “Cars Toon” short “Time Travel Mater” – which, yes, I’ve also seen countless times.) Bearing this in mind, it’s interesting to consider that when McQueen attempts to flee Radiator Springs, the thing that tethers him there is Stanley’s statue… perhaps a representation of fate and how it’s futile to deny it.

Eternal recurrence is evident, too, in the racing careers of Doc, The King, and McQueen. Doc is still clearly wounded by the way his career ended – that it concluded with the physical anguish of a serious wreck and the emotional anguish of being discouraged from returning to the sport. When Doc shares this with McQueen, it makes an impression on the young racer.

At the movie’s climax, The King appears to be hurtling toward the same fate as Doc – he’s a legendary racer whose career is set to end in a painful, dispiriting manner, after getting wrecked by Chick Hicks. When McQueen sees what’s happened to The King, he immediately thinks of Doc. And, in that moment, it’s as if he’s able to perceive the looping nature of their reality.

McQueen, aware of the pain that Doc has carried for years, wants to spare The King of that. So, rather than win the Piston Cup he’s long coveted, McQueen chooses to come to The King’s aid and help him end his career with dignity – an opportunity that Doc was never afforded. In doing so, McQueen helps set The King down a different path.

In “True Detective,” Cohle portrays fate as unalterable. In “Cars,” maybe it’s a little more forgiving.

Or maybe not. Because by “Cars 3,” McQueen is the race car who suffers a serious wreck and is discouraged from returning to the track. So, maybe fate can’t be canceled. Only transferred.

Look, I might be out of bounds on all this. I might be reading too much into a movie that prominently features a tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy.

But there’s a question I keep coming back to. And it’s that if you wanted to tell a story that was subtly about eternal recurrence, where would you set it?

The perfect setting, it seems to me, would be a race track. With cars speeding atop it. Going ‘round in one big loop.