My mother has been checking out Present Tense. In response to my Mother’s Day story, she asked if I could write about things that were a little more positive. I’ll do my best Mom! What a good sport.
Present Tense
(PAST IMPERFECT)
Author Archives: Tim Elhajj
Wolf at the Table
I came to Augusten Burroughs work through Dry, a memoir about his struggle with alcoholism, which is somehow both heartfelt and funny. Then I read Running with Scissors, his quirky coming-of-age story. Wolf at the Table is completely different from the earlier works, exploring Mr. Burroughs’ relationship with his father, an emotionally distant alcoholic. It would be an understatement to say Mr. Burroughs finds his father lacking: His bitterness is so palpable, the book is hard to read.
I love memoirs that explore fatherhood. In the 50s and 60s, fathers were almost always depicted as good and wholesome. As I kid, I could see my old man didn’t add up. How could he? Those depictions had little to do with reality. Nothing bad about Dad was every explored. Now we get something like Wolf at the Table, but this father is so clearly and irredeemably bad, it’s almost like a throw back to thin view of fathers from the 50s and 60s (albeit the other side of the coin). Burroughs father is as bad as Father Knows Best is good. How’s the for coming full circle?
You have to feel bad for any adult lugging around so much resentment from childhood. One good thing about being a rebellious child: With my family, I always managed to keep the resentment ledgers pretty even. If you give as good as you get, you never have to feel bitter.
Lightning Strikes Four Times: Aaron Gets Two More Unassisted Double Plays
Aaron is cleaning up this year. In yesterday’s last game of the regular season, he got another unassisted double play. I reported on his first and second unassisted double plays and he got one a third one I hadn’t reported for a grand total of four.
One thing is certain: He doesn’t get his superior athleticism from me.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
As it turns out, the best part of the new Indiana Jones movie for me was the anticipation and the nostalgia it evoked. I haven’t enjoyed the sequels nearly as much as I enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford does a fine job, but the script doesn’t hold together very well.
You can’t fault a franchise that’s a take off of pulp stories for having implausible action scenes, so I won’t. But all the character’s motivations seem muddled or just plain silly. I’m not going to list all my gripes, but let’s just say I wasn’t impressed.
Nevertheless, I still enjoy slapping my floppy rain hat on my head and pretending to be Indy with my kids. So there’s that.
Ten Year Olds Are the Best Year Olds
This morning I kept leaping into the living room as my 10 year olds were getting ready for school. I was wearing my floppy rain hat, humming the first few notes of the theme song for Indiana Jones, and making a whip noise with my mouth. Whoopersh! Whoopersh!
They loved it.
Too bad they can’t make it the entire way through Raiders of the Lost Ark. We get to the opening scene where Indy finds the corpse impaled on the spike booby trap and they turn to quivering jelly.
“Turn it off, turn it off. Oh, my! Oh, no!”
That’s okay. One day they will be all grown up and when I leap into the room and make whipping noises they will just sigh and roll their eyes.
Web Gems Galore!
Aaron got another unassisted doubleplay last week. Woo!
Inching Toward Publication
Some small success to report on the publishing front.
One of my stories has been selected as a finalist for an anthology about fathers, My Dad is My Hero (Adams Press, Spring 2009). My story is one of 53 selected, but only 50 will be published. I’ll find out in July or August if I made the cut. Keep your fingers crossed, people.
The story I submitted is an excerpt from a current post on the blog (the contract I signed allows me to continue to publish it here, even if it’s selected). And that post is actually an excerpt from a longer chapter in my memoir. It’s ironic that the the anthology is about heroic fathers: the full chapter from the memoir offers a somewhat different sensibility about Dad, or at least it juxtaposes a heroic Dad against a more needy Dad. Despite this irony, Dad still makes out pretty good in my memory (as he does in my book).
If you’re wondering (especially you people at home), my childhood memoir isn’t meant as an attack on Dad or anyone else. The more I write, the more I learn about the story, but from what I can tell right now it’s learning to appreciate your own talents and sensibilities, instead of trying to be someone you’re not.
If you want a memoir that’s an attack on fatherhood, read Augusten Burroughs’s Wolf at the Table. I’m only 100 pages in, but Mr. Burroughs is so bitter with his father, it’s hard for me to read.
The Modern Mind
This hulk of a book (843 pages) kept me busy for the last three months. I racked up $1.70 in late fees from the library, but it was worth it.
Peter Watson describes the intellectual achievements of the last century. If I had to choose, I would say physics seemed to be the highpoint of the last century. I didn’t realize that worm holes and time travel existed outside of science fiction. Nor did I realize what a long sad history racism has had or how persistent its theme has been in intellectual circles. Somehow I always thought racism was the domain of the working class.
For the last three months I read a little of this each morning, with coffee. Now that I’m finished, I feel a little lost.
Every American’s Right
Yesterday I was in my living room complaining about a letter I got from my health club. The kids were watching TV. I told my wife I was going to call the health club and complain. I must have been expressing myself too forcefully, because Aaron looked up and asked if it was legal to call up and complain.
“Son,” I told him, “as an American, it is your God given right to complain. Anytime you feel you are treated poorly, you should always complain.”
I hope I didn’t just create a monster.
Mother’s Day Dyn-O-rama
For Mother’s day this year Kennedy and I made a dyn-O-rama. I am not even sure where I got that name, but that’s what we’ve been calling it.
Earlier in the week Kennedy told me she wanted to make Mom a little three dimensional scene like the nativity scene we put out at Christmas. Kennedy often makes off-beat suggestions like this and I have learned to go with the flow.
She suggested we work with wood. I suggested cardboard (sometimes you have to buck the flow). When Holly and Aaron went to the game Friday night, Kennedy and I got busy.
I let Kennedy pick out the materials at the craft store. When we got to my work, I asked her to draw some figures in action poses. She drew Holly reading a book and herself dunking a basketball. I created a picnic table for “Holly” to sit on and a backboard for Kennedy’s avatar. We used the office color printer to print family photos from my flicr page and then cut and pasted the heads on our avatars.
We finished up late and then came home to ended the night watching Oklahoma on an old VCR tape. I told her how much fun I had with her and she agreed.
“I thought it was going to suck,” she said, without the slightest bit of malice.
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