It's almost 7:30 in the morning....

....on Monday the 27th and everyone is still sleeping. It snowed here last night, not a lot, but enough to send Shahob into paroxysms of joy. He really, really loves the snow. Sometimes when I look at him it astonishes me to think that he is my son, that he, this boy who is in the world, who is so clearly already his own person, separate from me and yet not so separate from me, is my son. Last night, Maryam put him to sleep on the couch in the living room while the fire we had built was dying, and when I came back from moving her car to a spot where we won't have to worry about alternate side of the street parking, she was still laying next to him, and she looked up at me and said, "I think he doesn't love me as much as he used to.... He doesn't spend as much time with me; he spends all his time with you." Which is true in part as a matter of practical necessity, not of Shahob's desire, but he is still so firmly attached to her, enmeshed with her--what she said reminded me of something I read in a book I was using when I was first trying to write my book of essays. It was written by a female family therapist and it was in response to the notion that single mothers cannot raise boys into men, that boys need to have a man in the house in order to become "real" or "true" or whatever men. And the writer told this story of a client of hers who was pregnant and had already started crying in anticipation of the child's separation from her, not the fact of giving birth, but the boy's--I think the woman knew the child's sex--independence of his mother, as if the boy would be born, look at her, say, "Thanks very much, but I no longer need you," and walk off into the rest of his life. The writer's point was twofold, about the cultural imperative that boys be men before they are done being boys, becoming indpendent and self-sufficient emotionally and psychologically before they really have the coping mechanisms to do that, and about how women buy into this notion and hurt not only their boy children, but also themselves by denying themselves the connection to their children that they need in their own way as deeply and profoundly as the child does. And it made me think, of course, of my own parenting and my own relationship with Shahob and what I am and am not conscious of along these precise lines. And I am thinking right now how hard it is to look at your own parenting in an objective way, much more difficult, in some ways, than looking at yourself as a lover or a spouse or a friend, because the child is so inarticulate about your relationship with him or her. There is no way, at least not until he or she gets a good deal older and more mature, that he or she can be for you the mirror that an equal, at least in terms of age, etc., can potentially be. Because, of course, it is not the case that lovers or friends or whatever are by definition your equal, which is a deeply painful realization to come to, but that is a subject for another time.

Two days nursing a sick son...

Not very sick, not dangerously sick, but sick enough, and young enough--he's six--that he did not want me to leave his side for almost the entire two days. Or, more accurately, he did not really want to leave my arms for that long, especially today. I read aloud to him from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for what was at least four hours combined and he curled in my lap almost the whole time, not wanting to move. I understand him. He's all achey and fluey and he wants the physical comfort that comes from being held and stroked and from the warmth of someone else's skin against yours. And when I was finally able to get him to agree that I could stop reading--he had to eat dinner, at least--I went and rented Spiderman 2 for him, and I was really surprised not just at how much he remembered, but at how critically he remembered the movie from when we saw it in the theaters. When Peter Parker decides to give up being Spiderman, Shahob started explaining to us how this decision had both a good side and a bad side. The good side being that Parker would not be able to concentrate more on school; the bad side being that he would have to watch people getting hurt, people he would have helped as Spiderman, and not do anything, and while my son does not really have the vocabulary to talk about guilt and responsibility and accountability, it was clear that these were the concepts he was referring to.

But now at last I have some quiet time to myself. Shahob is in bed with his mother; my in-laws are in their room--they live with us now--and I am here in the living room with my laptop and the muffled noises of Jackson Heights near midnight coming through the closed and locked windows, and I am thinking on the one hand how wonderful it was to be able to take care of Shahob when he was sick, not to have to leave him with my in-laws, and on the other hand how much work I didn't get done yesterday and today, everything from paying the bills to straightening my office to grading papers that I really, really, really need to grade by Monday. And I recognize this feeling: I am overwhelmed by all I have to do and all I want to do and all I would like to be able to start planning to do. And it boils down to this reality: I am not working on the Bustan--the second book of Persian translations I have contracted to do--or on any one of the several projects I have started. I haven't even submitted my poetry manuscript to the few places that I still want to submit it to right now.

And I know there is something building in me to write, and I know it has to do with family, my family and my wife's, and why my in-laws are now living with us, and why I became a father in the first place, and why I don't really feel like a son to my father or that my father is my father, and it's about love and loyalty, marriage and commitment, and why I sometimes feel trapped.