Familyhood Read Free Page B

you?”
    â€œYou have to understand,” he said, patiently. (I was obviously not the first one in his life to question this particular choice.) “The plane doesn’t want to crash.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “The plane also probably doesn’t want to go to Bridgeport for the weekend, but it goes. The plane doesn’t always get a say in the matter.”
    â€œBut it does. Because”—and here he paused again for dramatic purposes, practically willing me to embrace this—“the plane wants to fly.”
    He then launched into a complicated dissertation on the laws of physics and momentum. Once the plane gets up in the air, he explained, it wants to stay up in the air. In fact, what with energy and thrust and so forth, the plane almost always will stay up in the air, flying. So long as the engines don’t stop working and the wings stay on, crashing is almost impossible.
    â€œBut it happens,” I pointed out, fairly unnecessarily.
    â€œSure,” he said. “But usually because of things out of our control. So I just focus on what I can control: roll, pitch, and yaw.”
    I thought that was perhaps the name of the legal firm handling his estate. “Eddie Roll, Markus Pitch, and Simon Yaw—Making Things Right Since 1984.”
    Turns out, no. Roll, pitch, and yaw are, in fact, aviation terms. As best I could understand it, if you imagine a plane flying through the air, there are three imaginary axes: front-to-back, side-to-side, and up-and-down. These are the areas you want to concern yourself with when piloting.
    â€œRoll” is the way the wings dip up or down, “pitch” is the way the nose goes up or down, and “yaw” is the way the nose goes left and right. (This, by the way, is one reason I myself will never fly a plane; what I just explained to you there is the upper limit of what my brain can digest.)
    But basically, my pilot friend explained, if you manage the pitch and the roll and the yaw—countering sudden changes by rooting yourself as best you can back to center—you’re pretty much home free.
    â€œAnd raising kids,” he told me, “is a lot like flying.”
    I was a bit miffed upon hearing this last bit.
    â€œAre you sure it’s not like being the captain of a boat?” I asked, irritated that my brilliant analogy had to now be chucked. “Because I had the whole ‘boat thing’ worked out pretty solidly.”
    â€œNo, it’s more like flying,” he assured me. “Because flying has that extra third dimension. Raising kids is definitely more like flying a plane.”
    SO FORGET ABOUT the boat captain thing. I was wrong; kids are like a plane. And you’re like the pilot, but only a little. In truth, the kid takes off and flies less because of what you do and more because of how the kid is designed. Once they’re up, they’re going to be buffeted and pushed around plenty by bad weather and strong winds and angry turbulence. No way to avoid it. As the pilot, you make your adjustments. That’s your job. Do it as best you see fit.
    But take comfort knowing that in the end, they’ll fly. Because they want to fly.
    P.S. ANYONE INTERESTED in a perfectly good “boat captain” analogy? Only used once. Call if interested.

Like a Half Hour
    M y wife and I have established some ironclad rules and traditions that serve to keep our family strong, connected, and grounded:
    â€¢ We always have dinner together as a family. (Except for those nights when we don’t—which is most nights. One of us is working late, or the kids are a bit too wild, and we’re unable to pull it off . . . something usually gets in the way.)
    â€¢ We always go over the kids’ homework with them before they pack it away. (Except for the days we don’t—which is most days—because the kids were fooling around too much and didn’t finish the homework, or it