Next year, he'll be able to say it

What a difference a year makes, no?





And a bonus pic, just because I like it:

The Blame Game

So, my right shoulder has been aching like a sonofabitch all week (radiating down the right side of my back and across my shoulder blade), and the blame lies squarely with West Texas singer Robert Earl Keen.

Because if he wasn't around, then the brilliant little redneck holiday ditty "Merry Christmas From the Family" wouldn't have been written, or sung, or become wildly popular at our house several years ago.

And if the song hadn't been so regularly played at our holiday parties, then my friend BJ wouldn't have gone out and found it as a CD single that came with a picture book and a recipe for the infamous "champagne punch" mentioned in the tune.

And if the recipe hadn't come into contact with my champagne-lovin' hands, I wouldn't have made a double batch for our New Year's Eve party on Dec. 31, 2003.

And then I wouldn't have guzzled several glasses of it.

And then I wouldn't have been too tipsy to realize that just because we happened upon a live band playing swing at a swanky bar downtown in the wee hours of New Year's morning, it didn't mean I should hit the dance floor.

And then I wouldn't have, literally, hit the dance floor. And the corner of a table on the way down.

And then I wouldn't have ended up in the ER at 3 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2004 (talk about a buzzkill), getting an X-ray and a sling for my separated shoulder, along with some mild narcotics to ease the pain that I would eventually feel with considerable force once the champagne buzz really wore off.

And now, four and a half years later, all it takes is for me to swing my 20-pound baby up into my arms in a certain way, rotating that damn shoulder just so, and the pain is back. Without the champagne buzz.

Damn that Robert Earl Keen.

Incidentally, the Champagne Punch recipe is seriously outstanding. Just don't drink and swing.

Champagne Punch
1/2 cup light rum
1/2 cup dark rum
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup orange juice
1 cup pineapple juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 bottles champagne
fresh fruit slices (lemon, lime, orange, whatever you've got)

Mix everything but the champagne; chill. Right before serving, add the champagne and stir.

Father's Day, Part 2

I thought, instead of waxing poetic about all the attributes that makes Chris a helluva dad, I'd just post my column from Sunday.

Dads may miss heyday hobbies, but fatherhood lets you dream
By Robyn Passante
rpassante@islandpacket.com

To see what fatherhood does to a man, don't just look at my husband. Look at his stuff.

First look at his beloved drum kit, which once held court in its very own music room surrounded by other instruments and musical equipment. It's now stacked in the corner of our guest room, rarely played with force anymore, as such passionate solos have been deemed too loud for our 1-year-old son's sensitive ears.

Then check out that former music room, which is now a sunny yellow and filled with Haba blocks and bedtime books and a stuffed rocking caterpillar that sings "You Are My Sunshine."

Next, peek into my husband's garage (I never pretended it also was mine), once pristine and organized with enough room to park a car and work under its hood. It now is a glorified baby storage shed, holding two strollers, a wagon, a child's bike seat, a kiddie pool and several large toys our son has outgrown. It hasn't seen a vehicle inside its walls for months.

So you'll have to backtrack to the driveway to look at his car. It's a 2001 Chevy Blazer -- a mild, child-friendly sport utility vehicle with airbags and A/C and a carseat base securely strapped to the backseat. It's sitting right where his beloved 1983 Scottsdale stepside pickup used to be. She was a rare midnight blue beauty with a small-block 305 engine with a full Edelbrock manifold and carb setup. She roared like thunder. She also had no seat belt on the passenger side, no heat or A/C, and no place for a carseat. So she had to go.

You also can take a look at his tackle box (bone dry), his bicycle (tires perpetually flat), and his skateboard (in the attic).

Sensing a trend here?

I'd like to tell you the point is that he doesn't mind that his old life is largely gathering dust. I'd like to say he's a new man who has cast aside all former pastimes in favor of building blocks with his son, 24-7.

But I would be lying.

The fact is, he misses his "stuff" a great deal. It's just that when he spends time with any of it, he misses his son even more.

I admit I was a little curious -- all right, concerned -- about what parenthood would do to all of my husband's hobbies and interests. Sports, music, cars, these things are important to him. He's the type who likes to be outside, who stays busy, who always has the next big purchase in mind for whatever pastime he's currently focused on.

In a nutshell, he's a guy.

And I knew that fatherhood would ask a lot of him. I knew it would suck up his free time, take away his ability to be guiltlessly self-indulgent, and squeeze out -- at least temporarily -- some of the hobbies and rituals he thought made him who he was.

I couldn't help but wonder, when those identifying markers fall by the wayside, who will he become?

A year later, I have my answer: He has become Daddy. Or, rather, "Dadadadadadadadadah!"

Like magic, fatherhood gave him a whole new set of goals, pastimes and life-defining moments that get the heart beating faster, and with more purpose, than a 305 engine with a full Edelbrock manifold and carb setup ever could.

The evidence of this is everywhere at our house. Beside that stack of drums in the corner are two old drumsticks sawed down to fit a toddler's hands, so that our boy can sit on Daddy's lap and bang away. Beside that neglected tackle box is a special child's fishing reel bought with much nostalgia off eBay; it's the very same model my husband's own father gave to him as a boy.

And that stuff in the garage? It was all put together excitedly (directions invariably thrown aside, then quietly consulted an hour later) by the same first-time dad who once mourned the loss of his music room, pickup truck and regular fishing outings.

This year I've learned that the best kind of father sets aside some of the dreams he had as a man to make room for all the dreams he holds as a dad. He doesn't lose who he is, or live vicariously through his child, but he does hope and pray that his kid outlives him -- in every sense of the word.

I know the day will come when our son is old enough to have friends and hobbies of his own, when there will be more time for my husband to use that fishing rod more often, and perhaps buy (back) the truck of his dreams.

For now, though, we'll at least give him today to putter around in the past, doing whatever it is he wishes he could do more regularly. My guess is he'll go fishing, then come home and tell me how he can't wait until our boy is old enough to go with him.

My wish for all dads today is that they spend some uninterrupted time doing what they loved before they had kids. Dig out that tackle box, take the old bike for a spin, tinker with your tools in the garage.

Then take note of the moment you feel it -- that pang in your gut of missing someone special, with the image of your little one's smile flashing in your mind -- and thank your lucky stars you're a dad.

Beach Bum

We spent Father's Day at the beach, per Chris' request. We'd taken Kostyn a couple times before when he was too young to realize where he was, so this was his first real beach experience. I was expecting him to be a bit timid, but that was not the case. Loved, loved, loved the waves, the sand beneath his toes, the shrieking kids on boogie boards, even the swarming seagulls. What a ball, and what a perfect Father's Day.

GObama

This whole Obama thing really has taken on a life of its own, hasn't it? The latest nonsense, forwarded by members of my own extended family, no less, is this:

"According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ ... will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??"

I mean, seriously. An unassuming, peace-loving, U.S. senator from Illinois is actually the antichrist? Oh thank goodness such important news was typed up in an email chain and forwarded across the country, junking up people's inboxes with more of the same old fear tactics the conservatives have been dishing up for almost a decade.

I like what my friend Morgan had to say recently about the madness of it all. Read his take here.

Big Boy Bed

Well, the kid's 1 now, so we told him to buck up and stop being such a baby. (So what that he still can't walk?) To nudge him in that direction, we got rid of the crib in his room and put his mattress on the floor, giving him a modified toddler bed.

I'm kidding, of course, about the 'hurry up and grow up' part. But not the bed part. Some people think we're nuts, but Maria Montessori would disagree. The Montessori philosophy of child development is one that stresses freedom of movement and independence, fostering what the child CAN do instead of focusing on all the things he CAN'T do and, therefore, keeping him restrained from much of the adult world.

Getting rid of the crib and allowing Kostyn to move freely around his room (after a careful, exhaustive and thorough process of childproofing his room while at the same time making it much more "Kostyn-friendly") is our way of acknowledging that Kostyn lives here too, this is his room, and he's far more apt to explore his toys and learn about and have respect for his home environment if he's free to really live and move around in it.

So far, he loves it. And I love the fact that now when he's awake in the middle of the night and cries out for us (he crawls to the baby gate at his door that we put up when we go to bed), I can just hang out on his bed and snooze a bit while he lies beside me or crawls over to his toys and amuses himself. Which is exactly what he did last night at 1 a.m.

Gone Baby Gone

This is my column for Sunday's Island Packet. I'm posting it here because I know I told a few of you faithful Just Sayin' readers (haha) how excited I was about the camper we just bought.

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to have faith in the goodness of mankind.

A few years ago — admittedly against my better judgment — my husband and I bought a sailboat. She was a Marshall Sanderling catboat, wide and heavy and slow, a 17-foot beauty with a fiberglass hull and wooden topsides with two bunks below deck.

I knew nothing about sailing save for what I’d learned by listening to my husband’s tales of sailing every summer with his cousins and uncles through the canal system in upstate New York. It was love at first sight between him and this boat, and I knew my most objective reasoning about bills and budgets and expensive boat slips were falling on deaf ears. When he saw her he regressed to his 12-year-old self, and I was sunk.

We named her Desiderata, something desired, and set about sanding and staining and painting her, a process I soon learned needed repeating every year. She spent hours on the May River, sailed around Calibogue Sound, and became intimately acquainted with the Beaufort River and Port Royal Sound as well.

She made many people happy but none more so than my husband, who dreamt of one day teaching his son to sail the way his uncles had taught him. He was sure Desiderata was just about the safest vessel on which his boy could learn the art and athletics of sailing.

Then last summer she was stolen, trailer and sails and all, right out of the lot where we were storing her.

Over the years I had warmed to the boat but still regarded her like a greedy family member, one who is sucking too much money from your wallet though you don’t have the heart to put them out on the street. After all, they’re family. And for my husband the theft was very much like a sudden death in the family.

We didn’t talk much about it — he really couldn’t bear to — except for the occasional conversation on the processes of filing a police report and obtaining an insurance claim. The settlement check arrived in the mail last month; I thought I’d be happy to recoup our investment, but really, depositing that money in our account felt pretty hollow.

For awhile my husband talked about using some of the cash to buy another boat. But eventually that idea turned into one of buying a camper, and suddenly it was my 12-year-old self reappearing from the haze of childhood to smile with anticipation and nostalgia.

The summers of my youth had been spent in the woods with my aunts and uncles and cousins, tubing down the Schroon River by day and making mountain pies over the campfire by night. And oh how eager I was to carry on those traditions with my boy.

After searching for weeks we found the perfect one on Charleston’s Craigslist, a 10-foot pop-up camper that sleeps six to eight people. It was a 2001 Jayco that came equipped with a little refrigerator, gas grill, cold A/C and even an attached awning and screen room. The pristine pictures of the little pop-up camper sold us on the deal, and we were thrilled.

We contacted the seller, who said he had moved the camper from Craigslist to iSold It, an eBay affiliate, to sell it there. There were some strange stipulations to the sale — the seller asked for payment to a third party through Money Gram — but after researching the validity of both iSold It and Money Gram, we took a leap of faith and sent the money, assured that within 48 hours we’d get a confirmation e-mail and be able to pick the day for our vacation-on-wheels to be delivered.

We spent the first few days daydreaming of all the adventures we’d have with our little boy, knocking around campgrounds across the country just as I’d done as a girl. But as day after day came and went without that confirmation e-mail, we slowly realized we’d been scammed. We never heard from the seller again.

It had been a fake sale, orchestrated by someone who pirated a legitimate company’s name and reputation to scam us out of our money and our dream.

There was no more boat, and now, no camper either.

When someone steals something from you, you’re left feeling stupid and vulnerable, exposed and angry and empty. Luckily, if you center yourself on the treasures of your heart, you are somewhat bolstered by the kinds of riches you know can never be stolen.

So to the scammers, con artists and thiefs out there: You can take a possession, you can even dim a dream. But you cannot steal a memory. And, try as you might, you can’t swipe the intentions we have of passing down to our child the happiness we were blessed with as kids.

We’ll just keep finding another way to do it.

When I close my eyes I can see me as a child, unzipping the screen in our family’s camper to feel the dew on the canvas and smell the bacon my dad is frying over the fire. I can inhale the pine mountain air and hear the stirrings of my loved ones in their campsites nearby.

Such a scene still fills me with peace, and a childlike giddiness. And that’s a gift I will pass down to my son, so that someday when he is grown and the world tries to knock the wind out of his sails, he, too, will have a few treasures even the most cunning thief cannot steal.

The Big Day

Kostyn's birthday was spent at home with just Mommy and Daddy. We had planned to take him to the beach or somewhere equally exciting, but he was still coming down from being utterly overwhelmed from the trip, so we decided to lay low and hit the pool instead. He loved it.

Here he is helping Daddy put together his new birthday wagon (Thanks Nana and Papa!):



Taking a spin around the living room:



Splashing in the pool:



Heading home from the pool. He loves that wagon:



My best attempt at a birthday cake:



And, the cake tasting. I think it's safe to say the kid enjoys chocolate almost as much as his mama.

Road Weary

"Mommy, these things keep falling from the sky! What did you and Daddy call them? Helicopters? Whirlybirds? New York trees are weird."

So, we did it. We trekked north with the boy to both of our hometowns in upstate New York, plus a few other stops along the way to see friends and family. The jaunt from coastal SC to central NY is a 15-plus-hour car ride on a good day, so we ended up breaking it up into two barely bearable chunks. Kostyn did surprisingly well in the car given that he was cooped up in his carseat for at least a few hours for six of the 11 days we were on vacation.

In addition to all the new sights and sounds (we stayed in five different places during the trip), Kostyn quickly became overwhelmed with the number of people who wanted a piece of him up there. They are dear loved ones to us but mostly strangers to him, and after a few days he sort of freaked. It got to the point where he would freeze and look down as soon as he noticed someone smiling at him. That was usually followed by all-out crying and desperate crawling in Mommy's direction. I felt bad because so many loved ones wanted to snuggle and cuddle and play with him, and they were all so good about keeping their distance instead. He did reward several patient people with the gift of him falling asleep in their arms, though.

To make matters even more challenging, he got sick while were up there, and then I got sick, too. Not fun. After his fever spiked to 103 (his very first fever, by the way!) we took him to a local health clinic to make sure we weren't dealing with an ear infection (which we weren't).

All in all it was a decent but exhausting trip. We were incredibly thankful to see so many friends and family, though there is never enough time to really feel 'caught up' with people. Kostyn got treated like birthday royalty everywhere we went, and the weather was perfect, which made us long for a permanent move up there even more. We'll see.....

Kostyn got his first haircut, thanks to his Aunt Annette, who did a super job of 'fixing' what was quickly becoming a mullet.



Celebrating his birthday with Chris' family:



Celebrating his birthday again, this time with my family. His Aunt Lisa's yummy homemade cupcakes were his first real chocolate treat.



Our friends Jerry and Kim's gorgeous twins, who were so patient with KO (thanks, guys!):



His future wife, Sophia, who is a perfect blend of her parents, Mike and Ann. Soooo sweet.



Trying to find his cousin Cora's tongue: ("See, it looks like this, and I think it's right in there...")



It's hard to see it in this picture, but my nephew Zayvius did not take off his Batman cape the entire week (his usual getup also involved black cowboy boots and an old pair of pink gloves that desperately needed to be washed, if my poor sister could ever convince him to take them off). He is a gem, just like his sister.



And here's Chris teaching our nephew Tesher how to tie knots around sticks with blades of grass. Boys.



See, Kim and Amy - I didn't take a single picture of either of you hot pregnant mamas, just like you asked!

Happy Birthday Baby Bear

Today marked the one-year anniversary of the best day of my life. I can't believe a whole year has gone by.

I'll post birthday pictures (and vacation pictures) asap, but for now here's a stroll down memory lane. This video clip is of Kostyn arriving home from the hospital for the first time. He was 2 days old. I look at this clip today and a few things cross my mind:
1. How tiny and skinny and fragile he was.
2. How absolutely clueless I was as a mom.
3. How Chris always videotapes every little moment for far longer than I think is necessary. In every clip I'm in you can practically see me silently screaming "Cut! That's enough! What the hell are you still filming for?!?"
I guess I should cut him some slack. It was a pretty big day.