Return of the Prodigal Father

We’re not dead, and everything’s great.

I’m sure all of you erudite word hounds are thinking to yourselves, “What does the title of this post mean? Doesn’t “prodigal” mean “profligate,” “wastefully extravagant,” or “spendthrift”? Is Matthew broke? Has he misused a metaphor? And just what exactly is it with Sarah Palin, anyway?”

All valid questions. In answer to the first, I’m evoking the story of the wayward son who vanished without a trace and wasted his time and money, only to return months later to be feted by family and friends with accolades and parties. So here I am. Ready for kegs and naked twister.

I’m sure the next question on your minds is, “Where the hell have you been the last 2.5 months?” As my brother-in-law put it over a month ago, I seem to have set a new land speed record for starting a blog and then letting it go mysteriously and utterly defunct.

You might think I’m lazy. And it’s true, you would never lose money betting on indolence as the reason I haven’t accomplished something. You might think I’m overwhelmed with work and don’t have time to blog. And it’s true, my work schedule is batshit insane.

But the real reason I stopped blogging was both simpler and more complicated. See, a funny thing happened: Eli became my son. Just like that. “Gotcha” became “got you.” Done. Part of the family. My boy. Brother to Naomi and Townes. Very much son to Allison. And it turns out that adopting a child, in the end, despite all the paperwork and travel and weirdness and worry, just isn’t very different at all from birthing a child. All that frenzy and angst over the birth -- or the adoption -- and then suddenly there’s a child there that wasn’t there before, and he becomes fused to you in a matter of days, and life becomes all about the beautiful but very mundane world of parenting. What to feed him, how to clothe him, when to applaud him, how to raise him. By the end of August, Eli was every bit as much one of my children as Naomi or Townes, and our family got down to the normal and wonderful and humdrum business of getting on with ourselves.

Now, I’m just not one to be often moved to write about the daily lives of my children. Maybe it’s the taciturn Midwesterner in me. Maybe it’s the lapsed, stiff-backed Calvinist. Whatever the reason, there’s something uncomfortable or unnecessary or indelicate about rambling on about our daily affairs. Others don’t feel that way and that’s fine and they write some wonderful and funny and inspiring pieces on family life, but I’m wired to ponder and internalize such things, not to broadcast them to the world. So I suppose the reason I stopped blogging is that adopting Eli stopped being fantastic or unusual, and started just being normal – and that’s the most fantastic outcome I could have hoped for.

But in fairness to you, my One Reader, let me finally and at long last get back to the subject of this blog.

Eli would like you to know that he does not like bread, but does like beans and broccoli. His favorite thing in the world is whole milk yogurt. He’s heavy enough that you can feel it lifting him now, and he eats normally and well. His most beloved book is “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb,” which as everyone knows is a classic that reveals new nuances and life lessons every time you read it. He enjoys being thrown in the air as high as possible, and dangled by his feet, and tickled until he can’t stand it anymore. He’s not much of a talker but he’s working on it, and he’s already smarter than you.



30 Minutes Ago

He was Spiderman for Halloween, a holiday that was at first scary, then bewildering, then like being admitted to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The day after Halloween nobody was looking when he got a stool out, selected a 100,000 Grand candy bar from the bowl on the counter, put it in the microwave still wrapped, set the timer for 55 minutes, and pressed Start. Five minutes later I was wondering where all the smoke was coming from when I noticed that the microwave was running and there was a bubbling magma of caramel and plastic sizzling away in it.

He likes story time at the library, he likes running down our driveway, and he likes visiting Naomi and Townes at school – where he is invariably mobbed by children of all ages.

He’s not especially fond of car rides that last longer than 30 minutes, so we are looking forward to driving to Chicago for Christmas.

He is no longer afraid of the cat. Or many things at all.

He loves his toothbrush. His hair is thick and dark. His favorite color is yellow. He will play with play-dough for hours at a time. He likes to cook. He’s intrigued by snowflakes. He can produce boogers the size of small mammals. He will give you a fist bump or a high five or a kiss if you request one.

He loves us. We reciprocate.

What else is there to say?

So with that, Eli and Townes and Naomi and Allison and myself bid you thanks and farewell, for now at least. I may return here to write about seminal moments, I may not. I enjoyed very much writing about the adventure of adopting, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. I now enjoy living the adventure that is my family, but I don’t find myself scribbling things down about it. I have other adventures that dominate my thoughts and my writing urges, phantasmagorical stories of talking trees and blue dust and floating islands and space travel and the metaphysics of bacon.

Coming, some day, to a bookstore near you. Or perhaps to your digital corneal holo-reader implants.