On Tyranny

KEYS to maintaining and iron grip on my household

With the blessed return of my wife from Ethiopia, things are looking up an Chez Melendez. The kids are coughing less, I’m sleeping more, and there’s someone in the house I can talk to with more than a third grade education! So instead of having a long drawn out piece today where I take some trivial life event and stretch it into 1600 words, let’s take a quick look around the Melendez Cinematic Universe.

• I am a little bit worried my children have been reading historian Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Snyder’s little booklet on how to resist authoritarianism has gotten an enormous amount of press in recent years for no particular reason.

  It’s quite good. You should read it.

  The problem is that while I want my country to be democratic, I do not wish for my household to be democratic. My household should be benevolent despotism run my wife.

  (Note: Just kidding. More of a diarchy. That said, as long as we’re talking household governance systems, I would find the increasingly blasé world of polyamory much less pretentious if all of the open minded people started referring to themselves as being in “triumvirates” rather than “throuples.” Then you could have fun discussions about who in the relationship is the Caesar, who’s the Pompey, and who’s the Crassus, as in “I love my husband, but he’s such a Crassus.”

  I used to find hearing about other people’s polyamorous lifestyles fascinating in the same way I find people’s trips to North Korea fascinating—something unusual, exotic, and not for me. Mow feel about polyamorous people the way I feel about vegans—I don’t really care, and I don’t really want to talk about. I have no particular objection to you being polyamorous/vegan, and I have don’t object to you expressing it in my presence. You can bring both of your partners to Thanksgiving, and I will provide a vegan alternative other than wine (beer?) I accept polyamory and veganism as legitimate ways to live and absolutely believe people should be able to express themselves as they wish, so now can we please stop talking about it as if it is still interesting and having think pieces about it in the New York Times? No? We still have plenty of think piece about heterosexual marriage and endless conversations about them? Yes, but we should we?

  My take on polyamory, polygamy, and even adultery is that they are only interesting to me as a source of additional domestic labor. Honestly, if my wife ever had an affair—which I don’t worry about literally at all—my first reaction would be to ask why her lover wasn’t contributing to housework and child-rearing. In conclusion to all of my polyamorous friends, I love and I cherish and celebrate your relationships. And to my vegan friends, I tolerate your eccentricity.)

  Snyder’s first lesson is “Do not obey in advance.” I am pretty sure my kids have figured this one out. There is very little obeying in advance in my house. There is also not that much obeying in retrospect. Currently, we’re working on a deal where L can get her ears pierced if she demonstrates that she’s responsible enough to care for pierced ears by getting herself dressed every morning. Most mornings she does dress herself—eventually. But the prodding, pushing, nagging, and extorting required to get her to do it are somehow more effort than literally putting her clothes on for her. Her big complaint is that it is unfair that C gets help getting dressed. Somehow the fact that we have not made an ear-piercing deal with C does not resonate with her, nor does the fact that if we let C dress himself, he would go to school with a hard hat, sunglasses, and no pants. Her second complaint is that a lot of time is spent getting dressed and undressed every day, and it is a boring thing to do. I have no response for this. She’s right. And the diminished variety in my wardrobe since I stopped going to the office proves it.

• My mother really does not like it when I am self critical not the internet. I think she worries that I actually mean it all. (Note to my Mom: I do not mean it all.) When I joke about being a bad dad, it really bothers her. I get this. I really do.

  When L gets discouraged about, say, her drawing of a mouse and says she’s bad at drawing mice, my heart breaks a little. It’s the same, when C tells me he cannot open an apple sauce pouch. You can kids! You’re doing great!!!! I believe in you! I imagine this is how my mom feels when I joke about being a bad dad/husband/job candidate. After a previous blog, though I can’t remember which one, where I had joked about being a bad dad, she told me she did not like it, and I explained that I had said that because it was funny that way.

  She responded with something to the effect of, “Well, why couldn't you say, I’m a dad who had a challenging day.”

  The answer, I tried to explain, is that that is not funny. Not even a little. A correct, sober, and moderate assessment just has no comic bite. It would make me wonder if my mom gets jokes, except for the fact that she is very funny, if occasionally a bit off color for her son’s taste.

  Also, some of my most popular posts have been ones where I question my competence as a parent. People like them. They find them relatable. I think this is because most, if not all, parents, really wonder if we’re secretly bad at it. Alternatively, people just like laughing at my misfortune.

• During the period of illness in our house, we consumed a great deal of chocolate in a variety of forms. The kids got chocolate ice cream to soothe their throats and push calories, chocolate chips to rid their mouths of the horrible taste of medicine, and hot chocolate to warm them and get fluids into their bodies. L likes to put the chocolate powder into the milk herself. I get it. It’s fun. That’s why Kenny Bania on Seinfeld had an entire act about it. C, however, does not like this process. Every time I’d offer to let him put the powder in the milk, he would look at the milk and scream “That not hot chocolate!!”

  Eventually, I figured out that I could manage the situation by telling him “OK C, I’ll get rid of this boring milk and bring you a hot chocolate,” then go into the kitchen add the chocolate powder and then bring it back.

  “Look, I got rid of the milk and got you a hot chocolate,” I declare cheerfully.

  Usually this resolves the situation, except for one day when C demanded “I want sugar on top.” Sorry kid, I may be feeling like a defeated parent but not that defeated. (Note: Mom, I feel good about myself, not that defeated etc. Do not worry about me.)

  Kids eat a lot of chocolate in Switzerland, and having hot chocolate every morning wouldn’t be the least bit strange, but I sympathize with an American friend here who told me she just can’t do it. There are so many stereotypes about Americans and junk food that giving your kid chocolate every morning feels like it’s feeding a narrative, even if doing so is more Swiss than American.

• We went to the Geneva Christmas market yesterday on a glorious fall day. I’m pretty opposed to doing anything Christmasy before Thanksgiving, but I have to give them a break here because Thanksgiving does not exist in Switzerland. And at this time of year, it was actually do warm to drink hot wine, which is kind of the entire point of Christmas markets. Still it was a nice outing. The kids rode the merry-go-round and the grownups each had a cold beer. I’ve gone to a fair number of Christmas markets in France and Switzerland now, and the one thing that jumps out at me is that there is always, always, always a Canadian stand. Though it might more accurately be called a Canadian stereotype stand. They generally, but not always, sell two things, maple syrup and poutine. Every time I find myself a little surprised and disappointed that I can’t get beaver pelts there.