A Boy Comes Into His Own

It's a rite of passage long in coming. We've had L and N sharing a room ever since N arrived to cramp L's style. The reason was simple: our dense-pack So Cal subsistence in our 3-bedroom bungalow did not allow for separate kid's rooms while still maintaining the non-negotiable of Daddy's office. The office, affectionately known as "The Cave," was my sacred retreat ground; a place to weather the storms of life and Daddyhood. An enormous desk, a computer, big book cases stuffed with books that were therapeutic, not because I actually read any of them, but because they were just there, radiating wisdom and well-roundedness into the very air, a mini-stereo with an an auxiliary iPod hook up - all contributed to the man-spa, the shrine, the anointed place of otherness.

Anointed places of otherness don't stand the test of time very well.

I've known for a while my days of retreat and reinvigoration were numbered. As the kids have grown, so have the frictions. By inflicting crampedness on the two smallest members of the family to buy a little breathing room for the largest, we'd given ourselves ever-diminishing returns. First of all, the room they shared had become a perpetual disaster area, looking much like the aftermath of a sizable tsunami. (After all, who wants to clean up their 99 lbs. of scattered toys when their sibling's 3 lbs. are distributed through-out?) And second, bedtimes were stretching like summer sun towards a solstice as the chit-chat, rough-housing and the occasional song-fest would leak out of the room for several hours after lights-out. Stacy and I knew Abraham and Lot would need to part ways. We understood our little zygote would have to undergo binary fission. We who had become one were grimmly aware that the one would need to become two. We just didn't want to... OK, I didn't want to give up the man-cave.

Sorting - yeah, sure they are.

We whole-heartedly acknowledged the need to separate the two, and I was able to pretend for a while that we were actually serious. Denial was quite easily accommodated. In the spirit of progress toward our goal, we kicked off a remodel to add an office nook to one end of the kitchen. The never-ending project was the perfect mechanism to suggest that I was moving forward with the inevitable while actually maintaining the comfortable status quo for months and months. But alas, even eternal kitchen remodels reach a point where you can't pretend any longer and have to admit that you really could dissolve the office and separate the rooms now if you tried. After that I had to resort to the "need a good long weekend" excuse, which is always a guarantee of a couple more months of man-cave. But eventually, last week, I had the unfortunate inconvenience of working shift-work over the weekend and flexing the following Friday off. Presto! A three-day weekend. My excuses had run out. Time to divide the nations. I now know how the president of Yugoslavia must have felt.

Nothing that is intended to increase the overall level of organization gets to the goal directly. Fighting entropy is an inevitably non-linear proposition. In order to make things nice and tight and neat, you have to undergo a small natural disaster in the process. Rooms have to be gutted, bed's have to be decomposed, mattresses have to be stashed in the most ludicrous parts of the home, and the entire shifting maneuver has to take on the logistical planning of a multinational NATO operation. The commander of forces has to ensure that the native populace, though eagerly willing to assist in any and all of the tasks at hand, are suitably quarantined to prevent collateral damage.  And believe me, the native populace will be exceedingly excited.

One of many "temporary" dumping grounds.

And there is no such thing as a surgical strike. One does not move in, engage in bedroom shock and awe, and walk away, mission accomplished, in a day. The rebuilding of the infrastructure will take days, weeks or months. Our living room, kitchen, master bedroom and assorted hallways are littered with the refuse of life looking for a good box or drawer to call home. And much is MIA. I have yet to figure out where my stapler is, and imagine that it will be found by the local citizenry and put to dubious use long before I stumble upon it. But the deed is done, or at least irrevocably initiated, and we are committed to the long haul. I will not be so presumptuous as to provide a timetable for the ending of hostilities against the axis of evil (entropy, overcrowding, and inter-sibling aggression), but we are signed up to see it through, at least until we go stir-crazy amid all the junk and haul it into the backyard for a glorious bonfire.

The initial ascent

In Xanadu did Kubla-N a stately pleasure dome decree

The sound sleep of a man with a sense of establishment.