In the idyllic landscapes of my mind, every community revolves around a manicured town square where ornate fountains send water cascading from the gaping mouths of chiseled fish. Perfectly planted flower beds bloom with the rhythms of the season, expertly maintained by volunteer gardeners. In the center of this colorful square, under the canopy of ancient trees shielding cicadas from predators, is a gazebo. This is the great forum. The grounds upon which all the neighbors gather to discuss the needs of the town. It’s a magical place where parents sit on the gazebo steps, chatting about life, as their children ride bikes in the safety of the local town square.

Sounds awesome, right?

In my single road subdivision, just off a busy six-lane road, we don’t have any of the above. There’s a swing, though. It hangs from a tree in my weed-choked yard, expertly neglected by myself.

When my family and I moved into this house, we almost took down the swing. The previous owner had installed it. The swing is in an awkward spot. While the tree is in my front yard, the swing hangs over our neighbor’s. It also goes over the front sidewalk, and swings toward the road. Although we live in a very quiet cul-de-sac, vaulting my children toward the road feels a little odd. When people are walking by on the sidewalk, they have to dodge the giggling children dangling from a rope of ambiguous age. It’s not ideal.

Swing by and meet the new folks

But after our first few days swinging, something magical began to happen: I started meeting neighbors.

In our last house, we were pretty isolated. Our neighbors were sort of close, but even after six years of sharing a driveway, we spoke to them maybe a half dozen times. A prime reason for picking a new home in a subdivision was to have more visible neighbors again. Neighbors with kids. Neighbors who shared wine and food. So far, we haven’t had any free wine or food, but it’s still early.

The more we went out to the swing, the more time my kids spent with the neighbor kids. Soon these gatherings moved from the swing to the yard. And their parents followed.

It felt like the swing was the town square of our cul-de-sac. It provided a non-verbal invitation to all to gather. What may have just been a wave from across the street became an impromptu hang out for all. The kids would play, the adults would chat. The swing began to feel like the red Solo cup that keeps your hands busy at an awkward social gathering. It satisfied the enduring human need to be doing something else while also being social.

Interestingly, while I feel like my wife can speak with other moms with little need for an activity to center them, we dads … we need something. A point around which to rally. Our swing has become this point. Guys can walk over because something is happening. Somehow this rope, which I’ll never replace (because it’s way, wayyyy too high), and this tiny plastic seat transform into an easy ice breaker. No one has to come up with a topic. There’s no need for a cold approach, an awkward, “So how about the local sports ball team?” The swing naturally provides the, “Kids, ‘amiright,’” topic. Total strangers immediately have something to talk about.

Putting dads at ease

The swing’s natural draw has been a big help to me because I’m terrible at being social. It’s been an issue my whole life. As the kids age, I can see where my anti-social attitude has begun to have a negative effect on them. I want to be the guy that sees other kids and another dad and says, “Hey, let’s go make friends!” Frustratingly, I’m not that guy. While I have a very Ron Swanson demeanor, I’m soft and cuddly on the inside, but my genetic inability to smile seems to put people off.

But the swing!

The swing has saved me. It’s the friendly smile from the front porch that I can’t muster on my own, and it’s made it clear to me why the City Dads Groups have been so helpful to me. They provide the thing around which to rally. They provide an activity or a metaphorical town square in which to meet. These groups are my swing, and my swing is the extension of the groups.

As humans we are all told who we should be. Men are not immune to this. We are told to be tough and strong. We are told to be independent kings of our individual castles. Sometimes our walls are up, especially when it’s so common to feel at ideological odds with our neighbors and fellow humans, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe one day there will be a tree swing on the grounds of the White House. All sides of the political spectrum can swing together, laughing, remembering the joy of being a kid, forgetting all the forces that seek to divide us.

Until then, I’ll keep my swing up as a beacon to the other families to come hang out and chat awhile. Maybe this simple swing will unite the entire subdivision!

As long as the homeowner’s association doesn’t force me to take it down . . .

Photo: © fotovika / Adobe Stock.

Moving. It’s not fun.

Packing everything you own into boxes, selling a house, and buying another one are arguably three of life’s greatest challenges. They are also three of those big checkmarks of so-called “adulthood.” Of course, as a destination, adulthood has extremely mixed reviews. Why was I in such a hurry to get here? Is it too late? Can I pack my adulthood into those same moving boxes and ship us all back into the blessed ignorance of childhood? It’s just a different ‘hood, right?

Moving really is a frightening time. Sure, it comes with some excitement, but it also comes with so much to do. Luckily, I’ve called in to take a few weeks off from my job as a stay-at-home dad.

Oh wait, what’s that you heard? “Dads don’t take sick days?” Whaddaya mean? How am I supposed to pack these moving boxes when my kids keep making them into forts? I can’t put these glasses in bubble wrap when it keeps being dragged away with giggles. On a normal day, I struggle to get everything done. I juggle the kids, their education, their entertainment, the diaper changes, the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning and everything else. With moving, there’s suddenly many more things up in the air.

Juggling moving, parenting duties

I finally asked my nearly 5-year-old son how he felt about moving. After all, he had no real say in this or our first family move, which happened when he was 2. While still not old enough to have super strong ties to an area, he has a preschool here that he loves and friends. He has grandparents living down the street who he sees weekly. He has a big room, a huge yard, a special playhouse and a host of memories. And now, on top of all that, he also has a stressed-out mom and dad, mountains of boxes appearing and so many questions.

My son told me he was both happy and sad. He was excited to be moving “into the ocean.” (Note: We are not, in fact, moving underwater, but we will be living a bit closer to the beaches.) However, he’s also sad to leave. He already knows he’ll miss his friends.

I also have a 2-year-old daughter. She knows. She barely talks, but she knows something’s different. She’s far clingier than normal, and she’s been acting a bit nervous. I think she suspects either something big is happening with the family or I’m going to make her try broccoli again. Both are terrifying.

The kids will be fine, though. My son’s about to start kindergarten so he’ll make tons of new friends. My daughter might not even remember the move; after all, her brother only has vague memories of his first house. My job during this transition is to never lose sight of what’s important even while juggling my many new tasks. Even if all these other crazy things seem on fire, I must keep them all in the air. I once watched a man juggle flaming batons. He didn’t stop to worry about being burned or what might happen if he dropped one. If he’d paused, he would get singed, so he just kept juggling.

Look back in adventure

Ultimately, my kids matter most. While I can’t pack my life into boxes and move back to the ‘hood of childhood, and houses will come and go throughout the years, my family is my home. I am already home. Everything else is just window dressing. I’ll focus on them, and keep the laughter going, even while juggling flaming balls of stress all around. In the end, my kids will move not just to a new house, but to a happier place and a happier childhood.

I look back at my own childhood moves and remember the boxes and the smell of Sharpies. There were long rides in the moving truck and the strangeness and struggle of making new friends. I remember taking everything I owned and packing it up.

One day, I hope my son remembers these moving boxes. I hope he remembers the packing and tears and the excitement of new adventures. And I hope he someday realizes that every move brings him just a teeny bit closer to that inescapable ‘hood we all move toward a bit at a time: adulthood. That is still a long, long way away for him. I’m in no rush for him to get there.

And at times, it feels like it’s still a way off for me, too. But I’m in no hurry either. After all, I hear the reviews of adulthood are mixed.

About the author

Chris Mannino lives with his wife and two children. As a full-time stay-at-home dad, he considers himself a lion tamer, cat herder, sanitation manager, personal chef, private teacher and more. Somehow, he also manages to squeeze in a writing career: crafting fantasy stories from picture books through adult. Visit him at www.ChristopherMannino.com.

Moving boxes photo: ©Pormezz/ Adobe Stock.

Humans are animals, bound and acted upon by forces of nature that are, at times, far beyond our control. Something rooted deep inside desires a few, core needs to be filled. It’s this natural and unrelenting reality that makes emptying our homes, shoving our priceless memories into questionable cardboard boxes, and piling them into rickety metal rectangles, so wildly dramatic and stressful.

It shouldn’t be so stressful. It shouldn’t illicit feelings of being displaced, wayward and lost, but it does. Despite my best efforts, my most recent move sent shockwaves through my family of five.

We all know moving sucks, so I’m not special here. We are all going through some shit right now, and mine isn’t particularly more special than yours. My only goal is to encourage you to find the lessons and teachable moments buried in our times of suffering. In these moments, when our kids can feel the tension and sense the stress, we can help shape our children into better humans.

Good news: it’s easier than you think!

I’m no paragon of patience or colossus of calm, but I’ve found a deep breath and 30 second conversations can rescue kids from a total meltdown. If I’m being completely honest, these moments may be just as therapeutic for me.

On moving day, as dads, we are supposed to be the grumpy and sweaty beast of burden. It’s our genetic birthright to embrace this time-honored tradition, but we have an even greater responsibility to always have the welfare of our children as a top priority. We might be so focused on safely transporting the “fra-gee-lay” Italian lamp we received as a major award, that we may fail to notice the increasing anxiety in our children. It’s tempting to ignore what’s happening around us to remain task focused, but as parents we don’t get that luxury.

Soothing conversations we need to have

Here’s an example. While I was carrying boxes out of the house, my 4-year-old son was running between me and the other guys. I had already barked at him to stop, and I had expressed frustration with my wife for her not keeping my son in check. Now, for the third time, my son was being obnoxious on purpose. I could see his defiance. This wasn’t clueless goofing off. He was trying to impede our progress on purpose. I filled my lungs with air to awaken the thunderous dad voice of discipline only reserved for special occasions. However, instead of yelling at him, I set my box down. I lowered myself to eye level. Letting out my breath slowly, ignoring the back pain, ignoring the knee pain, ignoring the existential pressure of moving, and money, and pandemic, and political nonsense, I quietly asked, “What’s going on, buddy?”

I won’t share these private words between father and son because it’s unnecessary. All I did was let him speak. I answered his questions. I thanked him for talking to me, and he didn’t bother us again. This worked because over the years I have built a foundation of 30-second conversations upon which this 30-second conversation could rest. My son doesn’t have memories of dad spitting fire and venom. Instead, he has memories of a dad taking a breath, taking a knee, and taking a moment to listen.

It’s easy to be angry. It’s easy to wield the hammer, but being a parent isn’t easy. I encourage you to begin building your own foundation rooted upon the bedrock of 30-second patient, understanding, and loving conversations.

Also, I’m never moving again.

Ever.

Photo: © Prostock-studio /  Adobe Stock.

We’re standing in a house somewhere in Minnesota. It has two more bedrooms than our condo in the Chicago area. It has an extra bathroom (and a half), a yard with a built-in barbecue, basketball hoop, two-car garage and property taxes so laughably low that it’s hard to believe this all comes for about the same price as where we live now.

My third- and first-graders are running around claiming bedrooms for themselves and, for a brief second, it’s hard to think of any of the reasons keeping us where we are in suburban Illinois. A casual curiosity to see what we could get on budget during a long weekend getaway visiting family has turned into a serious examination of our lifestyle and how we want to live in the future.

From the moment my oldest was born, we’ve known our 100-year-old apartment couldn’t be home forever. Four people, a dog and a frog can only live in a tiny two-bedroom space in one of the most expensive areas of the United States for so long. Yes, we love the community and take pride in its history, diversity, values and activism but it has slowly become something we’re less sure about.

Our village has fallen short in several ways that leave us wondering if this is a pattern to expect going forward. We’ve not given up on it completely, but we occasionally browse the local real estate ads hoping to find the rare, affordable three-bedroom home. Maybe it’s partly because we can then tell ourselves that we tried to find another home here. Maybe it’s to make it easier to tell our friends that we’re not moving away and never looking back.

Having the hard conversation about moving

Over the past few months, our family has had a few of those “car conversations” that parents know too well where a deep, complicated topic comes up on the way to somewhere and you find yourself sitting in a parking lot talking about it because now seems like as good a time as any. We’ve tried to begin the mental preparations of asking our kids to leave the only home they’ve ever known. It’s especially hard on my son who never wants to go anywhere or do anything. My daughter, on the other hand, told me after we returned home from our Minnesota trip that she wants a porch swing — something impossible in our current circumstances.

My daughter was in a unique Spanish immersion program for kindergarten that has a waitlist. My son has a laundry list of ethnic food establishments that cater to his finicky tastes. We can have Indian on Tuesday, authentic tacos on Wednesday, Thai on Friday, and gourmet pasta at a kids-eat-free place on Mondays. We can walk to multiple transit stations, the local food co-op, and the free weekly festival just a few blocks up our street.

But the world is a big place. How do you teach a child that there is both positive and negative in the comfortable and familiar? How do you, as an adult, weigh your love of wide-open, natural spaces with a love of busy, compact city life?

And, in an especially tricky conversation in the Trump Era: how to factor in the political consequences? How do you raise children to be multicultural and global citizens in a red state? What does raising a feminist daughter look like away from an urban area where she may not see the same examples of equality? What if the population where you want to go is mostly white? Is being close to extended family really important? If moving to a new location involves the purchase of a second car, how do you create the spreadsheet of pros/cons to figure all of this out? There are finances and existential questions.

And then comes the ever-present, comforting weight of staying exactly where you are.

Leaving offers exploration and discovery

So far, our tactic has been to emphasize moving as exploration and discovery. There are billions of people in the world, thousands of cities, hundreds of countries: why not try to encounter some of them? Yes, the job market has to be OK and we’d probably appreciate less harsh winters or a less flat landscape than Minnesota offers. But, ultimately, the people who keep saying the same thing to us over and over and over again are probably right: moving is not going to get easier when they’re older. Indeed, the longer we stay, the more enmeshed we are. If we’ve ever had visions of living abroad or in the mountains or on a beach then the time is probably now.

Even if that means saying goodbye to our local custard shop. We’ll probably find another and have new memories of stepping up to a new window and ordering our new “usual.”

As a dad, it’s tough for me to imagine finding a new group of fathers to hang out with, a new group of cyclists to ride with, a new group of people so active in a different community. But the internet helps. For as much as we like to bash the way social media and screens affect our lives, I know that 2018 promises many more connective opportunities than in the past no matter where we go. Whether it’s finding an expat network abroad or a group of trail runners who like to hit the woods on weekends, I can’t imagine how difficult, isolating and daunting a move would have been pre-internet. People did it, but now you can have a reply within 10 minutes to a “hey we’re new please meet us at the playground” post.

I’m thankful to belong to a group like City Dads. We’re in, what, 30 cities now? If I need to find a good beer almost anywhere in the nation, there’s a waiting network of friendly guys online or in real life who can help our family navigate new waters. And City Dads Group is one of many such organizations. We’re blessed to live in an era where finding people with common interests and common experiences is … common. Maybe I’ll see some of you soon.

Moving photo: Jason Lander on Foter.com / CC BY

My wife texted me in a panic this morning. She couldn’t find her membership card to the Staten Island Children’s Museum she wanted to visit with our kids.

She later texted me a photo of my 7-month-old at a museum, putting some filth-ridden toy in his mouth, the goofy idiot. I texted back, both to insult my son for being a goofy idiot and to ask at which museum she’d ended up going to with the kids.

I also knew that didn’t matter. We live in New York City.

It turns out she’d gone to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum instead. She could only find her membership card for the science museum in Queens bit then my son wanted to go back to the Museum of Natural History for the 15th time, or maybe the NYC Transit Museum for the 50th, or to that museum we visited when we saw R2D2 (the science museum in New Jersey). Every one of those places is less than an hour away from our place in Brooklyn.

Their options were almost literally limitless.

Over the weekend, we took a ferry over to Governor’s Island, complete with amazing views of the Statue of Liberty, so my 5-year-old could play in the slide park there. Then, we took the ferry back and hung out at Brooklyn Bridge Park for a little while, complete with amazing views of the Manhattan skyline, and on the way home, we walked by Prospect Park and had to forcibly pull my son away from the three playgrounds we passed as we made our way back to our apartment.

That variety is why we like the city.

A few years ago, after five years and one kid, we left NYC for the same reasons everyone else does: the cost of living is too high, space is too limited, and people too plenty. Those issues remained when we returned to NYC after a year and a half down south.

Yes, living in the city is expensive, and no, we likely won’t be able to buy a house here anytime soon. But we tried to downsize — moving a few years ago to Raleigh, which is ostensibly a city only without a centralized downtown and no real public transportation so it didn’t much feel like one. So despite our interest in having more space and less expense, it wasn’t for us.

The funny thing is, I thought it would be a culture clash that did me in. Instead it was that after almost 15 years in Boston and, at the time, five years in Brooklyn, I had become a city person. I didn’t anticipate that, especially not when I thought about having children.

My wife and I both grew up in non-urban settings. I am from suburban Connecticut, and she grew up in rural Pennsylvania. A childhood in New York City is pretty far afield from both of ours, and I never anticipated raising my kids in an environment like this. As such, I won’t pretend I don’t have some concerns about it.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to the probability that they’ll ride the subway to high school, and it will never not bum me out that they won’t spend as much time riding dirt bikes down wooded pathways. But everything is a trade-off.

For everything they miss out on, they’ll gain something else.

We may not have a big yard (and we’re lucky we have the sliver of yard we currently possess), but there are more than enough nearby greenery and park spaces to accommodate us. We may not have as much space, but space is overrated, and everything we need is easily accessible and then some. From countless parks and museums to a veritable Epcot of food options, there is little my kids won’t be able to experience as they grow up.

The culture and diversity NYC provides are immeasurable. The convenience it offers is irreplaceable. At this point, going back to a small town or suburb is unimaginable.

A version of this post previous appeared on Dad and Buried. Contributed photo: Mike Julianelle

“We can’t live like this,” my overheated 14-year-old daughter declared.

We were a few days into our recent move to a new house — actually, to a very old house with many things that needed fixing. Its lack of air conditioning added to our misery, especially given the unfortunate heat wave.

At first, my wife and I laughed at my daughter’s melodramatic statement (and her humidity-induced curly hair). People lived without air conditioning for millennia, I explained to her. Discomfort builds character, I reasoned to myself. Besides, we planned to install air conditioning in the near future.

But over the next few weeks, the move-in process worsened. The house consumed my attention: fixing minor issues like creaky doors, getting estimates for major problems like a driveway so bad my wife trades heels for sandals to walk on it, and gleaning as much wisdom as possible from all the workers traveling through the house. Thanks to fancy technology, the chimney guy showed me the innards of my aging chimney, the plumber showed me clogs in my drain tiles, and the heating guy showed me rust in my boiler.

Instead of fretting over all these X-rays, however, I should have been taking the pulse of my relationship with my two teen daughters. Our family health was suffering, and it showed in the increasing number of slammed doors and sighs of exasperation. I grew to hate being such a distracted dad. Echoing my daughter, I finally realized: “We can’t live like this.” We needed to add some fun to this process. But how?

Elevate your perspective

Enter the roofing guy. One day he invited me to follow him up a ladder to inspect a flat roof outside my daughter’s bedroom window. As I ascended, I got a charge. I had forgotten how exhilarating it can be to (safely) explore a flat roof—the sense of freedom, the altered perspective, the aerial view of the neighborhood. As I looked out from the roof, I also reveled in the rooftop memories from my own childhood house and the small, flat roof outside my bedroom window.

Later that day, I texted my 14-year-old in her lingo: “if u wanna climb on roof outside your window I have the ladder up!”

“I’ll be right out lol,” she replied instantly. Who could say no?

After climbing up the ladder to the roof safely, we enjoyed the good stuff — the new perspective, the sense of adventure (and slight risk), even a few memories from my childhood. It was sublime. And I could tell she appreciated me sharing such a mature, potentially dangerous experience with her.

Then her 14-year-old mind brought me back to earth with the casual request: “Can me and my friends climb out the bedroom window onto this roof sometimes?”

As a montage of noisy teen girls and trellis-climbing suitors rocketed through my head, I replied: “No. And we should probably get down now.”

But the rooftop moments with my daughter have stuck with me as we settle into our “new” old house. They remind me to take time to savor the high points of parenting. Never lose sight of the big, aerial picture of family life. For that is no way to live.