Dylan Stafford

Friday I saw Fergie, the curvy-sexy singer of the Black Eyed Peas. I was coming out of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and I saw the paparazzi across the street. There were about 6 very amped-up photographers swarming someone on the other side of 3rd Avenue. I knew in the center of the photographers was somebody famous but I couldn’t see who it was yet.

I was leaving my son Jackson’s doctor’s appointment and I was pushing him in his stroller. He wanted to press the cross-walk button, and I didn’t want him to get run over by a passing car. He likes to stand on the unsteady strap that goes between the stroller’s front wheels and reach to press the cross-walk button, so I couldn’t pay attention to the unfolding star-sighting.

Jackson is two years and nine months old and he was stepping out in a fleecy, spider-covered onesie at 1:00 in the afternoon. He wouldn’t change into daytime clothes and after 30 minutes of cajoling, I gave up and took him to the doctor in his pajamas. What could it really hurt anyway? I couldn’t think of any logical reason he had to wear daytime clothes.

We’d kept him home sick the last four days. I stayed home with him Tuesday and Friday, and Marisa covered the middle days when I made a business trip to Atlanta.

He’d had a fever on and off since Monday night. He wasn’t eating much and had been grouchy. Little annoyances set him off, like my failed effort at getting him dressed in something besides pajamas. He’s a lot like his mom and dad, as we’re both grouchy when we get sick.

I called the doctor’s office that morning and explained that he’d had a fever throughout the week, that he’d not been eating much, had been lethargic and now had developed a barking cough that was waking him up at night. The nurse said there was a 2:30 time slot. I asked for anything earlier because 2:30 would be in the middle of his nap time. She looked again and said I could bring him at noon.

Our doctor determined that he had bronchitis. I filled the prescription and got him on it. Soon Marisa and I caught the illness from him.

This part of parenting is one of the last parts I’m getting comfortable with, dealing with illness. I have never been at ease with staying home when it is me that is sick. Unless I’ve got a broken leg or am actively bleeding or have vomited in the last few minutes, I always feel like a cheat when I stay home sick. I think that I will get fired. I think that people will come to my house and see me and call the sick-day-fraud police.

I think all my guilt about sick days is misplaced karma from my shoplifting pre-teen years. When I was in elementary school I was a good shoplifter. I was a chubby preacher’s kid with an angelic face and dimples and I got away with it–I never got caught. I used to steal Playboys from the Stop ‘n Go market in our neighborhood and share them with my friends. I had a little library service of soft porn and it made me a popular dude. 

When Jackson gets sick, I have those same guilty, sick day feelings. When he was born, I was only able to stay home about three weeks from work before I started going back into the office. I had more sick days saved up but my guilty conscience wouldn’t let me use them. If having a baby isn’t a valid reason to stay home, how could a cold or flu ever be enough?

My mantra for 2010 is “slow down, experience more”. Yes, yes, very zen, but it’s working for me. California and our federal government are both running out of money. At UCLA, I’m a state employee and we all got a pay cut this year. I’m not holding my breath that my Terminator-Governor will have salaries come back as promised.

We seem to have a hangover from a slight over-consumption problem that isn’t good for our environment, for our budget, for our health. Maybe it is time to slow down personally and globally. Maybe sick days are supposed to happen. Maybe sick days are a chance to back off, eat ice cream, and let the world go on without me… Nah–sick days are a big pain-in-my-ass, an interruption to all my grand plans and grand designs. I don’t mind rest and relaxation, but it needs to be productive.

Jackson will be three in a couple of months. Parenting has gotten easier this last year. He’s so much more fun now that his words are here and his imagination is waking up. He’s stronger and more dexterous and I’m not so worried I’m going to hurt him when we play-wrestle.

Parenting is shifting in my perspective. I can’t control how it is going to go. There’s nothing to win. It is an everyday, suit up and show up, kind of gig and it is loosening my little world view. I’m getting to be content where I’m at, and that is a big deal for me because I’ve always been a “I’m not there yet, but I’m working hard and I will get there someday” kind of guy.

The paparrazi finally crossed the street and I saw that they were stalking Fergie. My silly ego came face to face with a legitimate rock star. Last year at the Rose Bowl, my best friend Travis and I saw Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas open for U2. She was 90 feet tall and booty-licious on the monster screens of the U2 stage. While I am a rock-star in my mind, she is a rock star in life and she had the paparazzi to show for it, snapping her picture as she went for her doctor’s visit.

I’m old now. 40! Ha! My rock and roll days are a memory. But I’ve got a peace. It isn’t better or worse than the electricity and titillation of earlier years. It’s just peaceful. And–I’ll take it. I’ll slow down and experience it and I will take it.