Perchance to dream...

But enough about them. Let's talk about me. Let's talk about Daddy's hopes and dreams. You'll notice that I left the Profile piece over there to your right mostly blank and that's because, well, I'm shy. However, in the posts to come you'll be given clues into who I am. Little puzzle pieces that, hopefully, will fit together - you may have to force one into place every now and then, though, as I have. When the puzzle is complete, you will be left with a character who is a little bit Christopher Reeve in Superman when Margot Kidder as Lois Lane first confronts him in her rooftop garden, a little bit of Tom Hanks's man-child in Big, and equal portions of J. Pierpont Morgan, Woody Allen and Nikola Tesla (but mainly due to my love of pigeons and my freakishly large thumbs).

Who am I? I'm a singer. Mostly in the style of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin or Elvis Costello. Oh, I can belt it out with the best of them, and the best time to do this is in the car, in the morning, along with whatever is in the CD player. Lately, thanks to my sister, that CD is the soundtrack to Curious George, over...and over...and over. And, with apologies to Jack Johnson, I think I'm pretty damn good. My children, though, ask me to stop. Beg me to stop. My own flesh and blood don't want me to entertain them the best way I know how. What kind of way is that to encourage my dream of singing at Carnegie Hall some day? Do I laugh in C's face when he brings me one of his lop-sided people drawings? Do I beg S to stop when she mangles the ABCs? No, of course not. I laugh at them and ridicule them behind their backs and share it with the 116 unique visitors to this site since I went public with it yesterday like any responsible parent would.

Our job as parents is to nurture dreams, to identify our children's interests and abilities and to gently, so gently, nudge them in that direction with grace and affirmation. Nowhere does it say anything about covering your ears and screaming, "No! No! No!" from the back seat. Well, It's time for Daddy's dreams to be about more than finishing a television show uninterrupted and stepping onto a dry bathroom floor in my sock feet. It's time for me to sing.