Boy, the Way Glenn Miller Played

“It’s too late, Edith. My bus has sailed.”

– Archie Bunker, All in the Family

Adam and I are in a great state of bliss, a great state of shock, and a mild state of mourning.

Bliss, because who wouldn’t be? Our dream came true. The ink’s not dry on the paperwork yet and there’s still an entomologist’s wet dream worth of bugs to work out, but all in all, we got what we paid for. We got to have kids, and that’s quite an honor, considering as a pair we don’t have the reproductive parts to cook up a batch of our own. The fact that somebody read a bunch of letters about us and said, “here, take these two” still fills us with a sense of grateful wonder.

We’re in shock because as much as we thought we were ready for this, who in the name of heaven and earth could really be ready for this? This, with all its exhausting surprises. Wow. We were so not ready.

And curiously, more and more as the shock wears off, we find ourselves in an almost puzzled state of mourning because we don’t get to be who we were anymore:  Hoovy and Hoovy, the mind-reading wonder twins. Now we’re Dad and Daddy, and some days not only are we not on the same page, we’re not even shopping at the same Barnes and Noble.

I lost my candy rights 40 days into the fray. It was decided I was far too generous with the bribes and the candy, so Adam and the therapist cut me off. Now when the kids ask for fun stuff, I shake my head and say “go ask Daddy.” Who can make the sunrise? Sprinkle it it with dew? Apparently not me anymore. Honey badger don’t do Willy Wonka.

Adam feels equally outvoted when the kids come into our bedroom at night with the sniffles or bad dreams. He’d just as soon boot the little darlings back to their own rooms, no holds barred, where I’m more of a “climb in and kick me” kind of dad, not overly concerned if I half-sleep through Justin’s squirmy bedbugs if it means I feel him close to me, something he otherwise doesn’t volunteer for. I need that closeness. It keeps me going. And if scared-of-the-dark night visits are the only way I get them, I want them. Adam wants a good night’s sleep and kids who learn to stay in their own beds. And logically he’s right. But the need to be loved is a strong counterpoint, and I win this one.

Snacks and candy, midnight wakeups, where to have dinner, how to eat dinner, what the rules at the dinner table are…all this stuff is brand-freaking-new to us, and it’s stuff we didn’t even think to discuss in advance. We were too busy building bunk beds and congratulating ourselves for our awesome humanitarianism. Now, pan back from the forest and look at the trees, and where Adam says “A,” I say “B.” I say "yes" and he says "no." It’s no different than any other couple’s parental missteps; ours just seem magnified because we didn’t get any ramp-up time leading up to it.

Unless you adopted a six and seven-year-old too, most of your kids started out as babies and clay. You got to mold them into seeing their parents as a duo. You got to work out the bugs in your parenting style before they learned how to talk and they weren’t sitting there debating it with you. Ours showed up on day one fully conversant and tap dancing on the tabletops, and we never thought to pre-arrange the hand signals for who tackles them down again. Or which offenses need tackling. We’d play good cop bad cop, but I’m such a hopeless good cop, my badge already comes with hippy beads and peace signs. As my sister Erin said before we got them, “I picture Adam being the dad and you being Mrs. Doubtfire.”

It’s weird not to be on the same page as Adam. We’ll get there again, we’re starting to gel, but it’s been an astoundingly difficult two and a half months, realizing for the first time in our 15 year relationship, we’re really not the extension of the same heart and mind we always assumed we were. We were raised by two exceedingly different sets of parents and the conflicting styles we bring into this endeavor are painfully clear to us every day, as we scratch our heads at our mismatched efforts and try to learn to come together again.

We used to finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s thoughts and move through life together with the grace of Baryshnikov tossing Nureyev up in the air. (Okay, I know that never happened, but it’s hard to find a male-male ballet couple. On stage, anyway). Now we clunk through the early days of parenthood like Forrest Gump before the braces came off doing a square dance with Stan Laurel carrying a two-by-four.

Sigh. Cue the music. Our synchronicity used to be such an effortless brotherhood.

Like Archie and Edith sitting at that old piano bench in Queens via Burbank, Adam found the tune and I screeched out the high notes. You guys enjoyed it. You howled your approval (and you knew who you wurrrrrr then!) and cheered our theme song because it ended in happy two-part harmony. Now you watch Justin beat the crap out of his sister and you’re not quite sure what to think of us. Our 21^st century version of All in the Family, turns out, is still filmed before a live studio audience.

We were trying to think the other night of things we miss the most. Misty water-colored memories and what-not.

We decided buffets were on top of the list. Those of you who knew us well knew that Adam and I were uncontested Las Vegas buffet champions. They were closer to our heart than some of the relatives we know, and three times a week, rain or shine, you could find us gorging out at Fiesta, Texas, the Suncoast, Santa Fe, or – bow your heads for a moment of silence – Red Rock Station.

We mourn the loss of familiar habits and places that just don’t fit in the new family schedule. We miss driving down Decatur to Red Lobster for trout when enough gift cards build up from those silly consumer panel surveys Adam’s always doing. We miss hopping down the street to Chili’s for a piece of salmon and a black bean burger, still muttering under our breath about how they took the tuna sandwich off the menu, even though that was seven years ago.

We miss movie night on the couch with movies starring grown-ups who shoot people and use swear words. We miss Star Trek, the Sy-Fy Channel and sitting in the hot tub with no pants on. I miss Backyard Monsters and talking to Dawn every morning. I miss Skyping my mom on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

We miss impromptu trips to the local bookstore for decaf, hot chocolate and a browse. Oh, we were shameless. We’d look at the shelves, page through best sellers, then order them on our Kindles and sit there and read them. Now my Kindle is just one more device that plays Stupid Zombies and Angry Birds and streams Netflix episodes of ninja cartoons.

I miss getting up in the middle of everything and saying, “You know what? I think I’m going to Cost Plus to buy a big bag of licorice and a big bottle of wine,” then sit on the couch, watch six episodes of Big Bang Theory and finish the whole damn thing, because there was no good reason not to. Now I have two impressionable kids who had a doozy of a birth mom who drank like a fish, and they don’t need to see it in their new house too.

Wine, wine, whine. What else have I got?

We can’t travel overseas anymore, at least until we’re settled. For the past three years we’ve gone to London two weeks out of the year and loved it immensely. Oh, sweet London.  Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, loose in the tube stations, people-watching in Leicester Square, kosher lunches in Golders Green. Walking down the High Street in North Finchley on the way to Sainsbury's for clotted cream and jam balls, not a care in the world. London is magical. For God’s sake, I got to read “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens” in Kensington Gardens. Put that on your bucket list.

All gone. Sigh. Now we’re happy if we survive a trip to the athletic club.

Our friend Howard wants us to come along this winter when he takes his daughter Shayna to SeaWorld and Disneyland. SeaWorld? Disneyland? With our crew? We took our kids to Circus Circus overnight and nearly crapped our pants chasing them through Adventuredome. They were good in Wisconsin, but a lot of that time we had them trapped in lakes and boats and there was nowhere to run. The odds of hauling them to London and back on a ten hour flight feels like Richard Harris belting out a Don Quixote number. To dream the impossible dream.

Their case worker has to give us permission to take our kids out of state, did you know that? We can take them to three or four county-ordered therapy appointments a week, and nobody’s passing the hat for gas money, thank you very much, but if we want to take a cozy family trip across the border to the faraway mystic land of, oh, Utah, for example, we need a signed permission slip like we were going on a fourth-grade field trip. And it takes about three weeks and three requests to get one. Ain’t life a bitch til they take our training wheels off.

Oh well. No sense crying over spilled milk. Everything we used to be, we’ll be again someday. Kids grow up, logistics get easier, and we’ll all get used to moving together as a synchronistic unit of four, where once there were two. But we sure miss the twoness of two sometimes. For everything we gained, we never really stopped to think about what we’d lose overnight and for months…our sense of effortless unity, our sense of untouchable connectedness. The world is saying “I told you so,” but thank God it’s getting better and thank God it’s starting to come back now, because I still love Adam impossibly much, and it’s scary not being on his page anymore. Even though he’s a Grinch with the candy.

Meanwhile, back here in the real world, I just put a killer big meatloaf in the oven, which I know the kids will declare disgusting on sight. But it’s something Adam and I used to enjoy monthly and I haven’t made one since they’ve been here. Screw the frozen chicken nuggets, that’s what they’re getting for dinner tonight. Besides, Adam and I know better. My meatloaves are legendary. They’re the stuff dreams are made of. They’re genuine Monets in a world full of poster art.

So, that’s where I’ll leave you tonight, talking my bravest game, defiantly serving meatloaf, counting my blessings, and secretly missing London and pining for the easy breezy couple we always used to be.

Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.