Palm open, he fans out the little fingers of his little left hand save for the index and middle one, folding the fanned ones into that curative palm of his in a partial fist. His chubby thumb is a lenient latch over his partial fist. This boy, our boy, lifts his middle and index fingers, parts them like a touch typist (he\u2019s just started lessons) and forms a V, keeping his other digits in that soft caress of a clench. Our three-year-old raises his arm and extends that hand and then his arm, that glorious wing, outstretched and aloft. He shows us a smidge of a Michelangelo half-smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeautiful,\u201d I say, \u201cPeace to you<\/em>, my man.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLooks more like the Churchill thing,\u201d my wife says. \u201cV for victory, babe?\u201d<\/p>\n V as in voila!<\/em> V as in verisimilitude<\/em>. V as in all the things or some of the things or at least one of the things a parent could hope for on the parenting front.<\/p>\n “Look at our little man express himself,” I say. “We might just have us a peacenik here!”<\/p>\n My wife and I join hands and beam at our son.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018I didn\u2019t do anything wrong<\/em>,\u2019\u201d he sputters, launching into an impression of the impressions he\u2019s seen and heard of former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, c. 1973.<\/p>\n This boy makes a V with the fingers of his little right hand, raises that soft short arm it\u2019s attached to so that both of his arms are in the air, affirming his Nixon\u2019s non-wrong-doing. His arms shadow dance in slo-mo, his V fingers curling ever so slightly. He jettisons his pacifier with the whoosh of his next word: \u201cWhat\u2019s<\/em> Nixon doing?\u201d<\/p>\n My wife picks up his pacifier from his high-chair tray and looks at me and looks at me hard with the look she\u2019s been shooting at me pretty often of late. Not an I told you so<\/em> look so much as I\u2019m really tired of you not getting it and being this kind of stupid<\/em>, although at this point, it\u2019s been abbreviated to Do something.<\/em><\/p>\n I think I get it. It\u2019s my fault, it definitely is, if it\u2019s a fault thing. And if it needs fixing, I\u2019ll fix it. But I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My wife and I, I think we agree on essentially everything when it comes child-rearing. In addition to the usual things, we believe it\u2019s important for both of us to be ourselves with and in front of our son, to be role models in that context. So that he has a better shot at being him<\/em>self.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also big on education. Lifelong learning. If our son shows an interest in anything\u2014<\/em>typing, math, science, literature, the law, the pop-culture and psycho-social implications of preserving the Nixon-as-a-symbol-of-what-exactly? in American life\u2014we\u2019re gonna encourage the hell out of it. At least that\u2019s what we\u2019ve said we\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n A couple months ago, our son began to exhibit signs that he might dig political history. If his interest in a PBS documentary on the Kennedys was any indication, he\u2019s fascinated by world leaders and especially the charismatic kind. Which was fantastic. Something my wife and I both could get behind and feed.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been demonstrating his interest in a variety of ways. That color splash crayoned on that construction paper taped to the fridge? That\u2019s a picture he drew. \u201cDe Gaulle\u2019s hair,\u201d he told us. One night I said he needed to wear a jacket and he said \u201cYou mean my Mao coat?\u201d I made him cry when I told him the baseball cap he\u2019d received for his birthday wasn\u2019t a replica of the University of Havana hat issued to the team Fidel Castro pitched for.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the Nixon thing. I\u2019m reading this long, three-part biography of the man, a matter-of-factly rendered opus of his rise, ruin and recovery, and I am really digging it. It\u2019s infuriating and it\u2019s tragic and it\u2019s sad, but it\u2019s also strange and surreal, so it can be really funny. To me. I haven\u2019t been able to stop talking about the books, or about him. The Checkers speech. The enemies list. The how<\/em> of him. That campaign poster showing him in a suit and hard shoes, on a desolate beach, hands in his pants pockets as he walks, all by his lonesome, away from the camera, into the future.<\/p>\n My wife doesn\u2019t find Nixon as interesting as I do. And she doesn\u2019t think there\u2019s anything funny about him.<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t he more or less everything we\u2019ve said we believed we were fighting against?\u201d she said. \u201cThe fear mongering, the abuse of power, the paranoia, the narcissism\u2014doesn\u2019t his story strike you as not entirely different than you-know-who\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s been the extent of her disapproval of my Nixonphiling. Up until last week. That\u2019s when our son started asking, or maybe just started saying<\/em> because sometimes it\u2019s hard to tell if he\u2019s actually asking questions (he\u2019s three), if I could tell him even more of the stories I\u2019d been reading. \u201cWhat\u2019s Nixon doing?\u201d he kept saying.<\/p>\n Turns out he\u2019d also been binge-watching Nixon interviews, movies, documentaries: the Kennedy-Nixon debate, Nixon on Laugh-In, the Watergate tapes, Anthony Hopkins\u2019 Nixon, assorted YouTube clips featuring all things RN, including that Mobb Deep track that samples a 1971 Nixon speech (“America’s public enemy number one is drug abuse”) and all the original \u201cI am not a crook\u201d aka \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything wrong\u201d moments. We thought he\u2019d been watching Ken Burns\u2019 The Roosevelts<\/em> and an Angela Merkel documentary.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou<\/em> did this!\u201d my wife had said.<\/p>\n \u201cAren\u2019t we supposed to share our passions, to be ourselves around him?\u201d I\u2019d said. \u201cAren\u2019t we here to feed his interests?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFeed this<\/em>,\u201d she’d said.<\/p>\n I agreed to curb my glee and keep the tales to myself until we could come up with a better parenting strategy. I admit, I was starting to wonder if we needed one.<\/p>\n The other night, I was outside his bedroom door, about to go into his room to say goodnight, and I heard him channeling Nixon during RN\u2019s post-resignation good-bye speech to the White House staff: \u201cAlways remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don\u2019t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Is this Nixon thing our son\u2019s latched onto a bad thing? If it is, how do we (I) get him unlatched? Am I a bad father if I don\u2019t think the Nixon thing\u2019s a bad thing? I say this to my wife as she\u2019s rinsing off the pacifier.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe if you\u2019d been an adult or a parent in the 1970s you\u2019d feel differently,\u201d my wife says. \u201cLike now, with 45. How come you\u2019re not joking about him around our son and don\u2019t you start.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n She has me there. I haven\u2019t been joking about 45. I haven\u2019t been able to watch or listen to him.<\/p>\n And suddenly, there 45 is. On the television screen less than 10 feet in front of us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been another one of those<\/em> kinds of 45 days\u2014that much, I haven\u2019t been able to avoid hearing. Now he\u2019s on a tarmac, headed for another land. Another place to make this day even more of one of those<\/em>\u00a0kinds of days. He boards the jetway, stops, turns and waves, possibly to a crowd at the airfield. Or maybe just to the television audience. 45 waves, then flashes a V.<\/p>\n My wife and I gasp. “My man!” I cry out to our son, whose eyes are backlit as he begins to speak:<\/p>\n \u201cPeace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, that pursuit must go on.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s JFK!\u201d my wife says.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n Our son makes a V with the fingers of his little left hand, then makes one with his right. He raises his soft short arms into the air, and half-smiles.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s Nixon doing?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If our son shows an interest in anything\u2014typing, math, science, literature, the law, the pop-culture and psycho-social implications of preserving the Nixon-as-a-symbol-of-what-exactly? in American life\u2014we\u2019re gonna encourage the hell out of it. At least that\u2019s what we\u2019ve said we\u2019ll do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1971,1970],"class_list":["post-15293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-parenting-strategies","tag-richard-nixon","writer-pat-foran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15293"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15432,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15293\/revisions\/15432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}