Isaac Joseph

June 18, 2009


I never meant to write a daddy blog.

It’s funny. Just when you think you know everything that’s going to happen, life smacks you behind the ears and reminds you otherwise.

I thought I knew this whole childbirth thing. After going through it with Sierra two years ago, I proclaimed myself an expert.

Yet here I am, still surprised, completely in awe. Unable to do anything but think about being a daddy. Absolutely convinced that, no matter how hard I try otherwise, I can’t write about anything but being a daddy. A new daddy. To a little boy.

Isaac Joseph

Welcome to the world, Isaac Joseph.

Thank you for bringing another Y chromosome into the house. For promising a lifetime of work as Sierra’s foil.

And for reminding me that, despite all of my insistence otherwise – both two years ago and now – Black Marks on Wood Pulp is first and foremost one of those daddy blogs.

Tags: Isaac, Sierra, Vilhauer |

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Living in simpler times

June 15, 2009


We got to go to the balloon races this past Saturday. Though our friends were there, it was solely a family excursion. Just Kerrie, Sierra and me. Just like the zoo a few weekends before that, and just like every night in the backyard over the past month.

Last night, we followed it all up with a trip to Dairy Queen. Dinner led to dessert. Sierra’s constant repetition – “ICE CEEM COON ICE CEEM COON” – was both cute and disturbing, though we were convinced we should fulfill her wish. After all, it was only an ice cream cone, to that point only seen in pictures, only a distant reality in a children’s book.

And it was one of the last she could have in this situation. Just Kerrie, Sierra and me.

Sierra’s ice cream cone continued a vow we made to ourselves – never verbally, never consciously, but a vow all the same. To cherish these last few days alone with Sierra. To remember what it was like when our family was just three people and a dog.

I mentioned before that our time in our old home would be an experience that only Sierra could claim. Something special she had as the older sister – as our first child; a reward for putting up with our flailing attempts at learning parenthood.

Parenting may be easier with Baby Boy Vilhauer. It will certainly be more familiar.

But regardless of the benefits that come from being number two, Sierra will always hold one thing that Baby Boy never will – memories of a first home. Memories of a smaller family. Memories of growing up and teaching us how to love something more than life itself.

It’s not that much longer before Sierra is forced to share her life with another child. I know it will be a change, but it’s a change that she’ll accept. Because she cares enough for other people to understand what it means to have a little brother. It’s instinct with her. It’s the most natural thing I could imagine her latching on to.

Until then, we’ll look back on these simpler times with joy. With a touch of nostalgia, I’m sure – not because we don’t love what’s going on, but because we equally loved this point and can never get it back.

It’s funny. I’ve been tethered to the idea of nostalgia for years. Looking back and remembering the best is something I’ve stubbornly clung to, something I constantly fall back on despite knowing I should simply stop and enjoy the good times.

Like going out for ice cream. Just Kerrie, Sierra and me. I knew what I would miss at that point. But it didn’t stop me from enjoying every minute.

Sierra teaches me something new every day.

Tags: Isaac, Sierra, Vilhauer |

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Not quite ready

June 1, 2009


Okay. I’ll admit it.

I’m not ready for this baby.

Whoa, whoa. Before your “fear of commitment” sirens start flashing and you start pointing your golden finger of justice in my direction, know that I am, indeed, excited for this baby.

I am thrilled, actually. I know I’ve been quiet on the subject, but I’m simply ecstatic. Nervous, yes – nervous to finally meet him, to welcome a boy into the world, to know that everything wonderful that Sierra has brought to our lives is about to be hectically heaped upon us once again, despite being in the midst of another parenting chapter at the same time.

I’m proud, too. Proud to have this opportunity, to marvel at how Sierra has grown and learned and become such a great little person, and proud to have the chance in helping Baby Boy Vilhauer do the same. The honor of doing so, even.

But I’m not ready.

Not when it comes to preparedness. Not when it comes to having all of our ducks in a row.

Not when it comes to timing.

No, considering the change in scenarios, and compared with Sierra’s relatively muted arrival, Baby Boy is entering life with a jarring bang, chaos surrounding him. Where last time we were preparing day by day for the arrival of a not-yet-determined child, this time we’re lucky to have noticed the process at all. We’ve found ourselves waist-deep in full-term concerns.

We haven’t unpacked. We only just cleared out a room. We’re still adapting to a new home, to the whirlwind of summer invitations, to the advancements of close friends.

Sierra is only slightly aware of what’s to come, and at times I fear we’re in the same boat.

From a period of contentment to an unassailable feeling of anxiety.

I suppose we’re doing this the way you’re supposed to. Full on, with all surprises intact. An adventure in adding life – one we’ll always remember.

Still, without a doubt, we’re not ready for this baby.

Of course, by saying that, I realize that, when it comes down to it, we’ve been ready since the beginning.

Tags: Isaac, Sierra, Vilhauer |

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On moving

May 17, 2009


I haven’t written anything in a while, and I have a lot to say.

You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been three days since we said goodbye to our first home.

And I can’t help but be surprised how much I miss it.

Though we spent the past two and a half months working to buy and sell a home, the move crept up on us. Despite the culmination of events – events that led us from desperate to frantic to endlessly busy in just a few weeks – I am still shocked by how empty our house could become, how it happened so fast, how I was completely unprepared to let go.

How, despite spending months trying to get rid of it, I still wished we could have made it work out. Stay a little longer. Hang out one last time.

It took two trucks and a handful of eager movers to completely gut our house. When it was finished, I walked from room to room, snapping pictures of my favorite features, taking it all in – as empty and clean as when we moved in, with little change aside from seven years worth of wear.

Kerrie shed a few tears. But I kept myself insulated from it, fearing that I’d shed the same tears. I looked forward, not behind; blinded by anticipation, I did what I could to grind out the hours. I unpacked the house several times in my sleep. I imagined where things would go, what I could do, what surprises were in store.

But that last night, I couldn’t help myself. “Here I am,” I thought. “My last night in my first home.”

Our first home. Where we planned our marriage. Brought home a dog. Trained a dog. Nursed little nips from a dog. We got married and bought cars and became adults. We formed our careers though several hiccups. I began writing in the dormer. I began reading again in the dormer. I learned about my new job in the dormer and privately celebrated in the dormer.

It was Sierra’s first home. Our first child. Her first steps, first words, first teeth, first joys and pains. She learned how to be a person in that house. She fell into our lives in that house.

There are a handful of things I’ll always remember. The creaky floors outside of Sierra’s room. The nights sitting in a rocking chair, with only the glaring light of the hall illuminating my book as I lulled Sierra to sleep. The night I listened to John Edwards and Dick Cheney as they debated in the summer of 2004. And the night I watched the first politician I truly believed in elected President four years later.

A lot of life was lived in those walls. But I’m thankful for one thing: the first years in that house were something Kerrie and I had to ourselves. They are memories we hold closely, memories that only we can claim. And likewise, that house is something that we can share with Sierra – a reminder of the days before our family had become four, something special that Sierra gets to remember, to her ability, in the upcoming years.

This new house begins a new chapter. In a few weeks, baby boy will be born. Life will get more complicated, will require more time and more space. And with our new home, we have it. It’s the perfect marking point for what we had and what we are about to become.

We are lucky. We found a house we wanted, put our house on the market, and were lucky enough to still snag it months later. We were able to make it quick. Harried, but painless. We were able to find people to help us – people who we thank for all eternity, from our families to our friends, from our Realtor Briana to the kind souls who owned our home before we moved in.

I miss the old house. But I love this one just as much. And once I come to grips with the idea that my memories are still around, despite the new location, I’ll slowly forget about what we had and focus on only what we have.

All of our stuff is here. It’s strewn across the house, scattered throughout each room like beads of mercury, dispersing in every direction, seeking level ground, but it’s here all the same.

And room by room, things are looking more comfortable. More like what we left behind. More like home.

Really, it’s already there. We’re here. We’ll continue to grow here, will celebrate new lives and new milestones.

This is our new base. Our new home. All that’s changed is the location.

Tags: Career, Friends, Home, Isaac, On..., Vilhauer |

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64 crayons

May 10, 2009


When I was in grade school, the trek to buy school supplies was a momentous occasion. It was a license to get new stuff, served fresh from the school district thanks to a one-page white sheet detailing all of the supplies we’d need for the year.

Often, there were items that seemed superfluous – 18-color watercolors we’d use once, a straight edge we’d use more often to launch paper missiles than we’d use in art class. But there was always one constant – crayons, at least 16.

One year, in an act of kindness I still remember, I was given every grade schooler’s art-supply-list dream: the 64-crayon box of Crayola. The one with silver, bronze and gold. The one that said, “I have 64 colors, and I am a better person than you.”

That night, the night before school started, my mother sat down and, per the school district’s suggestion, began writing my name on all of my school supplies. On my ruler. On my eraser. On my pencils and on my pencil bag. And then, though it wasn’t needed and seemed ridiculous to the point of insanity, on each of those 64 crayons.

Imagine that. Writing “Corey V.” on the sides of 64 crayons, each one seeming smaller and smaller, each one causing more and more hand cramps.

I still think of that today. It’s what I use to remind me of the bond between a mother and a son. And it’s proof that, despite how distant I’ve been in my life – and despite how callous I can seem – my mother has done things for me that I’ll never begin to know.

I see those things firsthand, now. The sacrifices that Kerrie has made in order to make sure Sierra has the best life possible – things that our little girl will never remember: gifts of time and energy and attention, career changes done specifically for her benefit, each worried minute when she’s sick, each patient second when she’s misbehaving.

Sure, fathers are there too. But the bond is different. Mom’s get a head start – a 40-week head start. A head start that strengthens the bond, not into something better than a father’s bond, but into something different. Something a little more patient.

Something that can lead a mother to write the same name, hundreds of times, smaller and smaller, just, in the rare chance that it could happen, to protect her son from losing his precious silver crayon.

That’s my mom. And in a way, that’s all of our moms.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And Happy Mother’s Day, Kerrie.

Tags: Isaac, Sierra, Vilhauer |

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BMOWP Classic Album – Master of Puppets

April 25, 2009


Master of PuppetsMaster of Puppets by Metallica

I was 14 when Super Mario Kart was released for Super Nintendo. Despite months of religiously dedicating my life to Final Fantasy II, as any geeky fanboy wanna-be did during the first few years of the Super Nintendo, I took time out to try the game out.

It probably goes without saying I was hooked. Most people were. For the rest of the year, there was only one game in my system – Super Mario Kart. We all became experts. We all mapped multi-player strategy in our heads at night, when the console was turned off.

This isn’t about Super Mario Kart, but it might as well be. Because during that time, my love for something else was just reaching its apex. Metallica. Kings of thrash metal, and emerging monsters of rock.

1994 was three years after the release of Metallica. It was two years after my father and I had seen them live at the Arena. It was a year after fully accepting and devouring the entire Metallica canon – at that time, five albums and a cover EP.

You have to picture me at that time: awkward, tall and scrawny, with unmanageable tight curly hair. T-shirts and jeans that were often too short. A cautious self-esteem that wasn’t dangerously low but threatened at times to dip below normal – or, however normal self-esteem can be in middle school, where every kid is desperately searching their life for meaning and popularity and the niche that they will eventually ride out for the four years of high school.

I was the least likely Metallica fan in the world. I wasn’t like my friend Eric, who kept his thin blonde hair long, wore metal shirts and played football, giving him a seeming toughness that befit the strong nature of thrash. I was, instead, an outcast. No leather, just a Chicago Bulls Starter jacket. No ripped jeans, just shorts with socks.

But somehow, I made it there. It started when my dad purchased Metallica on CD. It continued with that Arena show, during the two-and-a-half year Wherever We May Roam tour. It sprouted into something real when I bought …And Justice for All on cassette and discovered the complexity and thoughtfulness I thought lacking from most metal groups.

Everything steamrolled, really. The five albums became a constant playlist of middle-school angst. Metallica didn’t rock out about ladies or mythical demons or any of that – they laid out blistering diatribes on war and society and politics and, occasionally, metal itself. …And Justice for All has always been my favorite – after all, it was the first Metallica album that really clicked.

But it’s Master of Puppets that’s by far the best. And it always comes back to Super Mario Kart.

As far as memories go, it’s forever paired with the game, their points of reference intertwining – the game just months old; the album, several years – combining into some kind of two-headed monster (see what I did there?) that encompassed every thought. Every emotion. I rarely played the game without Master of Puppets in the background. It was the soundtrack of the year, the game serving as an effective stage for escape from whatever it was life was supposed to be like in middle school.

When I hear “Disposable Heroes,” its anti-war message still resonating today, I think first of a red turtle shell seeking out the first place Kart. When I hear “Master of Puppets,” I can still rattle off the solo like it was part of my DNA, but its lasting image is a banana peel in the middle of the road.

It’s no doubt that, when I dreamed of being the frontman of some heavy metal cover band, that I wanted our name to be Damage Inc.

Today, after years of mediocre Metallica albums, I am reminded of what Metallica really was – and is again – by their newest album, Death Magnetic. I remember that discovering Metallica was a movement in my life – a personal shift from safe and easy to that which still drives me today: creativity, complication and mastery of craft.

Yeah, it’s just metal. But I have no shame in being a Metallica fan anymore. Just as I didn’t back in 1994, when my life revolved around two things: a video game and an eight-year old album. It’s just that now, I can put things into perspective, understanding that it wasn’t the video game that made the album so fantastic.

It was the album itself that made life seem so different.

Tags: Music, Vilhauer |

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Everything I know I learned from the Internet

April 16, 2009


The Internet has taught me a lot of things. How to hack together a blog, how to compare myself to people I have no business comparing myself with, how to assume a larger circle of friends due to chance Twitter meetings, how to confound the people I love with silly memes, how to convince myself I’m relevant, etc.

And outside of the self-deprecating stuff, it’s taught me a lot about design, photography, the book industry and the inside lives of Sioux Falls’ top web designers and marketing people.

But it all seems to have led up to this.

Because I just used the Internet to fix my garbage disposal.

F. T. W.

Tags: Vilhauer |

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