Tag: interview meme

Bleary!Zach: Tell me about a time when you first considered Chris as possibly Nathan’s other dad.

Oh, god.  This is embarrassing actually, because it was WAY earlier than I care to admit.  We’d moved into Chris’ place a week or two earlier, and we were all still so sleep deprived.  I mean, Chris and I have both shot films that were demanding and had crazy travel schedules and we’ve both functioned on very little sleep, but in those cases everyone around you is a grown-up, or at least should be.  You don’t have some helpless little baby who could literally die if you screw up too badly in your sleep-deprived state.  And I remember stumbling out of Chris’ spare bedroom at about three in the morning, worried that I *hadn’t* heard Nathan cry and deciding that I needed to check that he was still breathing, because that’s how nervous and paranoid I still was back then.  I was heading to the office where his bassinet was kept when I saw that a light was on in the living room.  When I reached the doorway, I could see them by the light of a single reading lamp.  There was an empty bottle on the side table, and Chris was holding Nathan in one arm and holding a Winnie the Pooh book or something in the other.  The light was soft and just illuminated the dark downy hair on the top of Nathan’s head and one side of Chris’ face.  His voice was sort of lilting as he read, and Nathan was staring right at him.  It was so, so perfect.

Right then I *ached* for that to be our life.  I had to cover my mouth and sneak backwards so he wouldn’t know I’d seen, because I was sure that my longing was written all over my face, and it was *completely* inappropriate.  As far as I knew at that time, Chris was my very straight best friend, and I was just a sleep-deprived mess.  I was still fielding the odd call from Miles, for god’s sake, and Chris and I hadn’t even started the weird cuddling-during-movies yet.  He was Nathan’s Uncle Chris.  But that was the moment I knew that I wanted it to be something else, even if I thought it was utterly, tragically unattainable.

Weeks later when we finally got our shit together and it suddenly felt dirty to call him Uncle Chris to Nathan, I started whispering in Italian, the way my Nonna did when I was little.  ...babbo vuole tanto bene.  It was still wishful thinking at that point.   Well, more than that.  A fervent hope, still fragile and hard to trust in.  And then Nathan got sick and Chris did not run screaming, and that clinched it.

Chris has joked with me that I only want him around for his magic baby skills, and while it’s true that he is the perfect second father, our relationship has always been a rich, multifaceted force in my life.  That I get to share this with him is one of the greatest gifts and adventures I can think of.  But neither of us is overly romantic or mawkish.  Usually when he says I just want him for his parenting skills, I answer that I’m really just after his ass (because you’ve seen it, right?), and intend to be for decades to come.

(Idk if you can answer this without spoilers for the ending, but if you can’t, just ignore it. xD) For Zach from Holiday Post: Have you ever thought about being with Chris before? I’m specifically thinking about when you acknowledge that your relationship with Chris was one of the few that wasn’t poisoned. Have you ever considered that it might be possible to have more than friendship with him?

rabidchild67:

So I guess… I guess you were there, huh? You’re not the first person to bring it up, and… well, it’s just… my feelings are kind of complicated around it all and… he’s really the closest friend I’ve ever had, and I’d tell him that, only he won’t return my calls. So. 

*sob*

Chris from Blind Dating: I’ve been dying to know how the first meeting with Zach’s mom went. Was it in LA or Pittsburgh? Is it hard for Zach to go back? Did you learn something new about him seeing him there (if that’s where it was)? Pick and choose what you want to answer… I don’t expect it all.

suedescripture:

Actually it was at Joe’s on the Fourth of July. We always meant to go visit her in Pittsburgh, but the timing never worked out. I had student teaching and Zach had some rush jobs and Margo had work too… anyway it took awhile, and she came out for the holiday. It was enlightening. And completely terrifying.

It’s… kind of difficult. She watches him like a hawk, you know? She kind of mother-hens him, always telling him to be careful, or unnecessarily reminding him where his drink is… it doesn’t take long for him to get snippy about it. There was a point where Zach was walking between the barbecue and the fire-pit in Joe’s backyard, and she about popped a hernia trying to verbally guide him, and he got madder than I’ve ever seen, yelling that he knew where he was, he could feel the heat, he wasn’t senseless. She didn’t tell him, but she went inside with tears in her eyes, and Joe went in to calm her down… I got the feeling it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, you know? And Zach can be scary when you piss him off, just sayin’. She let up after that, but you can tell, she struggles with it.

Joe tries to mediate, but you can tell it wears on all of them over time. And you can’t blame her, you know, she’s his mom, she basically nursed him back to health for six or whatever years, I get that it’s hard to break out of whatever your new normal has become. But at the same time, I can see why he felt like he had to leave. Hell, my new normal is tucking my shoes against the wall and putting my laundry in the hamper and not leaving knives in the sink. My mom is pretty thrilled about it.

She watches me too. Margo is not a woman to cross, I learned that right away. When Joe picked her up at the airport and she walked in, handed her bag off, looked me up and down once and said, “So you’re the new guy,” and then proceeded with an interrogation like I was going down for murder. She knows more about the past few years of my life than my own mom does. I feel like I’m on probation, and she’s the overseer.

Zach loves her though, don’t think he doesn’t. There’s a lot—a LOT—of residual dependence vs freedom things going on with them, she had to help him bathe and go to the bathroom when he was a teenager, you know? And he couldn’t have gotten better without her. He’s totally a Mama’s boy. He did apologize, by the way, they hugged it out.

I think he’s still convincing her of my merits, but she’s warming up a bit.

Zach from Bleary: What’s your favorite thing about being a father?

Oh, god, that’s so hard to answer.  There are so many little things I love.  But I guess the best part is seeing how Nathan changes as he gets older.  How his personality develops and certain things really excite him and others don’t.  Parts of his personality have seemed fixed from almost the day we brought him to that hotel suite in Chicago, but others change or become refined as he develops. 

While it’s happening, you don’t really think about it.  You just enjoy each little milestone as it happens and meet him where he is.  And if this week his favorite music Gustafer Yellowgold because Chris took him to a concert at the Los Angeles Public Library where all the kids danced to “I am From the Sun,” and his “Rocket Shoes” t-shirt is his absolute favorite, well, you just make sure that music is available in both cars, and the nanny’s ipod, and in the living room, and you learn all the words to “I Jump on Cake” and enjoy the moment.  Because in a few weeks or months, he’ll have a different favorite or a new skill, and this will be a fond memory and you’ll be cheering him in some new adventure, like toilet training.

The truth is, Nathan just keeps getting cooler and more interesting.  Each stage he’s been in, I’ve loved while we were in it, but then he learns to sit up, or crawl, or walk, or dance, and it just gets better.  Or he make finger paint pictures he’s so proud of we have to tape them to the fridge because these new stainless steel appliances aren’t magnetic.  And it would be easy to forget what those early days were like, and next month I’d probably forget what this time is like, but I’m really lucky that my partner won’t let me.  Chris takes so many pictures, but more than that, he makes sure we can see them.  He got an Apple-TV he’s loaded them all onto, and when we’re in front of the TV and not streaming a show, they’ll just start showing up, like a screen saver.  And it’s completely random… something from Nathan’s first month, and then sitting up shaking a toy, then at the beach, then in the hospital, and then a piece of his art… but it’s all there, and you can really see how he’s changed… how we’ve all changed.  Because those random pictures, that’s the history of our family.  And I never thought I was going to have that.  And I just feel really, really lucky.