Real Fatherhood: The Path of Lyrical Parenting

By Robert Kamm

To buy Bob Kamm's musical CD, Real Fatherhood, visit www.springbound.com/bob_kamm.
Real Fatherhood chronicles key events in the first nine years of an actual father-son relationship so rare, it’s doubtful it has an equal in the annals of fiction or non-fiction. Surprising, humorous and inspiring, this book is also rich with vignettes instructive for any parent facing the difficulties of raising children in the information age.
From the moment Bob meets his son in the delivery room he responds with an innovative spirit, often going directly against the conventional wisdom.
Rather than focusing on a career during Ben’s most vulnerable years, he’s willing to work at anything that pays the bills and allows enough time to be a fully present dad. Several years later, when he does rise to the top of his profession, it’s not competitive drive that gets him there, but the same enduring determination to be with Ben. For the same reason, he waits years before purchasing a home. Debt will only mean more work. “Work takes time,” he writes. “Love needs time, lots of time. Beyond a certain point, work is the thief of love. A real father fights to keep that thief from his home.”
When his marriage falls apart and Ben suddenly begins to stutter, Bob is convinced he can “love the problem away” himself rather than look to a professional to solve it. The description of what follows is bound to become a classic, so richly does it draw the personality of a three-year-old boy.
When Ben’s mother, Stacey, begins a descent into substance abuse, a custody transfer is crafted without lawyers.
When Ben’s teachers believe he doesn’t want to learn to read, his dad discovers what’s really going on.
When friends urge cutting Stacey off from all contact with her son because of her emotional turmoil, Bob manages to set boundaries, walk the edges that must be walked and maintain the relationship.
Through these and many other challenges emerges a courageously honest and lyrical image of fatherhood during the critical early years – years too often missed by work-driven dads.
Real fatherhood. Real boyhood. Real inspiration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665532518

Robert Kamm

Bob Kamm is a poet, singer and songwriter who set aside his career ambitions to give his son the kind of childhood he felt he deserved. In the process, he became a highly successful and innovative businessman, ultimately developing a consulting practice devoted to leadership development, organizational change and family-work life issues. His clients revere him as a Renaissance man of rare life experience, wisdom and heart. Among them are J.D. Power & Associates, General Motors, The Ford Motor Company, Mercedes-Benz of North America, the Maritz Corporation, Toyota of Canada and Honda American Finance. Individual clients attending his widely praised leadership workshops and seminars have come from fields as diverse as technology, medicine, nursing, Olympic competition, insurance, real estate, architecture, public relations, engineering, psychotherapy and counseling, business consulting, teaching, the performing arts, a wide array of entrepreneurial interests and, most important of all, parenting. The controversial analysis of the American workplace in his first book, The Superman Syndrome: Why the Information Age Threatens Your Future and What You Can Do About It, landed him interviews on CNN, National Public Radio, Fox-TV San Francisco, CBS Radio and KFI in Los Angeles, C-Net, Yahoo and numerous other electronic and print media. He has written dozens of articles for business magazines on a wide array of topics all revolving around the question of how we can realign the relationship between work and family. A father, step-father and grandfather, he lives with his wife Della in California. Author’s Website: www.kammtown.com

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© 2021 Robert Kamm. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/20/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3252-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3251-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

for

Ben

Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been a daunting and consuming endeavor, particularly since its subject matter is so personal and precious. Whatever I’ve managed to accomplish here required the steady encouragement and understanding of my dear wife, Della. She delivered every step of the way as no one ever has for me. It also required the blessing and support of my son, Ben—which he gave generously. My parents, Herb and Phyllis Kamm, writers both, have been cheerleaders and editors. Thanks, Mom and Dad! To my brothers, Larry and Lew, your love and interest are more important to me than you may imagine.

A lot of people were there for me and for Ben throughout the years described in these pages. Specifically, I want to acknowledge the whole Callahan clan, the Dyson clan, Sherri, Jackie and Pam of the Montessori school, Ben’s buddies, Trent and Matthew, Chuck and Jackie Wheeler, Wiese and David Ralston. To the college students who provided hours of stimulating companionship to Ben when I had to work—thank you and bless you, wherever you are.

More recently, a host of friends have consistently demonstrated their belief in me, something that brings great comfort and energy to the solitary process of writing. Melissa Cook, Jamaica Galloway, Stan Friedman, Rick Sutton, Kevin Sites, Trish Anthony, Dr. Barry Bernfeld, John Nance, John Scherer, Steven Tosh, Jim Brunelli, Michael Croxon, David Britton, Chris Bellino, Miles Brandon, Phil Smart, Jr., John Shepard, Mike Hamm, Greg Greenwood, Rick Rogers, Steve Smythe, Vinnie Mandzak, Linda Hill, Larry Anish and Ron Robertson come to mind for the very specific gifts of friendship they each embody. I am blessed to be in the affections of many others as well from our past and present. Forgive me for not listing you all…but you know who you are and how grateful I am for your presence in my life.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 A Name and a Promise

Chapter 2 Tag-Team

Chapter 3 Poet in Residence

Chapter 4 Going to See The Pollywogs

Chapter 5 Custody Without Lawyers

Chapter 6 Roommates

Chapter 7 Maria’s House

Chapter 8 Edge-Walking

Chapter 9 New Digs

Chapter 10 The Kingdom of Play

Chapter 11 Of Bullfrogs and Dolphins

Chapter 12 Evolving Chow

Chapter 13 Newcomer, New Name

Chapter 14 Can I Go There With You?

Chapter 15 Stacey’s Surprise

Chapter 16 Night of the Volcano

Chapter 17 Holding the Line

Chapter 18 Tethers

Chapter 19 Lowering the Dartboard

Chapter 20 Sleep Grieving

Chapter 21 Hands

Chapter 22 Home is the Holiday

Chapter 23 Child of the Red-tailed Hawk

Epilogue

Notes

Introduction

Work takes time.

Love needs time, lots of time.

Beyond a certain point, work is the thief of love.

A real father fights to keep that thief from his home.

This book chronicles many of the key moments

in my effort to win that fight,

and others, during the first nine years of my son’s life.

It’s based on detailed journals,

poems and songs written throughout Ben’s childhood.

Most names have been changed for obvious reasons.

Chapter One

A Name and a Promise

Stacey and I sat opposite each other on a granite shelf at six thousand feet in California’s Sierra Mountains. Even in the deep shade of ponderosa pines, her eyes were blinding blue suns, framed by her small round face and a cloud of strawberry blond. If it’s a boy…and I think it is, she said calmly, I want to name him Benjamin…after my father.

No deliberation was needed. Benjamin, I uttered. The name changed forever in my mouth and ear. As it resonated, a red-tailed hawk glided by, caught an updraft and circled above the nearby canyon. I watched it for several seconds then returned my gaze to Stacey’s and said, Benjamin—youngest and most beloved of Jacob in the Bible. I’ve always loved that name. Do you know it means ‘son of my right hand’? What better name could there be? Such love. Such strength. I pointed to the hawk. She smiled and nodded.

***

After more than thirty hours of labor, Stacey rose from the table with her teeth and fists clenched. Two nurses, the doctor and I chanted, Push! Push! Push! Our voices rocked the tile walls. I was so exhausted and giddy, we sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Then, in a suddenly casual tone, the doctor said, It’s a boy. I turned to see Benjamin’s face for the first time. Though I had tried hard during the pregnancy to imagine him as a particular individual with particular features, he was still basically the baby. But this was no baby come to join us. This was a person…of me…of my family…of Stacey…thoroughly recognizable…and blue, astonishingly creamy blue. The room tilted and twirled. My eyes were fixed on him but I was falling away slowly, slowly. At the last second I felt his tiny spirit lasso and haul me back. I tumbled forward off the cliff of my own breath as he took his first. Our souls collided.

The doctor placed him gently on Stacey’s tummy. We covered him with caresses. The biblical phrase, a laying on of hands, came to mind. I thought, This must be what that writer meant thousands of years ago. A sacred moment repeating itself through generations. Love’s first touch, wet with weeping and kisses.

The mechanics took over. Clipped the chord. Put drops in the eyes. Jammed his arms through the sleeves of a tiny t-shirt. Oh, he didn’t like that! How must that feel to his new skin? An empathetic wildfire raced up my arms, extinguished only by the determined efficiency of the nurse. But we’re not done. He must have his little knit cap. He must be placed in the warmer under an eye-stabbing light.

The doctor became a shoemaker’s elf with needle and thread. In no time, Stacey was stitched up and ushered from the room. The din of delivery dissipated. Alone, I hovered over Benjamin and bent the light away. He lay on his back, eyes tightly closed, his hands resting beside his ears—the first newborn hands I’d ever seen up close. Perfect miniatures. Perfect! I placed one of my pinkies in each. His fingers closed firmly around them, sending a shiver through me.

You’ve had quite a journey, I whispered, but it’s okay now, Benjamin. I kissed his cheek. Papa is here with you now. My voice made itself still smaller. The worst is over. It’s gonna be fine from now on ‘cause your daddy is here…my Benjamin…my tiny boy…my Benji…my Ben. Even smaller, my voice, for no one else on earth to hear. No one. We’re gonna have a fine life together. Benjamin and Papa…Papa and Benjamin. A fine, fine life.

Chapter Two

Tag-Team

Though we grew up on opposite sides of the country, Stacey and I both passed through our teens into early adulthood in the Sixties. The cyclones of assassinations, protests and war blew most of the cultural illusions from our eyes. We learned to be suspicious of the established order and were not eager to join its ranks. By the time our lives entwined in the early Seventies, each of us had traveled extensively and held a number of different jobs. When Benjamin was born, we were still exploring the socioeconomic laboratory for careers. Ironically and instructively, this turned out to be liberating. There were no direct conflicts between parenting and vocations. In fact, we wondered why couples had children if they were already beyond that threshold, unless they were sufficiently established in their careers they could afford a long break. It was clear the first years of nurturing were critical. Not just for Ben, but for us as well. We needed to give as much as he needed our giving. We needed to languish in the wonder of his name, his birth, his unfolding magic. It was imperative for our well-being, an essential part of parenthood. Why would we want to be in conflict with this? No, our economic mission was simple and clear—pay the bills with minimal time and effort in order to focus all our love on Ben and each other.

On one level, it didn’t matter which of us worked or if we both did, but breastfeeding simplified the decision. Our intuition and study told us it was Ben’s unalienable right to be nurtured by his mama’s body. Since our society had long since moved beyond the agrarian model allowing mothers to papoose their babes into the fields and breastfeed them when necessary, it was clear Stacey’s job right now was to be his main caregiver, playmate and banquet. That left me to get the money. I was willing to take almost anything with reasonable pay. By the time Ben was two months old, I was selling new and used Volkswagens at a dealership in nearby Fresno, California. Had they known, my childhood friends would have been struck dumb. Bob was going to be a writer, lawyer, politician or professor. Bob despised symbols of American materialism like cars. Well, as John Lennon wrote some years later, Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

We were both astonished at how successful I was, especially since I’d never owned a new car and my last sales job was peddling lemonade on a suburban summer sidewalk at age five. It felt good to earn enough in one month to pay six months’ rent, good to be given a brand new green Bug to drive since our car was a thirteen-year-old Plymouth Valiant with 150,000 miles—the finest example of esthetic idiocy ever to come from Detroit. It also felt good to understand selling wasn’t just a game of chance but a craft I might master as something to fall back on if the need arose in the future. Initially, the hours were limited. I could do my job and still have plenty of time to be with Stacey and Ben. There was no better place than deep in their eyes, especially Ben’s. He was a nonstop semi-spastic comedy of miracles as he scanned, groped, twitched, spewed and tooted his way to an understanding of the world.

But trouble was coming. After my first few months on the job, the dealer consolidated our store with his Porsche-Audi franchise. Immediately, there was a demand for more hours. Family time began to vanish. Stacey and I agreed I should hang on long enough to build up a little cushion and then we’d high tail it out of there. Six months later, we headed for Los Angeles where more work opportunities and a good support system of friends awaited.

By now, Ben was a year old. He was still taking the breast, but plenty of solids, too. A new work solution surfaced. We became subcontractors to a catering company that provided a route and baskets of food. Hauling them on our shoulders through the financial district of LA, we fattened the bulls and bears with sandwiches, cookies and our own home-baked brownies. Brokers were great impulse buyers. They took their eyes off the racing ticker just long enough to point and say, Gimme that and that. We started at 6AM and finished at 1PM. It didn’t matter which of us worked now so we generally alternated weeks. Our customers quickly warmed to the idea of tag-team parents. Gimme that and that and that and that.

When we started the route, Ben was not quite a toddler but rather a teeterer and lurcher, requiring his own security force. During my weeks home with him, we did a lot of veering from wall to wall. We also spent hours crawling around on the floor playing, singing and dancing. We dug lots of holes in the dirt, started a garden, captured whole nations of snails under the nasturtium and released them into someone else’s yard after intense interrogations. We sat on the sidewalk watching the ants go marching one by one, hurrah! Sallying forth into the neighborhood, architecture, trees, shrubs and flowers became the objects of our affection. We rated displays in store windows, made friends with the local merchants, examined imported objects from everywhere, studied trucks, cars and bicycles. I was his trusty steed as he happily rode my shoulders and hips through successive adventures. In the playgrounds the magic of the swing, the ball, the stick, the flag, the kite became known to us. We splashed and squealed through countless baths together and often took naps so deep the thunder god himself couldn’t wake us.

The specialists say kids don’t really begin understanding language till around eighteen months and seriously speaking till around two years but I swear to you by the time Ben was fourteen months old, I understood a full vocabulary of his gestures, expressions, sounds and, yes, words…and he understood mine. We were in continuous grand conversation with each other. He was my Benji-bo and I was his Baba. Yes, it sounded like some kind of Indian guru name but it worked for me. Initially, Stacey and I thought he called me this because he wasn’t yet able to make the P sound for Papa. But one particular incident left us wondering if he had chosen B over P intentionally.

Four friends and the three of us were gathered around the picnic table in the backyard of our duplex gnawing our way through corn on the cob and grilled chicken. Ben was seated on a high chair at the end of the table, a little blond barbecue-streaked Buddha. I was kidding with our neighbor’s three year-old daughter, Ariana, whose nickname was Goosy.

Goosy, do you know why they call them ears of corn?

No, she answered, eying me suspiciously. She was already quite familiar with my silliness.

Because the cornstalks actually can hear with them. They can hear the birds singing. I whistled. They can hear the dogs barking. I barked. They can hear the wind blowing. I made wind sounds. And…

At that precise second, someone at the table blasted a big note on the butt trumpet. Without missing a beat, I added, …and they can sure hear you farting, Miss Goosy!

When the laughter subsided, Goosy, drawing out her words for dramatic effect, said, Noooo, Baaab!

Another chuckle coursed around the table and then quite unexpectedly Ben repeated her words with absolute clarity, Noooo, Baaab!

We roared, captivated by the perfect imitation and enunciation of this portly pint-sized fellow at the head of the table.

Our reaction was all the reinforcement Ben needed. A pumpkin’s grin was planted on his face for the rest of the meal. From that moment on, he called me Bob, except for rare occasions when he seemed to have no problem finding the P for Papa. And so it would be forever. It wasn’t New Age. It wasn’t about my being his buddy instead of his dad. I knew full well I was both and so did he. No, this was Ben’s spontaneous creation and we found it worthy of honor.

***

We knew full well our tag-team arrangement wouldn’t generate enough income to start a college fund or buy a house or new car or life insurance or achieve many of the things young couples often take as goals. Life is full of trade-offs and this was ours. We bet the investment that was going to benefit Ben the most during these very tender years was a father who was every bit as real and present as his mother, rather than one caught up in the energy of career building—an energy very different from what was required for nurturing a little person, or any intimate relationship, for that matter. There would be time for creating financial wealth when he was older and in less immediate need of our companionship.

Stacey and I were of one mind when it came to the structure of our life because we were of one heart when it came to Ben. Unfortunately, the joy and satisfaction we felt parenting couldn’t hide the existence of a complex set of fault lines beneath the surface of our own relationship. We really loved each other but were constantly being tossed and turned by forces beyond our reach, deep within the substructures of our personalities. It was confusing. We sought help. It was still confusing. After fifteen months in LA, we decided to move. We were just not city mice. Maybe the change would shift the dynamics of our relationship. We opted for a little town about three hours north on California’s Central Coast. Stacey’s parents and brother, Paul, lived there and would be happy to help care for Ben. That would certainly allow more time for us to be a couple. Besides, now that he was two-and a-half and very mobile, we wanted him to have an outdoor childhood. Our tag-team work strategy might not be as feasible if we moved, given the smaller job market in a town of fifty thousand. Still, we thought it was worth the risk. Maybe we’d have to revert to my being the sole breadwinner. Maybe I’d have to go back to selling cars for a while till we got our bearings. Hopefully, a small town dealership would be much more relaxed than the frenzied pace that drove me from the business fifteen months earlier.

Chapter Three

Poet in Residence

We rented a little guesthouse on a five-acre farm ten minutes from Stacey’s folks and about the same