The Dad I Am

I’m not the dad I thought I’d be. I’m patient but not as patient as I imagined. Before I had kids I couldn’t imagine that I would be a Yelling Parent. Now I wonder if I will ever stop yelling.  I don’t think I’m making the same mistakes my parents did but God knows I’m making my own.  When I thought about being a dad I always pictured moments and how I would react in them- how I would deal with a kid having a public meltdown, how I would handle all the questions (I actually looked forward to that! I’d love having a curious kid and having the answers, I thought.)  I didn’t understand that parenting doesn’t feel like a collection of moments; it feels like a long, uphill rocky mountain climb. Yes, occasionally good things happen.  But you don’t get much time to enjoy them before you have to dive out of the way of a falling boulder.  And when those moments I had imagined do come I am so damn tired that I miss them. And the questions aren’t, “Why is the sky blue?” They are, “When are we going to Chuck E. Cheese? Why is it called Chuck E. Cheese? When are we going?” And they are asked 50 times before I’ve had my first coffee.  No one told me about this and I didn’t think to ask. 

I’ve had to move my “what-I-consider-a-good-dad” bar way down.  Now I think I’m doing good when I don’t yell mean things.  Apparently I’m going to raise my voice almost daily, but I won’t be abusive. That’s what it’s come to. “Sweet Jesus! Why the hell doesn’t anybody listen to me?  I am not going to ask again, pick up these goddamned toys RIGHT… NOW!” is a perfectly acceptable way for me to talk to my kids right now.  

I’ve always respected single parents. But now I practically worship them- those that are keeping it together anyway.  I’m at my wits end after spending 8 hours with my kids.  My wife does most of the evening parenting stuff and they pester her more than me on the weekends.  How do people do all of that-- the morning fight over clothes and brushing teeth, the day-long misery of work, the evening with kids who don’t want to eat what was cooked for supper and who splash like maniacs in the bathtub and fight like honey-badgers when it’s time for bed so that the parent barely has time to guzzle a glass of wine before going to sleep—alone? It’s damn near heroic is what it is because we have to share the planet with them and their kids and their success or failure affects all of us.  Next time you see a single parent whose kids are not ax murderers give them a hug and thank them like fucking crazy.

I still think I’m a pretty good dad. My kids are healthy and happy.  They trust me.  They know I love them. And more importantly, they don’t know how badly I want them to be older and more interesting.

Future Bra Burners

The other day my daughter, her friend, my son and I played a ball game in our basement. The girls made the rules up as we went but here are the basics:  We each held a ball, counted to 19, and threw it. Anyone who ended up holding two balls was the loser. Many times this led to my daughter and her friend saying to me, "You have two balls, you're a loser!" I tell ya, I was 18 before I realized that having two balls made me a loser! Kids grow up so fast these days.

The Conversion

The following is based on a conversation I had a few years ago (some of my recollections of that day may be fuzzy) with a friend.  Our Township’s Board had recently approved a family’s proposal to turn their land into a gravel pit on the condition that all the trucks that would now be coming and going use a designated route to and from the state highway.  We’ll pick up the conversation with my friend saying:

“We sure like to tell people what to do in this State, don’t we?”

“I see your point…”

“But?  There’s always a ‘but’ with you, Tom!”

“You should have seen me when I was single! Maybe not a ‘but’, but certainly many fine pieces of…ahem, where was I? Oh yes…I see your point but... since we built those roads and continue to pay for their maintenance, why isn’t it ok to have an engineer tell us which roads can take the most abuse?  ‘We’, through our local government, won’t tell them they can’t build a profitable business for themselves using the roads we built right to their front door and continue to repair but we will tell them which of the roads they must avoid with those huge ass dump trunks. I guess they can either pay to improve all the county roads all the way to the state road themselves or they can take a right at the end of the driveway and use the road the engineer says will best take the abuse.  Either way, they get rich if they want. And this way our roads don’t crumble while they’re doing it.”

“Still, I have a big problem telling people what they can and can’t do.”

“Really?”

“Of course!”

“You’re a douche bag!”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You can’t come in my house and…”

“A-ha!  It turns out you don’t have a problem telling people what they can and can’t do!”

“In my home, yeah!”

“So maybe you need to think of your community as your home, which it is of course. Then you wouldn’t mind if we made some rules that we all have to live by.  In other words:  Congratulations! You are a Democrat now! I’ll get you some bumper stickers next time I’m at the Home Office.”

“Damn."  He paused and looked at the ground. He scratched at the ground with his boots, delaying as long as he could the admission we both knew was coming. "Well, Tom, as always, you make a good point. And you look so good doing it.”

“Thanks.”

“I guess I am a Democrat. Who do I need to call?”

“We’re a pretty loose affiliation, as you may have noticed.  But you’ll start spotting other Democrats in crowds now. It’s pretty ease.  They’re the attractive ones.”

Oh, For Christ's Sake!

Today's Comment Section Takedown finds our hero (me) running into a Leviticus-quoting Boob in the comment section of a same-sex marriage story. You know the quote, it's the one which says that men who lie with men as they do women are committing abominations (You'll notice it omits kneeling.)

My response (I've reworked it a little.):

@Brunhilde (not her real name)-- Perhaps you should consider reading from the parts of the Bible that teach kindness. As I understand it, it is nearly impossible to read the whole Bible and come away with the message that God hates anyone (even fags). Indeed, if you want permission to be a decent, kind, understanding person you will find it in the Bible. This is especially true of the portion that was written after God (supposedly) sent his Son down to clear things up. Yes, it troubles me when followers of Christ quote from the Old Testament to prove his hate because they can't find proof of it in any of his own words. My impression has always been that Christians gave a fair amount of weight to Christ's words, no? I guess the thing is:  The Bible isn't helping you if you are rifling through it to find permission to stay the same miserable person; it's beauty (I hear) is not in its ability to "let you off the hook", it is that it challenges its reader to be a better person. Repent or perish!

Chocolate-Covered Cherries These Are Not

There is plenty to deplore about this recent heat wave. All the shit-covered water balloon shrapnel now littering my yard is at the top of my list.  I picked up the shards of the first couple hundred blasted balloons. Then I noticed Sadie, Unconventional Wisdom’s official dopey dog, helping me, and I thought, “Probably I should stop you from eating them but you’re a dog, you’ll be fine.”  In fact it seemed a perfect solution.  The kids love smashing them, dog loves eating them, and dad loves not having to pluck the shards out of the grass.  Sadly, the bubble burst tonight when I mowed over a couple piles of rainbow-colored dog shit, strewing the confetti across my lawn.  I hope the snow comes early this year.

I'm The Asshole

I've been mildly anxious most of the past two weeks as I've been dealing with selling a boat and buying a new one.  The past two days I've been laid low with a cold and spent some time rueing that as well.  And the whole while I've known that a dear friend has lung cancer and had a surgery scheduled for this morning, a surgery during which doctors could discover that the cancer was more aggressive than they knew, that removing the lung would not suffice and that, well, let's not even think about the rest yet. About an hour ago I got the bad news that this cancer is aggressive. I don't know what that means exactly, but my imagination is certainly running wild. I know it sucks. And I feel like I suck, too, for wallowing around like a goddamned asshole over my dumb little "problems."

A Decade of Love

It’s common knowledge, especially among the women in my life, that my wife is a very lucky woman. I’m not going to argue with that but I will point out that being married to me for 10 years is not as easy as it may seem (you will remember that the longest any woman lasted previously was 11 months). I have been thinking a lot lately and have come to realize that I don’t deserve full credit for this decade of wedded bliss. Surely Stacy deserves some credit, has done some things right. Indeed she did not stop making good decisions the day she chose me.

At times like this over-statement is tempting and superlatives are expected. She is the best this, the fastest that and on and on. Well I promise you that I cannot overstate what Stacy has done for me, how important she is to my ability to thrive. When we met, I was depressed, lost and about to marry the wrong person. Yes, I had managed to muddle my way to Hamline University and yes, I would have graduated with a respectable GPA.  After all, I am plenty smart and prideful.  “Well, Tom, if you are plenty smart and prideful then what, exactly, did Stacy do for you?”  First of all, I didn’t know at the time that I was plenty smart. Or rather that some people weren’t. I just assumed that everyone who applied at Hamline was accepted and that everyone who wanted to could get at least a 3.0. I wanted to, is all, because my professors knew my name and I would’ve been embarrassed to get a C. 

If I had met Stacy earlier would I be a doctor or something now? I don’t know and this isn’t about me anyway. Here’s what’s important:  The fact that we can seriously consider that question tells you what you need to know about Stacy.  That simply by being her friend I was going to be more successful than I would’ve been without her.  

We met my first year at Hamline. It was my fourth year of college but, because I had transferred from a community college, I was a few credits short of being a junior. After a few months, Stacy, recognizing something in me that I don’t know anyone else had, had me enrolled in summer school, on track to graduate a full six months before I thought it was possible, and enrolled in a senior honor’s seminar with her. And she has never quit working her magic with me.  For one thing, I am a writer now. And whereas what skill I have comes from me, the certain knowledge that I can do it comes from her. I have dear, dear friends without whom I may not have survived my lower moments. But before Stacy, I never believed that I could do more than survive; that I could thrive.  She doesn’t give huge motivational speeches.  She does it by putting things in front of me and expecting that I’ll do them- because she knows I can. And she does it by working so hard that any non-dipshit man in her life must do the same.  She does it by not being surprised when I do good things.  She does it by being “on my side” no matter what.

I think I’ve written before that we don’t celebrate birthdays and anniversaries with presents and cards.  Because each of us was stung in our first try at marriage, we decided to forgo those things and concentrate on being nice and respectful to each other every damn day instead; to say “I love you” every day; to not ever raise our voices in anger.  I won’t say that you should do those things, too. Of course you should respect your mate but how you choose to show it is no business of mine. But I will tell you that our system works for us. Sure, we do things that make each other crazy, but it’s much more fun to giggle at those things than to fight about them. And how do you giggle at things that make you crazy?  You do it by knowing without so much as an inkling of doubt that you are married to the perfect person for you. Therefore it follows that those maddening things are nothing more than silly idiosyncrasies and not the essence of the person whom you married. 

Real-life intrudes, even on love letters, and I must wrap this up. I could go on and on about my wife though. She is the best.  And she has taught me this lesson, which I recently told my five year-old after she asked me whom she would marry:  “If you get married it has to be to someone who makes you a better person, like mommy does for me. Otherwise it’s a huge waste of time.”