Lego Dads

Yesterday is just one example among thousands of what a father might be doing on a Saturday, or any day.  In this example, he’s examining the streamlet of water running down the curb and the patch of grass around the water meter that is greener than all the rest.  He’s calling the City to see if this little situation is their’s or our’s.  But “ours” really means “his” because I.know.nothing. 

It’s ours.  So… Lowe’s, water off, repairs, line cleared, water on, no hot water in the tub, water off, bathroom panel removed, water on, still no hot water, water off, glue extraction, polish tub knobs, water on, and we’re back in business.  

 I tell him thank you, and wonder how much I would have paid a plumber to do all of that.  He’s sweaty and dirty and relieved it only took half of the day, and not the rest of it. 

On this Father’s Day, I’m thinking about how fathers spend most of their time.  A handful of words come to mind…Fixing. Providing. Teaching and Hiding (and Napping w.h.e.n.e.v.e.r. possible).

Fixing.  Yesterday - water pipe.  Last week - washing machine.  Week before - neighbor’s bike tire.  Before that, truck brakes.  To do - Van upholstery, re-side the rest of the house, remodel bathroom. 

Providing.  Preparing to go to work. Time spent at work.  Recovering from work.  A friend once told me it is easy to forget that our husbands feel like they’ve been pulling a long train behind them all day when they walk through the door at night. I think she’s right. 

Teaching.  My boys love to imitate my husband yelling, “BOYS!”  This is usually followed by some instruction on not leaving plates in the living room, or what it means to “clean the kitchen”, or how you put something back where you found it when you’re done using it, or some small detail about spray painting things, like PUT SOMETHING UNDER IT!

Hiding.  Sometimes, fathers have to hide to get some time to themselves. The bathroom and garage are popular places.  But, they’re good at hiding other things, too.  Like little irritations, back pain, fear, fatigue, and how hard they are working.

Napping.  Well-deserved, men.  Nap away.  

What is amazing to me, is that the two fathers in my life, my father and my husband, had no long-term in-house model.  My husband was only 5-years-old when his Dad died.  He dreamt he lived in the attic for some time afterward.  My father’s in-house Dad was abusive or absent.  And yet, these men continued to move forward through life like self-constructing Lego people.  Observing the best of what they saw in the other men in their lives, and building those things into themselves.  They are unrepeatable, irreplaceable, and so very.very.good.

Happy Father’s Day to my Lego Husband, my Lego Dad, and to all of you Dads out there. Thanks for being who you are, doing all that you do, and paying for dinner.  

A Gentle Disintegration

Yesterday, we took our first daytrip to the beach without all of the boys.  The oldest was working. Today, the middle one drove solo for the first time.  He got his driver’s license on Friday.  He’s the really busy one and his busyness always necessitated a ride in the middle of my free time.  So, we celebrate this new freedom right along with him, rather than validate the pit in our stomach provoked by the thought that “this is really happening.”    

As a wise friend’s wise mother used to say, “Only sick birds don’t leave the nest.”

So, I don’t ask for time to stop or slow down because it is all well, and happening as it should.  I’ve mentioned it before, but my friend calls the years your children are home, before anyone can drive, the “sweet spot”.  Everybody is home, safe and secure under a loving and watchful eye.  My sweet spot is disintegrating, but I am grateful that it has been slow and gentle.  Measured in days and years, not seconds and minutes.  

These past two weeks, many young people have lost their lives to murdering madmen.  I get lost in trying to accompany their parents in their grief.  I don’t know any of them, but I obsess, pray, and force myself into the present.  And repeat.  I see social media posts of people continuing to smile and live their lives like nothing has happened.  I am amazed at this, at first.  And then I join them, because I need the distraction.  It is refreshing to see and share the good, as well as the bad, I reason.  Like some weird balance in this land of unrelated-but-loosely-connected people.

Though social media wasn’t born, yet, Dr. Haim Ginott in “Between Parent and Teenager” describes the benefit of these loose connections, well. “Many teenagers are tormented by terrors they think private and personal.  They do not know that their anxieties and doubts are universal.  This insight is hard to convey.  Each teenager must attain it on their own.  It takes time and wisdom to realize that the personal parallels the universal, and what pains one man pains mankind.”

We have so much to learn from one another.

I sat with her again on Friday.  She was asleep at the dining room table and came to with a touch on the shoulder and mention of her name.  We flipped through her book, looking at the pictures.  She didn’t remember writing it, seem to recognize her name on the cover, nor think it odd that if someone else wrote it, they sure included a lot of pictures of her family.  

I was grateful again that she has given us so much to talk about in these pages of hers.  Laugh-out-loud moments with her children, layers of loss, years of sacrifice, and joys beyond all telling.  If we didn’t have them, I fear the shallowness of what would remain in their absence.

It is my ability to share her story with her (because she had written it down for herself), that I do the same.

One day, I may be dependent upon a stranger who visits frequently to tell me again who she is and what is this, again?  Hopefully, hearing the stories will pluck the strings in my soul, releasing all of the chords to my favorite song.  I will remember how we all “survived being alive”, and marvel at how whole and integrated I feel after a long life of unhurried and gentle disintegration, and a visit from a stranger.