A Young Man’s Fancy

 

Well, I received some interesting news today – news that no doubt would send shivers down the spine of any father worth his weight in Trojans. My beautiful daughter – the apple of my eye, the greatest thing I will ever leave behind on this Earth – has…gulp…a boyfriend.

My first reaction was probably not a good one. It involved a curious re-enactment from the first “Twilight” movie – the one where father meets boyfriend for the first time while cleaning his guns. My second reaction was to do the usual man-thing – fix the problem, damn it. Of course, that took me back to the first reaction – and since I’m not overly fond of bloodshed (and its requisite jail sentence), I tried letting the news settle in.

Eventually, my daughter’s new romance brought me to the memories of my first serious crush. I was roughly the same age as her (another piece of reality that pushes me closer to the idea of pricing shotguns at the pawn shop) and I was totally smitten. I had never known such an amazing feeling, such an incredible joy. And eventually, as first crushes fade away I felt the most profound pain and heartbreak. Then I thought about my little girl and what she is in for.

My little girl. She’s hardly that anymore. She is 13 and weaving her own way into this paradoxically joyous and painful fabric we call life, and she will do the same things we all have done. She will know that rapturous one-of-a-kind feeling (well, it was one-of-a-kind once…) that defines head-over-heels love. And, sadly, she will have to work her own way through the big bump in the road that surely lies ahead when this boyfriend becomes a scrapbook memory (Or, god forbid, when this boyfriend becomes a reality TV star on “High School Reunion”!). As her father, all I can do is watch with gritted teeth and loaded guns.

I get the biggest kick out of seeing Jess interact with the world. One of my most cherished memories comes from a Halloween night of trick-or-treating I never wanted to see end. I only got to take her trick-or-treating once, but watching her go from house to house and seeing every person at the door respond to her with such affection – and her responding with such sweet politeness – made my heart soar. All of her little personal victories that followed – dance class, karate class, guitar lessons – have given me the same joy. And so it should come as no surprise that some other man should come along and feel that exact same joy in her presence. Even if he is just a teenaged, smooth-texting Romeo (or Edward, Jacob..whatever) intent on stealing my little girl away.

Yep, it’s not even spring and some young man’s fancy has already turned to thoughts of my little girl. And that’s okay. It’s the Circle of Life and all that. The circle starts, completes, then starts again. Such is life.

You know what else forms a nice, neat circle?

The business end of the shotgun I plan on buying.

Technorati Tags: Twilight,Jacob,Edward,High School Reunion

The Numbers Game

 

 

I spent last weekend with my daughter Jessica to celebrate her 13th birthday. Wait, let me rephrase. Actually, I spent the weekend AT Jessica’s, as opposed to WITH – she is at that mercurial age where making sense of things is like holding onto water. It’s an age where one minute you see a child playing Marco Polo with her friends, and the next minute you see a young woman coming of age in her own personal Twilight script (Go Team Jacob! Wait, should dads say that?? Ewww….).

It’s an age I remember with much trepidation – and one I wouldn’t want to repeat for any amount of government bailout money. So it’s with the benefit of my own experience that I look at the events of this past weekend with a mixture of fondness, pride, and pain. I’ve written before about some of the choices I’ve made as an adult. As I grow older, I get reminders that there are consequences for all those choices – some expected, and some quite surprising. Whether those consequences are good or bad have yet to play out, but the signposts along the way remind me of their difficulty.

My daughter has had a very difficult time with our relationship over the last few years, and I am guilty of underestimating that difficulty. Somewhere along the way, I blinked and she went from Blue’s Clues to New Moon. After her mother and I divorced about 10 years ago, I became a weekend dad and that made our relationship easy. Just pick her up on Friday nights, take her to see Shrek, and drop her off on Sunday afternoons. That meant I was only around for the fun stuff, but never there to help mend the nicks and bruises that go into building a true bond between parent and child. And when I took a radio job and moved twelve hours away, our bond slowly, steadily unraveled. Visits dissipated to occasional holidays and week-long summer stays, and finally to annual visits as life just got in the way. But over the last year I have made more of an effort to amend my negligence, and that is what made being a part of Jess’ 13th birthday so important.

This past weekend, her mother and I worked on a party for Jessie and her friends. It was an amazing success - with the exception that Jess held me at an emotional arm’s length and while that wasn’t surprising, it was difficult to take. As we went through the day grilling burgers and entertaining her friends, I tried to remember that her emotional distance was the residual effect of years of my bad choices and did my best to take it in stride. Of course, not all of of the awkwardness came from my recent re-emergence in her life. Some of it was just parental missteps (long-distance-dad tip #1: never, EVER give your 13-year-old daughter-child-woman a Hannah Montana birthday card – VERY uncool!). Some of it came from my trying too hard to create a bond with her (long-distance-dad tip #2: no matter how hard you try to take a picture of her good side, you will only succeed in getting a great many shots of the back of your daughter’s head!).

However, as any parent knows sometimes your efforts are rewarded when you least expect it. After the last of her friends had been picked up by their moms, Jess retreated to her room. After awhile, she came out tentatively to thank me for the presents and stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say next. I suddenly realized how hard it was for her to do that – we do have a lot of distance that I’ve let accumulate these last five years – and gave her a hug. She didn’t pull away for once, and I told her I was sorry about the Hannah Montana card. She said it was okay, and went back to the safety of the Naruto books and Twilight posters in her room.

I’d like to think that I’m a good father, and I have two stepchildren and a daughter who could probably offer up evidence both pro and con on that notion. But at the end of the day, I realize that I made a career choice (moving away for another radio job) and a family choice (remarrying into a family that got more of my attention than she did). Then I made more choices that took me away from both the radio job and the new family, leaving me alone to face myself.

It’s profoundly awkward facing yourself when you realize your daughter may be watching, because you begin to understand how little room for error is left as time goes by. That’s what made being at this birthday so important to me. Birthdays are a finite number, and I’ve missed too many of them already. I don’t want to find out how many more I can miss before realizing all too late that my number’s up.

EPILOGUE

I wrote the above on the night before I planned to head back to Georgia. Earlier in the day, Jess’ mom and I had discussed the pros and cons of saying goodbye before Jessie headed off to school (my original plan). The more I thought about it, the worse an idea it seemed – we both get terribly emotional when it’s time to go, and it’s all I can do to keep it together when it’s time to leave. I knew it would be tough for her to have to deal with as well. So we agreed it would be better if I waited until after school was out. That would give Jess time to privately process things instead of having to risk putting  emotions on display in front of her friends.

I grilled another round of burgers when she got home and after we ate, I started packing up the car to leave. Jess’ mom came to me and pulled me aside to explain that Jessie thought I was going to stay another night. Since I had to work the next day, another night wasn’t an option – and while Jess understood that, she passed a request on through her mother – could I stay and help put together a gingerbread house? I was caught completely off guard. All through her birthday weekend, she hadn’t wanted to spend much time beyond what was necessary.

I thought about another time Jessie had asked me to stay a little longer. She was about four then and we were playing in a nearby park. On that day when I told her it was time for us to go, she’d asked in a disappointed voice, “Can’t we stay a little longer?”

On that day - a day when I thought there were so many days ahead for us – I told her we couldn’t this time. On that day, I had no clue what the numbers game was going to end up costing me. But on this day, with a fragile gingerbread house and an even more fragile relationship with my daughter at the fore, I decided it was time to make up for that day in the park.

On this day, I was going to put off leaving for as long as I could.

We took our sweet time building that gingerbread house, and I was amazed at the transformation in Jess. She’d been so reserved and quiet all weekend long, but doing this together brought something out of her that I’d been aching to see. For an all-too-brief time, she was my adoring daughter again and I was more than her father – I was dad.

After the house was built, we took turns finishing off the leftover icing. And for the first time in my life, I was able to say goodbye without the hellish guilt that usually goes with goodbye. We exchanged hugs and “I love you’s” and I promised to come back for a Christmas visit.

I have yet to make a permanent peace with myself over how things have turned out between Jessie and I, but thanks to a gingerbread house and a daughter’s big heart I was at least able to build a bridge.

Technorati Tags: fathers and daughters,dads,single dads,weekend dads,Hannah Montana,Twilight,Jacob,Team Jacob,Naruto,Blue's Clues

The Eyes Have It

 

(photo courtesy of the U.K. Telegraph)

Game on! Tiger Woods, the most desirable of celebrity endorsers since Michael Jordan, is up to his ball washer in speculation, controversy, and hearsay. Welcome to the ripple effect of the internet, Tiger. This is one water hazard you’ll wish you never ran across.

Everyone has an opinion on Tiger and his little run-in with a fire hydrant. Does he owe us an explanation or doesn’t he? I’m quite certain he doesn’t owe US (the general public) an explanation – his wife, maybe – but us, no. And likewise, we don’t owe him (or celebrities in general) our blind, loyal devotion. But enough of the newsy stuff – let’s focus on the REALLY trivial. For instance, Twitter is already overloaded with Tiger ticklers. And the U.K. Telegraph has posted these top five Tiger tamers:

Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole in one.

What's the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards.

Tiger Woods wasn't seriously injured in the crash, but he's still below par.

What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2.30 in the morning? They went clubbing.

Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron.

Ah, the cult of personality. Makes you want to roll your eyes, eh Tiger?

 

Technorati Tags: Tiger Woods,Tiger Woods crash,Tiger Woods crash jokes

The ABCs of Adam Lambert

 

First warning…this is a PRO-Adam Lambert piece. Get ready to get your righteous indignation on!

My friend Jimmy Carter, who reports on entertainment for a great many country music stations across America, posted this New York Post piece on Facebook today about ABC’s dropping Adam Lambert’s “Good Morning America” appearance following complaints about his “shocking” performance at the American Music Awards. Now, I know Jimmy’s readership/audience pretty well so I’m not surprised by the outpouring of anti-Adam sentiment. Disgusted by it, but not surprised.

Second warning…this is a PRO-Adam Lambert piece. Proceed at the risk of any Puritanical sensibilities you may still have!!

Now, let’s all just take a deep breath and take a look back, shall we? David Bowie may not have painted his fingernails black in the Glam-Slammin’ Seventies (his Ziggy Stardust-persona was circa 1972…NINETEEN SEVENTY-TWO!!!…That’s 37 years ago, thank you very much). But he certainly wasn’t above theatricality to shock and entertain an audience. Point being, pushing the entertainment envelope has actually been around longer than Adam Lambert – literally.

With Bowie, we weren’t sure what was going on – we just went with it (well, some of us did). Around the same time, Freddie Mercury donned his black fingernail polish as the lead singer of Queen. With Freddie, we had a better idea of what was going on, but again we just went with it (well, some of us did…and we were starting to get the joke – that it was simply entertainment for entertainment’s sake).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And again, around the same time, Steven Tyler discovered the booty-call benefits of black fingernail polish as lead singer of Aerosmith. With Steven, we knew precisely what was going on, and we went with it (and since Steven was unabashedly heterosexual, it was easier for many to go along with it).

Final warning – this is a PRO-Adam Lambert piece!! Run away and save yourselves!

Lambert is already on record for pointing out the double standard that exists between female and male performers. Madonna and Britney Spears can kiss, and it’s water-cooler talk – but let a man push the envelope and he MUST BURN IN HELL WITH THE OTHER DEVIATES. After all, that’s truly the only way to protect ourselves isn’t it?

Really, now. Do you honestly think – HONESTLY – that his performance was that threatening to your life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Most of the Facebook comments I noted were more from people’s response to what was described in the media, not to what they actually watched. After all, awards shows are nothing more than self-congratulatory affairs that usually generate average ratings at best. And ABC has the enviable position of being able to have its Lambert and eat it too. After all, the Big A new exactly what it signed up for, and the full-press media blitz shamelessly plugged Lambert along with Taylor Swift and the rest of its safe-as-milk lineup. And by cancelling Lambert’s GMA appearance, the network gets to have it both ways (which may give them more in common with Lambert than they realize, but I digress).

Adam Lambert is a talented singer and entertainer, and while his vision may not be your cup of tea, you’re certainly able to change the channel anytime you want. This man is an entertainer, and that’s all. His being on any TV show, movie soundtrack, or pre-programmed Clear Channel station will in no way harm you or your way of life, because – say it with me – he’s an entertainer.

Wait…so was Ronald Reagan, and he became President. Hmmm…maybe Adam Lambert IS a threat after all.

Technorati Tags: Adam Lambert,GMA cancellation,ABC cancels Lambert

Walk On The Mild Side

 

I bundled up for the walk this morning and found treasure in the dark.

At six this morning, there was nothing but the last dregs of night-quiet. Near the post office, I could see the street lights glowing amber-bright through the pre-dawn haze. As the sky cleared, stars shone magnificently – the Dippers, a barely visible but reddish Mars, and a few other gem clusters dazzled and I had to remember to look ahead and not up, lest I start staggering like Dudley Moore’s Arthur painting the town.

I rounded the turn in front of my house, and the post office street lights reached beams out through the trees to create their own wonder. Occasionally the quiet was punctuated by a passing car and eventually the morning mail truck unloading the good news and the bad news at the post office. In the distance, a dog sensed my presence and barked a warning – and I couldn’t blame the little fella. I was all dressed in black like a cat burglar, and deserved a bark or two for my lack of fashionista sensibility.

At the Atkinsons Candies factory nearby, I could smell them baking the day’s wares – and thinking that I really needed to keep walking, at the risk of wandering over to ask for a sample. It was tempting, but I pressed on. On the other end of the block, a neighbor’s Halloween lights cut through the long shadows, and I made a mental note to self to make sure we have candy to hand out.

Such was my morning walk. Forty minutes of quiet and mild exercise that cleared my mind and gave me some good energy to carry into today. I know it’s all New Agey and touchy-feely but it sure did me some good to get out and spend some time with myself this morning. And I really should do it more often. I promised myself I would, so we’ll see how that works out.

And if it doesn’t work out, that’s fine too. It was sure worth doing today. 

They Say It’s Your Birthday…

 

I have a friend (let’s call her…my ex…) who is really good at celebrating birthdays. She has always tried to take her birthday off from work so she could celebrate it by doing whatever she wanted. I, on the other hand, tend to randomize the event and let it float around like Forrest Gump’s feather – a practice which doesn’t always get the best results.

This year, I decided to try it her way. I took the day off and spent the morning wading through all the Facebook birthday notes, e-cards, and texts from friends and relatives (and ex-wives!). Then my dad and I enjoyed some time together doing random acts of yard work. After finishing that job, I begun preparations for the Birthday Cookout – getting the grill fired up and the burgers ready to be burned (which is how the old man likes ‘em – if they moo back, that’s a problem!).

Then I started rambling through the cupboard and found some fixin’s for a pumpkin pie. Feeling a certain inspiration, I dug out one of mom’s cookbooks and followed her recipe to the letter. It’s in the oven now – and while it may turn out to be more pumpkin mush than pumpkin pie, it really did me good to work on that pie. I wrote in my last blog about it being a year since mom passed, and making this pie was a way of connecting with her. It may turn out disastrous, and it may not – but the joy was in the journey, and not the destination.

What do you know? Mom’s gone, but she’s still leaving me birthday presents. Happy birthday to me – and thanks for the pie, mom.

What Needs To Be Said

 

Anyone who’s lost a parent will tell you that you never get over it. And it’s true. We lost mom a year ago on October 25th, and I find myself reflecting on that strangely detached yet intimate piece of my life. And even now it surprises me how stark some of the details of that time still are.

In late February 2008, mom had her first stroke. I drove up from Panama City to visit her in the hospital, and she was in reasonably good shape considering the circumstances. I helped dad get her home, and I remember her frustration over not being able to connect dates with their corresponding events – she knew October 26th was significant, but couldn’t remember it was because it was my birthday. After trying so hard for about 30 minutes to connect the dots, she just blurted out in amused – but genuine – frustration: “Where did my life go?”

Between March and June 2008 she had three more strokes – the last leaving her bedridden. This was the period of time where mom gave up and dad grew bitter. She was unable to feed herself and had to be given Ensure through a feeding tube by my dad. She was in constant pain and had to stay on medication to ease it. Dad had to clean and change her. He would often express his frustration – they were on fixed incomes and relying on Medicare to see them through, and while that did what was needed, he felt he could have used some help with her. And he got a limited amount, through daily nurse visits. But it still didn’t seem enough and he would vent to me over the phone in words that would make a marine blush – words I was not used to hearing from my usually restrained father.

Flash forward through a long, strained summer for the two of them to October 2008. I was headed home from work when my dad called to tell me that mom was in the hospital again with another stroke. The doctors gave him two very lousy choices: a) either they operate on mom and try to remove a clot that was causing her strokes, which she only had a 20% chance of surviving, or b) do nothing and wait for her to die, which was imminent within 4-6 days.

Dad told me his decision – he was going to let mom go.

I would never pretend to second-guess my father. But if you ask me, it takes a strong man to let go of someone he’s spent fifty years of his life loving and caring for. He did it unwaveringly, in a voice that was strong and full of support for me in case I needed it. And he made his decision knowing full well that it was the merciful thing to do. I responded by telling him I would take time off and drive up the next day.

When I got to the hospital, I talked to mom’s doctor – I needed to hear the facts from him, and after listening I was shaken. I didn’t want to hear that mom was going to die, but there it was. So I immediately called work and let them know I’d need to be off indefinitely (thankfully I had a great boss who completely understood the significance of what my family was going through). I spent the next six days with her as she slowly, achingly slipped away from us.

My first night there, she woke up and saw me. She had been unable to speak since being bedridden in June but managed to choke out “I love you” to me. I held her hand, and she squeezed mine back as I told her I loved her too. Through my tears, I asked, “It’s your time, isn’t it mom?” She nodded yes, and that was all that needed to be said between us as she kept squeezing my hand.

That was my goodbye with mom. She would spend the next few days slipping in and out of consciousness, and stopped recognizing us. Through it all, my dad was amazing. He would hold her hand with such tenderness and speak to her in quiet, intimate words that were his way of saying goodbye too.

Mom held on until the early morning of October 25th, the day after her great-grandson’s birthday and the day before mine and my nephew’s. I don’t remember her passing – I’m sure I was too exhausted for the memories to have stayed. But the sum of this experience has led me to where I am today, sharing my life with my dad on a daily basis – each one holding up the other just when it’s needed.

And I am profoundly grateful to have been able to say goodbye to mom. Few children get that opportunity when a parent dies, and I cling to every moment of that time so I never forget how lucky I am. When Sunday comes up, I’ll go to the cemetery with dad and we’ll put fresh flowers on mom’s grave after church. We’ll go somewhere together for lunch afterwards and maybe we’ll share a memory or two.

And maybe we won’t. There’s a sort of silent understanding between us on what that day means and words just don’t do it justice.

Technorati Tags: death of a parent,loss of a parent