Father's Day

Last Sunday was Father's Day. Apparently FD was invented a couple of years after Mother's Day, an interesting bit of affirmative gender action at work. In the newspaper, an article stated that today's dads are far more likely to be closely involved in raising their children--they change diapers, push strollers, chauffeur kids around, sing lullabies, and want more time off from work to spend with the family.

This is a great thing, and I like to think that our generation of dads had something to do with moving this whole daddy enterprise forward. Having had the benefit of living with an involved dad, I know that this is no small feat. If you will recall, when we left off, I was returning from the hospital with a third kid, so life with three little boys under the age of four was no picnic, believe me. In fact, it would have been unbearable without the complete involvement of Jack--while he may have had some eccentric notions about things like bacon, he was the most committed of pops. I cannot imagine raising any number of kids on my own--I am gobsmacked by the everyday heroism of single parents everywhere, and worry about the lack of support that they must struggle with on so many fronts.

So I count myself one of the lucky ones--who knows what trouble I would have gotten myself into without Jack's help? As it was, I was usually two hairs away from a complete melt-down. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day with your sanity (not to mention the kids) intact. As the once-domestic-goddess Roseanne declared, "When my husband comes home from work at the end of the day and the kids are still alive, I figure I've done my job!"

The scenario at Chez-us was fairly unchanging--once dinner had been consumed (getting those boys to eat was never a problem--they were remarkably tidy--food spilled meant food not eaten), the dishes done and Tercero plopped into his crib for the night, I would head for the door, announcing that I was going for coffee (to Dee's, or Natalie's, or Allie's, or Claire's, or Barb's) and not to wait up. I needed time away from the house and all that kid energy. Vampires have nothing on children when it comes to sucking up life forces--vampires are only hoovering up blood, after all.

Once I left, Jack would bathe Primero and Segundo, inserting his six-foot-three inch frame into the tub along with the boys and all the toys. He usually fell asleep within minutes until the boys, tired of playing, would wake him up ("Water's cold, dad!"). There is a story about a toy boat, its little plastic chain attached to a large ring, which the boys attempted to latch onto the only thing resembling a pole in the tub, which also happened to be attached to Jack, who woke up to little fingers determinedly attempting to cram the ring onto the moorage post. The story, while true, has assumed apocryphal status in the family--'nuff said.

After the bath, Jack would pop the boys into bed (they shared a room), settle down with them and read a story until he fell asleep, usually within the first three pages. I, returning from getting buzzed on coffee (Natalie's espresso was particularly deadly) would find him unconscious, book open on his chest, while Primero and Segundo, having fallen asleep out of boredom, were draped over him in interesting configurations. This is the picture of an involved dad.

I would wake him up and he'd stagger off to bed. I would stay up reading, jazzed on coffee, fiercely protective of my alone time. Then, morning and its barely-controlled chaos beckoning, I would reluctantly leave the blessed silence of the living room and go to bed myself.

But back to the business of dads--when I think back (as I have been doing a lot of lately--must be age) to all the dads whose kids comprised The Little Moron Club, I see men changing diapers; coaxing goo into baby's mouths; lugging infants and toddlers in arms, on shoulders, in various devices and vehicles; reading bedtime stories, putting band-aids on skinned knees, patiently explaining that cats don't always land on their feet and therefore should not be dropped from heights, and many other tender actions. My mind's eye is filled with pictures of the dads--Rollie, Jack, Duane, Joe and the rest--showing patience, love and tenderness to the kids. Just as The Little Moron Club had a lot of moms, it also had many dads looking out for the various members. And I like to think that the dads were furthering the evolution of fatherhood by their prosaic yet profound interactions with the children. So when I see those Little Morons who are themselves now dads, I see guys who cried when their daughters were born, who go all mushy at the sight of a newborn, who moon over the smell of clean baby, who--like pack-mules--lug all the paraphernalia the modern child seems to require from house to car to park to car to street to car to store to car to house again, if not with complete good cheer, then at least with a minimum of swearing.

This memory business is, of course, fraught with the danger of glossing over the negative. While this is true for most frolics down memory lane, as we tend to remember only the good (who wants to remember the bad?), nevertheless, for the most part, the dads were great. Jack's few lapses from his usual good nature loom so large in the boys' collective consciousness that they have assumed legendary status. Smashing a small chair to show how stupid wrecking toys is (the logic still eludes us), kicking a hole in the wall (which the boys then brought all their friends over to proudly show it off) out of frustration at some other inane act of wanton destruction, losing it over trivial items such as Primero filling the truck's gas tank with gravel (the tamping stick poking out of the tank was a dead giveaway) or Segundo peeling all the bark off a recently-planted willow tree (again, the murder weapon--a butter knife--was left at the scene of the crime) have become the fondly-remembered litany of Dad losing it. Primero especially has a knack for embellishment--every year the stories get more and more lurid. Sometimes strangers new to the stories are alarmed, and eye Jack nervously, ready to call Social Services for his retroactive crimes. However, as we know Primero's proclivities in this area, we remain calm--like fish, the fits grow with the telling.

The dads, as mentioned, were great. They worked, but retained the ability to play--boomers have always been good at playing. But they played with their kids in a way that taught them the value of responsible play, and how essential it is to young and old alike.

Traditions of play took hold--The Great Green Tomato Fight, for instance, instigated by Rollie, went on for some years. As a nod to Dee's dismay at wastage, it quickly morphed into The Great Green ROTTEN Tomato Fight--only those rotting orbs left after the harvest were allowable ammunition. Of course, the decomposing tomatoes added a delicious disgust factor to the enterprise, a wonderful example of necessity becoming the mother of a truly gross (and therefore greatly improved) invention.

Camping was also de rigueur as a pastime. And camping usually meant group camping--it was affordable, and the enticing lakes of northern Saskatchewan were an easy drive away. All manner of kids learned valuable skills on these outings--how to avoid drowning each other, now NOT to open a Swiss Army Knife, how sliding down pine trees in shorts is dangerous, how burning marshmallows flying through the night air are to be dodged at all costs, how fire--while our friend--must be respected, which means not throwing various substances into it to see what will happen.

The dads were also up for rescues of various kinds--driving down to the creek to pick up bikes and kids too tired to pedal home, heading up search parties for yard-runners who'd made a break for the school playground, and of course the always-needed ambulance service to the hospital's emergency room. Sometimes the victims were dads themselves--I recall one particular evening when Duane, side-swiped on his bike by one of The Little Morons who was a bit too exuberant in his recent mastery of "no hands" cycling, came into our kitchen, jacket clutched to a face pumping blood, hollering for Natalie to drive him to the hospital. Because Duane was a farmer who eschewed medical treatment for pretty much everything ("Just slap a band-aid on it--I'll be fine!"), this caught our attention. It must be bad if Duane actually WANTED to go to the hospital. It was--I remember his eyes, enormous with growing shock above the bloody jacket, and his muffled cries of "Natalie! NATALIE!" I believe a broken nose, dislocated jaw, various lacerations and other injuries were involved. Duane, once he was splinted and stitched, dismissed it, maintaining that these things happened--no biggie--he now had a couple of new scars to add to the old ones (see future blog post on "Male Ow-ies and Scar Hierarchies").

The dads, for the most part, did their jobs well. They were good models. And given their increasing eccentricities (see previous blog post "We're All Married to the Same *@#$%&* Guy"), it is inviting to think that perhaps moving male culture forward consumed so much emotional energy that their various dormant weirdnesses finally have a chance to frolic unencumbered. It's an interesting theory that warrants further exploration at some later date. I await input from all interested parties.

In the meantime, let's celebrate dads--after all, a dad is a male who has had the courage to procreate and stick around to help herd the kids to adulthood (and beyond). They're the ultimate cowboys--staying in the saddle until the end, for being a dad (or a mom for that matter) is a never ending story--dads become grand-dads. Hopefully this generation of grampies, grandpas, pader-buzorgs, zeydas, abuelos, nonnos, babus, bobos, papouses (and my personal favourite--"it"--grandpa in ancient Egyptian!) will change a diaper or two--my dad and Jack's dad managed to get through many grandkids without stooping to handling poopy diapers. Sons become dads and dads become grand-dads and, in the deathless words of Father Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes, so it goes.

I, however, like to think that this circle is really a spiral. Circles don't really go anywhere--they wind up where they started. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again even though it doesn't really work, then let us move away from the circle model of parental development into the spiral, for the spiral moves. It may be up (hopefully) or down (yikes!), but it moves. The spiral is also the pattern of the universe. Galaxies are spirals. The DNA's double-helix is a tandem spiral. Some of the oldest carvings on the planet are spirals cut into rock. The earth's coriolis effect which spins off hurricanes and tornados and sends water down drains (counter-clockwise if you're Australian!) partakes of the spiral. So let us embrace all the dads who, in their efforts to tenderly herd the kids into a better world, are spiraling upwards and outwards, moving the children towards new ways of seeing and being.

Thanks, dads. You know who you are.