Fatherhood

I have a 3 1/2 year old son who likes to go fishing. I find that amazing in and of itself, but what's really amazing is that he can cast a full size rod & reel and he prefers that over the kid sized ones.

I've slacked off on writing much here lately because the last two months have brought an unusual amount of unexpected bad stuff into my life. I ended up in the hospital unexpectedly for close to a week, and then when I got out I found out about some pretty scary news relating to my personal finances that I'm still trying to sort out. Then I had to scramble like mad for a month to make up for the week I had to be away from work. And I have an insurance agent who is either 100% clueless or else he just gets his rocks off telling me how I'm not going to live very long.

To add insult to injury my 45th birthday is this month and I got in an argument with the woman who runs the daycare my son goes to this morning.

Anyway, to return to my original point; I promised my son that we could go fishing today after work. We are fortunate enough to have a large pond / small lake in back of our house which makes keeping these fishing promises easier than keeping some other promises. When I got home we grabbed the fishing gear and headed down to the lake and started fishing and talking. It was a real Andy and Opie moment and I was amazed that this was my life. For a little while all those other worries disappeared and the world was a perfect place. I guess that's what father & son fishing is all about.

I thought of this the other day. I was driving and fanaticizing about the death of the person who was passing me in a school zone during the morning drop off time because I had the audacity to slow down to the speed limit of 35 mph. How did I get this way, and why can't I let this stuff roll off my back? Shouldn't I be thinking pleasant, saintly, loving, brotherly thoughts as I serenely go through my day?

I always wanted to be like Kwai Chang Caine in the Kung Fu TV series. I'd always know the right thing to do and I'd be humble and gentle and try to find the spiritual approach to every problem. Then I'd open up a serious can of whoop-ass (in slow motion at that) only as a last resort. I guess that is a pretty typical male fantasy. There was Billy Jack and Buford Pusser from Walking Tall and all that stuff. They'd always know the right thing to do and justice would be upheld by their mere existence.

Tonight was one of my nights to pick up my son from daycare. I thought it would be fun to take him to the playground and then we?d go to a Chinese restaurant he really likes. While we were at the playground two older kids started picking on him right in front of me. My initial reaction is something along the lines of violence breeds violence. I'm thinking about smacking this one little brat who seemed to be the leader, to kingdom come, but I think better of it because hitting kids is frowned upon and probably for good reasons. So I try to hang back and see where this is going. This one little kid is looking at my son with such hatred and then he gives me the same look and makes a fist.

Great, this is really going nowhere fast. Maybe I can talk to the kid and diffuse the situation. I'd been standing there the whole time and knew that there was absolutely no provocation on my son's part so I'm trying to figure out how to approach it. I try to smile and ask the kid what's up. He just stares at me with even more hatred. I really want to knock this kid's face into the dirt at his point and my son, who is three years old is saying he's scared because every time he tries to use any of the playground equipment kid hateful and his trusty sidekick try to block the way or push my son down.

If I handled this badly up to this point it only gets worse from here. My next move is to figure out who are the mothers of these two and go over to talk to them. I tell them that their kids are ganging up on and picking on a younger kid. They give me that ?boys will fight at the playground? bullshit. Why will boys fight? Because you let them, because you teach them that it is ok? Because you want them to be able to fend off the rapists in prison? These two have a pretty good chance of ending up there so maybe it is a good skill for them to be honing.

The mothers were like audience members on the Springer show or Jane or Ricki Lake. "Don't you tell me how to raise my child" blah, blah, blah. Then one calls me an asshole as I?m walking away. Now all bets are off, I can have a pretty foul mouth and fueled with anger it can be something amazing with a life of its own. But as I'm verbally battling these two I realize I really need to just walk away. The hateful little kid follows us down the sidewalk to the parking lot making a fist and looking at us with that amazing look of hatred as we walk to the truck. As we get to the end of the sidewalk I turn around and look back at the kid with an equal amount of hatred and he goes running back to his mother who has done nothing to stop his following us.

When we get back in the truck and start to drive away I really want to cry. Why did I handle this so badly? Why did I handle this so badly in front of my son? Where were those back episodes of Kung Fu to draw on? Why was I thinking of smacking this little kid? What the fuck?

Years and years ago I was having a conversation with someone and I said in passing that someone we knew was an asshole. He replied "You think everyone is an asshole.". What amazed me about this statement wasn't that it was true and he had just provided me with a much needed moment of satori. What amazed me was that he didn't think everyone was an asshole also.

I don't know, I want to think differently, and some times I do but those times aren't nearly as often as I'd like. I want to move toward a spiritual life but as someone told me years ago "water seeks its own level". My level is thinking the world is full of assholes, I guess. Taking my son to the playground and ending up in a situation like the one I described only reinforces that bleak outlook. Unfortunately I wasn?t raised in a Shaolin Temple and I?ve never learned to snatch the pebbles from the Master?s hand.

In regards to my last entry about Millard Fuller, I found out tonight from my brother in law (what did I say everyone is?) that Millard Fuller and his wife were kicked out of Habitat for Humanity recently. Of course the b-in-law mentions this in passing in a name dropping way that just totally gave me the creeps. So how fucked up is this? I mean its supercalafragalistically fucked up for the Fullers but its also fucked up for me (the center of my universe) since I just started feeling comfortable with some sort of connection to Christianity mainly because of these two and what the hell am I supposed to think now?

I know, I don't paint a pretty picture. I know what I am and I have a black, black, heart.

Don't even get me started on the Life Insurance companies................

I'm afraid that this is what I'm turning into this year. I'm sure you know the kind of father who covers the house and yard in Christmas lights. I'd always noticed one or two of them around but while I appreciated their effort as a passerby I never felt the call to decorate my own abode in all that China and the local big box store has to offer.

I guess it all started innocently enough, my wife had joined a local freecycling listserve with the intention (I was told) of giving away some of the things we had been storing for years, to someone who could use them. Then she told me about the three reindeer that someone was giving away. I said something to the effect that it was her responsibility to get them and find a place to keep them and anything else that might be involved, all the while maintaining my total disinterest in any sort of lighted yard decoration.

Well, after having them sit on the deck for a few weeks (my wife's idea of finding a place for them - leave them out so I'll find a place for them) . I decided to hook them up in the back yard for my 3 year old son to see. I think once I saw his reaction to them it was all over for me. Next came the icicle lights, (might as well get them early because they always run out of this stuff when you finally do get the fleeting urge to decorate on Christmas Eve). Then it was the 30" high lighted candy canes marking a pathway to my son's Little Tykes playhouse. Then came the lights in the front of the house. Then the colored ceramic lights like we had when I was a kid, and then the net lights and then.........

I know I wouldn't be doing any of it if it weren't for my son and those ragged used reindeer would have never showed up here to turn me into crazy Christmas light guy if it weren't for this little three year old boy.

I grew up in the 60's which I imagine was the heyday for Christmas and kids. They still made the Sears Wishbook which had every kid mesmerized for the whole last quarter of each year and enough households had TV that a number of animated Christmas specials became a part of our pop culture and history. I wonder if those holiday specials seem better to me than what they have now because I'm just nostalgic for my childhood Christmases or if they truly were better.

A few years back I found the Chipmunks Christmas and Walter Brennan's Christmas albums on CD. These records played such a large part of my childhood memories of the holidays that I was very excited to have found them again and in scratch-free digital sound nonetheless. I wonder if people look back as fondly on the tele-tubbies Christmas Specials as I do on the Peanut's Special and Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I guess those who grew up after my generation got all our specials plus whatever else came down the pike afterwards like the tele-tubbies.

Anyway, this morning out of the blue I really wanted to hear the Chipmunks, so after searching all the usual places and coming up with nothing more than an empty jewel case for the album, I finally located it in a CD album/binder in my truck where it had probably been since last Christmas. I put it on thinking my son would totally dig it just the way I had as a kid, but his reaction after a long period of furrowing his brow and silence was "I want the Wiggles, I want the Wiggles now, I want the Wiggles" (repeat as necessary). My son is a big fan of the Wiggles and I guess singing Chipmunks just don't cut it for him. He's too young to know about Santa Claus or Jesus or Satan or Charlie Brown and Linus or Kwanza or Hanukkah or George Bush or Saddam Hussein, and that is all for the best we feel, but I wonder what it will be like for him growing up. Things feel so much harsher now than they were when I was a kid.

I feel this great responsibility to keep a sense of awe and wonder and magic in his life for as long as is possible. If lighting up the yard and house can help accomplish that and add some good memories to his life then I guess I will go on being crazy Christmas light guy for as long as I can.