Half Past Awesome

Go Ahead. Eat It.

I grew up wishing that, on the side of the family I was being raised in (mostly), there were more of us somewhere near my age. It was mom & me, followed by my stepdad, a long-term visiting friend of mom, a cat and a three legged dog. Conversations were not really geared towards anyone under 30. As such, my mind was filled with opinions on Jimmy Buffet and the still ever-present threat of communism in our country circa 1982. About as wild as we got was one holiday weekend in 1984, when I was allowed exactly one sip of my stepdad’s Dos Equis beer and promptly fell off the edge of a dumpster, hit my head and was thus lectured on the dangers of alcohol. Good times.

My mother, bless her Episcopalian suburban white-lady heart, had me decked out in the  ultimate Young Republican attire each Sunday and every single holiday on the Anglo-Saxon calendar. It varied a little, but the basic gist was this: tan pants, blue blazer, white shirt, red tie, Penny-Loafers (too young for tassels, but just right with actual pennies) and hair parted in in such a way so as to suggest I might engage in a conversation on emerging markets in Japan at any moment. Rebellion came in the form of skinning an entire turkey and eating it, moments before dinner was announced to several pedigreed guests who were busy discussing the Edmund Fitzgerald and furiously smoking like freight trains in our living room. The grease smears across my crooked mug and starched shirt were enough to make some people question my credentials as a Mayflower Descendant Society Member. It was my proudest moment and one I’ve never been able to duplicate.

When you’re a kid with more imagination than brains and people around you are relatively one step away from the bone yard, you begin to create scenarios that amuse no one but you. Thus began The Crane. The Crane was a method I devised for scooping mashed potatoes and peas into my scatter-toothed mouth that would take me away from the stifling world of adults. I began to imagine I was dredging our local harbor with each scoop, and would hold multiple-sided conversations between The Crane operator and the disgruntled Longshoremen who were not on board with such unorthodox techniques. As The Crane Operator and dictator of the scenarios, I would callously fling yams to one side, crushing the occupants of Mint Jelly Town, thereby igniting riots. My mind scattered over the chaos, and mostly there was yelling. Unfortunately for anyone at the table, this scenario did not simply take place within the confines of my mind; the dialogue was made for all to hear, much to the horror of the guests at the table, as they were apt to be casualties in the upcoming dinner plate revolution I was plotting. I might’ve been wearing Penny Loafers, but my heart was cloaked in anarchy and blood. The Crane excited our three-legged dog greatly, since there was a good chance that, as collateral damage from my dredging techniques, she’d score some asparagus that had been flung off the plate in the name of efficiency and crappy taste.

We didn’t fight. We didn’t watch football. We didn’t scream obscenities at family members we only saw once a year, and we most certainly did not put our elbows on the table. In fact “we” didn’t do a whole lot, except consume a meticulously prepared meal while silently hedging bets as to who would first spill something on the tablecloth and thereby incur the silent wrath of my mother, who would immediately light up a Virginia Slim in protest.

And although she no longer smokes, and 3o years have passed, whenever I go home and there is a lull in the conversation at dinner, I audibly fire up The Crane, scoop up a load of mashed potatoes and immediately begin an argument between an invisible laborer and me, The Operator, King Of The Dining Room Table. Mom snorts some wine out her nose, not noticing that dollop of jelly my step-dad has let slip on to the fine linen. And a newer,  four legged dog patiently waits for the aftermath, knowing she’ll soon be rewarded.

I’m thankful for every moment of it.

"You! In The Back Row! Remember Me?!"

Today we tackle an insidious situation, one that’s only been made worse by the proliferation of the intarwebs: The Bully.

There are articles galore out there testifying how the centuries old trend of picking on the weak is alive and well, with tons of heinous examples of people being driven to the very brink by the assholes of society. I hate those filthy swine with every fiber of my being, hate to the volcanic core what they do to others in the name of popularity, insecurity, small genitalia compensation, whatever.

Clearly, I was bullied as a child.

And I remember them all, as vividly as I remember the beatdowns they inflicted upon a once-upon-a-time skinny kid like me. Shea Morenz, Bodine French and Austin Prince doled out regular charley-horses, public shunnings and playground mock-o-ramas on a semi-daily basis to me and a handful of other weirdo types. It didn’t help our cause any that we had no cohesion, weren’t part of some lovable gang of losers like you might find on an after-school special. We weren’t nerds who then went on to become ultra-billionaires, either, so there’ll be no Bill Gates moments in the future. No, I was in the company of characters like the kid who insisted on being called “Punker Joe”, even though his name wasn’t Joe and his distinguishing characteristic was that he always had two slug trails of snot hanging from his nostrils to his upper lip. It was hard to form an allegiance with someone who mostly spent time talking to the monkey bars and had an aversion to Kleenex.

So we suffered in an isolated fashion, taking refuge in our own minds, quietly, secretly hoping that the recess yard monitor lady would turn the corner at some point and catch them in the act, whip a pistol out of her purse and shoot them dead. That never happened, oddly enough. And, as the unpopular objects of the attention of the kings of the school yard, we were only too happy to be left alone when they doled out harassment to others, thereby becoming silent enablers of the taunting.

Except for Charles Spaulding. The only thing I really remember about Charles was that he wanted to be called “Charles”, not “Charlie” nor “Chuck” or anything else. That, and he seemed to have an affinity for wearing a yellow rain jacket, even on sunny days. He really, really loved that jacket. Nonetheless, he was the only one who would intervene on behalf of the bullied, when he himself wasn’t being punched or ridiculed. He was a scrawny punk, little Charles, but he had a sense of justice that wouldn’t allow for him to stand by when the gang of the popular were dispensing wedgies. He took more than one hit to the face trying to stop some other kid from getting a smacking. I hope Charles is the most successful guy in the world, because he? Was one brave little third grader who had the clankers to stand up for what’s right.

I responded in a more traditional fashion: I retreated into my own head and became a sarcastic little son-0f-a-bitch with a substantial chip on my shoulder. It seems to have served me okay, at least to this point. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve become a giant hairy sarcastic son-of-a-bitch who, according to my wife, looks like a homicidal maniac by default, thereby thwarting modern-day bullies through the art of the unintentional bluff.

Unfortunately, fantasizing about just desserts doesn’t leave you as satisfied as you’d like. So what, the bullies became meth-addicted male prostitutes who live under the pier and get their meals from the dumpster? Or, more likely, they’re the bosses we’ve come to hate, wildly successful with thinning hair and wives half their age and bank accounts to match. Either way, it makes it no easier to go through the rituals of their bullying ways during the school years.

So, as a solution for my own boys, I’ve tried my very best to instill the value of sticking up for those who can’t, with the not-so-veiled undertones of my intolerance for bullying by them. Already, Heathen #1 has had his share of dealing with the yard bully, the football bully and the schoolbus bully. I wonder if their parents know their own children are behaving like little cretins; maybe school-age bullies are the children of adult assholes, which would seem to make sense.

Myself, I say we arm the yard monitors.

There you go, again

MEN OUT THERE – Do YOU want to know how to read your spouse? Would you like to earn effusive praise, respect and undying love from the woman you’ve chosen as your partner in this crazy life? Want this tip free of charge, no strings attached? Then lean in close for a minute, I’ll whisper the answer I’ve stumbled upon after years of prodigious effort……

*you can’t win*

There. I’ve said it.

Look, I love my wife, I really do, and what I’d like more than anything is to be able to pave the path of our marriage as smoothly as I’m capable of doing. But, to continue this horrible analogy, the job-site plans keep changing on a moment by moment basis. Quite frankly I, and the rest of my gender, are quite incapable of comprehending the fluid dynamics that constitute the parry/thrust of communication  with our wives.

The tradition most guys bring to the table is to meet the threat of violence with escalation. It’s just the human male version of fight-or-flight. You do some tough guy posturing internationally? We will bomb your people back into the Stone Age. You make a freeway lane merge without proper signaling? Then there’s a good chance we’ll fly a finger, cut you off and behave like enraged silverback gorillas, and we don’t even know why. The same methodology applies to the way we approach trying to communicate with you, the spouse.

We want to get along. We want to keep your fury in check. We’d love to be able to read your minds and predict your moods, really. And you just won’t let us, so we react as we can, with confusion and senseless gesturing leading the way. Not coincidentally, we tend to appreciate the value of a good whiskey as we get older. We need you. According to you, we could not function without your intervention; we’d all be hopeless slobs who can’t ever find their keys, who rarely do laundry or eat anything that isn’t pre-processed and has various pig parts as the primary ingredient.

So, to further the species, to better society and because we tend to get lonely and tired of eating pig parts, we enter into binding contracts of various forms with you, the better gender. Easily talked into the most ridiculous behavior with the potential reward of seeing you naked, we begin to eat vegetables again and take jobs with good dental insurance. Mini-vans become “a good idea”. We develop a fine tune filter that you call “selective hearing” that allows us to go to our happy place while you inform us of all of our shortcomings. We seek out other housebroken males in similar situations and lament wasted youth and our collective shock at the migration of hair from our heads to our shoulders. For fucks’ sake, we wear KHAKI PANTS……WITHOUT IRONY.

We do all of this because…….well, I’m not really sure why, but I know it’s what I want to do. It’s called love and it’s covered in marriage, and I guess I should thank you. I am now in a place where, according to you, I would die if left to my own devices. Just tonight, I went to my boys football practice without him because he and I could not locate his jock nor his pants, and he didn’t want to go in his underwear and I was supposed to be coaching. Yes, you brought him a short time later when you used your magical Uterine Tracking Device to find his clothes, and for that I am grateful, eternally. But that look you gave me, the one where one eyebrow shoots skyward as if to say “shouldn’t there be a Lemon-Law in place for husbands like you?” I just love that one. All husbands do, and some of us take that look as a threat and we respond in kind. I’ve learned that’s not the best time to act on that emotion. So I roll my eyes, which, apparently only serves to anger you further. The best thing to do is to accept the fact that I’m never going to win, I’m never going to predict your emotions with any degree of accuracy and you’re always going to feel cheated in The Great Husband Lottery.

To concede at this point would be the smart thing to do. To learn the lesson I’d brought up earlier, about never winning, that might be wise.

But no one has ever accused me of being smart, much less wise.

If I was I probably wouldn’t have written this, either.

Half The Brothers

Nobody’s lives are really like that.

And by that I mean “as depicted by anything you’ve ever seen on television”. I grew up on a steady diet of The Cosby Show, Family Ties and Diff’rent Strokes served as familial meals, and let me tell you I’ve learned one thing: I am not the son of an African American OB/GYN and his extremely talented lawyer spouse, nor the product of a privileged raising in New York City. Okay, maybe I learned something more than that, but that’s the primary point.

I bring this up because I’m taking a quick trip to visit my brother this upcoming weekend, and I always have a good nostalgic jag every time the prospect of a journey home comes onto the radar. Buns, as my brother, is a product of our father’s raising, which is to say, he’s every bit as fucked up in the head as I ever was. I find this comforting. Every shortcoming in my life he’s familiar with, because if he hasn’t at least suffered from the same crippling faults, he’s heard me drone on about them for hours.

We are one screwed up family.

I would point out for you all the ways in which all of my brothers are screwed up, painting myself as the only normal one, and that would be funny, and it would be true, from my perspective. But it would be wrong. It would be wrong to sell them like that, all five of them. People who know them well know their attributes, both hilarious and tragic. To betray their characters by assassinating them here online would be deliciously evil, and I like to save those types of exchanges for when we all meet up, so we can see the results of our insults and slings and arrows in person.

Most people seem to have this kind of dynamic with their siblings: listen to how funny it is when I talk shit about my brothers, but should you open your jaws in the same vein, I will unload multiple barrels of ugly retribution upon you. There is comfort in the sanctity of your own clan of crazy.  And when you’ve moved far from your clan, be it to the middle of the country or across the continents, the need to re-connect to our roots, our families, is an instinctual drive that DOES comfort us.

I’ve broken friendships, I’ve hurt those close to me for no apparent or obvious reason, and I’ve behaved like a dirtbag in general on several occasions. All of us have. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy when you’re a cynical bastard, and for that reason alone, I am grateful for family.We will continue to hurt one another, intentionally or not, through our actions or our neglect, and then in a moment of need, of hurt or of genuine sadness, we’ll turn to one another, since every other bridge around us is up in flames. And because we’re family, we’ll open our arms up just enough to embrace one another with one arm and use the other to deliver a punch or a noogie.

I’m really looking forward to two days with one of my brothers; as we get older and our lives move from “full of potential” to “such wasted potential“, we can and do take solace in the company of someone who knew us from birth. We’ll never be Willis and Arnold, much less the children of  Cliff Huxtable, that much is a fact. In lieu of that, we can savor the ironic results of being raised by our own father, The Lyin’ Dutchman; it’s turned out a lot funnier than any 80′s sitcom I ever endured.

ThunderChicken & The BabyClucker

To witness unconditional love is to witness grace itself. As fathers, when we hold our children for the first time, there’s a moment of immersion wherein our complete being becomes compromised and torn down and rebuilt. Our souls, our hearts and minds, everything we’ve ever known gets forever altered and intricately intertwined to 7lbs. 11ozs. of chaos. And we’re never the same for it.

To love like that, in that moment, so selflessly and overwhelmingly is a thing of relentless beauty. Few moments in life can rival this experience. It is a fleeting taste of unbound joy and desperate terror as we realize our every action from here on out will, in some odd way, impact the life of something so innocent and so pure. The birth of both of my boys rewired my heart forever.

Of course, being as how they are now 7 and 5, that innocence is melting like a glacier; we immerse ourselves not in swaddling and gentle stolen moments of holding the babies, but rather, in Transformers and fart references and the joy of cleaning up 7 million Lego pieces at a time. And that’s ok, too.

Thunderchicken became a father to a little boy yesterday. His daughter calls him her “Five Dollar Daddy”, a story that she’s concocted about how she “bought”  Thunderclucker for a half sawbuck way back when. Theirs is a wonderful relationship, but I don’t have female offspring, and girls and women scare me, so I don’t pretend to understand the dynamics of fathers and their daughters, not even a little. But a son, a son is a being I can comprehend.

I was at the firehouse when Thunder and his wife welcomed their boy into the world, and it wasn’t until this afternoon that I got to see the little dude. We’d exchanged texts, like the teenage girls we are, yesterday, when he announced the arrival. Unconditional love. Two words, a bond shared between man and son, and that life altering moment. When I walked into the room, his baby wasn’t in his arms, but the look on Thundercluckers face spoke the volumes he was feeling. All of them, mashed up into one overwhelming onslaught of unabashed joy. His lovely wife was recovering from the whole affair, tired and gracious as ever. That sort of energy is infectious, and when love fills the room, if that doesn’t bring a smile to your face and peace to your heart, then you’re one cold bastard. Their little man is safe and healthy and sleepy and for that briefest of moments, you believe in the triumph of the human spirit, despite all that is wrong and crazy and destructive in this world. This boy is hope, theirs and the rest of ours.

As people gleefully passed this baby around like the cheese plate at a cocktail party, I was overwhelmed with emotion towards this person I’d known for all of seven minutes. More than that, I saw the look on his old man’s face. This is a boy who will be loved, as a child deserves, unconditionally and forever. He’ll grow up and break his parents’ hearts, his siblings toys, several rules which will cause the Thunderchicken to lose what hair he’s hoarding on his skull. I’m so excited for him, for his family. The bond between father and son is unlike anything I’ve ever felt and commandeers the better part of your heart. Watching my friend establishing these bonds is a privilege, indeed.

Congratulations, Brian.

"Oh, it's not just the coffee that's hot, baby!"

Tonight I saw a picture of an old high school classmate and his friend at the foot of some Himalayan waters, beautiful mountains shrouded in cascading fog, the look of adventure fresh on their faces, as though they only stopped long enough to get the picture taken, and then it was off to start a revolution in some remote village.

That is not my life. Not in the least.

Let me tell you how my life is evolving.

This morning I was desperately trying to catch that last 13 minutes of sleep we all crave. You know the kind I mean: it comes right after one of your kids wakes you up to inform you of his latest revelation/breakfast demand and the next round of “snooze” on the alarm clock. It is a sacred time, indeed. It is the grown up version of the time in your 20′s when you clung to the base of the toilet, begging God to release you from this hangover with the vow to never, ever drink again, I promise, I swear, just make it go away, oooooh that toilet feels so nice and cool and next thing you know you wake up at 3pm in a puddle of your own vomit. That feeling.

So The Wife was attempting to shoo away the children in the hopes of robbing some heat from me at o’dark thirty, since she drops her thermostat from 118 degrees the night before to 17 degrees sometime in the midnight hour. She uses her icicle toes to ferret out any sort of heat that might still be available, an exercise I thoroughly don’t appreciate.

She tells Heathen #1: “Go away, Daddy & I need some snuggle time”. This is not nearly as racy as it sounds. I simply want those elusive 13 minutes of sleep and my wife wants to play Arctic Explorer with her toes. I hate her for this.

Heathen #1 responds with: “I know why you want us to leave. SO YOU CAN HAVE SEX.“

Good morning.

He is 7 years old. I curse like a lovesick sailor on shore leave around the firehouse, in the shop, at old ladies in traffic, but never around the boys. I’m a sick and twisted bastard, admittedly, but the boys have never even seen that side. I still use the word “potty” for the love of Jeebus; I don’t need my boys going to school loudly proclaiming they’re “slingin’ a deuce, gonna get rowdy”, which is exactly how one verbally addresses restroom needs while at the fire station.

So sex? I’ve never uttered the word around them, but the boy has my full attention now.

“What? I mean, let me repeat that WHAT? And WHERE did you hear that?”

“I dunno. “Allison” told me that word.”

“What do you think it means? And WHAT?”

“It means when two people take their clothes off and kiss. “Allison” says she’s had sex before.”

I find myself, at this point, looking around wildly for that gallon jug of bleach that I can throw at my boys’ mouth. This just won’t stand. I am not ready for this.

It was all fun and games when I caught him at age 2 wildly humping the protective rubber ducky that covered the bathtub spout: that’s just funny, and half the reason we became parents. I laughed, which only made him air hump faster, which made me laugh all the more, and thereby assured he knows deep down, somehow, that sex can be really funny.

But not like this. Not now. Shit.

“Son, that’s not exactly what sex is, but you know what? That’s an adult topic and we’ll talk about it when your older. And, no, “Allison” did NOT have sex, no matter what she tells you.”

“Ok. But that’s what you want to do.”

Trust me son. What I really wanted was that last (now) 9 minutes of sleep, which is a damn precious commodity. You’ve assured that I won’t be sleeping in the near future, since you’ve decided to engage in the practice of talking about the unholy arts. Because, trust me, once you start talking about it, you’ll never stop. Like body hair and trying to gain approval from your father, that shit stays with you for life. You’ll think about it, you’ll do stupid things in the name of it, you’ll love it, you’ll regret it, you’ll feel dirty and liberated and ashamed and glorious all in one fell swoop. You’ll brag, you’ll cower, you’ll chase it to the end of the earth, and you’ll sacrifice your dignity and self-respect, all in the name of taking your clothes off and kissing. It is at once the reason for our existence and the source of our downfall. You’ve begun to cast aside innocence in exchange for pimples and confusion and that endless instinctive drive that will, some day, if you’re fortunate enough, torment you right up to the point of a lifelong commitment to the one you love.

I’d give just about anything for those 9 minutes of sleep now.

But I’d give a whole lot more if I could postpone his growing up for a little while longer.

It's All Going SOOO Smoothly

Scorecard After A Week Without The Wife

• Money spent on stuff like beef jerky and Crown Royal at Sam’s: like $200
• Loads of laundry (mixed carelessly and with hot water): 13
• Time spent searching for damn library book that will no doubt cost us $6000 and a lung if we don’t return it within the next couple of days: 3 very pissed off hours
• Scrambled eggs left on plate because “I don’t liiiiike cheese in them Daddyyyyyy”: 6
• Showers they’ve taken: 5
• Showers I’ve taken: 2
• Stack of mail on the counter: 39″ tall
• Number of bills probably overdue: probably all of them
• Number of episodes of SpongeBob I’ve watched: 361
• Number of episodes of SpongeBob they’ve watched: 67
• Dreams about Transformers they’ve had in which they’ve been stabbed by a sword and that scares them and they feel the need to inform me about it at 2:38am and they also want to talk about it in detail: 3
• Times I’ve been woken up by the dog’s putrid breath and the fact that he’s spooning me: 12
• Number of instances where I’ve trimmed their fingernails at the school bus stop: 1
• Hours I’ve spent shaking my fist at the computer screen while she posts pictures of her fabulous time in Florida with all of her girlfriends as I’m slowly dying of neglect here in Misery: 16
• Number of times I’ve left the house since she’s been gone: twice
• How many hours spent waiting in line to sign one of the boys up for football. With them pulling on my pant legs, since I was too dumb to bring any distractions for them: 2
• Number of meals created by opening a cardboard box and setting the oven to 425: most of them
• Amount of sympathy I’ve drummed up from anyone, especially other mothers: none at all

It would be most appreciated if you could possibly tear yourself away from your little excursion into a life of heinous debauchery and perhaps return home at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Your war-torn and beat-nine-ways-to-hell husband.

ps- I lost the checkbook.

Because The Dog Wouldn't Take The Picture

Chronicles Of Abandonment

• 7:15am – arrive home from a firehouse shift to an empty house. Remember that Wife has left for Florida recently, thereby leaving me in charge for a short while. Begin to wonder where the children are.
• 7:17am – check calendar. Yup. It’s a school day. They must be in school. Longingly look over at liquor cabinet.
• 7:19am – loud noises! No repercussions! Scream at walls and argue with dishes, while dog takes on a nervous shake.
• 7:20am – now hoarse. That screaming shit is not as fun when you’re closer to 40 than 20. Headache begins to set in and I reach for a bottle of Ibuprofen. THIS? is how we roll.
• 7:30am – realize that all pertinent housework can be put off for at least 5 more days. Small fist pump of victory.
• 7:31am – look in freezer and decide there are enough fish sticks and frozen pizzas to last us at least four days. I now contemplate a life without bathing for a week, without leaving the house and wearing nothing but a robe. This idea has a striking appeal.
• 7:36am – first pot of coffee and second wind kick in. This is going to be so awesome. You have no idea how much I’m going to get done in terms of writing and creating and making all kinds of magic happen.
• 7:38am – motivation totally lost as I marvel at stupid internet sites. Why do I keep chuckling at animals doing stupid things? That’s it, I’m officially old. Resist urge to forward any of this hilarity to ANYone.
• 7:39am – Scheduled self-loathing in full swing.
• 7:48am – head down on desk as I realize that I’m a completely worthless piece of crap, sobbing uncontrollably. Dog begins to look at me with disgust, promptly farts and then leaves the room. This does not help.
• 7:53am – ok, feeling better. Then I read the updates on Facebook of friends who are, apparently, out there in nothing but awesome climates, changing the world and partying like Mick Jagger all at once. Self-hatred returns.
• 7:56am – begin loud karaoke/air guitar session as a means of overcoming sense of worthlessness. Totally works.
• 7:58am- decide against the early morning cocktail, on the off-chance that The Heathens will light their school on fire and I’ll be called to answer for their actions in the principal’s office.
• 8:00am – realize that sometime within the last 45 minutes, the mother-in-law has been here at the house to drop off the Heathens toys, probably heard the scream-fest and is now reporting me to authorities. So much for privacy.
• 8:01 am – begin preparing defense of aforementioned actions as I anticipate call from The Wife, demanding to know “just what in the hell I’m doing in the house scaring my mother like that.”

They Who Would Abandon Their Husbands

Soon the Wife will be leaving me. For a week.

One whole week with her girlfriends in Florida, dressing up like unleashed cougars, lounging around the pool and casually eyeballing young men with no shirts on. One whole week of eating like royalty and consuming fruity martinis. No kids, no cares, no husbands. She and her merry band of women will be cavorting in the sun and surf, with half a dozen husbands left in the dirt wondering how in the hell any of this seems fair.

This has become an annual affair, and far from being an impossible situation, it’s a great week back here at our own Ground Zero. This is when the men rule the roost, when we leave the toilet seats up and declare fish sticks a culinary delicacy, one worthy of replicating six nights in a row. The Heathens and I will do our damnedest to consume as many episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants as possible. How about some raw toast for breakfast?

While she and her friends are loudly and publicly referring to themselves as The Girlie Whirlies and demanding punk-ass 20 year olds with their hats backwards dance with them, I’ll be teaching the boys the virtues of motorcycle ownership. We’ll crank some Dropkick Murphy’s music (she really hates that stuff), we’ll go down to the tattoo parlor as a family and talk to the guy I want to do my first ink, and if they’re really well behaved I might introduce them to my favorite barkeeps down at Patton Alley Pub.

And my wife wonders if it’s a good idea for her to go out of town.

She always worries about it, but that never stops her from her reckless abandon(ment). This trip is sacred to her, for reasons unknown to the male gender as a whole. Men sometimes congregate in groups for out of town trips, but mostly this is for the express purpose of shooting something in the woods and drinking whiskey while telling tales of their prowess with a firearm. I’ve never thought about trying to get a bunch of my guy friends together for a week on the beach, where we could sit around the condo and tell each other how beautiful we all are as we lurch towards middle age. If I proposed this, it would be met with a bunch of “what the hell are you thinking, man? I’ve got kids. The missus would never go for it.” Plus, it might be a hard sell, offering them the chance to pay money to fly to another state with the stated goal of laying around with sand in our shorts, catching some skin cancer and complaining about our love handles.

This is, apparently, the perfect way to spend a week in her eyes. She needs it, or so she claims. I claim to need to live back on the Pacific coast, but that is met with little more than a rolling of her eyes. This, my friends, is the beautiful chemistry of the well oiled machine that is a healthy marriage.

So off she goes. Fine. And good riddance. Who needs her anyways?

After a week, we will.

A lot of us have multiple fathers. Baby-daddies, step-dads, sperm donors, fathers, papas, sirs and the like. I have had two in my life and each had a hand in who I’ve become as person. And for the first 29 years of my life, I couldn’t appreciate what it took to be a father, so Father’s Day meant little more to me than a chance to bestow some hand-made piece of junk gift and a hug or two. Then I became a father, and the game changed, considerably.

To have a child of your own blood has an impact the likes of which cannot be paralleled. The bond remains, tested though it may be by either party, throughout the years, and I took a vow to never take that bond with my own boys lightly. When you hold your child for the first time and realize that THIS is the person for whom you’ll sacrifice your own life, for whom you’re willing to do hard time in prison, you can’t ever go back. You can’t un-know the emotion, and it builds from the moment it’s forged. Each of our children is a biologically bonded and inextricably linked by unconditional love and a selfless desire to watch them grow up healthy and strong, able to take on this world’s challenges.

This is the love of a father, and having experienced it, I can now appreciate it what it takes for a stepfather.

There is no blood bond. That child will always be the son/daughter of someone else. They’ll look like their father, and you’ll always be reminded of that each time you look at them. And yet, for a lucky few of us, we’re still loved unconditionally.

I am a lucky step son.

When I was 4, he came into our lives, a bearded carpenter with a quick laugh and an ability to make my mom smile, something that had been stolen from her over the previous few years. He wanted me to jump in the truck and go to the job-site with him. He showed me his life, he (tried to) teach me his skills, he took a genuine interest in me and he showed me unconditional love. Every boy needs that from a father.  He stepped in, he stepped up, and I’ll never have the words to express to him how much that meant to me, still means to me.

32 years have passed and he’s still the man I consider dad. We’ve had difficult times, to be sure. There’s not a soul out there who can outwork him and I’m fundamentally lazy, so you can imagine the friction that smoldered into a full-bore furnace during the teen years. Today, at 66, he can still drive me into the dirt with his work ethic, and one of my biggest fears is letting him down. He’s old-school enough that we don’t discuss such things as “emotions” or “validation” or any number of institutions he considers “communist propaganda reserved for hippies”. And that’s ok. I can always get him to visit us here in Missouri with the promise of an upcoming project that I’d be sure to screw up if he’s not here to build it right. I need to come up with a new project soon, because I miss him.

But for now, I just want to say thanks. Thanks to the man who makes my mom happy, because she deserves it. Thanks to the man that inspired me to be a worthy dad, one who can give to his children what he’d received as a young boy: a father’s love.

Thank you Robert.

Happy Father’s Day from a grateful son.