Dads

Lately I’m really aware of being a ‘father’.

All the routines, habits, and nuances that I’ve accumulated throughout my life, is starting to give me an idea of how it’s filtered through my kids’ eyes to make up how they will see me as they become adults.

My dad was always known for sending us to the fridge to get him a beer. Something we did excitedly since we knew it gave us a chance to lick our thumbs and clean off the area of the can that would pop open. Our way of contributing to our household. I never knew why I had to clean it off. He also used to sit on the floor of the living room and look up, wide-eyed at the television while he ate his dinner after eight at night aas we were marched up to bed. I would wake up some mornings when my room was dark, and a sliver of light would enter my room from the bathroom across the hal. My dad would be in there before five in the morning, shaving while listening to NPR on the radio. He took a long time, and I would always fall back to sleep before he left the bathroom to put on his suit and walk to the bus stop. He and his friends would stop silent when I entered the room where they were laughing and talking loudly, and even though I got the impression that he wanted to be left alone- he was always welcoming when I came down to the basement to talk to him while he worked in his shop.

Now that I’m the age he was when I was a kid, it’s all sort of put in perspective. Except for things like the constant pooping, slow reflexes and general sleepiness, I don’t feel any different than when I was 20. I still carry some of the quirks I had as a kid, like sprawling out on the floor of my porch to stare, wide-eyed at the television while I play video games, or talking loudly about penis jokes with my friends- until one of my kids walk in. I listen to NPR, or podcasts in the car while the kids are riding in the back, and though social services prevents me from having my kids fetch my beers, I would definatly have them make my coffee from the one-cup cofee maker when they’re old enough. I’m sure they would take as much pride in their craft at leveling of the coffee grounds in the bowl as I did cleaning off the top of my dads beer can (I found out later- factory dust).

My point is, that all the habits I’ve collected through my life to create a type of ghost of who I really am. Something that my kids will giggle to each other about like my sister and I did. A collection of things that are meaningless to my dad, since they were just small habits he had carried over, but carried so much weight with us. But something I’m becoming all too aware of lately with my own kids. When I’m working on the computer in the basement “office”, and Audrey demands to come down. I tell Erin to release the baby-gate and listen to her little feet bounce down the stairs. I let her sit next to me at the desk, and let her play with the plastic light-sabre my mom bought me. She sits on the table, trying to ape typing on the keys and using the mouse, and I make her feel welcome as I find something on pbskids.org for her to play with. I’m sure she and Margo will talk about how I fall asleep on the couch after dinner, wrapped up in a blanket, trying to convince one of them to snuggle with me. And I’m sure they will confront me later about how they would hear me taking a shower late at night, listening to NPR as I shaved and shoving my clothes down the laundry shoot while I brushed my teeth, like my sister and I have done with my dad. When we told him stories about how we heard him take his showers so early in the morning, and pressed him for some insite on what caused him to do that, he would only shrug, smiling to say, “I don’t know. I had to go to work.” Which would make our heads cock to one side, then elaborate on the details. Unbelieving that he wouldn’t appreciate that his routine is part of how we see him, and that part of our childhood. But to him it just one of many carryovers and habits of his life. And when my kids ask me about showering at night. I could try to explain how it was a moment in the day of quiet. A zen like ritual to preform before goign to bed. Or that I was well aware that they could probably hear me, and take some kind of comfort in it. But in reality I’d probably say, “I dunno, your mom hoggs the shower in the mornings- so I have to do it at night.”