Saturdays, Then and Now

Nothing can feel so freeing to so many than to realize Saturday is coming especially after a long work week. For most of us, Saturday is a day when we can let go of the day-to-day pressures of work and focus on things we want to do, at least for a short time. I pondered this recently, ironically on a Saturday morning, when I found Hannah and me watching a TV show called Gravity Falls. On the show Uncle Stan, watching his nephew, Dipper, and his niece, Mabel, shoot off fireworks and toss water balloons, said, “This is what Saturdays are for-doing dumb things forever.” I chuckled at that comment before I started thinking how I have spent Saturdays during my lifetime and then I began comparing them with how I spend them now. Here are my unscientific findings:

Saturday, then: Sleep late. I mean, really late.

Saturday, now: Wake up early due to either:

a) a three-year-old who needs to potty

b) my own weak bladder

c) the neighborhood dog which barks all the time

d) my own forgetfulness as I accidentally set my alarm to go off at the regular time

e) all of the aforementioned or some combination thereof.

Saturday, then: Wake up in time to order take-out from either my favorite barbecue or Chinese restaurant.

Saturday, now: Wake up in time to beat the traffic into town to get a haircut then go to the bank to transfer funds from one account to another then go to the post office to mail a package, all the while passing the barbecue restaurant twice and the Chinese restaurant four times in the process and never stopping once at either one of them.

Saturday, then: Watch Bugs Bunny and Scooby-Doo by myself, quoting dialogue I have heard a million times out loud.

Saturday now: Watch Peppa Pig and Jake and the Neverland Pirates with Hannah, quoting dialogue I have heard a million times in my head.

Saturday, then: Accidentally pull off a drawer handle, when duct tape won’t fix the handle, move everything out of the drawer into another drawer and determine not to use the handle-less drawer ever again.

Saturday, now: Visit the local hardware store to locate a thing-a-ma-jig that fits into the whats-it-called on the guess-which-appliance-may-be-going-on-the-fritz next.

Saturday, then: Get annoyed at all the noise the neighborhood lawnmowers and weed-eaters running outside make.

Saturday, now: Get gas and oil for the lawnmower and leaf blower, pick up sticks out of the yard, pull weeds from the flowerbeds, mow the yard, blow the grass clippings off the porch, walkway and driveway all the while wondering why the neighbors have yards which look like lush wonderlands and ours looks like a small desert compared to them.

Saturday, then: Sprawl all over the couch, falling in and out of sleep all afternoon.

Saturday, now: Yawn and think about when I used to take a nap on Saturdays.

Saturday, then: Get hungry and dig through the refrigerator looking for leftovers wondering if I could make a sandwich out of leftover pizza, grilled chicken, Mexican cheese and ranch dressing.

Saturday, now: Get hungry and dig through the refrigerator looking for leftovers wondering if I could make a sandwich out of leftover pizza, grilled chicken, Mexican cheese and ranch dressing. Okay, some things haven’t changed.

Saturday, then: Reminisce about running and jumping and playing on swing sets and with rocks, bugs, flowers and trees while blowing bubbles, riding bikes and playing ball. 
Saturday, now: Run and jump and play with a three-year-old, rediscovering a world of swing sets, rocks, bugs, flowers, trees, blowing bubbles, riding bikes and playing ball.

Saturday, then: Wish I had cable TV so I could have more options to be entertained. 

Saturday, now: Wonder why we have cable TV when I see all these things that we are told are entertaining.

Saturday, then: Sit in an easy chair rarely wondering how Saturdays could be any different, and if it were different, could it be any better. 

Saturday, now: Sit in an easy chair watching and listening to Jennifer read a book to Hannah just before bedtime wondering how Saturdays could ever get better than this.

“This is what Saturdays are for-doing dumb things forever.” Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes, they’re about more than that though.

The Old Man: Me

I have come to many things in my life just a little bit later than others my same age. I never really noticed this until I was in my early or mid-twenties, so even that realization took a while to dawn on me. Looking back, it was most likely third grade before I really understood how to tie my shoes. I started college when I was 19 years old and even then started in January and not the previous August like most do. I married when I was well into my thirties. Maybe with this type of history, I never really gave it much thought when Hannah was born and I found myself well into my forties.

I think about it now though and sometimes when I do it really makes me feel old. Sometimes I think about it when I see the parents of some of the children the same age as Hannah. Some of them were just born when I was working my way through college. I wonder if they would ever appreciate the Three Stooges, Emmylou Harris, Members Only jackets or Polo cologne. They only know a life where their "good ole days" are populated with over-sized VCRs, clunky DVD players, big boxy microwave ovens and bag cell phones. There is nothing wrong with not knowing certain things from the past but when we are all sitting around waiting for whatever event we are attending together to end I am not sure how well my ability to discuss an Atari game from 1983 will be received. That can make a man feel old. I further realize I am old enough that I could be this dad's father. A few times I have even realized that their own father is younger than I am. Of course, that would mean that guy would be younger than me and would also be a grandfather, so maybe he would feel older than me.

 
I think about being an older dad sometimes when my bones ache or my body doesn’t bounce back as quickly as it did when I took my younger days, and the share of health I had then, for granted. My wife and I have both observed how we have some understanding of why God blesses younger people with children. It is because they are, in part, physically equipped enough to handle the non-stop activity children will bring into a life. Early in Hannah’s life, I often would jokingly tell her not to throw something in the floor because at my age I only had so many bend-overs left and I wanted to save a few. The truth is after a hard day at work and at my age, bending over to pick up a toy makes one wonder if you are burning away that ability. Admittedly, I don’t always see myself at the age I am. Some people seem amazed when they ask my age and I tell them.Well, either that, or they do that to make me feel good and I won't debate either argument too much. Frankly, my hair has remained intact and the gray hair has mostly held off for now. Truth is, I still feel young in many ways even though my body will give me a gentle, and sometimes, a not-so-gentle, reminder of how time is rapidly moving forward and pulling me along for that ride.

Some remind me that being Hannah's dad at my age may be God's way of keeping me young at heart. Maybe so. I do know I enjoy seeing things I sometimes take for granted, things I think I know so well, for the first time through her eyes. There is something timeless about that experience that words cannot fully explain.

One day my being older than the other dads of her friends may be an issue for Hannah. Maybe she will even call me “the old man”, a phrase my Dad and his siblings referred to their father as and a phrase I have never been able to call my own Dad. Maybe she will make fun of me to her friends about how I always talk about Polaroid cameras and long-distance phone calls and driving a stick-shift accentuating each thing I longingly recall with air quotes. She may even insert an eye roll and a heavy sigh right after saying those words. She might even verbalize to some stringy-haired boyfriend with wanna-be facial hair how out-of-touch and out-of-date I am with the hip-and-happening and whatever cool phrase-of-their-day that all the kids will be saying about themselves then.

And that will be fine. That seems to happen when different generations get in each other’s way. After all, on some level, most of us could say we have that exact same experience in our own past.

This blog post is scheduled to appear initially on Father’s Day, 2015. The previous two posts were about my father and his father. That said, this whole fatherhood thing has been on my mind for a while. The reality of fatherhood for me is that I am an older dad. For Hannah the reality is I may not be able to physically do all the things I could have as a father for her if fatherhood had come to me twenty years earlier. I am okay with that tradeoff because I understand and I hope Hannah comes to understand how that one thing takes nothing away from how much I love and care for her and it never will. While I am not sure I would ever be prepared enough to tackle everything that being a father has entailed so far in the nearly four years that it found me, I do know that being a little bit older when it did come has taught me a few things. One of those things is that how sometimes things happen late in life, maybe later in life than when society expects or even later than one would expect, but these things usually happen because the time was right for it to happen. 

Happy Father's Day 2015!

The Old Man: Dad

I recall only one time feeling a bit sorry for my Dad as I compared my youth against his own age. I was probably close to double digits in age at the time and we were playing in the yard. I did something to Dad and turned to run away as he gave chase me in order to catch me. Being so much younger and quicker I was able to get away. As I reached safety I recall thinking how easy it was to get away from him and I chalked that escape up to being so much younger than him which, of course, meant he was so much older than me. Not until some time had passed did I ever recognize my own naivety in failing to understand how if Dad had really wanted to catch me at that time he could have. Other than that one moment I never recall ever giving any consideration to my Dad’s age ever.

I came into his world when he was thirty five years old. For a man his age and for that time, some may have considered him a bit old to be having another child. He already had two other children. When I came along my brother and sister were crowding the teenage years. This meant my mom and dad dealt with changing diapers and baby spit-up as well as teaching the other kids how to drive a car and other typical teenage drama. I also never recall measuring his age against the age of the fathers of my friends until later in life. Even now I could not tell you if he was older than any of them because back then such a thing just never seemed to matter.

I never have considered him old. I never have given thought to ever calling him ‘the old man’ like he and his siblings sometimes called their own father, even as some sort of endearing term. I have always just called him “Daddy”.

By trade, he was a jack-of-all-trades, working as part of a maintenance crew for a chemical company. He welded things together. He tore things apart. He put them back together. He found leaks in pipes and plugged those leaks or replaced those pipes. He worked with his hands so much so that they were often calloused-covered and slightly stained from the grease and the oil and the sludge. He spent close to forty years there helping to keep the workflow moving for a company that was then the backbone of the community where we lived. As time lurched forward, the company began scaling back, and my dad recognizing the changing landscape, chose to retire. Since then, a shell of that company remains. It lives on with a different name now and the present owners preside over a village filled with empty rickety, dilapidated shacks and gigantic chemical smokestacks propped up by the laws of gravity, superior engineering and memories of those who once lived and breathed their work life there. Since then, Daddy has spent another lifetime staying busy with a garden or yard work or putting a roof on a house or two here and there or helping take care of others including his own father and other relatives including Mom. He calls it retirement. He defines it by never slowing down, by always staying busy with something.

What those of us in his family understand is that he is the steady force in our family, the backbone of who we really are as a family. He’s the quiet one. He’s the dependable one. He’s the one always willing to do the dirty part of any job that has to be done, even when completing that task comes with little or no thanks. He’s the family gardener, raising and tending a garden for as long as most of us can recall. He can be a mechanic when a car breaks down. He has fixed water leaks, water pumps, cleaned out ditches and can repair a toilet that either leaks or is clogged. He can even be a cook when someone shows up hungry. He is a jack-of-all-trades still.

Recently, we visited my Mom and Dad and I was able to spend some time with Dad. He told me he was writing down some of the things he remembered as a child. He had read a recent newspaper article about a reporter wanting to gather stories from people from an earlier generation. The thought of this ignited his creative spark so he was spending time with paper and pen writing down some of his memories he made when he was younger in an effort to pass it along to this reporter.

I have heard him talk some about his life before. Most of that talk is about his work life. Every now and then, a story would emerge about his life early on with Mom. And on a rare occasion, some story about growing up would be shared. I have heard most of these stories several times. Honestly, it’s hard to relate sometimes to how he grew up since I grew up in a much different way and in a much different time. I recognize though it was his own hard work that paved a road for me that was much easier to navigate and travel than the road he had to travel, one that was unsure, dark and winding. His work allowed me to take roads he never dreamed to take and roads that at least allowed him and Mom to share that ride with me vicariously.

On this night though many of the stories he told were new to me. He began telling some stories about growing up, tales of when he was ten years old, twelve years old and on into later days when he and Mom were first married. There were stories about the house he has shared with my mom for all but the first three days of their married life together. He dropped names of people who had built that house then who had owned that house. He told us the price of that house and how through hard work it was paid off in full long before I was ever born. He shared stories about how he dug out the basement beneath us on his own and built onto the house when he needed to do so to accommodate our growing family. There were stories about his siblings and his parents. There were stories about the hills and valleys on the land where he spent his childhood. There was a scary story about a snake, stories about moonshine and even a story about a murder. These stories left me spellbound by their charm, by their mystery, by their realism. Each story brought up questions and discussions about nearly forgotten family members and the places that now only exist in time to haunt a memory.

My dad is not often this reflective. He provided some explanation when he said he simply wanted others to know what type of life he had lived, especially the life he lived in his younger days, a life gone away with the passing of time.

While he reminisced, I commented how he had experienced a great deal in life when looking at where he started to present day. He had been witness to a lot of change in how life is lived from day to day. I told him how we needed to sit down with him and his siblings and record them all talking about their lives together so that their unique take on life is preserved in some way. We then talked some more about the stories he has held in himself for a lifetime. Briefly, as I listened to what he had seen in his life, I saw a man with slumped shoulders. I saw a man with strands of gray hair twisted and tangled with smaller stands of black hair. I even thought I heard some certain tiredness in his words. For a moment, I saw him as an old man.

I shook off that thought. He can’t be an old man. He’s my Daddy. I looked back at him and refocused so I could see him as I have seen him since the moment I discovered and embraced maturity. I looked for and found those qualities I have long recognized in him, someone who is solid, dependable, hard-working, quiet, dedicated and loving, merits resting on terms set and owned by his own actions and validated by those who know him.

He casts a large shadow and for me, always will. It is a shadow I knew years ago I would always live in. And I am good with being in that place.

We all count time. We all label things. Some may number his days and call him an old man. I just can’t bring myself to do that. I’m not sure I ever will be able to do that. Maybe I am still that naive little boy scampering away from Dad during some childhood game thinking my own skill and talent provides me an escape from some old slow force, which in reality can catch me anytime it wants. Maybe it’s just an escape from reality keeping me from recognizing that time moves on, never stopping and aging all of us along the way.