On the TV: New Sprint commercial with new CEO, Dan Hesse, introducing himself
My Six-Year-Old Son (in a deep, exaggerated voice): Hi Dan Hesse!
My Three-Year-Old Daughter (in a deep, exaggerated voice): Hi Dan Hesse!
My Son: Hi Dan Hesse!
My Daughter: Hi Dan Hesse!
My Daughter: Hi David Hasslehoff!
It was a long day. My company had been rolling out one of the bigger projects we’d had to date. I was on hour 12 of a 16 hour day, finishing up the work from home so I could at least be near by family. My wife, who had recently fallen under the spell of bronchitis and a sinus infection, sat on the couch, somewhat coherent and catching up on the DVR backlog of shows we had recorded. Dylan was engrossed in some online video game fashioned for kids his age. I was grouchy, tired, and stressed, nose in my laptop, trying to power through all the work that I needed to do to help get this project launched.
And then there was Stella. She’s like an apparition, darting around the room, asking questions over and over again until someone answers. Getting toys out and leaving them where they happen to be when she grows tired of them. She has the busy body of a three-year-old, but the mind of a 6-year-old. As I’m working, she climbs up on the couch next to me, and I barely notice as she slides around behind me, wraps her arms around my neck and begins to hang, her full weight pulling against the front of my throat.
Giggles ensue.
I’m jarred out of overworkitis just enough to notice the new accessory I am wearing.
“Stella, what are you doing?”
“I’m a ninja!” she replies.
As is always the case when one of my kids crack me up, I laugh out loud and feel the same kind of pride and ex-highschool football jock feels when his kid scores a touchdown at the big game. I look around the room to see if anyone else heard this moment of pure genius. My wife is staring at the TV barely conscious due to a nasty cold. My son has the video game hypnosis/drool thing going on. The dog is contently searching for crumbs on the floor. I decide to keep this little gem to myself, because, really, one cannot disclose the true identity of a ninja without jeopardizing one’s life.
Stella, your secret is safe with me.
As my son and I are driving to pick up a pizza while on a recent family trip to the coast, he suddenly accuses me of being a flake. Knowing my son, this sort of accusation is usually caused by a blood sugar crash, exhaustion from a long day or is simply a cry for attention. The fact is, we’d had a day of disappointments for him—all of the card readers were broken at the arcade, the bumper cars were closed—the kind of stuff that all adds up to a crestfallen kid on a beach town vacation. I’d vote for the cause being a combination of the above factors.
“Daddy, you never keep your promises to me. You always say you’re going to do things with me and then you don’t do them,” he says, with a tone of frustration riding atop his stream of consciousness.
“That’s not true, Dylan. I try to keep all of my promises to you and take that very seriously,” I say in my best compassionate father voice. “Sometimes there are circumstances beyond my control, however, that get in the way of promises being kept.”
“Like… the government?”
I laugh out loud, purely amused and proud at the same time, wondering where this delightful spike of insight and wisdom came from. “Yes, like the government. I think from now on, when anything goes wrong, we should just blame it on the government.”
He laughs too and says, “Okay, daddy.”
Later that night, after we pick up our pizza, we’re walking out the door (after the video games at the pizza joint have stolen no less than four of our quarters). “Sorry they ate our quarters bud, at least you got to play a few video games,” I offer.
Without missing a beat, he grabs my hand as we start to cross the street, simultaneously offering up a sage piece of insightful wisdom. “It’s okay. I think it’s the government’s fault anyway.”
To a child growing up in the ’70s, everything about the world seemed huge and grandiose. I’m sure that many kids feel like their surroundings are huge and grandiose, but the ’70s were even more huge and grandiose in a way that expressed a sense of excess and complete abandonment for all things not huge and grandiose.
Bell bottom pants were all the rage, spanning monstrous proportions, flared out and seemingly capable of creating their own low pressure systems—especially to a kid hovering around that precipitous adult knee-level. Muscle cars were big, loud, colorful and ever-present, constantly speeding down our street, a risk to life and limb for anyone tooling around on a Big Wheel. Rock stars were the first of their breed—crying out for attention and promoting lifestyles of excess, smashed up guitars and attitudes that were even louder than the amount of decibels their concerts could produce. Their attitudes, in fact, were so loud that one could go deaf by simply looking at them. Celebrities were mysterious and sex was still in its heyday, prior to the AIDS scare, right on the heels of the free love movement of the ’60s. This was the age of big. The age of loud. The age of promiscuity.
From that knee-high perspective, it seemed as though a child could only aspire to some sort of greatness or promiscuity. The athletic kids wanted to be football stars. The smart kids wanted to be successful business people. The extroverts wanted to be celebrities. All of these dreams were promiscuous in their own right.
And then there was my crowd, the other kids. The creative kids. The misfits. None of us were particularly exceptional in anything we did, yet we weren’t slow or mentally deficient either. Where other kids saw things like reality and fact, we saw things that didn’t exist.
We dreamed of boldly going where no man had gone before. We pretended to have rock and roll bands while playing our older siblings’ hard rock records. We had adventurous fantasies of terrifying ghosts haunting one of our houses. We were awestruck by Star Wars when it came out. We played doctor where there was no actual doctoring involved. We abhorred sports. We got picked on by bullies. A lot.
It was this upbringing that plagued many a Generation X child. Our parents had emerged from the ’60s, full of questions for authority, embittered over the war in Vietnam, shedding traditional idyllic notions of a perfect Leave it to Beaver family and ready to forge a new path for their kids—and perhaps just as confused as their role in the world as we were. TV was fully infiltrating our homes with a new level of violence, sexual innuendo and sensationalism. We played after school to the sound effects of the Million Dollar Man. We did after-school homework to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd chanting, “We don’t need to education,” and we went to bed after witnessing the blood-pumping car chases of The Dukes of Hazard.
To a kid like me, it seemed as though there was no other option in life but to seek fame and fortune as a grown up. Greatness, after all, had to just sort of… happen, didn’t it? I had this belief that people were magically discovered for having an innate talent, and that yes, perhaps we all had some charismatic innate talent that would ultimately be realized some day. I fantasized of one day picking up a guitar and playing in such a manner that would put Jimi Hendrix to shame. Or maybe I’d be eating lunch at a restaurant with my mom some day and a talent scout would recognize what immense talent and universal appeal I had, casting me in the next Summer blockbuster without so much as an audition. Nobody ever told me one has to work hard to attain success.
As I got older, I tried to magically achieve fame, fortune and notoriety at many levels. I did art, I played in bands, I took up break dancing, I was a skateboarder, I tried to write, I dreamed. I did a lot of different things in a very average and mediocre manner. But the one thing I never did was stick to one specific goal with undying dedication and perseverance. As it turned out, the ’70s may have taught us to crave greatness, but it didn’t teach us how to attain it. That was something I had to learn on my own, after years of failing at various endeavors, falling short and always wondering what my true calling would be.
The spotlight, as it turns out, has an even narrower focus than one might expect.
To this day, I still have that fantasy in the back of my head, but I’m more grounded and do realize that if I want to be great at something, I need to focus on that, and nothing else. As it happens, right about the time that realization began to form was also about the time I became a parent, transitioned to becoming a business owner and came to the epiphany that I no longer have the time to invest in that level of intense focus and drive.
I think this is something a lot of people contend with as they reach mid-life. We realize our dreams are just that, we go through a period of mourning their loss, we grapple with our own mortality, we ponder all of the “what-if”s and then we slowly come to accept the fact that we are where we are and can only move forward in a way that fits in with our new lives.
For Generation X, this means narrowing down the list of dreams from ten to one. It means accepting the idea that, now that we have the drive and the knowledge to succeed at something, how can we do it with one tenth the amount of free time we had when we were younger?
For me, it’s finding those spare moments in the early morning hours when the rest of the house is still fast asleep, with dreams of their own. I sneak downstairs and begin banging away on this laptop until I hear footsteps on the floor above and the sound of little voices consorting with one another.
My new dreams are focused on following through, making a commitment to finish something and accepting the fact that I can always return to it and make it better. They are grounded in attainable reality, fueled by hard work, a new sense of focus and balance. They are realistic. That being said, no matter how much more realistic my dreams have become, they will always indelibly be fueled by fond memories of bell bottoms, muscle cars and rock n’ roll.
I have a shocking revelation for you: I’m no perfect parent.
And here is shocker number two: I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing.
We’re all human and prone to mistakes, errors in judgment and the occasional indiscretion or two. As a parent, I’ve said and done many things that have me questioning my ability to be a good role model for my kids. Most of these things revolve around losing my temper, letting a few four-letter words slip out, or laughing at inappropriate moments. I mean, I never hit my kids or emotionally abuse them, let me make that clear. I’m talking about the mistakes all parents make from time to time. The ones that make us all question our parenting skills. There’s just something about these small human beings who have the ability to take us back to a primal fight or flight state with a moment’s notice. We all have those moments where we’re tired or hungry or vulnerable. That’s precisely when they strike, like a missile defense system with a powerful radar and a stealthy approach.
But, this is not about my temper. It’s about mistakes and forgiveness.
My daughter just turned three. She has a heart that’s bigger than Texas. She’s a glowing ball of happiness and cheer, bringing smiles to 99% of the people she interacts with (and for what it’s worth, that last 1% are just sad, desperately repressed souls). I’d never do anything to hurt my kids or erode their trust in me. Not intentionally, at least. And when she’s scared or hurt, it tears me apart.Tonight, we planned a nice evening together as a family. The idea was to get dinner, grab some dessert and see a movie. Dinner started out nice enough. The kids were on their best behavior, the food was decent and we had a nice time. After dinner, we hit the local pet shop to look for a soft crate for our dog, then grabbed some dessert. Things were going along just fine. Soon enough, it was time to get to the theater. As we drove towards the theater, however, I began to feel light-headed and a little disoriented. I figured it was a sugar rush from the ice cream cone I’d just eaten (I had been cutting sugar out of my diet for awhile) and didn’t think much of it.
The parking lot was packed, so I double parked and ran over to make sure there were seats left, bought our tickets and jumped in the car to drop the wife and kids off in front of the theater. I pulled up in front and told the kids to get out on the curb side with my wife. My wife spotted a parking spot that had just opened up and exclaimed urgently from outside the car, “There’s a spot over there now. Go get it!” Feeling a little disoriented and light-headed still, and not thinking, I hit the gas and began to pull a u-turn—before the kids had finished getting out of the car.
“WAIT! WAIT!” exclaimed my wife frantically from outside the car.
I hit the brakes. I looked back.
“Stella wasn’t out of the car yet! You may have just run her over!”
I entered some sort of a state of shock. I didn’t panic, but I also didn’t under-react. I flipped the car into park and locked the parking brake into place before walking around back to where my family was standing. People in line for tickets looked at us like we were having a domestic dispute and then went along with their business, too concerned about getting their own tickets and popcorn. I saw my wife pick up my daughter and heard the ensuing crying from my little girl. I didn’t know what awaited me as I rounded the back of the car.
“Is she OK?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“I don’t know,” said my wife, with a very understandable tone of anger in her voice. “I think she fell out and behind the wheel, but I can’t tell if her leg was run over.”
I reached out to hold my daughter and she came to me. I tried to calm her down and ask her if she was hurt. Her pant leg was wet and had a black mark on the outside. I slowly rolled up the pant leg, taking care not to jostle her too much. I envisioned black and blue marks, massive swelling, blood and a trip to the emergency room.
It was just an abrasion around the knee, from what we could tell. My wife moved her leg around gently and Stella didn’t scream or appear to be in any extreme pain. We were relieved, but of course, I was feeling horrible. My son came over and looked up at me. With a sad look, he leaned against me and said, “Daddy, that scared me.”
“Me too, bud. I’m sorry.”
I pleaded with Stella and told her how sorry I was and that it was an accident. They went inside while I left to park the car.
I think at that point, I was still in a state of shock. The weight of the situation hadn’t quite hit me yet. I knew we had dodged a bullet, but at that point, I didn’t really realize the size, velocity and trajectory of the bullet. We watched the movie and I think we both monitored Stella’s demeanor as closely as we could, watching to see if her leg appeared sensitive to movement or touch, or if she was extra sensitive or moody. She sat with me for awhile and seemed to be no worse for the wear. Ever so thankfully.
At some point during the last hour of the movie, the cramps began to strike and that was when I knew that I had gotten some kind of food poisoning from dinner, which explained the light-headed disorientation I’d experienced before and during the accident (not to mention, I ended up spending most of that night in or near a bathroom). It wasn’t an excuse for not stopping to make sure everyone was out before pulling away from the curb, but it at least offered some explanation as to why I may have been somewhat out of it at the time.
Once we got home, we were able to take a closer look at her leg and upon further inspection, it did, in fact, appear as though her knee was pinched between the tire and the ground a little. There were abrasions on either side of her leg. The best I can figure is that when I slammed on the brakes, the car lurched forward and bounced back, which was about when her leg landed behind the rear tire.
And that was when my imagination started to play out other possible scenarios.What if I had pulled away earlier? Just a second earlier and she could have fallen under the front of the back tire. I could have run her over. I could have sent her onto the cement head first. It could have been much, much worse.
The truth is, the only saving grace of the night came as we were leaving the theater after the movie and walking back to the car. I was carrying Stella and she suddenly wrapped her arms around my neck, gave me a big hug and enthusiastically exclaimed for the world to hear, “Youw the bestest daddy in the WHOWE WIDE WOWLD!”
Even though I felt as though this was not a title of which I was worthy at the moment, my heart warmed over a million times.
“How is your leg now?” I asked.
“Good,” she replied.
We made it back to the car, got the kids all buckled in and I thought for a moment how much I love my kids and how happy I am that my daughter has not yet learned how to hold a grudge. Her forgiveness had let me take it a little easier on myself, and once again, she was smiling and laughing true to form.
As I checked her seatbelt, Stella stopped and looked at me.
“Daddy, is the tire okay?”
I’m not sure when it happened first, but parts of me have started to disappear.
These parts, well, they are not physical parts, but parts of who I am. My music. My writing. My free time. My will to imagine and play. Freedom. Sweet freedom.
Imagine yourself beginning life as a large block of granite when you were born. As you got older, the granite started to take more shape and definition, because as people chipped away at it, it became you. A nose appeared. Eyes grew out of sockets which were once flat planes. Cheekbones slowly erupted from the surface. Hair formed and details emerged that became the story of who you are today.
There’s a point at which the chipping away becomes more subtractive than additive, if that makes sense. It’s the difference between building character and altering it. Maybe a few wrinkles here, some sagging there. The hairline recedes. Eyes sink further into their sockets. The facial expression becomes that of worry and stress in lieu of wonder and curiosity.
This is how I’ve felt as I’ve grown more into adulthood. Perhaps it began the moment I realized I was going to be a father. That looming sense of responsibility, the desire to be a good role model. The feeling that one’s fate is close to catching up with him. The need to wear glasses. The humility. Or humiliation, as the case may be.
My kids have helped me immensely to keep things in perspective by constantly reminding of just how human I am. Not too long ago, I picked my son up from school. A precocious six-year-old who has worn glasses since he was two, he noticed quickly that I, too, was wearing glasses.
He asked, “Daddy, why are you wearing your glasses today?”
“Because it helps me keep better posture when I’m working at the computer, so I don’t have to hunch over to see things on the screen,” I replied, thinking this was the end of the topic.
“Well,” he posited, “if you’re going to wear those glasses all the time, you’d better get some that look good on you.”
I could do little more than laugh out loud. My son had officially burned me. It was done in such a matter-of-fact nature that there was no maliciousness to it, but it was little more than amusing to me, because, really, I look smashing in my new glasses. Don’t I?
Regardless, it wasn’t my first brush with the brutal honesty that kids can often serve up, unpunished. This has taken many forms over the last several years, but I believe the most memorable one was when my then two-year-old daughter looked up to me in the shower and declared, “Daddy, you have boobies.”
I have to admit, I was embarrassed, in denial—and dare I admit—stunned speechless by her accusation. Yes, I have put on some pounds in my adult years, but could I really have crossed that line where some extra baggage, as my MySpace profile so delicately describes it, to full-on man-boobs?
I tried to correct her, the two-year-old, by countering with, “Boys don’t have boobies, they have pecs.”
I was almost pleading.
She leveled her eyes at me, displaying a stern expression like a school teacher calling a student out for cheating on an exam.
“Daddy. You have boobies,” she reiterated.
This last sentence was spoken with a certainty and firmness like she knew there was no other truth. In her two-year-old wisdom, of all things she knew to be real—Barbie dolls, Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street and candy—she knew this one fact more concretely than any other: I had, in fact, grown boobies.
It’s this level of honesty that children are amazing at. They see it. They call it. There is nothing to debate other than the ethics, politeness and timing of their remarks. They mean no malice. They are not trying to hurt your feelings, but they are speaking the truth—even when we are trying to hide it.
And, the truth is, I am not a kid anymore.
While parts of me are disappearing, other parts (read: boobies and glasses) are appearing. Sadly, the one thing that seems to be disappearing most of all is time.
It’s time that I used to spend writing music, going to band practice, seeing shows, trying to write anything worth reading, drawing, experimenting, taking road trips with my wife, or even doing absolutely nothing. These are the parts of me that are quickly disappearing and I don’t know if or when I will get them back.
Is the loss of these pieces worth the trade-off? I can say, without a doubt, yes.
But I can’t say it’s not hard as hell to let them go. It’s like losing a loved one, a pet you’ve had since childhood or at the very least, your favorite guitar. You dream it or they are going to come back some day. The dreams are so realistic and heart-wrenching. You may even think you hear their voices sometimes, only to turn around and see there is nobody there. It’s my phantom self, gone in exchange for a career, family functions, time with my kids and those other numerous responsibilities that seem to creep into my daily schedule for which I can find no means of control.
I’m an adult now. The extras have been chipped away, almost weathered away over the years, leaving time for the essentials.
And, I have boobies.
“Princess Leia is dirty, mommy,” says the girl, holding her armless action figure up in the air. She repeats this phrase at least three times, because a two-year-old can never be heard enough. That girl is my daughter.
For a brief moment, I close my eyes, inhale the smell of breakfast being cooked a hundred times over, and I wonder where I am and exactly how I got there. When I open my eyes, I see tables crammed with people in a small, dark, dingy coastal cafe. The kitchen is a half-walled-off section of the room and I watch floating torsos move about the grill, chewing gum and flipping omelets with little interest or passion for what they are doing. The decor is rustic, and it feels like I’m eating breakfast at Grandma’s cabin, only she’s invited 30 other people and has improvised ways for them to fit into the spare space. The heat in this place is extravagant—the kind of heat usually reserved for senior citizens’ homes where poor circulation is the leading cause of hypothermia—and I have to keep wiping sweat off my brow. I look towards the window behind me for some light, only to be met by a dark, cloudy Oregon coast day.
To the right, my son, the five-year-old, plays with some Star Wars action figures, using his glass of milk as an improvised combat barrier. I gaze at him lovingly and he catches me, among his equally improvised laser gun noises coming out of the corner of his mouth, taking care not to make too much noise, but just enough so the enemy combatant is blasted into oblivion. When he catches me watching him, he is embarrassed. He bows his head down and tosses his action figures at me.
“What’s wrong? Did I embarrass you?” I plead with him.
He responds with a grunt.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Keep playing. It just reminded me of when I was your age,” I continue my plea. “I used to play with my Star Wars figures just like that.”
Another grunt.
Feeling somewhat disoriented, I try to remember how I became a dad, a bona-fide grown up. I close my eyes again, take in a deep breath, and when I open them, our waitress is standing at the table, glassy eyed and disinterested. The look on her face makes zombies come to mind, so I jump a little. She asks if we are ready to order. I stare at the menu searching for anything that my kids might want to actually consume and am met with numerous items that may only appeal to someone whose teeth have been replaced with prosthetic devices that merely resemble teeth—but are far too disproportionate to actually be their original teeth. I read the menu over and over again, and no matter how many times I scan it, it does not change. Then my eyes shift to the waitress’s stomach as it expands and contracts the horizontally-striped shirt she is wearing. The tightness of the shirt and the generous proportions of her figure loom out at me with each breath, creating a hypnotic wave-like effect. I snap-to, as my son has hit a deadlock with his beverage selection. Recognizing this dead air in the ordering process, I dive in and offer my usual gesture to keep the ordering process in motion. A mocha, yes. Single, yes. Short, yes. By the time the waitress and I are done with our beverage dance, the five-year-old has decided on milk for his breakfast drink. Another disaster averted.
My wife sits to my left. While I am busy trying to resuscitate my son from his embarrassment coma, she is occupying the two-year-old with spoons, napkins and beverages. A spoon flies down to the floor. I quickly snap my own spoon up and hand it off to my wife as an instant pacification tool used to bypass my daughter’s crying fit. “Thanks, good save,” says my wife.
I scan back through the last 6 years and try to remember how many times my wife and I have had a meal where we could just have a conversation without any interruptions and I can count them all on one hand. The truth is, we’ve had more dinners alone than that, but by the time we get alone to eat, sometimes we just prefer to bathe in the silence, devoid of screaming kids, whining toddlers and projectiles being hurled through the air, narrowly missing the booth fore, aft or next to us. It washes over us like a warm bath full of soft bubbles, cute bunny rabbits and chocolate kisses. Moments like that are the ones that childless couples take for granted. We used to watch older couples at breakfast, reading the paper, not talking to each other and wonder why they even go to breakfast together. Now we are enlightened. And then there is the fact that, when we do talk, the topic inevitably turns to that of our kids.
I turn to my wife to say something and am cut off pre-sentence by a kid yelling something about having something on the end of her finger. The more vague a kid is about a substance, generally speaking, the worse the reality of the situation is. If kid says, “Mommy, I have a booger on my finger,” it’s simple. Cut and dry. You are dealing with a known commodity. But if a kid says, “Mommy, I have something on my finger,” you’d best put on the level four bio-hazard gear and evacuate the room. Quickly.
The excitement renders my sentence missing in action, so I drift off again, wondering where the me went that I saw myself becoming so many years ago. After years of playing in various unheard-of underground bands, I had envisioned myself as becoming a member of indie rock royalty, playing out in well-respected bands, doing interviews, running a record label. I wanted to make a mark in history as an artist, a musician, a songwriter, a lyricist with blindingly insightful prose that could make even the most frigid, stone-cold of men shed a single tear. My arrangements would be catchy, instantly recognizable, yet completely original and innovative. Of course, it would all be accessible enough for even the most vapid top-40 listener to appreciate, with plenty of nods to my obscure influences to keep even the most pretentious of critics in check. Not an original dream, by any stretch, but it was mine and I owned it with a great amount of conviction. Interestingly enough, after a couple of doomed tours of duty in vans full of sweaty guys, weeks of sleeping on hardwood floors, and what seemed like eons of playing to rooms full of less people than attended my high school English class, I realized that the life of a touring musician was about as glamorous as the life of a, well, father and husband to two wonderful kids and a wife who is indelibly my soul mate. And truthfully, the life of a father harbors much higher levels of excitement and payoffs, bar-none.
I am yanked back into reality by the unmistakable sound of a two-year-old girl burping.
I scan across the restaurant and see two steaming plates of breakfast floating toward our table. This puts me into parent mode and I begin to clear away the eating space for the five-year-old and myself. I fastidiously organize my silverware, drinking glasses and napkin. When breakfast arrives, I eat quickly and voraciously, as I never know much eating time I will actually get. It’s as if my 6th grade gym teacher is standing behind me, ticking stopwatch in hand, screaming in my ears to eat faster! Faster! FASTER!
I cut up the five-year-old’s waffle and talk it up excitedly, hoping to bypass any new food fears that may arise. “Wow, a gingerbread waffle, that sounds yummy.”
I’ve found through a calculated program of trial and error, that ninety percent of parenting is being proactive. The other ten percent is thinking on one’s feet when one forgets to be proactive. Sadly, at least in my case, this ends up being a sliding scale whereby I am frequently spending more like ninety percent of my time thinking on my feet. This time in particular, being proactive pays off and the previously ominous gingerbread waffles are a hit.
I stop for a moment, as I push potatoes around my plate and try to remember how I got here. Not the here in the sense of the restaurant, but the here I always thought I’d never be a part of. The American dream, the nuclear family with the 2.2 kids. The house. The mortgage. The big yard with the play structure. The hot tub. The two cars. I’d like to say it just happened, but then I remember that it didn’t. I remember being young, like six or seven. My sister, ten-years my senior, would take me out for long drives in the west hills of Portland when our parents were fighting. We’d talk about life and I’d tell her how I wanted to have a wife and a bunch of kids when I grew up. Even though I may have forgotten that dream briefly somewhere along the way, back then I knew what my fate was. Yet, still, I never considered myself a kid person — until I had kids. I never considered myself a parent — until I became one. And, I never considered myself a man — until I realized that I have to teach my son how to become one.
After the five-year-old and I are done eating, I look at him and see that he is still pouting, his action figures — a stunted Obi-Wan and Storm Trooper — are still lying motionless beside my shorter-than-expected mocha. I ask him what I can do to help him cheer up. He picks up a spoon and hands it to me.
“How about you are Darth Vader.”
“Me?”
“No, the spoon is.”
I smile at him, for a number of reasons, and I say, “That sounds like a great idea. Good thinking.” For the next ten minutes, Darth Vader, in the form a spoon, alternates between battling against stunted Obi-Wan and tickling the five-year-old. I drift off again, mid-play, hands automated in play from years of multitasking, and see another me. This me is an alternate current day me, having followed the path I initially thought I wanted to pursue. This me is alone, lonely, unhappy with life, jaded and with little to show for anything other than a few CDs and some faded record review clippings saved from old weekly tabloids that are no longer being published. I snap to, jarred back to reality by Obi-Wan delivering a death blow to my spoon.
I look around the table and the faded din of the restaurant recedes to the background. The foreground becomes much clearer. Despite all of the chaos around me, I know that there is no other place I’d rather be than right here. I wonder what I did to become so lucky. This is it, the life I always wanted, but didn’t expect.
And sometimes, the unexpected is just what we need to be whole.