Tagged: mommy blogs
I Cried At Work Yesterday
Dear H-,
I’ve been wanting to write to you directly for some time now, and finally an event at work caused me to put pen to paper. I don’t know how old you’ll be when you read this, but hopefully you’ll be old enough to understand it. If you don’t understand it, ask me or another adult about it.
The reason I decided to write to you today is that I wanted to tell you that I cried at work yesterday.
Now, I know you’ve seen me cry once, but you probably don’t remember it. And I’m sure you don’t remember why. I never saw my dad cry, but I have to believe that he did–at least once. Sometimes I think it would’ve been nice to have seen it with my own eyes as a boy. So in case you never see me cry again, I’m telling you now that I cry.
I cried yesterday because I found out that a guy who works for the same company as me was killed on the job, by the job. And in a separate incident, another guy was really badly injured and might die as well. As the group of us walked out of the noisily air conditioned trailer where we were handed this news and into the hot sun in order to get back to the dangerous work, I could only think of you. I could only think of how you look when you look at me, which is to say look up at me. Your chin sticks out; your eyes are at attention; your hair falls freely off the back of your head. You’re such a good listener. Well, it’s time to listen up again. Sad things happen in life. Really sad things. One of the appropriate responses to these sad things, even for dads, is to cry. But just because sad things happen doesn’t mean you stop living life. Sad things are a part of life–just like happy things and boring things. You have to move forward, move past them. Even though I was sad, I went back to work.
Okay. I think that’s it. I don’t have any big finale. I love you.
Pete
PS – I do have one more thing. You’re a beautiful girl H-, never doubt that.
Slow To Anger
“Clap now H-!” he said, clapping his own hands in the process.
She began to clap and asked, “Why daddy, why? What happened?”
“Our team did a good thing. And you clap when that happens,” he explained.
“The purple team?” she asked.
“Yes, the purple team. Remember, it’s like I said earlier. Just watch the crowd. When the people wearing purple clap, then you know it’s time to clap,” he reiterated, “but if you hear clapping and see people in red clapping–then don’t. They are the enemy.”
“Clap when the purple people are clapping?” H- asked.
“That’s right.”
The father-daughter duo found themselves amidst an afternoon ballgame’s cheering crowd. The team played in a city whose native residents prided themselves on their origins, and the nearly overwhelming amount of fans wearing red illustrated why. Seated next to the pair was one such Cardinal fan who was unafraid to sport that day’s evil color. And next to her sat a teenage daughter who was about to leave for college. This was learned from the bits and pieces of their conversation that could be heard over the PA announcer, H-‘s incessant demand to know when there would be some shade and/or dessert, and the roar of the crowd. This mother, then, was already nostalgic.
“How old is she-” she started to ask, addressing the man. His face wore raised eyebrows and wide eyes which he hoped would express some mix of “Why are you asking me?’ and “She’s not deaf'”, so the woman turned to the little girl. Re-starting, she asked, “How old are you?”
“Four,” H- answered politely.
“And what’s your name?”
“H-,” answered the girl who then had to clarify upon the mother needing help with the slightly uncommon name. “What’s your name?” H- asked in kind.
“B-,” the woman answered.
“B-?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What’s your last name?” H- asked, never straying from the divinely ordained interrogation method.
“Watts,” B- answered.
As if used to having to repeat herself, or perhaps simply aware that it was a noisy environment, H- repeated herself calmy, saying, “I said, ‘What’s your last name?'”
B- chuckled at this unforeseen development while shrugging as she looked back at another similarly stationed mother who was seated one row up with her teen and was intently listening in on the interaction. As B- answered H- again with “Watts”, her sunglasses did little to hide her sharpened determination to speak clearly.
It was only after the three of them–father, B-, and the mother from the row above–saw H-‘s perfect expression of almost-frustration as she was about to complete the question for the third time that the problem became clear to everyone but H-.
“H-,” the father asserted, now laughing and shaking his head. (So focused was H- on learning B-‘s surname that this interrupting voice and calming touch on the shoulder could be seen to startle her.) Nonetheless, the man continued, “She’s not asking ‘What?’ She’s saying her last name. Her last name is the word ‘Watts’. Watts.”
“Watts?” H- questioned.
“Yes. Watts,” he answered.
“But we don’t clap when she claps, because she’s wearing red,” H- said.
“That’s right. She’s the enemy,” he said, smiling proudly.
Will I Ever Become a Man?
He taught me so much, and I don’t even know his name. All I remember is that it was a sunny, hot afternoon at Heritage Square. H- and I had been pounding the pavement and riding the rides all morning. It was time for a break. We headed to the grill area.
There happened to be a vintage motorcycle show on the same grounds as the theme park that day. As expected, there were plenty of leather vests, bandannas, and unkempt beards. Wearing a black leather vest over a black t-shirt and sporting a very unkempt beard, my average sized soon-to-be mentor was even missing a tooth. I can still see the gap now. Yellow, yellow, yellow, black, yellow, yellow, yellow. I also remember that the remaining teeth on his mandible were strikingly tall and thin for some reason.
But what really made him stand out was the rather long sentence that was typed in white font on his black shirt. As usual, I noticed “fuck” before any of the other words. I became simultaneously terrified and curious. What kind of randomly long t-shirt slogan contained the eff bomb? His vest, which cut off the first and last letters of each of the three rows, did not make the task any easier. Attempting not to stare, after several volleys, I finally made out: “Off is the general direction in which I wish you would fuck.”
“So, H-, what would you like for lunch? They have grilled cheese. Do you want grilled cheese?” I queried, the shrinking line forcing the discussion.
“I don’t want a grilled cheese. I want a hot dog.”
“We’re having hot dogs tonight, so it’s gotta be a grilled cheese. Well, I guess there is also chicken fingers, or a corn dog.”
“Corn dog?”
“Yeah, it’s a hot dog wrapped in corn bread. Is that what you want?” I asked, devastated that she found a loophole to my no-hot-dog reasoning.
“I think I want a corn dog. No, I want a grilled cheese.”
“Good.”
Only one more customer to go, I noticed that they had some beer bottles on display, in addition to the typical beverages I’d come to expect. Not just beer, they also had three flavors of delicious Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Debating for longer than I’d like to admit, I decided to stick with soda. I really wanted a Mike’s, and figured just one wouldn’t be weird or inappropriate on a nice afternoon of riding roller coasters with my daughter, but I couldn’t do it. I genuinely feared what the biker behind me was going to think of me for buying a Mike’s. Not knowing anything more than any of us about the guy, I was afraid because I knew that if I was him, I would loose a smart-ass comment on the strange man in front of me whose t-shirt didn’t have the eff-bomb on it and then bought a Mike’s. So I stuck with the combo meal that came with a soft drink.
Even knowing that there was only one line was not enough to prevent me from nearly breaking my neck as I turned to confirm what my ears reported next.
“Will that be all?” I heard the cashier say, as I saw her hand the biker a Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
Eating Cereal Quietly
“So, George, remind me again what you were telling me last night?” Pete asked upon returning to the kitchen after setting H- up with cereal. “Other things I was doing at the time caused me to miss the significance of the meeting being one-on-one, but I think I get it now. You said you had a one-on-one meeting with your boss and that he asked for your opinion on how your performance should be measured.”
“That’s right. I asked him if he wanted to know how I thought I should be measured, or if he wanted to know how I thought I was being measured.”
“Which was it?”
“He said he wanted to know how I thought I should be measured.”
“And you said that you think your performance should be measured on the quality of your work, but he said that he was going to measure you on the duration of your work?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Pete responded in disbelief, “that’s totally inverse. The goal should always be to get more done in less time–not just to work longer.”
“Pete–I know.”
“So what happened next?”
“He told me that to achieve an excellent on my review next time that I will need to work nights and weekends.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him that I wouldn’t be aiming for an excellent then.”
“Ha.”
George opened the door to leave for work and paused, saying, “You don’t know how close I was to asking him, ‘Do you want to be a soul crusher?'”
“Ha.”
As always, the crack of the wooden blinds against the door signaled George was off to work. Pete then turned to H- who was all the while quietly finishing her cereal.
“Are you a soul crusher H-?” he asked her, using extended, slightly squinted eye-contact to signal playfulness. “I know I don’t want to be a soul crusher. I want to be a soul creator, a soul grower,” he reported, increasing the melodrama with the repetition in an effort to summon a response from the speechless little girl.
With her familiar, lovable earnestness and attentiveness H- responded, “I’m still growing.”
Caught!
“Heyyyy!” said H-, her head rotating up in order to look him in the eyes. Slowly peering into his soul, she couldn’t stop her bottom lip from quivering. Her face flushed red, and she loosed a single, crippling tear. “Why did you do that? Why did you take off my band-aid?”
“H-, come on now. You saw that it was already starting to come off on its own. How long had it been on for anyhow? Two days? You didn’t even have a bleeding oww-ee,” he said, meeting her eye-contact and rubbing her shoulder. “Plus, I keep telling you that band-aids aren’t stickers-”
“Look! It’s red. Can I have a band-aid to put on it?” she asked, her tone revealing that she believed she had presented sound reasoning.
“No, H-, you cannot have a band-aid to cover the mark left by leaving the last band-aid on for too long,” he winced. “Can we stop talking about band-aids for the rest of the night at least? Please?” he asked, appealing to her well-developed sense of give-and-take.
“Okay. But tomorrow morning I want another adult band-aid,” she asserted, her persistence approaching a level generally reserved for the possessed children in career-making horror classics.
“We’ll see. For now, let’s get back to bed so we can continue reading about King Aaathuh,” he said.
****
“Daa-ddy! Daa-ddy!” sounded his own personal alarm clock exactly twenty minutes early.
Climbing out of his bed, he opened her door and let her know that it wasn’t quite time to get up yet.
“Can I play quietly for a little bit?” she offered.
“Sure. I just need twenty more minutes,” he said.
Only a minute passing until guilt overcame him, he reappeared in the living room, much to her surprise.
“I’m going to rest a little out here while you play,” he informed her.
“Rest a little?”
“Yeah, rest a little. Here on the couch. It’s not time to get up yet, but when my phone goes off, I will. You can play though.”
“Okay.”
No sooner than he had closed his eyes, he heard her walking towards the bathroom. Eyes still closed, he asked, “H-? Where are you going?”
The entire essence of her being still moving forward, her corporeal body came to a halt. He opened his eyes just in time to see an empty face betray that all available energy was being redirected into deciding how best to play this one out. No less sudden than when light vanquishes darkness, her widening eyes and resultant raised eyebrows signaled that she had made her decision. Turning towards him, she slowly nodded her head in the vertical plane, raised her index finger, and casually informed him, “I’m just going to get one band-aid.”
How ‘Bout?
A strict father, though one who exercised a parent’s hypocritical initiative frequently, he never let her watch television. And his list of approved-for-her movies included only three titles: Holiday Inn, White Christmas, and The Lego Movie. She fell asleep during the first two, and, much to his chagrin, she lacked the context–not to mention the capacity for abstract thought–requisite to enjoy the third.
But every once in a while he would hear her say something that beckoned the playing of a song. Not just a song, but a music video. This evening was no different.
Instinctively these days, she knew to flip up the paper-thin seat cushion, so as to not ruin anything if she spilled, before assuming her oddly favorite eating position–one that had the left-half of her body sitting on the chair, while the right-half stood on the creaky hard-wood floor.
“You’re the greatest, daddy,” H- said, much to his delight. “You’re the greatest, not mom.”
“Hey!” he said firmly, not wasting time on a crescendo, “that’s not true H-. You’re mom’s the greatest, too. I’m the greatest dad, and she’s the greatest mom. Understand?”
“You’re the greatest dad and mom’s the greatest mom,” she recited.
“That reminds me of a song H-. Have I ever played R. Kelly’s “World’s Greatest” for you? The song he wrote about the boxer Muhammad Ali for the movie Ali?” he asked, making his way over to the laptop.
“World’s greatest?” she asked, in kind.
“Yeah. I didn’t think so. It’s a good one, just give me a sec to pull it up,” he said, trying to remember if the video contains anything a three year old shouldn’t see. “Okay. Here it is.”
“Is it the rainbow song?” she asked.
“No, it’s not the rainbow song,” he answered, chuckling as he tried to remember what past video had a rainbow in it.
Like most R. Kelley videos, there was a touch of a melodrama before the music began. Finally the music started. Memories and feeling flowed as Kelly sang, “I am a mountain. I am a tall tree, oh-oh-oh, I am a swift wind, sweeping the country.” Searching for any sign of understanding or enjoyment on her face, he couldn’t help but get caught up as the song built to the chorus. Soon he found himself singing along.
“If anybody acks you who I am, just stand up tall, look ’em in the face and say-ay-ay-ay-ay-ee: I’m that star up in the sky. I’m that mountain peak up high. Hey, I made it. Mmm. I’m the world’s greatest.”
“How ’bout-” she began.
“I know, I know, you want the rainbow song,” he interrupted, breaking from the song.
“How ’bout you not sing it, so I can hear it?” she finished.
“Oh,” he said, laughing. “I suppose I can try.”
Still Timeless
Happy that she chose waffles over doughnuts, he found himself preparing the batter when she called to him from the couch.
“Daddy, come lay with me. Don’t you want a little rest before breakfast?”
“H-, you know I’m cooking. If you wanted to lay, you should’ve said something earlier.”
“You’re cooking?”
“Yep. It’s almost done though,” he responded.
“Why you keep saying almost?” she asked.
“Do you know what “almost” means, H-?” he asked, genuinely curious about her response.
“Not done yet?” she answered, her voice betraying a modest level of hope.
“Sure. It means not done yet. But so would lots of words. How close does “almost” mean?”
“Fifteen?” she guessed.
His smile grew as her answer reverberated in his head.
Proudly, then, he cooed to himself, “She’s learning.”
Mommies Are Not Alive
Her new nearly-florescent neon tennis shoes did little to distract him from feeling the sting of what she said next.
“Mommies are not alive,” she purported.
“Mommies are not alive? I don’t think that’s right H-,” he returned.
“They aren’t alive. Mommies are not alive,” she said.
“What is a mommy?” he asked, seeking context at the least.
“K- is my mommy,” she answered.
“Hmm. So you know K- is your mommy, and that she’s alive, but you still maintain that mommies are not alive?”
“Yep, they’re not,” she said.
“Well,” he took a breath, “I hate to break it to you kid, but mommies are very much alive. Your mommy is alive. My mommy is alive. They’re alive,” he lectured dryly.
“Mommies are not alive,” she continued, a perfect stubbornness showing through. “Skeletons aren’t alive either.”
“Skeletons, eh?” he said. “Oh! I get it. Not mommies, mummies! Muh-muh mummies are not alive. You’re trying to say that dead bodies wrapped in tape are not alive, right? They’re called mummies, muh-meez, not mah-meez.”
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes betraying her brain’s increase in activity. “Bodies wrapped in,” she paused, “in tape,” she finished, her nodding head and squinting eyes calling out his inaccuracy. “Mommies-”
“Muh H-,” he corrected, “muh-meez. Mummies are not alive.”
“Mah-”
“Muh-”
‘Mah-”
“Muh-meez H-,” he said, feeling his patience about to buckle. “Forget it. Can you say reanimated?”
“Re-ami-nated?” she asked.
“Re-ani-mated,” he repeated.
“Reanimated,” she said.
“Good. Now say ‘mummies are reanimated, but mommies are alive.'”
“Mommies are reanimated, but mommies are alive.”
“Perfect.”
Mac ‘n’ Cheese’s Home Date
“How’s your mac’n’cheese H-?”
“It’s far away,” she responded matter of factly.
“Huh? How’s your mac’n’cheese?”
“It’s far away. It’s in Townsville,” she said, finally elaborating.
“Wait what?” he asked, shaking his head. More curious than ever to discover where this would lead he again asked, “How’s your mac’n’cheese?”
“I told you daddy. It’s far away. It’s in Townsville. On May 10th. That’s my birthday,” she said, nodding her head while staring at the dish. Searching eyes exposed her thoughts more than words ever could. “How can I be more clear? I think I’m being clear,” she thought.
“Your mac’n’cheese is far away, in Townsville, which is on May 10th?” he asked, attempting for clarification.
“Yep,” she answered, delighted by his demonstration of understanding.
“Oooookay then.”
High Class
“Do we have cauliflower?” she asked after he mentioned broccoli.
“Nope, just broccoli,” he answered.
“Why don’t we have cauliflower?” she persisted.
“Because I didn’t buy any,” he said, not giving in.
After finishing her broccoli, she watched as he slid the grilled chicken on to her plate. Together now, they began to eat.
“Oh,” he interrupted, “did you want barbecue sauce?”
“Yes,” she said, “the new sauce.”
“I know, I know. You didn’t like the hot stuff.”
“Hot stuff?”
“Nevermind. Here’s your sauce. And here’s my sauce.”
To the sound of silverware squishing into chicken, they returned to the task at hand. Suddenly, she let out a shriek.
“What?” he asked, fearful that even the new sauce was too hot.
Spitting out the chicken, she replied, “I don’t like the roasted ones. That one’s roasted.”
“Huh?”
“See daddy? Roasted,” she said, pointing at the grill marks on the chicken.
“Oh. You don’t like the burnt part. Excuse me, the roasted part. Okay, you don’t have to eat it,” he allowed. “High class H-, you’re high class,” he thought, pride swelling.
Captain’s Log 