Father's Day Vignettes

I'm seven years old, and Dad takes me aside while Mom keeps my little brothers occupied with s'more-making at a pond-side fire. He asks if I have anything important in my pockets, and then he tells me the plan. He's going to pretend to get angry at me, and I need to run away to the dock. Then he'll run out to the edge of the dock (pretending to be angry) and throw me into the pond with all my clothes in. My little brothers will have no idea that we were just pretending. Dad is my buddy.

I'm eleven, and I just brought in a load of firewood from the hedgerow behind the house. I led Pax and Calvus back there with a sled, and we hauled it through the snow (sometimes Calvus was riding instead of pushing) up to the house. We made a fort with it, and then stacked it in the wood pile. Dad comes up to me afterwards and tells me that he noticed I did some work without being asked. He says that was a really good thing to do, and it means I'm growing up. Dad's impressed with me.

I'm fourteen, hiding out in the barn, and I just cracked my Dad's ribs. I was lying around on the couch, putting off cleaning the room that I was supposed to be moving into downstairs since I've been complaining so much about sleeping in the hall. I was provocative on purpose, just looking for any excuse to argue and say something dramatic. I managed to get him angry enough to grab me, and when I scuffled back I legitimately hurt him. I'm so ashamed of myself I can't imagine ever coming back into the house again.

I'm six, and Dad tells me to get into the car for a surprise, but not to tell any of my brothers. I ask him what the surprise is as we drive towards Medina. He defers the answer a few times, and I look out the window as we drive by my cousin's house and out of town. I wonder if we're going to the hardware store. We take a turn that I'm not used to, and he suddenly turns towards me and declares that he and I are going to see a Buffalo Bills game at Rich Stadium! It's a preseason game, and the Bills beat the Atlanta Falcons. I even get to see Jim Kelly warming up. But best of all, I get to sit with my Dad all alone at a Bills game.

I'm nine, and Dad has been sick for three days. I can tell Mom is worried, but most of what she says about insurance and the doctor is right over my head. I haven't seen Dad come out of his room the whole time, but he's real busy with the new business right now anyway, so I don't think much of it. When he comes out he hasn't shaved, and he can hardly stand up. He has trouble walking, and he looks real thin. Mom's putting out toast and soup for him, but he doesn't really eat any. I ask him some questions, but he doesn't answer. Dad isn't supposed to be vulnerable.

I'm fifteen, and I'm about to play my first trumpet audition. We're driving down to Houghton College, where I'm hoping to get early admission so that I can leave high school early. I feel dreadfully sick, and I think it's the hills. But really it's the nerves. I want to suggest that we turn back, and then I want to suggest that we stop the car. Mom asks me how I'm doing, and I say that I'm not feeling well. Dad tells to look at it this way: that I get to skip school, and that I get to go play the trumpet, which is something I love to do anyway.

I'm five years old, and I'm storming around the downstairs of the house furiously. I know that the bus will be coming any moment now, and I can't find my backpack. I need my backpack. I accuse all of my brothers of stealing it, and I'm getting even angrier because my Dad is laughing at me. Finally he has mercy and points out that my backpack is already on my back. He tells me I take myself too seriously.

I'm twelve, and my parents ask me to come into the kitchen. They say that we need to have a talk. I guess what the talk is going to be about from their tone. I've been sent to the library during health for the past few weeks of 6th grade, and I suddenly panic, knowing that they're going to want to talk about sex. They ask me what I know about...about..sex. I lie spectacularly, telling them that I know about what men and women do and how it can make pregnancies if they don't use contraception. (Contraception is the most important sounding word I know about sex.) They look immensely relieved, although a little puzzled, and conclude the conversation quickly, to everyone's relief.

I'm four, and my Dad brings me to work with him at Photos by Bruce. He has all kinds of fun sports equipment for me to hold, and I get my picture taken with a tennis racket and a basketball and a football. We even bounce the basketball back and forth a little bit afterwards, although it's a little big so I'm kind of scared of it. Dad tells me that he will develop the pictures in a dark room and I'll get to see myself looking like an athlete, which is what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm thirteen, and I know everything there is to know about music. I've been reading my Mom's old music theory textbooks that I found in her closet, and I've even taught myself how to read bass clef. My Dad is practicing his bass guitar down in his bedroom and I listen to him outside his door. I knock, and then I go in. There's a pipe lying on his woodstove, and he's been practicing a jazz song I recognize. I ask him how he knew what to play, and he says he was playing it by ear. My pride is wounded, but I more admire him.

I'm six years old, and I'm begging my Dad to put on the Star Wars record again. My brothers hear and join in as well. We all want to sing along with the main theme. Dad says the record player is broken, but he goes into his closet and gets out his old trumpet. He plays a scale or two to warm up, and then he plays the main theme from Star Wars on the trumpet. We all can't believe that he's playing Star Wars!

I'm ten, and Dad tells me that I need to come out back and help stack the woodpile that was delivered yesterday. The pile is enormous, and I'm sure that we'll never get through it all. And if we need to stack it, I'd rather make forts with it with my younger brothers. Sam and Pax start out helping, but each of them fade away pretty soon and need to go back in the house. Just Dad and I are left working, and although we don't get it all stacked, I can see the progress that we made. He tells me some funny stories about him and his friend Doug, and once we're finished we throw the football back and forth, just the two of us.

I'm eight years old, and my Dad has driven the minivan up on his two metal auto-ramps to change the oil. He's telling me about his high school chemistry teacher. He says "you'll pay for everything you don't know how to do." I crawl around under the car with him and blink as soot gets in my eyes. I see how grimy his hands are from wrestling with the drain to the oil pan.

I'm thirteen years old, and Sam is gone for a few weeks this summer. We all load into the van, and baby Martha is buckled in. Before Mom turns the van on, Dad looks back at me, Pax, Calvus, and little Lux. He says "We want you boys to know that we got your report cards last week, and we haven't talked about grades or about your concerts in a long time, because we didn't want Sam to feel bad. But we talked it over, and we want you to know how proud we are of you..." He keeps talking, but I've slid down the seat and am squeezing my eyes shut so my brothers won't see that I'm crying. I didn't realize until he talked about it how long I'd wanted to hear that.

I'm seven years old. Dad turned the game off because the Bills were losing so bad. He turns it back on to check the score, and it turns out the Bills have scored a touchdown. He calls me back into the exercise room, and we listen on the radio as they all of a sudden score again and again. I'm tired from being up early at church that morning, but I stay awake even as things slow down in the fourth quarter. The game goes to overtime, and the phone rings with Dad's friends. He won't talk anymore, because the game is back on, and Nate Odomes made an interception. When Steve Christie makes the game winning kick we pump our fists and jump up and down and scream louder than ever before and jump around the exercise room dancing and hugging.

I'm twenty six years old, and I've been a father for one day. Mom and Dad came and brought me dinner while J was still in labor, and then Mom was able to see James (but not hold him) for a few minutes on her way to work the next morning. I hold my newborn son to offer him to my Dad for the first time.

It's my eighth birthday. My Dad gives me a brown plastic case with only one working latch. It's a musical instrument. I open up the case upside down, and then turn the tarnished brass over, and look at the new instrument I'm holding in my hands. It's a cornet.

As a matter of fact, pretty much every good thing in my life came from Tom Smith.

Updates

The day started well. My alarm on my phone went off at 5:45, and when I rolled over to shut it off I saw that my old C trumpet had finally sold on eBay. It's probably been listed half a dozen times by now, and I lowered the auction price by over three hundred dollars over the course of the last month and a half. Someone was messaging me a month ago asking for everything I knew about model 5 mouthpipes. He said he was going to buy it, but never did. Someone else was messaging me last week trying to negotiate a private sale, and he offered me $925. I countered with $950 plus shipping, and never heard back from him. I checked the email to see how much it sold for, and someone had used the Buy It Now...$1300 dollars, and the money had already cleared. When trying to scrape together a down payment, that's some serious good news. I had it in the mail by 11:30 in the morning, and it's off to Arizona now. I hope that whoever bought it likes it. It was a good and faithful horn for me.

We looked at two new houses today, both up in the North Winton/Irondequoit neighborhood. When we left the first place we were talking seriously about putting in a bid. The second was better than any of the locations we'd looked at previously, but not as good as the first. I'm trying not to get too attached to the place we might bid on, so I won't say anything more about it, except that James loved it. (We brought him along today. That went about as well as you'd expect.)

I swing back and forth between the exhilaration of thinking "this is actually going to happen...we're going to be homeowners. We have the income and the credit to pull it off, and we're going to have a place of our own in a few months." Then I think about trying to add closing fees on top of our down payment money (definitely not 20%) and I remember the cover letter I wrote up trying to make excuses for the fact that "even though neither my wife or I have a full time job, you can see from the total sum of our 17 W-2s that we make a comfortable living." Then I think that it just isn't going to happen. No lender in their right mind would give us a loan worth accepting.

Ah, adulthood. I spent about two hours today reading a homebuyers guide from the library and punching in numbers to an amortization schedule. If we don't get the house, the next year or so will be an anxious struggle to stabilize our earning situations, save aggressively, and take auditions. If we do get a house, I'll still be taking auditions, and I'll be constantly checking the amortization schedule and running numbers about tax assessments and equity.

The thing is, this isn't some unique and tragic set of circumstances that demands general sympathy. I think this is just normal adult life. (Maybe this is why adults look so tired.) This process makes me appreciate the people who can find genuine joy in their own skin despite the constant weather of bills and loans and responsibilities battering at their door.

My parents come to mind. Today is their anniversary, and I still hope for nothing more out of my marriage than to resemble them in twenty-odd years. I know that they don't have a perfect marriage and that there must be a hundred undercurrents and troubles I'm never aware of. But just before I got married my Dad told me that he felt sorry for friends of his who dreaded going home to their wives at the end of a long day, and were always looking for an excuse to be out of the house. "And it's always been the other way for me," he said "and at the end of the day we want to be together"

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

In some truly tragical news, James is enacting a small scale German opera whenever he gets up from his afternoon nap. He's almost always bright and bubbly first thing in the morning, but he must sleep heavier in the afternoon, and he is CRANKY lately. Here are some highlights:

"Oh NOOO my bike needs to be in'a kitchen!" <begins to cry>

"Uh-OH, my milk is gone an'I need WATER!" <begins to cry>

"Don't read that book in the yiying room, you must read it in'a kitchen."
"Why can't I read it in the living room?"
"Because...Daddy's gonna practice, and it's gonna be LOUD." <begins to cry>

"Nope, my book is not in the ottoman. I can't find it in the ottoman. Can't. No. No. <shakes head> It's not in there."

In the past we've also heard:

"Oh NOOO somebody cleaned up my mess!"

"I'm hungwy for my breakfast."
"But it's almost time for dinner, little bear. Do you think it's morning?"
"Uh-OH, I need my cereal!"

From M. Laine

From the marriage of Darryl and Tom many children were born. Some of the children were very beautiful; others were terrifying monsters. They were called Smiths. They were six in number and of great size and strength; like men, only much grander. There was R. Dudlius, who ruled the library, Samuel Magus, master of carpentry, Pax, otherwise known as the guitarsmith; Calvus, the breadmaker, Lux, author and poet, and M. Laine, youngest and most powerful of them all.