Thought Jeff would like that title.
Anyway . . . one of the things I’m trying to do more these days is spend time with the kids where I’m not being a parent. You know, I’m not watching out for them, not worrying about them, not telling them how the world works. Instead, I’m running around, digging in the mud with them and, well, just having a good time.
I remember my Dad doing things like that. Specifically, he’d let me go to work with him on a Saturday. This wasn’t a time when I, the four year old, and my Dad, the adult, would spend time learning about his business. No, this is when I was also a man and I helped him do whatever he needed. Plus, I was allowed to take something from his desk.
So, those are the types of memories I’m trying to give my kids. The times when Dad is a human being, not just an authority figure.
Yesterday before dinner, we were playing in the back yard. What started out as an innocent game of kicking a ball around devolved into a game of chase. That is the girls were the hunters and I was the hunted.
As I ran around the backyard, dodging their outstretched arms, I began to scream, “No! Don’t get me! Ahhh!” Matilda, being the more mature of the two children, went along with the whole game and started to threaten me with all sorts of bizarre, 8-year-old playground tortures.
Gertrude, on the other hand, didn’t understand. She suddenly stopped running and called my name.
I trotted over to her and looked at her face, which was filled with worry and guilt. “Daddy,” she said, as she reached up and put her cold hand on my cheek reassuringly, “don’t be scared. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not scared honey. We’re just having fun.”
“You’re not scared,” she asked.
“No, honey. I’m just having fun.”
“Daddy’s not scared of anything,” she said with extreme confidence.
At that moment, the levity left the situation and I was filled with a sudden sense of responsibility.
Sure, dads aren’t afraid of anything in our children’s eyes. To them, we’re the ones who check the house in the dark when they hear a noise. We always go into the scary situations first, to make sure it’s okay for them. And we’re the one who confronts that jerk at the mall who is cussing up a storm in front of the kids. We’re not afraid of anything because, when it comes to our children, nothing is more important than their safety or well being.
But that’s where the fearlessness ends. Much like Alvy Singer, and his modern day cohort, Slate columnist Jim Holt, I’m terrified of a few things.
Alvy, the protagonist of Annie Hall, stopped doing his homework after learning that the universe is expanding. "The universe is everything, and if it's expanding, some day it will break apart and that will be the end of everything." He wonders, what’s the point of doing his homework if everything is going to end in a great flash? Sure, it may be billions of years off, but after that there’s nothing. So why bother now?
In a way I agree with Alvy and Mr. Holt. The thought of all matter contracting back into a singularity scares me. Not because I will be around, or conceivably, any other human. But if everything that has been, is and will be in our universe is suddenly wiped from existence only to have the possibility of another universe burst forth from the same singularity, what’s the point now?
Think of all we’d lose! Dali, Vonnegut, the Sistine Chapel, The Beatles, the concept of human love, Average Joe: Adam Returns.
Or maybe I’m more like Joe Banks, from Joe Versus the Volcano (a highly underrated movie). Joe is a hypochondriac who thinks he is dying. After learning his fate, he decides to take control of his life. He quits his job and tells his boss, “And why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you? I can't imagine but I know. Fear. Yellow freakin' fear. I've been too chicken shit afraid to live my life so I sold it to you for three hundred freakin' dollars a week! You're lucky I don't kill you! You're lucky I don't rip your freakin' throat out! But I'm not going to and maybe you're not so lucky at that. 'Cause I'm gonna leave you here, Mister Wa-a-Waturi, and what could be worse than that?”
But Joe’s courage is short lived. Soon he’s back into his cycle of fear. Even after falling in love and having a spectacular adventure, he’s floating on a raft with his one true love, aware that he’s never been sick. That’ it’s all been in his head. He’s been battling fear all these years. Still . . . his throat starts to close up, he’s not feeling well. His true love says to him, “It’s always going to be something with you Joe, isn’t it?”
And that’s me. There’s always going to be something. Locking the door a thousand times a night. Wandering the halls making sure the kids are still breathing, reaching out to feel my wife’s warm body in the middle of the night because it somehow reassures me.
Fear is part of life, but I couldn’t tell the baby that. I just hugged her and said yeah.
But as Alvy would say, “There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.’ Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”
Or, more to the point, “Honey, there's a spider in your bathroom the size of a Buick.”
Discuss
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