Unlicensed

(Hi… yes, yes it is awkward to begin an essay with a parenthetical aside but I’m going to, hell, I might italicize it as well, being unlicensed and unregulated and all. I just wanted to say that there are several links to previous posts in this one.  Feel free to check them out if you care to.  But, hey, maybe you could read all the way through this one before you do, because, I’m pretty sure that if you jump elsewhere on your phone, I probably won’t see you again.  Thanks.)

They came to take away my "dad blogger" license away back in September.  A couple of guys sporting beards and superhero tees knocked on my door.  The one with the bigger beard suggested that I knew why they'd come. I did.

I hadn't done the obligatory back-to-school post yet.  I scrambled mightily to get one up on time the year before, but this year… yeah, nothin'. Also, I haven't posted in a long while, which is usually pretty forgivable but, months...?  I've also made a concerted effort to talk less directly about the boys, again, understandable, but, sort of off brand.  And, I neglected to do a Father's Day piece, which is, well, unheard-of.

I was informed that I can only wear my cargo shorts to do yardwork, which seems reasonable and I'd already been doing that.  They wanted my "World's Greatest Dad" mug as well but decided I could keep it when I told them it was in the back of the fridge full of bacon grease (which in and of itself makes me the world's greatest dad).  They also asked for the decoder ring I used to translate the stuff the boys wrote and said early on which didn't make sense.  I told them I'd like to keep it because I've actually got drawings and stories and such that I haven't yet figured out.  They seemed cool about it.

There were a few other caveats as well.  In honor of my nearly ten years of service to the community of dad bloggers, I am allowed to post anything I want on Father's Day and the first day of school – no questions asked.  But, I mustn't post new sentimental slop as I did for so many years at any other time, at least dad slop, I guess.  I can, and this surprised me, repost old pieces when I'd like.  I gather this is a result of the "throw-back Thursday" clause.

The one thing that really had the whole system messed up was that the name of my blog here is, and shall always remain, "ihopeiwinatoaster."  I guess not having a reference to "daddy" or "father" or "pop" or anything Star Wars lets me keep using my same domain.  Usually, you are asked to archive your "Dad" period and, if you wish to continue blogging - which no one in their right mind should - you need to start afresh.  Ha, I knew that stupid handle was a good idea.

There was a lot of mumbo-jumbo legalese.  I had to initial off on a few subjects I'd need to stay away from - Lego and tee-ball and doing laundry and broken arms and, let's see, uhm, homework and math and misspellings, whimsical writings and inexplicable drawings and, oddly Harry Potter – because, apparently, it's the dad's with younger kids turn to write about the good stuff.  I can see all that, really, and there's a really good cadre of fresh dads taking up the cause… God love 'em.  I had to write a piece to say I understood the terms of the dissolution and to say goodbye, see above.  However, because of the domain name loophole, I can just keep posting here.

Listen, I actually think it's good that they stopped by and took the license, I may go rogue every now and then and talk about the boys, but I think in principle the gag order is valid.  There is a sweetness and a sentimentality in writing about babies, toddlers - just children in general - that should be explored.  I certainly have read a great number of posts from men about their kids over the years which have moved me to tears.  And, you know what, I hope that continues.  However, I'm not really the guy to do it anymore.

The wickets get a bit stickier as children turn to adults or, in my case, boys grow into men.  The stakes are a little higher, tales of teddy bears and movie scares and misspellings and odd math no longer seem appropriate, even, as I worked very hard to do, if they are told tenderly and lovingly.  It's no longer my business (was it ever?) to tell you about them.  There are crushes and heartbreak and failures and successes and books and fights and glories coming to learn from, and they will.  But, those are now their stories to hold or to share.

So, I was supposed to have this submitted to and approved by the Blog dudes by the end of last year, but, well... I didn't.  That's because I didn't want them to see this last part.

You see, I'm not done yet.  I've got more to say, a few more stories to tell, some advice to give.  I've worked very hard to honor and respect N and Z over the years I've been doing this and I think I can still do that.  Not by sharing their awkward and embarrassing teenage angst and pubescent bodily functions (which I see bloggers using more than I'd like to), but by offering a little help to them as the years go forward.

I can offer them a little more of me by sharing my past dreams and even my current hopes, perhaps…

There is an undeniable arrogance in assuming your kids will want to know more about you as they go on in their own lives.  It's embarrassing but, here's the thing, two things really - I'd give a lot to see something like this from my own father and I've heard that from a lot of guys over the years.  Also, over and over again folks say to me that the boys will treasure the posts I've done here over the years.  I've been proud to curate their childhood, proud to have thought deeply about them, considered them, and I've been so very proud that they are my sons.

There are a lot of folks I should thank from those years I was sorta in the scene… but I won’t.  I would hope they knew, know, whatever.  Some offered me much needed technical support, others lifted me when I was falling, some were frank in criticism, some just liked the words I lined up into weird rows.  Trying to name them all would be irritatingly long and probably ill-advised.

However, there is one individual I would like to call out: You, kind reader.  Yeah, you.

When I write, I don’t imagine a big audience or entertain the notion that there’s some sort of “ihopeiwinatoaster Nation” out there.  No, I’m pretty much talking just to you on the porch watchin’ the trees grow and the wind blow or in the kitchen waitin’ for the coffee to finish and the biscuits to bake.  I’ve tried to keep it casual and soft here - although, I have gotten my britches in a bunch a few times - and I intend to keep it that way.

Thanks for stopping by, I know you are busy, I hope this maybe slowed you down a bit.  Feel free to poke around in the basement archives if you’d like, but that’s hard on the Blogger phone app… oh well.  It’s a sad truth that blogging was meant to be done on a computer monitor, not a tiny screen in your palm.

God’s peace to you kind reader. 

Here's a picture of me in a blue workshirt.  Not a picture of the boys. (Sorry, it was required... weird, I know.)

Cheers...

Folding Memories

This post was originally published on City Dads Group where they inexplicably welcome my meanderings.  If it seems familiar, that's why, that or I already wrote something similar eight years ago... and yes, I could look into that, but, I don't want to.

***

I’ve heard parenting described as a vocation where the goal is to work yourself out of a job. Seems pretty accurate to me.

As a longtime stay-at-home-parent, I see myself doing it all the time. In fact, as I write, the washing machine is spinning noisily and the dryer is droning away, and I didn’t start either of them. My 14-year-old twin sons are doing their laundry today, a job I did for them for years. I showed them the ropes a few months ago and now, begrudgingly and with a bit of prompting from me, they’ve been doing it on their own.

Late last week, I found one of them riding the lawn mower, finishing the last part of our long backyard. The other will do it this week. There’s a lot to learn about mowing and there is an inherent danger in it, so I had been reluctant to show them how. But this year, I figured they are both tall and strong enough to wrestle the old Cub Cadet around the yard. I’ll show them how to do the trim work with the push mower in the coming weeks.

This morning, I woke up — later than usual — to the smell of sausages and potatoes. I went into the kitchen to start my coffee but I couldn’t tell if someone had made breakfast. The counters were wiped, the dishes in the machine, even the frying pan was hanging clean and dry on the rack. I thought maybe I hadn’t smelled right or something.

I asked the boy on the Nintendo Switch in the living room if he’d had breakfast. He had, and for the first time, had cleaned everything up.

Perhaps some of you are thinking to yourself: Damn straight, ‘bout time they pulled their weight around the old homestead. Yeah, I get that, But, and I might be criticized for this, I didn’t have children to do my work for me. An acquaintance of mine called me late one night decades ago to tell me his toddler had gotten him a beer from the refrigerator. He’d, uh, trained her, I guess, to do it and he thought it was a hoot. I still know the daughter and she stopped getting his fucking beers when she turned 12 — they were never close.

There are, I’m sure, dozens of other examples just like these of me working myself out of jobs. I’m OK with it, of course, but there is another description of parenting that I’d like to share with you: Parenting is just one long damn goodbye.

I always thought of doing my boys’ laundry as something I was supposed to do for them not because of them. Did it overwhelm me at times? Yes, but not often. Mostly, it was just another chore, a part of my job, just labor. I’d set timers for when a load was done, I folded on a custom-built folding table just beside the dryer, left-handed boy’s stuff on the left, the other’s on the right. I’d stand and fold and pair and pile and … think.

I can’t begin to tell you how much you can learn about your children from doing their laundry. You learn what they favor, what pants and shirts, what socks are worn most often – that kind of thing. But, there’s a bit more. All those loads of laundry gave me a sense of how good life has been to them, to us. Jeans with holes and grass-stains, mended and scrubbed, are a reminder that they are healthy, that the yard is green and long enough to shag flies. A fruit-punch stained white shirt is from a birthday party at the laser tag place. A blood stain on the collar of a gray hoodie is from cut on the forehead from a killer tube ride at the lake. I wasn’t folding clothes; I was folding memories.

When they were really little, two years old maybe, I’d take them for rides on the tractor without the mower engaged. We’d laugh and curve around the yard, them marveling at the wildness of it all, me at their delight in it. As they got older, I remember them watching me mow and feeling like a mounted knight, a sweating hero for them in the blistering August sun. In fact, there’s a picture of one of them, watching me go around the yard, standing on the porch with a shoe in his hand, hoping for a ride. A few years later, the fascination with it faded, but I still remember their little faces watching me. It felt good.

Today, as I look upon backyard from the dining room table, thinking about laundry and tractors, they are making lunch for themselves. More a raiding party, really. They are heating leftovers and adding this and that, improvising as one does in the kitchen. I watch and listen and think back to a time when I made every meal for them, never really imagining a day when I didn’t have to.

One long damn goodbye. Goodbye to the closeness I felt to them, handling all those clothes, steeped in dirt and stains and memory.

One long damn goodbye. Goodbye to knowing I’m watched, appreciated, needed. To feeling like a hero, a man, a father on my gas-powered steed.

One long damn goodbye. Farewell to cooking every meal, preparing every snack, packing every lunch, buying every banana, pear and apple, roast and chop.

You may be thinking, shouldn’t I be glad to not have all that work to do.

Maybe I should, but mostly I don't.

On Baseballs, Dirt and Shorts

This essay was originally published by the kind folks at City Dads Group a couple months back under the title "Backyard Baseball Field Fading Fast, Memories Staying Strong."  Over the years I've been very good about keeping all the stuff I write - pertaining to the boys and/or childhood - on this page.  I hope you don't mind.


I know where it is. I see it pretty frequently, but, unless you knew it was there, you’d probably miss it. I picked it up, rescued it really, from the lawn mower a couple of years back and put it in a fairly strange place.

It was hiding in the tall grass, all the way back in the yard, just this side of the home-run fence. It was what we always called a “game ball” to differentiate it from a “practice ball.” Game balls come off the bat hotter than the smooshy practice balls, so it was worthy of a rescue.

If you’ve ever been around wooden fences, you know that sometimes the posts begin to rot at the top where they are vulnerable to the rain and snow. After many years, thirty-some I’d guess in this case, this can create a divot at the top, a little bowl that, I know now, is the exact size of a baseball.

So, there it sits, rotting itself I am sure, just a little grey dome now, silent, unhit, uncaught, unmuddied for a couple or more years now.

+  +  +

I threw away a pair of shorts just yesterday. Those ubiquitous cargo shorts dads like so much and everyone else seems to hate. They were fraying at the bottom and the seams for the side pockets were torn and open. I shouldn’t have been wearing them anymore, honestly. I purchased them probably eight or so years ago.

As I looked at them, sitting on top of the trash bin, I got to thinking. I had worn them so frequently when our twin boys were little. I’d stuffed those pockets with handkerchiefs and juice boxes, Jolly Ranchers and jelly beans, smooth stones and acorns, peanut butter crackers, kazoos and, once, a cute little pink teddy bear in one and a blue one in the other – parting gifts from a birthday party if memory serves.

+  +  +

I know where it’s supposed to be and sometimes I think I see it. Once, it was so worn I had to move the plate back, closer to the house, making the home-run fence even farther away. The old spot grew back, but the new one became just as worn as the old one had been by the time a couple of seasons has passed.

Even though a rubber practice home plate covered part of the area, the grass stopped growing and it had became just a dirt patch. Often we forgot the plate and the boys pounded away at the bare ground, waiting for my pitch. It’s just under the edge of one of the old twin maples that shade and grace the backyard. More than once I had to get my loppers out to trim back a branch or two that were blocking the trajectory of that hopeful home-run ball.

+  +  +

I look out at the backyard and see them, us, really. In the strange timelessness, the weird immediacy of memory, the scene unfolds.

The graying, heavyset, man stands next to a bucket of balls. A boy stands and smacks his bat on a cracked and dirty home plate. Another boy, glove on, in “ready position” waits in the back of the yard not far from the fence line flanked by a couple of pine trees.

They are maybe seven.

The man, a dad, me, grabs a ball and inexpertly throws a pitch. A swing, the red Easton bat misses – boys don’t miss pitches, bats do. Another pitch, another swing. He connects but it is a practice ball and it falls easily into the hand of the boy in the outfield.

“Stupid practice balls,” the batter complains.

“Here’s a game ball, dude, see if you can get it,” the dad says.

“Save it for later, for after I’m warmed up.”

“All right.”

Not knowing what to do with the ball, he doesn’t want it mixed back in with the others, he tries to stick it in the front pocket but it’s too tight in there. About to throw it back in the bucket he notices the side pocket, the cargo pocket, of his new shorts and settles the ball in there.

As the at-bat continues and he finds three more good balls, the pockets accommodate all four comfortably. He uses the first one he found last. The bucket is empty and the other boy will be up soon, after the balls are collected, the hits recalled and the diving catches bragged about. Backyard tradition has it that the last hit requires a run around the bases.

The pressure is on.

A soft throw, low and outside, just where he likes them. A red swoosh of bat. Ding! Loud and hard. The ball soars, the outfielder has a good jump on it, but comes up short. The ball sails on, it might go over …

Thwack, right into the top rail, it drops into the pine needles and tall grass of the neglected fence line.
“I can’t find it, Dad,” the fielder shouts in frustration, “He’s coming around third, you gotta get him at home!”

He pretend throws a pretend ball. The dad pretend catches it, runs toward home. The batter, now base runner, slides into home for real. His left foot catches the base, sends it flying and then his shoe tears into the grass underneath, skidding out a divot and the bare, brown dirt is exposed. The tag misses.

“Safe!”

In the excitement, the ball is forgotten.

The next batter is up.

+  +  +

A misplaced, forlorn baseball. A worn out, thrown-away pair of shorts. A grown back batter’s box.

Endings all.

It is easy to spot beginnings. They are anticipated and celebrated. First steps, first spicy salsa, first T-ball practice, first school this, first church that, you know them. They go down in our memories. They are photographed and posted and bragged upon – as well they should.

But the lasts … man, the lasts you don’t see them coming sometimes.

We haven’t had batting practice in the backyard for a couple of years now, it occurs to me. I think we got tired of climbing the fence. I can only think of one time we even had a toss back there this year. I’d have liked to have known that they were the last, I’d have savored them more, remembered them better.

Right now, though, as I sit here at the dining room table looking back on our little field of dreams, I think I did savor them. Maybe, every time we played was just practice for the last time. Maybe every moment is a last. Maybe every pitch is a first. Maybe every moment is simply a now – a now held in the leather of a glove, in the dirt of a backyard, in the pine needles and tall grass of a fence line, in the frayed and worn pockets of a pair of shorts, in the strong branches of a maple tree, in these tears as I look back there as I write.

But, new beginnings await. New nows, new lasts. Don’t they?

Excuse me, I’m going to go fish a pair of shorts out of the trash. My heart’s not done with them yet.

Thanks for stopping by.  These days I am never quite sure when you might hear from me again.

Peace.