Unique among mornings, Monday morning is loathed universally as the true signal of joy's ending. School (for those younger) and work (for those older) beckons with a klaxon alarm promising to remove life's joy as quickly as one's eyelids allow. For the past 13 school year Mondays, my routine has remained constant - through slightly cracked eyelids I walk down the hall and wake up my oldest son Nate before waking up my youngest son. Even the words leaping out of my froggy throat have been unchanged for years. "Nate, time to get up and get moving." Nothing more was ever required for him to sit upright in bed and slowly begin his trudge to the shower and eventually school. I would linger by his door to give him a hug until his advancing age required him to check his phone before exiting the confines of his room. Your skepticism of teenage waking horrors may be well documented but believe me when I say he was the easiest kid ever to wake-up!
But Monday morning May 15th, 2017 was different. Unconsciously I had ignored its significance even as I celebrated the other little milestones of Nate's senior year of high school. College visits in the summer, last first day of school, college applications and acceptance, his 18th birthday and the other 'lasts' which accompany the end were ticked off one by one until only three days separated Nate from shedding the last vestiges of his childhood. As my feet padded quietly down the carpet on this Monday morning, the sunshine streaming through the loft window slowed me just enough to allow my brain to catch up with the gravity of the situation. My emotions suddenly strained the bonds which normally contain them and I became still.
Never again would I trod this path - in this routine - to wake up my son.
An immense sense of loss flooded my now rapidly awakening brain followed immediately by a tremendous pride in what Nate had accomplished in school and the type of young man he has become. The sun's rays metaphorically presaged the next emotional wave which washed over me - hope for the new beginning which awaits Nate. As I stood frozen in the sunlight, awe entered my consciousness as I realized the phenomenal potential inside my son. I mourned the loss of this morsel - unknown to Nate - of our relationship while simultaneously rejoicing in the successes we will celebrate in the years to come.
Rarely have I had to reconcile such an explosion of emotions during my fifteen second morning walk. But in that moment I truly understood what C.S. Lewis (again lookhimup if you don't know who he is!) meant when he said of fatherhood and parenting - stay close but be far. Watching your children grow up is one of mankind's most imperfect sciences. What works for one child can backfire for another. You do the best you can given the circumstances until one day you remove the training wheels and hope like hell they can keep life upright! At first you stay within an arms length, then begin trailing in their wake until finally they can ride out of sight with your full confidence - all the while knowing you will be there for them if life's delicate balancing act requires a light touch on the handlebars. And that, mes amis, is the essence of fatherhood. It only took me 44 years and countless missteps to figure out!
In the now 54 hours which have elapsed since Monday morning, the stream of Nate memories which usually meanders through my head has turned into a wild, raging torrent. One day heredity will try to dam Nate's stream inside my head but digital never dies (hopefully!). Rushing out now is the confusion during his birth, holding him his first night watching a show about sub-Saharan Africa while his mother slept, his first steps, his broken arm, his collection of tiny NASCARs, decorating his bike for the neighborhood July 4th parade only to go to the wrong starting spot and miss the whole thing, losing his jacket under the bleachers at Sycamore and the courage he had to summon to walk underneath them to pick it up, playing catch with balled up socks as I folded laundry, telling a nearby spectator who was smoking at the races that he - the smoker - was stupid for smoking, his first soccer picture day where he ran around kicking the soccer ball until he was drenched in sweat for his picture, coming to my basketball camp at Mariemont HS and winning the 3-on-3 Cut-Throat competition, waking up from kidney surgery and wanting to do some homework, his various t-ball/baseball teams, the overnight at the zoo, the day I yelled at him during a car ride for being ungrateful only for him to give me the best essay ever written entitled 'My Hero' (all about me!) when we got home, the conversation we had in the car during 6th grade when one of his 'friends' pulled the big-time card on him, venting his frustration after a called third strike to end a baseball game that he insisted was a ball, the museum-like quality of his bedroom (if you ignore all the clothes), our yearly trips to the US Air Force Museum, his first trip to the islands in Canada (and the passport picture he took with his phiten necklace on), learning to drive a boat with my brother, our driving lessons together and his impeccable skills behind the wheel today ... the torrent rages still!!!
All of which leads me to Don Draper and his finest moment. Of the many fictitious accolades Don Draper received during his Mad Men days, none could ever be attributed to his parenting skills. What he lacked in fatherly manner, he more than made up for it with his uncanny ability to predict what people (other people - not family members) needed to feel a connection or emotional response. In what arguable was the best 3:30 minutes of television drama in the past twenty years, Don Draper played nostalgia like Mozart. As Nate prepares to graduate and (to soon for me!) head to the University of Cincinnati, Don Draper's imagined sales pitch for Kodak's (no youngsters not Kodak Black .. Kodak - the company!) new slide projector echoes through my head. Clicking through a slide show of his family's pictures he says, "This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. Takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel. It's called the Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around and back home again to a place we know we are loved." I ache to share those memories with Nate again and re-script my fatherhood failings. I steadfastly hope Nate comes around and around and back home again for years to come because there is no doubt that I love him.
Congratulations Nate! Here is to many more memories and celebrations!!
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