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| A Father's Bedtime Story - When God Leaps into Family Life at Surprising Moments |
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"Hon, will you do Peter tonight?" Chris asked as she looked over at me, while on her way to the laundry room with dirty clothes. "Peter, give mummy a kiss." Peter, already in his yellow Dr. Denton pajamas, sat upright on the upper bunk of his trundle bed along with his newly acquired Richard Scary book about cars and trucks. His book was his most recent favorite - which he loved having me re-read to him every possible night for the past month. I was already sorry that I had promised to read to him. Earlier in the kitchen, he had brokered a deal, and now there was no way to back out. He had the entire book practically memorized so that whenever I conveniently skipped a page here or there, Peter immediately corrected me and then had me start over by going back to the beginning of the missed section. This night Peter was more than ready; but his room was not. The blue carpeted floor had been acting as unofficial clothes hamper, with an accumulation of the entire weekend's wardrobe; this day's dirty shirt and pants now added to the mess; one shoe here, a sneaker there, muddy white socks under his little molded plastic desk, pants hanging from the bedpost, underwear inside out laying about wherever they been initially dropped, another shoe, and several items of unknown origin, a partially eaten apple, and various discarded wrappers; all laying among the soldiers, trucks, airplanes and other toys, which had failed to keep up with various attention spans of play. And then there were the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs all larger in scale than any of the other toys, all in procession across the room beginning at the doorway and making their way across the carpet and up onto the white painted dresser in the far corner. There was the dresser itself, with each of its four drawers opened to varying degrees and their contents spilling out so that some clean items mingled in with the dirty clothing on the floor below. Dinner had gone long and I was more tired than usual. In fact I felt downright weary. Unlike other evenings, I was in no condition to cajole Peter into "assisting Dad." I had no energy to have Peter gather up shoes, refill the closet, or for that matter, fill the totally emptied toy box at the foot of his bed with the numerous objects that presently made the carpet impassable. I did none of this because I was unable to focus. I was distracted, and although my body was certainly there in the midst of this clutter, my mind was even more cluttered. There had been the earlier table conversation of our two oldest children. Megan had just finished college that spring and was still without a job - or at least a "real" job. Our second child, David, who had finished high school, did have a job, but it had no future. Dinner had been de ja vu. Chris used her best, patient self in an effort to make the conversation go positively. But the more she was positive, the more negative they became. I stayed out of the conversation, all the while thinking that I had never imagined that being a parent was going to be quite like this. It was not the way I pictured fatherhood. Eventually our two children started disputing about who was in the worst situation and who could at least do what, and who was more stuck than the other - a reverse brag of some sort. The two of them rattled off in machine gun style every self doubt imaginable, which Chris finally put a temporary end to by assigning evening chores. It might have been better had I yelled; instead I had managed to take on their anxieties. Two confused and frightened people, uncertain of their futures, were straining the entire household and all their doubt was proving to be contagious. In previous conversations, I had usually listened, and then interjected such things as: "You're both still young, you'll figure it out. Go easy on yourself. Things will work out." Supportive words meant mostly for myself. It gave me something to hold onto in the midst of the roller coaster my two young adult children seemed intent on riding. While I dutifully picked-up the room, I went about mindlessly. Peter sat with book-in-hand, patiently waiting. Mine was a fatherly pick-up; not the kind that would have pleased a mother. I sorted things out in broad and general categories. All trash went in the wastebasket. I put back into the closet things that might have been better selected for the wash, throwing away several school papers. My selection criterion was simple: anything on the floor, wrinkled or torn, got thrown away - which was practically everything I gathered up. Chris would have looked at dates, carefully reflected on the artwork, or asked Peter if he still wanted to save any of the papers. I did none of these things, as Peter sat quietly, neither assenting nor disagreeing with his father's actions. If he had spoken, I missed it entirely. A human vacuum cleaner I had dissolved mentally into; I had turned on automatic pilot. This was the result of an even earlier conversation, compounded by the dinner conversation. Before arriving home I had been given the news that our eight-year-old station wagon, which sat for two full days before the mechanic looked at it, needed a transmission. What made it worse was this was the rebuilt one installed last year was now 300 miles over the warranty. I had put off calling the mechanic back tonight as a way to stall his decision. The weightiness of parenthood was making me dizzy almost, as I loaded the toy box with the last of the dinosaurs. I tried imagining how we would ever make it through. How would I make it through being a father to six children? "I was crazy to think I could ever be an adequate father to even one child, much less six of them." This thought caused my temples to twitch. "God, was this some kind of sick joke?" Almost without warning the words just seemed to come out: "So Peter, what do you want to be when you grow up." It was rhetorical, of course. I closed the cover of the toy box and moved toward the closet to return the lone sneaker discovered behind the toy box lid. My comment was probably my way of reconnecting with this little boy sitting so patiently, whom I had almost forgotten about. Without any pause what so ever, Peter spoke. "I want to be a daddy just like you." Frozen in my tracks, I couldn't believe my ears. "I want to be a daddy just like you." I repeated the words to myself in an attempt to let them sink in. "I want to be a daddy JUST LIKE YOU." As I turned and looked, I noticed how small and how beautiful this young son of mine appeared, as he stared back at me; and when our eyes met we both smiled. "Let's see that book of yours." After adjusting myself onto the bed with Peter cuddled around my right arm, I propped the picture book, and began to read all about the most amazing cars and trucks, without skipping a single word. As Peter took delight in having his favorite book read, I turned another page in the book of life. Don Paglia Don, who was one of the presenters at one of our diocesan priests' conferences, is co director of the Hartford Archdiocesan Family Life Office along with his wife Chris. |
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