Back From Vacation

I was on vacation last week with some of my wife’s family and they have younger children in the 6 – 9 years old range. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with kids that age, as my kids are now 17 and 20. It didn’t take me long to realize there are some major differences between my kids and the others.

The first difference was being woken up by kids at 6:00 in the morning. At that early hour, they are up and ready to go. You’re still sleeping? Not for long! They tried to stay quiet, but after about ten minutes of progressively louder whispering they started talking in their regular, middle-of-the-day voices. They obviously didn’t get the memo that it is alright to sleep past the normal time they get up for school. I usually get up at 6:00 AM for work, but I’d be very content to sleep past that time for a week or two. So I lose a few hours of the day by sleeping in, but who cares? I mean, it’s VACATION! My son could sleep until 10:00 or 11:00 (maybe even noon) and not feel bad about it. Of course, he’s not going to bed at 8:00 – 9:00 PM either, so I guess there is a tradeoff there.

The next difference is that younger kids go in and out of the house about a thousand times a day. And they slam the door every time! Not long after eating breakfast they are out to ride their bikes (slam!). After a few minutes one of them needs a drink of water, so he or she comes back in (slam!). Guzzle down that water and it’s time to get back outside like there’s a 30-second time limit on the break (slam!). Then someone realizes that someone else just went in for water, so they come in to get a drink, too (slam!). Repeat this process for every kid (slam!) multiple times (slam, slam, slam!) and…well, you get the picture. My kids either stay in the house, or when they go out there’s a quiet click as the door closes and we don’t see them or hear them for two or three hours. When they come back they quietly close the door. Ah, that’s nice.

The last difference is that younger kids get bored during the day. What? Bored? Did I mention that it’s VACATION? I guess that having fun for hours at a time gets old pretty quick for younger kids. You can only ride your bike, play games, watch movies, go to the beach and goof around for so long, and then it gets monotonous. Throw in breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between, and it seems like a pretty good day to me. I have a remedy for the boredom: sleep later and there won’t be as many hours to fill! That would take care of a couple of issues at the same time. We’d all be able to sleep later and the kids wouldn’t be so bored.

Now I don’t want it to sound like it was all bad or negative, because it wasn’t. It was actually a really great week. I had fun with the kids at the beach and I love to listen to them as they tell me about things from their perspective.  I got to spend some time with both my own kids, which doesn’t happen as much as I’d like these days. I got to spend some time with my in-laws, both of whom are kind, generous and entertaining. Last, but not least important, my wife and I got to spend a lot of time together, without the usual stuff that gets in the way at home, like work and schedules. You can’t beat that.

The week flew by and it wasn’t long before I was back to the real world. It’s at times like those that I sometimes wish I was still a kid, where vacation is not just a week or two, but the whole summer, and where I’d have so much time in the day to do whatever I wanted that I’d get bored. I’d just have to remember to close the door quietly on my way out.

Father's Day Thoughts

Last Sunday was Father’s Day and I desperately wanted to pull out something from my younger days to share with everybody. However, I couldn’t find anything that I wrote as a kid for Father’s Day. I guess that when I was a kid we didn’t do stuff like that for our Dads. It was definitely a different time. Let’s face it, back then most of our fathers were not very engaged with us and our lives. It was mostly the mothers that raised the kids and Dad was only brought in when the heavy artillery was needed. Still, I was hoping to find something.

Then I thought about a poem I wrote for my Dad for Father’s Day a couple of years before he passed away. I looked high and low, and couldn’t find a printed copy. I looked on old 3.5 inch floppy disks (yeah, I still have a few of them) and came up empty. I looked in the attic in some storage boxes and it was not to be found. So, I have nothing to share with you about Father’s Day from when I was kid. However, I can share some things I always think of when I think of my Dad:

•  I always knew when Dad was coming home because I could hear him whistling as he came up the walkway. I don’t know the songs he was whistling, but I’m sure they were classics from his life. That is something that was not passed down to my kids; I can’t imagine going around whistling Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, or even the Beatles.
• Whenever we sang “Let There Be Peace on Earth” at church, it brought tears to Dad’s eyes. When you’ve been in a war and seen things that you just don’t talk about, I guess singing about peace has a little more meaning to you. My son is in chorus at school and when they sang it for a show I, too, had tears in my eyes thinking of my Dad.
• On Sundays, Dad always made breakfast for us – bacon, eggs and toast. It was awesome to wake up after a nice, long, fun Saturday and smell the bacon cooking in the kitchen. Even if most times he overcooked it (unless you like it dry and rock hard), it was awesome to not have to make it myself.
• On Sunday afternoons, Dad always made hamburgers for lunch. He didn’t make little, scrawny, slider-like burgers; he made big, beefy burgers that took two hands to eat. The Burger King Whopper had nothing on Dad’s burgers!
• On Saturday afternoon, Dad would watch Candlepin Bowling, a local bowling show. He really got into it, and when a pin was wobbling he would yell “Get over!”  I tried that once when I was bowling and the people in the next lane did NOT appreciate it.
• Even though we weren’t very well off when I was a kid, my Dad was always willing to serve others and help wherever he could. When he tried to refuse a Thanksgiving turkey one year, we were all a little ticked off. However, now that I’m older I get it – there’s always someone who is in greater need than you and he thought someone else should have gotten it.
• When I wanted to learn how to play Cribbage, Dad patiently taught me, even when I made the same mistakes over and over. He took the time to explain what I could have done that would have been better. I, however, did not have that same patience when my kids were kicking my butt playing Trouble.

Maybe someday I will find a copy of that poem I wrote for my Dad. Even if I don’t, I still have a lot of great memories of him and the many things he taught us growing up. I hope that my kids have fond memories of me when I’m gone. I’m sure they’ll tell their kids how they kicked my butt playing…well, just about every game we played. I also hope they'll remember the good things I taught them.