Always Coming Home...

“Dad, I’m the only person you know who likes the way you drive,” he says, almost smiling, almost serious, looking hesitantly up to make sure I’m taking the comment as a compliment and not criticism. It is three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun makes this January 13th feel like a Fourth of July, and the smell of gasoline adds a bit to the barbeque feeling. It is, in any case, a holiday for us, a get-away weekend in Tijuana, just the two of us. I smile and tell him it takes a while to drive well fast and that he should start slow and learn how before he tries to do it quickly. Of speed, like most things excessive, I tell both of my kids they can decide just how much is too much on their own, once they’re old enough and mature enough to make such decisions—for the time being, it’s just a matter of getting older. Once they’re older, the list includes other benchmarks of maturity, including a decent education, a modicum of demonstrated intelligence, and some stability—like getting and holding a job.

It’s true. I have become my father.

I am both cool and mildly permissive, which they like; I am a clean slate on which they can experiment new styles; I am a sounding board for their deepest, darkest secrets, as I am very much committed to their well-being, but detached enough by simply not living with them that I can contribute a somewhat-objective point of view. And G-d knows I can bite my tongue when I don’t like what they decide. Childhood is, after all, the time to get the scrapes and cuts and black eyes and (may He in His mercy please forbid) broken bones. But I am also sometimes irascible and often simply incomprehensible and many times just crazy. I come from a world very much different from theirs and things can get lost in translation.

So speed is my translator right now—and shopping. My son and I go fast—no, really, fast!—and my daughter and I spend quality time picking out shoes—and I mean LOTS of it. I guess she does have a little advantage in a gay father. At the very least, I can put a good outfit together. It’s harder for him, but then he was always the mature one (and I’m comparing him to me, not to her). It is a good thing I’m equally at ease working on the car, or working on the computer with him hunting down all the goodies we’re going to put in the car.

In the end, I guess, you live your life the best way that you can and pray to G-d your children will forgive you—no matter what you do, they’ll find fault in it, mostly because you failed to prove you were superman, or Jesus Christ himself. I can’t walk on water—I tried! When I was eight, after reading the Bible, I tried out the pool and sank like a stone—albeit a thin, well-shaped stone. Still, I've measured their lives out in sighs and tears, and gasps and fears. Their hopes have been my dreams and their fears my nightmares. Their dreams have been my goals and I have worked my fingers to the bone to get them. They're mine, darn it! Mine and only mine! Until they're only theirs—and then I'll be content to rest down in the ground.



Oh, and another thing, one that helps me more than most anything else with my children… I am the only person they know with a shorter attention span. I am guaranteed to be fun—in short spurts when I concentrate really hard… but I get bored really easily… and this is long and I am done… and there’s coffee to be had… there’s gotta be a starbucks within fifty miles… remind me to write the rest of this when I come back.