Running In Place

Last night we attended a ceremony to see my Dad’s installation as Commander of his American Legion post.

Ever since he retired, 9 or so years ago, he’s really put his heart and soul into the community, working with the Legion and with the Boy Scouts. 

It was nice to see him recognized.  He’s a guy who would never ask anyone else to work harder than he would work himself.  He’s got an affable good humor and genuineness.  He’s got the sensibility that comes from growing up in a tiny house with no indoor plumbing, in a tiny town smack in the middle of the country - from working hard all his life - in the Army during the war, as a housebuilder, a long-haul trucker, a carpet layer, a warehouse foreman, and probably some other things in between that I don’t even know about.  Boys and dogs are instantly drawn to him.  He’s 6′ 6″ tall, but when I was little I remember he drove a Karmann Ghia for a short time - possibly the only time he drove something other than a pick-up truck.  He eventually gave the sports car to my mom.  He and my mother split when I was 2 but he still called her Babes whenever he came to pick me up.  He still calls me Babes too, even though I’m his nearly 40 year old kid.  When my mother was dying, he dressed in a suit and came to see her.  I’ll never forget how it felt to see them together one last time.  I left them alone and I don’t know what they talked about but it was probably good memories.  They had always had a tremendous affection and respect for each other that transcended marriage and divorce.  My Dad has been married to my step-mom for 25 years now.  He raised her son from the time the boy was 5 - that’s how he got into scouts.  Thanks to Dad, my step-brother eventually became an Eagle Scout.  My step-mom has been the coordinator, planner, and encourager of all Dad’s pursuits.  With her financial saavy, she was able to make it possible for both of them to retire early.  For nearly every activity he’s involved in, she’s right beside him doing it too. 

 Thanks Sue

Being at the ceremony, seeing the respect and goodwill his fellow Legionnaires obviously feel for him, has got me feeling reflective about his life (and consequently, my own).  Thinking of all the times I fell away and didn’t call him or show up for visits and he welcomed me back with no lecture or guilt trip - the first time I drank and my friends ditched me and he came and picked me up and never told Mom, the first time I had a hickey and he never freaked or called me out on it - just acted like the bandana wrapped around my neck, like some Hee Haw reject, was perfectly normal.  He never pulled that overprotective, controlling father act that, I think, alienates kids right at a time when they need to feel accepted.  He just quietly, sometimes helplessly, waited - waited for me to come back around, waited for me to send up a flare, waited for me to figure out what was right for me.  I don’t see him as being lenient - there was not a desire to spoil or please me.  Moreso, I think he is patient and he is present, and seems to have an inherent understanding that all things will come of their own time.  Swedish Lutheran to the core.     

I think he’s going to make a great Commander.  And, although he would likely never consider taking a prideful moment, I am proud as hell of him. 

My husband and son are having a nearly heated argument about the boy cleaning his shit-hole of a bedroom.  The kid is coming up with some very passionate arguments about his “system,” which evidently includes filing folded up pieces of paper “that one of his teacher’s might ask for” all over the floor.  This system also extends, apparently, to the mix of clean and dirty clothes strewn about.  And don’t even ask about the closet, believe me that you don’t want to know.  The kid is pointing out to the old man that you can’t exert your ”value system” on another person - and that the two of them have a different value system.  The old man is pointing out that he is not asking him to worship a different god or change his ideological beliefs - just to pick the crap up off of his floor.  

Here is me, on the porch, listening - screaming inside my head but keeping my mouth clamped tight.  My contribution would likely be of the “I PUT A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD,” or “YOU NEVER LIFT A FINGER AROUND HERE” or better still “YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN PLACE.”  Whether my argument is right or wrong, it will add nothing but ill feelings to the debate at hand.  So I sit, and grit the teeth, and know that the old man will prevail because he rarely lets ‘nearly heated’ become an actual argument.  He meets accusations with measured responses, addresses sarcasm with rationales, asks challenging questions when faced with faulty logic.  I remember having these exact same arguments with my mother - but she pulled the authoritarian line with me and my room got cleaned by me because the alternative was her cleaning it for me, with a Hefty bag (and it wasn’t an idle threat, she had done it).  So, although I quite strongly suspect that the kid’s arguments regarding his filing system and his values are somewhat (maybe mostly) related to not wanting to attack the huge project of putting that 12′x12′ dump into some semblence of order, the other piece of it - and perhaps the most significant - is his sense of autonomy.  I hoisted the “It’s MY Room!!” argument on my mom and although a part of it was fueled by straight-up laziness, another part really was about what I considered to be a piece of my value system at the time - that being that neatness and order and cleanliness and, maybe most of all, keeping up appearances, was not as important to me as it was to her.  So, although my first, reactionary instinct is to say he’s avoiding cleaning his room out of sheer laziness, I have to recognize that those ”value” arguments are not necessarily the smoke screen that it would be easy to catagorize them as.  Sure, we could say Dammit, clean up your room because I said so!!  We are the parents and we supposedly have that right.  But the kid is 17, he’s not hardly a kid anymore.  Shit, I was out on my own by the time I was his age - and my first apartment was a mess.  I lived out all that slovenliness just like I had always wanted the right to do.  And it got old after not too long.  Maybe forcing him to clean his room is not necessarily teaching him some important life lesson.  Maybe it’s easier to just close his bedroom door when company comes - not because it’s easier to not have to fight about it, but easier because in the end, he’ll find his own way through.  If his filing system really and truly is folded up pieces of paper on the floor then so be it, if it’s really not - he’ll let go of the pretense and find what truly works for him……eventually.  Unfortunately, probably not while living in this house.  *sigh*

1)  Foot:  less swollen, not unswollen.  Vague pain, not absense of pain.  Just enough of each to be convinced that today’s not the day to strap on the sneaks, but not enough of either to hope that tomorrow won’t be the day.  Hope and disappointment - 2 sides of the same injured coin.  But.  Tomorrow may be the day.