For my post this week, I have excerpted a set of short vignettes from my book A Father’s Collage. These vignettes capture moments with my children when they were young. I hope they bring a smile and remind you of times with your kids.
Choosing the TV channel
Jessica and Theresa are downstairs watching TV. They approached their mother about 30 minutes ago asking her to decide which of the two had the right to choose the next show.
She told them to work it out for themselves. I guess they did; it’s quiet downstairs.
Maybe they had a duel and shot each other.
I prefer to believe that conflict resolution skills were applied, and they are peacefully watching a test pattern or something else, like the Wonderful World of Insects, chosen by each to spite the other.
Dyeing your hands blue
Julia and I are tie-dying her socks using chemicals from a kit given by Uncle Kevin and Aunt Cheryl.
There are complicated instructions that required her father to read them several times. Mid-point in the directions it is noted that you shouldn’t get the dye on your hands.
“Whoops,” said Jessica staring at her all-blue hands.
I hope the stuff wears off/washes off sometime in the next year. This is the kind of activity that, in addition to traumatizing a kid who may have blue hands for the rest of her life, gets dads in trouble with moms.
Handling he cranky and hungry kid
The day was supposed to be warm and sunny. The warm part showed up. Sunny must have come down with the flu; gray and rainy were substituted.
Theresa’s normal sunny disposition seems to have also come down with the flu and been substituted with something that is a little whiny and demanding. She has just arrived to complain that her father has failed to make her chocolate chip pancakes and because of this horrible treatment of a child, she may not eat breakfast at all.
She’s staring at me right now. Fortunately, she doesn’t know that I can withstand the stare and scowl of a 6-year-old for months.
Getting ready for bed
It’s bedtime for the junior set.
Theresa is denying the time of day. We just finished watching an episode of Star Trek in which the ship went through a “time-space distortion of some major league threatening, but everyone will survive after 40 scary minutes, form.” This has probably led her to believe that the 8:05 on the clock is not real but rather one of your basic suspension of physics anomalies that plague households and star cruisers every now and then.
I’ll set my phaser on stun and zap her soon.
The insight of a child
Julia told me that the reason she doesn’t remember much from when she was a baby is that “My head was too small.” The kid is going to be a scientist.
Siblings as friends
I am peering through Theresa’s bedroom door, quietly shift my weight in order to see the scene creating the hushed dialogue.
Theresa is in bed, covers up to her neck. Left thumb in mouth. Right hand gripping her bedtime companion, bunny, tightly to her chest.
Jessic is lying on top of the bed, next to Theresa, holding a child’s oversized story book so that both of them can see. Reading to Theresa. Theresa gazing intently at the pictures.
I don’t know how often the older sister reads bedtime stories to the younger sister. An act of kindness. An act of love. An act that a father hopes is one of thousands of such acts between them over the course of their lives. An act that might mean that he, the father, has brought something good into the world.
I guess all parents hope for, and enjoy seeing, siblings being friends. Jessica in general has a deep and genuine warmth and expressiveness. Combining those characteristics with her beauty and ability to be very funny will undoubtedly cause several males to develop serious crushes. I hope she (and I) can handle the attention.