Great customer service

On the way home from the gym today I stopped to pick up some fast food for lunch. (And yes, I get the irony; don’t be snarky!)

Anyhow, it’s been a tough couple of weeks and the next few at work promise to be busy and stressful, although the road trip with daughters will be spirit mending. Meanwhile, I’m home alone, trying to stay busy and not think about problems and not worry about the folks I love.

So anyway, I’m not in the best frame of mind, generally speaking. And I didn’t feel like going home to eat and then going back out to run errands. So I turned into the fast food place with a familiar sense of surrender.
 
And then, through the drive through speaker (which worked well, believe it or not) came the friendliest voice you can imagine. This guy made me instantly feel like I’d fallen in with friends.  He joked without delaying me and made a suggestion that actually made sense and just made me feel like his only reason for being was to help me have a wonderful lunch experience.

Think about this: all he had to work with was a boring fast food chicken sandwich and his personality. And from those ingredients, he put together a truly positive luncheon experience for me.

When I pulled up to pay the guy had rotated away from the window so I passed kudos through his manager. And I hope the manager made this guy feel as special as he made me feel.

Sometimes, you just get the nicest surprises in the most unexpected places.

I've created a monster

‘Kay, so here’s how it played out:

Daughter One is coming home for awhile. This is a very good thing.

 In the course of discussing you know, stuff, I sort of allowed as how I’m concerned about my health from a gross tonnage standpoint and working on both my intake and exercise. This level of honesty would also be a good thing, but…

This was not long after I’d learned she has developed into quite a cook and just before I said something to the effect of “Yeah, I’d love to try your healthful recipes!”

Mary is on her side, as is Two, as are most of our common friends.

To recap: I was honest with my daughter about my health and welcoming of her offer to introduce me to some of her culinary faves. Someone please tell me how this turned so badly against me!

To a famous man

I don’t suppose you much care what I think.

Which is odd, because I am one of the people whose enjoyment of you as an entertainer brought you the fame that you so assiduously pursued for as long as I can remember. As a kid I memorized your Noah routine, as did all my best buddies. My friend Mark and I used to do our version of you asking “Who is this really?” and then crack up at our own comedic brilliance, much to the annoyance of Sister Basil.

I watched you in I Spy and on variety shows and when you got your own prime time show, I watched it every chance I got. You were the icon for a generation of Dads. And I followed along. I hope I’m a dad like him, I told myself. If only I could grow up to be as brilliant and funny and wise and caring as him.

Flavored gelatin seemed more desirable just because you took such delight in recommending it to us. Of course, gelatin is a kid thing and you were at your comedic / friendly / trustworthy best when making your cute, pucker-mouthed grin at a giggling child.

You were well-reasoned and caring and wise and playful and you did not interfere with your television wife having her own power. You respected yourself and your children and your elders and – ironically - women.

Respect was a big thematic thread for you. You famously slammed Richard Pryor for his blue humor. Some of us were proud of you for that stand. Wow, were we on the wrong side of that one!

And all that time, people were hurting. People you used and flung aside. People you drugged and raped. People who could not make their voices heard through the cacophony of our worship of you. People we should collectively have been protecting from you found nowhere to turn.

“I didn’t know” rang as hollow on my lips as on the lips of the residents of Oswiecim and Treblinka. It’s not enough to say you were famous. Or rich. Or that you made us laugh. You made us not listen to the ones you silenced and that’s on all of us.

I resent you for making me a bystander.

I resent you for making me regret my own laughter at your jokes while others were being crushed under your thumb.

I will resent you every time one of my daughters talks about her own encounters with perverts. I resent that they can’t be entirely comfortable walking alone or meeting a new man or wearing a bathing suit in public or, or, or …

You are the monster under the bed, the snake in the basket, the moving shadow in the night and the dread fear of every father of daughters.

You are the reason my daughters are afraid. But you will not win. Because my daughters are strong women who will not be defeated by you.

You are a horrific part of so many women’s pasts. And when you wonder, THAT is why from now, you have no future among civilized people.

Do what you can

Several people I love are hurting tonight. One due to an assault, one due to the death of a loved one and others for other reasons. None of them for reasons I can erase with my magic wand.

We can each and all only do what we can. So please, please, soon after you read this turn to someone you value and tell them why this is so.

I'll be back with you soon, promise.

Flurry of activity

I taught Daughter Two how to replace the working parts of a toilet today. Never mind that it took two tries because I failed to have her flush the line thoroughly and by the time we figured out we had crud in the pipes from work on the water main on the next block, we had ruined the replacement fill valve. My bad.

The point is that someday when Two’s own toilet fails to flush, she won’t have to wait a couple days for the landlord to get around to fixing it. Nor will she have to pay weekend or evening rates for a plumber. Ten bucks at the hardware store and ten minutes of work and the toilet is once again relief-ready.

When Daughter One had a flat whilst still a student driver, I coached her through changing it. She did just fine and didn’t even complain about getting to her voice lesson with filthy hands.

My daughters are definitely girls. That doesn’t mean they should have to rely on males for the everyday mechanics of life. I didn’t try to make them into boys. But being self-reliant shouldn’t be gender specific.

Proud of both of them.

So, why the title? I wrote this while staying out of the way. Mary is helping Two with final preparations for her post-grad trip to Europe. Since it is now 11:23pm and Two and friend have to be at the airport at 4:00am, I sorta figured my best move would involve hiding in the office, writing.

Of course, I could have stood in the hallway pontificating about the fact that her packing could have been finished earlier, say yesterday. But I opted to remain among the living; hence the hiding.

Moral: When there’s an oh-crap-I-have-to-be-at-Jessica’s-an-hour-ago-and-I’m-not-packed flurry of activity, just stay out of the way and think nice things about the flurriers. It’s kinder this way.

Also, smarter.

Learning experience

Just returned from a road trip with Two to visit my family in the California bay area. It was a trip in more ways than one. Got to visit with two of my three sisters and their esposas, my brother and his, in a setting that was free of hoopla, agendas or expectations. It was special. Among the specialities (yes I know, but I’ll spell it as I wish!):

·        Visiting with Anne and Gary and finally getting to know him much better before their wedding in the Fall (he’s a nutball and so will fit right in);

·        Lots of chat with everyone about just whatever came to mind;

·        Got to see and interact with the new circle of cousins (my great nieces and nephews);

·        A wonderful reunion with a nephew I haven’t seen in years;

·        Scored some used books from Pat and Patty;

·        Schooled Pat on helicopter piloting;

·        Enjoyed some cool fireworks courtesy of City of Morgan Hill;

·        Forgot about work (almost) entirely.

Far and away the best part of the trip was the time in the car with Two, especially on the way home. For those who haven’t made the trip, it’s fourteen-and-a-half hours, an easy drive but a long one to do in a day. On the way down, Two slept and recovered from a nasty cold while I listened to a book on CD, munched Cheetos and wondered what people did who work in that building. Coming back, she shared the driving chore and with several days together behind us, we eased into heart-to-heart mode.

I learned more about her life at MIT, about her vision for her future, lots of personal and family stuff I won’t go into here. We really got to share and I learned a great deal, not just about her but about being a young women in post-millennial USA. And yes, about us as two adults, as father and daughter, as elder looking back and younger looking forward. And looking forward together.

I will drive again with her in August to facilitate her move to Chicago and of course, I look forward to that trip, as well. Then I will be driving back to Seattle with One the next week and that trip just has me all choked up in anticipation. I just can’t wait to get on the road with her and talk about anything and everything. She’s far enough past college that we’ll have a wealth of experience and outlook and forks in roads to discuss. She’ll play her music and we’ll talk about da book and books and ideas for writing. And her experiences as a young adult, which explorations worked for her and which not so much. I truly can’t wait! I can learn from this young women who had the courage to pursue a dream that would have scared me silly at her age.

I’ve always loved my daughters and they were fun kids (well, usually anyway…). But the young women they’ve become are fantastic people and the opportunity to spend whole days just chatting with each of them is precious. Being a dad is an incredible honor and also a lifelong learning experience.

Car tuned, check. Leave scheduled, check. House sitter lined up, check. Bring it on!

And yes, I do know how fortunate I am.