I am in Maine visiting my father. My wife is not here. HIS wife is not here. For the first time ever in our entire lives, we are here together without women, trying to control small children. And we are not well-suited to the task. I mean, I am, obviously, but as a parenting team we leave a little to be desired.
For one thing, my Dad is a very traditional man in his sixties, meaning that the cooking and cleaning are not his job. But with his wife gone all week, he is suddenly in charge. And she has forbidden him in advance from ordering pizza. There is a menu taped to the counter, a complete list of every meal that he is going to make for us. “You know,” he said as he attempted to boil water, “this might be the first meal I’ve cooked in fifteen years.” This is not a comforting statement to hear from your chef twenty minutes before dinner, but it turned out alright. The kids both actually ate everything on their plates, and even had seconds. I believe it has also been at least fifteen years since the last time that happened as well.
And we have a parenting system down. Edward does something, Grampy tells him not to do it, he continues to do it, I repeat what Grampy has just said, Edward ignores me as well, Edward goes upstairs to think about what he has done, and I towel off the dog. It works fairly consistently, although I don’t think my father has the built-up patience that one requires when dealing with small children. Come to think of it, I don’t recall him ever having it, so perhaps nothing has changed. Either way, there is a lot of grumbling and head shaking.
Luckily, today is my wife’s birthday. Part of the reason we are here is that this place is much closer to her school than our house, so we are going to get to visit her. That should take a little bit of the pressure off. And tomorrow we may go off to the camp that my father’s wife is trying to get ready before the summer renters arrive, which will mean swimming, boating, and extra support in the childcare department. Not that we can’t do it on our own. It’s just…weird.
I don’t know that my father and I have every really done anything together. No trips, no projects, no joint efforts, no endeavors, and no collaboration. We chat about sports, music, and the general decline of society that began after the JFK assassination, but we don’t do anything together. Which is why this is so bizarre. If I was on my own, as I have been for the past month, I would be fine, but when suddenly faced with help from a man I have generally not relied on for assistance, I am off balance and in a fog. But in a good way. It’s kind of nice to have this time with him, for really the first time ever. I just don’t know what to do with it. Luckily we have a lot going on to keep us busy. I’ll get the towel.