Big World Events and a Fatherless Father's Day
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One day recently, I was pushing my four-year-old daughter on the swing and she asked me to stop for a second so she could go examine something across the yard.
It turns out what she saw was a grouping of three white mushrooms. We walked over to them and she pointed out that there was a Mommy mushroom, a Daddy mushroom, and a Baby mushroom. Then she spied a few more mushrooms in other parts of the yard and labeled them Grandpa mushroom and Grandma mushroom and so on.
I’ve noticed that all my children do this — their default when they see any group of objects or animals or whatever is to describe them as a family and assign each of the members of the group a role.
It’s funny, but I guess it makes sense because family is what children know best.
And really, adults aren’t much different. At least I know I’m not.
For example, when world changing events happen, things that are difficult to understand or put in context, my first instinct is to think about what my family and friends will think, how they will react.
Of course, when those people you care about aren’t around anymore, you kind of just have to guess.
My dad died in December so this will be my first Father’s Day without him. And while the arbitrary holiday itself isn’t particularly meaningful to me, I feel it’s somehow significant that this is my first fatherless one.
When I look at the calendar, my dad hasn’t been gone long, but it some ways it feels like it’s been a decade. And not in the “feels like Dad died last decade, doesn’t it? Hahaha” way, though you better believe I wasn’t going to miss the chance to use that joke.
We’ve seemingly packed a ten years’ worth of events into the last few months. I mean, do you even remember that Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several other people died in a helicopter crash only five months ago?
The pandemic, of course, was the event that wiped everything off the map from March until Memorial Day.
Covid-nineteen would’ve been a complete nightmare for my dad. Especially a couple years ago when he was more active because keeping him away from Lowe’s for months or a year would’ve been a colossal struggle.
The virus consumed our thoughts for months, but then a cop murdered a man on camera and the righteous rage that followed made us forget the pandemic in the blink of an eye.
My dad was caring and kind and had no tolerance for treating anyone poorly for any reason, especially not their skin color. I can only assume he would’ve been happy to see people speaking up. And, of course, he would’ve continued to be flabbergasted by the President of the United States.
In his last years, I remember my dad rolling along, pushing himself with his feet as he maneuvered his wheelchair or walker from his bedroom to the dining room table at dinner time.
Many times, I assume because he’d been watching cable news, he would say something like, “did you hear what Trump did now?”
My mom would ask what he did, and my dad would try to explain. If you’ve been paying attention the last four years or so, it probably comes as no surprise that it was often difficult to determine where Dad’s dementia left off and the reality of what Trump had been doing picked up.
His description of events always seemed a bit off, but not totally implausible considering what we know. I mean, if he would’ve told us Trump had protesters gassed so he could walk across the street to hold up a Bible upside down, I’m sure all of us would’ve smiled politely as if to say, “OK, Dad. Whatever you say!”
With everything that’s gone on over the last month, I can only imagine what he would’ve thought about everything Trump has been up to.
This has been such a profoundly weird time.
I haven’t been writing all that much lately, but that’s probably not surprising because I haven’t been doing much of anything lately. Certainly not much of anything that involves leaving the house.
Mostly out of necessity, I’ve retreated from the world and reveled in the comfort and frustration of having my immediate family with me twenty-four, seven.
Of course, it is odd that we’ve never been together more, and yet, it feels like I’m spending less quality time with my kids than ever. I look back through my photos and glance at my old articles and it’s all there. The things we used to do, the weird games we used to play, and the funny things they used to say.
But now? Every day feels the same. Lots of TV and video games and work and maybe watching the kids play in the sprinklers as the sun bakes down and the afternoon thunderheads loom in the distance.
The encounter my daughter and I had with the little mushroom family is one of those moments that seemed to be more common in previous years and less frequent now.
It makes me a little sad that many of those days may be gone, perhaps forever. Children grow up and they begin to do more activities on their own. Parents get older and eventually die. Pandemics and national tragedies and horrific events come and go, and we struggle to comprehend them until they begin to seem somehow normal.
Through it all, we take comfort in the familiar. Whether it’s a family of mushrooms or our real family. And we mark days in our memory with little asterisks.
Sometimes it’s a momentous event that changes the entire world, and sometimes it’s something much smaller. Like one person’s first fatherless Father’s Day.
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