Macaroni Dad

As I sit here I realize old mama Macaroni and I fired up the factory a little more than 9 years ago to make something wonderful happen, but if we hadn’t...we’d be sitting here alone – eating a large pizza. We instead are graced with the magical presence of our youngest child who is the last of three for this family. She will be our last chance to get it right. I still wonder to this day who decided we were even qualified to bring actual life forms into the world. I am pretty well qualified to screw up most things in my own life...I am fairly confident I am building an 8 year old catastrophe across the table from me.

When you are knee deep in diapers, breast feeding and car seats there really isn’t time to think about your kids growing up and emptying the nest. You don’t necessary wonder about their well-being or where they might live or who they might marry when they get old enough because life isn’t as much a planned event as it is a fire drill for survival. When you have two out of the house and a third one at 8 years old -- and almost half-way through her time living at home -- you begin to wonder how quiet the house will be without any kids in it. You begin to think more. For me it’s a pretty scary thought. It should make me drink beer, celebrate and smash cans on my head, but instead it makes my eyes well up and wonder what we might do with our lives when all the kids are gone.

Mama Macaroni has her first child who is well on his way to leaving his parental units in the rear view and living comfortably outside of D.C. I have my first child, now at 21, who is building vital character and embracing life while grabbing it by the horns as a Gator in Gainesville. That leaves the “ours” child, who was sitting across from me at the dinner table this evening  telling an overly and intricately detailed story about how a misunderstanding at school and a gossip trail might have a boy thinking that she likes him. I was in awe. Wisps of hair curl around her face because at one point today she was apparently very sweaty. She sits taller in an adult sized chair than I remember. Her face was so animated as she told us how this story circulated around the entire class and how she tried to comfort a friend to set it straight. She never sits still at the table, it’s like she has jumping beans inside. She picked and plucked at her pizza until she finally dropped what was left of the crust on the floor.

“Can I eat it still?”

Being an avid food safety professional I told her what any health conscientious dad would say.

“Honey, it was less than 5 seconds.”

I wasn’t listening to the entire story, but was engrossed for the presentation nonetheless. I was thrilled actually that she was talking to us. Most evenings she comes home and we ask her how her day went and get answers of one or two words. Tonight was different for some reason. She was really letting us know all the stuff. Stuff about her friends and how kids would say stuff about other kids and how even at 8 years old the drama was already playing out like you would expect to hear from teenagers twice her age. I was happy for a moment that the problems she was facing were so simple and innocuous. There was an innocence to her words and I felt sorrow in knowing that she was experiencing pain and hurt and frustration as she processes, reacts and learns to cope. There was a helplessness knowing that if we were to be really good parents we wouldn’t get involved but would talk her through the challenges and hopefully give her the tools she would need to survive approaching cataclysmic events that often occur in the 3rd grade.

I looked to my wife and gave her a little smile. We both knew that there will come a day when we won’t be so important in this little life. Right now, I am going to drink this in.

In true man fashion I went into the zone. I heard someone today describe this as the ‘No Zone.’ I see her mouth moving but I no longer hear the words. I am an expert at this because I practice sometimes when her mother speaks. She is still telling her story but I am elsewhere. I am smiling. I am proud. I really love this little creature. Did we really make her? Good lord I used to hold her like a football. What will she be when she grows up? Will she be weaker for being the last child? Should we have tried harder to give her a sibling? Should I have been tougher on her? Stronger? Softer? What could/should I do differently to give her the backbone and strength she needs to be all she can be. By trying to do everything right I am sure I am inevitably doing some things wrong.

Whether we wanted to or not, we made mistakes. We never made decisions to purposefully screw up our kids, but it happens. At some point there is a harsh realization that we are all just older kids ourselves, wrecked and wounded, at various levels of maturity trying our best to raise healthy children of our own. Some of the junk we carried is going to get scraped off, but some is going to stick to them. Hopefully they get the tools they need and the guts to distance themselves as far away from the bad stuff as they can. Hopefully they learn to fly higher than we ever learned to. Hopefully they leave us in the dust. We never really know how much we screwed them up or how much they learned until we get to gaze on them from afar....but right now, from a distance and from across the table, the three of them look to me like giants, and I think they might make mom and dad look like amateurs.