chosen chaos

No. 2.

Dis­claimer:  Noth­ing in this post is intended to under­mine the hard work per­formed by SAHMs.  In fact, it’s not about you (assum­ing I’ve cap­tured a large por­tion of my wife’s audi­ence), it’s about HWDs (that’s Hard Work­ing Dads).  If any­thing I write rubs you the wrong way then you’re overly sen­si­tive.  After all, I’ve already acknowl­edged the dif­fi­cul­ties my wife faces as a SAHM and I pro­vided a dis­claimer.  Get over it.

The expec­ta­tions placed on Dads have evolved immensely over time.  As recently as two gen­er­a­tions ago, Dads were expected to act as bread­win­ners dur­ing the day and play dis­ci­pli­nar­ian at night.  Their “free” time usu­ally con­sisted of lawn work, any­thing requir­ing a ham­mer, or catch­ing up on the news.  This was largely the sta­tus quo and no one com­plained.  Well, times have changed.

It’s almost 9:00 p.m. and I’m exhausted.  My 4-​​year-​​old woke me up at 6:24.  After giv­ing him a hug, I looked at the clock and imme­di­ately felt guilty that I missed my wake up call to hit the gym.  Damn, already behind.  On the plus side, I was able to give both boys a quick hug before head­ing to work.  I leave them with the same mes­sage every day – be a good lis­tener, take care of your fam­ily, and have fun.  Do those three things and the rest will take care of itself.  After a 40 minute com­mute, I walked into the office min­utes before an 8:00 a.m. meet­ing (once again, behind).  The rest of the day was a blur of addi­tional meet­ings, e-​​mails, and head-​​scratching prob­lem solv­ing (I’ll spare you the details).  Oh, and 20-​​minutes for lunch, which I used to call home.  The “work” day wrapped up at 6:15, but the real work started when I arrived home.  “Dad, let’s go play TEE-​​BALL!”  It’s 95 f’ing degrees out and I haven’t had din­ner.  “You bet boys, let me grab a quick bite.”  Before I eat, how­ever, I rush over to the girls, give them both a kiss (equally of course), and goof off until I get a gig­gle.  The boys run around me in cir­cles while I scarf down din­ner and get the day’s report from the wife.  Unfor­tu­nately, I can only hear every other word because the boys are scream­ing for me to play, play, PLAY, while at the same time punch­ing me repeat­edly in the back (this is, appar­ently, very funny to the under-​​5 crowd).  Then it’s a quick change of clothes (after tak­ing the girls up for baths and kiss­ing them good­night) and out­side to pitch wif­fle balls.  After my shirt is soaked with sweat, we head inside for flash cards.  A lit­tle before 9:00 the boys head to bed.  “Dad, are you read­ing sto­ries tonight?”  F.  I’m tired, sweaty, and still try­ing to con­vince myself I’ll work­out.  Most nights I do read sto­ries.  I ask about their days, blow them kisses, and assure them they’re the best tee-​​ball play­ers I’ve ever seen.  But not tonight, I’m flat beat.  My wife takes story time and I walk down­stairs as the addi­tional guilt sets in.  No sto­ries, really?  What’s wrong with you slacker?  All they wanted was to hang with Dad.  Would 20 more min­utes really make a dif­fer­ence?  Some day you’ll want those 20 min­utes back.  Ugh.  I should have read sto­ries.   

Now, don’t take this the wrong way.  I have won­der­ful kids, a sup­port­ive wife, and a reward­ing career.  In fact, this post is more indica­tive of how lucky I am then any­thing else.  The point is to draw some atten­tion to mod­ern day dads, who are often over­looked.  It’s not the 1950s.  In addi­tion to work, we coach ath­let­ics, take part in school, teach life lessons, read sto­ries, give baths, put on paja­mas, do the dishes (when the wife has box­ing, yoga, or girls night), etc. etc. etc.  And you know what, we love it!  Most of us enjoy being mod­ern day dads.  My father was good at it and his gen­er­a­tion laid the ground­work.  When we don’t get a chance to do these things we feel guilty.  We try to be every­where all the time.  There’s only 24 hours in a day, but mod­ern day dads could use closer to 34.

It’s now 9:53.  The Reds lost and I’ve spent my free time writ­ing this post.  No work­ing out, which means an extra early morn­ing.  But like most mod­ern day dads, I can’t wait to start all over again tomor­row – hope­fully with hugs from the boys, because it doesn’t get bet­ter than that.  To mod­ern day dads, I salute you!  Now go get some sleep….               

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Curi­ous what No. 1 was?  See here

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