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The Dad
I just figured something out. I am the
“Dad”. I don’t know why it took me
so long to come to terms with that, but on a recent
camping trip I realized that my role had changed.
I’ve understood my role in the rest of life
for quite some time, but on camping trips, it
hadn’t seemed to sink in. I did what The Dad
was supposed to do, but without really grasping all
of the significance. Does that make sense?
I have gone camping my entire life. (Rumor has
it that I was conceived in a tent.) In all that
time, I have had many roles. For a long time, I was
a “Kid”. A Kid does not have to do
anything but survive a long car trip, not fall in
the fire, avoid poison ivy, and be around for
meals.
When I hit my early twenties, I became an
“Independent Adult”. That meant that I
was expected to participate a little in the work of
the vacation. I would chop wood, help pitch the
tent, or at least bring beer.
Now, I am the Dad. I am responsible for pulling
the camper (we’ve upgraded). I have to set it
up while my Kids jump on their bikes (after I
remove them from the roof) and explore, trying to
avoid the poison ivy. My wife, Liz, helps, of
course. She is the Mom. Together, we do the sweaty
work of unpacking and setting up the campsite so
when our kids come back, they will have something
to eat and somewhere to sleep.
The uniqueness of my role appeared one night
when the Kids and the Mom were all safely stowed in
the camper, quietly falling asleep. That’s
when we were visited by our marauding neighbors,
the Raccoons. Their role is to scour our campsite
for a poorly secured cooler and empty it of all of
its butter. This pack was made up of a big fat Mom
and five cute little puffball Kids. When I realized
that one of the coolers’ lids was being
loosened, I knew I had to go outside and protect
it. I put my shoes back on and loudly opened the
door. This sent all of the Kids scurrying off into
the woods. The Mom looked at me for a moment,
huffed like I was being rude by interrupting her
business, and waddled off to collect her Kids.
I kept shining my flashlight into the woods to
protect my back from a Ravenous Flying Raccoon
Attack From The Rear (it could happen!) After I
wedged one of my shoes between the picnic
table’s bench and the loose cooler, I did a
sweep of the site to see if anything else had been
overlooked. When I saw a skunk in the screen house,
I hot-footed it back into the camper. He could have
whatever he wanted.
That’s when I realized that I had become
the Dad. When I was a Kid, that’s what my Dad
did. He braved the dark wilderness to protect us
and our food. I don’t remember him running
from a skunk, but I do remember him washing our dog
in tomato juice. I knew in that instant that I had
accepted a mantle of sorts. Not the kind of mantle
in a Coleman lantern, but a mantle of leadership,
of guardianship, of…the Dad. It certainly
didn’t change what I did or how I camped, but
it changed the way I looked at what camping should
be. It also made me have more respect for my own
Dad.
The Light is Still at the End
I was almost there. I had almost reached that
elusive, magical moment in the day called,
“Everything Is Crossed Off My Things-To-Do
List.” I began to imagine the short nap I
would take before starting dinner. I would take it
not because I needed one, but because I had time to
take it. I even began composing the column that
would celebrate this rare triumph.
I was halfway through the penultimate (second to
last) item on my TTD List and the end was near.
That chore was to clean the cobwebs off the front
porch. It sounds odd, but I never noticed them
before the previous evening when some friends were
leaving our house. I usually walk with my eyes
down, scanning for toys or small children to avoid
stepping on, so the spiders had erected quite an
array of webs and egg sacs in the upper corners of
the overhang.
I took a broom and then a hose to the ceiling
and walls of the porch. As I was finishing, I
noticed that the ground cover nearby was beginning
to spread onto the front walkway. A fresh, clean
porch deserves to have a crisp walk leading to it,
I thought. So, I trimmed the ivy back into its
allotted space. Since I had the edger out already,
it made no sense not to finish edging the grass all
the way to the driveway.
On the other side of the walk, the holly bushes
that I am trying to coax into being a hedge looked
awfully unruly across from the manicured
landscaping. It didn’t take too long to trim
the errant branches and encourage the bushes to
grow in the right direction. By winter of 2011, I
should have a solid wall of green spiky leaves and
poisonous red berries.
However, tidying up the bushes made the leaves
covering the ground surrounding them look less than
rustic, as I had decided in the Spring. They looked
downright disheveled. They had to go. I raked them
up and took two wheelbarrowfulls to the mulch pile
out back.
That made quite a mess on the walkway, so the
hose came back out and I sprayed everything down.
Finally, the front of the house looked completely
rejuvenated, almost new. It sparkled like the
minivan after a car wash. And it only
took…
It took all the time I had before I had to start
making dinner. No nap. No finished To Do list. No
celebration column. Just this one. Oh well.
Tomorrow’s Things-To-Do list will have one
more item on it. Maybe I can finish that one.
©2008, Mark
Phillips
* * *
Women, it's true, make human beings, but
only men can make men. - Margaret Mead
Mark
Phillips is a Stay-At-Home-Dad and freelance
writer. Along with raising his four children, he is
developing a franchise called “The Vacuum IS a
Power Tool.” It is designed to help SAHDs
maintain that which makes us men, instead of hairy
Mom-substitutes. He earned a B.S. in
Communication/Theatre Arts and teaching
certificates in English, public speaking, and
psychology from Eastern Michigan University. After
six years as a high school English teacher and
Director of Dramatic Arts at Powers Catholic High
School in Flint, Michigan, he changed careers and
became a Stay-At-Home-Dad. www.TheVacuumIsAPowerTool.com
or E-Mail
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