Suburban Expedition: The Perils and Pleasures of Dadhood

Finally, we had a nice two-story, split-level colonial in the ‘burbs. Not just any ‘burb, but Pittsford, one of the most affluent in the Rochester area. Of course, we were on the lower end of the affluent, in the sense we still had to mow our lawns, but had the pleasure of paying high taxes. It was a fine neighborhood, with young families like ours and established families, doing our best to stay off each other’s nerves.

Like our neighbors, we enjoyed well-groomed lawns, with the lawn care companies regularly running down the streets, troops of riding mowers and guys with leaf blowers that utilized spare jet engines from an Army/Navy store, blowing not just leaves on the ground but denuding trees if they happen to point the portable jet stream skyward. Then the guys would come out on their standing fertilizer spreaders running around on the lawns. We had our own fertilizer spreader, as we always had a dog; we opted not for a boring uniform healthy green color, but a patchwork of greens, and in some spots, yellow.

It was an odd thing in our house because my then-wife would occasionally speak some French spontaneously as she would list off things to friends and relatives that needed attention around the house, such as “Oui need to clean the roof gutters” or “Oui need to paint the bedroom”. Not sure why she did that. I always did the work alone, and there was no need to remind me every six months. She always provided me a list of things to do, so complete and well-thought-out, it made the coronation of King Charles seem like an impulse.

At least I had my little place in the home, in the cellar, of course. A wood shop, where I would make tables, chairs, and clocks to sell online and to repair things around the house. I valued the shop greatly, having picked out all my equipment with care, rivaling that of what NASA would do for Space Shuttle missions. When we divorced, all of those things had to be sold off, as apartment complexes generally frown upon planing stock at night with an incredibly loud machine. Putting a beloved dog down, leaving a favorite job, being a Buffalo Bills fan - all of those painful experiences pale in comparison to having had to sell all of those beloved tools.  When I left the basement one last time, looking back in tears, I swear I could hear off in the distance the sound of Taps playing.

Being a dad was a many-faceted job; I was the home Reich chancellor, with my word being the final word (as long as my wife approved), but I was also the babysitter, repairman, storyteller, and secretary general of the home, should my neighbors come knocking with “concerns”. We would take turns reading to the kids in bed at night, often rereading their favorites dozens and dozens of times over the years, with character voices so good, that Mel Blanc used to call me for tutoring. I was also in charge of home defense, both in the physical way, in case an axe-murderer came in, and also for the internet; the latter being much more difficult. Seal Team Six could have been doing an assault on the place and I could have better defended against that, than the evils that could be found on the internet. I thought I had access locked down so tight, that NORAD would send me a warning if my kids typed in “chicken breast” as a search term, but I was wrong, very wrong. Why the NSA doesn’t employ highly motivated 14-year-olds to get around security measures is beyond me. I swear, the Berlin Wall and WWII cryptic codes wouldn’t stand a chance if my kids wanted to do something.

It’s a weird dynamic young teens have with their parents; they do things they don’t think the parent knows about, but do, and of course, they do get away with things we don’t know about - and don’t want to know about. Conversely, they know stuff about we parents think we had well hidden, only to find out years later, uh, yeah, they knew about that.

Ah, they were so like me, in my troubled youth.