Category: Family

The 6th year of life is a turning point for many children. It seems like that is the year kids learn how to swim, how to ride their bikes, and they start asking questions that are a little more difficult to answer. I did those things when I was six. I also learned that Dad wouldn’t always be there for me, but that I could find the strength to go on without him.

There comes a time in all of our lives when we have to take the training wheels off. We start by feeding themselves, going to the bathroom on our own, and getting dressed. Eventually we choose our friends, register for high school classes, drive a car, and get a job. Our instinct as parents is to prevent our children from falling and getting hurt as they make these life choices. We don’t want to see our children suffering because of bad decisions. The problem with this is that we humans often learn by doing, and by failing. To learn how to make decisions, we need to make decisions. As parents, it’s OK to be training wheels for our kids, but eventually they need to learn how to ride the bike on their own, even if they get hurt.

When I was 6 years old we lived on Dragon Killer Circle. What a great name for a street! We lived in single family, Navy housing, and Dragon Killer Circle had no through traffic. A perfect place to learn how to ride a bike. Recently, I’ve seen some tiny tykes pushing themselves around on miniature bicycles without any pedals. That’s a neat way to learn, but I didn’t have that. I had the good old fashioned training wheels. They were terrible.

Think about it. They only supported the back tire. It’s as if someone was trying to design an unholy tricycle/bicycle hybrid that was made to tip over. They didn’t teach balance, and if you tried to turn, the training wheels prevented you from leaning into it. The only thing left to do was pedal straight, on a newly paved road. God forbid that a small rock, or a crack in the sidewalk would catch under one of those hard, rubber training wheels.

Fortunately, Dragon Killer Circle was a nice, smooth road with very little traffic on it. I was able to pedal straight, hop off, turn around, get back on, and pedal back, over and over. Dad raised the training wheels a bit so I’d have to balance more. I hacked the system though, and would ride the left training wheel hard, leaning precariously. This made it tough to ride in a straight line, so I’d have to continually adjust, slowly meandering down the street like a drunkard with a shortened left leg. Hop off, turn around, and pedal back. (Hiccup)

Eventually it was time. Dad took the training wheels off. “Don’t worry, I’ll be holding on to the back,” he assured me.

I remember the sun and the wind. I remember the freedom of peddling and knowing that Dad was there to make sure I didn’t fall. I went so fast that it brought tears to my little eyes. I had a huge grin on my face. The grin of a kid experiencing a wondrous freedom for the very first time. I heard Dad whooping and cheering me on, which encouraged me to peddle faster, but something was amiss. In the back of my mind I realized that it sounded like Dad was pretty far away. I looked over my shoulder and there he was in the distance, shouting, waving, and laughing. Way in the distance.

“Dad!?!?” I choke-screamed, as the bike started wobbling. I stopped peddling and tried to control the left and right twisting of the front tire, but fear overtook me. Like Peter on the raging waves, all I could see was the curb and the street racing by so incredibly dangerously fast. Without Dad to support me I couldn’t do it. I crashed spectacularly. I say it was spectacular because Dad came running up laughing and throwing around words like “PHENOMENAL” and “AWESOME.” Plus, there was a lot of blood, and as we all know there is a direct correlation between bloodiness and epicness when we’re reliving childhood adventures.

I felt betrayed by Dad. He said he would be there for me. He claimed I was going “so fast” that he couldn’t keep up. Plus, look how far I had gone without him! That mollified my anger a little bit as I recalled the speed and freedom of the wild ride. I wanted to do it again, and (spoiler alert) I soon learned how to ride a bicycle. I don’t remember any of the other lessons or how many times I fell. I do remember that first crash though, and the realization that I could accomplish something on my own. I was a Dragon Killer.

That is probably my earliest memory of Dad, and it is perfect. It is Dad supporting, encouraging, and telling a little fib, as he helped me work through a quintessential childhood challenge. Lianne just read a book titled, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. Dad let go. I failed. And because of that failure I was able to succeed. As parents we need to take the training wheels off, let go, and then cheer like crazy as our kids go slay some dragons.

“Pump it 3 times.”

“Ok, now pump it 3 more times, then hold it.”

No, these are not the lyrics to a popular wedding party song. This is my Dad, under the van, talking to the young me, sitting in the driver’s seat. He’s bleeding the brakes. I love those memories of working with Dad on the cars. I’ll never forget being strong enough to actually help, and still small enough to get my hands into tight spots that he couldn’t reach. We’d listen to talk radio and chat and work. He was the walking stereotype of a backyard mechanic. Duct tape, zip ties, engine grease, and dirty hands were part and parcel of many a weekend in our driveway when I was growing up. Chilton was his best friend.

Continue reading Pump It Three Times

I get up and shuffle down the hallway toward the garage to work out at 5:30 in the morning. First, my left big toe pops. Then my right knee. Then I feel a little tightness in my ankles, so I twist them one at a time and am rewarded with a satisfying pop from both. This reminds me of Dad.

Growing up we had a wood burning, cast iron, fireplace insert that we used to heat the living room. Dad was usually the first one up, and he’d get the fire started in the winter. Sometimes, however, I managed to get downstairs before him. I’d put some kindling on the embers from the night before and gently blow on them to get the fire going. It wouldn’t take long for Dad to wake up, and I always knew when he was heading down the stairs because I could hear him coming.

Continue reading Creaking Joints

I’ve got Dad’s truck now. It’s a 2WD Toyota with a medium cab. It’s nothing fancy, but it does come in handy. We’ve picked up big loads of mushroom compost for our garden, and we’ve used it to move beehives back and forth from the property. As an added benefit, once I got the truck I became much more popular. I found out that I had more friends than I realized, and all of them are moving stuff for some reason.

So it was that I found myself helping a friend of a friend move the other day. It was raining. The two apartments were only a few miles apart, and I like helping people move, so it was no problem. In fact, it was fun. It takes a rare combination of strength, agility, and guile to be a mover. Fortunately I have all 3 in good measure. There’s also an aspect of spatial awareness that comes in handy when you’re trying to squeeze an overstuffed couch around a 90 degree turn. I’ve played a lot of Tetris in my day, so like a good supervisor, I stood to the side and told the guys how to rotate and lift the couch so that it fit through the opening perfectly. They couldn’t have done it without me.

We couldn’t have done it without the truck either. I was proud of the way we stacked a large couch, and a queen sized box spring and mattress on the relatively small truck bed. I tied it down with a rope and a luggage strap, but it didn’t look safe at all. The mattress and box spring extended up precariously, well past the top of the truck. As I drove to the new apartment I reminisced about that time the dresser broke free from it’s moorings and slid right out of the back of the truck up on Diamond Springs Road. Then there was that time we took the chicken coop to an Earth Day event. The wind caught up under the shingles and flipped the whole thing out of the back of the truck and it smashed all over the road. We at least had the foresight to take the chickens separately in the van, otherwise we may have been eating chicken stew for dinner.

I looked back at the mattress swaying gently in my rear view mirror, and I slowed down a little.

I also reminisced about Dad. The main reason he bought the truck was so that he could help people move. He didn’t need a truck himself, but he saw a need in his community and he knew that having a truck would help him fill that need. He gladly pitched in when a former law student, who was also a bit of a hoarder, moved boxes and boxes filled with tons of law school books. He carted chairs and picnic tables around for church events. He helped his sons and their families move into their new homes. He loved to help people move, and the truck was an instrument of service.

I was driving his truck. Helping someone move. Carrying on his legacy.

The truck is emblematic of the impact Dad had on many people, and this is felt most strongly by his family. If we look we can see ripples of him every day. I parked the truck facing forward in the driveway recently, to keep rain from pooling in the bed. It was unusual for me to park that way. We had a birthday party for the kids that day, and when Lianne looked out of the window before the party and saw the pickup pulled in and facing forward she thought, “Wow, Rob’s here early.”

It only popped into her consciousness briefly, like a flash of lightning illuminating the memory of Dad and then disappearing quickly. Suddenly, she was back in the present, left with only a dull afterimage of what once was.

Our lives are still filled with those reflections. We have moments when we forget that Dad passed away, and then the inevitable reality crashes in. Dad isn’t here to offer advice about all the practical things that he seemed to have so many answers for. He isn’t here to lend his strong back and laughter to a morning of moving furniture for a friend. He didn’t get to see Clay and Angie’s property, he’s missing all the kids growing up, including Lex, who only got to meet him from the womb, and Lachlan who was born after he died. He missed Jaron’s wedding, Grant and Mary’s new puppy, and Mom’s love of boxing. Not only is he missing them, but we’re missing his reactions and thoughts on all of life’s wonders and all of life’s hardships. Dad’s responses to these things would have been ebullient, wise, and practical.

Maybe Dad is getting to experience some of our lives from the spiritual realm. Maybe these moments when we think he’s here, and the times we spend with him in our dreams, are manifestations of a tenuous connection between our world and his. I don’t know if that’s true. The spiritual realm could be outside of space and time as we understand it, and the concept of our loved ones watching us may simply be a coping mechanism we have to deal with grief and loss. Either way, when I hop into the truck and see his old machete sitting on the floor I’m going to use that poignant moment to remember Dad, and to be grateful for the legacy he left.

I thought these thoughts as I drove his truck and lent a hand to a friend of a friend.