Tag: Father

  • Apple Pickin’

    This past weekend, we took part in our annual tradition of going apple picking! I dusted off my red and black flannel shirt because there was a chill in the air, and I had a need to the great taste of crisp ripe apples!

    We started apple picking when the kid was two, and my folks came up to visit us in October 2017. My parents were here to see us, especially to see their granddaughter, and my Ma wanted to experience a New England Autumn. My wife was the one who came up with the idea of apple picking, and it was great Fall activity. It was cool out, slight mist in the air, leaves were changing, and it was something that my parents had never experienced before. Me as well.

    After that, on the first of second weekend in October, we head up into the Hudson Valley for an orchard to spend the morning weaving between trees, picking away.

    This year, I had been looking forward to this more than anything. Part of it is that Autumn has been late in arriving up here. Seems like two weeks ago, we still had the air conditioners on dealing with several days of 80 degrees. But Fall did arrive, and like magic the leaves started changing, temps cooled, and we even got a little rain. Driving up out of the City, it was rejuvenating to feel that the season had started changing. For me, Summer is oppressive while Autumn is liberating.

    This year, as the season was changing, there were other changes too. The apple picking was fine, we all had a good time. But as I looked around the orchard at all of the other families out there with their little kids, I noticed that my daughter was one of the older children out there. I was sort of amazed that there were no teenagers; Like almost none. And the few that were there looked like they wanted to die. I know that apple picking is a cheesy cliche thing to do in Fall, and when I looked over at my kid, who was having a good time, it was apparent that I have a limited time left to do this stuff with her.

    Things will change, as they always do. It will be sad when the day comes and she doesn’t want to do this stuff anymore, but it’s also normal for her to get older and not want to do the old things anymore. Maybe she’ll prove me wrong. I know that she’ll still want to apple pies that her mother makes after these outings. That part won’t change.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    ODDS and ENDS: Painting, Soccer Workouts, and Summer Playlists/Albums

    (Saw it written and I saw it say…)

    I may have mentioned it before, but the plan this Summer, before the kid goes away to camp, is to get the living room painted. And I am one who believes that one of the best lessons we can teach our kids is that sometimes you have to do things for your family that aren’t fun; such as painting the living room. It needs to be done because the last time we painted was ten years ago, right before the kid was born. So… it’s time. There will be patching and sanding, and taping and painting. When me and the wife did it, we completed everything in two days. My guess with the kid is that it will take us four. I don’t want to rush it, because we will make some mistakes and have to go back and clean them up, and I also need to occupy as much time as possible. These summer days can be boring.

    And one of the other ways I am trying to kill time with the kid is having her work on her soccer skills. She had a very good first year playing soccer for her school team, but she didn’t start, which annoyed her. Truth of the matter is that there were girls on the team that were better players than her, simple because these girls had been playing for a couple of years already. As I explained to my kid, if she wants to start, she has to work harder, and up her skills. To my relief and happiness, the kid accepted this challenge – she likes competing and winning. I do want her to getting a starting position on the team, but I am more proud of the fact that she likes working hard to achieve something that she wants.

    And as we are now in Summer, and family road trips are coming, the pressure to build a playlist is growing. The wife has one that she has been working, and has been teasing us with selections while around the home. Even the kid has shown off her growing list of all the different artist that she’s found. That leaves me. I have yet to start, but I already have a bit of dread in me about this. Mainly because I seem to really only pick the same twenty songs, over and over. I can admit that my range of music hasn’t not grown and expanded as I have gotten older. But really, what I really want to do is just listen to albums. I used to take road trips and bring all of my Beatles CDs, or Led Zeppelin, and just go from start to finish – listening to how the band progressed. I used to do that with Oasis and Soundgarden, too. Since iPods and smart phones, I don’t listen to albums anymore, and I miss that. But, the game is about making playlists for these road trips, so I need to go and search out some deep cuts.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Lunch with Friends, TJ’s in Harlem, and Camp Letters

    (Yes I do, my bag is full…)

    The wife and I had a good friend come in from out of town yesterday, and we all went to lunch. I had this thought, more like an understanding, which was that this wouldn’t just be lunch – this would be a hang out. And I was correct. We grabbed lunch, and then headed back to our place, and hung out, catching up, for several hours. The wife made queso, and I made drinks. My wife had the foresight to get all of her work finished for the day before our friend came over; I held out hope that somehow I would find the time to get my stuff done after he left. A couple of drinks told me that I wouldn’t work yesterday. But… I’m not really upset by that. It had been years since we had seen our friend, and spending time with people you care about is never wasted time

    There is a Trader Joe’s in Harlem! It opened yesterday! Holy Shit! Everyone is going to the Trader Joe’s in Harlem! And it’s about time! I am a huge fan of quality items sold at affordable prices…

    The kid is away at camp, and yesterday, I got a letter in the mail from her. The letter was short, very cute, sweet, and made me almost bust out in tears and cry my little dad heart out. Even thinking about the letter makes me choked up. Fatherhood is an amazing adventure, showing me that I have more love and compassion than I thought I contained.

  • Haircuts

    I am a balding, middle aged man. I look like my father, who is a very spry senior man, who has been bald since the first time I remember seeing him. My brothers are bald, and my paternal grandfather was way bald! To be in this family is to be a bald man. I knew this when I was a child, and my uncle, my dad’s brother who was also bald, told me that I needed to grow my hair long before it’s too late. We all knew it was coming. And I did grow my hair very long for a period of time in the late 90’s.

    Around the age of thirty, I started to notice that things were beginning to thin out on top. I wasn’t too worried about it. But the year that I was engaged and leading up to our wedding, I did use minoxidil to keep what hair I had. It was an act of vanity as I wanted to look as youthful in the ceremony and pictures as possible. Somewhere around forty, my hair just took off for the hills. I started wearing a ballcap, not because I was ashamed of my head, but because one Summer I got an awful sunburn on the top of my head, and now I can really feel how cold winter winds can be.

    I say all of this because haircuts are an odd conundrum for the balding man. What hair I have left still grown and needs to be cut and shaped. Yet the quantity of hair I have is significantly less than the average head. I had a barber. He was a good man. But I began to notice that what used to take him thirty minutes to do, was now taking ten minutes to accomplish. And I could tell he was trying to stretch it out.

    That is why I started cutting my own hair with a shaver. Sure, I save money, but now is a chore I need to do every three months. The shaving part is easy; cleaning up all the little hairs is a pain in the butt. (My father still sees a barber, but I know he goes for the social aspect.) I have gotten pretty good at it. Start to finish, including cleanup, about thirty minutes.

    I have thought about growing out my hair, my kid wants me to do it, but I don’t think I’m the type of guy who can pull off bald on top, long in back. Besides, I already had long hair.

  • You’re Embarrassing Me!

    My kid finds me embarrassing. This isn’t some shock or revelation, or even a surprise. All kids find their parents embarrassing at some point, right? It just comes with the territory. With my kid starting at a new school, she has found me more embarrassing than usual of late. I am a silly person, I admit that, but I also know that the kid is trying to fit in, and what she wants is for there to be nothing, and I mean NOTHING, to disrupt or rock that boat. I get it, and I have been on my better behavior to just be normal.

    But I would also like to point out that even my “normal” behavior has been deemed embarrassing. So, this appears to be a no-win situation, because as I have mentioned above, all kids find their parent embarrassing.

    In my time, it was my mother who put a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker on the back of her poo brown Chevet. I mean, it was bad enough she drove a shit colored Chevet, but reminding everyone that Jesus in fact did love them was a bridge too far for me. It was junior high, and as soon as I got out of that car, all the kids at school would begin to yell at me “Jesus Loves You!” There were a few creative bullies out there who would add “Satan Loves You, Too!”

    But I started thinking this morning, being that I am now on Team Parent, that there is nothing wrong with me, so why should I have to change? If I am being my true authentic self, then there is no reason for me to adjust my behavior. I’m not the problem here. I’m just me and the kid is just going to have to come to terms with that.

    And yet this feels like the wrong attitude to have in this situation…