It smelled like Sunday morning today. Coffee breath and unshowered dad.
It used to be the one day of the week where I’d be awake before him. I’d wait around for a bit, waiting for permission from my mom to go wake him up. I’d run up the stairs with my dog, open the door, and hope that he wasn’t going to scare me when he woke up.
Waking up my dad is like being around a wild animal when it senses danger, he immediately tries to go from 0 to 60, jumping up and looking around groggily, trying to assess the threat. It’s startling. Eventually he’d recognize it was me and pull me into bed to wrestle. The dog would grab his toy, jump onto the bed and stand over us, pushing his toy into my back or against my dad, forcing once of us to play with him. Dad’s hair might not have even greyed all the way yet.
After things settled down I’d lay with him in bed or against him on the couch downstairs while he watched ESPN’s the Sports Reporters, drinking his first cup of coffee. Mom would make jelly pancakes, or crepes as they’re popularly known by. Blew my mind in 7th grade French class to learn that.
I was a shy kid, didn’t have a lot of friends, was afraid of being around people I wasn’t familiar with, and those mornings always made me feel like none of that really mattered.
I was lucky, because for the most part, my life was full of domestic tranquility. My parents fought every now and then, and since it was the 90’s and you couldn’t watch any television show or movie where parents weren’t getting divorced, I had an irrational fear of my parents splitting up. I ran up into my room sobbing as a kid at least two times thinking that they were going to get divorced, only to be consoled by both Ma and Pa that adults fight, especially when they love each other, but they weren’t going anywhere. But they lied to me about Santa being real, so I didn’t completely believe them.
My dad is loud and boisterous, he’s not afraid to say whatever joke comes to his mind and will talk to anybody. At times it seemed/seems like he already knows everybody. While on the way to Yellowstone one summer vacation, we stopped for the night in some incredibly small Midwestern town that my memory tells me was carved out of the side of a mountain. It was in Wyoming, I believe. The four of us, Mom, Dad, sister and I were leaving the hotel for dinner, when Dad recognized a guy he knew from his hometown. The population of the city we were staying in was only 50 or so.
Mom is a classic mom. Much quieter that Dad, but is willing to pretty much go along with anything. Loves laughing, especially at my dad when he embarrasses himself and acknowledges it, which is rare. That he acknowledges it, that is, normally he doesn’t. Basically if you hate my mom, its like hating Starburst jellybeans and love. Something is wrong with you.
Mom thought Dad was crazy when they first met at work. She always says “I’d never met anybody like him, he was so… loud.” Eventually she warmed to him, enough for my Dad to tell a co-worker that he had planned on asking her out on a date. Co-worker let this slip to Mom by accident, Dad called her one night, ended up talking to her for an unspecified amount of time (reports are unconfirmed, too many figures have been put out), but it apparently was enough for her to get impatient waiting for him to just ask her already. I like hearing that story. I’ve seen my dad climb trees taller than three-story houses with a giant motorized saw in his hang trying to cut down one little branch, throw his body around in sports, and generally do amazing dad things. But when it came to ask out a girl he liked, awkward fumbling on the phone. Small talk. Had to work up the nerve. Had to work at it in general.
They came to visit me at my apartment recently and insisted that they sleep on the air mattress on the floor while I slept in my bed. I couldn’t talk them out of it. We went into Chicago and visited the field museum on a Saturday. Dad couldn’t help but make “dad jokes,” at every exhibit he saw. I took pictures on my phone of everything he commented upon, maybe intending to write something about it later, but mainly to remember how much fun it was just to hear my dad comment on how penguins look like they’re wearing tuxedos.
While we were in the Egypt exhibit they wanted me to take a picture of them posing against the most Egyptian looking thing we could find, and then to send this picture to my sister. They wanted to brag about where they were at, knowing that she wants to go to the museum again and, especially, the Egypt exhibit.
Why would two adults in the latter half of their 50‘s, with two (for the most part) fully grown children and over a quarter of a century spent together do this?
Because they’re still having fun, and still playing “slug bug” nearly 13 years after my younger sister grew out of it. And I think that’s the best anybody can really hope for.
Dad bought Mom flowers and they went out to eat with my sister and her boyfriend. They had a nice Valentines Day.
One Dad observation:
“I dated a girl that looked like that once.” – Jeff Rogers, February 2012, Chicago, IL.
