The Dad Thing to Do

 

It is Father’s Day weekend and I have been trying to figure out what I would write about as a dad and a dad blogger for the occasion. I was playing around with some ideas that would have led into some grand treatise on modern fatherhood or manhood.  I had some writers block and was doing some searching on The Google this afternoon for some inspiration. Maybe a pithy quote or something.  Interestingly this one above that is most often attributed to Lennon did not originate with him 

As with many famous quotes attributed to famous people via the Internet, it was actually said by someone else. In this case it likely belongs to Allen Saunders. Regardless of the origins it is doubly useful in this case. 1. Lennon included it in “Beautiful Boy” about his son Julian and 2. it was what I realized today.

My two oldest daughters were watching TV and I was looking for pithy quotes about being a good father. Their show ended and I turned off the TV. They were griping about wanting to watch more. I encouraged them to find something to do. They were flopping about on the couch complaining when suddenly I realized that the work I was doing on a blog post was exactly the opposite of the point I wanted to make in the post that was developing in my head.

So I said let’s do something together. I asked what they wanted to do and one suggested a walk and the other suggested walking to the park and everyone was on board so instead of writing a post about fatherhood we went and did this instead.

We did some swinging.

We did some standing swinging.

We had a spinning class.

We practiced jumping off the swings. Each time a little higher and a little further.

The last seven months have been more challenging to pay attention to life instead of just making plans. I have been working a second job that started out as a three month gig and turned into seven months. It has been a great opportunity to help out and the extra money has helped to make ends meet. Working a full time and a part time job is tiring and makes it harder to spend time with the kids. Throw an election into the mix and it gets a little tighter since I am not one to sit on the sidelines during campaigns. When this election was called the oldest two both said they wanted to come canvassing with me. They took turns and we got some good one-on-one, daddy-daughter time. I taught them how to canvass. They learned how to look for indicators of whether someone was home and we had some chats about politics and important issues. Plus they got to reap the benefits of being a volunteer on Sundae Sunday. My 5 year old apparently talked with her teacher about how much fun she had canvassing with me.

It has been a good reminder that I need to keep an eye on the life happening around me while I am busy making plans.

Happy Father’s Day to all my fellow dads out there!