Father's Day

The movie Parenthood (1989) always sticks with me. The movie starts off with the child version of Steve Martin's character being left alone at a baseball game by his father. It flashes forward to the present where you see grown-up Steve Martin at the game with his own kids and carrying an armful of souvenirs and barely able to make it to the car.

[caption id="attachment_2320" align="alignnone" width="460"] That's basically me[/caption]

Everyone has their own list of things that they feel their parents did wrong. It's one of the fringe benefits of being a kid, you have 18 years to jot down notes that you plan to read aloud as you thrust their wheelchairs full speed through the entrance of the retirement home. Even though I have my own list, I don't have "bitter child syndrome." Everyone knows a person who finds a way to turn the most arbitrary statements into a segue about their childhood.

Me: "I just made some lemonade."
Person: "My mother once sold my little sister for a jar of lemonade."
Me: "???"

While I think that there is definitely a phone book full of talking points regarding my upbringing, I recognize that there were a lot of success points. I never had to hold a teddy bear to show a judge where someone touched me. No one ever beat me for shits and giggles and to my knowledge (assuming this is my real family) I've never been sold for rocks. So I'd call my childhood a success.

Still, I'll always remember those "talking points" and, like Steve Martin's character in the movie, I'm just trying to do better. And also like him I'll probably overdo it. When I was little we never really went anywhere except the shopping mall. So today we went bike riding down the Mt. Vernon Trail. We rode to the airport and watched the planes take off while my daughter "chased them." We went over the bridge to the Jefferson Memorial where I let her do her Rocky thing and run up and down the stairs until she was tired. Then we stopped and had a picnic under a tree near the water. I fed her Gerber Spaghetti while she waterboarded me with her sippy cup. Then we came home, shared a popsicle and watched Sesame Street until she fell asleep.

I'm tired as hell now, but I only have 16 more years to go before she'll be done with her list. And if I play my cards right then hopefully the worst thing on the list will be, "When I have kids of my own I'm gonna give them some space!"