Fathers' Day

Sylvia Plath used to get up at 5 a.m. to write for a few crucial hours before her kids woke up and she had to go about the business of being a mother. She called that period of time "the blue hour" because when she was writing at that time, it was winter in London where she was living and the light she wrote by was blue. That little sliver of time was was when she could get stuff done. When it comes to this blog, my blue hour is Sunday afternoon. We come home, eat, change clothes, and then spend a few hours just decompressing before it's time to get ready for dinner and then bed. Some people nap, others draw or read. Sometimes I blog.

So today is Fathers' Day. I have been thinking a lot about Dennis in the last couple of weeks. I still really miss that guy, and I'm sad that Parker will never have any memory of him as her grandpa. I am glad that Maryn and Avery were old enough before he passed to remember him teasing them, calling them "turkey lips," bringing them toys, buying them pie. I miss him for my own sake too. I just miss being able to call him and know that he probably had the answer - to whatever question. I had a builder, a plumber, an  electrician, a mechanic, a financial expert, a negotiator, a professional bargain hunter, and a friend with zero tolerance for BS on call at all times and they were all the same guy. I know I'm a sentimental sap but this video produced by Dove Skin Care of all things just breaks me apart every time I see it. It gets to me because it so succinctly (sixty seconds) summarizes the role that I think dads are supposed to play - they are there to comfort, guide, rescue, help, and celebrate at every turn. The kid on the monkey bars kicks his legs and panics thinking that tragedy is about to strike. His dad comes in and rescues him from his tiny emergency and assures him that not only will things be okay but it wasn't that scary of a thing in the first place. As a forty year old man, I still wish I had that to rely on.

The other side of this is that I am a dad. I get sad that Dennis isn't around any more, but it's important that I don't get caught up in that for too long because me relying on my father is not the point of my life any more. I have three incandescent daughters (the little and the not-so-little), and that opportunity is just the honor of my life. Each one of them is so maddening in her own unique way, and yet when I look past the daily complaints and irritations, I see that each one of them is literally spectacular in her goodness, her creativity, her sensitivity, her capacity for joy, her ambition, her talent, her vulnerability. I just have so much admiration and love for each one of them. I'm just a doof who doesn't feel much wiser than I ever did, but I hope that I'll manage to not blow it as a father and that my daughters will reach adulthood feeling like they have in me someone who comforts, guides, rescues, helps, and celebrates them with love and compassion.

I'm making myself tear up, so I need to move on to another topic.

In other news, tomorrow and Tuesday are my last days of class for Spring semester. It was a quick seven weeks, and it's ending just as I feel we're starting to hit our stride. Ah, well. Week after next, I'll start teaching a twice-a-week summer class, The Art of the American Film. I'm excited because watching and talking about movies are among my favorite things in the world, as you know, but also because I really need a break from teaching composition. I feel like this whole year has been me wandering through the junkyard of every approach and method I've ever been taught and randomly picking up an assignment here, a technique there, and just slapping together some Frankenstein monster of pedagogy. Nothing I've done in the last year teaching-wise has felt complete or unified. I need to take a break for a little bit. I need some time to decompress and think about the best way to move forward in the fall. Teaching normally gives me a lot of satisfaction and purpose, and I don't like feeling as though this important component of my adult life has been shorting out and fizzling for nearly a year. Time to recharge and try again later.

I just finished reading Dave Cullen's book of investigative non-fiction, Columbine. My pal Angela Hallstrom suggested it in a comment on one of my previous posts and since she has excellent taste, I gave it a whirl. I started it partly because I was looking for a new non-fiction book to use in my 112 classes but also because I have always had some kind of investment in that terrible day. My cousins went to Columbine and my lovely cousin Kristin was in the cafeteria when it all began. I remember coming home for lunch and finding my mother standing right in front of the TV watching helicopter footage of kids running out of the school. She said, "I think this is where John's kids go to school." It was a horrible day.

Like everyone else, I've heard every story and myth associated with what happened. The Trenchcoat Mafia, the cruelty of jocks as they persecuted these lonely kids, the girl who wouldn't deny Jesus even with a gun pointed at her face. I wanted to know what really happened. I wanted to understand, if possible, why any of it happened. The book is one of the clearest, most thorough pieces of research writing I've ever read. It clips along, never exploiting or exaggerating, never falling into the potential trap of sentimentality, allowing the drama of the actual events and the power of good writing and research to drive the book like an engine.

It is excruciating to read, and honestly, if I didn't feel morally obligated to finish it, I might have abandoned it at times. One of the killers was an actual psychopath - no real human emotions, no sense of empathy or compassion for other people. The other was an extraordinarily depressed, lonely, impressionable kid who might have either just killed himself or done nothing at all without the prompting of the other one. Their sickness led to an incalculable amount of sadness and suffering. It's hard to read about what those boys thought and felt but harder to read about the normal kids and parents and administrators who had to deal with the aftermath of their choices.

I thought about my cousin Kristin, her siblings, my Uncle John and Aunt Alanah a lot throughout the book. Even though the book actually made me sad and blue for much of the time I was reading it (and believe me, reading the book does not make teaching at a community college any easier or comfortable - also, it is definitely not the book to be reading when you are having trouble with your kids), I think now of the last time we were in the West. We stopped in Logan, Utah to see Suzy's old stomping grounds. Kristin lives in Logan with her husband, and we went out to dinner with her at a restaurant called La Tormenta. It was loud, crowed, chaotic, and not what you might call super-sanitary - but the food, oh my, the food was wonderful. And so was Kristin. She is smart and lovely and funny and good. According to the book, the majority of the Columbine survivors have moved on and are happy, healthy, well-adjusted people. They're bored with talking about that day in April. It's the past and they are busy living their lives. That gives me hope. Kristin in that loud Mexican restaurant gives me hope.

Well, the blue hour is over. Kids are in the kitchen staring into the fridge and, as a good dad, I have to go intervene before they spoil their dinner.