This is my Drive Home.
I know it's a little abstract. It's not really a picture of a drive home; it's a car, it's a sunset, it's the silhouette of the trees sitting on the horizon. It looks like the album cover to an emo punk band who sings nostalgic ballads about the golden teen years when everything was fun and nothing was hard and love was simple. But all those things encompass what goes on in my head on my drive home.
I've always been introspective. But when I drive home from somewhere, it's like my inner monologue is on crack, spouting out some kind of esoteric narration about where I am in life and what I'm learning and why it matters.
I got a new job. My official title is "marketing rep," but my day-to-day tasks are mainly comprised of blog posting.
I get paid to blog.
Ironically, between that and school and being married, I haven't had much time to hop on here and write about my own life. All this introduction aside, what I really want to write about is what's been going on in my head on my drives home recently. I know it sounds morbid, but for the past week or so, I've been pondering what I would say at the funerals of my dearest friends and family. This morning, I found something on my computer that I wrote a long time ago, about one of the most important people in my life.
I don't know why, but growing up, my dad hated not being able to open our bedroom door all the way. If he ever went back to our room to check on us or say something, and something was blocking the door, it was never a pretty sight.
We had these toys called "no-ends" when we were kids. They were named as such because there really was no end to what we could build with them. We built space ships and weapons and "life-sized" people to play with. We went through a phase where we built tents. They were basically giant igloo-shaped wireframes with blankets draped all over them.
One night, my brother and I had had the same igloo-tent sitting in our room for over a week. It used every single no-end piece we had, so it took up a lot of space. Well, my dad came in to tell us dinner was ready, and sure enough, the tent was blocking the door. Naturally, we were inside the tent at the time, so we were greeted with my dad pulling back the makeshift blanket-curtain doorway and asking "what are y'all doing!?"
We instantly accepted the impending reality that we would be made to disassemble the tent. But instead of issuing the orders we were all too ready to hear, my dad simply said "I'll be right back."
I remember my brother and I looking at each other, dumbfounded.
He returned minutes later with a desk lamp, a portable television and a power strip. He asked if he could join us in our tent. We weren't in the habit of telling him "no," so we moved aside and watched him crawl awkwardly into our tent and plug everything in. He had us affix the lamp to the top of the tent while he messed with the antennae and tuner on the TV.
We sat there watching a baseball game in grainy black and white, in our new and improved tent, fully equipped with interior lighting and a slightly larger entrance. And my mom came in later and got all three of us in trouble for not going out there to eat. But as a young lad, there was something to be treasured about my father being in trouble with me.
It's the unexpected moments of fatherhood that scattered themselves throughout my childhood. It's the random decisions to get in trouble with me rather than get me in trouble. These are the times that I remember when I think about my father. It's not even that I choose to focus on the good and not the bad - no, not's not that shallow a sentiment. It's the overwhelming depth of love I remember feeling as a son, knowing full and well that my dad was letting go - even if just for a moment - of his adulthood, to assume the role of a child, so that he may relate to his son in a way that would be understood.
Herein lies the true nature of a father's love. This is how I will always remember my dad.
-R.
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