Hang in there, Bus Stop Dad, you're doing great

My morning drive to the office takes me through 6+ miles of mostly residential streets. I see people walking their dogs, little kids playing in front yards, and bathrobe-wearing senior citizens fetching the newspaper.

The cast of characters varies, but there are three people I see consistently. As I head down Lander Road, I always notice a particular dad standing with his two little boys while they wait to catch the school bus.

The boys wear Minecraft-themed coats in the fall and winter. I would guess them to be maybe 7 and 9 years old. They are always moving, chasing each other around or running up and down the driveway to blow off morning steam before having to sit still for several hours at school.

Their dad is a tall fellow with a beard. Usually he's holding a mug that I assume contains the coffee he needs to jumpstart his day. That day, I imagine, consists of getting the boys onto the bus, hustling to get himself ready, then heading off to work to put in 8-10 hours in support of his family.

I have seen the mother only a few times, because (I'm guessing) she needs to be at work earlier than her husband, so it's his job to make sure his rambunctious little sons get to school.

"Rambunctious" is a word my mom would have used for them. "Spirited" is another euphemism meant as a polite alternative to "occasional pains in their teachers' asses."

Maybe I'm wrong about the boys, though. They could be angels in the classroom and hellions at home. I can only go by what very little I observe of them as I drive past at 35mph.

The dad, however, I do know. I don't know his name, of course, and I don't know what he does for a living or where he grew up.

But I know the life he leads. I know the things that keep him awake at night when he thinks about his wife, his boys, and what he needs to do to make sure the lights stay on and food appears on the table.

I know the uncertainties he has even after nearly a decade as a father. I know his often-troubled internal monologue and the confident front he puts on for others.

I don't know him personally, but I know him as a member of the Brotherhood of Dads.

He's out there day after day with his kids, his coffee, and his anxieties.

And there's no place in the world he would rather be.

Part of him looks forward to the day they can drive themselves to school while part of him dreads it. He knows these exhausting mornings are the stuff of memories and that someday he'll miss all of it.

I don't think I'm reading too much into this situation, even though I see him for only 2-3 seconds at a time, three mornings a week.

Because I've been him.

And I'm here to tell him, whatever his name is, that he's doing a great job. Much better than he thinks he's doing. And that those boys have a million reasons to know they are loved, including the fact that their father uncomplainingly stands outside with them while they wait for the bus in heat, cold, rain and snow.

Keep going, my friend. In case no one has mentioned it today, you're an amazing dad.

I've reached the age when, like many dads, I cannot think of anything I want or need for Christmas

Every year until I was well into my 20s, I would ask my dad what he wanted for Christmas.

And every year he would say the same thing: "Case of beer."

He was always just kidding (he gave up drinking in the early 80s), and I always knew that would be his response, but it was like a little ritual we had to go through.

As I got older, this routine of ours got somewhat annoying because I really, truly did need to know what he wanted for Christmas. It seemed so hard for him to come up with something.

Now I get it.

Let it be known that, as I enter my mid-50s, I have no idea what I want for Christmas.

Clothes, I guess. And Amazon gift cards always work. And maybe the occasional classical CD?

The reality is, I have just about everything I could want. I don't have expensive tastes, and any time I want something, I just buy it for myself.

If I were particularly smart, which I am not, I would hold off on these types of purchases from, say, September onward and allow my family to get these items for me.

But of course I forget and just buy whatever I want whenever I want it. Then this time of year rolls around and someone in the family asks what they can get me and I'm stumped.

I suspect something similar happened to my dad all those years ago.

Which is why he always ended up getting the cheap plastic desk set or picture frame I would buy from the elementary school Santa Shop. (Come to think of it, that's probably the stuff he loved the most.)

The point is, I hate making a Christmas list because I don't need anything and I really don't even want anything. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. I'll take a heaping helping of that, if you can swing it.

Otherwise, I don't know...case of beer, I guess.

My TV viewing is mostly snippets of whatever my wife is watching

This is a common scene in our house:

Terry will be taking a break from one of the million tasks, large and small, that comprise her day. She often does this by plopping down on the couch with a cup of coffee to watch television.

She will be happily watching something when I come wandering into the living room. The screen catches my eye. I stand there for a few minutes watching with her.

I become sufficiently interested that I will ask her a few questions about the characters and the plot. Then I either stand and watch some more, or else I head off to do whatever it was I had intended to do in the first place.

Then it happens again in a day or two. Sometimes I will actually sit down and watch for 10 or 15 minutes. More often than not, though, I stand. Dads often do this and I don't know why. Maybe we simply don't want to commit.

Anyway, over time, I become familiar enough with the show that I can pop in six episodes later and quickly catch up on the action.

Sometimes it's a Netflix series, other times it's a competition show like "Dancing with the Stars." Either way, I never watch the whole thing with her, but rather just enough to establish a baseline level of knowledge that allows me to ask educated questions like, "Are those kids on 'The Fosters' still making bad choices?"

I don't think of myself as a TV guy, and it's not because I have any objections to TV. Nowadays, there's far more good writing and acting on TV than there is in movies.

It's just that, for the most part, I don't have time for it. I choose to fill my non-working hours with other things that aren't any better or worse than TV. They're just other choices.

But Terry has good taste in onscreen entertainment, so quite often when I shuffle through the living room, I see something interesting. I know I should be tackling a particular chore or getting ready to leave for a PA announcing gig or something, but I can't seem to look away.

So I end up watching maybe 15% of a multi-season series through a string of 10-minute (or smaller) chunks of viewing.

If there are important bits I know I've missed, YouTube will more often than not have those scenes and I can use that to fill in my knowledge gaps.

It's not the recommended way to enjoy high- (or low-) quality television, but I can tell you it works.

The quarter-zip fleece is the centerpiece of any wintertime Dadwear wardrobe

 

I don't know who it was, but at some point, there was a clothing designer tasked with coming up with something dads living in colder climates could regularly wear, say, from October through April.

The result was the quarter-zip fleece, and I am eternally grateful for this person's efforts.

This time of year, I wear one of these garments probably five or six days a week. I own a half dozen of them in various colors that I pair with an undershirt (always white, gray, or black) and jeans, and I'm ready to go.

You cannot claim to be a Dadwear aficionado if you don't have at least a few of these in your closet. For the record, you also need several print polo shirts, a few pairs of khaki shorts, and an array of t-shirts you wear to mow the lawn.

Let it be known that I wish to be buried in a quarter-zip fleece, even if I die in July. If you want, you can put it on me over a shirt and tie. I'm not a total goober.

Here's what I think Dad might want for Father's Day today

Hey, it's Father's Day, so I just wanted to pop in for an off-the-normal-schedule post to offer up a thought...

If you haven't bought Dad anything for his big day today (assuming you're even planning to get him something in the first place), I have a suggestion for a gift that will cost you nothing.

And please understand I'm not saying that all fathers want this. You can't say all dads want a certain thing any more than you can say all moms want a certain thing. Everyone is different.

But from my experience, I think there's a good chance the dad in your life will enjoy this particular present. And it's this:

Leave him alone.

Just for an hour or so. Leave him alone. Let him do what he wants or go wherever he wants to go. By himself. In a noiseless environment. Just be quiet and leave him alone.

That's all. Dad wouldn't mind some alone time. It's none of your business what he does with it. He may very likely just sit on the couch with his hand in his pants. Doesn't matter. The key factors here are:

• Leave Dad alone
• Be quiet
• Don't ask him what he's doing

Do we have that, kids?

Happy Father's Day to all of my fellow dads. And to the rest of you, just leave us alone for a few minutes, OK? Great, thanks.

People sure do love their daddy-daughter songs...

I find this amazing:

The second-most-read post in the history of this blog is, for reasons I cannot fathom, one titled "Street Walking," which I wrote last year after I walked 17 miles to work. It has received 837 page views, meaning that particular page has been viewed 837 separate times.

OK, fine.

What, then, is the most-read post in the history of this blog? That would be one headlined "Five Songs That Make Dads of Daughters Start Blubbering," which appeared here a little over a year ago on April 6, 2012. That was one where I listed five of the top daddy-daughter songs that are sure to bring on the tears. Fun, a little sentimental, but certainly nothing special.

Or at least I thought so.

How many page views has that daddy-daughter post received? In a little more than a year, that one post has been viewed 9,319 times. Yes, 9,319 (or 11 times more frequently than the second-most-read post).

I cannot begin to explain this. Or I suppose I can. But it would be a total guess.

For one thing, the daddy-daughter bond is a sacred one. Dads love their sons, no doubt, but their love for their daughters is, while no more intense than what they feel for their boys, different. It's just different.

It's a clinging, protective bond, and our society encourages it. It expects dads to hate their daughters' boyfriends. It expects them to put their little princesses on a pedestal. It expects them always to look on their daughters as "Daddy's Little Girl."

I'm not sure if this is all good or bad. But I do know that people are interested in getting ideas for daddy-daughter songs, and I can only assume it's to play at weddings or other special family events. I mean, really, why else do you need a daddy-daughter song?

Other than to start crying randomly as you're driving along and, say, Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses" comes on the radio. Or at least that's what I've heard. From a friend.

Go to Google and search for any of the following phrases, and you'll see this little blog appear on the first page of results for all of them (or at least the last time I checked it did):

• "daddy daughter songs"
• "songs about daughters"
• "songs about dads and daughters"
• "songs about fathers and daughters"
• "songs about daughters and dads"
• "songs about daughters growing up"
• "songs for dads from daughters"
• "songs from daughters to fathers"
• "songs for dads and daughters"

Like many webmasters and bloggers, I use Google's popular Analytics tool to keep track of visitors to "They Still Call Me Daddy." It tells me how long you all spend on the blog, what you read most, where you live, what operating systems you're using, what links or websites brought you here, etc.

I don't even bother checking the section of Analytics that tells me which search engine keywords bring the most traffic to my blog. Because it's always (always) those phrases above.

I would like to think that sometime in the past year, a wedding has taken place somewhere in the world that featured one of the five songs from my list. And that the bride and groom secretly thank me for making their special day perfect with the ideal Father-Daughter Dance song.

I will, in the interest of making their joy complete, accept a cash donation in return for this service. It's the least I can do.

The art of dadness

It's tricky being a father in the 21st century.

Guys in my generation are influenced by two very different styles of parenting: On one hand, most of us had fathers who were of the old school. They were generally good dads, but they left the majority of parenting duties to their wives. Their involvement in the child-rearing process was fairly limited to serving as procreators, disciplinarians and financial backers. And in some cases, not much else.

On the other hand, we ourselves are raising kids at a time when fathers are (happily) expected to be far more hands-on. Unlike many of our dads, we were right there to witness the birth of our children, which as Sting once very aptly said makes the whole thing "much more bloody and profound." In that alone we are sometimes more closely connected to our kids from the very start than our fathers might have been.

We are also rightly expected to take part in all day-to-day aspects of parenting. This is eminently fair but also sometimes a little challenging. The only role models we had for this growing up were our moms, since our dads were so often out working or doing other manly, dad-like things and were therefore absent from the minutiae of having kids. Consequently, a lot of us are simply carbon copies of our mothers when it comes to parenting style.

Women, for the most part, are pretty understanding of this ongoing conflict in our lives and as a gender have been remarkably tolerant of our fatherly shortcomings. One side effect of this is that the bar is set fairly low for modern dads, and anything we do right is met with cheers and applause.

Seriously, it's not that difficult to be considered a good dad nowadays. You show up to little league games, change a few diapers, stay home and watch the kids when your wife goes out and, presto, you're suddenly a candidate for Father of the Year. I've always thought the standards should be a lot higher than that. If we're going to be what we're supposed to be as dads, I think someone needs to push us a little harder.

And speaking of watching the kids, you know what has always bothered me? When someone sees me alone with my children and asks whether I'm "babysitting" them. As if they don't actually belong to me and I'm just pretending to be a parent for a bit while my wife is out shopping. The two irksome implications of that question are:

(1) The responsibility for watching the kids really falls on my wife and I'm graciously offering to do her job for her, and

(2) I'm incompetent and can't be trusted to do this for too long.

In all fairness, I don't think people who ask whether I'm "babysitting" my kids mean anything negative by it, and usually they're of an older generation that simply had a different approach to parenting. But it still bothers me.

I am of the opinion that fathers are invaluable. That's not at all to say that single mothers can't raise quality kids. They do it all the time, and they amaze me. (I know some great single fathers, too.) I'm just saying that a dad brings something to the equation that's hard for a parent of the other gender to match, just as a father on his own by definition can't give his kids everything a mother can.

I am very blessed to serve on the board of directors of The City Mission, an incredible organization in Cleveland that helps people whose lives are in crisis. Next month, the Mission will conduct a day-long event called "Where's Papa? A Symposium on Father Absence." The speaker, Dr. David Stoop, has written more than 20 books that deal with parenting, and specifically with the role of fathers in raising children.

I presume that Dr. Stoop is going to point to the dozens of studies showing the negative social, developmental and financial impact of absent fathers on our society. But beyond that, I just hope that in some small way the event lends credence to the idea that dads are worth something. Popular culture has done a lot to denigrate the role of fathers, and we're often viewed as optional accessories. As I said, this in no way detracts from the efforts of single parents, but I like to think that what we do as fathers is vastly important, and always will be.

I had a great dad. He was goofy, and he had his quirks and faults, but not for a second – not for a single second – did I ever doubt that he loved me and cared for my well-being. The effect of that simple fact on my life has been immeasurably positive, and I want my kids to enjoy the same thing.

Because let's face it: We can't rely on moms to tell stupid jokes, make bad puns, wear hideously mismatched outfits in public, and fall asleep on the couch with their hands in their pants. These are time-honored dad traditions, and by God, I will do everything in my power to uphold them.